The Human Familiar (Familiar and the Mage Book 1)

by Honor Raconteur

  I’d never been in a hotel this nice before. I usually stayed in inns. The service was definitely a notch above what I was used to.

  When we reached the counter, the man turned a professional smile on us. “Welcome to Brightwood Hotel.”

  “Thank you,” Tarkington stepped up, taking lead. “I’m Jon Tarkington. This is Renata Rocci and Bannen Hach.”

  “A pleasure to have you.” The man marked out our names and then reached for keys. “Magus Tarkington, you’ll have room 101. Ms. Rocci, you have room 102, and Mr. Hach, you have 103. You’ll find your rooms to the far right, through that door, on the right side.”

  “Thank you.” Tarkington took his key and turned, ready to go.

  “Ah, sir?” The clerk stopped him with a staying motion of the hand. “Just a moment, I believe there was a message for you.” He snagged a white envelope from under the counter somewhere and presented it.

  “Thank you.” Tarkington took it and opened it while walking. He seemed intent on reading while walking, which I didn’t think a wise thing to do in this crowd of people, but he stopped after five steps and frowned. “Rena. Bannen. This is from the Magic Council.”

  I came around his shoulder to read it myself, only to be frustrated, as it wasn’t in a language I knew. “What does it say?”

  Tarkington’s features turned bleak and unhappy as he translated, “It says that you are to be sent back home immediately. The familiar bond is to be broken.”

  On the train, when this was still an academic question, I could talk about the possibility of breaking the bond. In that moment, I could be rational, even if I hated the idea, but I could debate about it and do some speculating. Now, staring at that message, I felt my emotions burst out of control. I wanted to take that note and rip it to tiny shreds.

  Rena looked ready to cry. I knew exactly why and I wasn’t sure what to do, if there was anything I could do. We needed to talk about this the very moment I could get her alone.

  Tarkington stared at the message for a long moment before crumpling it into his pocket. “We didn’t see this.”

  What did he just say?

  “We didn’t see this,” he said, more forcefully. “I was tired, I didn’t check what the message said, I shoved it into a pocket and forgot about it. I’ll continue to forget about it until after all of this is over. Rena, I refuse to let you go into a dangerous situation like this without Bannen. Of course Shunith will do everything in her power to protect you,” he let a hand linger over the wolf’s head and gave a good scratch behind one ear, “but she can’t protect us both during a chaotic situation like the one we’ll be heading into. We’ll deal with the Magic Council after this is over.”

  Most of the time Tarkington came across as a little wishy-washy to me, a man that tried to be a good one, but didn’t always have the right approach to a problem. I hadn’t been sure how to react to him half of the time. But in this moment, I could have hugged him. He did, in fact, know how to take a stand on matters when he truly needed to.

  Rena gave her master and me a wobbly smile. “Alright. Let’s put it off until later, then.” Hefting the strap of her bag more firmly onto her shoulder, she went looking for her room.

  I watched her go with a frown. I didn’t like this, not one bit.

  For a moment, I let the matter lay. I threw my bag into my room—which was nice and roomy—and stripped off most of my weapons and coat. I did keep a dagger on me, because I was not in the habit of wandering around naked in territory I didn’t know, but the place was packed with magicians and overprotective familiars. I didn’t imagine much trouble could happen.

  Not wanting Rena to have enough time to start changing clothes, I immediately went back out and tapped softly on her door. “Rena.”

  Maybe she expected me. She opened the door and grabbed my arm, pulling me inside. I briefly registered that her room was identical to mine—full size bed, small table with two chairs, and a full length mirror in the corner with a small bathroom in the back. Then I focused on her.

  ‘Upset’ didn’t begin to cover describing her face. She was mad, on the verge of tears, and about a hair’s breadth from latching onto me. Her emotions were so conflicted that I think she didn’t know which one to go with.

  “If you want to scream and get it out of your system, I won’t judge,” I told her with a faint smile.

  “If screaming would solve anything, I’d have done it.” Still looking ready to punch something, she flopped into one of the chairs, only to sit on the edge of it, ready to explode into motion. “I spent months prepping for that summoning spell. Months! Far longer than apprentices have to, because I’m not good with regular spells, and creating any sort of portal is basically torture for me. And then they wait, give us more than enough time for the bond to actually cement, and now that we’re like this, now they want us to break it?!”

  All very true. “Are you sure that bunch of idiots actually understand magic? Familiar bonds? Because they’re certainly acting like poorly trained monkeys about this whole thing.”

  She paused, lips pursed. “You make a good case for that. I’d laugh but it’s too painfully accurate a description.”

  I shrugged. “Tell me about it.”

  For the first time, uncertainty flashed across her face. She ducked her chin in, hair coming forward to hide her expression. “I never asked…if you wanted to stay. You said you’d act as my familiar, and certainly we are technically bonded, and that’s a different matter—”

  I couldn’t take seeing it. She had too many insecurities, brought on because of the idiots that didn’t understand her, and having her act like this toward me was too much to take. I went down on a knee and smoothed her hair away from her face with both hands. It brought her eyes up to mine, which I held steadily.

  “Listen to me. I have no interest in returning home. Is being your familiar challenging? Obviously. But I prefer challenging over boring any day.”

  Rena bit her bottom lip. “Your familiar bond is influencing you to say that.”

  “Likely,” I agreed, not bothered. “Maybe thirty percent?”

  She blinked, not expecting that answer. Then amusement flickered over her face. “Just thirty?”

  “Maaaaybe thirty-five. I’d give you thirty-five.”

  Snorting, she leaned her face more into my right hand, eyes falling to half-mast. “What’s the other sixty-five, then? Your streak of independence?”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “You’d be bound to another person; isn’t that counterproductive to independence?”

  I shook my head before she could even complete the question. “Being bound by rules you don’t agree with, or have outgrown, that’s different than being connected to a person. We all have bosses in life, and spouses, and having them doesn’t make us less independent. It’s more like, here I have room to grow. I can realize my own potential and do good work in the process. Back home? There is no room for me. My parents want me there because it’s the safer option, not because it’s the right one for me.”

  She studied me intently. “So you feel that being with me won’t make you feel constricted.”

  “Not really. We’ve been basically joined at the hip for almost two weeks. I haven’t felt the need to murder you yet.”

  Pretending to consider this, she offered, “I only felt it once.”

  That didn’t actually surprise me. I have that effect on women most of the time. “See? If you only felt it once, we get along swimmingly.”

  Brows furrowed a little, she asked slowly, “So me wanting to kill you is…normal?”

  “I’m overprotective,” I admitted without a qualm. “You know this, it’s not a surprise, likely the familiar bond at play, can’t do much about it, so if you only felt like offing me once? Then you’re patient enough to put up with me long term.”

  “You know, that sounds strangely logical.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  Rena took in a deep breath, then another. I
could see her fighting down the panic, the anxiety, with every breath she took. I monitored her anxiously, as I really didn’t want her to have another breathing attack, not when she had been doing so well. She closed her eyes for several long seconds before she let out a sigh and opened them again.

  Watching her, I thought I understood why she was so upset. Mages weren’t accepted as a mage at all unless they had a familiar. That was part of it, the logical part of it, and being denied the recognition that she had summoned me had to hurt her pride. But I would bet the main reason was that she felt attached to me. We honestly cared about each other now, and maybe that was the bond’s influence, maybe it wasn’t, but did it really matter where the emotions came from? They were there, that was what mattered.

  Neither of us wanted to let go. That was all we needed to know.

  “One battle at a time,” I counseled. “Let’s fight one battle at a time. Right now, we have some very strange creatures that might or might not be a magical experiment gone awry. Let’s focus on them first. Then we’ll go back to Corcoran and knock some heads together.”

  She gripped one of my hands tight enough to cut off circulation. “Okay.”

  I’d reassured her as much as I could. Whether she would be able to fall asleep or not was a different question, but I couldn’t help her there. So I smoothed the hair from her face one more time and asked instead, “Do you ever wear your hair up?”

  She blinked at me. “I do. I’m just bad at doing hair myself, so if it’s up, it’s because someone else did it.”

  That sounded a little strange to me. Weren’t girls good with doing elaborate things with their hair? “Really?”

  “I’m the youngest sister in my family, I never had to do my hair growing up, and then when I went to Tarkington as an apprentice, he had no idea what to do with a little girl’s hair, so I just combed it and called it good.”

  Ah. So it was lack of experience. “I have a feeling that it’s going to get in the way tomorrow if you leave it hanging straight. So in the morning, come to my room, I’ll braid it for you.”

  She perked up. “Can I do multiple braids like yours?”

  So she liked my hairstyle, eh? “Sure.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask, actually, as I noticed that your family’s hair was similar in style: do the braids mean something?”

  Amusement ran through me. “Of course they mean something. They mean I’m cool.”

  My coolness took a hit when she laughed.

  Ruefully, I explained, “No, there’s no significance behind them, it’s just how we all deal with our hair in my country. See how my hair’s a little stiff and coarse? If you don’t tame it in braids, it poofs out, makes us all look like black lions. Braids are the only way to go.”

  Reaching out, she ran her hands through the bottom section of my hair, the part that wasn’t braided. “I do see.” Her fingers rose, coming toward the temple, lightly tracing the braids with the very tips of her fingers. “Some of these braids are more prominent than the others. Some lie flat instead of raised. How do you—”

  There was a thump against the wall, from Tarkington’s side. “Sleep!” he called through the wood.

  Daddy apparently had been listening. The walls were not as thick as they would appear. Giving it a dry look, I promised her, “We’ll talk hairstyles in the morning. Good night, Rena.”

  She nodded agreement. “Good night, Bannen.”

  Seeing Bannen braid my hair the next morning before breakfast set off some sort of braiding craze. Master for some reason hadn’t liked the idea of me being in Bannen’s room, so instead we went to the dining area and Bannen braided my hair at the table. He did some sort of elaborate style where it became three braids that were then braided and looped around each other. Master did a quick mirror spell so I could see it. It looked pretty, but even more importantly, it felt very secure. So secure that I might need Bannen’s help unraveling it again.

  But because we did it in the dining hall, everyone else in our party saw his skills, and the next thing I knew, there was a line six girls deep wanting him to do theirs.

  Bannen, good natured about it, picked up a hairbrush and hair ties, and went to work. Since we had limited time to eat before going, I ordered him breakfast along with mine. He was three girls in when he said in an off-hand manner, “Apparently braiding a woman’s hair in public pulls a hidden switch. There’s a life lesson to be learned here, I just can’t put my finger on it.”

  I laughed and offered him a forkful of eggs. “Shall I feed you?”

  “Don’t you dare,” Emily threatened without turning her head. She apparently didn’t want a crooked braid. “He’ll get egg in my hair.”

  Bannen paused and leaned forward to snatch the bite anyway.

  “Hey!” Emily protested even as I laughed. Somehow, I just knew he’d do that.

  I snuck him periodic bites. Call me petty, but I felt a little pleased that everyone else’s hairstyles weren’t as elaborate as mine. They looked good, but he clearly wasn’t going to spend the same amount of time on theirs. Little things that he did like this made me feel special.

  Although, now those little things were also making me sad. I had no idea what I was going to do when he left. I just knew it was going to be ugly.

  Derek passed by with a plate of food in his hands, sneering at us as he went. Bannen paused, alert and ready to move if necessary. Perhaps Derek realized that it was better to not try something, as he kept walking. Bannen stared after him another moment before commenting, “Is it just me that wants to put a boot up his arse every time I see him?”

  “No,” Emily assured him, “That’s universal.”

  Master Vonda came to sit at the table, her plate mounded with bacon, as per usual. I swore she ate it three times a day. “We have expressed our concerns with the Council about Derek on more than one occasion. The run-ins he has with all of our apprentices is more than worrying. He’s caused several accidents that could have been very harmful.”

  “In the more long-term sense,” Tarkington added, a tea cup poised in front of his mouth, “the very people he is antagonizing now are soon to be peers. As you have seen, half of the jobs we work are because of our fellow mages pulling us into a project. We depend upon that network of friends and acquaintances to earn a living. As it stands, he’ll have no support group to draw upon.”

  It was admittedly stupid in many respects, but then, bullies weren’t known for their brains. Derek might be book smart, but he was street-stupid, as my father would put it. He didn’t have any survival instincts. The way he deliberately antagonized Bannen was proof enough of that. No one in their right mind would do that. Bannen was all rippling muscle and bristling pointy edges. He practically radiated danger. No matter how fast Derek cast his spells—and he admittedly was very quick—it didn’t guarantee that he could fight equally with Bannen.

  I shelved the problem of Derek, as he frankly wasn’t my concern, and went back to eating breakfast and trying to feed my familiar. Bannen thankfully finished the last braid and sat down to feed himself before we had to leave.

  Magical carts and trolleys could be found in a city, even one the size of Brightwood, but get outside of that and they became very scarce. We loaded up on wagons and headed out. It took another two hour trip toward the affected area, and perhaps because of that reason, the hotel packed us a sack lunch.

  Bannen spent the entire two hours asking Clark, Steve, Hunter, Mandy, and Paul questions about their fighting styles and how their familiars fight. These were the people that we had never sparred with, although I had a time or two. Bannen went into detail about how they moved, what spells they liked, what their familiars would do in combat. I imagine that with as many guard stints as he’s been on, it was crucial to know how the other men fought and moved. Because of the nature of my magic, this was only the second group project I joined in on, so I listened with rapt attention. Bannen’s right, my magic lends itself best to destruction and fighting. Odds were
I’d be in a situation like this again. Learning how to coordinate with people like this is important.

  “So, in summary,” Bannen concluded, pointing to each person as he spoke, “Trudy is more a hand-to-hand fighter, the raven familiar is a scout, Clark specializes in long range attacks, with the panther—”

  Sabrina the panther gave him a disdainful look.

  “My sincere apologies,” Bannen corrected himself without batting an eye, “I meant our supremely lovely panther familiar. Is that better? Excellent. Our supremely lovely panther familiar guarding against attacks so Clark can fire off spells. Hunter can act as a support spellcaster for the others, enhancing their attacks, and Mandy and Steve will use phasing spells. Wait, Steph, Emily, Lori, where are your familiars?”

  “Mine didn’t come,” Steph explained. “Pilot still hasn’t completely kicked that nasty cold that literally has him sneezing every ten seconds. I left him at home to recuperate.”

  “Ours,” Emily said with a long-suffering sigh, “got into a batch of divinity fudge last night and are now sicker than dogs. I’ve never actually seen a marmoset look green before.”

  Lori made a face. “Her marmoset and my owl get along famously for some reason. Unfortunately, that means they usually are getting into trouble together. Right now they’re at the hotel puking their little guts out.”

  Neither of them looked that sympathetic. Knowing how often those two familiars got into food they weren’t supposed to, and were appropriately sick afterwards, I didn’t blame them.

  “And on that lovely note,” Master Vonda announced from the front bench, “we have arrived.”