Page 29 of Warlocks Don't Win
“I’ll deal with Jessica,” I said and hurried out, but not too fast. We wouldn’t want him to think that I was afraid of him. Why had I kissed him? What had that shock been? It had seemed like the house, messing with me. Stupid house, sending me back into his arms so I could suck the life out of him like a proper Sage.
I went to the library, which wasn’t grand like Winston’s family library. It was more of an office crammed with books. No two-story sliding ladder for me. Too bad. I gathered up a pile of books on curses and bindings and then sat at my mother’s still cluttered desk to go through them.
After a quick perusal about curses based on bastions, like our house, I put the curse books to the side. I closed my eyes and stretched out my hands, opening myself to communion with the house.
Nothing happened. For a long time. Just…nothing.
Finally I opened my eyes and dropped my hands. “Why is the house closed off now?” It had no problem filling me with its lack of strength when I connected back in the woods. Fickle beast. And that shock, dropping me on top of Winston like that.
My mother’s glimmering haze coalesced in front of her desk, making me feel guilty for sitting in her place, also reminding me that she needed to be put to rest before she drove me mad. She put her ghost fingers on the top book. “It has secrets, just like everyone else.”
“The house has secrets? Also attitude. I thought I was supposed to be its mistress.”
“You’re Sage House’s caretaker. It needs to trust you before it will open up.”
“I cleaned it.”
“With a spell, like you don’t want to actually touch it. Poor thing, abandoned and unloved by its new mistress.” She reached a ghostly hand to a wall, all melodrama even after death.
I rolled my eyes. “Poor thing. I don’t have time for this. I’m here to break a curse, not humor a cranky old house.”
“If it felt like you were going to stay, it might be more willing to help you.”
I sniffed. I had absolutely no intention of staying there. I’d rather eat every single hat in my shop. “Fine. I’ll take care of it on my own. I’ve lived happily without a stubborn, irrational house to deal with for years.” Also my mother’s ghost. I stood up, chest aching as I hesitated.
The other way to figure out the curse was to test the subject, which was Winston’s grandmother, the only person in the world who hadn’t abandoned me when I’d gone to prison. She must think that I was the one who cursed her, that I had no sense of gratitude or obligation, if she knew it was connected to my house. How could she not? She wasn’t stupid. Maybe she was senile. I really shouldn’t hope someone was senile, but there you go. I was a bad seed.
I shook my head and left the library, avoiding the sound of Winston’s voice as I slipped out a side door. The path was overgrown to the point of ridiculousness. Still, after shoving through the jungle, I made it to the woods, to the shaded depths where I’d spent so much of my youth. Now, the trails were hard-packed from their use in Jessica’s show. About me. I should watch it to see how humiliated I should be.
I hiked through the woods until I got to the edge behind the back of Tabitha’s house. I passed a pitcher of sun tea in the wild grass, a spattering of seeds on a stump, and then reached her back door, a few steps from the old water pump. I knocked until it opened with a creak, and Tabitha looked out at me with a soft and distracted gaze.
“Clary. They said that your hair got strange, but I didn’t think it would be quite that…” She reached out to touch it, but I dodged her hand and stepped past her, into the depths of her kitchen. A pot of something was boiling in the ancient, blackened hearth. Soap? Soup? Perhaps she made her soap edible. Not less likely than making her soup soapable.
“You’re the voice of the coven. Why would you allow a golem to be created?” I asked first thing.
She frowned, vaguely confused, but it didn’t feel real to me. She looked like a caricature of a Salem witch, stuck in a past age for marketing purposes. “My dear Clary,” she croaked, once more reaching out to touch me.
I turned at the last second so her fingertips caught air instead of me. You didn’t just let people touch you unless you gained their trust through years of sausage rolls.
“My dear Tabitha,” I said with my own sweet smile. “The golem. Who created it? Why did you agree to letting such a dangerous creature be made for something as frivolous as a television show?”
The pot on the hearth chose that moment to overflow with a hiss on the flickering flames below. Thick smoke swirled while Tabitha turned to deal with the pot.
So that’s how it was going to be. It would take hours to force her to tell me anything. While she was focused on her intentional distraction, I walked back out the still open door, back past the seeds that for a moment reflected the light more like bone or teeth than seeds, but maybe I was seeing things.
Once I was back on Sage property, I let out a deep breath and tension along with it. Tabitha was a problem. She wasn’t the voice of the coven on accident, and she used that whole aura of distracted, harmless, behind-the-times to make people underestimate her. Could she be the reason behind my mother’s death? Murder. I’d been the knife behind my mother’s death, butnot the reason. I’d had no reason to kill my mother since I didn’t want her magic, her power, her house. I’d wanted Winston to save me from my legacy, from hers.
I walked the woods until I was closer to town. If Tabitha wasn’t going to give me answers, I’d have to go directly to Jessica. Who would mock my hair with even more energy than I would. And Winston. What would she say about me marrying that mage? The entire thing was ridiculous.
Her apartment was down the street from the reptile house, in a new condominium building that didn’t try to look like it had any kind of heritage. It was nice, particularly after visiting Tabitha.
I found her name and then buzzed her. It took five minutes of buzzing for her to answer, voice groggy.
“Good. Delivery. Come up.” She unlocked the doors without actually checking to see who I was. Interesting. Not nearly paranoid enough for someone who dealt with real golems. Likely someone else on her set was in charge of the actual magic that could backfire so easily if you weren’t paying attention.
I walked up the steps, skipping the elevator because I wasn’t fond of being trapped in metal boxes. Reminded me of jail. She was on the seventh floor. I walked into her apartment, aware that I might be all wrong about her, and she might have something even nastier to throw at me than the golem. She did, but it was the stench of excess, vomit and sticky sweet something. She was slumped on the couch with an ice pack to her head, looking like she’d been run over by a very bad spell, or, if the scent of her apartment was any indication, a hangover.
“Who is in charge of your golem?” I asked, dropping on the couch beside her.
