Page 35 of Warlocks Don't Win
I shuddered at the thought of the two of them together.
“Does it hurt?” Winston murmured, his mouth so close to my ear he only needed to breathe the words to be heard. His hair kept brushing my neck. Such gorgeous locks. The rest of him was glamoured just enough to not be recognizable as Winston the Warlock. I could see past it since he hadn’t put any real effort into it, and making a glamour that would fool people who already knew what you looked like took far more magic. He was probably magically exhausted from creating a way door. Those weren’t easy. My linked back-door in the shop had taken weeks. Of course, I’d mostly done it to see if I could. I could, and it was handy for avoiding some traffic, but not much else. There was nowhere else I wanted to get to quickly.
I shivered from his breath on my skin. “Only the thought of paying for your tickets. I’m not sure why I let Jessica come along. I guess it’s an old habit that I’d hoped had died along with my mother.”
She elbowed me. “I’m right here. Don’t talk tohimlike I’m not even here. If you were so worried about money, you could, I don’t know, make some.”
“That’s right. You need to pay me back fees for using my name in your show.”
“How else was I supposed to find you? What did I ever do to deserve your abandonment?” Her eyes welled with fake tears. That was the Jessica I remembered, manipulative to the tear ducts.
Winston snorted. “You didn’t even show up for her trial.”
“Of course not! My mother died and people were talking like I did it, following in Clary’s footsteps! I had to disappear so I didn’t end up like her. It wouldn’t have helped her case, and its not like you should talk. Doing nothing was a vast improvement over your betrayal. Not that she shouldn’t have known better, being the kind of low-life, soulless, bottom-dweller that you are, but?—”
I cut her off by elbowing her in the stomach hard enough to knock the air out of her. Only I was allowed to insult Winston. My husband. Gulp. “You’re saying you created a television show for the sole purpose of luring me back home?” I gave her a skeptical look. “When I first showed up, you weren’t happy to see me.”
She shrugged. “Some weirdo came with Winston the Wicked and I’m supposed to believe it’s you? The Clary I knew wouldn’t ever forgive or forget that kind of betrayal. Of course the Clary I knew wouldn’t have fallen for his lies in the first place.” She glared at him past me.
I rolled my eyes and slouched back in my seat, done with this conversation. “Whatever. I don’t watch TV.”
She got a hurt look. “But we used to spend hours together watching those old shows. Gilligan’s Island, I Dream of Genie, Bewitched. You’re saying that you just stopped? Who even are you? Why haven’t you cursed Winston by now? What are you waiting for?”
I hunched my shoulders, trying to ignore her words and Winston’s silence. He was brooding so loudly right up against my side. My shoulder really was hurting. Why had I decided to leave Singsong City again? Did Winston manipulate me into it? Sure. There was a curse, and it was rooted in Sage House. Those were the facts. Irrevocable.
“Seriously, Clary,” Jessica continued, apparently not reading my body language. “It seems like you’re just stumbling around in the dark. You used to be so much…more.”
I rolled my eyes again, but didn’t say anything. What could I say to something so obviously true. I used to put effort into looking competent. And look where that got me. Squished on a train between two people I’d been avoiding for half of my life.
Winston broke his broody silence to say, “Looking competent is not the same as being competent. Appearances are meaningless without capability.” His voice was a delicious rumble. Why did it have to be so delicious?
“But stripes?” Jessica tugged on a strand of my hair to make a point.
That’s when Winston slid his arms around me and pulled me onto his lap, turning so he faced the aisle and Jessica was behind him. I was on his lap. In public. No one could see us, but still. He covered my shoulder with his hand and for a moment the pulsing ache was worse before it slowly got better.
“What are you doing?” I asked stiffly, trying not to notice how good he felt wrapped around me.
“I’m not going to let Jessica pull your hair like she’s a five year old bully who doesn’t understand personal boundaries.”
I blinked into those soft caramel eyes. “Right. Pulling my hair is so much more invasive than pulling all of me onto your lap.”
He felt so good, strong, right.
He brushed my nose with his and Jessica gagged. He murmured, “It’s the price of going to see my grandmother and Jessica without telling me about it. Either of them could have killed you.”
Jessica scoffed. “Hardly. She’s not easy to kill. Then again, she did go see Tabitha before me, and she could definitely have killed her so…”
I peered over Winston’s shoulder at Jessica, ignoring the other people in the car who weren’t looking at us, almost like this entire row was glamoured. It was. And silenced. I’d learned how to do that early in my life because Jessica talked too much, and always had. Something she said niggled at me. She’d said that people accused her of murdering her mother during my trial, not after.
“I thought Merta was killed during the battle to control the coven, after I’d been convicted. Isn’t that what you said?” I frowned at Winston whose arms tightened around me. I liked it so much. I couldn’t like being close to him, because I hated him. Absolutely, but I couldn’t react too strongly, or I’d look like I liked it. Or something. Panic. I was trying to focus on murders, but how was I supposed to do that when my soul-bound husband/enemy was wrapped around me? He didn’t feel like my enemy. He felt like home, how he’d always felt.
He nodded, eyes so soft and melting. It was like his eyes weren’t thinking about murders either. “That’s what the reports said. Was she killed before, but no one reported it until later? I could have sworn that she was poisoned in a public place, full of witnesses.”
Jessica scowled over his shoulder at him. “Yeah, she was poisoned in the tea house. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t even there. Somehow that made it even more suspicious. That was a time when everyone was calling everyone a murderer. Clary’s whole thing started it. Your witness didn’t help.”
“But it was hemlock?” I asked, trying to focus on the important things. Why was it important? Hemlock was easy to access for anybody.
She shrugged again. “That’s what they say. I wasn’t around.” She’d always had issues with her mother. She probably felt guilty for not being too sad about her death. I didn’t have that problem. Issues aside, I’d gotten along with my mother almost unnaturally well.
