I buried the thought in the back of my head. Being stripped of my magic was no longer my biggest worry. I had to get the image of thousands burning at my hand out of my head. I had to get rid of it like I’d gotten rid of the husk of myself that I saw whenever I thought about my magic being stripped. Fear got me nowhere. It didn’t help any situation. Fear made a person do stupid, irrational things.
I couldn’t afford to mess up. There was too much at stake. I couldn’t even entertain the idea of being captured and used as a weapon. At least now I had some resemblance of control, but if I was controlled by someone else, I would have nothing at all—and that terrified me. It made me want to curl into a ball and weep. But I couldn’t. I had to be strong. I had to banish all of those thoughts from my head. It wasn’t helping with the emptiness in my belly and the bile that rose in my throat from the separation. It only added to it, and I knew I was going to be sick if I didn’t do something. If I didn’t push my fear to the back of my mind and focus on the task at hand.
“Damien,” I hissed as he passed the janitor’s closet. He stopped for a second and looked behind him. I watched him through the crack of the door, opened just enough to see him when he walked past the closet toward his locker. The hallway was full of kids, but I knew his route, and I knew that he liked to walk close to the wall. I knew he didn’t like walking in big crowds. I watched his puzzled expression, and when he saw no one behind him, he turned the other way around.
“In the closet, you nit,” I said, fighting a smile.
Realization dawned on his face and, without thinking twice, Damien stepped into the closet. The space was small, way too small for two people, but this was what I had to work with. I couldn’t wait any longer to talk to him; I had already spent too much time talking with the headmistress after she’d told me to find him. I had spent too much time separating myself from my familiar already, too. I had to catch him before he let anything slip, and this was my best option.
“Lia,” he said, rubbing his head after bumping it on a shelf. There wasn’t much room to avoid it, coming in. I was grateful that I was short enough to have missed it when I’d snuck in here. We stood about two feet apart, a broom jabbing me in the back and a tower of toilet paper rolls threatening to tumble over behind Damien. “Not that I don’t love being in a confined space with the prettiest girl in school, but I have to ask: Why am I here?”
I ignored his compliment, even though it made me smile slightly. This was not the time for cuteness. This was not the time to relive the memory of the previous night—the kiss, the flirting, the making out. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it, and now was not the time to figure it out.
“You haven’t told anyone about...” I leaned in closer to him, whispering my words, “you know?”
“The kiss?” He raised his eyebrow. “No? I didn’t think you’d appreciate me going behind your back and telling the whole world about it while you were missing classes. Actually, where have you been?”
“Not the kiss.” I smacked his abdomen with the back of my hand. “The other thing. And I’ve been laying low. Headmistress’ orders.”
Realization dawned on his face. “Hell no! That’s not my secret to tell. Why? Has something happened?” He looked around the closet, trying to find the flaming ballerina in a little room that could hardly fit the two of us. “Has someone taken her?”
“No, nothing has happened.” Not yet, I wanted to add, but I held back. “I need you to keep it to yourself, okay? No one can know about her. I mean no one, Dame. Not Patrick, not Nina, and not even Wendy.”
I didn’t enjoy keeping something so big from my friends, but the more people that knew, the better the chance of someone who shouldn’t know anything finding out. I was sure the headmistress had spoken to Mr. Henry by now, as well. This was top secret and on a need-to-know basis. If Damien hadn’t found me in the kitchen that night, he wouldn’t have had to know about the familiar, either.
“I won’t tell a soul, Lia,” he said. I could have sworn there was hurt in his voice. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t tell you,” I said. I felt guilty, I did. It was awful having to keep something a secret without knowing why it was kept a secret. But I couldn’t tell him. Not yet, anyway. I had to figure things out first. I had to get all the information first. I already asked him to keep one secret. I couldn’t expect him to keep another. Not when I didn’t even know what to do about us, about the kiss.
I didn’t want to guilt him into keeping my secrets, and I didn’t want to feel obligated to him. The headmistress hadn’t said anything about keeping the people that were after me a secret, but I made it a rule myself. The fewer people who knew about anything going on with me, the better. Even if that meant keeping it away from my best friend.
“All I can tell you is that I’m in trouble, but the headmistress is working on it. I just need to stay hidden for a while,” I explained. “Only until I have figured out what to do about it all.”
“You’re kind of freaking me out, Lia.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” I said, then took a deep breath. “I just can’t risk involving you in something that I myself don’t know anything about.”
“You involved me the day we met, seven years ago, Lia.” He stepped a little closer to me, but I took a step back, shaking my head. The broom did a number on my rib, but I ignored the pain. “I’m sorry, Damien. I’m just sorry.”
And then I did the cowardly thing. I did the one thing I despised seeing women doing in movies—I bolted.
I opened the closet door and ran. I didn’t care who saw me. I didn’t care who I knocked over on my way. I just needed to get some distance between myself and Damien. If I stayed any longer, he would have asked more questions, and then what was I supposed to tell him? I couldn’t just repeat myself, couldn’t tell him that I couldn’t actually tell him just yet, that I was sorry. That was the one thing that made a person feel even worse than they already felt to begin with.
It was easier to run than to face him. It was easier to bolt than to look him in the eye and tell him that I didn’t trust him enough. It wouldn’t have been in so many words, but that was how he would have taken it. It was how I would have understood it, if I were in his shoes. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t trust him. I did trust him, more than anyone. But I had to trust the headmistress more, and her orders were not to give him too much information. She had the power to help me, Damien didn’t. And if trouble came to find me, I knew the headmistress could hold her own. I knew that Damien, despite every good trait he had, could not fight anyone in a real battle.
Chapter 11: Talking With Fire
Hours turned into days, and the days became a week.
I had gotten quite familiar with the wall of my tower. I had counted every crack; I had counted every stone. I had grown increasingly aware how dull my room was. There was nothing interesting to look at, and it was starting to get to me. I needed a plant or something, anything, really. I didn’t really care what it was, as long as it brought a little color and life into this brown and grey prison cell. I didn’t care as long as there was something to distract me from the deafening silence. From the voices in my head that kept retelling the worst stories possible—the stories of how my life would end, of what would happen if I was found. I wanted something to take away the suspense. I’d always hated surprises, even as a kid—especially when someone told me that there was a surprise in store for me. I’d rather they had just kept it to themselves before the surprise actually found me.
Waiting was the hardest part. There were things for me to do, of course. I had access to the Internet, I had books, I had a phone, but there were only so many things you could do before the suspense devoured you whole and there was nothing left to do but study your surroundings, hoping that you would find something interesting enough to distract you from the real problem at hand.
Fiona came to visit me every so often, marveling at the ballerina that had made herself at home on my pillow.
I’d tried to make her a little bed of her own, which she refused to sleep in. She wanted to be in bed with me, on my pillow. I didn’t mind it much. She radiated a comforting warmth that lulled me to sleep at night. It was something I had come to love about the little familiar.
The ballerina seemed to enjoy the attention. She loved spending time with me, and she adored the hell out of cuddling and laying on people’s laps. Fiona seemed to enjoy giving her attention, as well. I didn’t know where the ghost went when she wasn’t with me. The headmistress assured me that the secret of the familiar was safe with Fiona, so I didn’t worry much about it. Still, I wished she visited me more often. I didn’t realize how reliant I was on my friends until I wasn’t allowed to see them anymore.
I missed them. I was lonely.
The familiar and I had already established a connection. In a way, I thought about her as a child of sorts, and I was certain she felt the same way about me. There was an unconditional love that came with our companionship, the sort of love a mother has for a child. The ballerina and I have also gotten around to chatting. Never about anything that mattered—instead, we spent most of our time reading or watching a television show, then spending hours discussing it afterwards. It was truly extraordinary how much of her own person she was. Even if I weren’t around, she would be able to carry herself in any conversation without so much as a stutter. We avoided heavy topics, though. Well, I avoided heavy topics. I couldn’t be bothered thinking about those things right now. I would only drive myself mad with fictional situations that may or may never happen. Besides, shit was going to hit the fan anyway—what point was there in discussing it now?
“Can you stop pacing?” the ballerina sighed, rolling her eyes as she watched me, head propped up on her hands as she lay on her stomach with her feet in the air. “You’re going to thin out the carpet.”
“What is taking her so long?” I asked, biting my thumbnail. It was an awful habit.
“There are a lot of things to figure out.” She shrugged. “Besides, your assault on that carpet isn’t going to make things go any faster. Relax a bit. You have all the time in the world. Why are you spending it worrying when we could be watching Gossip Girl?”
The ballerina had an unhealthy obsession with television dramas. Especially ones that involved damaged characters.
I glared at her. “I’m afraid,” I admitted. “I’m so afraid. All of this came out of nowhere. One day I was still getting bullied in the hall, and the next I found out that there might be an evil organization after me? I don’t even think everything has sunken in yet. My emotions feel muffled, as if they are being stifled under a heavy blanket. I can’t put my finger on it. I know that I’m not reacting the way that I should be, but I don’t know how or why.”
“I know, I can feel it,” she said, turning on her back. She held one foot in the air, stretching her leg.
I turned to look at her fully. “Just how powerful am I?”
She seemed to think it over for a moment. “You remember that volcano? The one you formed me in?” I nodded. “There are about seven of those inside of you. If you combine those, that is your power. This is assuming some of them aren’t deeper than others.”
I swore under my breath, pushing a hand through my hair only to get it knotted in the curls. Another string of curses left my mouth as I yanked my hand free. This was yet another thing that annoyed me, that frustrated me and felt out to get me at every turn—this jungle of hair on my head. It hung well past my shoulders. I was considering cutting it, but ginger hair, short and curly? I hated clowns enough to fear becoming one. All I would need was a red nose and shoes that were a few sizes too big for my feet. The image made me shudder.
“If they get some sort of power over me,” I started, going back to chewing on my nail, “that power is enough to wipe out entire states.”
The ballerina shook her head. “There’s no way of using all of it at once. It will burn you out. Your body isn’t made to wield all of it simultaneously. That’s why the gods gave you this body and not one like mine; immune to the flames. If you used all of your magic at once, it would burn you from the inside out. There would be nothing left of you.”
“Oh, God,” I breathed. My pacing continued.
“But that’s why I am here,” she continued, and I stopped in my tracks, looking at her. “I possess half of your magic. Imagine yourself being split in two. That’s basically what happened to us.”
“I don’t feel weaker, though. If anything, I feel stronger.” I looked at my hands as if I could see the magic within them. I wondered what they looked like, the tendrils of magic that snaked their way beneath our skin. I wondered if it looked like the actual magic, red and fiery. Or did it resemble unicorn hair? Was it while and sparkly? Did it have an ethereal glow?
“That’s because you didn’t even know about the first volcano before I came along. That volcano got unlocked once you entered it. There are still two more for you to find.”
That meant there was more power for me to unlock. That meant the power I felt now, the power that threatened to take my breath away and knock my feet from under me, was not yet everything I possessed. This crippling magic was still not at its peak. I swallowed.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “How does you being here benefit me?”
“The purpose of familiars was never for us to serve our masters. The legends are wrong. All of them. Some have half-truths, but none really captured the true purpose. When a sorcerer became too powerful, he had the ability to split his magic in half. The one half would inhabit an entity called a familiar, and the other half stayed with him. This was a way for the sorcerers to keep the magic from consuming them. Half the magic wasn’t enough to kill them. The other purpose of splitting it in two was that if one half got out of control, the other half could stop it. That half could very easily absorb the blow of the rogue magic.”
“So if I lost control...” I started.
“I would step in and absorb the magic,” the ballerina finished my sentence.
“What would happen to you, then?”
“I would die,” she said, matter-of-factly. “And I would take my half of our magic with me.”
“You would die for my mistakes?”
“Don’t think of it like that. I am a part of you.” She got up and walked to my pillow, making space for me to lie down. I did, and only then did she continue. I stared at the dull stars on the ceiling.
“Ultimately, I am an extension of you,” she went on. “I will not be killed; I will be sacrificed. It’s a measure that your own magic has put into place, a way of protecting itself. It’s a way of protecting you. It’s your magic’s job to protect its master, and despite what you might think, you are its master. You are my master.”
“What do you know about what I think?” I challenged. I didn’t address the fact that she had called me her master. It made me feel like a slaver.
The ballerina smiled. “Oh, Lia. Have you forgotten already that I told you that I am a part of you? I have heard every thought, every doubt. I know every fear and want that is in your heart. I know that you are afraid of the magic inside of you.” She tilted her head to the side in quiet contemplation before adding, “Well, less now than in the past. You have a new fear now. But it’s not the Dark Brotherhood that you are afraid of, is it? It is what they will make you do to your loved ones that is actually scaring you. You are afraid of your relationship with the boy. You are afraid that it was ruined by the kiss, that he will treat you differently now. You are afraid because you don’t know what you feel, and you know enough about feelings to know that it is not a good sign. You do not feel the same way about him as he does about you.”
“Okay, that’s weird.”
“It’s true,” she said with a shrug. “I am the part of you that knows all of these things. I am the part of you that helps find solutions to your problems. I am your magic. It’s my job to protect you, mentally and physically.”
“How do you kno
w how he feels about me?”
“Everyone knows—and deep down, you know, too. You just choose to ignore it as much as you possibly can. Think back, Lia. Think about the way he acts around you, the things he does. Do you think it’s a coincidence that you end up sitting next to him every time you eat together? Do you think he would defend anyone else in your group like he does with Margot on a weekly basis? He kissed you, not the other way around. He made the first move, which means that he is into you.”
“Shit,” I breathed. “I don’t have the time or energy for this. There are other things on my plate. I can’t think about what to do with him right now.”
“Thinking about what to do doesn’t address the actual problem at hand. It essentially only makes you overthink things. Sometimes, it’s better to just let things run its course. Let the situation play out on its own and then just act in the moment. You assess everything—every single situation. You’ve mapped out every scenario. You, my dear Lia, are a control freak.”
“I am not a control freak,” I defended, crossing my arms.
The ballerina laughed. “You’re frustrated that you can’t control your magic, and therefore you have to control everything else in your life.”
“Can we talk about something else?”
“Not yet,” the ballerina said, then floated toward me until her eyes were the same height as mine. I stared into the void of light. “You need to hear this, first, because you are going to drive us both insane with your constant worrying. You cannot control fate. You cannot control what will happen, what will come, or how it will come. It will come when it is ready, and it will come regardless of whether or not you are. It is your choice how you react to it, but ultimately, it won’t make any difference in the outcome because things will end the way they’re supposed to end. It’s the way fate works, and the way destiny is laid out.”
Enchanter Witch Academy Page 7