“Dancing to that band? Every single week? No.”
“Friday nights once a month, and you don’t have to arrive until the second set?”
Boys were horrible. “But I hate their music so much,” Viola complained. “Seriously, where is that buzz coming from?”
“Where is what buzz coming from?” Chauv asked.
It wasn’t in this room after all. Viola broke Hebe’s locking charm like it was made of spaghetti, and went on the rampage. “It’s in there.”
“That’s Holly’s room,” Chauv called behind her. “So, uh, privacy issues?”
Viola pushed the door open. “Which one’s Holly again?”
“The famous one,” her boys chorused.
She found it on the bedside table, along with a set of keys, pens and small change. A necklace, flat and silver, giving off that buzz of residual magic. “Ugh,” said Viola. “Nasty cheap little trinket. Chauvelin, come here and hold this for a second.”
He followed her instructions exactly, his large hand folding around the delicate chain, even as he complained about it. “You can buy null cases in packs of ten, I don’t appreciate being treated like a piece of lab equipment...”
“Hush,” said Viola, and turned the necklace over with the end of a pen, running a swift diagnosis charm over it. “So, Holly Hallow. The famous one. Her ex-boyfriend’s evil.”
“Not a shock,” Chauv agreed. “The last one was something big in the music industry, I think, a complete dick, but this one’s even worse…”
“Sure, whatever,” said Viola. “This necklace is part of a summoning charm that has been luring trolls into the city over the last few days.”
“That’s,” said Chauv, and stopped. “Holly has exceptionally bad taste in men.”
“Bring that,” Viola snapped. “We need to talk to Sage. I’m ending this.”
Chapter 12
4am, Second Wind
A storm whipped itself up in the middle of the postage-stamp sized garden. Holly Hallow was at the centre of it, eyes glowing white, and a halo of fury literally licking out from her skin.
“YOU DID WHAT?” she bellowed at her ex boyfriend.
Her friends stood around her, staring, as if they had never seen her perform magic before.
Viola was impressed. She would make an effort to remember Holly’s name from now on.
“Baby,” said the ex, who lacked a full set of self-preservation skills. “It’s nothing for you to worry about. Just business…”
Holly punched him.
With all the magic she had built up, the punch had the power of several cranky ogres and a side-order of sea monster. It collected him hard and sent him flying into the nearest fence.
“What the hell kind of bullshit did you bring into my house?” she howled at him. “Everyone I care about is in this fucking house!”
The earth trembled beneath their feet as the ex raised his head and glared at her. Viola felt him gather his own magic, tapping into the power of the earth to summon, and to smite. How many more trolls were there in the city? How many could he control?
Sage reached out, and took the necklace from Holly’s hand, snapping it into pieces. A toxic blast of magic spun outwards, and into the night air above them.
The ex laughed. “You think that’s my only one, McClaren? I’ve been screwing my way across this city for months, and I’ve left a token like that on every bedside table. Tonight was only a taste of the power I can tap into as the One True Trollmaster…”
Viola turned him into stone.
Everyone turned and stared at her.
“What?” she said defensively. “Did you want him to finish his monologue? It was boring.”
“You can undo that, right?” complained Holly. “Because I want to punch him again.”
“We probably need to know more about what he was planning, in case taking him out of the equation doesn’t stop the trolls,” Hebe said, with rather more tact.
“Fine, whatever,” Viola huffed. She turned the slimeball ex back into his human shape with a wave of her hand and turned around to go inside. It was cold, and she really couldn’t remember why she had bothered to stay this long.
“Oi, you’ll show me how to do that sometime, yeah?” Sage called after her.
“I’ll send you the practicum report, you can peer-review it for me by Monday!” she yelled back.
Around the corner, by the door, she saw Chauv leaning against the wall, talking to Dec in a low voice.
“Don’t you feel helpless all the time?”
“It’s different for me, mate,” Dec said easily. “I never had magic. Never needed it, to do the work I love. My Mum was an Unreal Equity activist — got all riled up about the discrimination against the magic-free in our society. My sisters, too. But it never affected me much.”
“How do you protect the people you love without magic?” Chauv asked plaintively.
“Maybe you need to trust them to protect themselves,” Viola broke in. “That’s what partnership is all about, isn’t it? Balancing out each other’s strengths and weaknesses?” She almost sounded like she knew what she was talking about. But it worked for academic group projects. Why not relationships?
Both men looked up. Only Chauv looked surprised.
“Easy for you to say,” he told her. “You can jump in and help when shit like this goes down. You’re not broken.”
“My help isn’t wanted,” said Viola. She glanced at Dec. “You missed me transforming someone into stone. It was amazing.”
“I’m gutted,” he said. “Next time, give me a head’s up.”
“I’ll devise a special whistle to alert you to my moments of magnificence.”
Chauv slouched against the brick. “It’s like Hebe only gets half of me,” he muttered. “Sooner or later she’ll realise that, and she’ll leave.”
“Ugh,” said Viola. “You cannot pull off self-pity, Chauv. Don’t even try.”
“Dickhead,” added Dec. “You wouldn’t even have met Hebes if you were still Mr Magic Pants.”
“That’s true,” Viola agreed. “You’d still be with the beautiful people, swanning around with a different girl every night, and never taking them home to meet your parents in case one of them turned out to be Suitable Wife Material.”
“Such a life you lead,” Dec marvelled. “I’ve missed so much by not being born into High Society.”
Viola could feel magic shifting nearby, under her feet, around the corner. The so-called Trollmaster was at it again, putting up a fight. Part of her wanted to help, though she hadn’t been appreciated last time she tried.
“Do you know what I want right now?” she asked.
“Me,” said Dec. “Or ice cream.”
“A time travel potion so you could go back and tell Jules NO to going out tonight?” Chauv suggested.
“Tonight didn’t turn out so badly,” Viola admitted grudgingly. “We’re friends again, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” said Chauv, and took her hand. “Yes.”
“Good, then you can make me a cup of coffee. You can’t tell me you didn’t take your fancy coffee plunger with you when you sneaked out of your family home in the dead of night. Not after you risked being disinherited to smuggle it into your family home in the first place.”
Chauv blinked at her. “Coffee. Seriously?”
Coffee would make her vulnerable. Coffee would make her as close to a null as she was ever going to get, barring accidents. Coffee sounded really good right now.
“Ferdinand Chauvelin. Make me a cup of coffee.”
“Police are here to arrest whatsisname,” Dec announced some time later, gazing out the kitchen window.
Viola held her empty cup out, and Chauv poured from his stainless steel, stovetop masterpiece. This was her third cup, and it was wonderful. Her magic was muted now, barely accessible, and that made her tastebuds even more alert to the rich smoothness of this particular blend.
“How did they restrain him in the end?” s
he asked in a bored voice.
“Hebe transformed some broken tree branches into ropes, Sage charmed them, and then after he broke out of that and summoned two more trolls to attack them, Nightshade carved some runes on the grass, and…” Dec leaned out the window to yell, “You know I really liked that apple tree!”
“Hmm,” said Viola. “If only someone could have turned the villain into stone to keep him available for the police without three escape attempts that destroyed half your back yard.”
“To be fair,” said Chauv. “That shed was on the verge of falling down anyway.”
“This isn’t even the most property damage that one of Holly’s exes has left us to deal with,” Dec agreed.
“The trouble with witches,” said Viola. “We assume that magic will always be around to fix things. That we are invulnerable. It is a dangerous assumption.” She raised her cup in a quiet salute to Chauvelin. “You taught me that. After Sadie was kidnapped by those nulls.”
“I remember,” Chauv said softly. “I was so angry that they had used our reliance on magic to attack our family. But when Mother found out I arranged for Sadie to have Unreal self defence lessons, she was even angrier. As if me admitting we had a weakness was worse than outsiders using it against us.”
“So the occasional cup of coffee won’t kill you?” asked Dec.
“Not when we have valiant friends to keep the monsters at bay,” Viola said, and saluted Chauv with her cup.
Chapter 13
5am, Crash Space
Viola stole Sage’s Kraken shirt.
It was a perfectly justified action.
The party was over, the police had taken the (ugh) Trollmaster into custody, and it was slightly too early to get a decent breakfast anywhere. It was taken as read that everyone would spend what was left of the night here, in the flat shared by Sage, Chauv and Dec. Holly, Hebe and their bespectacled flatmate Mei fetched pyjama party supplies from downstairs: comfortable clothes, spare pillows, and three jumbo bags of marshmallows.
Viola was handed a pair of pyjama pants with owls on them, an over-sized t-shirt with cupcakes on the front (the cupcakes had faces), and was pushed into Sage’s room to ‘ditch the little black dress.’
This was practically an open invitation to shove the cupcake monstrosity under Sage’s pillow, steal his Kraken t-shirt, and button Dec’s flannel shirt over the top of it for the sake of subtlety.
Sage was all right, but he was still the drummer in That Band, and he didn’t deserve a t-shirt this cool.
When she emerged wearing the very latest fashion fusion of flannel and owls, Viola found the whole mess of them — her friends and Chauv’s friends — tangled together over couches and beanbags, all limbs and marshmallows, watching the first episode of something trashy on their big screen TV. Chauv was braiding Hebe’s hair. Sage and Jules sat as far from each other as they could get.
Viola considered the seating options for a few moments, and then she placed herself directly on Dec’s lap.
He grinned, and slung an arm around her waist. “So, are you new to The Bromancers? Do I need to wiki you the basics?”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “I have no idea what you are talking about. Can we assume I don’t care?”
“This isn’t the first episode,” Hebe exclaimed suddenly. “It’s the third episode.”
“It’s the first good one,” Dec called across to her.
“Lies and slander, the first good one is Season 2, the Halloween body swap,” said Sage.
“There’s lots of great stuff in Season 1,” argued Mei. “You can’t skip all the meaningful looks and slash potential because you want to cut straight to the episodes with meta-references to existing fanfic.”
“Ugh,” said Holly. “Why do I even hang out with you people? Can’t you just watch a show without all the diagrams and opinions? You’d invent a shipping war out of the Home Cauldron Channel.”
There was a pause. “Yeah,” said Sage. “But you know those two ladies selling dried potion ingredients are totally hot for each other. I bet there’s fanfic.”
An argument broke out, which led to half the room unironically throwing popcorn at the other. Viola tried to put up a low level barrier charm, because she was going to get a whole lot less friendly if she ended up with corn in her hair. Her fingers were fuzzy and she stared at them. Oh. Coffee. Damn it. She was going to have to rely on dirty looks to protect her hair from popcorn.
“So,” said Dec in a low voice, leaning up to her ear. “Confession time. I collect vintage board games. I’m into role playing, not in the bedroom, well maybe in the bedroom, but I mean a gaming thing. I spend a lot of time working out statistics about fictional dragons. That’s often a deal-breaker for women.”
Viola rolled her eyes and shoved him lightly. “I translate Ancient Greek poetry for fun, I regularly alienate everyone around me with my pure, unadulterated bitchiness, and I don’t do relationships. I genuinely don’t care how you spend your spare time.”
Dec nodded. “I think you might be my muse.”
“That’s not a selling point,” she informed him.
“I’m willing to invest in an extremely high thread count in bedsheets?”
“That’s more enticing.”
“So, coffee sometime? Or, a less witch-sensitive beverage of your choice if there are active trolls in the area?”
It wasn’t every day you found a boy who looked into the face of a gorgon, and decided he wanted to spend time getting to know her.
“I’ll consider it,” said Viola Vale.
Chapter 14
6am, Best Hangover Breakfast In The City
“You,” said Jules, lost for more intelligible words. “You —”
Viola sipped her tea calmly, and ate a corner of her raisin toast. “We’re not going to talk about this,” she informed him.
“Vale,” he hissed. “You are wearing comedy pyjamas in public.”
Sometime between 4 and 5 am, Viola had hit a very mellow, philosophical frame of mood, and had somehow managed to stay there despite the people in her general vicinity.
It was all that had kept her going through the screening of an entire episode of The Bromancers, with associated commentary.
Jules shut his mouth, surprisingly. The two of them were perched at the counter of the Fennysnake Cafe, which opened at 6am and served what Sage called The Best Hangover Breakfast In the City, what Holly called, Heart Attack on a Plate, and what Hebe called The Least Offensive Option, seriously, The Other Place That Does 6AM Breakfasts is Run By Goblins.
Everyone else was crowded around a mass of tables shoved together, arguing loudly over who was going to order three kinds of bacon, who was going to order what kind of waffle tower, and whether a smoothie counted as breakfast.
None of them had complained or teased when Viola and Jules set up their own little island of calm away from the chaos. That was… surprisingly cool of them.
“He seems happy,” Jules muttered into his freshly juiced glass of brightly-coloured pulp. “That’s annoying.”
“Yep,” said Viola, lining up her remaining slices of toast. “Almost like he has this whole life thing figured out.”
“He doesn’t need us any more.”
“No,” she agreed. “But he’s not shoving us away. So, progress?”
“Progress,” Jules agreed sadly.
They sat in blissful lack-of-conversation for a while, as the table of aggressive breakfast debate behind them continued to heave and rattle.
“I always figured you and Chauv would end up together,” Jules confessed.
Viola almost choked on her tea. “You thought what?”
“You’re both hot and mostly straight, and I don’t know. I ship it.”
Viola bit savagely into her toast. “You can’t just point two straight people at each other and say ‘now, kiss,’ Nightshade. It doesn’t work that way.”
Jules lay his head on her shoulder. “But you’d make such pretty babies,” he wh
ined.
“Just because you’ve always wanted to marry Ferdinand Chauvelin does not mean I do!”
He stilled against her. “Low blow, precious.”
“I know. Sorry.”
“He’d make a terrible husband,” Jules muttered.
Viola patted him on the head. “So would you, darling.”
Over at the table, Hebe let out a sudden yell. “Sage, it’s the song!” she shrieked.
“Shut up,” said Sage, shifting in his chair.
“No, wait,” said Chauvelin, vaulting over the unholy combination of tables to get to the cafe’s little radio. He turned it up.
“Wait,” said Viola, tilting her head. “Is this Kraken?”
* * *
You and I are an explosion waiting to happen
Don’t wait
Light it up
Let’s go
* * *
I set fire to your broom,
You’ll incinerate my car,
Flame on,
This is us
Burn hard!
It was a rough, fun song, with that characteristic Kraken sense of humour. Viola hadn’t listened to them in ages — hadn’t realised there was a new single out.
Sage looked like he had been hit over the head. Obviously a true fan. Too late, Viola wasn’t giving the t-shirt back now. Hebe and Chauv giggled and shoved each other while they listened to the song all the way through. When it was over, the whole table burst out into applause.
“See, that’s a good song,” Viola said, when the noise had died down. “Why don’t your band do songs like that?”
Chauv laughed so hard he nearly head-butted his girlfriend in the face.
“I wrote this one,” said Sage.
Viola stared at him. “You wrote a song for Kraken?”
“You got paid to write a song that got on the radio!” howled Chauv, and he and Dec fell over themselves to slap Sage on the back. Hebe and Holly threw themselves on his lap, hugging and/or punching him.
Unreal Alchemy Page 9
