by E M Graham
He sighed. “It’s an uphill battle though, I’m afraid. He’s working against infighting factions and small minds.”
“What’s your part in it?”
“I have the blessing of the EURO’s behind me,” he said. “The European Union of Realtech Operations, it’s a ... oh, I won’t get into that. Suffice it to say, it’s the formal convergence of the European witch community.”
“Good luck with that,” I said, remembering the harsh words given to me by my own siblings about my half-blood ever since Mom’s disappearance. Their attitudes had been learned from Cate, I knew, and she was a product of her own Kin. As I said, prejudices ran high in this town. “You being a half-blood and all.”
“Enough about me,” he said as he turned his golden green eyes to stare right at me. “What gives?”
“What did Dad tell you?” I shrugged as I hedged.
“Little, except he was in a fury earlier this evening after a visit from a certain Mr. IronArms. He seems to have calmed down about it now.”
“Hmmm,” I said. Maybe Hugh didn’t know about the baby. Dad would know, for the dwarf would have delighted in telling him exactly which conventions his daughter had broken, and on which page of the constitution he would find these broken rules.
“So, the dwarves.” He leaned against the footboard of the old iron bedstead and turned to me, waiting for me to tell him.
“Umm.” I wrapped my arms around my knees and rested my chin on them. Believe me, I had the mind blocks up full force, and I was getting pretty good at this. Unfortunately, I knew that he could sense this.
If we had Hugh’s help tomorrow night, we would be assured of success, yet if I broke down and spilled the whole story to him, he wouldn’t help me. No, he would work with Dad to get me on the first plane out of here tomorrow for my own safety. Never mind Benjy and the baby, they were natural collateral damage in the Rule of Law of this strange world I’d gotten myself mixed up in.
The ironic thing was, I’d secretly decided that I did want to get training for my powers, I needed it. But not yet. I would gladly leave as soon as this business was all over. Screw university – I was only marking time there anyway; it was never what my heart called for. But it was the only card I held right now.
I had to trick Hugh, but I hardly dared to form the thought in my head for fear he would sniff it out. Yet perhaps I could fill my head with another truth, and this would shine over my other, more insidious plans.
“I do want to be trained,” I said. “I want it more than anything, now that I’ve found out I can be, that training actually exists and I can have it, me, a half-blood.”
He relaxed and smiled at me, the light glowing in his eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m so glad you see the sense of this. Finally. You’ve got strong powers, and you need to develop them, learn how to use them.”
“But not yet,” I said. “I really need to pass this semester. I’m sort of on probation with the university right now, and I don’t want to mess up my chances of finishing that degree.” I peeped up at him to see how he’d take this.
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” he replied, waving aside my worries with a flick of his hand. “Your marks here are meaningless. Your father can use his influence to get you in anywhere you want to go. You’re not stuck at the local uni, you know. You can go anywhere in the world you want to.”
“Maybe I want to go here,” I said, bristling a little. I needed this excuse to buy me time. “This is a perfectly good school. It’s not Oxford or Yale, but it’s fine. This is my home town, you know.”
He gave me a funny look that held no clue as to what he was thinking. “Your loyalty is admirable. Misplaced, but rather sweet.”
“I need to keep going to classes,” I urged him. “And I have a test tomorrow. You have to help me persuade Dad to let me out of the house. I’ll be safe, I’ll keep my head down and out of trouble.”
I silently crossed my fingers as I stared at him, imploring.
He nodded as he got up off the bed. “I’ll see what I can do.”
THANK GOD THIS family didn’t go in for a formal breakfast table. By getting up early and sneaking downstairs for a quick bite, I was able to avoid the lot of them.
As I stood and chewed, I looked around the kitchen. It didn’t look like my idea of a witch’s kitchen – no herbs hanging from rafters, no cats sprawled before the ovens, no crooked stovepipes or crooked anything. As all my knowledge of witches and the supernatural came from books, it was no wonder I knew nothing about the reality of witchcraft and the ways of witches.
I actually felt excited about going away to learn. It felt right and good. But not yet.
First I had a fairy hall to raid, with the added complication of being grounded in my father’s house.
Hugh was the key. I would somehow convince him to bring me over to the Southside Hills when he picked me up again at MUN this afternoon, and from there I could trick him into providing assistance.
14
I HADN’T LIED to Dad about the exam that morning, the one I was totally unprepared for. Stupid Math 1010, having tests so early in the semester. I’d breezed through this subject in highschool with Alice at the desk next to me. Not that she allowed me to cheat off her, of course, but she never suspected a thing. And what she didn’t know had never hurt her.
And I hadn’t been physically looking over her shoulder or anything, I only allowed her mind to help me with the answers. I’d never examined the process, I just let it come naturally.
But at university, Alice had sped past me easily, already having her maths component done and working now through Statistics, which I didn’t intend to touch. History, English, Folklore, with a smattering of German and Linguistics – that was more my style, the courses I could bullshit my way through if necessary. But I had to take basic math, those were the rules.
Hugh convinced Dad to let me go to classes, and I hopped on to the back of his motorcycle. I could easily have walked or taken the bus from Dad’s house, but neither of them were taking any chances with me. The greatest joy that morning was seeing Sasha’s cranky face peering through the window as we sped off down the drive, me clutching Hugh tightly on the back of his bike. I gave her a third finger salute as we turned down the lane.
AS IF I DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH on my mind, I was thinking as I stared down at the paper on the desk in front of me. Greek? It could have been. I wished I’d been paying more attention in class those few times I’d attended.
But then a wisp of an idea came to me. Alice had been as familiar as my own skin, but could I make this power work with someone I didn’t know? Like, actually get inside the head of someone who knew what they were doing with this exam? I’d learned pretty quickly how to block my thoughts from Hugh, and he was a powerful witch.
A surreptitious glance around and I found my prey, that guy to my left, the one with the unwashed hair whose name I could never remember. We’d spoken a few times, hung out at the cafeteria so I already had a small connection with him. I sent out mental feelers, just relaxed and let my antennae waft in his direction. I didn’t have a clue how this worked, but this was a good time to learn.
And the trick, I found, was not to try and not to think about it. I set my pencil at approximately the same place on the page as he was at, and I let it flow. Whatever this was, it was working. I was channelling the nerd.
Sort of hard to explain how I was doing this. It was just that, in the moment right before he wrote on the paper, what he intended to write flashed through his mind and so in to mine, and I could see the letters and numbers and copied them down as fast as I could.
This guy was smart! We were done in record time. After he left, I spent a few minutes trying to figure out the first equation. I didn’t try too hard, as no one expected a perfect test result from me.
With this hurdle out of the way, I now had the whole day to figure out the evening’s plan and who I was going to get to help me. I had seriously considered Hug
h, I really did, but on second and third thought I acknowledged that there was no way he would ever lend assistance. He was a stickler for rules, and going to the fairy den to steal back Benjy and the baby would be absolutely verboten in his eyes. Not to mention Dirk’s plan to help himself to the fairy gold.
The only other witch I knew was my sister, the one who hated my very existence. Oh man, this was not going to be easy, but I didn’t have much choice, did I? I just hoped I could find her without Seth being there.
I think I said before, Sasha and I had gotten along pretty well in the few times we’d been together as little kids, before Cate realized what was going on and put the kibosh to our friendship. I had actually felt really at home with her, I remember feeling like I belonged.
We had played magic games in our garden at Richmond Cottage, little kids learning to stretch and develop our powers. It had come to us as natural as running and tumbling down the steep slopes, learning balance and how to fall.
These memories were only coming back to me recently, I must have put them away when Edna told me to, taking my cue from her fear of all things supernatural and related to my father. But we had played with magic, having competitions like who could shoot the blue energy from our fingertips the furthest, or who could lift the heaviest object without touching it. How could I have forgotten these things?
We hadn’t been very friendly in the past few years, but I was confident I could call on her for help in this time of need, perhaps appeal to the kinship we had once shared. Never mind I was a half-blood, for I was beginning to rediscover that I did in fact have magical powers, and the witch blood in my veins was the same as ran through hers. Surely that must count for something?
Still feeling rather smug about my success with the exam, I did the stupidest thing imaginable. I walked into the lion’s den.
I deliberately chose to seek out my sister in to the Arts Building cafe, the one at the top of the atrium that the Kin crowd had long ago claimed as their own territory. Of course Sasha would be surrounded by her friends here, and that was my first mistake.
It was a spacious yet cozy room, with tall ceilings and windows looking east over the campus and down into the glassed-in space at the heart of the Arts Building. This was the perfect place in which to feel like you were on the top of the world, and the Kin students treated it like their own private sanctum. Outsiders were not welcome. And despite my genetic heritage, I was still an outsider in their eyes.
The large airy room became deathly quiet as I strolled up to the counter, everything silent except for the hum of the refrigerators. I could feel twelve pairs of eyes on my back, then the low buzz of whispers growing.
With coffee in hand, I turned around to face the room. My eyes met those of my sister, widened in surprise at my daring, with a little horror thrown in too. She was sitting by Seth, of course.
“Hey, Sasha,” I said, and nodded in her direction.
She quickly turned away to her companions. I’d gone to school with most of these kids, known them half of my life, all except for her boyfriend. They were the ‘perfect’ crowd, all of them beautiful and clever and entitled, for Kin were always so much more polished than the rest of us, as if their wealth ran them through a machine which honed all their brilliance before spitting them out into the world. Or maybe it was their magic which gave them the extra glamour.
Sasha was, of course, looking hot today. Her long black hair shone like a stream in the sunlight and her black and white print dress was perfectly fitted to her form, not showing cleavage but still way more sexy than any student had a right to be. Her lacquered nails were a tasteful red and the whole ensemble was set off by her matching red suede heels.
Yet her face was pale beneath that perfect complexion.
I straightened my shoulders to allow my own hoodie to hang gracefully on my body, but yeah, I couldn’t help but feel like a frumpish teenager in my rumpled jeans and scuffed sneakers. With a flick of my unbrushed hair I ignored her ignoring me and boldly took the table by the window overlooking the inside of the building below, my back to the lot of them.
Frig them all. This half-blood witch was claiming her rightful place in society, and they were going to have to get used to it.
I took out my notebook to set out my plan for the evening because I’ve always found it easier to write when I’m thinking. No sooner had I put pen to paper than the pages riffled as if in a breeze.
Sasha’s false tinkling laugh sounded over the buzz of conversation.
“Stop that,” she said in a teasing scold to one of her companions.
Then I heard the words ‘her father’s bastard’ whispered loudly, reverberating around the room.
The coffee in my cup began to shimmer and shake, and in mere moments small perfect waves were forming on the top. The paper cup itself didn’t move a millimeter as the tiny storm grew and coffee began to slosh over the top and splash onto the table.
A burst of laughter sounded behind me. I continued to ignore my sister and her pack of hyenas. I merely wiped up the spills and set back to writing. I glanced up to the cafeteria worker, to see if she had noticed anything to of the ordinary, but she had back firmly turned to the room. There was no one else in the cafeteria to witness these strange happenings.
But my pen was suddenly working against me, and the words I wrote were not my own.
Half-blood! Half-blood!
The accusation stared up at me. I tried to control the pen physically but just ended up with a huge gash down the middle of the page, the nib cutting through to the paper below.
“Noah!” But whatever else Sasha said to him was lost in the screams of laughter from her friends.
I shut my book, laid down the pen and turned in my seat to confront them. I couldn’t fight them on their own grounds. Not yet, but that didn’t mean I was powerless.
“Hey, sister,” I said, with nonchalance in my voice.
She winced slightly at my direct attack.
“You’re no sister of mine,” she said, darting a quick glance at her companions. “You’re an accident of nature. A freak.”
“You might not want to be drawing attention to yourself,” one guy drawled. He wore a purple shirt with large white polka dots on it. He could get away with it because it was silk and obviously expensive, and his hair was all quiffed up. His face looked like it had been photoshopped.
“Half-bloods are dropping all over the place,” another noted.
“Like flies.”
“And the air is becoming... pure.” This was said by the largest guy, who leaned back in his chair in his pressed white linen shirt and a menacing smile on his lips, leaving me in no doubt what he meant.
My heart literally skipped a couple of beats. Were they claiming responsibility for the murder of that poor woman, Tracey, the half-blood witch? Suddenly I felt very small, vulnerable and exposed.
Sasha shifted uncomfortably.
“Oh, run away home, why don’t you?” This in a bored voice, but then she caught herself, no doubt remembering that my home was now, albeit temporarily, hers. The venomous look she threw me dared me to bring that up.
“Of course, she’s going to be exiled soon enough,” she added to her friends. “And sent far away, out of our hair.”
“The sooner the better,” one girl said.
“Perhaps we should round up all the half-bloods,” White Shirt said. His lips were thin and mean. “Send them out to colonize some island off the coast.”
“What, like Alcatraz?”
“That’s far too hospitable,” said Polka Dot Quiff. “Kolyma in the Siberian Sea might do better.”
“A gulag, no less!”
Ten voices laughed and cheered. Seth had not made a sound the whole time I’d been there, but his eyes hadn’t left my face, and I could feel the hungering start. It was just magic, I told myself. See through the illusion, don’t allow him in like the other day. Don’t let that happen – I’d get eaten alive here in the witches’ eyrie.
/> Sasha brushed imaginary crumbs off her skirt, then looked up at me impatiently. “Just go, would you?” She spoke in a low, urgent voice.
“I came up here to speak with you,” I said, far more bravely than I felt. “Do you mind?”
She shrugged, not meeting my eyes. “I doubt we have anything to say to each other.”
I stood up and moved over to where she was sitting. “I need to speak with you, in private.”
Her friends laughed amongst themselves, still openly mocking me. Sasha was turning red in the face.
“In private,” I hissed again.
She glanced towards Seth, and he nodded slightly still with his eyes on me, and a small smile formed on his lips. I don’t know, but it looked an awful lot like my sister was asking permission to speak with me. What the hell? The Sasha I knew had guys dangling from her fingertips like puppets; always in control and uber-confident.
If that’s what love looked like, I wanted nothing to do with it.
We took the table furthest away from everyone, right in the corner under the supersized spider plant and I sat right next to her.
“Look, I know you don’t like me....” I began, speaking in a low voice.
“What are you doing here?” she broke in with a harsh whisper. If I didn’t know her better, I’d say she was nervous, but nothing had ever fazed my sister. “Why can’t you just... stay under the radar, like Dad told you to do?”
“What’s going on with you, Sassy?” The nickname from childhood slipped out. “You’ve changed, something’s bothering you... I’m not interested in your boyfriend, you know, if that’s what’s bugging you.”
She gave me an incredulous look and drew herself together, smoothing the skirt of her dress. “Tell me what you want to say and then go.”
“I need your help.”
