Page 7 of Her Dreadful Will
He looked away from her.
“Carebear.”
His pointed ears twitched toward her singsong voice, but he didn’t move until she said, “Come here.”
Regally he approached and allowed her to scratch his head. She used to think all Dobermans were born with their signature pointed ears, but she’d since learned that their ears were cropped as puppies, along with their tails. Apparently a floppy-eared Doberman was a lot less intimidating than one with those devilish sharp peaks.
“I wouldn’t have trimmed your beautiful ears,” she told him, rubbing his glossy black neck. “I’ll bet they were soft.”
He yawned, showing vicious canines and a long pink tongue.
“I did a bad thing tonight, Carebear,” she said. “I hurt someone. And I didn’t stay to make sure he was all right.”
The Doberman looked at her, the two brown spots over his eyes quirking like judgmental eyebrows.
“I know, okay? I’m a terrible person. But at least I got what I needed. Sort of.” Soleil pressed a hand to her eyes, groaning. “This is going to be the weakest hyacle yet. And I shouldn’t even be making another one—I have so many in play already.”
She should check on the other hyacles—tune in to each person, make sure all her mind-flex magic was still in place—but she was so damn tired. If she did check-ins with all of them now, she’d be in a recovery trance for days. Better wait until after a good night’s sleep.
“Come on,” she told him, getting up. “Let’s get some rest. Bring your bed.”
Carebear rumbled in his throat and seized the bed in his jaws, dragging it along as Soleil walked down the hall to her room. The Doberman nudged his bed into place beside hers, then folded himself gracefully onto it, his long neck still erect and his ears pricked, while she went into the adjoining bathroom.
The dog’s constant alertness usually made Soleil uneasy, but tonight she found it comforting. The officer who had first introduced them had given her a list of basic commands the Doberman knew, along with a handful of more dangerous ones for chasing, attacking, and restraining a perpetrator.
She’d practiced the hold order with Carebear before, but never the chase or attack orders—not many escaped convicts running around Wonderland.
When she came back out of the bathroom, she perched on the edge of the bed. The Doberman swiveled his lean neck, meeting her eyes.
“Carebear,” she said, stretching out one slim leg. “Lock.”
Without hesitation, he clamped his jaws around her ankle—just firmly enough to keep her in place without breaking the skin.
“Release,” she told him, and he let go. “Good boy! Oh, such a good boy!” She petted him until he relaxed, sinking down to his bed and even deigning to bathe her fingers briefly with his tongue.
Progress, she thought, climbing into bed. Only two months in Wonderland, and already so many positive things accomplished. Countless people influenced for good. Twenty-five hyacles formed, nestled in carved teakwood boxes, with one more hyacle to be crafted tomorrow. She took copious notes on each contact and saved them to the Institute’s cloud server because no way was she taking any chances with the material she needed to prove her thesis and become a Highwitch.
Once she achieved that rank, she’d have to remain in good standing with the Eldritch Convocation, the ruling body of witch society, for at least ten years before she’d be eligible to apply for the rank of Witchlord—and at that point she would have to submit to more lengthy studies and rigorous tests. In the message feeds of the Institute’s online classrooms, she’d heard rumors of a few exceptions to those rules—people so powerful or uniquely gifted they’d been allowed to complete the tests and achieve Witchlord status early. There were even rumors of someone as young as Soleil being assigned the rank. From the moment she read the rumor, Soleil had been jealous of that fortunate, faceless witch. But no one seemed to have any details or corroborating evidence, so she had tried to put it out of her mind.
Gaining the rank of Highwitch would ensure a small stipend from the Institute. It would give her some authority over any other witches in her assigned sector, and permit her to practice small workings with no more than one other witch at a time, within the purview of the Convocation’s strict rules. Maybe one day she’d even be permitted to form and register a small coven.
Soleil could only imagine the thrill of working with another witch. Since everyone at the Institute communicated online and used aliases, the only witch she had ever known in person was Tarek.
Tarek and Soleil were in the same Ancient Lit class the first semester of her sophomore year. He was clever, handsome, and good-natured, and she’d quickly developed the most hopeless crush on him. When he finally asked her out on a date, her heart soared. But it wasn’t actually a date, after all. Tarek suspected that she was a witch, and he merely wanted confirmation of the fact. Wanted to recruit her for the Institute. He was bisexual, he told her, but primarily attracted to men; and he was already involved with another student, a senior like him. Heart-sore, Soleil had thrown herself into the Institute’s training program as a blessed distraction.
Despite the whole “unrequited crush” thing, Tarek was her friend and her mentor in magic. His primary affinity was lexical magic—anything to do with words, learning, and languages—including computer languages. He had applied that affinity to a dual major—computer science and international business.
Tarek knew how to weave magic into his normal life while maintaining secrecy, and he did it with a skill that was partly personal charm and partly blatant, brilliant lies. He would have made a fantastic deep-cover spy.
Soleil still chatted with him occasionally. He was the only Institute grad she could video-call, since they already knew each other in person. Even now she could recall every detail of his face—the olive hue of his skin and the soft shine of his brown eyes. The two tiny moles on his face, one dotted kissably above his lips and the other beneath his left eye. She remembered the way his brown curls were constantly escaping the knot at the nape of his neck.
He was engaged now. Living in London, working a human job and moonlighting for the Institute. Far out of reach.
To purge Tarek from her mind, Soleil focused on her bedroom ceiling, which she had painted with swirling vines, interspersed with sigils for protection and peace. In the curls and peaks of the design, she thought she glimpsed the outline of a profile—the pale stranger on the sidewalk. As she floated in the space between consciousness and sleep, she thought he turned toward her, and opened snakelike green eyes, and smiled.
5
Elena Brownell hated going to the dentist, feared it with a gut-curling, irrational terror. She resented the fear because it was so common, much too plebeian a weakness for the mayor’s wife to harbor. The last time she’d had her teeth cleaned, two years ago, she had made a fool of herself, hyperventilating and clutching the shiny arms of the dentist’s chair while the hygienist tried to console her. Worse still—Jen Hattori had been in the neighboring exam room and had overheard the entire incident. Of course she had circulated the story among their mutual friends, who made sly jokes about it over lunches or coffee dates. Elena had shunned the one and only dental practice in town ever since.
