The Uncanny Raven Winston

by Tammie Painter

  "Okay," I agreed, half-heartedly.

  "Look, Cass, you’ve got to be more wary and you need to take your studies seriously. You need to focus on your lessons, your balance, your control."

  "Yeah, I heard why." I swallowed back the sob that threatened to escape, but my voice still quavered. "Extraction? Really?"

  "There are people on your side who won’t let that happen. Trust me on that. Just promise me you’ll work on your magic and leave the investigating to me until your test is done. I want to help you and I want you to stay alive. You need to be alert to the danger around you. I don’t have anything concrete, but I’m coming to agree with Olivia’s idea that someone within HQ itself is passing power to the Mauvais."

  He reached out and took my hand. I wanted to enjoy the warmth and electrical thrill of his touch, but I pulled away.

  "You worked with him once. More than worked. Dodding told me you made the watch." Now that my verbal dam had been breached, the flood waters of all the secrets I’d learned came spilling out. "Oh, and he’s the one who told me about being extracted if I don’t get my magic under control. He, someone I’ve never met before, let me know what I was up against if I fail. Did you know?"

  Alastair nodded. The tart solidified into a brick in my gut. But at least it was his turn to look ashamed. He pushed away his plate even though half of his pastry remained untouched.

  "Since?" I prodded.

  "It was in the original letter."

  "You lied to me?"

  The words came out as a whisper filled with both disbelief and disappointment. I wanted to shout. I wanted to scream this question at him, but it just hit too hard. So much in me wanted to trust Alastair, but every time I began to do so, something came up to rip the rug of faith right out from under my feet.

  "I don’t know exactly when it’s scheduled, but believe me when I say this all-or-nothing test wasn’t supposed to happen until you’d been training here for at least a month. Then we show up and barely two days later, Olivia insisted your magic was too strong and HQ needed to test you to keep everyone safe. I argued against it. I argued you should at least be told the stakes. I argued until my throat ached. You deserved to know and I would have told you, but Banna threw a Confidentiality Spell on Rafi, Olivia, Busby, and me."

  "And that does what exactly?"

  "If we told you, we would be extracted immediately and mercilessly. But since you’ve found out through Dodding, through someone who wasn’t bound by the Confidentiality Spell, the spell on me and the others has broken. And just so you know, Rafi and I had just come up with a way to get around the Confidentiality Spell this afternoon. When Snellton found me, I’d been on my way to tell you what was really going on. I swear, Cassie. I’ve said this before, but I will protect you. I will fight for you."

  Okay, yeah, my throat got a little clenchy at this point, but the needles of distrust were still jabbing me.

  "And the working with the Mauvais part? The watch? How could you? You say you want to protect me, but you built the very thing that has ruined my life."

  Alastair took a while before answering. When he spoke, the words were thoughtful, careful.

  "I’ve explained to you before about my working for the Mauvais and about how I fell into his circle. I was younger and he acted like he was my friend. I don’t want this to sound arrogant, but my talent was recognized at an earlier age than most. That’s why they advanced me to the equivalent of a high school level when other kids my age hadn’t even been called up for training. I was smart and clever, but with no friends and no adults to lean on I also felt entirely out of place.

  "Your parents took me in as a friend, or maybe as a mascot. When they got more serious, I wasn’t jealous exactly, but I did feel abandoned. I didn’t understand why they didn’t have room for me in everything they did together.

  "The Mauvais was rising to power right at this time. He drew me to him like a butterfly hunter with a net. It’s likely he was using me from the start. He was a strong wizard, but not clever, not inventive. I was. He praised me, he needed me, and his attention was hard to resist. I’m sure a psychologist would tell me I was in need of some type of parental figure. I wanted to impress him. I wanted him to like me so much he wouldn’t abandon me. If I was a rich kid, I’d probably have bought him things, but I wasn’t wealthy.

  "I did, however, like to tinker with things and I liked coming up with silly ideas, and one day I built this amazing watch that could mess with time and affect magic. To me it seemed no more wicked than a joy buzzer. I was too young, and I suppose too proud, to realize the danger it might pose. I made sure the Mauvais saw it. When he showed his interest, I boasted about what the watch could potentially do.

  "I was completely joking around, of course. Like when you brag about something you’re going to do but you really have no intention of ever doing it. The Mauvais zeroed in on that potential, though, and told me to make it work, make it do the things I was only joking about. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t want him to dislike me, so I did it anyway.

  "Again, I was showing off, wanting approval, craving attention. Which meant I imbued the watch with a power it never should have had, a magic I should have been smart enough to stay away from. To demonstrate what I’d done, I brought my pet parakeet — who’d died just that morning — back to life.

  "The Mauvais wanted me to do more with the watch, make it even more powerful, but by then I’d already proven myself with the thing. I was bored with it and impatient to move on to something new to impress him with. I gave him the watch, which he soon filled with his magic. It wasn’t long before he was using it in ways I’d have never imagined.

  "By that time, your parents had finished their training with the police and we’d been slowly rebuilding our friendship. Their support and the things they told me about the Mauvais brought me around to realize I needed to distance myself from him. So yes, the watch I designed had some evil tricks hidden inside its gears. I’m not trying to pass blame, but he built on those bad aspects. His power and his intention made the watch what it came to be, not me."

  I thought of what Dodding had told me about the watch. Alastair had made it. He was the first one to make it work. His magic had jumpstarted the watch. I toyed with the remaining sliver of tart, but couldn’t find the desire to eat it.

  "So your magic was in the watch. The Mauvais’s power was in the watch. I took on the watch’s power, so both your and the Mauvais’s power is in me," I said slowly, trying to wrap my head around the implications. I recalled what Fiona had told me about how strands of magic intertwined, making them near impossible to separate. "Does that mean our three magics are bound together?"

  "That’s what I had been working on. It has to do with the membrane concept I’ve been trying to teach you. Well, not a membrane, more of a filter. It would have finally been a way to separate entangled strands of magic.

  "I thought I had it figured out when I asked for the watch to be sent to Portland. Then you came along." He smiled in a way I think was meant to be teasingly flippant, but fell a little flat. "Now, the magic has been blended in a way no one ever expected. You, me, the Mauvais, our magic is now tangled together. My magic within the watch should have dissipated over time. It’s hard to say how much, but now that your power has boosted all the magic in the watch…"

  He didn’t complete the sentence, but there was no need for him to. My interference had ratcheted up all the magic in the watch, even magic that might have been nearly absent. I thought of the times I’d caught the scent of cinnamon on Alastair. Faint, but there. The same scent I’d detected on the Mauvais when I fought him. Was the scent of the Mauvais hovering around me as well?

  "Can I just," I waggled my fingers in front of my chest, "filter out your magic from his and give it back to you?"

  "That would be great, but no. Once magic combines within a person like that, it’s difficult to section it back out. It would have be
en challenging enough to do it with two strands of magic, but add in a third and…"

  As his words trailed off, a couple strode by outside, laughing, holding onto one another, living and enjoying their non-magical lives. Their arms twining around one another made me think of the magic twining within me. A thought struck me.

  "So you could die if I’m killed while the watch’s magic is in me?"

  Alastair nodded slowly. "Which is another reason I’m really keen to keep you alive. Not my main reason, though." He squeezed my hand then let go. Distractedly, I took the final bite of my dessert, finding no enjoyment in the nutty sweetness on my tongue.

  38 - AN UNWELCOME LESSON

  AFTER ALASTAIR WALKED me back to the Tower, I went straight to my room and cracked open the books Banna had left. There’s just something about the idea that your brain will be wiped clean if you don’t do your homework that adds a keen motivation to your studies.

  I also produced no snarky comments and no grumblings when, early the next morning, I had back-to-back lessons with Rafi and Mr. Tenpenny, nor when I was told to expect more of the same that afternoon. I was then left to go back to my room for lunch where Mr. T told me to use the time on background work, not just seeing how many times my lunch plate could refill.

  With a maelstrom of new information roller derby-ing around my head, the time I should have spent sleeping the night before had been spent thinking, and apparently it wasn’t quite ready to stop. Too full of nervous energy to sit, I paced my room as I munched on a thick Cornish pasty. I kept wondering about Tobey, about whether he had lied to me about the building, or if he’d just made a stupid mistake.

  Also, what if Tobey wasn’t really Tobey? What if the Mauvais was up to his Morphing tricks again? It wasn’t a comforting idea that I might have been in the cramped file room with the Mauvais, but in some ways it was better than thinking Tobey had deliberately deceived me. And if the Mauvais was using the Morphing Spell again, well, that just struck me as vastly unoriginal.

  But could he have even done a Morphing Spell? It was, after all, a trick that required a fair amount of magical strength; and by pulling the watch’s magic, I had taken a good chunk of the Mauvais’s power. Still, he had been weakened before. If, as Alastair had said, the Mauvais was gaining power from another source, from someone in HQ, then he could be strong enough to morph again.

  I shook my head at this line of thought. I couldn’t accept Tobey might be the Mauvais. After all, where was the scent? If the Mauvais was using the Morphing Spell, he’d have to cover his scent up with cologne, with cigarette smoke, or with plain old body odor. But Tobey just smelled like Tobey. Sort of that clean, forgettable scent you get when walking down the soap aisle in the store. Tobey smelled like nothing more than well-scrubbed human because he had no magic to hide. His own or the Mauvais’s.

  All this rattled around my head while I stared out my window, mindlessly caught up in watching a couple on the wall trying to get someone to take their picture, then making wide, emphatic gestures as they explained to a volunteer how to use their camera. I told myself to snap back to attention, planted my butt in the back-breaking chair at my table, and pushed my lunch plate away.

  I needed to study and couldn’t be distracted with the antics of tourists, with endless servings of food, or with sifting through files in the dead of night. The sooner I could control my magic, the sooner I wouldn’t be extracted out of existence, and the sooner I could search for my parents.

  I focused on the book in front of me. The Zen of Membrane Magic and Power That Flows Like Water was a bit more philosophical than I’d prefer, but it was helping me understand the concepts of balance. Plus, it had lovely drawings of pools, ponds, and waterfalls in Asian-style gardens.

  The calming scenes reminded me of being around Alastair. He had protected me. Again. It was hard to remain suspicious of someone who kept intervening to save your life. And holy Zen waves, when he had held me to him….

  Studies be damned, I couldn’t stop replaying it. If I hadn’t been so freaked out about Tobey or my parents being trapped in a burning building, I’d have wanted to stay crushed up against Alastair for at least a few hours. I couldn’t deny just how good I felt when I was near him, and there was also no denying that the attraction between us was getting more difficult to resist. Again, came the thought that the sooner I controlled my magic, the sooner we could—

  Could what? A relationship with Alastair would mean facing up to my own fears of trusting someone, of opening up to someone, of being vulnerable to someone. Thanks to the cruelty of my endless parade of evil foster parents, none of those concepts were ones I’d had much luck with in my life. Mr. Wood had been the rare exception, but even from him I kept myself guarded, never opening up too much.

  Book, Cassie. Read your damn book.

  I had a choice, I thought after managing to read half a paragraph: Alastair could be my teacher, or we could test out how our lips fit together. And since that second option would be exhausting for him until I was better able to contain my magic, and because Alastair had shown he was a dedicated and skilled teacher, I opted to forego the smooching for training. Of course, that was easy to promise myself when the man himself wasn’t right next to me.

  Since my attempts to read were going nowhere, I decided to do some practical work on my own. I flourished my way through the motions Mr. Tenpenny and Rafi had gone over with me that morning, and was just about ready to try a Binding Spell on my pillow when someone knocked on my door.

  I checked the bedside clock. I had more work to do with Busby and Rafi later, but it was only two o’clock. I approached the door cautiously, my fingers tingling in preparation to defend myself.

  "Open the door, Black. I can smell you in there."

  I blew out an annoyed huff of air through my lips, then opened the door and found myself face to face with the unlovely sight of my landlord.

  "Where’s Mr. Wood?" I asked immediately. If Morelli was here, who was taking care of my battered boss?

  "He’s fine. He’s got a physical therapist in early this morning."

  Which could only mean Morelli was here to get his rent, or to tell me how many days I had before rent was due.

  "I told you when I left that I set up my rent payment to come to you automatically."

  He grinned. "That’s not why I’m here, Black." I did not like the sound of that. "You gonna invite me in?"

  "Why should I?"

  "Because I get to be your teacher today."

  I groaned, but stood aside to let him in. It only made sense that I should have to spar against other creatures, but if I was going to have to go up against a half-troll, couldn’t it be Chester? It’d be a breeze, all I’d have to do is distract him with a particularly lively rat.

  Nevertheless, best to get this ordeal over with as soon as possible. I made some space by pushing my chair against the wall.

  "Alright, Eugene, let’s do this," I said as I took my stance, bowed, and raised my hands to signal I was ready.

  "What the hell are you doing? I’m not fighting a girl. Put your bony arms down. And don’t call me Eugene."

  "Then why are you here?"

  He pulled a stack of papers from the envelope he’d been holding and dropped them on the table. He then took a good look out the window.

  "Nice view. Anyway," he turned to me and thumped a meaty index finger on the file, "you get to learn how to detect forgeries. Hear you’re not so good at that despite your supposed gifts and what you’re meant to do."

  "Meant to do? The balance thing?"

  "Nah, forget I said anything."

  I stared at him, then shook my head. I needed to spend my mental energy learning, not trying to make sense of whatever was bouncing around my landlord’s thick skull.

  "Is this a one-time lesson, or are you going to be showing up regularly?"

  "You can learn the basics today, but I might come
back just to annoy you." He opened the envelope and pulled out several pieces of paper of various sizes, quality, and color.

  Morelli first had me sift through ten documents ranging from handwritten letters to bank statements to passport applications to see if I could determine right off the bat which one was fake. Needless to say, I failed.

  "You’re looking with your eyes, not your magic," he said, actually taking on a teaching tone, not a Cassie’s-a-dunce tone. "Drift your fingers over the words, smell the paper, talk to the document."

  "Talk to it? Pick it up and ask it if it’s fake?"

  "You really have no sense of nuance, do you?"