Good Witches Don't Cheat (Academy of Shadowed Magic Book 2)

by S. W. Clarke

His eyes slitted open; he looked like he was hating every moment of being awake right now. And Loki never begged to go anywhere.

  Eva fixed me with wide eyes. “I’ll stay if you really don’t want me to come, but I’ll be worried about you two the whole time. You remember what happened in Vienna, Clementine.”

  I patted the pendant on my chest. “I’ll be fine. Umbra renewed the magic on my moonstone, and…” I drifted off; I didn’t even know why I didn’t want her to come. “All right, Eva. Come.”

  Her wings fluttered, lifting her in a hop to our sides. “When are we leaving?”

  “Now,” Aidan said. “The earlier we go, the sooner we’ll be back.”

  And so we went.

  On the outskirts of the academy, a twenty-minute walk through the forest, we came to the leyline.

  Eva and I stood back while Aidan did the honors. I had never seen him cut the veil before; he had a different technique than Eva. He cut like a painter, a single finger his paintbrush. In that moment I realized Aidan had an elegance, a way about him, that I’d been observing all along but had never really acknowledged.

  He was an artist. He was precise without trying, as a master painter can be.

  When he straightened and waved us through, Eva and I both took a moment to stare at him.

  “What?” he said.

  I pointed at the cut he’d made. “You’re kind of a secret genius.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Eva came close to the spot where the veil had been parted. “I’ve never seen a line so straight.”

  Aidan’s birthmark reddened above his collar; he didn’t like this kind of attention. “Would you two quit critiquing my technique and just go on? We’re wasting time.”

  Eva, with Loki still in her arms, ducked through.

  When I came after, I fixed him with a grin before I passed to the other side. “You know you’re always doing the cutting from now on.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Oh, just go on.”

  Passing through the veil was as simple as stepping through a curtain. On the other side, Eva stood in unbroken sunlight, Loki’s eyes turned to glimmering emeralds as he gazed at me over her shoulder.

  I stepped from a forest floor onto asphalt—a street. Beyond us, a wrought iron gate offered a slatted view of a massive old estate, vines rising up its sides. Left and right of me were only foliage fielding the lane leading to this one house.

  “I thought we were going to London,” I said over my shoulder.

  “This is London,” Aidan said, coming to my side. His voice had changed; a nervous tremor had arrived. “Well, the outskirts.”

  “So, what? We’re taking a bus in?”

  “No.” Aidan remained where he stood, staring ahead. “We’re here.”

  I pointed past the gate. “We’re going there?” My question was answered when my eyes drifted onto a plaque set into the brickwork beside the gate.

  NORTH, it read in massive, formal lettering.

  So, Grandma North was basically aristocracy.

  I set a hand on Aidan’s shoulder. “Should I call you something else now? Baron? Duke?”

  He shrugged me off, his face hard and set. “If you call me any of those things, I’ll never forgive you.”

  “Yes, Baron. I mean Duke. I mean Sir. Aidan, sir.”

  Aidan looked like he wanted to sink into the ground.

  Eva let Loki down, turning back toward us. “Your family has a beautiful home.”

  Aidan’s Adam apple bobbed with his swallow. He started forward, chin lowered. “It’s not my home. It’s hers.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  We came to the gate, and Aidan pressed a button on the speaker.

  Since my knowledge of this kind of wealth was limited to Downton Abbey and The Secret Millionaire, I assumed somewhere, a doorbell was ringing.

  A moment later, a man’s voice came through. “Yes?”

  Aidan’s chest rose with his breath. Then, “It’s Aidan, Lottie’s son.”

  “Charlotte’s son?”

  “Yes. Her daughter Charlotte.”

  A long pause followed, during which I assumed Aidan’s grandmother was being informed of his arrival. When the man’s voice came back, he said, “I’m afraid she’s declined to see you.”

  Eva and I exchanged a glance. Declined? Whose grandmother “declined” to see their grandchild?

  Aidan’s birthmark had gone a shade of red I’d never seen before. He pressed the button again, held it down. “She’ll want to see me.”

  “I’m sorry, but she’s already made her decision,” the man’s voice returned.

  “Tell her I have the last witch in the world with me.”

  “Mr. North—” the voice said.

  “Just tell her,” Aidan cut in.

  I’d never seen him interrupt anyone before. I liked this Aidan.

  A sigh came over the speaker. “All right.”

  As we waited, Aidan stood with hands in pockets, eyes on the ground. He scuffed at one of the decorative stones lining the entryway.

  Eva knelt to pet Loki, who curled into her and rubbed her knee with the side of his face, marking her with a bunt.

  I knelt near her. “You’re his now, you know.”

  She grinned. “Is that so? I’ve never been owned by a cat.”

  “Trust me, it’s an extra-special kind of relationship. Especially when that cat can speak English.”

  Loki turned to rub on her other knee, his eyes glinting on me, saying nothing; his eyes did all the work. Jealous? he was saying without saying.

  I shook my head. “Before this trip is over, he’ll own all three of us.”

  A click sounded. Beside us, the gates started into motion, swinging slowly and mechanically inward, granting us entry to the long driveway leading toward the estate.

  I straightened, pressing out my skirt. “I guess she does want to see a witch.”

  “Oh, you don’t even know.” Aidan had already passed through the gates with hands still in pockets, walking like a wind was buffeting him on this breezeless day. “Come on, then.”

  We came up the driveway to its circular end, where we passed up a few steps and under two enormous pillars supporting an overhang. Before us, a pair of grand doors promised even more grandeur, if they would only open.

  Aidan came up to one, ignoring the lion’s face knocker, and used his knuckles instead.

  When the door opened, an older man’s face appeared. His salt-and-pepper hair had been shellacked back into perfect shape, the rest of him encased in a suit. A real-life butler.

  He surveyed the three of us, his eyes finally landing on Loki, who stood between Eva and me, looking back up at him. “Mr. North and…friends?” the butler said.

  “That’s right,” Aidan said.

  “And a cat?” the butler asked.

  “My familiar,” I said. “His name is Loki.”

  “Ah.” The butler’s focus came to me, and I sensed a familiar uncertainty. “You are the witch.”

  “I am the witch,” I said in the same contraction-less, humorless voice.

  All three of us were led into the foyer of a home I could never have imagined entering. A crystal chandelier half the size of a car hung high above us; I stared at it as we passed down a hall and into a cavernous sitting room with a large fireplace and pastel-colored furniture.

  Through the tall windows, fielded by soft curtains, I glimpsed a sprawling back lawn.

  “This is called a chaise,” Eva whispered to me as we sat down on a low-slung sofa without a back and only one arm. Before us, a coffee table had already been set with tea and various baked goods. “And that’s a live edge table.”

  “The robin’s-egg blue is tacky,” Loki observed as he came to a half-seat at my feet. “Clashes with the green of the oriental rug.”

  “Loki has already cast judgment,” I whispered to Eva. “Says Grandma has poor taste in couches and rugs.”

  Eva hid her grin behind her hand.

 
Aidan sat on my other side, unslouched. His hands were clasped in his lap, eyes straight ahead. He remained that way as we waited, unspeaking, as though he were alone in the room.

  I had never seen him this way before. He was always slightly guarded, but not like this. Now, he might have been wearing invisible armor.

  “Well,” a woman’s deep voice said as a mass of white hair—with a body attached beneath—appeared around a corner. “Charlotte’s son has brought me a witch.”

  Eva and I both gawked as Farina North entered, a cane tapping somewhere beneath her enormous hair. But really, we only noticed the hair.

  It was a piece of art, not a strand out of place from the intricate, thick braids woven atop her head. They joined at the back of her scalp, forming an interwoven mosaic of hair all the way down past her waist, where they joined in a final knot.

  As she came to a seat in an armchair across from us, I finally noticed she wore a smart button-up shirt and trousers on her slender body. Every bit of her was tightly-woven, functional. Keen.

  She swept her hair aside, milky-blue eyes intense on us as she leaned forward. The woman had a hawk’s eyes and a mouth she’d spent a lifetime pressing hard together, so that tight lines formed above and below her lips.

  When the blue eyes came to me, they narrowed farther. “You’re her.”

  She hadn’t even acknowledged Aidan.

  Be polite to Aidan’s grandmother.

  “I’m Clementine,” I said.

  “Clementine what?”

  “Cole.”

  The smallest twinge of satisfaction touched her lips. “A Cole. Who’d have thought the Coles would provide the last of the witches? And where were you all these years, girl, while the world thought your kind extinct? Hiding?”

  Be polite, I thought again. That was getting harder.

  “No,” I said in as even a tone as I could muster. “You can’t hide when you’re put into the American foster system. You can only survive it.”

  Farina North sat back in her armchair, sizing me up with those hawkish eyes. “Well, you’re no Cole.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, whereupon Eva elbowed me.

  The old woman’s eyes shifted to Eva. “Well, aren’t you a fae picture. I’ve seen you eyeing the tea and biscuits—go ahead, my dear.”

  Eva, polite as ever, leaned forward and poured a cup of tea. She set one biscuit on her plate, perching on the edge of the chaise to balance the ensemble.

  Farina’s attention was caught by Loki, who still sat by my feet. She leaned forward. “A witch’s familiar, and a black cat no less. A lucky last witch you are.”

  “I don’t like her,” Loki said.

  “Me either,” I murmured.

  Farina’s eyebrow went up, but she didn’t ask about what we’d said to one another. “You have your magic, then. Where’s your broom?”

  “She doesn’t ride a broom,” Aidan said. They were the first words he’d spoken since Farina North had entered the room, and it sounded as though he’d strained them through a sieve. As though his jaws hadn’t moved to speak.

  Her eyes didn’t leave me. “What do you ride, then?”

  “A horse,” I said.

  She half-turned her face as though in disbelief, eyes still on me. “A horse?”

  “A black one. He’s called Noir.”

  If I’d thought she was looking at me before, now I knew she hadn’t been. Farina brought her full focus to bear on me. “What’s your element, girl?”

  “Fire,” I said, refusing to wilt under her attention.

  Her chest rose under her shirt with an audible insuck of air. “Gods, the last witch has claimed the flame. I have a hundred questions for you, to start.”

  I glanced at Aidan. He sat like a statue, and a pang of hurt shot through me. This woman was related to him. She was his grandmother, and she hadn’t said a real word to him. “If you want me to answer your questions,” I said to her, “you need to answer mine.”

  She gestured me on. “What, then?”

  “Aidan told me you’re a scholar on the Battle of the Ages. That you know more than anyone.”

  “That’s a debate between scholars, of course,” Farina said. “Tell me what it is you want to know.”

  I gripped the key in my pocket and stood. When I crossed over to her, the extent of her smallness, of her frailness, really came clear. I pulled the key out, still enclosed in my fingers, and extended it toward her.

  When my hand opened, she gripped a pair of glasses from around her neck. Setting them to her face, she went perfectly still.

  “Do you know what this is?” I asked.

  Her hand at the edge of her glasses began to shake. Or maybe I hadn’t noticed it shaking before. She didn’t look up. “It’s the liar’s key.”

  Eva’s teacup clinked as it was set on the table. “The liar’s key?”

  Farina’s eyes fluttered up, faintly landing on Eva. Then they rose to me, and I felt imperious, standing over her this way. She looked helpless. Afraid. “How did you get this, fire witch?”

  “The headmistress at our academy, the one Aidan and I attend—”

  “Shadow’s End,” Farina said. “Yes, yes. I know.”

  “She has will-o-wisps. She keeps them outside her office, always there. And one night, they offered me this key.”

  “What were you doing when they offered you the key?”

  I hesitated. Then barreled on. “I was trying to break into the headmistress’s office.”

  Farina shot up from her seat faster than I imagined a woman of her age was capable of. She brushed past me and straight out of the sitting room, her footsteps clicking across the wooden floors as she disappeared.

  I turned around. “Did she just ghost us?”

  Aidan’s expression hadn’t changed. He stared at me with a stony face. “She’ll be back.”

  After a few seconds of silence, Eva cleared her throat. “Anyone want tea?”

  Neither of us answered her.

  What I held wasn’t the ebony key. It was the liar’s key. Who was the liar, and why did the wisps have their key?

  Farina’s footsteps sounded again in the hallway. She reappeared with a massive tome held to her chest—maybe the only way she could hold up a book that big—and she set it down on the end table beside me, flipping it open and rifling through pages, her intricate hair sliding over her shoulder toward the ground.

  For such an old woman, she had vigor. I’d give her that.

  “The key, it’s here, in here,” she murmured, flicking through pages with the kind of irreverence a child might with a library book. But I could tell this thing was ancient. Her finger traveled down pages for a few impatient moments before she’d flip to the next one.

  I caught a glimpse of the text; it definitely wasn’t English. It looked like the language from the book Aidan had shown me. Faerish.

  And this woman could read it, too.

  So the Norths were scholars. Smart as whips, and this woman was as incisive as one. She had the money to be, after all. One thing I’d learned from living in a city full of politicians: money brings power, and power brings the guts to say whatever the hell you please.

  “Here.” She stabbed one of the pages. “I knew it.”

  “You knew what?” I said.

  By now, Eva had stood and approached to look with me. I sensed Aidan remained where he’d been sitting.

  “The key you hold,” Farina said, “is the one from the prophecy. Aidan knows this prophecy—I read it to him as a child.”

  I shot Aidan a glance, but he didn’t even notice. His eyes were unfocused.

  “Four pieces, four misdeeds. A lie will bind the key, a deception will secure the rod, a hex will tether the chain, and a theft will call the blade. Then, one who wields fire shall meet the Shade where she resides and destroy her for now and eternity.” Farina paused, her finger lifting from the page, her lips still moving with unspoken words.

  “Is that the whole thin
g?” I asked.

  Her eyes lifted to me, dancing with feral intensity. She ignored my question. “It’s said a great air mage delivered this prophecy not long after the Shade was banished to Hell. She foresaw the darkness that would come in the centuries after, and she was right. I expect she was right about this prophecy, too.”

  I lowered my hand, my fingers folding over the key. I didn’t like the way she was staring at me. “The key won’t leave my side,” I whispered. “Not since the day I found it.”

  “No, it won’t,” Farina North said. “It belongs to the one who wields fire. And that is you, fire witch.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  I replaced the key in my pocket. “Whoever you think I am, I’m not that person.”

  “Oh, and aren’t you?” Farina reached toward my hair as though to feather a lock of it between her fingers; I jerked my head away. “What did the wisps say to you when they offered you the key?”

  My lip twitched, unwilling to repeat the words I’d heard. I remembered them as well now as when I’d heard them. It is your claim.

  “Yes.” Farina nodded, stepping closer. “They told you a truth, didn’t they?”

  “Don’t press her,” Aidan said, rising from the chaise.

  “Press her?” Farina waved a hand. “Gods, she needs a little pressure. She’s it, Aidan. And the darkness encroaches each day.”

  I turned, finding Aidan standing not far behind me. “You said she told you about this prophecy as a child?”

  Realization trickled in, remembering that day he’d sat with me under the tree and revealed what he believed: that I was the only one who could defeat the Shade. Had he thought even then I was part of this prophecy?

  Guilt painted his features. “Yes.”

  “The key on your person was once the Shade’s,” Farina said behind me. “And now it’s to you to find the other three pieces, to reassemble the weapon.”

  I turned back to her. “I’m not this person.” But even as I said it, the words didn’t ring. They didn’t have depth.

  Farina knew it, too. A grim smile appeared. “No one has ever wanted to enter Hell, child. But if you must, it’s better to hold the queen’s weapon in your own hand.”