Page 51 of Her Dreadful Will
It could be like a group therapy session. Well, a group mind-flex session, anyway. Whatever was going wrong with her contacts, she could fix it. She had to fix them. They were supposed to be happy.
“Sure, maybe.” Mya was already pushing the stroller past Soleil with quick, purposeful steps. “That would be fine, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the children or the housework, or the budgeting or the shopping.”
Soleil was tempted to reach into Mya’s volisphere and tune it, but she restrained herself. No more hurried mind-flexing, except in extreme cases. Angry at herself, she stood motionless on the sidewalk, recalling how much time she used to take with the people in her hometown—carefully learning them over weeks and months, gently singing to their wills and making only the subtlest of changes.
Time to face the truth. She had tried to do too much, too quickly. She had seen the depth and breadth of the needs in this town, and she had tried to fix too many of them at once, instead of taking her time and learning each person thoroughly first.
But she didn’t havetime. She had a year, one single year before she had to report her results to the Institute Board. Less than ten months left to prove herself worthy of the title of Highwitch.
Maybe she should never have chosen such a complex thesis. It seemed simple enough at the time. She had only to prove that her magic, invasive and non-consensual though it might be, was not intrinsicallyevil, that it could change lives for good. And if the results were good, what did it matter how they were achieved?
She had thought herself more powerful and more skilled than this. Admitting that she wasn’t chafed her pride.
If only she had more time. Or more power—that would work too. If she didn’t have to spend so many hours recharging on the weekends, she’d have more time to invest in community events, in lunches and coffee dates, in getting to know her contacts more deeply so she could help them more effectively. If she could get more power, she would gain precious time as well.
Achan could give her more power. With his moonlight circles, his coven, his knowledge, she could be greater. Stronger. He had what she needed.
She moved on, distantly registering the bright morning air and the whistle of birds in the trees lining the street. Soleil checked her phone again, scanning the two texts she had sent to Achan yesterday.
“I apologize for my attitude and for what I said to you. I was tired, and dealing with a lot of new information. Please forgive me.” And then a second text: “I would like to get together again sometime. Let me know what works for you.”
He hadn’t deigned to reply.
She’d have to think of some way to make him talk to her. Maybe she’d call him after closing the shop this afternoon. Though he’d probably still be at work, digging around in people’s mouths, checking for crud and rot and infection.
Dropping her phone into her bag, Soleil lifted the shop key to the lock.
Noise from farther along the street drew her attention. Several storefronts away lay the town’s central square, a spread of neatly trimmed grass interspersed with flowerbeds and trees. In the center, bordered by red-brown pavers, stood a fountain shaped like a teapot with multiple spouts. Usually the spot was pristine, a haven of fluttering green leaves and welcoming shade, perfumed by colorful blooms. Soleil often enjoyed walking there on her lunch break. But the trees had shriveled and twisted, arching crooked black fingers over strips of dead brown grass. Mayor Brownell stood with a few others—his assistant Sarah, the city manager, and the director of parks and recreation. They were surveying the damage with solemn faces.
Soleil’s hand dropped from the lock. She hurried up the street and crossed to the square, approaching the mayor and the others. “What happened?”
The city manager shook his head. “We’re not sure. It happened overnight. Some kind of vandalism.”
Now that she was nearer, Soleil could see that the trees’ roots had actually bucked up from under the pavers, breaking through and shoving them aside. Through the rotted blackness of the roots and trunks shot streaks of sickly yellow, dotted with ridges of half-moon mushrooms, as fat and broad as if they’d been growing there for weeks. The once bountiful flowerbeds were now a slimy, moldering mass, like a bagged salad left in the fridge long past its freshness. The stink of rotted flowers made Soleil cover her nose and mouth.
If she hadn’t already suspected a magical culprit, one look at the fountain would have cemented her suspicions. The huge, heavy stone teapot had been picked up and turned upside down. As for the stone teacups that dotted the bed of the fountain, nothing was left but pale dust, heaped here and there along the dry concrete.
“It’s terrible,” Soleil managed. “I can’t believe it.”
“It will cost a lot to repair,” said Mayor Brownell. “But I’ll see it done. That’s my job. I do my job. Let’s get started on this. Call in a crew, Burt, and take care of it, okay? We should all do our jobs responsibly and well. Without distractions.”
Soleil cringed at his repetition of the phrase, and the intensity of his stare at his assistant when he said “distractions.” She clenched her teeth as she walked away, forcing herself to breathe calmly and rhythmically despite the panic twisting around her lungs. The mayor was yet another case she would have to revisit, another adjustment made too clumsily and too quickly. Another mind-flex gone wrong, because she couldn’t keep track of it all.
She didn’t have the mental or emotional bandwidth to deal with the mayor right now. He seemed to be functional enough; a little oddity in his behavior wouldn’t be noticeable with everyone so fascinated by the strange wreckage.
Someone had destroyed the square on purpose. Someone magical. Someone with a grudge, or pent-up anger, or a bursting swell of magic that demanded release.
Achan. Who else?
But whatwasthis magic? Nothing so destructive was taught by the Institute. Their classes focused on beneficial magic, specifically its application, in small, secret ways, to normal lives and careers. The Institute professors taught their students to do practical things, like how to repair the copiers at work with a single touch, or how to magically purge malware from a company’s computers. How to grow a garden so lush that you could command the highest prices for organic produce, or how to create ensigiled stones that you could carry in your pockets while serving customers, so they would be more docile and polite. How to layer illusions over products so that people would be more prone to buy them.
Some of the magic strayed into questionable areas, which peeved Soleil because she was so often singled out and criticized for her “dark” affinity. It was inconsistent at best. The professors allowed the other students to challenge and malign her via the in-class chat, watching the discussions unfold without attempting to stop them. Soleil was left to defend herself, with a little help from Lucibae and Uzigoth, whenever the criticism occurred during a class they shared.
Perhaps the other witches were only jealous that she could affect people naturally, when it took them weeks to create an effective charm. Soleil had wondered if her teachers were jealous, too. They taught her, but kept their distance and often refused to respond to her questions. The only professor willing to mentor her was Highwitch Erlich; and even he seemed hungrily fascinated with her power, and not much interested in her as a person. She liked him anyway, glad to have found someone who didn’t try to convince her to stifle her gift permanently.
Maybe Achan was right. What if the Convocation’s rules were only in place to control people with superior abilities—people like her, and like him?
Witchlord or not, Achan was definitely messing with some forbidden magic. The state of the fountain and the square had to be a message to her. He knew where she worked; he had known she would see it and recognize it for what it was. He was being defiant, and angry. Showing off his power, his reckless disregard for the rules.
