Whoever decided this was forbidden must have been a very unhappy wizard…
When I felt her clench around me and she lifted her hips and dug her fingers into the bed, making little anguished sounds, I knew she was close.
“Wait,” I told her. “Wait for me.”
“How long?”
“Not long.”
She bit her lip. The sight of her anguish, her attempt to hold back, was all I needed. I crashed into satisfaction, into her arms. Her hands dug into my hair again, her smile soft and private in the afterglow.
“What a nice surprise,” she said. “I’m glad Master Blair’s hair made you so hot.” She snickered.
“It just felt like the right thing to do before embarking on a quest.”
“I’ll try not to call you away from it too much, but you make it hard.”
I slipped a ring on her finger and gave her another kiss. As I heard Alec’s footsteps approaching, I said, “I’ll report back.”
Then I left her to be found naked by Alec and slipped into Etherium.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Firian
I lit a candle and burned the hair.
“Lead me to my kin, the familiar of the one called Ignatius Blair…”
A strong wind suddenly knocked against the window panes of my cottage and I heard one of the shutters break loose and bang repeatedly against the wall.
Someone doesn’t want me to find this person…
I wouldn’t be distracted by the wind. I shut my eyes. “Lead me to them!”
Papers blew off my desk and scattered around the floor. I heard it but I didn’t open my eyes. “Nice try,” I said. “But I won’t give up. For the third time, I ask you—lead me to them.”
The candle was snuffed out and I heard the wind move away like a passing storm, into the forest.
I walked outside and the path had changed again. I changed into a fox and started down it, not knowing where it would lead me. I was tense, my ears perked to every sound, my nose to every smell. But the forest seemed to be normal here, although thick with brush.
The forest grew thicker and thicker as I traveled for three days without meeting anyone else on the road. Charlotte didn’t call me for the entire time.
Finally, I reached a clearing with a little cottage. A woman was outside picking tomatoes in a garden, but as soon as she saw me, she grabbed her basket and ran toward the door.
“Wait!” I said. “I don’t mean any harm.”
The door slammed. “Go away!” she yelled. “I don’t help travelers!”
“Are you Ignatius Blair’s familiar?”
“No!”
“Then where is Ignatius Blair’s familiar?”
“Ignatius Blair has no familiar!”
Why would the spell lead me here? I didn’t smell anyone else around. Nah, I thought. This is a riddle.
“Ignatius Blair isn’t his real name, is it?” I called back, with a hint of triumph.
“Go away! Please go away.”
“I really don’t want to hurt you. Ignatius Blair is my witch’s friend. I just don’t understand why he asked me to spy on other familiars in Etherium instead of asking his own familiar to do it. Surely he trusts you more than me, and you’re older than me, so you’re certainly more powerful. However—if Ignatius Blair isn’t his real identity…I understand. You’re in the book under his real name, right? You’re a clue for anyone who starts poking into his business.”
“If you care about Ignatius and the work he is doing,” she said from the other side of the door, “just leave it alone.”
“I need to protect my witch,” I said. “She deserves to know—”
As I had my hand smacked on the old wooden door of the cottage, all my attention focused on the woman on the other side, I heard the tiniest ‘snik’ and felt something sting my neck.
A dart.
Shit.
I pulled it out, but it was too late. My vision fuzzed, and then my brain followed. I felt myself hit the ground but the pain barely registered as I was starting to fade away.
I tried to fling myself back into the real world before I lost consciousness, but I couldn’t seem to do it.
I heard footsteps approaching now. “I banish this poison,” I whispered, trying to fight off the spell.
“Ooh, he’s a tough one. Look at him fight,” a woman said, her voice sharp and confident. “Charlotte Byrne’s familiar. Thank you for leading us here. We’ve been looking for this place for a long, long time.”
That was the last thing I registered before darkness took over.
Chapter Forty
Charlotte
The council was back.
We saw their cars pull through the gates in the morning. I’d left Firian alone for three days straight, which seemed like an eternity not to see him. I felt a prickle of foreboding.
Three days is definitely long enough.
“Firian!” I called him. “The council…”
He didn’t appear.
“Firian!” I called again, louder this time. “Firian!”
Could he like…be on the toilet? I struggled to think of any reason he wouldn’t appear instantly. He said he would always be there whenever I needed him, and he always was.
Alec stepped out of the shower in nothing but low-cut black briefs, toweling off his hair. “You okay, Char?”
“The council just drove up! I’m calling Firian! He’s not coming! Oh my god. Something’s wrong.”
“It’s probably nothing,” he said, but his mouth tightened and he went to the window. “Huh…I think that’s…Piers Nicolescu.”
“He’s related to Harris?”
“He’s a cousin and he’s on the council. Are they all here? That’s…a lot of cars.” He turned to me and said in an unnaturally calm voice, “I’m going to get dressed. Keep trying to call him.”
“What’s going on?”
“I have no idea, but we’ll find Harris and Monty.”
He threw on his uniform, knotting his tie as he walked down the stairs. He clearly wanted to look sharp. I had gotten dressed for class but I felt disheveled and threw up a quick glamour to make myself look more polished if I had to see the council again. I knew I was a mess when I wasn’t even turning on looking at Alec.
Everyone in the dorm was talking about what it could mean, but no one had any idea. I saw a few guys looking at me, clearly jumping to blame.
But, I had a feeling they were somehow going to be right.
“Let’s stay put,” Montague said. “If we’re in trouble again, let them drag us out.”
“Piers is out there?” Harris crossed his arms. “He’s been doing some work in Alaska.”
“So…he came all the way from Alaska?”
“As far as I know.”
I was shaking a little. Montague put an arm around me, but he was pretty grim himself. “Where’s Firian?” I kept asking it like someone would actually know.
“It’s the entire witch and warlock council,” Alec said.
We were all huddling in Montague and Harris’ room. I stared at Harris’ neatly kept side of the room, with a pile of books on his perfectly made bed, while I sat on Montague’s rumpled plaid blanket. Every moment that passed where I hadn’t heard from Firian, I felt more hopeless. I couldn’t contact him any other way. If I called and he never came…
Alec’s spider familiar suddenly appeared on his arm. She crawled up his arm—my skin crawled thinking about it and I had to look away—and whispered in his ear. Then she disappeared.
“She says…the council captured Firian,” he said.
I got to my feet. “They’re going to take him away from me!”
I didn’t know what to do, but I ran down the stairs and out the doors. I ran sort of blindly, tears in my eyes, clutching my wand. I was vaguely aware of HAM chasing me, but somehow I managed to stay one step ahead.
Most of the guys had gathered around outside already. They were all murmuring nervously and looking ahead
. I saw two warlocks leading Master Blair down the stairs, wands out, like he was under arrest. I shoved past the guys all the way to the front of the crowd.
I was breathing hard, looking around.
Then I saw Firian. As a fox.
In a cage.
I screamed. I tried to run to him, but Madame Solano switched her wand out at me. Its tip burned my skin and I had to step back.
I noticed another cage too, this one holding a bearded dragon. Was this Master Blair’s familiar?
Master Blair looked at me, his face stubborn, one hand clenching and unclenching into a fist repeatedly.
“Where is Jablonsky?” one of the younger warlocks asked him. I guess they had really brought the A-team. This guy, wearing a black coat with a built-in shoulder cape and honest-to-god spats, looked like he was barely thirty, smooth-skinned and handsome in a jerky sort of way. It seemed like a preview of Harris’ future.
Piers Nicolescu. Right…
“I told you. I don’t know,” Master Blair said. “You dragged me out of my office and I don’t know where any of the other professors happened to be in that moment, if they weren’t in their classrooms.”
“Here’s Professor McGuinness.” The blonde witch came walking just behind the necromancy professor. “Were you aware of what was going on here?” she prodded him.
“How can I answer if you won’t tell me what was going on?” McGuinness looked at her like she was more of a nuisance to his day than anything else.
“What is going on?” Professor Das asked. A lot of the students were demanding the same thing.
“A lot is going on,” Madame Solano said. “And we have the proof we need to make an arrest. Ignatius Blair, you have risen up from a childhood of obscurity and poverty through scholarships to our schools for warlocks since you entered the Adirondack Academy for Magical Arts at age six, correct?”
“Yes,” he said, giving her a cutting glance. “Is this a trial? I believe I have a right to legal representation.”
“You will have a trial,” she said. “This is not it. This is informing your students of the false pretenses under which you have participated in our community. Is this your familiar?”
His jaw clenched.
Piers shot the bearded dragon with a bolt of blue magic that made it let out a very human, female scream.
Master Blair was breathing hard. “You bastard.” Another warlock caught his arm, holding him back from launching at Piers.
“This familiar,” Piers said, “is registered in the book. This familiar belongs to Amelia Halt, also registered in the book, daughter of the late John and Dahlia Halt from New Hampshire. They had no other children. Would you care to explain, ‘Ignatius Blair’?”
“When I was born, I wanted to be a boy. I wanted to practice warlock magic. So my dear mother said, why not be a boy.” He threw up a hand. “And why not? You just said yourself, I rose up through warlock schools thanks to scholarships, until I was appointed the dean of the best school for warlocks in the entire country. My mother died. My identity was unquestioned. I fit in. I did well. So tell me—why—not?”
Holy crap.
The other kids were going nuts behind me, some whispering, some jeering a little.
The man who ruled over the school was born a woman. That was the secret he hid from me so he could advance me through warlock schools.
I didn’t think there was any secret I would understand him hiding from me, as if I couldn’t be trusted.
But this one, I did. I had dealt with a lot of crap here. I couldn’t imagine what it was like back when they were young. Hiding that all your life, knowing your familiar could give you away. I couldn’t blame Ignatius for not trusting anyone too easily.
“Because you are not fit for this job,” Piers said. “You have proven everyone’s worst fears about the mingling of witches and warlocks, and allowing a generally permissive atmosphere. You have allowed one of your students—and not just any student, but your single female student—to consort with her familiar.”
Oh, fuck.
I mean, I knew it was coming, but it was still just as horrifying as it would be if I didn’t expect it.
“Haha!” “I knew it!” “You fucked that fox, Roller Slut?”
“Shut up!” I bit back furious tears. I was not going to let anyone see me cry, but it was very difficult when I saw Firian there, his black paws splayed in the cage because it was a little too short for him to stand upright.
“Wait a minute,” Professor Adams said. “I think folks need to calm down and sit around a table, talk this out—”
Another warlock lifted a hand to Professor Adams, cutting him off. “Did you know about all of this, Professor?”
“No, I didn’t. But I trust Master Blair. Man or woman, he’s been running this school just fine for over ten years now.”
“Everyone working at this school will be questioned by the council,” said old Councilman de Brigue. “We are installing temporary professors in your place until we have sufficiently determined that you were not complicit in this breach of conduct. And we are appointing Councilman Nicolescu as dean of Merlin College in Master Blair’s place. This school has been the training ground for future council members for over a century. Its reputation has been sullied greatly by you.” He paused to cough phlegm into a handkerchief, because apparently his anger had stirred up old man gunk. “Well, we remedy this now. As for you, young lady—”
They all shifted their focus to me.
I was frozen. I felt the presence of Alec and Montague beside me, but I felt like we were too outnumbered to draw much comfort from it.
“You’re wrong about her,” Harris said, stepping in front. “Cousin.” He gave a slight nod to Piers. “She’s not ‘consorting’ with her familiar.”
“We have proof of it,” Madame Solano said. “Her familiar encountered a faery in the woods, who asked for one of his witch’s kisses in exchange for a favor. Did he deny it? No, he refused to give one up.”
“Oh, that. A kiss,” Harris said, his voice dismissive. “Really? You’re going to punish her over a kiss? How many young people experiment a little with their familiar? You know it’s quite a few. But we are really overreacting if a kiss is the same as sex or marriage. This is ridiculous.”
Oh nooo. He was saving me again. For real. This was getting so irritating.
“Whatever the case, she should be in a witch school,” Madame Solano said.
“Hrm, but…the wand,” Piers said. “Maybe my little cousin is right. I will be here to supervise, after all, and I would like to know more about this wand of hers. You know I’ll keep her on a short leash.”
“You just want to keep her powers for yourself!”
“They’re warlock powers,” Councilman de Brigue said. “You won’t know what to do with them, dear woman.”
“Then she shouldn’t have them! She is a witch!”
“So we just suppress a perfectly good potential?”
This wasn’t sounding good at all.
Except that maybe I would get to stay with HAM. Only, with Piers Nicolescu breathing down our necks and perhaps making some unknown use of me, how miserable would we be?
And what about Master Blair?
He (I was just going to keep thinking of him as ‘he’ unless otherwise corrected, since that was clearly how he had chosen to live) stood straight, looking off into the unknown, as if resigned and detached. I hoped he hadn’t given up.
He had made this plan with my mom and Samuel to put me here so I could end the council’s rigid grip. It had something to do with Wyrd and my wand. I was going to keep fighting, either way.
“She is of my bloodline,” the less-ancient blonde councilwoman suddenly said. “We let the warlocks have her, but I will check in.”
“You are?” I asked. “You’re of my bloodline?”
She gave me a look that showed me that she found me completely shameful. “I was Samuel’s mother,” she said, before looking away from me again like
she hadn’t just dropped a total bomb on me. “We must be sure she doesn’t mess around with this familiar of hers. We must bind him to this form. The witches’ council I must insist on this, at least. You aren’t going to kiss a fox, are you, Miss Byrne? It is shameful—the corruption that your mother brought upon this family.”
“Am I ‘the corruption’ now? I must not be that bad if you’re fighting over who gets to use me and my wand,” I said.
“What a mouth on her, too,” one of the other witches noted.
“What’s going to happen to Master Blair?”
“Miss Halt will be brought before the full council,” another man on the warlock council said. When he said ‘Miss Halt’ it was the first time I saw Master Blair flinch a little. I cringed a little in response, just seeing how much he didn’t want to be called by that name. “Her fate and her familiar’s fate will be decided there. Your professors will be reviewed here on site and will resume classes if they have not violated regulations; otherwise they will be replaced by qualified educators as quickly as possible. I apologize for the disruption. Master Nicolescu is your new dean. He will be making sure the transition goes smoothly and classes resume as soon as possible to wrap up this school year, and as your next year begins, we will have it all settled. Please make him welcome.”
There were a few enthusiastic greetings. Henry went right up to Master Nicolescu and shook his hand. “It’s about time, sir. I always knew there was something off about the dean.”
Still, a lot of other students liked Master Blair. He was friendly to everyone and he had renovated the roller rink.
“This blows,” Jack said. “Where’s Stu at?”
It was true that Professor Jablonsky remained glaringly absent while all the other professors had gathered outside immediately. I think a couple of warlocks had gone off to look for him.
A few of the council members started leading Master Blair away to the row of old black cars while one carried his familiar in her cage. He looked back at me. It was the first time we’d met eyes since I first saw him there.
A Witch Among Warlocks: The Complete Series Box Set Page 48
