Spellbent

by Lucy A. Snyder

  “I suppose that fire you started in your bedroom had nothing to do with Mr. Feathers sending you here, then?” Jordan asked.

  I gave a start. How did he know about that? “It— it was an accident,” I stammered. “Nobody knew I had a Talent, and I had a bad dream about fire, and—”

  Jordan waved my explanation away. “Of course, of course. An accident. Pyrokinesis is quite common among certain teenagers who are denied regular outlets for their abilities. Mr. Feathers sent you here to live with your mother’s sister quite soon after, correct?”

  “He called her that day and they made arrangements, yeah.”

  “Sent you by Greyhound bus, didn’t he? Just a week after the fire?”

  “Yeah.

  “You’d think a man with his income could have afforded an airplane ticket, wouldn’t you?”

  “It was Aunt Vicky’s idea—they didn’t know how bad my nightmares might get, and what might happen while I was asleep, so they thought the bus might be less dangerous.”

  “Ah. Do you speak with Mr. Feathers often?”

  Why was he calling my father “Mr. Feathers”?

  “Sometimes,” I said. I belatedly realized it had been well over a year since I’d even tried to contact him. The last two times I’d called the house, he hadn’t picked up or replied to my voice mails. My e-mails had also gone unanswered. “He’s pretty busy with his job and my brothers and sisters—”

  “They’re not your siblings.”

  “What?”

  “Joseph Feathers is not your biological father. Your father was Ian Shimmer.”

  “What?” I felt profoundly shocked, but the shock was mixed with a weird sense of relief and vindication. My real father hadn’t rejected me after all. Or had he? Did my biological father even know I existed? Did my mother have an affair? I couldn’t believe she would cheat; she and my father—I mean, Joe—always seemed perfectly happy together.

  “I suppose you want proof.” Mr. Jordan pulled a sheet of paper out of the folder and handed it to me. I took it with a quivering hand and scanned it. The only thing I could really see was Shimmer’s picture; I had his eyes and nose. Which, possibly not coincidentally, looked an awful lot like Joe’s eyes and nose. The brief text was hard to read, hard to take in.

  Shimmer had been my mother’s first husband. I’d never known she had a previous marriage. Maybe Joe hadn’t, either; it seemed like the kind of thing he’d have thrown in my face sooner or later.

  “Shimmer died… in prison? Why was he in prison?” I asked.

  “The case has been sealed and I cannot divulge any details,” Jordan replied, “except to tell you that your mother was convicted in the same case. Due to her pregnancy, she was not incarcerated, but she was forbidden from performing any magic under pain of death. She married Joseph Feathers very soon after. Apparently she met him at a coffee shop.”

  Jordan’s expression was scornful; clearly he thought my mother had hooked up with the first likely guy who came her way after the trial, a man of means who would keep her comfortable and who could be duped into thinking the baby she carried was his own.

  “She was a witch?” I had always thought my Talent was from some long-recessed family trait.

  “A sorceress, actually. A necromancer, the same as Ian Shimmer.”

  Black magic? Death magic? I remembered my mom as a warm, loving person. No. It wasn’t possible.

  Is he lying? I desperately thought to Pal.

  No, I don’t think he is. Pal was sitting on the edge of a fern’s pot, his eyes wide.

  “She… she never did any of that kind of magic that I ever knew,” I faltered.

  “Of course not,” Mr. Jordan replied, his voice hard as a judge’s gavel. “She was completely forbidden from performing even the simplest charm, although we couldn’t prevent her from using mundane emotional and psychological manipulation on your stepfather. She was forbidden to possess magical materials or spell books or to teach others magical arts. And as a consequence of her finally disobeying her orders, she was dead less than an hour after she cast her last spell.”

  I had never been able to forget coming downstairs in the morning to find my mom cold and still on the kitchen floor; the coroner told the family she’d had an undiagnosed brain aneurysm that burst.

  “What spell?” I asked.

  “Do you remember feeling sick and having headaches in the month before your mother died?”

  Was there anything this guy didn’t know about? “Yes; she told me the doctor said it was a sinus infection.”

  “It was, in fact, brain cancer. An aggressive ependymoma. Even with surgery, radiation, and the best hospital care, you had a vanishingly small chance of survival.”

  “She … she gave her life to cure me?”

  “Oh, not just her life; she was a necromancer, remember? She slipped into Children’s Medical Center of Dallas that night and smothered a young boy named Peter Gonzales who was awaiting a heart transplant. Your mother stole his life energy to cure you. She managed to ward off the automatic death-spell invoked after she completed her incantation; the Hunter spirit didn’t catch her until she was back home.”

  “That’s a lie! She wouldn’t kill a little boy!” I knew I wasn’t supposed to raise my voice to the man, but I couldn’t help it.

  “Oh, but she’d done worse. I can show you the documentation if you’d like.” Mr. Jordan shuffled through his papers.

  “Keep it.” I was biting down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep myself from tearing up. I would not cry in front of this man.

  “As you wish.” Jordan closed the folder. “So. With you the proverbial red-haired stepchild back in Texas, you came out here to live with your mother’s sister Victoria. Who, while she never had much magical ability herself, took a keen interest in fostering yours. “

  “You may not know this, but the day after the fire, Mr. Feathers was determined to put you in a mental institution. But Victoria recognized that the fire in your bedroom was the result of your Talent manifesting itself rather than teenage sociopathy; she convinced him to turn over your guardianship to her. You were most fortunate he called her first rather than the county hospital; your life would be very different and much worse right now if you had been committed. In many ways, you owe Victoria your life.”

  Aunt Vicky had arranged for me to start getting magic lessons at the Folklore Department at Ohio State. As at most large universities, the OSU Folklore Department was mainly a front for secretly educating Talented students in magic. The faculty offered a few mundane lower-level classes for ordinary students, but most of the rest of their offerings took place in the tall, windowless folklore tower in the center of campus. The department was well funded by local benefactors such as Mr. Jordan, and so the administration never really questioned why hundreds of students majored in a subject with seemingly no commercial value in the working world.

  “Vicky was really cool about everything,” I agreed. “She did all right by me, for sure.”

  “Then why did she die?”

  I paused uncertainly. Surely he knew all about Vicky’s death? It had happened in his backyard, after all. “Well, her husband, Bill, started sleeping around on her, and I guess when she found out, it was just too much for her. She poisoned him and then herself.”

  “Do you think she was depressed?”

  “Well, yeah, I’m sure she must have been. She was never, you know, the most chipper person in the world, but I think she would’ve had to be seriously depressed to do what she did.”

  “Then why didn’t you do something to help her?” I couldn’t say anything for a moment. “I would have helped her, if I’d known what was going on—”

  “And why didn’t you know about all the bad things that were happening in your aunt’s life?”

  “It was my first year in college,” I protested, feeling sick. “I was in the dorm, and I had a full load of classes—”

  Just a couple of days after I arrived in Columbus,


  “Her house was less than a ten-minute drive from campus. You couldn’t spare regular visits to the one person in your life who had genuinely helped and supported you? Who did she have for support besides her unfaithful husband? She should have had you.”

  “I didn’t know—”

  “A big part of knowing what’s going on is being interested enough to try to find out. It doesn’t seem to me that you were very interested in your aunt’s life. How long did she lie there rotting in her house before you thought to see if she was all right?”

  “Four days.” The words died as they left my throat.

  “I don’t think I heard you. Please speak up.”

  “Four days.” I tried to push the nasty images out of my mind. The horror of finding the decomposing bodies had been quickly followed by the bleak realization that I was alone in the world. Anguished, not knowing who else to turn to, I’d called my instructor Cooper that night; he was the only person I’d met at the huge university with whom I’d felt any real connection.

  He was a tremendous comfort as I grieved for my aunt; I don’t know how I would have managed without him. And, yes, we’d gone to bed pretty quickly after the class quarter finally ended, but I’d been aching for his touch for weeks. Afterward, he stuck by me, introduced me to a world I could not have imagined. It wasn’t just the magic. Through him, I finally met people like Mother Karen, people who became genuine friends instead of just more acquaintances I couldn’t really be myself around. I wasn’t going to let anyone make me feel ashamed of our relationship.

  But oh God, poor Vicky..

  “She was lying there dead for four days before I found her,” I finished quietly.

  “So. I will ask you again: Why do you think your aunt died?”

  “She died because I was self-centered and too caught up in my own crap to care about anyone else. She died because I was eighteen and stupid.”

  “Do you think you’re any smarter now?”

  “Yes.”

  “You haven’t finished college. That doesn’t seem very smart, does it?”

  “I’m just a couple of quarters away from my degree. We’ve had too much work for me to take classes the past year.”

  “We’ being you and Cooper Marron, I suppose? I did note, however, that much of your work is completely nonmagical in nature and involves mundane duties at a construction company.”

  “You say that like I’m lugging spackle or something. I put together their ads and newsletter. I work there because I like it there.”

  “It’s not work befitting an apprentice sorceress. It’s not even work befitting a Talented teenager. And it’s not the kind of work that Cooper Marron feels he needs to pursue, is it?”

  “Cooper gets loads of contracts, and I’m not advanced enough to help with all of it. We need steady money, so I work a part-time job I enjoy; it’s not a big deal.”

  “And why aren’t your skills advanced enough to participate in Cooper’s contract vork?”

  “Because … because I’m just not there, yet. Cooper says ubiquemancy’s kind of a tricky art; it just takes a while to get the hang of it.”

  “Or maybe that’s just a convenient excuse for Cooper.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “It seems that he’s turned you from his apprentice into his common woman without you noticing. He’s got you warming his bed, cleaning his home, paying his bills while your studies languish.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “Are you denying that you’ve had a sexual relationship with Cooper Marron that began either during or soon after he taught your freshman introduction to ubiquemancy class at OSU?”

  “No,” I said, “but we didn’t start seeing each other until after the class finished.”

  “Nonetheless, his relationship with you was—and is—unethical. It’s a clear violation of the codes of student—teacher conduct. Surely I don’t need to explain these basic rules to you. Did you never wonder why the department didn’t invite him back to teach?”

  “He didn’t want to go back… he doesn’t like teaching huge classes. He prefers one-on-one sessions.”

  “I’ll just bet he does.”

  I fought down the urge to smack the supercilious half smirk off his face. “Look, you’re making our relationship out to be this sleazy thing, and it’s not! We’re partners, and we love each other.”

  “You say you’re partners, but you’ve already admitted to me that he has you doing mundane work to support his interests. Any ethical master would have enabled you to leave the mundane world behind by now.”

  “That’s not fair… I mean, look at you, wearing that lawyer suit and tie. You spend most of your life in the mundane world. How is your life as a lawyer so much more magically worthy than my little office job? Is it just because you make loads more money than I do? You governing circle wizards keep telling the rest of us how money is this lousy, no-good distraction from all the crap we’re supposed to focus on —“,

  I realized I’d gone too far, and quickly shut up.

  Mr. Jordan frowned at me. “The difference is that I do not rely on mundanes for my survival. They rely on me for theirs. And the work I do is crucial to our community’s continued harmonious existence with the mundane world.

  “For instance, that disastrous little stunt you and Cooper pulled the other night caused nearly half a billion dollars in damage and crippled the city’s downtown. And I am the one responsible for cleaning up your mess. My company will have the city back in working order before the week is over. We will restore commerce and harmony, and soon everyone but the families of the dead night workers will forget about the whole ugly incident.

  “You, on the other hand, waste your time and Talent in front of a computer. The worst part is that you still rely on the outside world for survival. That kind of reliance is the very definition of a mundane.”

  He paused, staring at me. “You need to decide which world you belong to.”

  “I belong in this world,” I replied. “I’m completely dedicated to my magical studies.”

  “Completely dedicated. Mm-hm. A dedicated student is a respectful student, wouldn’t you say?”

  Where was he going with this? “Yes, I suppose so…”

  “No. There’s no ‘suppose’ here. Any serious student wants to be a respected member of the magical community, and one has to give respect to get it. Ignoring and disobeying the laws and rules of a community disrespects that community.”

  “But—”

  “Cooper Marron has a long history of scorning the laws of our world. And you, young lady, disrespected our rules when you let yourself become involved with him as his lover. Both of you have disrespected our world with your casual use of magic, and the incident downtown is a direct consequence of your sloppy behavior.

  “Your family has a history of violence and destructiveness, and at this point I’m not at all convinced that you won’t follow in your mother’s and father’s footsteps and become an outlaw even worse than Cooper Marron. How can I trust that you’ll be a responsible, productive member of our society? How can I let you remain part of our world?”

  Is he talking about banishing me? I asked Pal.

  Yes, he is, the ferret replied.

  “I never meant any disrespect to you or anyone else by seeing Cooper,” I said. “I never wanted to do anything but be with the man I love. I am really sorry for what happened the other night; I tried as hard as I could to make things right and I just couldn’t.”

  “You did do surprisingly well, all things considered.” Jordan’s tone was grudging. “Nobody who was aware of the situation expected you to survive. Clearly you’re a strong Talent. It would be a pity if you had to be banned from continuing your studies.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  A parchment and black quill pen made from a raven’s feather appeared on the chessboard in front of me.

  “I want you to sign this agreement that states that you will not, upon pain
of banishment and two years’ incarceration, attempt to find Cooper Marron or bring him back to this plane of existence.”

  I stared at the parchment. “I… I can’t sign this.”

  “You must. These are the terms of your remaining in the community, as decided by the governing circle. We think this is in the community’s best interests as well as your own.”

  “But earlier…”

  Don’t make him angry, Pal warned. heaping lot of trouble as it stands.

  “…earlier you blamed me for not living up to my responsibilities to Aunt Vicky. For turning my back on her when she needed help most. And now you want me to turn my back on the man I love, right when he needs help most? How is this supposed to make me a more responsible member of the community?”

  “Wherever he is, Cooper is lying in a bed he made a long time ago.” His voice held the snap of a coffin closing.

  “Cooper’s helped plenty of other people in this city when they’ve been in trouble. Why won’t you help him?”

  “Cooper is a bad influence. I can’t risk any more death and destruction because of him. I particularly can’t risk him returning to this city insane and out of control. No. He stays where he is. And you sign this agreement that you’ll leave well enough alone. After you do that, I’ll make sure you get assigned to a new, more suitable master.”

  “And if I don’t sign?” I asked.

  “I can’t prevent you from working what magic you know how to use, but you will be anathema. No member of this community may assist you in any fashion until you sign. Most major cities in North America have courtesy agreements with us, so you’d be excluded most anyplace you might wish to move to.”

  “I… I have to think about this.”

  Mr. Jordan nodded. “You have an hour. After that, the anathema decree will take effect, and Mother Karen will have to remove you from her home.”

  Mr. Jordan nodded toward the front of the house. “Cooper’s car is outside. Aside from some body damage it appears to still be in working order. We’ve taken the liberty of removing the weapons from the trunk. We can fix the car, and your hand and your eye, after you sign. It’s up to you.”