Life's a Witch

by Val St. Crowe

  Right then, Logan and I were sitting on swivelly barstools in a place called Joe’s, which was one of two bars in my hometown. It was a real hole in the wall. The place was covered in wood paneling and there were cigarette burns on the pool table. You couldn’t smoke in the bar anymore, but you used to be able to, and they hadn’t gotten a new pool table in the interim.

  There weren’t very many people out in the bar that night. It was still early.

  “So, what do you think about your mom getting her own place?” Logan said. “That’s great, isn’t it? She’s really coming along.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “She is.” It was cool that my mother was doing so well, but I couldn’t think about that stuff. The whole dinner had been torture, because I’d been thinking about coming out to this bar and doing this. It wasn’t fair. I shouldn’t be forced to confront this part of my past. I wasn’t proud of it, and I wished I could just pretend that none of it had ever happened.

  “And what she said about coming up to visit at Ravenridge? That would be awesome,” said Logan.

  “Yeah, definitely.” I sipped at my drink. We’d gotten them so that we could stay at the bar without making the bartender annoyed, but I was drinking a bit more of mine that I probably should. I was nervous. I scanned the place, looking at faces, trying to see if anyone looked familiar. I didn’t want to think about this part of my past. I didn’t like remembering how desperate I’d been back then, how little I’d cared. I’d taken risks because it had seemed as if nothing mattered, as if there was no way to avoid bad things happening to me. Now, I could see that I’d only made it worse for myself. But back then, I’d been traumatized by fighting the creatures from the other world, and I’d been scarred.

  Logan squeezed my shoulder. “You okay?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, fine,” I said brightly. “You?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” he said. “This is your past.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Well, you know, it might bother you a little.”

  He shook his head. “Nah. You did all this before you even met me. I cured you of it with my magic penis.” He grinned at me.

  I laughed a little, completely thrown off-balance. “Logan, geez.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “Just a joke.” He put his arm around me. “Hey, come here.” He pulled me close. “It’s okay.”

  I pushed him away. “You’re not… threatened or anything?”

  “No.” He gave me a funny look. “Why would I be threatened? None of this meant anything to you. It was a reaction to your circumstances. It’s not like anything there is between us.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “You mean that?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  I huffed.

  “What?” he said.

  “Well, if you really mean it, then why…?” Oh, hell, I should probably not be bringing this up right now, but I plunged in anyway. Call me an idiot. “Why are you always so weird about Reid?”

  He froze. “Wait, what?”

  “Reid is the same damned thing,” I said. “That’s the only reason I ever hooked up with him, and you know that, so why can’t you just—”

  “No, Reid’s different,” said Logan.

  “He’s not,” I said. “Not to me.”

  Logan blew out a long, slow breath. “Okay, I guess you’re right.” He furrowed his brow.

  Huh. I hadn’t expected him to agree with me that easily.

  He swiveled his chair back around the bar.

  I swiveled mine back around too.

  He took a drink of his beer. He looked up at me. “No, the Reid stuff is about me.”

  “It’s about Clarke,” I said.

  He winced.

  “God damn it, Logan,” I said, but I wasn’t mad, just sort of sad that he couldn’t let it go.

  “It’s not directly about Clarke,” he said quietly.

  “You associate Reid with Naelen. You see Reid as a rival, because you think that he and I—”

  “Okay, kind of,” said Logan. “But it’s more like… I don’t know, I guess I think that it’s sort of normal for women I’m in relationships with to, you know, have sex with men that aren’t me—”

  “What? No, it’s not.”

  “Well, I mean, even before the stuff with Cunningham and Naelen and everything, Clarke and I were… I mean she moved on to other people, but I just kept coming back to her. We weren’t together, and I knew she wasn’t faithful to me, but I was to her, so I guess I just think of that as… it’s just what women do—”

  “I am not Clarke.” I sucked down a big drink of my beer, and now I was starting to get a little mad.

  “I know that.”

  “I don’t think you do.”

  “I do,” he said. “Anyway, you’re right about the association stuff with Reid.” He took another drink of his beer. “But I realize now it’s stupid, and I’m going to stop.”

  “Good,” I said. I drank some of my beer.

  “Good.”

  We swiveled our chairs back around.

  “And it’s not okay for women to have sex with other men besides you,” I said. “You don’t just have to accept that.”

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, okay. It’s maybe not completely awesome that we’re looking for someone you fucked in the past.”

  “No,” I said, “it’s not.”

  He grabbed my hand. “But I’m not threatened, Petra. It’s the past.”

  I bit my lip. And then I spotted someone. I pointed. “That guy.”

  Logan followed my gaze to where I was pointing. “That guy? Really?”

  *

  “Nice to meet you,” said Sam Oswald, shaking hands with Logan. Sam was a scrawny guy with acne scars. He wasn’t exactly attractive, but back in the day, he’d been nice to me. I wasn’t exactly really discerning back then. I would go out and I would set my sights on someone appealing. But if I struck out, I’d go with whatever was left. Sam was one of those leftover guys. “You’re Petra’s boyfriend, then.”

  “Yes,” said Logan, looking square in Sam’s eye. “I am.”

  “Right on,” said Sam, grinning. “That’s cool.” He turned to me. “I heard you left town to go to a mage college or something. That’s good for you. I always knew you were meant for bigger things than this town.”

  Oh, hell. Sam was way too nice. I was kind of realizing now that maybe Sam had liked me. Liked me, liked me. And that I had been oblivious to that. I’d used him to numb my pain, and that hadn’t been a very good thing for me to do to him. I’d been pissed off with Willoughby earlier, but I was no better. Hell.

  Sam grinned back at Logan. “Gonna need my hand back.”

  Logan let go of Sam.

  Sam put his hands in his pockets. He was still grinning. “Yeah, it’s good to see you, Petra. You look good. And you seem happy. You know, back when I remember seeing you around here, you never seemed happy.”

  “I am happy,” I said.

  “Good.” He grinned, and he looked at his feet. “Uh, I’m probably going to go and see if anyone wants to play pool for quarters, so maybe I’ll see you around?”

  “Actually,” I said, “I need a quick favor, if you don’t mind?”

  “What kind of favor?”

  “Can we go outside for a minute?” I said.

  Sam looked back and forth between me and Logan. “Can you be more vague?”

  “It’s nothing bad,” I said. “It’s a magic thing. It’ll only take a minute.”

  “That’s still vague,” said Sam. He scratched the back of his neck. “But, uh, okay, what the hell? Anything for Petra Brightshade, right?”

  Damn, I felt even worse.

  Logan’s nostrils flared. He didn’t say anything, though.

  “Thanks,” I said to Sam.

  We all went through the bar to the back door, where people went out back to smoke, since you couldn’t smoke inside. We stood next to the tall, square ashtray, and I got the orb out of my pocket. I held it out. “Just, um, just to
uch this?”

  Sam looked around a little nervously. There was no one else out there but us. He sucked in a breath, and then he put his finger against the orb.

  Immediately, there was a flare of white sparks where his finger touched the orb, and the orb lit up bright white.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Logan in a quiet voice. “He’s got it all right.”

  “What do I have?” said Sam, who had recoiled right away and was now shaking out his hand as if it had stung. “What was that?”

  “It’s, um…” I didn’t want to tell Sam, I realized. Maybe bringing up the fact I’d been intimate with him and never given a shit about him was cruel now. So, I lied. “It’s just a bit of energy,” I said. “I thought you might have it. I felt something when I knew you before.”

  “You did?” Sam’s eyes widened.

  “Yeah,” I said. “There was something special about you.”

  Logan raised his eyebrows.

  Sam smiled. “Whoa.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “it could be a dangerous thing to have in times like this. There are creatures out there that can sense it, and they might try to find you and hurt you. It would be safer for you if we extracted it.”

  “Oh,” said Sam, nodding. “Okay.” He furrowed his brow. “You came all the way back here, after all this time, to help me like that?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I did. Because I never forgot about you.”

  Sam grinned, bigger than before.

  Logan cleared his throat.

  Sam looked at him. “Uh, and you’re here. So, yeah.” He nodded at Logan. “Thanks for that. It’s really cool of you to help her out.”

  Logan didn’t look entirely pleased.

  I shot Logan a look, begging him to understand. I didn’t know if he did, but I would explain later, and if he wasn’t okay with it—

  “How do we do it?” said Sam.

  Logan reached out a hand for the orb. “Just touch it again.”

  “I don’t know, man,” said Sam. “That kind of hurt a little.”

  “It won’t if I’m touching it,” said Logan.

  Ooh, that kind of made a hole in my story.

  “Because I’m a gargoyle,” said Logan.

  Thank you, Logan.

  “Oh.” Sam nodded. He touched the orb.

  Logan spoke quickly, repeating the words of the spell that Willoughby had told us.

  The orb lit up bright white, and it stayed white.

  Logan stopped speaking. He nodded at Sam. “You can let go.”

  Sam pulled his fingers back. “Whoa,” he said. “Totally far out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I was shooting skitters in Logan’s apartment. We’d just teleported back here, and we were taking care of the stray skitters that had shown up as a consequence. My stomach was still churning a little from the nausea.

  Logan raised his gun right at my head. “Duck,” he said.

  I crouched down.

  He shot over my head and got one that was crawling over the floorboards.

  I stood back up slowly. Going up and down like that wasn’t really helping my stomach. I spied another skitter crawling down over the top of the stove. I shot it. Then I turned to check for more.

  But Logan was shooting the last one.

  He tossed me his gun, and I caught it. I vanished both of them.

  Logan crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not sure why you brought us back here.”

  I bit down on my lip. “You don’t want me here?”

  “It’s just that you’re supposed to stay on campus when you can, and we might as well take this essence back there.”

  Oh. Right. I sighed. “I guess it’s just habit to come back here is all. You want me to teleport us to the school? Or should we just walk? Easier than dealing with more skitters and upset stomachs.”

  He stepped closer. “You know I want you to stay, don’t you? I miss waking up with you.”

  I stepped closer too. “Well, then let me stay.”

  He grabbed one of my hands. “What if something happens while you’re here? We still don’t know what’s going on with the scribbly things and all of that.”

  “Or with Professor Willoughby,” I said softly. “But I can handle myself. You know that. And I’m invulnerable. Let’s just take the essence in tomorrow.”

  He considered, looking deep into my eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “Unless you’re weirded out about tonight,” I said. “I could see how you were reacting to the stuff I was saying to Sam. And I was only saying that because—”

  “You don’t have to say anything about that,” he said. “Just because you wanted to be nice to him doesn’t mean that you still have feelings for him.”

  “No,” I said, “it doesn’t.”

  He dropped my hand and turned away. “Everyone has a little bit of fondness left for people that they’ve been intimate with, anyway. That doesn’t go away.”

  “Um.” I forced him to turn back to me. “I’m not fond of him.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “What? I’m confused.”

  “I did that because I felt guilty. Guy never registered for me. He wasn’t even a blip to me. He was a… body. I used him. And he liked me. I felt like shit about that.”

  Logan’s eyes widened for a minute, and then he bobbed his head. “Oh, okay. I guess that makes sense.”

  “So, can I stay?”

  He laughed a little. “It was never about that, Petra, please. I told you I wasn’t threatened.” He pulled me into his arms. His voice was soft. “I’ve never cared about your past. That doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

  I kissed him, and that made me feel good.

  Of course, Logan’s past seemed to have screwed him up in the head pretty badly. I guessed that my past had screwed me up too. But… I don’t know… I felt like I was more healed than Logan was. Maybe because I hadn’t been through the same level of trauma that he had. I wanted to heal him, though, the way he had helped heal me. I wanted us both whole and happy.

  He kissed me.

  I pressed my body into his and I opened my lips to him to deepen our kiss.

  We didn’t go back to the school that night after all.

  *

  The next day, we took my essence back to Willoughby, but he said that it wasn’t to be added to the mop-things yet. The essence was for use during the final spell. We’d do that when the mop-things were ready.

  Thing was, the mop-things were looking pretty sad. Two of them were kind of shriveled up.

  “Maybe they need water?” I said, peering at them. “They sucked up all the vampire blood, and they might be thirsty.”

  “Of course,” said Willoughby, adding more water to the shallow basin they sat in. “We need to check the water levels daily.”

  “I can do that,” I said cheerily. “Okay, so how long will it be until they’re ready for the spell?”

  “Maybe two days, maybe a week,” said Willoughby. “I’ll let you know.”

  For the next few days, I came into the classroom/storage room every day and gave the mop-things more water. Then I went back to my dorm, where Tatum was pissed off at me and wouldn’t speak to me, and where I had to sleep in my tiny bed alone. I missed Logan.

  I went to class and I did my homework. I studied. I took a test in herbology, and I passed. I did so well with a potion that my professor in that class used it as an example for everyone else, of how to properly do the potion. That made me feel good.

  One night, we went out to Barley and Bells. Reid was there, and he was wired. He was obviously on something. I didn’t know if it was a regular drug or some kind of spell. People at Ravenridge were always putting together intoxicant-type spells for fun.

  I was starting to get worried about Reid. When I’d met him, he’d been a bit of a party guy, I guessed, but he seemed different now, out of control. Of course, back then, I think his vice was sleeping with random girls, and I was pretty sure he’d been celibate since Tatum. I
didn’t ask, though. It was none of my business. But I wondered how long this could go on before we staged an intervention.

  Logan apologized to Reid, because of what we’d talked about the other night, how he was equating Reid with Naelen, as if Reid had been important to me romantically, when Reid and I had never been remotely romantic. He didn’t go into that with Reid, just said that he’d been an ass and that it would stop. Reid was pretty blitzed, but he seemed glad to hear it. He said he appreciated it, and the two of them did a shot together.

  When we left the bar later that night, Reid stuck around, still drinking.

  I really wanted to go back to Logan’s place, but he was worried. He kept going back to the idea that we didn’t know if I really was invulnerable. Maybe I could be killed, but we didn’t know how. After all, the only way we knew to kill the scribbly things was the hearthstone, but they could be killed in other ways. We’d seen Malachi be killed after all. Logan thought the scribbly things might be able to hurt other scribbly things, and since I was basically all scribbly thing these days, he didn’t want to risk it.

  So, I went home to my bed and lay there, unable to sleep. How long could my being stuck on campus go on? If we did the spell to turn me back to a human, then I’d be vulnerable again. We needed to figure out what these scribbly things were up to and stop them. Sooner rather than later.

  Of course, it seemed like the scribbly things were connected to Willoughby, and we couldn’t very well piss him off until he had explained the whole spell to us. It was annoying of him that he wouldn’t tell us all of the steps, but would only reveal them a bit at a time. I wondered if he was doing that on purpose so that we wouldn’t turn him over to the scribbly things.

  He’d done something. I knew it.

  So, the next day, I decided I would start looking into Fox Willoughby. I googled him, but I didn’t find out much. He had graduated with a master’s degree from Etgers University, which had an exemplary magic program, even if it was a school for regular people. He was from Ohio. He had a younger sister named Meg.

  I found her on Facebook and I sent her a friend request. She didn’t know me, but some people approved every friend request they got. I didn’t know what I’d say to her if she accepted me or anything, but maybe she’d be able to give me some insight into what was happening.