by Sarina Dorie
I closed my eyes and imagined the smoldering coals inside me cooling. I contained the red fire in a shield of ice and locked it inside my core. I visualized the pulsing waves of magic, coming in with a frequency that reminded me of music.
“What are you doing?” Vega asked.
Pain flared. I fought to retain control.
“Magic,” Thatch said. “No talking. You’ll distract my student.”
I focused again on my affinity. It tasted like classical music and sounded like Italian food. I smelled impressionist paintings. My senses became confused. That was how I knew it was working.
The stabbing pain was gone, replaced by the sensation of sunshine and prancing unicorns inside me. Everything was better. I sighed in relief.
“It’s over. You can open your eyes,” Thatch said.
Vega sat on the stairs, Thatch’s cape wrapped around her. “What kind of magic was that?” she asked.
“Go to bed, Miss Bloodmire.”
She made no attempt to move. “Was that . . . pain magic?”
“No,” Thatch and I said at the same time.
Vega smiled, white teeth flashing, sharp and predatory. “Well, well. Prim and proper Mr. Thatch using the forbidden art of pain magic.”
CHAPTER THREE
No Pain, No Gain
“I want to learn pain magic.” Vega leaned forward. Part of the cape fell back, exposing a long, shapely leg. “Why haven’t you ever taught me one of the forbidden arts?”
Thatch’s voice remained calm, his expression neutral. “It was an anesthesia spell to block her pain.”
I tried to make my face blank and expressionless like his poker face. I doubted it worked.
“I know what I saw.” Vega’s eyes narrowed. “You were performing a spell on Clarissa to hurt her.”
I could see how it might have looked that way, especially if she had heard me begging him to stop earlier. I shook my head. “He wasn’t.”
Thatch glared at her, his tone thick with sarcasm. “Indeed. You caught me breaking school rules and Witchkin laws. I’m tormenting Miss Lawrence with magic to punish her for her earlier insolence. This is what the dungeon master does to those who miss curfew.”
He was terse and snotty like that whenever someone accused him of disingenuous intentions. I wondered how much of that stemmed from hurt—and how much of it was him wanting to propel the stereotype that he was immune to hurt.
I couldn’t stand for her to think him a scoundrel. “Vega, you heard the oath he made, right? Thatch—Mr. Thatch—promised not to hurt me. He wasn’t. He was helping me.”
“That wasn’t Wiseman’s Oath. Lesser oaths don’t have as much power and can be broken.” From the way she chewed on her lip and crinkled up her forehead, she looked doubtful.
“Mr. Thatch wasn’t hexing me with pain magic when it was just you and me and I fell onto the stairs. Right? He’s helping me get rid of that pain.”
“I suppose.” She lifted her chin. “What was wrong with you anyway?”
“Go to bed,” Thatch said.
She looked to me. If I didn’t tell her now, she would ask me about it later when Thatch wasn’t present, so I might as well make up a lie while I had one and Thatch was here to back me up. I hated to resort to this, but I didn’t see any other choice.
“Fae semen,” I said.
She crossed her arms. “Prince Elric said his body fluids are nontoxic to Witchkin and Morties.”
“He lied.” Thatch waved her away. “His saliva is addictive, and his body fluids will degrade her health. I have more work to do, cleansing Miss Lawrence’s system of Fae impurities. Good night.”
Vega fell back onto the stairs laughing so hard tears streamed from her eyes. More of her cape fell back. “God! I’m so glad I’m not dating a Fae. That’s going to put a damper on future dates for you, isn’t it?” She wiped her tears with the back of her hand and stood, giving us a peep show as she readjusted the cape.
Thatch grimaced and looked away.
The explanation must have satisfied her. She started up the stairs. “If I were you, I would ask Prince Elric for one of those immaculate orgasms next time instead.”
Thatch raised an eyebrow.
I sagged against the chair. “Yeah, she knows about those.”
“Do I!” Vega called over her shoulder.
Thatch shook his head. “I don’t want to know.”
My body was heavy with fatigue. I could have fallen asleep in the chair right then. It was past my bedtime, and the pain had sucked away any remaining stamina.
Thatch sat on the floor next to my chair. He waved a hand in front of my abdomen again. Nausea churned in my belly.
He drew his hand away. “Do you think you can manage on your own when you feel the next . . . contraction?”
Contraction? That was a good way to put it.
“If I have warning. If I have a minute to prepare myself, I can do it.”
“You have about a minute before the next flare-up. You might want to start preparing.”
I closed my eyes and prepared the shield. As I brought my awareness inside me, I was conscious of the spark in the nearly empty void in my core. There was no magic yet, only the fuse to it, about to go off.
This time when the bomb exploded inside me, I was ready. I contained the pain, converted it, and filled myself with a version of the Red affinity more to my liking.
The magic ebbed away and came two more times. Each instance the surge was smaller than before, aftershocks following an earthquake.
“I’d wager it’s safe for you to take your leave of me and retire to bed,” Thatch said. “If you stay focused, you’ll be able to tell if it’s going to happen again. I’m confident you can manage on your own.”
I leaned my head back. “Are you sure I can’t just sleep in this chair tonight?”
“I’m quite certain. I need to return this to Jeb’s office. How they got it out without setting off his alarms, I can only imagine was Elric’s doing.”
My knees were shaky as I pushed myself out of the chair. I shuffled to the stairs, holding on to the railing for support. I was exhausted. Lifting my foot onto the first step was like climbing a mountain.
“How about I just sleep on the stairs?” I asked.
“Unacceptable. You will walk to your room and retire like a prudent professional.” Thatch placed a hand on the small of my back, the gesture intimate, especially for him, considering he didn’t like to touch people.
He took my free hand and walked with me, one snail-paced step at a time. He didn’t complain about it as he usually did about everything I did. I should have known that meant he was brooding. I was too tired to use witty conversation to distract him.
His eyes were intense as he studied me. “You know I don’t approve of you having intimate relations with a Fae.”
“Is this going to be another one of those talks?”
“No.” A smile flickered across his face before being replaced by concern. “You are aware I don’t approve of your attempt to restore your affinity with Elric’s assistance. Perhaps you now realize why. It will be close to impossible for you to temper your affinity without a mentor to guide you through the process. More importantly, it will be impossible for you to do so without giving your affinity away.”
If only I were better at pretending to be an Amni Plandai with harmless plant-and-animal magic or an Elementia with a natural talent for using fire, water, wind, or earth. Had I been good at the most difficult celestial magics like Thatch, I could have pretended to be a Celestor as he did. But the Red affinity was forbidden. If I restored my affinity, I could use it to protect myself and my students, but I would have to learn to hide what I was.
I closed my eyes, leaning against him as I took another step. “Elric isn’t the Raven Court. He doesn’t have nefarious intentions, and he isn’t going to use me.”
“Elric will find out what you are. If you’re lucky, h
e shall treat you the same, and it won’t matter to him what your affinity is. He might not use you for it. There’s also a chance he will.” He sighed despondently. “You’re young and in love, and you can’t imagine this person you trust would ever do you any harm. That’s why I worry about you. I don’t want you to make the same mistakes.”
The same mistake I’d made last time with Derrick. Mistakes like Julian. Or maybe he meant mistakes like he had made trusting Alouette Loraline, the wickedest witch of all time and my biological mother.
I stumbled on a step and forced my eyes open. “I don’t want to make the same mistakes either.”
“It would be safer if you stopped trying to restore your affinity altogether. It would be safer for you to insist on a chaste relationship from this point forward.”
“What are you, my dad? ‘No dating until thirty. And let’s ground you from magic while we’re at it.’ Be realistic.”
“Be sensible.”
My body was too tired to keep walking. My brain was too tired to keep thinking. “Can I take a break?”
“No. Once you sit down, you aren’t going to want to get up.”
I couldn’t keep walking. I let go of the railing and dropped onto the steps, banging my knee against the wood in the process. It smarted, but it was nothing compared to all the affinity pain earlier. I twisted around and plopped onto my behind.
Thatch sat down beside me. “I will be realistic. I know you aren’t going to listen to me. This is important to you, restoring your affinity. You will pursue it without my blessing, risking exposure and injury, which is why I am going to instruct you.”
I leaned against the banister. I wasn’t too exhausted to remember how he’d offered in his grumbling and unenthusiastic way to help me use pleasure to fuel my magic before by having sex with me. If he had expressed an ounce of passion or eagerness, it would have been difficult to refuse him—even with the bargain I’d made to fall in love with Elric.
I closed my eyes. “Excuse me if I’m not gushing with thanks after your offer, but I’m dating someone right now. I’m not going to be unfaithful and sleep with another man.” Especially after I’d had that big talk with Elric the day before about how unfair it was to give someone else immaculate orgasms like he had with Vega when he was in a relationship with me. Truly Fae common sense was as alien to me as everything else in the Unseen Realm.
“I didn’t suggest you should,” Thatch said. “I’m suggesting you undergo training with meditations so you know how to restore your affinity on your own.”
“Oh.” That didn’t sound so bad. He wasn’t trying to convince me not to date Elric. He wasn’t forbidding me from restoring my magic. For once, he sounded like he was willing to compromise.
He offered me his hand and helped me to my feet. “I can see you’re tired. We can talk about this tomorrow.”
My body protested with aches in every muscle. It was even harder to climb the stairs than before. Thatch held my hand, unruffled by my shuffling pace.
“I’m too tired to walk. Will you carry me?”
“No. You aren’t five. You asked me to treat you like an adult, and now I am.” His eyes twinkled. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to make anything easy for you.”
This teasing was an improvement from him complaining about how annoying I was.
“You’re being nicer than usual to me.”
He looked to the green stones of the amulet around my throat, which Elric had given me, and then away. “I have been endeavoring to treat you more . . . gently, despite the way your insufferable actions challenge my composure.”
“Just one of these days it would be swell if you were nice to me when I wasn’t injured.”
A small smile played at the corners of his mouth, too faint to tell if it was real or he was being polite. “I shall continue the undertaking of being nice tomorrow after the principal calls you into his office and chastises you for missing curfew. He hasn’t yet decided your consequences. I suppose he’ll cast his verdict once he discovers you’re alive and well.”
“Is he going to chastise me?” So far in my employment, Jeb had been patient and indulgent, like a grandfather wizard was supposed to be.
“I hope so,” Thatch said. “That way I won’t have to, and I can continue to be nice.”
Great. I’d survived Thatch and Vega’s inquiries. Now I just had to get through the principal’s consequences.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Principal’s Office
“I reckon I’ve been more than lenient, allowin’ you to fraternize with a Fae prince after you got into that scrape with the Silver Court.” Principal Jebediah Ebenezer Bumblebub stood, leaning over the mess of candles, crystal balls, books, vials, and assorted files on his mahogany desk as he shouted at me. “I’ve tolerated the foolish bargain you’ve made with them cuz you ain’t got the experience to know when you’re bein’ swindled, but I can see that has been a mistake. You endanger our students. Cuz of you, those kids are becomin’ desensitized to the presence of Fae. They’re gettin’ trained to be docile.”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.” I didn’t want my actions to put them at risk or teach them all Fae were nice like Elric.
Jeb removed his witch hat for a moment to blot the sweat from his bald spot with a sleeve. “All of this I have tried my best to wrangle with, but you willfully disregard our rules. You invite that fairy onto our property and allow him to break our wards. I ain’t about to condone the breakin’ of school rules by one of my staff.” Jeb continued to bluster, the spirals of his mustache uncurling and straightening as he spoke.
I’d never seen that happen before.
In my two school years at Womby’s, Jeb’s hasty rage over missing curfew was unprecedented after all the other times I’d messed up. Tearing the turban off Pro Ro’s head, riding feral unicorns onto school grounds, and ‘accidentally’ killing a pedophile staff member had all been far worse than missing curfew. The principal had never lost his temper like this before—especially not over the Fae bargain I had made that had saved the lives of my students.
Still, there was a time and a place for everything. It seemed it was the moment to allow Jeb to blow off steam. Then I could get back to getting finals ready for students this upcoming week.
I sat in the hard wooden chair, staring at my Mary Janes. “I understand, sir,” I said. He’d already been yelling for ten minutes. I wondered how long this would last.
I doubted Thatch had put in a good word for me at this point.
“I’ve fired other teachers for less. And if I was going to get rid of you, this would be the time of year to do it. There’s no shortage of other teachers out there—ones with more experience and more discretion than you. One of them could take your position.”
I stared up at him in horror. “No, please! I love working here. Give me lunch duty and breakfast duty. I’ll do all the jobs the other teachers don’t want to do. I’ll take a pay cut. I’ll do something nice for everyone who had to help reconstruct the wards.”
Jeb tugged at his silvery beard. “I don’t care who you’re related to, and what those Fae do to you out there if you ain’t got a job with wards to protect you. I’ve had it with you. I told Felix of my intention to fire you last night.”
I shook my head. Thatch had warned me the principal had been mad, and I’d have some kind of consequence, but he hadn’t said anything about Jeb firing me.
“Then Felix Thatch had to go off with his silver-tongued logic like he does.” Jeb waved a hand at me at the last words, smacking the Stetson-shaped brim of his witch hat and knocking it from his head.
He tossed the hat onto a stack of books and plopped into his chair. Sitting down, and without the added height of his hat, he wasn’t quite as intimidating. His bald spot and comb-over reminded me of my father. I wondered how it was they didn’t have the equivalent of magical Rogaine for Witchkin.
“Son of a succubus,” Jeb muttered. “I can’t believe Feli
x suckered me into Machiavellian logic.”
I swallowed. “What did Mr. Thatch say?”
“You’re a menace, a danger to us all unless you get your powers under control. There’s got to be a reason the Raven Court wants you so badly, eh? Keep your enemies close and your friends closer.” He paused. “No, that isn’t how the sayin’ goes. I forgot what I was sayin’. Where was I?”
I hesitated, uncertain I could spin this to my advantage. “You were about to tell me what Mr. Thatch said to convince you to keep me—that it’s safer for me to be close so the Raven Court doesn’t use me against you.”
Jeb took a drink from a tumbler of whiskey, staring off into the distance.
Sunlight filtered in through the Art Deco–style stained glass of the double windows to the right, painting the room in the shifting hues of a rainbow.
His office resembled one part wizard study, and one part Old West parlor with Victorian settees and a full bar of alcohol most high school students would give anything to pillage. To the left of the desk, a fireplace sat between columns of bookshelves. Various other items were stashed on the shelves haphazardly: kerosene lamps, candles, and other fire hazards among them. If there was such a thing as a fire marshal in the Unseen Realm, I was pretty sure he had missed this room.
What I’d first taken to be a cow skull—but I now suspected might be otherwise—decorated the wall between paintings of men wrangling cattle-sized dragons. From the amount of clutter piled into every corner, the room looked like it doubled as the storage closet for extra supplies.
“I told Felix Thatch I’d consider his suggestions. I did think about it. I decided he was wrong. You’re the reason the Raven Court keeps attacking our school, the reason why students and teachers have died. You’re too much of a liability. I ain’t keepin’ you on. You can pack your bags today.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Spellcheck Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself