Текст книги "Bewitched"
Автор книги: Laura Thalassa
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BEWITCHED
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LAURA THALASSA
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LAVABROOK PUBLISHING GROUP, LLC
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Copyright © 2023 by Laura Thalassa
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Lavabrook Publishing Group, LLC
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CONTENTS
The Law of Three
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Coming Soon
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Books by Laura Thalassa
About the Author
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For Astrid, who brews potions, dances with skeletons, and howls at the moon. You have magic in your blood, love.
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THE LAW OF THREE
The magic you cast,
In use be wise and true.
Do good unto others,
For threefold it shall return to you,
If ill will moves your hand,
And woe strikes in your wake,
Threefold it shall return its might.
Threefold the curse will take.
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PROLOGUE
Memnon
I am trapped.
I have been for a very, very long time. My body and mind are bound by spells both suffocating and comforting. I cannot escape them, no matter how hard I try.
And how I have tried.
This is not as it should be. I know that. I remember that.
Someone did this to me.
Someone…but who?
The answer evades me.
My thoughts are…fragmented. Broken apart and scattered by the very wards that shroud me.
There was a life before this shadow of an existence. Sometimes I catch glimpses of it. The memory of the sun, the heavy weight of a sword in my hand, the feel of a woman—my woman—beneath me.
Even when I cannot recall much of what I look like, I can see the slope of her shoulder and the curve of her smile and the mischief shining in her sharp blue eyes.
Her image…it cuts deeper than a wound.
Need her.
My queen. My wife.
Roxilana.
Need to leave this place. Need to find her.
Unless…
What if…what if she is truly gone?
Lost to me forever?
Terror eclipses my longing and clears some of the haze from my mind. I release what magic I can, funneling it through the few holes I’ve found in these spells.
Roxilana cannot be dead. So long as I exist, she must too. I have…taken pains to make this so.
I relax.
She will find me.
One day.
One day.
So I call to her, as I always have.
And I wait.
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CHAPTER 1
Selene
Today will be the day Henbane Coven accepts me.
I exhale as I stare up at the sprawling Gothic buildings that make up the coven’s campus. The property sits on the coastal hills north of San Francisco, bordered on all sides by the Everwoods, a thick coastal forest composed of evergreen trees.
There’s no placard that announces I’m now standing on witch-owned land, but this place doesn’t really need one. If a person lingers for long enough, they’ll see something out of the ordinary—like, for instance, the circle of witches sitting on the lawn ahead of me.
Their hair and clothes float every which way, as though no longer bound by gravity, and plumes of their magic thicken the air around them. The color of their individual magic varies—from bright green, to bubblegum pink, to turquoise, and more—but as I watch, it all blends, creating an odd sort of rainbow in the air around them.
A wave of longing moves through me, and I have to tamp down the panicky, desperate feeling that follows in its wake.
I glance down at the open notebook in my hand.
Tuesday, August 29
10:00 a.m. meeting with Henbane Coven’s admissions office in Morgana Hall.
*Leave an extra twenty minutes early. You have a bad habit of arriving late.
I frown at the note, then glance at my phone: 9:57 a.m.
Well, shit.
I begin walking again, heading toward the weathered stone buildings, even as my eyes flick back to my notebook.
Beneath my scrawled instructions is a drawing of a crest with flowers rising from a cauldron atop two crisscrossing brooms. Next to the drawing, I taped a Polaroid picture of one of the stone structures in front of me, and I’ve scrawled the words Morgana Hall beneath it. At the bottom I’ve written in red:
Meeting will be held in the Receiving Room—second door on the right.
I head up the stone steps of Morgana Hall, growing breathless with my churning emotions. For the past century and a half, any witch worth her weight in magic has been an active member of an accredited coven.
And today I’m determined to join that list.
It didn’t happen last year or when you reapplied at the beginning of this one. Perhaps they simply don’t want you.
I take a deep breath and force the insidious thought away. This time is different. I’m on the official wait list, and they arranged for this interview only last week. They must be taking my application seriously, and that’s all I need: a foot in the door.
I open one of the massive doors into the building and head inside.
The first thing I see in the main hallway is a grand statue of the triple goddess. Her three forms stand back-to-back—the maiden, flowers woven into her unbound hair; the mother, her hands cradling her pregnant stomach; and the crone, wearing a crown of bones, her hands resting atop her cane.
Along the walls are portraits of past coven members, many of whom have wild hair and wilder eyes. Mounted in between them are wands and brooms and framed excerpts of famous grimoires.
I breathe it all in for a moment. I can feel the gentle hum of magic in the air, and it feels like home.
I will get in.
I stride down the hall, my determination renewed. When I get to the second door on the right, I knock, then wait.
A witch with soft features and a kind smile opens the door for me. “Selene Bowers?” she says.
I nod.
“Come on in.”
I follow her inside. A massive crescent-moon table takes up most of the space, and on the far side of it, half a dozen witches sit patiently. Across from them is a single seat.
The witch ahead of me gestures to it, and despite all my encouraging thoughts, my heart hammers.
I take the proffered seat, folding my hands in my lap to stop them from trembling while the woman who led me in takes her own seat on the other side of the table.
Directly across from me is a witch with raven-black hair, thin downturned lips, and shrewd eyes. I think I’ve spoken to her before, there’s something vaguely familiar about her features, but her identity lies just beyond my reach…
She looks up from her notes and squints at me. After a moment, her frown deepens. “You again?”
With that question, I swear the entire mood of the room shifts from inviting to tense.
I swallow delicately. “Yes, me,” I say hoarsely before clearing my throat. I’m frightened this interview is now doomed before it’s even begun.
The witch who spoke returns her attention to the papers in front of her. She licks her finger and flips through them. “I was under the impression we were interviewing a different applicant,” she says.
What am I supposed to say to that? Sorry I’m not someone else?
Short of shape-shifting into another person, I don’t think I can appease her.
Another witch, one with a hooked nose and wiry gray hair, says gently, “Selene Bowers, it’s lovely to meet you. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and why you’d like to join Henbane Coven?”
This is it. My chance.
I take a deep breath, and I dive in.
For thirty minutes, I answer various questions about my abilities, my background, and my magical interests. Most of the witches nod encouragingly. The only notable exception to this is that hawk-eyed witch who looks at me like I’m a spell gone bad. It’s all I can do to answer the questions I get without letting her intimidate me into silence.
“It’s been a dream of mine to be a part of Henbane Coven for as long as I can remember.”
“How long can you remember?” says the witch in front of me.
I squeeze my hands together, a wisp of pale orange magic slipping from between them. I’ve danced around this topic in my previous responses, not quite sure how to handle it.
“It…depends,” I say now. “But my memory in no way affects my determination or my abilities,” I say.
“But it would,” she counters. “It would affect your ability. Spellcasting costs you your memories, correct?”
There it is, out in the open.
I tighten my jaw. “Yes, but—”
She flips through the papers in front of her before pulling one out and placing it on top of the others. “The medical records you released suggest that, and I quote, ‘It is believed that the patient’s memory loss is a magic-based disease with no known equivalent and no known cure. It appears to be a progressive disease. Prognosis: terminal.’”
The silence that follows her words is somehow very, very loud. I can hear my own breath leaving my lungs. More magic has slipped out of me, rising from my hands like a wisp of smoke.
“So,” she continues, “every bit of power you use chips away at your mind, am I correct?”
After a moment’s hesitation, I give her a halting nod.
“And with every use of your magic, your brain deteriorates.”
“It doesn’t deteriorate,” I protest, annoyed by that word. I lose memories, not functionality.
Now the witch’s expression softens, but it’s pity I see on her face. I hate that, more than anything else. I hate it so much, it’s hard to breathe.
“At Henbane Coven,” she says, “we don’t simply embrace all manner of disabilities—we hold those witches in particularly high regard.”
She’s not lying. There’s a reason some of the most powerful witches have been blind, and the first recorded witch in Europe to fly a broom—Hildegard Von Goethe—did so because she had limited mobility.
“But at Henbane Coven,” she continues, “you will be asked to rigorously perform magic. If your magic use is directly related to your memory loss, then being here will undoubtedly speed up your…condition. How can we, in good conscience, ask that of you?”
I swallow. It’s a fair question. It makes me feel panicked and desperate, but it’s fair all the same.
I glance down at my hands. I’ve had to think over this very thing so many times. Do I walk away from magic simply because using it will one day kill me?
I look up at the woman across from me. “I’ve had to live with my memory loss for the past three years,” I admit. “Ever since my powers Awoke. And yes, spellcasting eats my memories, and it can make my life very complicated.
“But I cannot live without magic. Surely you understand that,” I say, my gaze sweeping over all the witches sitting across from me. “And there’s so much more to me and my magic than my memory loss.” Like the fact I’m organized as hell. I’m so goddessdamned organized, it would make her head spin. “I would like the chance to show Henbane that side of me. I have a lot to offer.”
By the time I’m finished, my magic has swathed me in its soft sunset glow. I’m wearing all my emotions out in the open, and it’s making me feel uncomfortable and exposed.
The head witch stares at me for several seconds. Eventually, she taps the table, then stands. “Thank you for your time,” she says. Everything about her expression and posture looks solemn and guarded.
Fuck.
Today was supposed to be my day. I spent so many months working toward this. There is no backup plan, except to reapply again in another four months.
I mean to get up, but my ass is rooted to this chair.
“Selene?” the head witch says. “Thank you for your time.” Just the way she says it is supposed to be hint enough. She wants me to leave. The next interviewee might already be waiting out in the hall.
Emotion tightens my throat, and my hands are clasped so tightly, it hurts.
“I contest your rejection,” I say, staring up at the head witch.
She pauses a moment, then lets out an incredulous laugh. “You’re a soothsayer now? You peered into the future and saw your results?”
I didn’t need to, though her biting response is confirmation enough.
Before I can let it get to me, I straighten my spine. “I contest it,” I repeat.
She shakes her head. “That’s not how it works.”
Now I do stand, placing my palms on the desk. “I may not have the best memory, but I am persistent, and I can promise you one thing: I will keep applying and keep coming back here until you reconsider.”
It’s my toxic trait not to give up.
“If I may interrupt,” says one of the other women. It’s the witch with the wiry hair. “You might not remember me, but I am Constance Sternfallow.”
She flashes me a tight smile. “I think you are a fantastic candidate,” she says, “but your application is flawed in a couple of critical places. You need a better magic quest than the one you’ve submitted, and you need a familiar. I know it says that’s optional, but really, we do require it in most cases.”
Constance glances at the other women sitting at the table. One of them gives her a slight nod.
Returning her attention to me, Constance says, “If you can provide those two things—”
“Constance,” the head witch cautions.
“—then, Selene Bowers,” Constance continues, ignoring her, “you will be formally accepted to Henbane Coven.”
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CHAPTER 2
All magic comes at a cost.
For sorcerers, it’s their conscience. For shape-shifters, it’s their physical form. For me, it’s my memory.
I’m a bit of an oddity among witches. For the vast majority of them, the spell components pay for their magic. And if it doesn’t, the rest comes from their ever-replenishing life force. And while my own power follows the same rules, it also takes a few memories while it’s at it.
It wasn’t always this way for me. I had a normal childhood—well, as normal as one can have when their mother’s a witch and their father’s a mage—but ever since I hit puberty and my magic Awoke, it’s been this way.
I step out of Morgana Hall, staring up at the cloudy sky, excitement and gut-churning anxiety twisting my insides.
I pull out my notebook and flip to the first blank page. As fast as I can, I scribble down the important bits:
August 29
Had the interview. A witch named Constance Sternfallow said you will be accepted if you can meet the following two requirements:
1. Go on a bomb-ass magic quest
2. Get a familiar
I try not to hurl as I stare down at what feel like two insurmountable demands. Magic quests are incredibly subjective; I’ll be at the whim of whoever reads my paper on the experience. And finding a familiar, a witch’s magical animal counterpart, is much harder than it seems on the surface.
I take a deep breath.
It’ll be fine. It’s always fine. I’m smart, and creative, and crafty as hell. I’ll manifest the shit out of this.
Shoving the notebook back into my bag, I glance at another dark Gothic building to my left. This is the coven’s residence hall for attending witches, and it’s where my best friend currently lives.
I cut across the grass to it.
As I approach, I pass two massive lamassu—sphinxlike stone statues with a woman’s head and a lion’s body—that stand on either side of the porch, the hybrid creatures protecting the threshold of the house.
Ahead of me, the door opens, and a group of witches pours out, chatting among themselves. I rush over before the door can close behind them, and after catching it, I slip in.
Today, the residence hall smells like mint and fresh bread, and I can see wisps of red-orange magic drifting from the spellcasting kitchen to my left, where one of the coven sisters must be baking something literally magical.
All supernaturals have some identifying marker to their magic—a color, a smell, a texture. It varies depending on the type of being you are. Witches and mages in particular are known for having colored magic—supposedly no two hues are exactly alike. And only witches and mages—and a few other select supernaturals—can see these magical differences.
I nearly go snooping around the house, drawn in by the sight of magic and the cozy feel of the place. It’s been a long time since I lived among other witches, and I miss the way their power calls to my own.
Instead of exploring, I cross the foyer to the staircase ahead of me and climb it. Sybil lives in one of the many rooms on the second floor. When I get to it, I call out, “Sybil—it’s me!” then promptly enter.
At first, all I see is the greenery. Her room is a mess of plants, shelf after shelf filled to bursting with whatever species she’s currently fascinated with. The vined plants snake around the room, twining around framed photos and light fixtures. It’s probably some sort of fire hazard, but then, from the faint pale purple shimmer of magic above me, Sybil might’ve already warded the room against that.
She sits at her desk, her barn owl, Merlin, perched on her shoulder. When she hears me, she swivels around in her chair, causing her familiar to flutter his feathers before resettling.
“Selene!” she says. “Shit, is your interview already over? How did it go?”
I drop my bag and shake my head. “I don’t know.”
Sybil’s face falls a little. “Is that ‘I don’t know because I don’t remember’ or ‘I don’t know because I don’t know how to feel about it’?”
“The latter one,” I say.
I glance out her window, where I can clearly see part of Morgana Hall.
A coven is a strange thing—it’s a bit like a university for witches but also offers affiliated jobs and continuation classes for witches who’ve graduated. There’s also housing for those who prefer to keep their own company, and there’s even a graveyard for witches who want to stay with the coven even into death.
The truth of the matter is that joining a place like Henbane means joining a sisterhood, one that supports you and walks alongside you throughout your life. Who wouldn’t want that? Friendship, belonging, education, and a life that revolves around magic. I’ve yearned for it for as long as I can remember.
“You’ll get in,” Sybil says, drawing my attention back to her.
I give her a sad smile. “They told me my application was missing two requirements: a magic quest—”
Her brows furrow. “But you already had one of those,” she objects.
I lift a shoulder. “I don’t think they liked my Yosemite camping trip experience.”
Sybil makes an annoyed noise. “What more do they want? Mine was one of those group magic quests that the Witches’ Club offered back at Peel Academy,” she says, reminding me of our high school years at the supernatural boarding school. “That was the saddest excuse of a magical quest.”
After a moment, Sybil says, “So they want a different magic quest. Okay, that’s easy enough to arrange. What else?”
“They want me to find my familiar.”
“What?” Now she’s starting to look outraged. “But that’s not even a requirement. I know five witches personally who don’t have familiars. These things take time.”
Sybil’s own familiar tilts his head at me, like he too doesn’t understand.
I press my lips together, not saying what to me seems obvious.
The coven is making me climb these hills because, at the end of it all, they don’t trust that I have what it takes.
Sybil grabs my hand and squeezes it. “Fuck them. You’ve got this, Selene, I know you do. You are a witch—you can literally make magic happen. So go home. Have a pity party. And then it’s time to plot.”
I do go back to my apartment in San Francisco, which is really nothing more than a basement converted into a studio flat, but it’s my little slice of heaven.
I close the door, leaning back against it while I debate giving in to that pity party Sybil talked about.
At my back, something crinkles. I turn around to see a sticky note pressed to the door.
Return Kyla’s call and apologize profusely. (She’s still mad at you for forgetting her birthday.) Also, buy groceries.
Damn. I pull out my big-ass planner from my satchel, making a few vials of something or other clink at the bottom of the bag.
The planner is engorged with extra sheets of paper, and a flurry of sticky notes stick out from its sides. I flip to a blank page and take the sticky note from my door and place it inside.
I’ll deal with you later.
For now, I have admission requirements to complete.
I walk past my bookshelf, which is filled with more of these notebooks and makeshift planners. I go through them like potato chips. These journals of mine are my memory, each one meticulously labeled.
There’s another mounted shelf across the room packed with homemade, handwritten grimoires, each one organized by subject.
My tables and counters are lined with stacks of blank sticky notes, my wall is covered with a zoomed-out map of the Bay Area, and all my most important places are pinned and labeled on it—my apartment, my work, Henbane Coven, and so on.
I was serious when I said I’d be an asset to Henbane.
Witchcraft is my purpose. I want to study it. I want to excel at it. I want to go out into the world and do big things with it. And I will, with or without the coven’s help, I reassure myself. But that doesn’t change the fact that I badly want to get in.
I cross to my desk and drop my bag next to it, then head to my kitchen.
I need tea before I settle in to work.
Unfortunately, when I get to my cupboard, a sticky note stuck to it says:
Buy more tea bags—you prefer the fancy herbal kind.
Well, damn.
I open the cupboard anyway, and sure enough, there’s no tea. There is, however, a bottle of wine.
There’s a sticky note on this too, only this one is not in my handwriting.
The booze-fairy was here!
<3 Sybil
Hell’s spells, I love that sneaky friend of mine. I grab the wine, thanking the triple goddess that it’s a twist-off cap. I unscrew it then and there and pad back over to my laptop, drinking straight from the bottle.
Probably not the best habit to drink alone, but whatever, I’ll call this my celebratory drink for standing up for myself and getting a foot in the door.
I set the bottle down and pull out my notebook before reading over the two requirements I scribbled down back at Henbane.
It’s the second one that’s going to give me hives.
Get a familiar.
I drink half the bottle of wine while I ponder how the fuck I’m going to do this. It’s not as though I haven’t already tried. The thing is, a familiar isn’t just any animal. It’s a particular creature whose spirit resonates with your own and literally binds itself to you. Supposedly, familiars are the ones who find their witches, but that hasn’t happened to me yet, and I’m increasingly skeptical that it will happen anytime soon.
Okay, screw number two for now. I take another swig of the bottle, feeling the first stirrings of a buzz. I’ll focus on the other requirement, the magic quest.
Every witch has to participate in one of these quests. The idea is you go out into nature, connect with your magic on a deep, spiritual level, and then you write about your experience. In theory, it’s supposed to be life changing, but now that it’s a requirement for coven membership, it’s been cheapened and commodified.
But whatever, the coven wants me to give them an exciting quest?
Fine.
I open an airline site, musing over where exactly I should go. I’m sure the admissions board believes an exciting quest begins with an unusual destination.
Siberia? The Kalahari Desert? The Gobi Desert? I could go to the North Pole, ride a narwhal, and call it a day.
Only, when I scroll through international fares, everything is so damned expensive. My god. I’d need to sell a kidney to afford the airfare alone.
Oh, wait. They have deals on flights under this little tab.
I click it.
Oklahoma City—that’s…hmmm. Could I make that work?
Nah, probably not.
I filter the results to just international flights and begin looking again.
Reykjavík—don’t they have natural hot springs? Sounds nice.
Venice—I don’t know. It seems magical, but not in any sort of wild, natural way.
London. Paris. Athens.
I rub my head. All these are faraway destinations, but none of them fit the bill.
I take another swig of wine. Perhaps tonight is not the night.
I’ll sleep on it and hopefully come up with something tomorrow.
“Great Goddess’s left tit.”
I stare at the receipt for the nonrefundable plane tickets and the nonrefundable cruise I booked to the Galapagos Islands.
I mean, high-five drunk Selene for finding a destination I would legitimately love to visit.
But also, what in the actual fuck, drunk Selene?
A cruise? How did we even afford this?
One look at my credit card alerts me that we did not, in fact, afford this. Drunk Selene simply decided that future Selene would have to figure it out.
I spend a good ten minutes trying not to hyperventilate.
Maybe I can work overtime until kingdom come so I can pay this off. Or I could try to find more magical odd jobs. Those helped pay the bills this past year when money from my restaurant work didn’t quite cover it.
I take in the trip itinerary again.
This is what I get for drunkenly buying myself a magical quest.
It’ll be all right—I’ll fly to Ecuador, board the boat, enjoy the hell out of the cruise, try desperately to bond with some creature—any creature—willing to be my familiar, and then return to the States, where I’ll present my magic quest and my newly acquired familiar to the coven. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.
I write all this information down in my journal and blow out a breath.
South America, here I come.
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