Текст книги "Bewitched"

Автор книги: Laura Thalassa

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

CHAPTER 13

The week following my move-in flies by in a blur. I fully settle into my new room, Nero forms a routine with coming and going from the house to the woods around the coven. My bookshelves are finally all organized with my old notebooks, and my current one is filled with my class schedule and maps. I’ve picked up my course textbooks and even flipped through a few of them.

I’m ready for my first day of classes tomorrow.

I clomp down the stairs now, Nero prowling next me like a shadow. From the hall to my right, Sybil chats with another witch.

When my friend sees me, she calls out, “Selene! Where are you going?”

I should definitely be doing a better job of getting to know the witches I live with, and now is an opening to do so. I’ve already chatted with a few of them, and I’m embarrassed to admit that when I’ve been able to, I’ve written down their names, their familiar’s species, which rooms they live in, and anything else distinct about them, like some sort of obsessed stalker.

I mean, it does work.

“I’m going to take pictures of the different buildings on campus and put together a map.”

“Didn’t you do that yesterday?” she says.

I hesitate now. Did I?

Sybil uses my hesitation to head over to me. “Babe, you can chill out on the studiousness,” she says quietly.

Over Sybil’s shoulder, the witch she was talking to now eyes me curiously.

I lower my voice. “You know I can’t.”

I wish it were different. I wish I didn’t need to work harder just to be treated normally by my peers. But it is what it is, and Sybil of all people knows this.

She frowns. “It’s just, we’re finally under the same roof, and yet I haven’t even gotten to hang out with you since you moved in.”

I swallow, feeling this tension forming between us. I don’t want that. I’m adamant about proving my worth here at Henbane, but I also don’t want to strain my relationship with my best friend.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just…don’t want to screw this up for myself.”

Sybil’s expression gentles. “You won’t. You’re brilliant.” She lets out a breath, then nods to the door. “Go ahead then. Map out the coven, and when you get back, let’s hang.”

I sit on a stone bench at the back of Lunar Observatory, the northernmost building on campus, as the sun dips below the horizon. One of my notebooks lies open on my lap, this one detailing all sorts of information about Henbane Coven, from my class schedule, to notes on where things are, to what times certain buildings are open and closed. There are also notes on the idiosyncrasies that certain buildings have, like the fact the chairs in Cauldron Hall are prone to levitating, thanks to a prank that was never fully reversed.

I smooth my hand over the pictures of Lunar Observatory that I’ve taped to the page, lingering on the glass dome atop the building that’s supposedly spelled to make the heavens appear closer than they are.

There’s a thrum building in my veins and tightening my chest. At first, I think it’s simply me wishing I had an astrology class this semester—I don’t—but…the feeling is persistent. It lingers even after I finish scribbling notes and close my journal. If anything, it seems to grow as I slip my notebook in my bag and glance up at the twilight sky.

I stand just as the lamp in front of me flickers on. I’m slinging my bag over my shoulder when magic brushes against my skin, the touch like a stroke of a hand.

Empress…I have found you.

I suck in a breath, snapping my head up. I glance around, but there’s no one in this section of coven property. Yet now that I’m focusing on it, I swear I can feel those smoky-ale eyes on me.

There’s a pressure forming in my chest, right over my heart. I move my hand to it, trying to massage the tension away.

Right as I do so, that familiar indigo magic billows out from the tree line bordering the buildings, slithering in my direction.

Last time that magic coiled around me, it knocked me out and left me trapped in a tomb.

Can’t let it get to me again.

My feet move before I fully form the command in my mind.

Run.

I’m sprinting, my arms pumping and my bag banging against my side as I force my legs faster and faster. Past All Saint’s Hall, past Morgana Hall. My thighs burn, and my breath is already ragged. The wind howls in my ear as I push myself harder.

He followed me back.

Goddess above, he followed me back.

It was one thing to hear his whispered voice carried on the wind. But to see his magic again and to know he’s on the other end of it…

My nausea rises, and I force it down. Barf later, once you’ve escaped.

I feel rather than see a plume of inky-blue magic wrap around my waist like a phantom arm. I cry out, even as more of Memnon’s—and it must be Memnon’s—power fills the air around me, until it obscures the forest and buildings and the darkening sky.

Come to me, my queen…

I’m breathing harshly as I stop. I feel the tug of his power already, seeping into my skin and slipping into my lungs.

You left me before, but not again…never again…

The compulsion to follow that voice builds within me. I can’t tell what sort of spell this is, but it must be one.

I follow the line of indigo magic back to the tree line. It continues deep into the Everwoods forest. I take a step toward it, even as my rational mind screams at me that I’m being enchanted.

But my blood is heating, and my skin throbs at every soft brush of Memnon’s power.

Don’t be a fool, Selene! It’s just his magic lulling you into some false sense of safety.

I pinch my eyes shut, keeping my feet rooted in place.

Return to me, Empress. We have been parted for too long…

There’s something sensual in those words and that voice, something that reminds me of the Memnon from my dreams. It breaks my resistance altogether.

I take a halting step forward. Then another. It’s hard to fight that voice when my deepest, most innate senses are coaxing me toward it.

I think I’m being bespelled. That has to be what this is. I wish I hated it more than I do.

I make it to the tree line, my eagerness mounting. The longer Memnon’s magic grips me, the more intoxicating it becomes.

About fifty feet into the woods, the smoky magic dissipates.

I tense, glancing around. My flesh prickles with awareness.

Memnon steps out from the darkness like some nightmarish vision. Only, fuck, this man is real. And he’s even more devastatingly beautiful than in my memories.

My gaze moves over his tall frame, and it sweeps over his broad shoulders. I can see the tattoos running down his sculpted arms. Even in a T-shirt and jeans, this man looks all warrior.

My eyes move to his face, and if I weren’t still ensnared by his magic, I would’ve staggered back.

In my dream, Memnon’s intense beauty was heightened by desire and flame. Now, however, in the darkness where the shadows are deep and unforgiving, Memnon simply looks brutal—his cheekbones sharp, the curve of his lips cruel, and those luminous eyes wrathful. It’s a small mercy that I can’t see his scar. I don’t think I could take seeing that violence on display right now.

He steps forward, moving with a menacing sort of grace. “Did you really think I was done with you?” he says softly in that old language, his voice rolling and guttural. I understand him with alarming clarity. “That I would leave you in that tomb to rot as you left me?” He shakes his head slowly. “No, no, no.”

My pulse quickens. “Why did you follow me here?” I demand in English.

“Speak to me in our tongue, Roxilana!” he snarls.

“I don’t know ‘our tongue’!” I shout back in another language. The words welled from somewhere deep within me just as they did back in Memnon’s tomb.

A small sound escapes me, and I clutch my throat.

See, the thing is, that was technically not a lie. While I have always been able to understand Latin and Ancient Greek—and even read a bit of Ancient Egyptian—I’ve never spoken this language. At least, not that I remember.

Memnon stalks forward before grasping my upper arms. “I don’t know what game you are playing, but it will end.”

This close to Memnon’s staggering form, I feel particularly small and helpless.

“Let me go,” I say in that ancient language. Again, I don’t mean to speak it; it just flows from me. I’d marvel at it, but my fear is pushing out every other emotion.

“Not until you tell me what you’ve done to me,” he demands, furious.

I ache as I stare into those eyes. This feels so much like my dream, where confusion overlays reality.

“What are you talking about?” I say, not even flinching this time when the words come out in that other language.

He gives me a bit of a shake. “You dismantled my army. Destroyed our empire, ripped me from our lands, and thrust me into this twisted future where nothing makes sense!” He all but roars this last part.

“Let me go.” My voice rises with my pounding heart, and there’s steel in it. My power coils within me, gathering itself. The fear I felt only moments ago is giving way to anger.

Memnon’s lips curve into a smile. But his eyes are sharp as swords. “But haven’t you missed me, Roxilana?”

“Who the fuck is Roxilana?” Again, this strange language.

He gives me an odd look now. “What is this game you’re playing?”

“Why would I ever play a game with you? I don’t even know who you are!”

“You don’t know who I am?” His eyebrows lift in disbelief. Then he laughs, the sound chilling. “I have been inside you more times than there are stars to count. I am no more a stranger to you than your own skin is.”

I have been inside you more times than there are stars to count.

I stare at him for a long moment, cold terror washing over me. This creature lured me to his tomb and had me spring him from it. And then he followed me across an entire continent, and now he believes we’ve been together—like, together, together.

I am in deep shit.

“There’s been a mistake,” I say slowly.

My mind races furiously, trying to recall my memories from South America, several of which have long since washed away. I need to get to the root of this problem.

“Mistake?” Memnon growls. His eyes begin to glow like hot coals, and the air sizzles with power. I jolt, recognizing what supernatural’s magic presents like that.

Not a demon. Not a vampire or a fae.

A sorcerer.

They’re nearly as bad as demons. A sorcerer’s power eats away at their conscience. The stronger one is, the more heartless they’ll be.

And Memnon feels staggeringly strong.

Unaware of my thoughts, he continues. “After all you have done to me—after all the betrayal—”

“Listen,” I say, cutting him off, “whoever you think I am, I’m not her.” This Roxilana broad really fucked with the wrong dude. “Please, just let me go.”

Memnon’s eyes flare a bit brighter. “You dare to play ignorant. To call me a liar and what we are a mistake. You, the woman I gave everything to.”

“But I didn’t give you everything,” I insist. “You have me confused with someone else.”

He ignores my point. “You locked me away, denied me even the basic decency of death. I was never given funerary rites, never allowed to pass from this world to the next. You kept me from the afterlife, where I could ride the skies with my ancestors.”

I stare up at the man, who looks like some ancient deity.

“Instead, I lay caged for all this time. But I am caged no longer.” The last part comes out grave, ominous. “The world will know my wrath—you will know my wrath, my queen.

“I will put you at my mercy,” he vows. “And I will destroy your world bit by bit until all you have left is me.”

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CHAPTER 14

I stifle a yawn as I sit in Spellcasting 101, my first class of the semester. After my encounter with Memnon, I didn’t sleep much last night, instead using my time to scribble down what I could remember of the incident. Like the fact that he’s a sorcerer and that he happens to want to ruin my life.

I will put you at my mercy. I will destroy your world bit by bit until all you have left is me.

At least he let me go. I hadn’t been sure he would after all he had said, but Memnon did release me shortly after his threat, and he retreated into the darkened forest. Somehow, that was even more terrifying than him standing right in front of me. Knowing this vengeful sorcerer was lurking unseen in the Everwoods was partly what kept me up last night.

I rub my eyes, and my tired mind slips. For an instant I am back in my room, sprawled across my bed, my black tail…

Tail?

I snap out of Nero’s mind and back into my own, forcing myself to sit up straighter and actually listen to the lecture.

“As you all know, magic is steeped in everything,” my instructor says from the podium. Mistress Bellafonte is a middle-aged witch, her coppery locks shot through with white. “Most people barely sense it. Fewer still can access it. Only witches and a few other types of supernaturals can interact with and manipulate it.

“One of the oldest and most basic ways to do so is through invocation. That is, utterance,” Mistress Bellafonte says, touching her lips. “As we move through this course, we’re going to come back to this theme over and over. But for now, let’s dig into that.”

A thrill shoots down my spine because even though I’m tired and this topic is drier than the Sahara, I’m finally, finally a student at this coven.

“Certain elements of language can add to the potency of an invocation and thus a spell. The most obvious example of this is rhyme. But there are others. An element less commonly known is the use of ancient power words.” She gives the room a meaningful look.

“Why is this the case?” she says. “It’s the same reason why a witch’s power only increases with age—magic is attracted to old things.” She pauses again. “You will be more powerful in ten years than you are now. And more powerful ten years after that. Even when your bones are brittle and your muscles are twisted with age, magic will surge within you.”

The room has gone quiet.

“The world that values your pretty, youthful face knows nothing of your true power. Though in time, you will discover it.”

Mistress Bellafonte gives us a tight smile. “But I digress.”

She paces around the front of the room, her periwinkle magic curling lovingly around her ankles. “In the next several weeks, we shall learn some arcane words and phrases, and we will apply them to spells before we move on to common spellcasting ingredients, the use of writing, and the role grimoires play. We’ll discuss what effect seasons and the time of day play into casting, as well as lunar phases and astrological events.

“My hope is that by the end of the semester, you’ll have knowledge and some commonsense tools to work with as you come to understand your own power and gifts.

“For now, let’s start a basic introduction into the sounds of different dead languages.

“Crack your books open to page twenty-one.”

I open my textbook and turn to the requested page. On it is the image of a stone tablet, Egyptian hieroglyphs etched into the stone.

“This is stela found in Karnak. We’re not going to translate it all, but I want to recite a portion of it…”

She begins to read it, and no, that’s not right. I shake my head absently. She’s emphasizing the wrong consonants, and the vowels—

“Excuse me, but do you disagree with something I’m saying?”

I don’t realize Mistress Bellafonte is speaking to me until her magic curls under my chin and tilts my head up from my textbook so I can meet her eyes.

My skin heats as the rest of the witches in the room turn in their seats and focus their attention on me.

The silence drags on.

“Well?” the instructor presses.

I swallow, then glance down at the words. I don’t know how to voice these murky thoughts of mine, so I simply read what I can of the stela.

“Jenek nedej sew meh a heftejewef. Jenek der beheh meh qa sa, seger qa herew re temef medew.” The words roll off my lips, different from English and different from whatever language I spoke with Memnon. I feel…less certain with Ancient Egyptian, despite correcting the instructor.

I exhale and translate. “I am the one who will save him from his enemies. I am the one who removes arrogance from the haughty, who silences the boisterous so he does not speak.”

It’s quiet for a long moment.

“You didn’t use your magic to read that,” she finally says.

I meet her eyes. There’s a lot of confusion in them, as well as something else, something that looks like wariness.

She blinks and clears her throat, even as the witches around me continue to stare.

“Exceptional work,” she finally says before clearing her throat again. She turns from me then and proceeds to lecture the class about the stela and the power words that could be taken from it.

I frown as I read the rest of the stone tablet. It discusses martial victories against the Nine Bows—the various enemy nations of Egypt. The words on this stela would be better used to invoke dark magic, which is rooted in violence. They shouldn’t be in this textbook.

A bloodcurdling scream cuts through my thoughts, the sound coming from somewhere outside the room.

Mistress Bellafonte pauses and gives us all a reassuring smile. “Probably just Mistress Takada looking at all the spells she must grade,” she says jokingly before peering down at her notes once more.

But another scream follows it, and this one continues on and on.

“Murder!” someone finally cries. “A witch has been murdered!”

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CHAPTER 15

“They say her eyes were gouged out and her heart was ripped from her chest,” says Charlotte, the witch sitting across from me. I sit with her, Sybil, and several other witches in our dining room, all of us eating dinner.

I make a face into my food. The details are quickly making me lose my appetite.

“I heard she was naked,” adds a witch named Raquel, and she looks as though she wants to hurl.

For the twentieth time today, my heart races. Memnon shows up last night full of ominous threats, and now a witch is dead?

It’s just a coincidence, I try to tell myself. He wants vengeance on you, not other witches.

“Poor Kate,” another witch says.

“You knew her?” Charlotte asks, raising her ice-blond brows.

Overhead, the lights in the wrought iron chandeliers flicker, making the gloomy atmosphere all the more intense.

“Mm-hmm. She was a year above me, but she’d taken a leave of absence to work for some company that needed witches. Can’t remember the name of it. I didn’t know she was coming back to school.”

“I think she did move back,” Sybil says. “I’m pretty sure I saw her moving into the house—right down the hall from you, Selene,” she says, bumping my side.

“She’s my neighbor?” I vaguely remember speaking to a few of the girls who lived on my floor, but I don’t remember anyone named Kate.

“Was,” Raquel corrects me.

There are so many wide, spooked eyes around our table. And when I glance at the other tables in the room, the witches present are tense, and their conversations are subdued. I think everyone is considering how the witch found on the coven’s property could have been them.

Another witch with wiry hair and a sharp nose sits down, dropping a massive leather journal on the table. “I want to know what her final words were,” the witch says.

My gaze moves to her shoulder, where a—is that a newt?—sits perched.

“What’s that?” Raquel nods at the book.

“It’s my own Ledger of Last Words.”

“Olga,” Sybil chastises. “Now is really not the time.”

“Actually, now is exactly the time.” Olga’s eyes get a fanatical shine to them. “And I’m in the process of getting approval to pull Kate’s final words. It could help catch the killer.”

“That’s still disturbing as shit,” says the witch at the table whose name I still don’t know.

Olga lifts a shoulder. “Never said I wasn’t disturbed.” She laughs, and some of the women at the table laugh with her until it dies away. In its wake is a tense silence, one only punctuated by the scrape of silverware.

Charlotte leans forward in her seat.

“Who do you think did it?” she whispers.

My fears expand in my chest.

It may be my fault. I released an ancient evil, and he may be preying on young witches.

I catch Sybil’s eye before I swallow my nerves and shake my head.

“No clue,” I say to Charlotte.

No one else at the table has a better answer.

It’s only after dinner, when Sybil and I go to her room to work on our first assignments, that I decide to unburden myself.

I try to not let my chin tremble as I sit there on her floor, one of my textbooks open in front of me, while my friend moves about the room, watering dozens of potted plants crammed on shelves or hanging from the ceiling.

Now that a witch is dead—a witch who lived down the hall from me—I can’t help the terror seeping into my veins.

“He found me,” I say softly, jiggling one of my legs in agitation.

Sybil pauses. “Hmm?” she says, pausing to glance over her shoulder at me.

“Memnon,” I say. “He found me.”

“Wait.” Sybil sets down her watering pail. “What?” Her shrill tone has her owl ruffling his feathers before he resettles on his perch.

“Yesterday, when I was getting ready to head back here, he found me. He was lurking in the woods around the coven.”

“Are you okay?” she says, alarmed. “Did he hurt you? Threaten you?”

I swallow and shake my head. “I’m fine. No, he didn’t hurt me. Yes, he threatened me,” I answer.

“He threatened you?” Sybil’s voice has gone shriller. “Screw the Law of Three and its consequences, I will find a curse so potent, it will shrivel his dick off.”

I laugh a little at the thought.

Sybil sits in front of me, pushing my textbook aside. “Tell me everything about what happened.”

So I do.

By the end of it, Sybil has paled. “So this guy actually thinks you’re his wife?”

I nod miserably.

“And he followed you all the way here to Henbane?”

Another nod.

I twist my hands together, chewing on my lower lip. “And now a witch is dead,” I say softly.

Realization fills Sybil’s eyes. “You think he did it.”

I scrub my face. “I don’t know. It seems awfully likely though, right? He shows up, and the next day, a witch is dead.”

Sybil shakes her head. “That…definitely doesn’t look good,” she agrees. “But it could still be a coincidence.”

I want to believe that. I really do. Otherwise, that witch’s death is on my conscience.

Sybil frowns, furrowing her brow. “Just promise me you’ll be careful, babe.”

I take a deep breath. “I promise.”

The coven buzzes with activity as classes come into full swing, and even with the recent murder still fresh, life resettles. Despite all the supernatural aspects of a witch’s life, it’s the mundane routines that move the days here.

I glance out the window from my wards class. Outside, another class is sitting on the coven’s front lawn, growing massive beanstalks in a matter of minutes.

“…the easiest and most durable of wards come in the form of amulets.”

I turn my attention back to the front of my class, where Mistress Gestalt, a guest speaker, is giving the lecture. I take in the elderly witch as she leans on the podium. She’s what the fairy tales not so lovingly refer to as a hag.

Only, the stories didn’t get a lot of things right. For instance, hags don’t need to have warts and sinister features. This one, in particular, is more of a HAG—a Hot-Ass Grandma.

“Tell me,” she says now, “when you think of amulets, what comes to mind?” Her long white hair sways behind her as she walks.

Someone raises their hand, and she points to them. “A stone or pendant you wear around your neck.”

She nods. “Anyone else?”

Someone else calls out, “Signet rings.”

“Good, good,” Mistress Gestalt says. She stops. “What if I told you I was wearing ten different amulets? Do you think you could find them all?”

My eyes sweep over her. She wears a loose royal-blue dress cinched with an embroidered belt, a wrist full of colorful bangles, and leather sandals.

She pulls her hair away from her ear, showing off a copper earring with etched writing. She points to it. “This may be my most obvious example. But I should also tell you that the crowns on three of my teeth are marked with protective wards, and the belt has been embroidered with another spell.”

She points to a few of her bangles, a button at the top back of her dress, and a buckle on her sandals.

“Amulets do not need to be obvious or conventional—there are quite a few I’ve spelled over in the medical field—pacemakers, implants, dentures, and more.”

She spends the rest of the two-hour lecture going over the nuances of amulets and all the spells that can be placed on them. I write down notes on everything she says, determined not to miss a single detail.

A bell trills, marking the end of the class.

“Your instructor wants me to remind you all that your amulets will be due at the end of the week,” Mistress Gestalt calls out. “I myself will be looking them over. The witch who creates the most exquisite work will be offered a formal apprenticeship at my company, the Witch’s Mark.”

I gather my things alongside my classmates, my mind turning over the idea of an apprenticeship. Is that what I want? Eventually, I’ll have to specialize in some kind of magic. I wonder what a career that specializes in amulets would look like…

“Selene Bowers.”

I startle at the sound of Mistress Gestalt calling—and hell, simply knowing—my name. Of course, a name is easy enough to procure, if you’re a witch.

I glance over at her.

She gives me a soft smile, her light eyes a little vacant. “May I have a word?”

My gaze sweeps over the rest of the witches leaving the room. I don’t know what she could possibly want from me, unless it’s something I’ve forgotten.

After a moment, I nod. “Of course.” I make my way toward her.

“Good, good.” She grabs her notes from the podium and slips them into a bag at her feet.

My heart is picking up speed as I step up to her. I don’t even know why I’m nervous. I think it’s simply habit that makes me assume I’m being recognized for doing something wrong rather than, I don’t know, standing out for my amazing magical talent.

“It’s an odd form of witchcraft, yours,” Mistress Gestalt says as she zips up her bag.

I raise my eyebrows. She knows my brand of magic? I shouldn’t be surprised. Crones are especially sharp.

She straightens, and I catch sight of her unusual eyes.

“Incantatrix immemorata.” She overenunciates each word. “The unmentioned witch, whose magic devours her memories. Very peculiar. Very rare. I wonder why that is …”

My brows draw together; I’m taken aback by the fact she knows this about me. “That was just the way I was born.”

“Hmm…” Those light eyes scrutinize me, her body trembling a little. Though her magic is strong, her limbs seem light as a bird’s. “No, I don’t think it is.”

My gaze sharpens on hers. Now that I’m looking closely, I realize why her eyes look so unusual. There’s no pupil in either of them. Is she…blind?

“Who needs sight when the third eye sees all?” she says.

I recoil from her a bit.

Man, elderly witches are spooky. That really is when we come into our highest power.

“Selene, dear girl, you are being circled by vultures. Many eyes are on you. Some of them good, some of them bad, some a bit of both.”

“What?” I say, alarmed.

“Power is to be celebrated and feared. You have it in spades, but it is locked away. Find the key and use it. Don’t be a pawn when you’re a queen. No one commands a queen.”

I blink at her, and my hand twitches from the urge to write this all down before I can forget.

“I don’t…understand,” I say finally, tightening my hold on my bag.

She laughs, the sound wispy; it makes me think of corn husks for some odd reason.

“There is a lot you cannot remember, but do not fool yourself into thinking you do not understand, Selene Bowers.” She gives me a meaningful look with those all-seeing eyes of hers, and for a moment, I think she must know about Memnon.

“Make your amulet,” Mistress Gestalt says. “Protect yourself against harm.”

Harm?

“And Selene?” she says. “The villains are coming for you. Ready yourself.”

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