by R. M. Webb
“You’re gonna collapse, aren’t you?” All the urgency is gone and Noah’s playful again, his eyes crinkling up with a wide smile.
“Nope.”
“Liar. Sit down.” He indicates the chair in the corner.
“Nope.”
He watches me lean against the wall and I meet his gaze with all that’s left of my strength. I get this little burst of pride. How long ago was it that eye contact was a huge problem for me?Just a couple weeks ago, I’d have been blushing and looking at the floor and wishing he’d just say something already. But that pride gets squashed when I remember that I didn’t win any great personal battles, or overcome my huge tragic flaw all by myself. The only thing that’s changed is that the spell that made me shy away from interaction has been removed. That’s it. Nothing huge on my part.
Except it still feels huge.
Noah shoves his hands in his pockets. “Ok, if I explain some things to you, will you have a seat?”
I kind of laugh. “Only if you help me over to the chair.” I’m only partway joking, and Noah takes me at my word and leads me to the chair. Once I’m comfortable, he perches on the edge of the bed and looks at me for a long time.
“So,” he pauses and indecision flashes across his face. I stay quiet and watch the unfamiliar dance of pain and frustration mar his features. Finally he swallows and leans forward. “About twenty-five years ago, the leaders of the witches got together and decided to try to breed better magic users.”
I scrunch up my face and raise my eyebrows. “Breed better magic users?”
“Mhmm. The most powerful of our kind were gathered and … bred. All in the name of creating the ultimate group of badass witches and warlocks.” With a little flare of his hands, he glances down, indicating that he himself is one of those badass warlocks.
He looks at me long and hard and I don’t have to ask to know that he thinks I’m also the product of one of those unions. Which kind of kills the idea I’d been forming about my birth parents as a happy couple, deeply in love and cut down in the prime of their life for having a child like me. The idea that I’m the result of some kind of … what? Genetic manipulation? That’s just weird. It feels kind of itchy and uncomfortable.
“There were eight of us that survived the transition.” Noah clenches his teeth and his eyes are vacant, lost somewhere years ago. “We all transitioned super early. Too young to have any kind of impulse control. Bad things happened.” He runs a hand through his dark hair. “They took us out to this ranch, at least that’s what they called it. In my memories, it’s more like a military compound mixed with some kind of hospital, although back then it was just utterly terrifying. My bedroom had one of those one-way mirrors … they were always watching…” Noah trails off swallows. “Sorry, I don’t like talking about it.”
“It’s ok. Take your time.” Sounds kind of lame, but I don’t know what else to say.
Noah smiles appreciatively anyway. “Long story short, they tried to train us to use both light magic and dark magic. Thing is, black magic just has this way of taking over. No matter how hard they tried to help us learn control, once we opened ourselves up to it, it swallowed us up.” The look he gives me is hard to interpret. “Eight of us went into that training. Two of us came out.”
That statement hits me in the chest and there’s so much he’s not saying, but I think I can forgive that. I understand how good dark magic feels when it has you in it’s throes that I know what happened to those other six kids without him having to tell me. I wonder how many Noah killed. ‘Cause that’s what happened. There’s no doubt. He’s got that look of horrible things clutching at his psyche, that look veterans have when they talk about their time overseas.
And then, somehow, a bunch of thoughts line up all straight and I realize without a doubt who the other survivor was. “Luke, right? Luke was the other one who survived?”
Noah just nods.
I don’t want to process that just yet. That’s just too much of a coincidence and I’m already confused enough about Luke as it is. “So, how do you control your dark magic? How do you keep it from taking over and swallowing you up?”
“Everything gets easier with practice.”
I widen my eyes. “Come on. Be real with me.”
Noah looks down at his hands and his shoulders slump forward. “It’s a constant and consistent effort. I’ve had to train myself to see the good in things, to think positively, and to get the hell out of any situation that threatens my ability to control the dark magic.”
“It sounds hard.”
“Nothing in this life worth caring about is gonna be easy.”
That’s not true, being with him is easy and I think he’s pretty much the only person in my life that’s ever been worth caring about. I can’t quite bring myself to say that out loud though. Normally, the tiger would thump and swish her tail and show her dissatisfaction at my silence, but that doesn’t really happen any more. My guess is that it never really was my tiger doing all those things. I think it was my inner-self, the real me I guess you could say, trying to break through the spells that kept me quiet. The fact that I thought of that part as a tiger was either coincidence or my subconscious giving a little nod to my familiar.
A thought distracts me. “Noah?”
“Hmm?”
“If you’re thinking I was part of that experiment, how come I wasn’t in that group? Why wasn’t I taken to the ranch?” Noah’s shaking his head as I speak; he doesn’t know the answer, but that doesn’t stop me from asking the questions. “If I was part of the experiment, and if the witches organized the experiment, then why didn’t they know I was missing? Why didn’t they try and find me?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same thing and the fact of the matter is that I don’t have a frickin clue.”
“They had to know about me, right?”
“You’d think so. I mean, Daya herself was part of the whole thing, she was with us, one of our trainers at the ranch.”
“If they took so much care in selecting the parents, they’d have to know they were missing a child, right?”
“Again, you’d think so.”
“So what does that mean? What does it all mean?” I’m busy thinking about genetic manipulations and killer children being trained at some military ranch. Me disappearing and being hidden by someone with enough power to scare the hell outta Becca. It’s all adding up to one big, terrifying conspiracy theory. I may not have fit in super well here at Windsor Manor, but at least I’d felt safe. Now, I’m feeling decidedly less safe. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if I’d ever been safe at all.
I open my mouth and take a breath to tell Noah just that but am interrupted by a brisk series of knocks on my door. That’s weird. No one ever visits me except Noah and he’s already here. I give him a confused little look and stand. When I open the door and peek through the crack to see who’s there, my stomach drops and my heart skips and I think I just stand there staring stupidly for a second before swinging the door all the way open.
“Zoe,” says Daya in her heavy voice. “You’re going to have to come with me. You and I need to have a little talk.”
Chapter Six
The walk down to Daya’s office is the longest walk of my entire life. We pass a couple of the other students and they stare, not trying to cover it up even a little bit. My whole high school and college career, I never got in trouble, not once. Somehow it feels like I’ve ruined that record. I keep trying to remind myself that I’m a grown woman with a college degree. Doesn’t matter though. My heart’s still pounding and my hands are still sweaty and all I can think is:
This is bad.
Daya’s office is somehow just as flamboyantly intimidating as she is. There’s so much color jumping off the paintings on the walls that I just kinda sit in the chair she offers me and fold my hands in my laps. Somehow, it feels like if I say anything, I’ll just be adding more noise to the already loud room.
Daya takes a seat beh
ind her desk and leans forward, crossing her arms and leaning on her elbows. “I’m guessing you got enough rest after your little … display … this morning.”
“Yes, thank you.” My mind’s a whirling mess of worry. Did she see everything that happened or just the last part? Why am I here? Is this just a standard meeting to discuss my use of the healing magic or is this something more?
“Good.” Daya sits back in her chair and smiles at me. I’m as uncomfortable as I’ve ever been in my life. You’d think that someone who’s spent as much time being uncomfortable as me would know how to handle myself. But I don’t. Not at all.
I pick at the hem of my shirt. What should I say next? I open my mouth and take a breath, hoping something will work it’s way out, but, alas, now I’m just sitting here with my mouth hanging open.
“That was very impressive this morning. I’m not sure I’ve seen a witch as new as you are kill an entire garden and then bring it back to life quite as efficiently as you did this morning. And the bird. What a nice touch.”
Well, mystery solved then. “I didn’t mean to kill the garden. Or the bird. I just kind of lost control for a minute.”
Daya leans forward again and her dress devours her neck. Just kind of crumples up around her hairline like an Elizabethan collar. Makes me think of the Queen of Hearts and I’m pretty sure the next thing out of her mouth will be something like off with her head! “I wonder if you’ve heard tell of witches that can use both light and dark magic.” She holds up a hand when I start to respond. “I’m sure you have, by now, given how much people like to gossip around here,” Daya says, her raspy voice grating out into the room. “I wonder if you’ve had time to think about how useful those kind of witches would be to people who had the wits to use them. How dangerous they’d be if the wrong kind of people got ahold of one. How dangerous it is to actually be one, for that matter.”
The door to Daya’s office bursts open behind me and I spin in my chair. Lucy - the vampire ambassador - dashes into the room and draws up short when she sees me in my chair. A smile slides across her face and she bites her top lip. Those silver eyes of hers travel across my face and I remember, a little late, to look away before she can compel me. I mutter the incantation under my breath and look up. I’d love to smile in return, but since my face is currently frozen in fear, she’s gonna have to settle for a look that says: Hello. I’m terrified and uncomfortable.
“Speaking of danger…” Daya stands, checks her watch and gives Lucy a sly smile. “I thought we said 6:30.”
“Oh, we did, but I have other engagements this evening.” I don’t know so much threat and innuendo could be crammed into one statement. I shudder, but, you know, frozen in fear and all. “I thought I’d just pop over and see if we could meet early.” Lucy returns her gaze to me and there’s a little mental nudge as she tries to use her powers to get inside my brain. She arches an eyebrow and gives me a little nod of approval when she finds I’ve locked her out. “I can see you’re busy, though,” she says as she turns for the door.
“Oh, no. Zoe and I are just about done. Stay.” Daya gestures for a chair against the far wall.
“How is our little late bloomer doing, anyway?”
“She made quite the display this morning on her first attempt at solo magic. I think we’ll find many uses for our young Zoe.” Sure, this isn’t awkward at all, being discussed by two predators while I sit and listen, a little bunny in an overstuffed chair.
“If she’s as powerful as she smells, then I can think of a few uses for her. I think I’d like to borrow her once she’s done with her training.” Wait, she can smell my power? That’s wrong on so many levels.
Daya focuses on me and I feel exposed. I think I liked it better when they were ignoring me. “Zoe, we’ll postpone the nuts and bolts of this discussion until later. You remember what I said about showing off, now. That will only lead you to trouble or trouble to you. There’s a team out in the garden, fixing what you’ve done. Join them. Learn a thing or two from what they’re doing. There’s no reason for you not to get more practice.”
I stand, eager to be out of the room, eager not to have Lucy smelling my power and Daya insinuating that that she knows that I know about all the genetic manipulation stuff. Or am I just being paranoid? As I reach for the door, Daya speaks up again.
“Oh, Zoe? I saw your request to leave the Manor unsupervised and I’m afraid I’m going to have to reject it. It’s not safe for you to be out on your own until we’ve had a bit more time to get you sorted out and comfortable.” She smiles but her eyes say that she’d rather kill me than be smiling right now. Lucy gives a little chuckle that tries to sound sympathetic, but makes the hairs on my arms stand up instead.
I think I say thank you, or something to that effect anyway, and then I stumble out the door and head back out towards the garden. Everything Daya said had a double meaning. Either that, or I’m busy looking for a double meaning in everything she said. With as twisted up as my thoughts have been lately, who can know for sure? Certainly not me.
I stop dead in my tracks when I get outside and around to the garden. Or should I say ‘freaky overgrown jungle of terror?’ The perfectly cultivated and maintained trees are laden with massive fruit and leaves so robust they’re each battling for space on the crowded branches. Lush flowers bulge from thickened stems, the weight of the petals causing the plants to bow and bend. The once polite shrubs that lined the walkways are now adventuring out onto the paths themselves, devouring the carefully laid bricks in a swarm of green.
At least my little mishap created a decent learning experience for, oh, like, everyone in all of Windsor Manor. The garden is crawling with people. Teachers helping students with reparative spells, mentors sitting cross legged amongst the flora, spinning bits of magic in their hands and letting it loose into the plants. I’m not sure what’s more overwhelming. The fact that I’m the cause of all this or the fact that this happened after I killed everything around me.
I find Noah sitting on a bench and he scoots over without a word, making just enough space for our thighs to touch when I sit beside him. There’s this zing of energy as my magic greets his, this delicious rush of power that settles in my stomach like butterflies on a first date. And then I lose myself in the sound of his voice as he guides me through the reparative spells. Our magic twists and twines together, blending shades of gold and blue. It’s all so soothing. The gentle words of our spell. The brief moments of contact. The flares of magic and conversation from the other residents of Windsor Manor bubbling in the background. I think this is the most relaxed I’ve been since I came here.
From time to time, I give Noah’s shoulder a little nudge with my own, just content to be with him. He’ll turn just ever so slightly and give me a little sideways smile. As the garden slowly returns to normal ... well, mostly normal. It’s still going to be a little overgrown. Whatever I did, whatever spell I cast just before I passed out, wherever the power came from, there sure was a lot of it. I’ll admit, I’m a little proud that my protection spell is so strong that even a whole team of witches and warlocks can’t quite undo it.
As the sky starts to grow dim, people abandon their posts and head in for dinner in little groups of two’s and three’s. I’m fairly exhausted, but also exhilarated, so the two things kind of cancel each other out. I don’t think I could sleep if they told me my life depended on it. Noah and I sit separate from the rest of the students at dinner, eating and talking and telling jokes. I continue to pretend not to notice everyone else staring at me over their plates, whispering behind hands, their gazes slinking back to where Noah and I sit whenever they think they’re not being obvious.
Thing is, I get it. I understand their curiosity. I’m an anomaly. Transitioning at twenty-three with more power than any of the other witches and warlocks sent to Windsor for help with their own transitions. And then there’s the big conspiracy around me. Who tried to hide me? Why did they try to hide me? Can I actually cast more tha
n one kind of magic? There’s a lot of competition here among some of the students. The fact that I’m special makes me kind of a target.
But that’s ok.
That’s what kids do, right? Form cliques and leave people out? But I outgrew all of that years ago. It’s a relief to be outside it all.
The dining hall is emptying and Noah and I are still talking and laughing, but I can’t help but start to wonder about Luke. I was so sure that Daya would grant me permission to leave Windsor that I told him I’d meet him tonight. What will he think when I tell him that I can’t? Will he think I’m blowing him off? Wouldn’t that be kind of a good thing if he thought I was blowing him off? I mean, the guy used me, right?
Right?
Except he also, in those small ways that seem somewhat insignificant but important enough not to forget, he tried to help me, too. Maybe he knows more about who wanted me hidden and why they wanted me hidden. Maybe he knows more about dark magic and how to control it.
Ugh.
This shouldn’t be this hard. Noah’s so good. I really should just let myself fall in love with him, trust him to guide me in the right direction and be done with it. That’s the thing, though. I trusted Becca and look where that got me. I thought she had my best interests at heart, I thought she was my seeing-eye dog and I let her guide me through each and every aspect of my life and that turned out to be such a terrible mistake. I just don’t know if I can trust myself to someone else like that again. Not when I have so many questions.
“You all done?” Noah leans in and smiles, arching an eyebrow as he waits for me to focus on him.
“Ya, sorry. Got lost in my thoughts again.”
We scoop up our trays and utensils and deposit them near the trash bins. Noah’s just chatting away as we head out of the dining hall, his hand firm on my lower back, radiating that golden warmth that is his magic greeting my magic. I try to keep up with what he’s saying, adding the appropriate mmhmm’s and uh-huh’s when he pauses, but I’m just really super distracted.
