Hexes and Exes

by Sarina Dorie

  “Stop acting like a twelve-year-old. I’m not going to castrate him.”

  I nodded to the sword. “Yeah? Then why do you have a magic sword with you?”

  “It doubles as a flashlight.” He threw a bag down onto the ground beside me, glass clinking inside. It was the same one he’d shown me earlier with the vials. The sword changed shape again, shifting and compressing into a lantern with blue light. “Show me your spoils.”

  I didn’t leave Bart’s side. Thatch rummaged through the bag without me.

  “What did you shoot him for if you weren’t going to do anything bad to him?” I asked.

  “If I had suddenly appeared, he would have mauled me.”

  “No, he wouldn’t have. He didn’t maul Julian.”

  “That was their first time meeting him, I’d wager. This isn’t the Singing Stallions’ first encounter with me. We aren’t on speaking terms. More precisely, we happen to be on charging and impaling terms.”

  Thatch’s arrival had been suspiciously convenient. He’d shown up the moment Bart had been about to tell me something.

  “What did you do that made the Singing Stallions your enemies?” I asked.

  Thatch examined the hairs in the curry brush I’d dropped on the ground. “You mixed up the short hair and long hair, and now I have to separate them. It would make my existence so much easier if you followed directions for once. I prepared each vial for a specific purpose.” He held up one of the jars so I could see. “If you were going to run away from a perfectly safe area that I warded for your protection, the least you could have done was take the proper supplies with you.”

  “You could have told me you had warded the tree to keep me safe.”

  “No, I couldn’t. As I told you previously, you needed to believe you were in danger.”

  His words didn’t appease the demon of anger inside me wanting to break free and claw his face off. I shifted to a more comfortable seated position now that Bart wasn’t in imminent danger. “Why would Bart want to impale you with his horn?”

  “You’ve hardly made this a profitable excursion.” Thatch tucked the hair into separate bottles before returning them to their place. “I finished collecting wolfsbane, chimera excrement, toadstools, and five other ingredients for my spells an hour ago. Since that time, I’ve been sitting in the bushes, listening to your insipid conversation with that bloody unicorn, and this is all you’ve collected. I could have gotten Vega to do that much. There’s only one reason I needed you to draw in a unicorn. They like virgins.” He eyed me up and down. “You are still a virgin, aren’t you?”

  “It’s none of your business.” Donkule fornicator, I added in my head. This was not a conversation I wanted to have with my magical mentor. At the moment, I felt like I’d been conned into being the Sith Lord’s apprentice.

  Thatch paced back and forth. He continued to reprimand me. “I told you how valuable all parts of the unicorn are. If you had any sense in you, you would have taken advantage of that. His seed is the second-most-potent ingredient for spells after his horn—and the only viable substitute in most magics. I can’t tell if you’re intentionally dense or absolutely clueless. Every opportunity he provided, you ignored.”

  “Opportunity?”

  “He was begging you for a hand job. You could have indulged him.”

  “No, freakin’ way. That’s just wrong.”

  “He didn’t think so.”

  Thatch tossed one of the jars at me. His aim wasn’t very good. I had to overextend myself to catch it and fell over. It was a large one with a cork.

  “It isn’t too late.” He waved a hand at the new anatomy on Bart’s head. “Collect his seed, and then we’ll be done here.”

  I set the bottle down on the cushion of moss. “You want it so bad, you do it yourself.”

  “I’m not a virgin. I won’t be able to get him off.”

  “I’m not going to do it.” There were about a jillion reasons this was icky. The strongest floated to the top, shouting for attention. “It would be rape. He didn’t consent.” I wrapped my arms around myself, trying not to think about Julian. I wasn’t going to be like him and use someone’s sexuality to further my magical powers. Fae did that, and I wasn’t Fae. I pushed Julian out of my mind.

  “It isn’t going to steal his powers, nor would it be without his consent. He had already asked you for a favor. He will enjoy it in his little pony dreams, and he will gain power from your touch, first because you’re a maiden, and second because of your affinity. It won’t hurt either of you. You might even enjoy it.” He nudged the glass jar back toward me with the toe of a polished brown shoe.

  “The answer is no.”

  He shrugged, his face a mask of calm. “Fine. I’m not going to take you to the art supply store.”

  “You probably weren’t going to anyway.” I turned away, focusing my attention on Bart. I pushed his silver mane out of his eyes. Poor guy. He had been trying to protect me tonight, and this was the thanks he got.

  “Are you going to cry?” Thatch uncorked a smaller vial and held it close to my face. “I need some virgin’s tears for the spell I’m working on too. A virgin’s blood would be stronger, but one takes what he can get.”

  I pushed the bottle away and got to my feet, dusting off Josie’s cape. “I’m done helping you.” I started off toward the path.

  “Where are you going?” he demanded.

  “Back to school.”

  “You’ll get lost.”

  “Probably.”

  “The Fae will get you.”

  I kept walking. I could call the unicorns. Maybe. There was nothing he could say that would make me turn back.

  “The unicorn semen is for a spell to cure Derrick,” he called after me.

  Craptacular. Except that.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Raven’s Curse

  I halted in my tracks, turning back to Felix Thatch. “What do you mean, ‘cure Derrick?’ What’s wrong with him? Where is he?”

  The spidery limbs of trees creaked ominously in the silence that followed. Thatch’s expression was grim.

  Even if Derrick’s words in my dreams about being cursed had been a fantasy created by my subconscious, I knew from Derrick’s own letter that he had been cursed by the Raven Queen and that he had brought me Alouette Loraline’s journal. Yet, the Raven Queen’s emissary had hinted that the queen had given me the book. I didn’t know what to believe anymore.

  I held my breath, waiting to learn the truth about what had happened to Derrick.

  A flicker of emotion flashed across Thatch’s poker face—Fear? Anger? I couldn’t tell. It was gone just as quickly as it had come.

  He strode into the shadows, a cross-hatching of black lines cast by spindly twigs obscuring his expression. “I haven’t been completely forthcoming with you about your friend.”

  No duh. “So he’s okay? And you’re trying to help him?”

  “He is alive. If you call his miserable existence living.”

  I trudged back toward Bart and crossed my arms, waiting.

  He spoke quietly, the deep rumble of his voice blending in with the wind rustling the leaves of bushes behind him. “Despite my best efforts to keep Derrick concealed and his identity separate from your own, the Raven Queen discovered what he means to you. She’s cursed him with a very complex mind-control spell.”

  The cold seeped under the cape I wore and sank into my bones, chilling me to my soul. I didn’t want it to be true, but I couldn’t deny it fit into what I already knew about Derrick. Being under the Raven Queen’s control was worse than I could have guessed.

  For once, Thatch was being honest. It was time I was honest too.

  I fortified myself with a few steadying breaths, uncertain whether confiding in Thatch was the right decision. I rushed ahead before I changed my mind. “Do you remember back in November when I told you the Raven Court had followed me into the forest? They implied they knew I had my mother’s diary. They asked me if I
liked the Raven Queen’s present. But she wasn’t the one who had given it to me. I found it with a note from Derrick.”

  I expected his temper to flare. Instead, he sounded hurt. “You lied to me?”

  “I omitted the truth. It isn’t like you don’t lie to me.”

  “Only to protect you.”

  I didn’t believe that. He lied to protect himself. Still, his disappointment in me weighed heavy on my shoulders.

  He sagged against a tree, exhaling a cloud of warmth that dissipated into the air much like my hope for Derrick’s return. “This is worse than I had guessed. She knows you have—or had—the book.”

  “I tried to burn it. I did burn it. Only, it reappeared—like magic.”

  He snorted. “You can’t destroy a book with that much magic using a simple fire.”

  Oh. I guessed that explained its miraculous recovery. “Derrick left me a note. He said there’s a spell in the book I could use to cure him.”

  Thatch’s voice came out sharp, a sword that sliced through contradictions and left no room for arguments. “That is a lie.”

  I wondered how much of the book Thatch had translated himself by now and if he knew that for a fact, or he only wanted me to believe it. There had been a spell in the back of the book that I hadn’t finished translating. One of the spells had included unicorn horn. If it was the same spell, Thatch was lying about the book containing a cure—but not lying about helping Derrick.

  The moon unmasked itself from behind clouds, silvery light washing across the anguish on his face before the gloom of clouds took over once again. “The Raven Queen would have you believe that book will help you in order to tempt you to learn from her,” he said. “She forced Derrick into her service and intended to use him to lure you to her. I wouldn’t doubt if she coerced him into stealing the journal from Jeb’s office and delivering it to you himself.”

  His hypothesis matched what Derrick had said in his note to me. In a roundabout way, it was Derrick who had brought me the book—via the Raven Queen’s direction.

  Thatch watched me. “Most likely she intends to test your knowledge, to see if you possess anything of value to her. If she finds you to her liking, she might teach you the forbidden arts of blood and pain magic. If she fancies you, she may teach you succubus magic.” His voice remained an unenthusiastic monotone. “Lucky you.”

  “Is that what my mother was?” I asked. “A succubus?”

  “You are not a succubus. Your mother was not a succubus. Why must you insist on asking me that?” His breathing came out heavy.

  “I don’t know. Maybe because accidents happen to my boyfriends during intimate moments.” As usual, my questions never ceased to irritate him.

  “No. Accidents happen when you touch people. Period. The Raven Queen knows who your mother was. She understands your affinity. Now she thinks she can persuade you to learn Alouette Loraline’s secrets, follow in her footsteps, and cure Fae of their fertility problems. She will tempt you with magic and with Derrick. If you refuse her . . . guidance, it’s very likely she will torture Derrick in front of you until you agree to her terms. When she deems you are no longer useful to her or you learn anything that makes you a liability rather than an asset, she will ask him to kill you.”

  So there it was, just as I had feared: help the Raven Queen or allow her to hurt Derrick. I remembered her all-black eyes and the sharp talons at the end of each finger. She’d been beautiful and lethal, like a bird of prey.

  If I helped her, she would know my weakness and every other Red affinity’s. She would use us for our magic, force us to breed with whom she chose, and build her army to serve the Raven Court. Yet if I didn’t, she would hurt someone I cared about.

  Thatch wet his lips. “Fae magic is strong. I have been working to break Derrick’s curse. Unsuccessfully thus far.”

  I paced back and forth, hardly able to contain the tumult of emotions threatening to overflow. I was happy and relieved to know with certainty Derrick was alive but fearful for his safety. Knowing Thatch had lied to me about Derrick added to that chaos inside me.

  I laughed and choked back a sob. “Why didn’t you tell me? He was my best friend. I want to help him.” More than anything I wanted to see him.

  “That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you. I won’t have you meddling and making everything worse than it already is. His knowledge of you, and your insistence to see him and talk about old times, will only serve as a catalyst for the Raven Queen’s magic.”

  His knowledge of me? The Raven Queen had controlled him specifically to lure me to her, so how could he not know about me? Maybe he didn’t know I was at the school. No, he must have. He’d given the book to me and the notes had come to me on a breath the wind.

  Something about the story felt off. Maybe it was my intuition. Maybe it was my suspicion meter doing it’s normal thing when words came out of Thatch’s mouth.

  “You’re telling me this now? So I can help you help him?” I gazed down at Bart, snoring softly between us. “You really need unicorn semen for this spell?”

  “It’s the most potent part of the unicorn after the horn. If I’m able to work this spell, Derrick will be cured and his mind will be his own.” He shrugged with feigned indifference. “If not, Derrick’s condition will grow worse. Killing your friend will be a mercy.”

  I sucked in a breath at those words. I watched Thatch’s face, waiting for that malicious twinkle in his eye to hint he was playing a trick on me. It didn’t come. I forced myself to read between his words.

  “Is that why you wouldn’t answer any of my questions about him when I asked you last fall?” The idea of someone killing Derrick made my chest tight with despair. “Because . . . I might never see him again?”

  “It was better to let you think he was dead than for you to find out I killed your closest friend.” He stepped into the moonlight, silhouettes of spindly leaves framing him against the stars. He arched an eyebrow. “Think of the strain that would put on our professional relationship.”

  I had to save Derrick from his curse, even if it meant collecting the most disgusting items on Thatch’s list. But I wasn’t going to molest Bart to do it. That would make me as icky as Julian Thistledown if I did.

  “Okay,” I said. “Wake him up. I’m not going to take advantage of a unicorn without his consent.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  A Lannister Always Pays His Debts—and So Does Felix Thatch

  I couldn’t stop thinking about that night in the forest. I desperately wanted to forget about “manual expression of an equestrian species” as Thatch so eloquently had put it, but that would forever be burned into my memory.

  That wasn’t all that haunted me. I kept thinking about Thatch.

  I recalled the taste of his lips on mine, only for him to push me away later. Muddled in with that longing was guilt for using Bart—even if he had consented—and shame for fantasizing about the kiss with Thatch afterward. The entire reason I had been collecting penis pudding from unicorns in the first place was for Derrick.

  How could I allow myself to long for Thatch but dream of Derrick? I wanted to blame my affinity for losing myself in the moment, but I suspected this was all me.

  I loved Derrick. I was certain he was my soul mate. He understood me in a way no one else had. Even before I’d known magic was real, he’d believed in me and had shared everything he knew about magic with me to help me. He’d made my concerns his own and tried to prevent a catastrophic future, though our efforts had been unsuccessful.

  I hated myself for kissing Thatch. From his reaction, I suspected he hated me too.

  I didn’t want to see Thatch at school, let alone talk to him. He wasn’t difficult to avoid, considering he preferred the dark bowels of the dungeon rather than sunlight.

  Still, I needed art supplies.

  The discount store wasn’t open until Tuesday. I could get by a couple of days by stalling at the start of the semester, going over the syllabus and giving students
preliminary assignments to assess their abilities, but I couldn’t actually plan what I intended to teach until I had something, anything for them to draw and paint with.

  I went to Khaba first to see if he could escort me off campus. The door to his office was closed, but I could see him lounging in his chair talking to someone. I knocked, and he waved me in.

  Khaba greeted me with the kind of smile that could have made anyone dream of djinn. From the chiseled abs he flaunted with a shirt unbuttoned far lower than any dean of discipline could have gotten away with in the Morty Realm, to the perfection of this face, he was every bit of Fae beauty that enchanted mortals and gave his kind a bad name.

  He grinned at me. “You’ve got to hear what Balthasar Llewelyn did today!”

  I stepped closer to his desk. A breezed rushed past me.

  Khaba leaned back in a hot-pink leather chair that matched the bubblegum-and-fuchsia décor. “Balthasar actually thought he could get away with stealing an entire telescope from Pro Ro’s observatory and installing it in the boys’ dormitory. He even had an elaborate system of mirrors set up outside so he could see into the window of the girls’ dorm below.”

  “Heh. Real funny,” I said, unable to hide my displeasure at one of the worst students at the school.

  “Invismo has a theory about which girl Balthasar was trying to spy on,” Khaba said.

  I waited, praying the security guard who worked for Khaba hadn’t learned another detail that was about to make Maddy’s life more difficult. The last thing that girl needed was more attention from boys.

  “Invismo?” Khaba asked, looking to the empty chair across from his desk.

  I followed his gaze. The chair was empty.

  “As you can clearly see . . . the invisible man has left the room.” Khaba chuckled and shook his head. “He is always doing that to me! Yesterday I was in here talking to him for five minutes before I realized he hadn’t laughed at one of my puns and I was all alone. He thinks he’s hilarious when he does that.”

  I closed the door behind me. “Yeah, I bet he thinks it’s hilarious when he watches us while we’re naked in the shower too.”