by T. S. Bishop
“Mlfblm,” was what came out.
There was a flurry of movement around me.
“Sophie!” a boy-man’s excited voice called out. He was a man, I was sure, but something about his voice made me think that he was a boy. A boy I knew.
“How do you feel?” someone else asked gravely. His voice was deep and soothing, the kind of voice that would be excellent at reading bedtime stories. I thought of red hair, and dark eyes framed by long lashes.
“Can she hear us?”
I tried to move my head again in a nod and succeeded by maybe a millimeter.
“’Ey,” was all I could manage, but then I opened my eyes—with an effort, because they felt like they’d been glued shut—and met two pairs of worried eyes.
“Ouch,” I said, as light seared my eyes immediately, and squeezed them shut again.
“Hurts,” I whimpered.
“I’m turning off the lights,” Noah—I knew his name!—said, and by the cool dimness behind my eyelids I knew he’d done it.
“Hey again,” I said, opening my eyes. My mouth felt like it was lined with sawdust. I coughed.
“Here, drink this,” Dominic—another name!—said, handing me a glass of water. I looked down at it distrustfully.
“It’s just water,” Noah said quickly.
“Yeah, I’ve had a talk with certain people about slipping things into people’s drinks,” said Dominic, raising an eyebrow at Noah, who looked shamefaced.
I gulped it down thirstily. It tasted clear and cold and absolutely perfect.
“How long?” I asked, looking around at them when I was done.
“You’ve been unconscious for the entire day, ever since you came out of the maze,” Noah said quickly.
“So it’s…evening now?”
“About ten pm,” Dominic confirmed, glancing down at his watch. “How do you feel?” he added, coming forward and looking at me closely. He took my gently by the chin so he could study my face better. I felt a blush creep up my cheeks.
“I’m fine,” I said, pushing his hands away. “Is this a big deal? Does this not happen every time?”
“Not that we’ve ever heard,” Dominic said, steepling his fingers.
“Usually, witches just come out of the maze completely fine. They might be somewhat out of it—if they’re still feeling the effects of the witchwood brew, but getting knocked out for hours…I’ve never read of that happening.”
“Do you remember what happened in there? What you saw?” Dominic asked.
“I’m…trying,” I said uncertainly, “I can’t really remember it clearly. I think there were…flashes of light? And a woman in a red dress? And…someone was crying.”
Noah looked down at his hands. Neither of the other two boys showed any visible reactions.
“Is there something else?” I asked, looking at them.
“You were talking in your sleep,” said Dominic awkwardly.
“What did I say?”
“It was hard to make out,” Noah said, but I could tell that he was lying. Had I begged and pleaded not to be sent away? Had I cried out that I wasn’t lying, that I could see demons? It didn’t matter.
“I brought you chocolate,” said Noah.
I laughed, seeing his hopeful expression.
“Don’t worry, you’re not in the dog house,” I reassured him.
“Speak for yourself,” said Dominic, “Noah’s definitely not Adrian and my favorite person right now.”
“Wait, where is Adrian?” I asked, looking around and half-expecting to see his tall, loping figure emerge from the shadows.
“He’s confined to his quarters,” said Dominic evasively.
“What for?”
“For…fighting,” Noah said in a small voice.
“Whoa! Tell it to me from the start! And FYI, next time you lead with the information that one of the team was arrested for beating someone up,” I added, pointing at all three of them.
“Noted,” Dominic said, mouth twitching.
“This isn’t funny,” I warned him.
“One of the other Bloodsworn was getting a little mouthy, so Adrian put him in his place,” explained Noah.
“Was it about me?”
“You know Sophie, I’m starting to think you might be a little self-centered—“
“Well, was it?”
“Yes.”
“Dammit! That fool! I don’t need any of you to protect my reputation or whatever,” I exclaimed, glaring at them.
To my annoyance, they refused to meekly obey me. I really needed to cultivate an aura of cold badassery. People would take me more seriously then, I was sure.
“It would have been one of us either way,” said Dominic flatly, “We’re not letting people trash talk you—or anyone from the team—and get away with it in one piece.”
“How about a compromise?” I said. I was starting to get a tic behind my left eye from the thought of any of my boys—and since when had they become my boys?—going around the Sanctum picking fights with anyone they thought looked at me the wrong way.
“Next time you feel like someone besmirched my reputation—is that a thing people still say?—you come to me first. I get dibs on beating up anyone who talks trash about me behind my back, all right?”
“All right,” Dominic said grudgingly.
“I don’t believe in violent solutions to conflict,” Noah said in a saintly voice.
Dominic and I rolled our eyes at him almost simultaneously.
“This coming from the guy who had his bully ejected from the Sanctum and his family stripped of their rank,” Dominic told me in a low but carrying voice. “He takes people down with the power of bureaucracy and red tape.”
“If you’re going to do stupid shit,” Noah recited, “You’d better cover your ass or some nosy prick—like yours truly—is going to come along and ask uncomfortable questions that will ruin your life.”
“You’re like a golden retriever with the teeth of a piranha,” I said, throwing my head back and laughing.
I heard a noise coming from an outer room.
“Expecting someone?”
“Shit, it’s probably Adele. Hannah’s been distracting her all day, but I guess she’s finally back,” Dominic said, scrambling up and almost toppling the chair over in his hurry.
“Where’s the fire?” I asked, frowning at them. Noah stuffed sheets of paper into his backpack and had already pushed the window open and was peering outside.
“We’re not really supposed to be here,” Dominic explained, limping over to the other two hurriedly. “Adele’s a little…strict about visiting hours.”
“He means she’ll have our guts for garters if she finds us here,” said Noah. “All right, you go first, Dom. Then me.”
I watched them scramble out the window. The sounds of their escape had just died away when Adele walked briskly into the room, carrying an armful of bandages and a tray of food. My stomach leapt eagerly. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I saw the steaming hot food. My stomach gave an undignified growl.
“Good to see that you’re awake,” Adele said, setting the tray on my lap.
“Red jello!” I said, delighted. “You are a saint on earth, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am,” she said at once, but her mouth twitched. She sat down calmly by my bed, raised an eyebrow at the hat that Dominic had forgotten to take with him—oops, so much for being sneaky—and started to knit.
She loved me, I was sure of it.
“Any idea what happened to me?” I asked, setting my spoon down after a few mouthfuls of soup. Now that my stomach wasn’t crying out for food, I could actually think about the strange things that had happened to me today.
“I was actually hoping you would be able to answer that,” Adele said, not looking up from her clicking needles, “Do you remember anything from the maze?”
“It was…dark,” I said, screwing up my eyes like I was making an effort to remember, when what I was reall
y doing was trying to think of something that I could make up to tell her. There was no way I was telling her about my occasional nocturnal visits to a random magical prisoner who was very rude to me. “I heard a voice. It said I needed to be careful, that I had enemies or something. There was…a waterfall. And a woman. I think I knew her. Or I was supposed to know her. And she said something, but she was crying. Or maybe she was going to say something? Or she said I already knew whatever it was? It was confusing. And I saw myself, holding a pin. Or maybe it was a key, and it looked familiar somehow? And then there was fire, and I saw myself again. With the boys.”
“The boys?”
“Yeah. Adrian, Noah, Dominic and…some other guy. We were…uh, I can’t remember.”
“Anything else?” Adele asked smoothly.
“I can’t…think of anything else right now.”
“That’s quite non specific.”
“I’m sorry,” I said helplessly, “It’s all I remember.”
“Well, that’s pretty much what I expected,” Adele said, neatly finishing one row and starting on the next. It looked like she was making a scarf.
“Really? This was what you expected me to see?”
“Witchwood brew is notoriously unreliable,” Adele snorted, “I would have been far more surprised if you’d gotten anything coherent out of that experience. I mean no offense, but your friend Noah, for all that he has the entire Archive in his head, is quite impressionable in some ways. Hearing stories of witches having wondrous visions in the maze from when you were a child—creates certain expectations.”
“I see,” I said slowly, “So you’re saying that my going through the maze was basically pointless?”
“Oh no,” Adele said, surprised. She pointed at my hands. “Look down. It allowed you to see your magic.”
I looked down at my hands and gasped. They were glowing. A bright blue
“Some things are superstitious nonsense and others are superstitions but still valuable,” she said, smiling at my amazement. “You should be ready to start training tomorrow.”
I snapped my fingers, and all the candles in the room lit up. My fingers tingled with something strange and new. It felt like electricity, down to my bones.
It felt like power.
Chapter 14
“You have to concentrate.”
“I’m trying.”
“Are you using your mind’s eye.”
“Yes. Nothing’s happening.”
“Are you visualizing a flame?”
“Yes, just like you told me to.”
“Imagine that flame growing bigger and brighter, and feeding three smaller flames until all four are connected by an unshakeable bond.”
“…”
“Well?”
“I got nothing. Sorry.”
“If you would just concentrate—“
“Listen, lady, I think I’d find it a lot easier to concentrate without you breathing over my neck, all right?”
“Fine!” huffed my tutor, a witch with iron-grey hair wearing yoga pants and a black shirt that somehow still looked formal, and left the clearing.
We were in a little wooded area next to a cottage in the woods. Apparently, the Sanctum owned the place and used it as a retreat for apprentice witches.
The cottage itself was really nice—I didn’t actually know where it was, since we’d just crossed over with the portal and my tutor was very close-mouthed about everything—and it had clearly been furnished with comfort in mind.
There were long leather couches placed around a giant flatscreen tv in the living room that had a twenty-foot high ceiling, and a crystal chandelier. On the floor was a bear head rug, which made me uneasy because I felt like it was watching me with its eyes. There was a shelf with a ton of DVDs—seriously, more than anyone could possibly watch in their lifetime.
There were all the movies and tv shows that had ever existed from the time they could be taped. Unfortunately, I wasn’t exactly on vacation and training for sixteen hours a day didn’t give me a lot of time to catch up on all my favorite guilty pleasures.
The kitchen looked like it belonged in a space ship. All the appliances had a shiny chrome finish, and the counter tops were white and spotless. As soon as I stepped into the kitchen, everything started whirring and beeping and startling me out of my skin. And then the fridge started talking to me and I fled.
Apparently these witches really liked their modern conveniences.
The counter had two faucets, one over the sink and one that just had a drain with a grill over it. Kind of weird, right? Well, I twisted it open and coffee poured out.
That’s right. Coffee on tap.
If this was what being a witch was like, I was officially a fan.
I definitely was not a fan of Agatha, though.
Agatha was my tutor for the week. She was tall and thin and had a dour look on her face all the time. She reminded me of a crane, with its long skinny legs.
Most importantly, she hated me.
It would be easy to say that we had different work styles, but that wouldn’t be accurate. It was like my presence infuriated her, which I didn’t understand.
Luckily, living with eleven different foster families who had all harbored varying levels of contempt and disgust towards me prepared me for far worse than Agatha.
I took all her impatience and anger and put-downs and returned passive-aggressive sweetness.
Despite the opulence of the ‘cottage’, we didn’t spend any time there apart from meals—which were awful because Agatha insisted on an all-day fast to ‘improve concentration’. We were only allowed to drink hot water with lemon juice (to her credit, she followed the same diet), and in the evening we would break the fast with stale bread and oatmeal. We got up at five am every morning, went to the clearing and practiced various magical meditation techniques to ‘hone my powers’ and ‘prepare me to bond with my Bloodsworn’.
So far, I’d been able to do a grand total of diddly squat.
It was the third day, and all I’d managed to do was find a secret stash of candy and watch Seinfeld at night when Agatha was asleep. The morning itself had been a complete waste of time for me.
Agatha seemed to believe that repeating her instructions over and over again in increasingly loud and annoyed tones was enough to get me to break my mental barrier and start reaching out to my Bloodsworn. That obviously didn’t work.
I felt bad, I really did.
I knew how important this was. Without forming a bond with Noah, Dominic and Adrian, I wouldn’t be able to give them my power during fights. Without the bond, I, as an untrained witch, was also going to be worse than useless in battle. A lot was riding on the success of my training.
If only I had a better teacher.
I reached under my mattress and pulled out my cell phone. I had to hide it because I wasn’t allowed to communicate with the outside world, but I had managed to sneak it along with me anyway.
I switched it on and got a stream of unread messages from Noah, Adrian and even a couple from Dominic. I tip-toed to Agatha’s room and listened at the door to make sure she was asleep. I could hear soft, regular snores so the coast was probably clear.
I crept downstairs and shut myself inside the pantry, just to be safe.
“Hello?”
“It’s me!”
“Sophie!” Noah’s voice came through, crackly and indistinct but I could still hear him. I felt a rush of happiness that surprised me. I’d only been gone for a few days, that couldn’t be enough time to miss the boys could it?
“Hey Noah,” I whispered back, “How’s it going over there?”
“Kind of boring without you,” he said wistfully, “Adrian’s been mooning around. Don’t tell him I told you that!” he added quickly.
“Too late. I’m going to bring it up as soon as I see him. Listen, I need your help.”
“With what?” he asked. He was perking up, I could hear it in his tone. I could imagine the exact expression
of eagerness on his face.
“This training thing with Agatha is a total bust. I need you to tell me if there are any other ways to activate my awareness of you guys.”
“That’s weird, I was just doing some reading about that. But,” here he hesitated, “From what I’ve read, the fasting and meditating method is pretty tried and true. And the other ways are all just too dangerous.”
“You know I can’t resist doing a good ‘too dangerous’ thing,” I said in a pleading tone. “Don’t dangle that in front of me and not follow through.”
“No. No way. There’s a very strong possibility that it could kill you. Just stick with the meditation and the fasting!”
“Noah,” I said, letting the barest hint of a whine enter my voice, “She won’t let me drink coffee!”
“It’s only for another four days! You can handle it. Right?”
Ah, the sweet, sweet taste of wearing someone down.
“Sophie?” he said, and that was when I heard his resolve crack. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to do anything without Agatha’s supervision, all right?”
“Scout’s honor,” I said, crossing my fingers behind my back, even though he couldn’t see me.
Chapter 15
In my defense, I did leave Agatha a note.
In her defense, there was no note on earth that could have explained my plan in a way that made it sound reasonable and well thought out.
I left the cottage when it was still dark out, so I’d have a reasonable head start if Agatha decided to follow me. Unfortunately, that meant that I only had the light of my phone’s torch app to guide me to the ravine that was a mile or so away.
You might think, dark woods and ravines? Was this girl trying to be the first victim in a horror movie?
I was doing something else, but it was equally dangerous and ill-advised.
I was trying to awaken my bond with the guys by nearly dying.
“Are you sure this is the only other way?” I’d asked Noah, bumping my head against the pantry door and groaning. It just figured that I would have to choose between spending four more days in a remote cabin with Agatha or nearly killing myself to get what I wanted.