Wicked Magic

by Margot de Klerk

  “I’ve texted you, like, fifteen times. Adrian too. Where are you?” Monica sounded worried. It occurred to Nathan that he’d had her in tears more times in the last few months than in all the years he’d known her before. Well, shit. Now he felt like a bad friend.

  “I’m at home. I was asleep.”

  “You’re alright!” Monica sighed. “You prat, I wish you’d just text me updates, or something.”

  “I was waiting for you to text me,” Nathan said, frustration welling up. “I didn’t know if you were busy, or what the fuck was going on.”

  Monica was silent for a long moment, long enough that Nathan regretted losing his cool. He took a deep breath. “M—”

  “Are you okay?” she interrupted him. “Is your dad mad?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Nathan lied. “Is Adrian okay?”

  “Course he’s okay—he’s more worried about you. You two are idiots, you know that?” She was silent for a second. “We cleaned up the mess, but I’m freaking exhausted. I’m heading home, but you could… meet me at my place?”

  Nathan weighed that for a second. His parents were unlikely to allow it. Go anyway? Yay or nay? Realistically, could they get anymore mad? What was mad squared? Apocalyptic fury? Had they already reached that level?

  “Sure,” he said. “Text me when you get home?”

  “Will do.”

  They hung up. Nathan laid back down, staring at his ceiling. There was a spot above his bed where he and Matt had managed to destroy the plaster. They’d been playing indoor football on a rainy day. Not one of his better ideas.

  “You feeling better?” Cynthia asked.

  “Less like death warmed over,” Nathan said. “Monica wants to speak to me at her place. You can come if you want, but, um, I get it if you don’t want to get in trouble.”

  “Your aunt said to tell you your dinner is in the fridge,” Cynthia said, putting her head on his shoulder. “Would you mind if I went to bed?”

  There was a slightly frustrated note in her voice, as well. The whole situation was wearing on all of them, and Nathan didn’t know how to fix it. Could this be fixed? Every decision just seemed to make it worse. An odd feeling lingered between them, some unspoken tension that Nathan couldn’t name.

  “I don’t mind,” he said as gently as he could. “It would be good for me to speak to Monica on my own—I think she’s upset.” It would be good for Nathan, too.

  “Thanks,” Cynthia said.

  “Have you had dinner?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Alright.” Nathan kissed her chastely. “Goodnight.”

  “Night.” Cynthia slipped out. Nathan grabbed his phone and padded downstairs. Aunt Anna was sitting in the kitchen, alone. The house felt deserted, but it was probably just because everyone else was in bed.

  “Nathan,” Aunt Anna said softly. She searched him over with her eyes, looking for what, Nathan didn’t know.

  “Hi, Aunt Anna,” Nathan said. He abruptly remembered his tirade from earlier, and felt kind of embarrassed. “Um, did Mum and Dad go back to the hotel?”

  “Yes.” Aunt Anna slid him a sheet of lined paper. “For you.”

  Nathan unfolded it. His Mum’s neat, utilitarian print was scrawled across the page. Dear Nathan, please consider yourself grounded until further notice. We will discuss how to proceed tomorrow. Love, Mum

  Why bother adding the ‘love’ part, Nathan wondered cynically. It wasn’t as though she’d ever said it out loud. Maybe she was just trying to soften the blow.

  “Have you read this?” he asked his aunt.

  “No need, I discussed it with your parents.” She closed the lid of her laptop and set it aside.

  “And?”

  “Do you want to talk?” Aunt Anna asked. “Or are you just spoiling for a fight?”

  “I haven’t been spoiling for a fight,” Nathan said. “I’m honestly just… tired.” He fetched his dinner plate from the fridge, but it seemed like too much effort to heat it up, so he just started eating it cold. Aunt Anna was silent whilst he ate. Nathan glanced at her a few times. She wasn’t looking at him; she just stared at her hands, which were folded on the table.

  Finally, when Nathan was almost finished, she said, “I knew Adrian before he was turned. Jeff and I were dating at the time. Adrian was always… Jeff looked up to him, you know? He was very compelling, even then. Charismatic… manipulative.”

  “Adrian isn’t manipulating me—” Nathan started immediately. Aunt Anna raised a hand to stop him.

  “I’m trying to give a balanced view,” she said. “Hunters, by nature, are not very forgiving. Adrian became what they hated the most. Before he was turned, he was the older brother they all looked up to.”

  “So? It’s not as though he chose to become a vampire,” Nathan pointed out.

  “He chose to live, Nathan,” Aunt Anna said gently. “And I dare say there are some, Jeffrey included, who feel that there was another choice.”

  A cold sort of horror was growing in Nathan. He swallowed hard. “You mean… kill himself? Or… let them kill him?”

  “Yes,” Aunt Anna said.

  “That’s horrible,” Nathan said. He tried to imagine it and found that he couldn’t. When had Adrian become integral to his life? The thought of his uncle or his father killing Adrian made him shudder.

  “It’s the hunter ethos, which Adrian himself also once ascribed to,” Aunt Anna reminded him. “If you initiate, you also have to uphold that, Nathan. You are agreeing to never allow yourself to be turned. If it does come to that, it’s expected that you will take your own life.”

  Nathan stared at his empty plate. He was glad he’d finished eating, because he was pretty sure this conversation would have killed his appetite.

  “What if I don’t think that’s right?”

  “Would you want to be a vampire?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t want Adrian to be dead either,” Nathan said. “Honestly, I’m closer to him than my dad. Or Uncle Jeff.”

  “I know,” Aunt Anna said. “I see that now. And I think that’s a failing of ours—not of yours. But do you see why you need to stay away from him?”

  Her words made Nathan angry. No. No, he didn’t see. He bit his tongue hard, letting the pain ground him. “Yes,” he lied.

  “Good,” Aunt Anna said. “I suggest you think about that and tell your parents tomorrow. Maybe they’ll go easier on you.”

  “Yes, Aunt Anna,” Nathan replied. “Thanks for the chat. I’m going to bed now.”

  “Okay.” Aunt Anna smiled at him. “Are you alright? I know today has been difficult for you.”

  “I’m alright, just tired.” Nathan put his plate in the dishwasher and added, “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Nathan headed upstairs and shut his bedroom door. He lay in bed, listening to Aunt Anna shuffling around downstairs, closing up the house for the night. He felt her testing the wards, something which she did at least once a week. They buzzed in the back of his consciousness, reminding him they were there. Then he heard her ascend the stairs. She checked each room, first Jess’s, then his, lastly the guestroom where Cynthia was sleeping. Then she closed herself into the master bedroom.

  His aunt and uncle were deep sleepers. Nathan had never snuck out before. He’d never had to. Now, he silently dressed again. He found a ward he’d worked on a while back, for silent movement, and slid it into his pocket. Barefoot, he padded downstairs and let himself out the house.

  Nathan held his breath as he shut and relocked the door. The lights in the master bedroom stayed off. He was in the clear. He sat on the step and pulled his trainers on, then set off at a jog for Monica’s house.

  Monica opened the door for him in her pyjamas. She put a finger to her lips and whispered, “Everyone’s asleep. Let’s go to my room.”

  Nathan followed her up the stairs. Monica’s room was very bohemian. She collected dreamcatchers, which she hung from hooks above her bed. The curtai
ns were gauzy and didn’t block the streetlight which filtered in through the window. She had a double bed with blue sheets, and her cupboard was open, showing a haphazard mass of clothing. On her desk, her laptop was shoved into the corner to make way for her collection of wards.

  Nathan kicked his shoes off and slouched onto her bed. Monica locked her door.

  “How bad is it?” she asked.

  “On a scale from mildly awful to end-of-the-freaking-world, we’re pretty much at nuclear apocalypse,” Nathan said glumly.

  “Oh, Nate.” Monica sighed, collapsing onto the bed beside him. “What will you do? I’d offer you to stay here, but I’m pretty sure Malcolm will kick me out if I try to house anymore strays.”

  “S’alright,” Nathan said. “I have to go home. I have school and homework, and training…” He trailed off at the last one. “Maybe not training. They might decide to pull me out altogether.”

  “Fuck them,” Monica said. “It’s their loss.”

  “Thanks,” Nathan said, even though it didn’t make him feel better in the slightest. “Anyway, they know everything now, so hopefully that means it’s their problem now, right?”

  “Define everything,” Monica said.

  “About Halloween. About me and Adrian. About the Sahir. Everything. Hell, they even know I’m friends with Lily.”

  “All that in one day? You had a busy day.”

  “It’s not even over yet,” Nathan said glumly. “It can still get worse.”

  “Don’t say that.” Monica prodded his side. “Look on the bright side—maybe the Hunter Council will take over this whole mess. At least now they know what they’re up against.”

  “Yeah…” But remembering the attack, Nathan also remembered how outclassed they’d been. And something else.

  “Do I owe Jeremiah for protecting us?” he asked worriedly.

  “Probably not,” Monica said. “He was protecting the reputation of the Vampire Council. Probably better not to bring it up, though, or you’ll give him an opportunity to spin it that you owe him.”

  “So not the answer I was hoping for,” Nathan told her.

  “I live to serve,” Monica said ironically.

  They lapsed into silence. Nathan studied the pattern on Monica’s socks. They were yellow with little black and red birds. Cute.

  “Monica,” Nathan asked at length, “Have you ever let a vampire drink your blood?”

  “For sure,” Monica said, not sounding particularly surprised by the intimate question. “Adrian did, for one. But vampires don’t really love witch blood. He said it tastes kind of acrid. It’s the magic.”

  “Oh,” Nathan replied.

  “Jeremiah has, too,” she added.

  “I don’t want to know how that situation came about,” Nathan said hastily.

  “No.” Monica pulled her legs up to her chest. “Why were you asking?”

  “Because…” Nathan hesitated. “Because Adrian saved my life, and it nearly cost him his,” he said. “And I just… couldn’t. I couldn’t give him my blood, even though it would have helped.”

  “I don’t think he expected you to,” Monica said. “Anyway, Damien helped him.”

  “I feel like I should have, though,” Nathan said. He grasped around for words to explain how he felt. “I—I don’t—I mean—he said Damien found him useful,” he finally blurted out. “There’s no one who would save him because they want to, because they like him. And I wanted to, but I was just a fucking coward.”

  “Lily would,” Monica said. “Lily loves Adrian, platonically. Anyway, it wasn’t the time or the place, was it?”

  “I can’t think of a better time or place than when he’s just saved my life.”

  “In front of your dad? He’d have killed you on the spot.”

  That hadn’t occurred to Nathan at the time, nor afterwards, but now he thought about it and grimaced. Hunters believed that humans who had been bitten were tainted. Three bites and you could be turned. It was the first step on the path. He’d have been shunned for life.

  “Yeah,” Nathan said, leaning his head against the wall. “For sure.” But he felt dissatisfied with that answer, for reasons he couldn’t exactly pinpoint. It felt like a cop out.

  “Can we sleep?” Monica asked. “I was weaving high level illusions all evening, and I’m beyond exhausted.”

  Nathan glanced at her. She had dark rings under her eyes, although honestly Monica usually hid her fatigue under a layer of makeup, so for all he knew this was normal. Probably not, though. He remembered Cynthia. They were all just tired.

  “Are you okay?” he asked softly.

  “Fine, just need to sleep,” Monica said shortly.

  “M, really—”

  “I’m fine,” she cut him off.

  Nathan had overstayed his welcome. He pulled Monica into a hug and whispered, “I’ll head home. See you when my parents finally release me from the grounding of the century?”

  Monica clung to him for a second, before she took a deep breath and pulled away. “Good luck,” she said. “I’ll let you out.”

  Outside, Nathan waved once and set off home. Halfway there, he stopped and sat on a convenient stretch of wall. He pulled his phone out. From tomorrow, he was probably going to be grounded, without phone or internet, or pretty much anything else. Maybe his parents would come up with some equally terrible punishment. Maybe he could make nice and act contrite, but his parents weren’t stupid. They wouldn’t let him off the hook too easily.

  He ought to take advantage of this last moment of freedom.

  Nathan dialled Adrian and put the phone to his ear. It rang what seemed like a thousand times, before finally connecting.

  “Nate, do you have any idea what time it is?” Adrian asked. He sounded like he’d been sleeping.

  “Sorry,” Nathan replied. “I just wanted to…” Make sure you were okay. “Check in.”

  “Oh,” Adrian said. “Sure. I hope Benny’s not too mad.”

  “For real?” Nathan asked. “What do you think?”

  “How long are you grounded for?”

  “Unclear,” Nathan replied. “We haven’t discussed it yet. They’ve gone back to the hotel for the night.”

  “Shit,” Adrian said. “Wish I could talk sense into them, but I’m guessing that’ll make it worse.”

  “Much, much worse.”

  “I wanted to ask you earlier; how much do they know?” Adrian enquired.

  “Everything,” Nathan said. “It’s all in the open now.”

  “Did you tell them I approached you?”

  “Does it matter?” Nathan asked. “I could have walked away at any moment. I brought this on myself.”

  Adrian was silent, and it was a silence filled with self-recriminations. Nathan could empathise. He was beating himself up, too.

  “Maybe I should talk to Benny—or Jeff. He was always pretty level-headed. Or Anna?”

  “No!” Nathan said immediately. “No, Adrian, don’t get more involved. There’s no point. They’re stuck in their own beliefs and… I’m just not compatible with that.”

  “You’re dumping the hunters, then?” Adrian asked.

  “Maybe,” Nathan said. “I haven’t decided yet.” Just saying it out loud scared him. Hunting had been the one goal, the one purpose of his life for as long as he could remember. Even having his initiation postponed had been a blip in the system. He’d always known what he was working towards, and now that was just… gone.

  “You’ll be okay,” Adrian said confidently. “Hunting’s not the be all and end all.”

  “I hope so,” Nathan mumbled.

  “Will you let me know what your father says?” Adrian asked. “How long I have to lay low for?”

  They were winding down, and Nathan still hadn’t said what he wanted to say.

  “Um, sure,” he said hastily. “I doubt it’ll be forever. Dad has to go back to London eventually. Look, Adrian—I just wanted to say—”

  “Nate, it’s okay.”


  “You don’t know what I’m going to say!”

  “Bet I do,” Adrian replied with his usual irritating confidence.

  “What do you think I’m going to say, then?”

  “I’ll bet it starts with thank you,” Adrian said. “Nate, you don’t have to thank me.”

  “But I want to thank you!” Nathan said heatedly. “You saved my life.”

  “I did what I would always do,” Adrian said, sounding utterly unruffled. “You don’t have to thank me for it.”

  Nathan scowled and kicked a pebble at the base of the wall. It skittered into the road. “I totally froze up. I have no idea what came over me.”

  “A lot of people do that in their first fight after killing someone,” Adrian said. “You recovered. It’s okay.”

  “You saved me, and I couldn’t even do anything in return,” Nathan insisted. He couldn’t have said why it pissed him off so much. It was like he didn’t want Adrian to let him off the hook.

  “Nathan, it’s okay,” Adrian repeated. “We’re family. You don’t owe me anything.”

  Being released from the debt didn’t help Nathan’s confused feelings in the slightest. “I should have let you drink my blood.”

  “No.” Adrian’s tone was so firm that Nathan actually jumped in surprise. “Nathan, no. I know I’ve teased you about that before—maybe I shouldn’t have. I would never ask that of you.”

  “But—” Nathan started pathetically. He almost said, I thought you wanted to, but then he thought the better of it. “You needed it.”

  “I needed blood, it didn’t have to be yours,” Adrian said. “The Vampire Council keeps willing donors on hand. It wasn’t as though I would have died from blood loss.”

  “I couldn’t do anything to help.”

  “It was enough that you stayed,” Adrian replied. “It meant a lot to me.”

  “But…” Nathan was running out of arguments.

  “Go to bed, Nate,” Adrian said. “Stop torturing yourself. You did fine. You did better than fine. Tomorrow’s going to be hard enough, without adding a lack of sleep to the mix.”

  “Fine.” Nathan sighed. “Thanks, anyway. For chatting, I mean.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  They rung off and Nathan shoved his phone into his pocket. Reluctantly, he stood up and began walking back towards his house. His prison for the foreseeable future. He dragged his feet, kicking a loose stone along. He’d fucked everything up. Worse, he’d known this would happen, but he’d gone ahead with it anyway. Kept hanging out with Adrian. Got close to Adrian. A vampire.