by Ariel Hunter
“Ooo . . .” Jericho hooted, tossing back his blonde curls.
“So, when you say you have school to do, what you mean to say is you have him to do.” Jason stuck out his hand to have Callan shake it.
“Hold on, he isn’t—” I tried to get on top of all the jeering.
“You could have at least told us, Marnie,” Dulce said.
“Callan is my—”
“Marnie and I grew up together. I haven’t been back in town for that long, but it has really rekindled old feelings,” Callan expanded. “I beat her on the surf a couple weeks back and won our first kiss.”
“Marnie, is that true?” Jericho’s jaw dropped open. “He beat your ride?”
“Well, yes, kind of—”
“Holy shit.”
Dulce leaned into my ear and whispered, “He’s super-hot, Marnie. You look so good together.”
I blushed furiously. I looked over at Anya for help, but she just took another drink. So, I glared at Callan. In response, he wrapped his arm around my shoulder.
“Do you surf too, Jericho?”
“Oh, you’ve been dating Marnie and she hasn’t told you about her only real surfing rival?” Jericho boasted, sticking out his chest.
I laughed. “You wish.”
“I’ll have to take you on sometime, Callan. Show you how to really ride.”
“Well, I personally prefer windsurfing—”
Callan’s words were buried in shouts of protest from all my friends. I looked at him in amused admiration as he put his hands over his head, pretending to fend off their protesting attacks. He shouted out a round was on him for being such an inferior in their eyes and headed to the bar to get the pitcher.
Anya grabbed me by the arm and leaned into me. “Well that was an interesting development.”
I shrugged. “I guess it is easier than the truth right now.”
“Yeah, I guess that is way more complicated.”
“I mean, maybe it is okay to just let this play out. See how he would actually fit into my life . . .”
“Marnie . . .” Anya placed her hand on her chest, feigning shock.
“Hey, you’ve been up my ass to consider it,” I whispered, “even though it’s arranged.” I looked at the smug smile she had. “I’ll admit, though. It’s pretty hot seeing him outside that role.”
“I know. I just like seeing that you are going to give him a chance.” She smiled at me, then tugged at my hand. “Come on, let’s go dance.”
As she pulled me out to the dancefloor, I caught Callan’s eyes. He had returned to the table where my friends set up base, with the pitcher and stack of glasses. He smirked at me, winked, and I couldn’t help but smile back.
All right, you fucking hot warlock. You won this one.
The Whirlpool’s dancefloor was about half of the bar’s dedicated space, and the DJ for the night was spinning some electronica house beats that were pretty easy to get lost in. He was playing the lasers and fog machine to make a transcendental experience on the floor, but it was mainly lit with blue lights to accent the main attraction and namesake of the Whirlpool: a fountain and large pool that was as much for tossing pennies in as it was for drunken wading. There was a large, full-rigged ship with three masts, and a kraken sculpture in the middle of it, being evidently taken down by a whirlpool.
“Marnie, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about,” Anya shouted over the song as we danced. I leaned in closer to her. “There’s been some weird things going on with me.”
Anya pulled us closer to the DJ’s table, so we were further away from where the speakers actually projected.
“What do you mean by weird things?” I tried to look through the crowd to find Callan. I wanted him to come out and dance with me. I wanted to see if he even could dance, for one. I turned to look back to her.
“Just, some things . . .” Anya’s eyes were worried, her hands fluttering at her sides. I grabbed them and looked at her.
“Anya, just tell me.”
She opened her mouth, but then we both looked up as the DJ leaned down to us, leering in a creepy fashion, and moving far too slowly for it to be anything but intentional.
“You can’t run forever, Marnie.” The DJ’s eyes swirled deep black. He pulled back from us, grinning maniacally.
I clutched Anya’s hands and we backed away from the DJ. The music screeched to a high crescendo, a steady bass beat underneath echoing like a heart beating too fast. “What the fuck is happening?”
Screams rang out from across the dancefloor and there was a loud crash. Flames erupted by the bar. Two men who had been dancing near us suddenly turned, dark silhouettes against the haze of blue lights and fog. They walked steadily toward us as all other people tried to flee back toward the door.
One of the men approaching tried to grab Anya. I pulled her over quickly, my heart leaping into my throat. The DJ behind us was cackling and blurring music in a heinous mix.
Shit, shit, shit. Where is Callan?
I searched the crowd, fire, and fog behind the men approaching us, hoping to see Callan lunging through the stampede toward us.
Anya and I backed up against the stage as the two men, their eyes dark pools like the DJ’s, headed straight toward us. We stumbled over each other to get away, our breath coming in gasps as we found that the only thing behind us was the whirlpool, and flames were between us and the only way out.
Fire reared up behind the two men, making them black portraits, daunting and muscular, their fists clenching and unclenching: their intentions all too clear. The whole club was screaming and running. Glass was crashing to the ground. Fire was spreading across the roof.
Anya clutched my waist as I backed up against the pool of water. I glanced down at it and took a deep breath.
Find the harmony. Defend the ones I love. I didn’t need someone to save me.
Pink magic sparked at my fingertips. I could sense it swelling inside me.
I can do this.
One of the men lunged toward us.
I whipped a log of water from the pool and slammed it into the man’s head. Though it was only water, it had the force behind it of all my pink magic, of all my intense fear that we were trapped, and it pummeled him to the floor, throwing him backwards across the dancing area, cracking his head as he landed. His body disappeared as fog and smoke from the fire billowed out over him.
The other man stopped, looked at his companion slowly, then lumbered toward us.
“Back up, back up,” I shoved Anya to the far side of the pool’s outer edge. I willed a phase change, heating the pool, blasting it with intense pink magic, shivering it into a vapor. A white mist rose from the pool, and just as the man ran toward us, I thrust the hot steam into his face.
The man screamed as he smashed into a wall of boiling steam. It seared into his skin. He clawed at his face, trying to quell the pain sinking into his pores. He dropped to his knees as his clothing was singed and layers of his flesh peeled away. Blood streamed down his face as his skin melted.
I stepped into the pool, looking at the roaring flames around the Club. The heat was sweltering. Smoke was enshrouding the whole area, stinging my eyes. Anya was the only other person I could see as anything more than a frantic shadow. The DJ had disappeared, though the music was still grinding, whining in an anticlimactic climb and bass hit, barely discernible over the screams and sparking fire.
“Get down,” I commanded Anya. She ducked below a table. I stood in the middle of the whirlpool, the ship at my back, and thrust deep pink magic down into the two-foot depths of the water. I willed giant loops of water to rise from the pool and then float forward into the air, whipping in wide swathes against the flames where they raged over the bar, against pillars, over tables, and up the walls. I whipped until all the water in the pool was exhausted. I whipped until my body was spent, until my chest was heaving, until my head was soaked in sweat. My body was drenched with pool water and I collapsed to my knees, head bowed.
My body started to shake, and I buried my face in my hands.
Anya clambered into the now empty pool and knelt beside me, trying to pull my hands off my face, but I was afraid I was going to start sobbing. My body was cratered, every piece of me felt spent. I thought I might collapse to the floor. I just needed to sit here . . . for a moment . . . I was shaking. So tired . . .
“Marnie,” Callan shouted. His feet thudded as he jumped into the pool. He knelt beside me too. He put his hands on my shoulders. “Marnie, are you okay? Look at me.”
I slowly pulled my hands away from my face and looked at him and Anya. My best friend smiled at me gently and Callan was nodding reassuringly.
“If you hadn’t put out the fire, people would have died. We’re sealed in here. I was unwinding the binding when you were putting out the fire. You saved a lot of lives.”
I looked across the dancefloor. The bodies of the two men who had tried to attack me and Anya were gone. The fog machine was still going out of control and I could hardly see the other side, except as a milling mass of screaming shadowy figures.
Why were they all still screaming? I put out the fires . . .
Callan brushed my hair back and felt my forehead, as if making sure I was okay. And granted, I felt absolutely spent.
He lifted my chin so I could look deeply into his hazel eyes. “What you did was amazing. Nothing else could have been—”
A purple haze descended over the screaming crowd. It seemed to soften it. Not mute it entirely, but slowed it, calmed it, suppressed it.
“Shit,” Callan said and stood, face grim. “The Council are here.”
Chapter 12
I blinked my eyes and rubbed my forehead, the smell of sulphur strong in the air. Hiram TallTalker and Josie Bellsend were standing before me, daunting figures, frowning, hands clasped behind their backs. Callan helped me to my feet. I stood beside him and we shielded Anya at his back. My mother was off to the side, not even looking at me yet. My uncle flanked the Paragon Witch and Warlock and I was so relieved to see him that I forgot for a moment how much trouble I was in.
Wait, why would I be in trouble? I saved everyone here. Clarity started to ring in my exhausted mind as the Paragons looked around them in the muted haze of the club, the screams of the humans as if they were coming through deep, deep water.
The appearance of eight of the head Council of Witches members had been accompanied by one of their magic spells called a Smothering. It was a deep shroud of distraction that powerful magicians could place over an area, to make a significant space closeted in near invisibility. It protected up to a dozen people at a time. If any of the squirming, panicking humans by the still-sealed up door to the Whirlpool looked this way, they would still think it was covered over in darkness and feel a sense of doom.
“Ms. McTavish, yet again, we find your unruly magic at the root of great destruction where there are many human witnesses. Can you explain what ignited your fury this time?” Josie looked down her hawk-like nose at me.
Callan stepped forward. “Can you explain what brought you here? You gathered eight of your members quickly. Tell me, Paragon. That seems pretty convenient.”
Josie’s thin lips hardened into a tight line. “We placed a tracking spell on her magic. Her mother did it.” Josie pointed to my mom, where she was still staring around the dancefloor and club. My heart seized with cold fury. A tracking spell. My mom placed a tracking spell on my magic. “We have been watching her since the vine incident at Dimlight Academy, for fear of the white magic interwoven within her pink powers.”
My heartbeat had quickened, and my temples were burning. I knew the glazed look in my mom’s eyes, even through the smoky haze in the club: my mom was reading what had transpired here. She had cast the signature spell that she was gifted with as a witch. She could see anything that had happened in the last three minutes of a location directly after a teleport, thanks to the ingestion of a particular mushroom.
Thank god for that.
I might be furious with her for the tracking spell—and I would certainly let her have it later—but she would be able to see that I was not at fault here. Maybe she would even see who had possessed the DJ and the two men who had attacked Anya and me.
“That’s inexcusable, Paragon,” Callan said. “That’s a violation of her rights. You can’t track her without her knowledge.”
“We can if she is a threat to our world,” Hiram said. “Her actions and her inability to control her magic show that she threatens to undo what centuries of discretion our kind have built, regardless of how long and intensely you work with her, Mr. Edwards.”
“Bullshit. It’s a way for—” Callan’s angry retort was cut short, his fists clenched at his side, as red magical wind whipped around all of us. We turned to look at my mother.
“I have seen what happened.” My mother looked at me and nodded. “Let me show you.” The red shaped into holographic images, half our actual size and in a model before us of the club, mere outlines of Anya and me, facing the two men who were threatening us and the leering DJ. The other seven Council members watched as the scene played out. Anya clutched my arm as we watched my image pull at the water to slug the first man, then throw vapor into the second’s face. Callan watched with quiet pride as I used my water magic to put out the fire, then dropped to my knees in the bare pool.
My mom dropped her hands and the red magic evaporated.
“My daughter had nothing to do with creating the fire, or the possession of these men who attacked her. I was not able to see who did, as all of that started before the three minutes time. She was responding to their attacks. Marnie put out the fire in the club, saving dozens of human lives. She showed remarkable skill and control over the water element, as you saw. Clearly, Mr. Edwards’ guidance is making great strides. His training must be going very well, and we have every reason to continue to trust him.”
The Paragons mumbled back and forth to each other. The other witches and warlocks looked to them for guidance, not saying anything, though they wouldn’t meet my incredulous eyes as I looked at them. I couldn’t believe it. My mom had just proven I was not at fault for anything. And they still had to fucking talk about it?
My uncle stepped forward. “I’m proud of my niece. Well done, Marnie. Most experienced witches and warlocks would not have been able to handle this situation on their own.”
I looked at him with gratitude. He swiped his palms together while holding them over his head, to make sparks of orange magic light up, a sign of his admiration and respect as the sparks sprayed up into the air. It indicated that he was allowing another witch to see what color magic he had, and also lighting a festive celebratory display of approval.
I grinned as he winked at me. My uncle was aligning himself with me publicly, and I wasn’t surprised. He had no fear of thwarting the Council, either. Then he stared at the other Council witches and warlocks. Four of them followed his example, including my mom, and a rain of red through purple magic soon cascaded down.
The Paragons and one other, however, did not salute me.
Still, that was a pretty good apology.
I held my chin up high. “Paragon Josie and Paragon Hiram, I demand the tracking spell be removed from my magic. It is a violation of my right as a witch. I have complied with all your rules and I am no danger.”
Josie stared back at me, one eye narrower than the other. “I do not think this exhibition here proves that. You have shown yourself to be a danger more often than an asset. In fact, this showing here just proves your ability to use magic without a spell, which is, in itself, an indication of your affinity for volatility.”
“Paragon—” I began to protest but Callan put his hand on my arm.
“If this is how the Council is going to act, then perhaps I would be a better asset to the witching world outside the main coven as an independent warlock.” The tenor of his voice made us all aware his threat was real.
Josie’s left eye grew even narrower, givi
ng her smallish head the impression of a lopsided melon and then she took a deep breath. She flicked her fingers toward my mom. “Lila will take care of it, as it was her spell to begin with. However,” she pointed her fingers at me, “you will still be tested at Beltane.”
“No problem. I will pass it.” I was surprised that I actually felt the confidence I spoke with. Fuck yeah, I would pass that test. Especially if I could use water.
“See that you do.” Josie nodded toward the rest of the Council and they all popped out in sulphur sparks, except for my mom.
My mom quickly wove some red around me. She seemed reluctant to look me in the eyes as she did so.
“How did you even place it on me, mom? I didn’t sense you casting any spell when you were in my room.”
“It was when we were talking about Zilla . . .” She had the courtesy to look down as she spoke, ashamed.
I shook my head, trying to find the words to express the rage inside. How could she betray me, yet again? First, coercing me into the color reveal so that I was trapped into the witching world. Then, the arranged marriage still being engaged. Finally, this tracking spell. What would come next?
“How could you . . .” I whispered, the anger and hurt colliding within.
“I had to. To protect you. They wanted to take more extreme measures, Marnie. I knew you would prove them wrong. Now you will just need to do it again at Beltane.”
My tongue felt thick. “You could have told me. You could have said something. Anything. But you didn’t. You just . . . you lied to me. You made me think you came to deliver a different message. But you tricked me.” I felt my voice crack.
“I’m sorry.” My mom sighed, shoulders drooping. “Your uncle will be very sad if you don’t come to dinner tomorrow.”
I bit my lip to keep from snapping that there were certainly ways I could find to just have dinner with him alone. “I will come to dinner, but it won’t be for you. This was too far.”
Those words hurt her, but she nodded.
“I do love you, my girl. I will see you then.” As my mom teleported out, the Smothering lifted.
