“Sage, you can’t just shove your sticky paws into my relationship,” Hebe snapped, like she was scared of what I was going to say.
I didn’t blame her. I was scared too.
“I don’t even,” started Ferd, and then stopped.
“Let’s make this fast,” I blurted out. “Ferd mate, when Hebe and I broke up, she didn’t admit she was upset about it for more than six months and when she did, it wasn’t to me.”
Hebe opened her mouth and then shut it again. “That’s fair,” she admitted.
Ferd looked like he was just now figuring out something very important.
“Babe,” I told her. “I love you, but you’re shit at admitting when you’re not okay. Just because Holly is a drama queen doesn’t mean you have to be a … couch cushion that everyone sits on, you know?
Hebe glared at me, which was the most fire I’d seen out of her all weekend. “You think I’m a couch cushion?”
“Who is the couch in this scenario?” wondered Ferd.
I leaned in and gave him a sweaty smacking kiss on the cheek, then one for Hebe too. “Just — show each other the messy parts, yeah? I’m all for fucking your way through your problems and pretending they’re not there, that’s totally my brand but you two are way smarter than me. Right?”
And now I was legit giving them advice on their sex life. Time to back the hell off. There was a broomstick calling me. The night wasn’t over yet.
“Who died and made you the Boyfriend Police?” Hebe yelled after me, but she was laughing, so maybe I had left them in a better place than I found them. Maybe.
I was out of options for mates to join me on my Magical Mystery Tour of feelings and tragic backstory, but that was probably how it should be. I talked a good game, but no one wanted to see my messy parts right now.
I considered swinging past that coffee truck, see if the Hot Goth Boy was still serving this late, but how pathetic was that? A light flirting session did not make him my friend. I was on my own.
So yeah I wasn’t exactly in the best of moods when I stormed into our campsite to find Jules Fucking Nightshade with his hands all over my broom. “What the hell do you think you’re doing to Bruce?”
He jumped, shocked by my presence, and then pulled his usual frosty snark over himself like a cloak. “I’m getting out of here. I didn’t want to come in the first place…”
So he hadn’t been intending to keep our Miracle Workers date either? I didn’t know whether to laugh or be pissed off.
Oh, apparently I was pissed off.
“Hey, it’s not my fault you have no free will when your friends are involved,” I growled, leaning into his space and snatching my broom directly from his grasp.
His eyes flashed. “Excuse me, are you suggesting I’m the one who doesn’t set boundaries with his friends? You live with yours like some hippie commune fake family sitcom.”
That was… not unfair. “Come on,” I said shortly, and shoved Holly’s broom at him. Hers was in the best condition because we mostly never let her use it. “You want to fly? Fly with me.”
Nightshade arched an eyebrow perfectly, like he was some kind of old school film star. “Where are we going?”
He didn’t say no.
Something told me I was gonna regret this, but not yet. Not until morning.
“Trust me,” I said.
And what do you know? He did.
We flew about fifteen minutes inland from Mandrake Sands, across some horribly familiar airways. Farming land beneath us, the ground all patchwork like something out of old paintings.
He was good in the air. Of course. When it came to magic, Jules Nightshade is the only person I’ve ever met who has anything like my raw power. He left frost patterns in the sky as he flew. His proximity made my power spark up, hungry and wanting.
No coffee for either of us in the last several hours. We wouldn’t be able to fly these babies if we had.
So this was gonna get explosive.
It was growing dark, the sky curling up at its edges. I found the creek and swooped up the length of it, Nightshade in my tail wind. He overtook me, grinning like this was a drag race.
First genuine ‘I’m having fun’ smile I’d seen on his face all weekend, though I’d seen a lot of ‘I am pretending to have fun because my friends are looking’ grimaces.
“Down,” I said, and dropped hard, ducking under his flight path. “We’ll wanna be near the ground before we reach that line of trees.”
He cupped his ear like he hadn’t heard me, but followed as I ran lower and lower.
Half a metre from the tree line, my feet brushed the dusty ground, and I jogged lightly to a standstill, Bruce powering down. Nightshade kept going, circling around, and I saw his mistake a second before it happened.
He wasn’t that far up when he fell, only four metres or so, but it was enough to jolt the breath out of him. He threw himself to his feet straight away, like a cat pissed off that you saw it slide off the back of the couch. “What the fuck was that?”
“This is Circe Creek,” I said, huffing out a laugh, but not at him.
For a moment, I’d been scared that I got him hurt. Hilarious.
“Hang on, I know that name.” Nightshade stared around at the trees and paddocks. “Did you drag me all this way to the Town That Ate Magic?”
“Do they still call it that?”
His gaze raked the tree line, spotting the curse stone where it had been placed nearby, within sight of another, further up the nearest hill. Magic repelling spells, containing the whole small town and surrounding farms for about 400 acres. “So are you planning to murder me, or is this a booty call?”
“Would you believe neither?” I clapped him on the shoulder, more of a bro gesture than we’d ever shared before. “Congrats, Nightshade. I’m taking a tour down memory lane, and you get a front seat ticket to the wallowing and the angst.”
He stared at the curse stone. “You grew up here? Here?”
I shrugged. “Didn’t even know I had magic until my Aunt moved me to the city when I was thirteen.”
Nightshade’s eyes bugged out. “But you’re — you. You have so much magic. Like, a stupid amount.”
“Yeah. First wet dream in the new flat, I blew the power in the whole street.” He didn’t laugh. I guess it wasn’t that funny. “Wanna come watch me write something obscene on the town hall?”
Nightshade hugged himself. “If you think I’m setting foot inside the wards set by this magic-hating, witch-murdering town of yours, you are dumber than most drummers. And that’s saying something.”
Well, if he put it like that… the appeal of visiting my old haunts melted away. I looked at Nightshade instead, really looked at him. He was pale and drawn, no longer pretending to be the life of the party. I don’t think it was just the prospect of sleeping under damp canvas for another night. “So how’s your weekend been going?”
“It’s been shit, actually,” he said distinctly. “Chauv wanted to come here after — but it was a mistake.”
“Is Ferd Chauvelin the reason you’ve been pretending to have a good time?”
His eyes flashed at me. “You didn’t think it was for your benefit?”
Well, that was a relief. “So this isn’t a stalk and seduce your ex mission?”
Nightshade laughed at that, a short, sharp sound. “Wow, and I thought I’d escaped total humiliation this evening.”
“I’m kidding, mate.” We weren’t mates, not anywhere near it. But maybe we should be. We came from different worlds, but we had a hell of a lot in common when we weren’t ripping each other’s clothes off. We shared too many friends to ignore each other for the rest of our lives. “What have you got to lose by telling me?”
“It’s not my story to tell.” He huffed impatiently as I waggled my eyebrows at him. “You’re so juvenile, McClaren.”
“Didn’t stop you wanting to lick my abs.” But no, that was… old Sage and Jules. I was trying something else here. “Sorry
. Start again.”
Both his eyebrows went up this time. “Apologies? We are turning over a new leaf.”
“Nightshade,” I growled.
He relented. “Chauv’s family are… I mean, I never thought of them as warm. Warmer than my parents, but that’s not saying much: my Maman was carved out of a sarcasm iceberg. But his family? They treat him like…” He trailed off, lost for words.
I grunted in sympathy, and waved a hand at the curse markers. “Like this town treats witches?”
“Yes. Like they might catch something from him, what the fuck? He lost his magic in a freak lab accident, it’s not like he married a stripper or groped the maid or whatever.”
I blinked. “There is so much wrong with that sentence.”
Nightshade was in full flight now. “We didn’t even make it to brunch,” he ranted. “Got a head’s up from one of his cousins that we were walking into an intervention, not a reunion. I guess the parents had been all scheming together. They weren’t up to date with Vale and I — you know.”
Yeah. Nightshade and Vale froze Ferd out after the accident that took his magic — or he froze them out. He’d changed his university allegiances, made new friends, found Hebe. It was only in the last few months that he reconnected with his old friends, and we ended up all tangled up in each other. Now, you needed a chalk diagram or advanced software to unravel the complex dating-and-fucking connections between Ferd’s two social groups.
“They thought we’d help them screw him over,” Jules said bitterly. “That we’d encourage him to sign on the dotted line for surgical intervention, all for the incredibly slim possibility he can return to his old life without them having to change the way they think about anything, you know? So we bailed. I was hoping we could spend the weekend clubbing or binge-eating to get his mind off it but oh no, Chauv and Vale insisted we come here, to hang with their sweeties.” He glared at me. “You and me, we’re done. I’m not trying to stealth reverse the breakup or whatever.”
“What makes this different to all the other times we broke up and jumped back into bed again a few weeks later?” I had to ask, because I genuinely wanted to know. “What changed?”
Nightshade gave me the frostiest of glares. “Believe it or not, I decided I want a boyfriend who actually likes me.”
Ha, wow. A whole night of truth bombs.
“It’s fine,” I shrugged, shoving down the small stab of completely deserveable hurt. “Believe it or not, I don’t spend my days thinking about you and me and the grand romance we might have had.”
“Join the club,” he said, with a sour note that made me take a second look.
Jules Nightshade looked wrecked. The good news was, I wasn’t the reason for it. But now I was paying attention to something other than how good his mouth tasted on mine… well, some pieces clicked into place.
Ferd Chauvelin was a good bloke. He could be a wanker at times when the silver-dipped wand started to show, but he’d made an effort to break the worst of his rich boy programming. He treated Hebe with respect, and he was on my All-time Flatmates Who Don’t Suck list. (I booted Dec off that list months ago when I found clay in the fridge for the fourteenth time)
I liked Ferd. But the bloke could be super oblivious. He hadn’t even noticed his girlfriend was fighting with him.
He hadn’t noticed that Jules was miserable about being here.
Speaking of oblivious. How much of an idiot was I for not spotting before now that Jules Nightshade, shallow, hyper-privileged magical genius arsehole extraordinaire, was completely fucked up over his straight best friend?
“That must suck,” I said aloud.
Jules looked at me, annoyed. “What?”
“Nothing, mate.” Damn it. I’d been so sure I needed to shove Jules out of my life. But now? The poor bastard clearly needed more than two friends. “I think this is the first real conversation we’ve ever had,” I observed.
He leaned against a tree, recovering some of his usual poise. “Yes, you should take me to scary isolated murder sites more often.”
“I don’t think anyone’s been murdered in this town since the summer before I left,” I said, and waggled my eyebrows at him.
He snorted. “I will pay you not to tell me that story.”
After a minute, I realised he was staring at me expectantly. “What?”
Jules waved a hand. “Aren’t you planning to, I don’t know. Wallow in nostalgia while you walk up and down the tiny three-horse town that deprived you of magic for the first thirteen years of your life? Isn’t that why we’re here?”
Well, that was the original plan. “Changed my mind,” I said aloud. “I’m gonna not, and say I did. Let’s go find a pub and get blitzed.”
Jules Nightshade smiled slowly. “I guess you are the smartest drummer that I know.”
I was gonna friend the hell out of this bloke. He wouldn’t know what hit him.
Chapter 13
Hebe & the Fangirls
MONDAY, EARLY HOURS
* * *
So it was embarrassing that Ferd and I had been called on our bullshit by my ex, but it worked.
I was going to be able to tease Sage until the end of time for being invested enough to interfere in our relationship. Really, it was more embarrassing for him.
We talked. We really talked.
Ferd told me how his friends had saved him from yet another horrible intervention with his family. He’d had something of a breakdown in front of Jules and Viola, which he was embarrassed about. He’d been keeping up a front with them before now, pretending he didn’t really mind how his parents were treating him.
“Even if I had my magic back,” he said softly. “I don’t think I could go back to them, to the family, that life. Not now I know how little they value me.”
I kind of yelled at him a bit, because come on. I wouldn’t have been mad if I’d known why he wanted to be here. If I’d known he needed me. I wasted most of the weekend being pissed off over small stuff because he was hiding the big stuff.
Huh. Sage McClaren, drummer and relationship guru. Hilarious, considering he hasn’t had a steady someone in years.
That was a thought for another time, because Ferd and I had a lot of making up to do.
We walked on the beach for a while, and talked, and then we went back to his brand new shiny tent for more talking and touching and… well, sex is a lot more fun when you’re not using it to avoid difficult conversations.
Before we slept, I summoned all the sound-muffling hex bags into a circle around the tent, just in case we wanted to do it all over again in the morning.
That was the reason I didn’t realise what else was happening in our campsite until it was far too late.
I woke up naked and warm inside a sleeping bag built for two, with my boyfriend’s firm arms crowding me into the air mattress. There are worse ways to wake up.
For the first time since I set up the campsite, my magic was calm and quenched, completely content. Back in its box until the next time it reared its domestic goddess/monster tendrils.
Except.
There was an itch.
Just a tiny sting, like an ant or a beetle. A pin-prick of alertness.
It was quiet out there. Sound-muffling hex bags work both ways.
Ferd sighed and muttered against me, sliding his face down to his favourite place, between my breasts. Utterly unhelpful. I unzipped the sleeping bag and slipped out, tucking a pillow in with him so that he wouldn’t wake up.
His tent, so his clothes. I pulled on my jeans from yesterday and took a singlet and flowing blue silk shirt (seriously, silk for camping?) out of his rucksack and pulled those on. I borrowed clean socks, to wear under my boots (this is Australia, you never set foot in a campsite with bare feet). Ferd is a seemingly endless supplier of clean socks; he always has several pairs handy. It’s one of the things that my magic most enjoys about him.
I unzipped the tent and stepped out into chaos.
It was some
kind of party — noisy and raucous. Perhaps 40 people crammed into our campsite, dancing and laughing and drinking.
I checked my watch. It was 3am.
My magic rose up in me, unsure whether it wanted to welcome the guests with cocktails and snacks, or fling them all out. I looked around for a familiar face, trying to figure out which of my friends had invited this lot.
My sister rose up out of the mob, covered in glitter and smugness. Well, sure. This wasn’t the first time Holly had sprung an unexpected party on my living space, though she was usually sensible enough to invite everyone to the boys’ flat instead of ours.
She was wearing a t-shirt with her own face on it, which was… odd. Holly adores the Fake Geek Girl merch but she’s too cool to wear it in public.
Everyone was wearing Fake Geek Girl gear. It crept up on me quickly, that realisation. Some of it was official merch, some was homemade. Lots of Bromancers shirts and Athena Owl snuggies. There were at least four men wearing some kind of Sage cosplay, which was a special kind of surreal.
Juniper was dancing with one of the fake drummers, her arms wrapped around his not-wide-enough shoulders.
Holly saw me, and her face lit up. “Favourite sister!” she demanded, and gave me the world’s biggest hug.
My magic wanted to smother her with a pillow.
“We should sing together, sweetie,” she muttered with her face mashed into my cheek.
“We should — what?” Was she high? This had better not be Troll again, she was the worst on drugs. Never like this, though. I shoved her away from me. “What exactly —”
“You are the cutest,” Holly giggled, and booped my nose. “Come on, let’s sing Big Gay Breakup Song together. Juniper can film it for the website. It’ll be amaze.”
And then I knew what my magic had been trying to tell me. I stared at her, cold from my feet to my fingertips. “You’re not my sister.”
Unreal Alchemy Page 16
