Page 51 of Warlocks Don't Win
I frowned at Tolly while thoughts of Winston, hotels, and dressing got mixed up in my head. Finally I snatched her away from him, burying my face in her fur while I tried not to have a complete breakdown. The last ball was so horrible. What were the odds that this one would be any less traumatic? Nope. I wasn’t betting on that kind of thing. Would it be better to be at a hotel or his place? I was going as his wife, so not going to his house would look suspicious.
“Your house,” I said, voice muffled in her fur.
He put his arm in mine and led me to the street. A car pulled up, big, black, sturdy-looking, and the next thing I knew, wewere in the back seat, staring at each other, me still holding Tolly like a lifeline.
“You had a car following us?”
“The packages are in the trunk. How do you carry so many packages without a porter?” His eyes were so sweet, like he was looking forward to taking me into his fancy house in Apple City where all the respectable people lived. I missed Singsong already. The train ride had been awful, even though he got a sleeping car so we didn’t have to be cramped together like sausages encased in plastic. He was there, and there were beds behind us the entire trip.
“Do you like sausages?” I blurted out.
His smile flashed again, showing that shamefully weak dimple. “Your sausage rolls make life worth living.”
“Yes, but that’s mostly magic. Just generic sausages you get on the street.”
“Oh.” He frowned. “You’d like to stop on the way to get some street sausages? I’ll ask the driver to see to it.”
I nodded like that’s what I’d been thinking about. What had I been thinking about? His dimple, and the way his broad shoulders stretched his magic coat that needed patching. I needed to patch it properly, like all the packages I’d gotten, all the made things that had problems that I’d worked so hard to know how to fix. I fixed shape, color, style, but also spells, reworking them so they actually, well, worked. The coat was perfect except in its age and shabbiness. Winston wasn’t shabby. Like his two hundred dollar haircut and the hair serums that went with it. There was no way he made his own hair serums out of clary sage.
“Where did you get your coat?”
He looked down at the patched and pieced leather. “It was my father’s.”
“Ah. The one who died.” Ugh. Could I throw myself out of the moving car and die? No. The traffic was too slow. I’d probably just sprain an ankle.
He nodded soberly. “He wasn’t wearing it at the time.”
“Too bad. It has a lot of protections on it. Maybe would have kept him alive.” Yeah. Too bad. Could I be any less sensitive?
“Do you know why there are so few male neutral magic users?”
Was I supposed to know this? “Neutral magic doesn’t attract those who want flashy power. Also, Warlock is traditionally an insult. To be honest, I didn’t hear the term a lot before you did the whole, ‘Warlock Detective’ thing. I guess you can manipulate anything, including what used to be derogatory. Like Warlock’s Kiss. You made the term cool and so they made a band out of it. Not sure where the beards came from, though.”
“Oath Breaker. I named my show as a confession to you. I know I betrayed you. But I want to take that betrayal and turn it into something good. Not neutral. Good. Yes, neutral magic is about relationships, with nature, with others, instead of taking something raw and forming into an entirely different element. To be honest, I haven’t been a very neutral magic user for a long time. I’ve focused on the light side of magic. Healing, rooting out evil, bringing truth to light. Not because I’m light or good, but because you are.”
My head throbbed. “I officially have a headache. You’re saying that I’m a light user? I mean, with my mother’s magic, I’ve done some really interesting thing all over the spectrum using the magic already imbued in clothing, but that’s not what I am, particularly not on the light side. It’s just safer to use than dark magic, and my insurance isn’t the best. Why are we having this conversation?”
The car stopped and the driver got out to get sausages from a vendor on the corner.
Win leaned closer, capturing my hands while his soft eyes burned with sincerity. “I can be anything you want me to be, anything you need me to be. Just say the word.”
I pulled my hands back. “Obviously. You were the most manipulative person I knew and that was before years of acting. You can be anything and make anyone anything. So what?”
He studied me. “I did try to take a death curse for you.”
“Yep. And…”
“I would rather die than let you die.”
This conversation was making my chest squeeze painfully. Everything with him was pain or pleasure. “Probably has something to do with your parent’s deaths. Have you seen a therapist? You can go with Parody.”
“I did mention that I love you.”
Yep. Pain. “I still haven’t figured out why you’d say something that ridiculous, particularly after you made sure to tell me all about how all the time we were together, when you were supposed to be my madly in love fiancé, was just a ruse.”
“You’re so…perfect.”
That got my attention. I glared at him. “Perfectly striped.”
