I was so close. I don’t know what I planned to do if I caught him, but now I guess I’ll never know.
I’m still thinking of the third Dark Witch when Edgar’s hand reaches out to grab me again, so it’s no surprise it nearly startles me out of my skin. I screech a little and spin around, ready to be cross with him for sneaking up on me like that.
But it isn’t Edgar.
And it isn’t the Dark Witch either.
It’s a Crusader.
Chapter Two
Even in the darkness his white and red cloak stand out vividly—but it isn’t his most striking feature. All his skin, from the hand that clutches firmly to my arm, to the snarling face glaring down at me, is marred and cratered like something out of a nightmare. It possesses an unnatural shine and tightness, more like a mask than a real face.
Still, that isn’t what makes it the sort of face that would strike fear into the hearts of any who found it waiting on their doorstep. This witch looks barely older than myself, but beneath the scars is already the face of a man eager for righteous bloodshed.
I have no doubt in my mind that if he suspected me of a great enough crime, he’d carry out judgment right here and now without a single qualm.
“What’s your name, witch?”
My body begins to shake involuntarily, but try as I might, I cannot get him to let go of me.
“Stop it,” I hiss into the dark, trying once again to wrench my arm free. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
He must be used to hearing this sort of plea, because it falls on deaf ears. “You shouldn’t be out here tonight. Burnings aren’t the sort of place for good little witches.”
The way he calls me ‘little’ when he’s barely any older than me to begin with, makes my hackles raise.
“Maybe I’m not a good little witch,” I snap back, even though I know he’s the last witch I should be antagonizing. Especially not tonight, after what I just witnessed.
Something flashes in his eyes at my words.
“Wren, wait up!”
Edgar’s voice pierces the gnawing silence, but I can’t bring myself to look away from the Crusader.
He pulls me closer to him, until the gap between us is so small I can feel his breath on my face. “You should be careful, witch. Our world is not as safe as it once was.” His eyes drop from mine to look me over. “More often than not, it’s the most innocent-looking ones that have the most to hide.”
With that, he finally lets me go.
Though he only touched my arm, my whole body feels violated. I stumble back just in time for Edgar to catch up to us. He slows his jog to stand beside me, one hand reaching out to pull me to his side.
“What are you doing?” he asks, eying the Crusader warily.
“I was just wondering the same thing.” It’s a new, though familiar, voice that interrupts before either of us can answer.
Warlock Wright strides out of the alley after as, one arm outstretched towards the Crusader, and the other curled accusatorially at me. I press harder into Edgar, feeling my heartbeat quicken.
“N—nothing,” I stammer. “We just ran into each other here. I thought I saw . . .”
What did I see? If it was another Dark Witch, it doesn’t exactly matter now. Whoever it was is long gone.
I glance back up into the Crusader’s face. Part of me hopes it was a Dark Witch, just so I can deny this wretched man standing before me the satisfaction.
Warlock Wright has no patience for my hesitation. Still holding out one arm to motion for the Crusader to step aside, he squints up his eyes at me.
“Aren’t you Sybil’s girl? You should be home preparing for tomorrow.”
I nod, both annoyed and a little relieved to be recognized at last.
“Yes sir, of course. We were just going.” Edgar’s grip on my arm tightens uncomfortably.
“Unless, of course, Bedford, you had something more to say.”
The Crusader, Bedford, shakes his head—but he still watches me with that unsettling gaze. I haven’t even had the chance to break Witch Law yet, and still, he makes me feel guilty as if I have.
I keep my eyes trained on the Crusader as I’m dragged away before the rest of the judges show up and decide to start another trial, this time, with me at the center.
The moment we’re out of sight, Edgar stops and jerks me to face him. His fingers still dig into the upper part of my arm. I try to wrench myself free, but like the Crusader before him, he just tightens his grip.
“What was that, Wren?” he snaps, his voice sharper than I’ve ever heard it. “You could’ve gotten us both in trouble.”
A lump rises unbidden in the back of my throat. I have to push it down.
I stamp my foot and finally manage to yank my arm free. “What the fuck, Edgar?” I say, twisting my arm to get a better look at it in the light. Red marks indicate where he grabbed me. “I didn’t do anything. He came after me.”
Now he stops. He’d started pacing, his feet anxious to carry him away from the scene of our crime—that only crime being out past curfew the night before the initiation rites.
“Did he say something to you?”
I look up into his narrowed, golden eyes, and I tell a lie.
“No,” I say out of spite as my arm still throbs. “He just stood there like he was lost.”
Edgar shakes his head and runs a hand through the hair that matches his eyes. He was just a boy when we met, but now he’s a man. Or, at least, he will be after tomorrow.
We hear the echo of footsteps headed back in our direction and Edgar tries to start hurrying me again, but this time I plant my feet stubbornly on the cobblestones.
“You keep asking me what I’m doing here, but I have the same question for you,” I say, glaring up at him.
“Come on, Wren,” he whispers, his voice short and impatient. His eyes flicker from mine to the street behind me. “We should get out of here.”
“Not until you tell me what you’re really doing out here,” I say. It’s my turn to narrow my eyes at him. “I wouldn’t have had time to write you yet, not even if I went straight home.”
“Because I know you, Wren,” Edgar sighs in frustration. “I knew there was a burning tonight and you know how you can get.”
“Hold up,” I say, raising one hand up between us. “How I am, what?”
Edgar huffs and throws up his hands. “Reckless, Wren! You’re reckless, okay?”
“You think . . .” the footsteps are growing near, so I draw even closer to Edgar and drop my voice. “I’m the reckless one? Since when?”
His eyes shift up to the road again and he grits his teeth. “Since forever, Wren. I mean, come on, look what you’re doing right now.”
“I’d hardly,” I pause, pulling Edgar further into the gap between two buildings as Warlock Wright and several other judges stomp past us in the alley. From the looks of it, Bedford the Crusader has already gone off to join the rest of his hateful band.
The fact that my body is now pressed right against Edgar’s doesn’t deter my frustration, it just lets me spit venom right into his face. “I’d hardly call this reckless.”
Edgar isn’t looking down at me in anger anymore. Our bodies pressed this close might not have affected me, but it’s affected him. I feel his body stiffen against mine, his eyes now gleaming with something closer to hunger.
His hand reaches for my waist, tugging me closer. “I’ll show you reckless,” he says, his voice thick with desire.
Any other time my pulse would start to race, my thoughts tuning out the rest of the world while I melt into those liquid metal eyes of his—but right now, I’m having none of it.
I smack his hands away and squeeze out of the gap between the buildings back into the street.
“Go to hell, Edgar,” I snap, that sting of his grip still prickling on my arm. I turn and run down the closest street, away from him and the rest of tonight’s nightmare.
“Wren!” His voice echoes through the dark a
fter me, but I don’t look back.
It isn’t until I’m climbing back in through my own window, the honeysuckle vines rustling as I swing my legs up and over into my bedroom, that my head starts to clear.
Maybe Edgar’s right. Maybe I’m reckless sometimes, but that doesn’t give him the right to be patronizing about it. He’s my boyfriend, not my father.
I’ve never had a father, and I don’t need one now.
When I turn to gently nudge the window shut, I have to pause. Nothing is different about the alley down below. I still look down at the same faded picket fence, the same cracked and broken stone walls and streets—but something has already definitely changed.
A scent hangs in the air, and it’s one that isn’t easily forgotten. Not, at least, by my kind.
It’s the smell of a witch burning. It’s one I’m all-too familiar with, but for the first time tonight, somehow it seems different.
Somehow, it seems wrong.
If there’s a type of hangover you get for being an ass the night before, I wake with one of those in the morning.
The light casts shifting shadows across the ceiling as the crumpled vines catch the sunrise outside my window. For once, the sight isn’t a cheery one.
I roll over and groan into my pillow, letting my dark hair spread out around me, protecting me from the morning that has come too soon, and the memory of the spat I had with Edgar last night.
Yes, he was an ass, but so was I. And he might have called me reckless, but now I’m ready to admit the accusation wasn’t entirely misplaced.
The sounds of pots banging and my mother whistling down in the kitchen echoes up the narrow flight of stairs outside my room. This is going to be the last morning here in the house for a long time. By the end of today, I’ll be staring up at the turrets of the gleaming Highborne Academy, just hours away from my first taste of practicing magic.
I can practically feel the tingle of it at the ends of my fingers. Eighteen years I’ve waited for this, but now every moment longer feels like an eternity.
Last night I was afraid of change, but now, in the clear light of day, I’m anxious to get on with it.
Before heading downstairs, I scrawl a hasty note to Edgar on the pad of enchanted paper we use to send messages to each other. I could just use the telephone or my mother’s scrying ball, but that would involve explaining what I got up to last night—and I’d rather avoid that as long as I can.
My mother shrieks at the sight of me in the kitchen doorway and orders me straight back upstairs to grab a brush.
“It’s not my fault I inherited the hair of a harpy,” I snap, settling onto one of the creaking stools while she waves her wand around to make various spoons stir in pots perched precariously on the stove.
“Well you certainly didn’t get it from me,” she says. She sneaks a kiss on the top of my head before I have time to bat her away. She speaks the truth, however. Her fine, copper-colored curls are nothing compared to the thick black wire that seems to sprout from my head like weeds in July.
“Maybe it’s a good thing my dad’s not around,” I mutter, “Or he’d never hear the end of it.”
One of the spoons drops into a pot with a loud clatter, and my mom has to dive to stop a bag of flour from exploding as it tumbles unexpectedly out of the cupboard, nearly covering everything in the kitchen with a fine cocaine film. She doesn’t look at me, but I swear her hands are shaking just a bit.
“Is everything okay?” I ask as the bacon starts skittering across my plate. I chase it with my fork, stabbing at it three times before I finally give up and pounce on it with my bare hands like the uncivilized swine I am.
She just shakes her head, pausing to steady herself against the kitchen sink as she stares out the window into the back garden. She’s lit up like that, a temporary vision of the girl she must’ve been all those years ago when my father came into her life, however briefly. He left without a word, leaving nothing but heartache and a growing witch in my mother’s belly.
Even now, I feel immediately guilty for bringing him up.
“I just,” her voice cracks, and she stuffs her fist between her teeth to stop her lips quivering. “I thought today was never going to come, and then here it is.” When she turns to face me, tears are sparkling in the corners of her eyes, but they’re not for the father figure I only jokingly wished was here.
She crosses the kitchen to take my hands in hers. “You know I never got to do my rites with everyone else.”
“Yes,” I say, tugging one hand free to shove more bacon in my mouth, “you’ve told me about a thousand times. You were sick, so you didn’t get to go.”
“Not just sick,” she says, pointing her finger in my face. “I had the witch’s flu, so I didn’t just miss the initiation rites—I missed my whole first month. So, forgive me if I want to live a little vicariously through you today.”
Her eyes sparkle, and as much as I hate to admit it, mine do too—just a little.
Before I have to deal with my own complicated emotions, her eyes dart from me to the front door. I know what she’s about to say before she says it. “Your friend is here,” she says, reaching up to dab at her eyes before there are three curt knocks against the wood.
I leap out of my chair, grab another fistful of bacon no longer trying to whiz all over the kitchen, and run ahead before she can beat me to it.
When the door flies open, Edgar has to take a stumbling step backward.
While he’s a perfect vision in his silver-colored suit—I’ve only gotten so far as throwing on an oversized sweater and brushing the front half of my hair. The back part could still give a bird’s nest a run for its money.
“Wren?” he says, leaning to peer around me and down the hall for a moment. “You didn’t forget about today, right?”
“Of course not,” I say, breathlessly. Running should be illegal this early in the morning. I try to lean a little further to the side to obscure his view of my mother coming out to shake her head disapprovingly towards me.
But he’s not trying to catch a look at my prying mother, he just keeps looking over me skeptically. I follow his gaze and honestly can’t blame him.
“Just, hold on a moment,” I say. I step back inside and slam the door in his face, but not before I catch a glimpse of his startled expression.
After four years, you’d think he’d be used to it.
“Mom!” I yell, knowing she’s hiding right behind the coat rack. She slips out after a second, not looking nearly as embarrassed as she should. I cock my head and plant one hand on my hip. “What did I tell you about eavesdropping?”
She looks sheepishly back at me, but I can’t stay mad at her for long. Especially not when I need her help.
I straighten up and hold my arms up over my head like a plastic doll ready to be dressed, and give her a wink. “One last time?”
“Of all the children I could have had, it had to be you,” she says.
She raises her wand and with one flick, I’m transformed. My matted hair momentarily sticks up straight all over my head like a giant prickly porcupine before it floats down in soft waves to sweep across my shoulders. My clothes have been switched out for the nicest dress in my closet—a tight black affair that matches my hair.
Before I throw the door open again, I catch a glimpse of the cherry-red lipstick that’s now perfectly applied on my lips and have to shoot my mother a look. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you, really,” I say, and this time I’m the one who’s choking with emotion.
She throws her bony arms around me, and for once, I let her.
But only for a moment.
After that, I disentangle myself, smooth my hair back down, and show Edgar what was so worth waiting for.
He feigns surprise—this isn’t the first time I’ve enlisted my mother’s help for this little trick—and then takes my arm and starts practically dragging me down the path away from the house. I glance back once over my shoulder to wave at my mothe
r through the glass. It might just be the reflection, but something doesn’t seem right.
I expected to see her crying, to see the same trails of tears glistening down her cheeks that I keep having to brush away as allergies myself. But I don’t.
There, through the glass, I see another look on my mother’s face.
It’s fear.
Just as quickly as I see the fear there, it’s gone and so is she. I decide it has to have been a trick of the light. After all, what’s there for her to be afraid of?
Chapter Three
To the humans inhabiting our city, the old theater in the middle of town’s been in disrepair for over a century. The outside facades are crumbling, the old gargoyles are chipped, and as far as they know—it hasn’t even been fitted for electric lights.
That last part is true. We witches have no need for electricity.
But all the rest of that is just an illusion.
The skin of my arms turns to gooseflesh as soon as we spot the building. I’ve walked by it hundreds of times, been inside to watch the initiation rites for years, but this is the first time I’ll actually be participating.
Its ornate marble veneer is marred only by the shadow of the stage set up outside it last night. One wave of a wand and the stage was gone, of course, but I can’t shake the image of yesterday’s burning. I’ve seen burnings before, watched witches pay for their crimes—but last night was something different.
It’s more than my run-in with the Crusader. It’s the crime the witch was condemned for.
I stop suddenly, my feet skidding across the dew-damp cobblestones as Edgar’s dragged to a halt at my side in the middle of the street. He shoots me an annoyed look and another couple witches mutter as they have to side-step us on their way to the rites.
“What’s it now?” he hisses. His hand stiffens on my arm and his eyes shift subtly towards the clock tower just visible above the tops of the buildings surrounding the town square.
“It’s about last night,” I say, nodding at a couple of our teachers as they pass by as well. “That witch they burned, do you really think he did it?”
Dark Witch: A Paranormal Academy Romance (Academy of the Dark Arts Book 1) Page 2
