No one had a chance to reassure me. Harris suddenly stormed through the doorway. “Monty, what the hell?” he said, giving me a look of disgust.
“She was hurt!”
“She hurt herself. Look at her face.”
My face? I touched my cheeks. I had no idea there was anything wrong with my face. My fingers came away with green ointment on them. “Gah!”
“Oh, by the way, hot candle wax exploded on your face and there are dabs of green ointment all over it,” Firian said. “Luckily, it wasn’t too bad and it’s already healing up. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop vampires from flirting with you.” He handed me a handkerchief.
“We’re leaving,” Harris said. “I hope those flowers didn’t come from you.”
“So much for gentlemanly conduct,” Montague said. “I am the only person in this school who brought flowers or asked concern for the welfare of the only lady here.”
“You’re already enough of a pariah,” Harris said. “No one is going to associate with you this year if you support the attendance of a witch.”
“Too late.” Montague stood up. “I’m a vampire now. I’ve already ruined my reputation. And as soon as your parents find out we’re still friends, I know you’ll drop me too. I might as well cast my lot in with a fellow outcast; at least she looks good in the uniform.”
“She’s a nice piece of ass, but she’s a witch. We should be meeting her at a ball.” He looked at my appalled face. “It’s what everyone’s thinking, okay? You just proved that you can’t handle warlock magic, but you are a nice piece of ass.”
I threw off the blankets and lunged at him. Montague barely held me back.
“Master Blair doesn’t think I can’t handle warlock magic. He thinks I could be a sans pareil. I’m going to show you.”
“A sans pareil? Yeah? I’m really looking forward to our demon summoning contest now.”
I forgot about that whole thing. “Yeah, me too,” I said. “My demon is going to take a piece of your ass, carve it up, and eat it for dinner.”
“You are going to botch this and get banned from performing magic by the council,” he said smugly, which showed me that realistic threats were actually much more effective than trash talk. Aw, damnit.
“You two are not going through with this,” Montague said. “It’s too dangerous. There’s already something afoot. You’re my best friend, and Charlotte is a lady I’ve been developing a considerable affection for considering the length of our acquaintance.”
“You’ve been getting really pretentious since you became a vampire,” Harris said. “And if summoning a demon wrecks your developing affection for Charlotte, I’ll consider that a bonus. Come on, we have classes.”
“I was always pretentious.” Montague kissed my hand. “Take care of yourself.”
Once they left, Firian crossed his arms. “I’m glad you’ve learned to stand up for yourself. I was this close to scorching him with some flames of my own. You also have class, by the way, if you want to attend. Dean Blair suggested you just sit and observe the first week. Professor Jablonsky said you can just rest today if you want. We could get in some Fortune’s Favor uninterrupted…”
“I can’t look like I’m a poor weak girl who can’t handle class on my very first day,” I said. “Though I do need a change of clothes and…I definitely need to get this ointment off my face!”
“Whatever you wish,” Firian said, but I think my familiar had definitely been enjoying the life of a slacker.
I had until the end of the year to learn how to control my magic, to hopefully figure out why I was here and what happened to Samuel Caruthers, and most especially, to summon a demon. I wasn’t going to spend time doing magic in a game until I got my real life magic straightened out.
Chapter Fourteen
Firian
The thing about losing someone is that it doesn’t always come with a big tearful goodbye. Sometimes the person is right there in front of you, unaware of what’s even happened.
I was so afraid of losing Charlotte.
She didn’t even realize, of course. I’d been in the background all this time. I was the fox who sat in the bushes. When I was a kit, I watched her play in her kiddie pool. (Well, maybe that wasn’t the best memory to bring up first. We were the same age, but it still sounds creepy. She played in it a lot when she was little, that’s all.) I watched her dad grill steaks, and toss me one when she wasn’t looking. I watched her sit on the back deck reading. I watched her take walks where she admired spring flowers and walks where she moped and stared at her phone.
Usually, she had no idea I was around, but if she spotted me, I was just a regular old fox, wary of humans. Her dad kept me updated on her life.
It was a really strange way for a familiar to live, so I didn’t talk to the other familiars in Etherium much. I wasn’t ashamed of Charlotte, of course. She was a good person. Kind-hearted, with inner reserves of strength that kids who lost a parent often had, but also very fun. I knew the other familiars and their witches would judge her for various reasons. She slouched, she dressed like a slob, she used words like “fuck” and “mansplaining” that witches were too ladylike and old-fashioned to say, she sometimes crammed an entire muffin in her face. She spent way too much time on the computer, which was where I really got to know her. By the sickly blue light of a computer screen at three o’ clock in the morning when we were fighting dragons with a dwarven healer from Singapore, I thought, Doesn’t she need to go to high school tomorrow?
Familiars, they say, grow and adapt alongside their humans, the way trees grow low and bent by a steady ocean breeze or twisted around a rock face. I existed because of Charlotte, and in a large sense it was my job to be what she needed me to be. Even though we weren’t close like other witches and familiars, I still grew around her. I couldn’t fight my nature. Not that I’d really tried. I also liked shoving an entire muffin in my face.
The tragedy, in my mind, is that she didn’t fully appreciate what I meant to her. She had never needed protection before, or help casting spells. I could already tell she was used to doing things on her own and it wasn’t in her nature to seek my help, the way other witches would. A good instinct on her part, because she was too old for a familiar anyway.
But I couldn’t stand the idea of being shunted aside.
And on the flip side, she didn’t understand that I was supposed to be shunted aside. She saw me as a person, not a familiar. I could see why some familiars urged their witches to turn dark, addicted to the heady power of being human.
I would go rogue politely. I wasn’t going to let Charlotte turn into a sinistral. Job number one was keeping her safe for her dad, who was as important to me as she was, the way it had worked out.
Still, being a familiar in the real world at this age wasn’t easy. Everywhere we went, guys were staring me down. And now, Charlotte was stepping into her first class.
We had to walk a ways down the tree-lined paths of the campus. I kept track of her schedule for her. “Your first class is Necromancy and Dark Arts,” I said.
“Ooh. I should be good at that, if I really got magical powers from Samuel Caruthers, right? When is Potions class?”
“There is no potions class.”
“There isn’t? Damn.”
“You know Alan Rickman won’t be teaching the class, right?”
“May he rest in peace, Firian.” She rolled her eyes. “I just think the idea of making a potion sounds fun. What are the classes?”
“Literature.”
“Literature?”
“Well, warlocks and witches learn normal stuff as well, and they have their own canon of great works. Then you have a break in there for lunch. Then Magical History, then Enchantment and Illusion, then Theurgy. That’s it.”
“What’s theurgy?”
“Summoning and communicating with higher spirits.”
“There are a lot of types of magic left out.”
“Oh, you think? And what do you kn
ow about real magic?”
“Well, what about divination? Surely that’s a thing.”
“Mostly, the other forms are for women. Women specialize in healing, divination, and enchantment. Both sexes learn theurgy and glamours. Later, you might learn alchemy and conjuring and more elemental skills. The dark arts and enchantment classes are going to have a heavy focus on defense. They won’t teach you any dark magic, obviously, but they will teach you to speak to the dead.”
She paused. I could see her pondering the entire scope of life and death and afterlife and the mysteries of the universe in the space of a moment. Her dad wasn’t religious and she’d never lost anyone really close to her. She’d never confronted existential questions.
“Hey,” I said. “Don’t freak out. It’ll be okay. They’ll take it slow.”
“I’m not freaking out.”
“You have your freaking out face.”
“You don’t know my faces.”
I do, though, I thought. Charlotte was my witch. She didn’t know just how well I knew her. It wasn’t just from watching her. It was woven through my entire being. I knew when she was sad and when she was scared.
She took a deep breath. “I want to curl up with a blanket and watch baking shows all day.”
“Fortune favors the bold,” I said. “Not just in video games.”
Her face took on a more determined look.
We headed for the class. It was inside a stately brick building, of course, and up steep stairs. If anyone in a wheelchair had ever attended this school, I don’t know how they managed. But I thought I already knew the answer to that. Merlin College was not for anyone with any perceived weaknesses, unless that weakness was a desire to blow stuff up or summon demons. I didn’t trust any of these privileged little assholes, and even I was shocked by how stuck in the past this place was. My protective instincts were bristled at all times. I knew I should go to Etherium for Charlotte’s own good, but I wasn’t sure I could ever relax there again. She needed me.
We were slightly late. The door was shut. A gold plaque marked it as the Necromancy and Dark Arts room. I opened the door for her, and stepped back. Dread rose in me at the thought of walking in there with about twenty unknown dudes. The second Charlotte walked in, every head shifted to watch her.
Charlotte was cute. I’d noticed that, even if I shouldn’t. She was of average size, neither short nor tall, with appealing curves, a little stomach pudge, and…very flexible. Sometimes she did yoga on the back deck. She didn’t usually mess with her appearance much, which any familiar would prefer. I spent too much time in the woods living life as a fox to care about human appearances. Charlotte would have made a really cute fox. Ponytail, brown eyes, explosive little laugh, healthy appetite: that was my Charlotte.
I shouldn’t be thinking about her like that. It was only because all these other guys were around suddenly, making me possessive.
Being attracted to your witch was a huge taboo. In the magical community, it was one hundred percent normal to date your cousin but akin to a first-degree offense to notice that your witch had a really adorable smile. So I would keep that thought to myself. Maybe it was because I’d had to keep so much of a distance from her. We didn’t have that brother-sister relationship familiars and witches usually did. Instead, I’d watched over her from afar, and she seemed a little untouchable.
Yeah, and also, I probably shouldn’t have agreed to become her girlfriend/boyfriend in an online RPG.
Stupid.
The guys, despite being well-dressed warlocks, were still acting like guys everywhere. They were checking her out, giving each other looks, snickering a little in a private way. Then they noticed me behind her and the ogling turned more nasty. I heard some whispers, and a couple of not-so-much-whispers. “A familiar…” “She brought her familiar…” “Weird looking dude.”
Alec and Harris were both in the class, sitting together, and I found myself actually missing Montague. At least he treated her decently, even if a little too decently. Harris, at least, didn’t leer or whisper, but he looked disdainful. Alec, well, he was an incubus. Whatever he said, dangling a single woman in front of an incubus was a bad idea. He looked at her like he wanted to do things to her, as he always did, and she glanced back at him and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
Ugh.
There was one empty seat at the back of the room. It was obviously for her. She sat down, and I stood in the back against the wall. I fully expected what came next.
The teacher was your classic dark arts/necromancy guy. He was tall, a little skeletal, in a funereal suit complete with waistcoat and watch chain, disheveled black hair. He looked about forty, which meant he was probably sixty. He had a sort of pained look on his face. “Familiar,” he said, waving a thin, pale hand. “I think you had best go.”
“I won’t say anything,” I said. “But Charlotte is untrained, so I’m watching over her for this first week or so.” I knew setting a time limit on my presence might help calm everyone down, but I already had no intention of leaving.
A few guys laughed again. They were going to drive her to send me away in no time.
“Shouldn’t you be resting?” Harris hissed at her.
“I’ll get to bed early tonight,” she said. “Where’s Montague?”
“He takes alchemy in this period,” Alec said in his low voice. “Vampires can’t take the necromancy class.”
“I am Professor McGuinness, and…I have just been informed about the death of one of our most…distinguished alumni…Samuel Caruthers.” He sounded breathless with agony. “Mr. Caruthers and I were students together. It was a brief, but treasured time in my life. He was the most talented young man at school at that time. And so charismatic, our Samuel. I remember those days like a Merchant Ivory film…like a dream. Excuse me, gentlemen.” He left the room.
There was a general grumbling. Some guys looked back at Charlotte again.
“Man, I didn’t know Samuel Caruthers was gay,” said one boy with a buzz cut—the only such severe hairstyle in the room—and the look of someone who stirred trouble just for fun.
Charlotte hesitated only a second before saying, “Do you have a problem with that?”
“Nah. Just saying.”
“‘Just saying’, why? Do you know if he was gay?”
“Well—“
“You think Professor McGuinness is gay because he’s sad his friend died? And it matters, for some reason?”
“I—I dunno—“
“Then that whole comment was pointless, wasn’t it?” She tossed her head away from the boy. “Samuel Caruthers was my family.”
I could practically smell the bristling of a room of boys who had never had their world challenged before.
“You didn’t know him, did you?” Harris said. “I thought you didn’t even know about magic.”
“No, but maybe I would have liked to have known him.”
Left unattended, the guys started leaving their chairs and getting closer to her like a circling pack. “So how did you get in here? Doesn’t make any sense.”
“They’re going to let a girl do warlock spells?”
“I heard you and Harris got into it at the restaurant.”
“We didn’t get into it,” Harris said. “We just made a little bet.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I don’t think she can handle summoning a demon.”
“Ohhh.” “Definitely not.” “She’ll probably fall in love with the demon.” Someone shoved Alec. “Here’s a demon for you right here.”
Alec ignored the shove except for his eyes, which took a hard turn toward the shover. “Too late,” he said. “I have already been summoned.”
“Don’t make this about Alec,” Harris said. “He’s one of us. But this girl, on the other hand…needs to go to Morgana like a good little witch. I don’t think we should be bending the rules for her.”
I could see Charlotte’s shoulders shiver just a little. They were making he
r nervous. She was bullied in middle school, so I was afraid she knew this feeling. Charlotte had an inner strength that kept her steady through a lifetime of her dad’s anxiety, and that allowed her to cast a hell of an impressive fire spell—which she’d get much better at containing with a little practice. In fact, I’d bet part of their cruelty to her stemmed from jealousy. They knew she was going to be a force to reckon with. And witches didn’t play with fire.
But right now, she was just one girl thrown into a strange world, surrounded by unfriendly faces. The one family member who might have answered her questions had just died. Hints of future danger had already surfaced.
How was I just supposed to sit back and observe?
“She’s here to stay,” I said. “Like it or not. And I’ll be watching every moment. If any of you hurt Charlotte, I won’t hesitate to involve myself. You can snicker all you like. It won’t protect you from our magic. Or my jaws.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes,” I said. “I must say, the way you’re all jeering at her is so…revealing.”
“I don’t like the way you talk, familiar,” one of them said.
Harris scoffed. “No, the fox is right. Fighting with them is stupid. I maintain that Charlotte doesn’t belong here. But I will go through the proper channels.”
It was probably a good thing that Professor McGuinness returned just then, looking more composed. If I got into a fight with warlocks on my own initiative, the council would probably be having a word with me.
Chapter Fifteen
Charlotte
“I’m sorry. I was very shocked by that news. The truth is, Samuel Caruthers was one of the greats. In the history of magic, he was the only white necromancer we’ve seen in a century. To be a white necromancer is to maintain an impossible balance. To deal with the dead, without succumbing to the temptations of darker forces…well, that is something special. But…I hear you are related, Miss Byrne?”
The Fairer Hex: A Paranormal Academy Series (A Witch Among Warlocks Book 1) Page 8
