He considered this. “I’m losing a big part of my life. For good. I’m happy about potentially having a child, but…I don’t even feel ready for that. I hate that even if it happens, I’m going to see my son or daughter with their familiar and miss…” He paused. “See? Complaining just sucks. And we’ve been through this before. I’m telling you, it’s fine.”
“Maybe you’re safer as a human, Fir. If I ever turn her into a vampire, you won’t die,” Montague said.
“No way, I like food! You’re not turning me into a vampire.” I formed my hands into a cross and put them in his face.
Bemused, Monty grabbed them and pulled them apart, then slipped one finger in his mouth and gave my finger a small bite. My heart quickened at the look in his eyes. I guess in the back of my mind, thought we would find some way to make Montague human again.
He doesn’t want to be human again. Not anymore.
He’s not afraid to outlive us all.
Will he find me someday? Will he become more and more like Rayner until he follows me into my next life?
“You scare me sometimes,” I breathed.
“I know.” He smiled.
Firian ruffled my hair, trying to tell me with a gesture that he was fine, same as always, whatever happened. But it really, really did suck.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Harris
Family. What a stupid concept, I thought, as I approached the cousin who looked so much like me that it was truly annoying. Hurting him would be like attacking my own face ten years down the line.
We met on the edge of campus. Eleanor was perched on my shoulder. Piers’ sugar glider was gripping the sleeve of his coat. My dad said kids teased him about it mercilessly in the early grades of school, where your familiar still pops in regularly to help you with your spells. Worse still, it was a male familiar.
Familiars were wonderful allies that always seemed to perfectly suit their witch and warlocks, which meant there was also a very dangerous side to a familiar. They revealed who you really were to everyone from the day you were born.
Even in our own family, it was a running joke that a promising warlock like Piers had such a little adorable familiar who was not even a girl.
A female hawk was right up there with the best familiars a boy could have. I didn’t even consider how it would look to Piers when I walked up to him with her accompanying me. Since his familiar was out of sight by the time I was born, I had never thought about how, when he was a kid, his own family members no doubt thought he might be wimpy or gay, no doubt expressing this to him with the—ahem—sensitivity of all high-born European wizard families.
He had come into the world fighting to prove himself, I realized. He wasn’t even a Hapsburg, just a Nicolescu, so his family lacked the snotty royal element and was populated by scrappy vampire hunters, while his mother’s family was known mainly for turning out a hero in an 18th century wizard battle in Ireland.
Meanwhile, I was always expected to do great things.
Now Piers was on the council. He’d proved himself. But he didn’t look like a man who was satisfied. Daisy couldn’t stand him, said he talked too much, and the professors he brought into Merlin College were generally more loyal to him than talented.
He seemed pretty alone in the world.
I always felt like, in the end, Piers was family. He seemed to have at least a scrap of decency. I didn’t think he would be that much of a danger. Catherine was more aggressive. I thought I’d be fine taking on Piers by myself.
But there was something on his eyes that made me think, I made a mistake coming here alone. Sometimes decent people were pretty dangerous when life knocked them around.
“Good evening, cousin,” he said.
“What are we, prepping for a duel?” I said. “Why do you always talk like you’re a hundred years old?”
“Maybe because I’m on the council and I present myself in the language of gentlemen.” Piers shrugged. “Maybe I am prepping for a duel. Harris, you know I can’t just give up Merlin College to you. I wanted this job, and if I lose this spot, it’ll mark me. I just can’t let that happen. But you have no intention of backing down either, do you?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve been working too hard to give up.”
“The family is so disappointed in you,” Piers said. “I guess they really thought you had potential. But that’s how these things go. High hopes, squandered. Well, I don’t really see any point in talking it over. We know where we all stand.”
“Yep.” I took off my jacket and rolled up my sleeves. Then I lifted my wand, prepping for a good old-fashioned warlock brawl, like the kind I got into now and then around seventh or eighth grade, before we decided fights were just stupid.
Piers, meanwhile, held up a fragile glass orb. I recognized the orb, or at least, my family had an orb like it in the treasure room. It was for saving and containing power. Tupperware for wizards, from a time when even glass was precious. In French he said, “You, deemed unworthy by your own blood, are thus commanded. Your magic is now mine.”
He thrust the orb toward me.
If I ever wondered how Piers got on the council, the confidence with which he spoke the spell told me. I threw up defenses.
Too slow.
The spell hit me like a bolt of lightning. I threw out a counter spell, hardly having time to think about it. My reflexes just told me not to go down without at least one shot. I hit Piers in the leg, which was where I wanted to hit him, and then his spell really hit me. I was knocked back, barely keeping my footing. Eleanor had flown to a nearby tree. I barely heard her call my name through the rushing sound in my ears.
A wave of sickness swept over me and I swayed. I had never felt anything like this before. It wasn’t like nausea or fever or nerve pain, but it was a little like all of those…draining the life out of me, or so it seemed.
“My parents…gave you that orb to use on me, didn’t they?”
“You know the Hapsburg treasures,” he said. “So do you know what it does?”
“It steals my power.”
“Yes. Your parents felt that you are using your magic in a manner that is disgraceful to your ancestors, so they decided to take it away. I’m sorry, cousin, I can only imagine how embarrassing this is for you.” He slowly twirled the glass in his hand.
“The power of my own family turned against me.” I laughed dryly. I felt so weak. After all these years of practicing magic, being at the top of my class, and some obscure artifact from the vault where I used to find solitude to practice—it could waste all those years of work in a moment. “Whatever makes you feel like a big shot, Piers.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You have my magic. Growing up, I thought that was the most important thing. Becoming the best warlock out there, advancing through the ranks, getting the acclaim of older warlocks, impressing the family…”
“And I suppose now you’re going to tell me that you’d rather have your amazing friendship with a bunch of shady characters sharing your equally shady, stupid girlfriend.”
“You don’t get it at all. Then again, judging by the fact that you look unhappy even though you’ve won, maybe you do get it.“
“Maybe it’s better if I don’t just steal your magic, but wipe you off the face of the earth,” Piers said. “These mountain ridges are a good place to have an accident.”
He tried to take a step closer to me, but then he winced. I’d gotten in a better hit than he realized when he was standing still. He resorted to magic instead. When I saw his wand spark, I threw up my hands, a feeble defense, and spoke the words of a defensive spell. My magic was like an engine struggling to start. I felt something, but it didn’t really take.
And there was nothing I could do about it.
All my life, I’d been good at defensive magic. Between my reputation and my own power, I was untouchable. I wasn’t afraid of anyone.
Now, I had nothing.
If he wanted to kill me, it was going t
o happen. Either this spell would blast me into next year, or he’d hold back. Maybe he’d do something really cruel like throw me down to the rocks and break so many bones that I’d never walk again.
Eleanor swept down from the tree to intercept the spell.
“Eleanor, fucking—no! No!”
She turned human just in time to take the full brunt of the blast. When it hit, it threw her back. Her body, tall and willowy, seemed very fragile in the face of the spell. That alone must have hurt her, but it was easy to see what happened next. Her feet staggered to the edge until they met nothing but air.
“Eleanor, fly!” I cried.
She met my eyes and smiled sadly before she fell. At the same time, I heard a bunch of shady characters calling my name.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Harris
Eleanor did turn into a hawk before she died. A hawk with a broken wing.
I found her on the rocks, her eyes opening to slits to meet my eyes one last time, to say wordlessly that I didn’t need her anymore and dying for me was just part of her job.
Then she faded away as I held her, vanishing to Etherium.
Her life was over, just like that. I thought she’d be with me forever. She protected me, but as I became skilled at protecting myself, it was rare that she even appeared at all. My strength protected her. And it made her unnecessary.
Maybe she wished she had more purpose.
While I was down here with her, my friends had shown up to battle.
“Try and get that orb!” I had told them as I was already starting to scramble down the steep rocks.
“Do you need me to Edward you down there?” Montague said.
“Fuck no, just get him. I blasted his leg so he’s slow. Still, I don’t care about him, just the orb.”
So now I was standing here still holding the imaginary weight of Eleanor in my hands. At the same time, my friends were scuffling with Piers. I glanced up to see Piers knock Charlotte to the edge of the rocks. I waited, holding my breathe, ready to catch her if she fell.
But as soon as he got in one hit, Montague grabbed him and tugged him away from her. Piers shot a fireball at the crotch of his pants.
“Hey, that is not cool, Piers!” Montague yelled.
“Your vampire balls heal fast, don’t worry,” Alec said.
“Ungh!” Charlotte turned herself into a wolf so she was back on her feet in seconds, and knocked Piers down.
Piers was good, but I was willing to bet the four of them together were better.
Even without me.
My magic had been sucked out of me. I might have been able to sputter out a kindergarten spell. Nothing more. Without my protective wards, my friends were definitely more vulnerable to some of Piers’ attacks, but they worked together well enough that they were able to keep him busy, if not take him out.
As they were fighting, something changed in the very forest, all around us.
It was like a partial eclipse. The lighting shifted. The feeling shifted. At first, I didn’t know what it was. Charlotte turned back into a girl and snatched up her wand. “It’s glowing…”
“What is this?” Piers said.
Charlotte waved her wand. “Let your fingers unwind, from your hand to mine, give me the glass, and I won’t hurt your ass.”
“What did I tell you about rhyming spells?” I shouted.
She leaned over and stuck out her tongue at me. “I’ve got the orb!” Charlotte called down to me. “Harris…what happened? Why are you down here?”
I didn’t know what to say. I hated to even talk about Eleanor’s death. I didn’t share those things with Charlotte or anyone else. My girl just fought her way through her enemies and she was feeling good, and I wasn’t going to burst her bubble.
So I just said my usual shit. “Better be careful showing off that tongue of yours or I’ll just get ideas.”
“We’ve got Piers pinned down,” Montague said. “Do we have a plan with him? Can I taste him…?”
I could hear Piers struggling to speak through a hand over his mouth.
“Sure, Monty, go ahead,” I said. It would serve Piers right to keep thinking about vampires for the rest of his life.
“Wait!” Piers growled. “Enough! You’ve won. Did you feel that? This is a Wyrd realm now.”
“I felt it,” Firian said.
I clamored up the rocks. I was still so weak from the spell that I was sweating and dizzy by the time I got there. I fought with everything inside me not to show that weakness. “We won,” I repeated. “So what then?”
“So, I’ll leave,” Piers said. “I know when I’m beaten. The faeries hold this territory now, fair and square. If we want it, we’ll take it back, but not today.”
“Let him go,” I told Monty.
“Shit. Fine.” Montague hauled Piers to his feet. “You’d better run because I’m hungry.”
Piers and his familiar looked at each other, and then Piers vanished. His familiar protected him like any familiar would, whisking him to Etherium, where he could make his way back to the council in disgrace.
“My wand is glowing. I can feel it…,” Charlotte said.
“We won,” Alec said. “We did everything we set out to do.”
Charlotte bit her lip. “Yeah.”
“It’s time to make a life here,” Alec said.
“We lost…people,” Charlotte said. “I guess it just feels…I don’t know. I mean, I am happy. It’s better to win than to suffer in vain.”
“I know what’s wrong,” I said.
“Oh you do, do you?”
“You like the fight, Chosen One. You don’t know what to do with yourself now that it’s over.”
“I don’t like fighting…”
“You don’t like killing,” I said. “Fighting? I beg to differ.” I walked up to her and took her chin in my hand, a little roughly. “Don’t worry about that.”
I noticed that Firian kept looking at me funny, and the feelings I was trying to shove away just…refused to be shoved.
“I need to tell you something first,” I said.
“What is it?” Her eyes abruptly filled with concern, and even a little wariness. I hated to upset her. Maybe even more than that, I hated for her to think I was weak. I was giving her—and all of them, really—something I never gave anyone.
“Eleanor… Eleanor died. Protecting me from Piers. The orb you’re holding contains my magic, and it’s another one of the treasures from the family vault. When he took my magic, she…”
“Oh no!” She slid her arms around me and squeezed me, resting her head against my chest. “Oh no…brave Eleanor…”
“I know how you feel,” Alec said.
“Me too,” Montague said. “I think it’s even worse now, with Firian around. Rosa always seemed not-quite-real to me, but she was more real than I thought.”
“Melanie was definitely real,” Alec said.
“Firian! That means you’re the only familiar left…”
“I can tell you this,” Firian said. “They were happy to do it. Maybe it means I don’t really have a mind of my own. I don’t know. I’d be happy if I’d died for Charlotte. I guess that’s it, really. The worst part of being human is thinking I can’t protect her anymore.”
His words chilled me. It was just what I was thinking about Eleanor. Protecting me gave her purpose. I actually felt guilty that I hadn’t needed her in so long. “Why can’t you protect Charlotte now?”
“Firian has to become human,” Charlotte said. “At least, we think so. We’ll research what the spider lady said first, but…it’s possible that I might be pregnant with his baby. And she said that if he’s still a familiar, he’ll die. It doesn’t seem fair. But I guess it would explain why familiars and witches never fall in love, and when they do…”
“Bad things happen,” Montague said. “Like our infamous witch of St. Augustine. I think it might be true. It matches the story of the witch.”
“It’s fine,” Firian s
aid. “It’s fine. I’ll just be a dad. Man, it’s going to take a long time for me to say that without it sounding strange. But maybe my work as a familiar is done. You can protect yourself, and you have these guys to pick up the slack when you screw up.”
“Ah,” I said. “So that’s how it is…”
Charlotte looked annoyed at my smug tone. “Yes, this is how it is.” She stuffed my hand with the orb. “I guess you’ll want this back.”
I held the orb, feeling its power. With the magic sucked out of me and concentrated in this glass, it didn’t feel like mine anymore. It seemed a little misshapen somehow. I wondered if this was how a dog or cat feels when their owner comes home with a strange scent.
Like Piers, my magic had always been my ticket to esteem and riches. It was what my family expected, and I was good at it. I thought it mattered so much to me, but…
Maybe it actually belonged to someone else.
I handed the orb to Firian. “I want you to take it,” I said. “After you turn human, take my magic. Then you can still protect her. You’re the only familiar left now, and…no one is going to use these spells to protect our girl like you would.”
“Harris! What!?” Charlotte cried. “You would just—“
“You don’t want Firian to have magic?” I asked her.
“No, but—“
“You don’t think he’s more deserving of it than me?”
“Okay, I mean, yeah…Firian is more deserving of everything than you.”
“You know what the best part is?” I leaned in closer to her, until I could admire every individual eyelash flicking up toward me as she stared at me with perpetual annoyance.
“No,” she said.
“I’m being very generous and self-sacrificing,” I said. “And you can’t lord it over me anymore that you gave up your magic to save me, because I’m giving mine up now, just to make you smile. So you’re going to owe me. Big time. For the rest of your life. And I won’t let you forget it either.”
“Firian, give it back,” she said.
“I don’t think I will,” Firian said. “Protecting you is my job. I’ll use all the tools at my disposal.”
Battle of the Hexes Page 24
