Wicked Magic

by Margot de Klerk

  Then she jogged over.

  Nathan’s heart raced in his chest like he was running sprints for Grey—which, thinking about it, he’d be doing later. Fun times.

  Stick to the plan , he reminded himself. It’s a good plan.

  It was a good plan. He’d hopefully thought through every variable. If only it didn’t hinge on his ability to ask a girl out on a date.

  “Hi,” Cynthia said brightly. She looked really nice in her lacrosse uniform. “I wish you’d come any other week. We’re down our best player and we were terrible today.”

  “I thought you were brilliant.”

  Cynthia beamed at him. “You’re sweet.”

  “Hey,” Nathan blurted out. “I was wondering if—”

  “I was hoping to see you—” Cynthia started at the exact same time. They both stopped.

  “Uh, go on,” Cynthia said.

  “No, um, you first,” Nathan replied.

  Cynthia blushed. “I was hoping to see you. Actually, I tried to get your number off my mum, but she wouldn’t give it to me.” She paused. “She’s a bit, uh, overprotective. Sorry. I wanted to say thank you and sorry we were weird the other night. You must have thought we were, like, the Addams Family, or something.”

  Nathan had to laugh at that. He knew the Addams Family, and Cynthia was not it.

  “Seriously, no way,” he said. “You should meet my family. They’re complete whackos.”

  “You seem normal,” Cynthia said. She rethought it immediately. “I don’t mean that in a bad way!”

  Nathan had a sudden and very relieving epiphany: Cynthia was just as uncomfortable as he was. It put everything into perspective, like the sun coming out from behind the clouds on an overcast day.

  “You can relax,” he told Cynthia. “I don’t think you’re weird or anything. I’m glad your sister is okay. And, um, actually, I’ve been wanting to talk to you. Do you want to… hang out in town some time?”

  Cynthia shifted her weight. “I—I’d like that,” she said. “A lot.”

  “Well,” Nathan said. “I train most of Saturday, but I’m free Sunday? We could get lunch.”

  “Sunday,” Cynthia breathed. “Sunday’s great.” And she smiled, and it was like the sun did break out from behind the clouds.

  “I’ll see you on Sunday,” Cynthia added. Then, “Give me your phone. I’ll put in my number.”

  A moment later, she was jogging back to her team. Nathan clutched his phone to his chest, grinning like a lunatic. Cynthia paused halfway across the field and turned to wave at him. Nathan waved back.

  That had gone great.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE NEXT TWO DAYS, NATHAN floated on cloud nine, and not even Adrian’s ribbing could bring him back to Earth.

  Sunday was a wakeup call.

  He had a date. He actually had a date.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Jess asked over breakfast, when Nathan dropped his fork for the third time. “You have butter fingers today.”

  “None of your beeswax,” Nathan told his sister, but with none of his usual heat. His aunt frowned at him.

  “Are you alright?” she asked. “You were pretty happy yesterday—and you did your homework without prompting. Today you seem miserable.”

  “I’m fine,” Nathan replied automatically. “I’ll be out for lunch. I’m meeting, um, Matt.”

  “Ummatt?” Aunt Anna asked facetiously. “Is this a new friend I haven’t met yet?”

  Nathan felt his cheeks burning. Aunt Anna zeroed in on him immediately.

  “Is Ummatt a girl?” she asked.

  “Maybe?” Nathan answered in a small voice.

  “Nathan!” Aunt Anna said. “Are you going on a date?”

  “Maybe?” he said. “I mean,” he added hastily, “We didn’t exactly call it that.”

  “Is anyone else going to be there?” Aunt Anna asked.

  “Nope.”

  “And where are you going?”

  “Not sure yet.”

  “Who’s paying?” Aunt Anna asked, a knowing look in her eyes.

  “We didn’t discuss it.”

  “Maybe you should get a clue before you go,” Jess said snootily. “Or it’s not going to be a very long date.”

  “You shut up,” Nathan told her. “You’re too young to be talking about dating.”

  “Am not!”

  “Are too!”

  “Both of you stop,” Aunt Anna said. “Take her to the Turl Street Kitchen. It’s a nice café, you can find it on google maps. It’s not too pricey, either.”

  Nathan sighed in relief. That solved one problem.

  “If it’s a date, you have to offer to pay,” Aunt Anna added sternly. “I hope I raised you with enough manners for that.”

  “Yes, Aunt Anna.”

  “Good,” Aunt Anna said. “Please wear a pair of jeans without holes in the knees.”

  “Um,” Nathan said sheepishly. “That’s a big ask, Aunt Anna.”

  His aunt just sighed.

  A bit later, Nathan cycled into town. Cynthia was waiting in front of the McDonald’s on Cornmarket, and Nathan almost stopped dead when he saw her. She was wearing a denim skirt and a black long-sleeved top, with her blond hair loose around her face, and she looked very cute.

  Nathan hauled his brain back before it could dive off the cliff into incoherency and strolled over to Cynthia.

  “Hi.”

  “Oh, hey,” Cynthia said.

  “Um, sorry I’m a bit late. Did I make you wait?” Nathan asked.

  “Nope, I just got here.” Cynthia smiled. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Well, are you hungry yet? I thought we could walk around for a bit and then eat when we’re ready.”

  “I could eat now.” Cynthia flushed. “Are you hungry?”

  “I’m a guy—I’m always hungry,” Nathan pointed out.

  At that, Cynthia’s shyness seemed to melt away a little bit. “I wouldn’t know,” she said. “No guys in my family.”

  “Your dad?” Nathan asked, then realised how insensitive that question could be. “I mean—”

  “It’s alright,” she said. “I never met him. He left before I was born. There was Emma’s dad, for a while, but he died when she was three. It’s mostly just been us and my mum.”

  “Oh,” Nathan said. What did you say to that? “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, you can’t really miss someone you’ve never known,” Cynthia said carelessly. “Mum’s great. A bit overprotective, but she’s really good to us. Lunch?”

  “My aunt told me about a place that’s good.” Nathan pulled out his phone and showed her the menu.

  “Ooh, all-day breakfast,” Cynthia said. “I’m sold.”

  They meandered through central Oxford. The usual tourists were out in force, but the university didn’t start up for another week or so. They city seemed oddly bereft without its usual hoard of students.

  “Oxford’s really pretty, hey?” Cynthia asked.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Nathan said. “I’m not sure I’ve ever really appreciated it, but then I’ve lived here since I was seven.”

  “Really?” Cynthia replied. “You have a London accent.”

  “Born in London, somehow never lost it,” Nathan explained. “You?”

  “We moved here over summer,” Cynthia explained. “I’m still finding my way around. We were living in Sweden before, in the south. Malmo. But Emma and I were both born in England, and I guess Mum wanted to come back here.”

  “That’s cool,” Nathan said. “I’ve never been to Sweden. It’s cold, right?”

  “Not all the time!” Cynthia laughed.

  They settled in the café and ordered lunch. Once they were waiting for their food, Cynthia said, “Can I ask a kind of… personal question?”

  “Sure.” Nathan ran through any number of possibilities in his head, hoping she was about to reveal some kind of arcane knowledge of the supernatural. That would be convenient.

  “Y
ou live with your aunt?” Cynthia asked delicately.

  “Oh,” Nathan said. “Oh, yeah. But it’s not like… I mean… My folks live in London. They just… there was this thing that happened when I was a little kid, and they decided they’d rather my sister and I grow up out here. So we stay with our aunt and go into London on weekends. Some weekends, anyway. Mum and Dad have been pretty busy lately, I guess.”

  “Oh,” Cynthia replied. She seemed relieved. “I thought, well, I hoped they weren’t dead, obviously, but it just seemed…”

  “Kinda weird?” Nathan asked. “Told you we’re whackos. Military family.”

  “Have you moved around?”

  “No, that’s part of the reason why we stay out here. Means that Jess and I can get through school without having to move.”

  “How old is your sister?” Cynthia asked, and they moved on to safer topics, at least safer in the sense that Nathan was no long skirting around the we’re-vampire-hunters issue.

  When lunch finished, Nathan offered, “I’ll pay.”

  “Really?” Cynthia asked. “I don’t mind splitting.”

  “No—I mean—I don’t mind,” Nathan said. Should he insist? Monica would say that was anti-feminist. Monica would be laughing her arse off at him right now. Okay, he was on a date. He wasn’t thinking about Monica right now.

  His phone buzzed. Great. That was probably Monica, right there.

  “I’ll pay,” he said. “You could get us coffee later, if you want to?”

  Cynthia was smiling, so hopefully he’d made the right decision. How far into a relationship did you have to get before you could stop overthinking everything?

  After lunch, they wandered the city centre and Nathan showed Cynthia the Radcam and St Mary’s Church. They peeked through the gates of Brasenose College, then headed down to Hertford so she could see the Bridge of Sighs.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Cynthia enthused. She turned around and pointed at a round building. “What’s that one?”

  “The Sheldonian Theatre,” Nathan replied, and the familiar discomfort crept in. The Sheldonian Theatre doubled as a meeting point for the Vampire Council.

  “You wanna go look? We might be able to peek inside.”

  Cynthia nodded, so they headed over there. The theatre was closed, but Cynthia enjoyed taking pictures on her phone anyway.

  Nathan showed her into the courtyard of the Bodleian Library so she could snap more photos.

  “Have you seen the Covered Market?” he asked. “It’s like an indoor market, I think it’s like a historic landmark or something. There are coffee shops and souvenir shops, and there’s this occult-themed café that I’ve hung out at a few times. We could have a look around?”

  “Sure.”

  On the walk to the Covered Market, Nathan decided that—seeing as everything might be about to go alarmingly pear-shaped—he may as well take advantage of the moment. Heart in his mouth, he reached out and gently took Cynthia’s hand. She glanced up at him, then closed her fingers around his.

  “Okay?” Nathan asked hesitantly.

  “Okay,” Cynthia agreed.

  They wandered through the Covered Market, until they got onto the east-most corridor.

  “I think the occult café was down here,” Nathan hedged, walking slowly down the hallway. The thing about the witching level was that most people couldn’t see the entrance. They saw a high-level illusion: a blank stretch of wall with a staff-only door on it. If you had the sight, you could see through the illusion. The door became glass-fronted, and there were false exposed bricks and spooky signs with cauldrons and runes on them surrounding it for the full witchy experience.

  “Is that the place?” Cynthia asked, pointing to the doorway.

  The Witching Level , read the sign above the door in spiky letters. Nathan’s heart dropped to take up residence somewhere around the basement. Well, that’s that, then, he thought.

  “You can see it,” he said softly, and Cynthia whipped around to face him.

  “See what?” she demanded. Her eyes were very wide, her expression angry. Oh shit, he’d blown it now.

  “Cynthia,” he said warily, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “We should talk.”

  “You tricked me!” she shouted and slapped him, hard.

  Then she ran.

  Nathan was a master at compartmentalising pain. Bruises, bumps, cuts, scrapes. Just part of a day’s work. He could deal with those later. Being slapped in the face? A worry for another time. He raced after Cynthia. She was a decent runner, but Nathan was about four inches taller than her and he caught her before she’d even reached the High Street.

  He grabbed her wrist, trying very hard not to hurt her.

  “Cynthia, please, just hear me out.”

  “Let go of me!” she hissed, sounding like a cat. “I can’t believe you!”

  “It’s not what you think!” Nathan said. “Please!”

  “No!”

  People were starting to stare.

  “Please don’t make a scene,” Nathan said. “I just want to talk.”

  “Oh, wow, does that line actually work on anyone?” Cynthia gave up trying to pull away and went for offence instead. “What was the plan? Get me to trust you, then lure me off like your mates tried to do to my sister?”

  Nathan stared at her.

  “I don’t work with them!”

  “Like I’d believe that!”

  “I don’t,” he protested. “Cynthia, it’s not what you think. Look, there’s a place just here. Let me buy you coffee. I’ll explain!”

  “I really don’t want to hear your explanation,” she said. “You’re a dick!”

  At a complete loss, Nathan let go of her wrist. “I really did just want to talk.”

  “Yeah, right,” Cynthia replied. Then she ran off. Nathan didn’t follow her. He slouched off to the Starbucks on Cornmarket and bought a latte. Then he sat upstairs and contemplated how epically he’d just messed up.

  Great first date. Adrian was going to piss himself laughing when he heard.

  May as well get all the misery out of the way at once. He pulled out his phone and rang Adrian.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be on your hot date?” Adrian asked by way of greeting.

  “Yeah, it didn’t go so hot, funny enough,” Nathan muttered.

  “Did you screw up?”

  “No, you arse. The test was a positive.” Shit, he sounded like he was talking about pregnancy tests. He rephrased, “She could see the witching level. Then I tried to talk about it, and she freaked out and ran off.”

  “Well, shit,” Adrian said. “Sorry, kid. Better luck on the second date?”

  “Not sure there’s going to be one.”

  “Hey, look on the bright side. She obviously knows about the supernatural world. Seems to be scared shitless of us, but she is in the know. Which means you can just ask her about the animal thing.”

  “Yeah,” Nathan replied dejectedly. “Except she might never talk to me again. She thought I was working with the guys who nabbed her sister. I mean, leap of logic, much? We went from holding hands to her accusing me of kidnapping.”

  “What can I say? Girls are psychos,” Adrian said. “Especially teenage girls. Just avoid ‘em, to be honest. You’ll have more luck dating when you’re twenty.”

  “If you were here right now, I’d punch you.”

  “Bring it.” Suddenly Nathan was hearing an echo. “Seeing as I’m right behind you.”

  Nathan was on his feet in milliseconds. His uncle was standing right behind him. Nathan threw a punch, but Adrian caught his fist.

  “Ah, ah, ah, Nate,” he said. “We’re in Starbucks. You’ll get us kicked out.”

  “Okay, one, what the fuck are you doing here?” Nathan asked furiously. “Two, how the fuck did you find me?”

  “Two’s easy. I’ve been following you for the past three hours.” Adrian slouched into the seat opposite Nathan and stole his latte. “As for one, funny story, Damien�
�s witch friend seems to be having trouble scrying for Lily lately, so he asked me to come by and keep an eye on her. I don’t approve of him having his daughter followed, obviously, she’s a big girl, but I just couldn’t resist the mystery. After all, Monica’s in Morocco, so who whipped up an anti-scrying amulet for Lily?”

  Nathan sagged back into his armchair and glared at Adrian.

  “You already know the answer to that.”

  “Getting mixed up in vamp business? Tut, tut, little nephew.”

  If looks could kill, Adrian would be dead. Re-dead. Whatever. Ugh, Nathan hated him.

  “I must say, colour me surprised, turns out you have an unusual talent for anti-scrying wards,” Adrian remarked, sipping the coffee. “It works, even when she’s at home, and Park Town hardly has ambient magic compared to the city centre.”

  Nathan felt a thrill of pride, which he viciously tamped down. He did not need praise from a vampire, and he told Adrian as much.

  Adrian laughed. “Oh, you haven’t changed at all over the summer.”

  “Was I supposed to?”

  “Well, maybe you’ve grown an inch or two.” Adrian squinted at him. “Nah, not yet.”

  Nathan wished he could tip the coffee over his uncle’s smug face. “Five-eleven is not short!”

  “I never said it was.” Adrian leered at him. “Did they train you over summer, though? You really ought to have caught me tailing you. Sloppy, sloppy.”

  “I knew you were there,” Nathan lied petulantly.

  “Sure, you did.” Adrian smirked. “Shame about your girlfriend, though. She was pretty.”

  “You have literally no redeeming characteristics,” Nathan said. “I hate you so much. And you’re paying me back for that latte.”

  Adrian leaned back in his seat, his posture screaming arrogance. Sitting opposite each other, the family resemblance was painfully clear—same tanned skin, same brown eyes, same jawline—and it only made Nathan hate Adrian more. “I could help you get her back.”

  “Over my dead body are you compelling her to trust me,” Nathan said. There were ethical grey areas, and then there was vampire mind control. Nathan hated the idea that vampires could force someone to do something against their will. Worse, vampires could make them want to do things against their will.