Page 11 of Witchlore
“Tell me.”
“Why?” I stare at him.
“I like silly jokes, indulge me.”
“It was cringey, we were doing this thing about how King Henry was trying to persuade Anne Boleyn to be his mistress and I said…” I flush. “If he liked it, he should have put a ring on it.”
Bastian stares at me.
“Did you do that old dance? With the”—he flips his hand back and forth—“hand thing?”
“Yeah.”
“So she laughed?”
“Yeah.” At the time, it had seemed miraculous. Her laugh was the opposite of her, brash and bawdy rather than tittering and girly. I loved it first, before I loved her.
“Huh,” Bastian says thoughtfully. “That is funny.”
I wonder if he always announces things he finds funny rather than laughing at them.
“And was that it, then?” he asks. “She was blown away by your quirky personality?”
“No, we became friends first.” I smile, remembering the notes we’d pass in class at the beginning and how we escalated to messages, to secret meetups, each step a milestone to me of a closeness I’d never had with a friend before. I didn’t even care that we never hung out with her friends, or sometimes she’d pretend we’d never spoken. I took every second of her attention as an unforeseen miracle, but soon they had piled up and my life was saturated with Elizabeth’s brightness. “Yeah, she was popular but, like, she wasn’t stuck up. She was nice to me, and she had this laugh and I just…”
“Caught feelings?” Bastian says ruefully.
“Yeah.” I sigh. “Then we kissed this one time, randomly, and it… snowballed.”
We’d been the only two in the college library at the end ofa cold December day, preparing for the practical presentation at the end of my module that would be 70 percent of my grade. I’d been trying to make magic come out of my fingers to no avail for hours and finally, feeling like I was the worst person ever, I’d slammed my head into the desk so I wouldn’t cry. She’d looked at me, leaned across the table, and pressed her lips against mine. At first, it was soft, sort of comforting, but then I realized it might be my only chance to kiss the girl I had been low-key obsessed with for months so I went for it. When I did, she made this delicious little gasping sound and her opal ring glowed with a creamy light. That was that.
From then on, I kissed her whenever I could, catching the train to Alderley Edge and walking to her house to “study.” She didn’t live in student accommodation, since her family home was only a quick train journey from the city, and while both her parents were at work, we watched movies, ate ice cream, had dreamy daytime sex, and listened to music sitting on her trampoline in the big back garden that looked out on the woods. She was too scared of being outed to go on real dates in the city or to stay overnight at the student accommodation in Ancoats with me, but it didn’t stop the five months between December and May being the most perfect time of my life.
I realize my cheeks are wet. I brush tears hastily away with the back of my sleeve and look down, hoping he hasn’t noticed.
“But… you didn’t kill her?” Bastian asks hesitantly. It’s weird, because even though the police and the coroner are satisfied it was a brain bleed from the fall, even though legally, I absolutely didn’t kill her, my parents, Elizabeth’s parents, the college, all the other students, even sometimes myself are absolutely sure that I did.But the truth? Well, as always with me, it’s more bloody complicated than it looks.
“No.”
“So why do they say—”
“Because I was there,” I say sharply, and I tell the truth, mainly because not saying it is a knot in my throat that I can’t undo. “When she died. I don’t know, we were in this cave, she wanted to do this spell that she said would boost my magic, so I’d actually be able to cast a spell for a change.…” He doesn’t even look a little bit surprised. Of course, he’ll have already heard from our classmates how inept I am at both shifting and witchcraft.
“She didn’t, like, explain, and then she started doing the spell and I…” I take a shuddering breath, remembering the feeling of light and magic roaring agonizingly through my bones. “I shifted, my magic was weirdly intense, it pushed her, she fell and when I came round…”
“It was too late?” Bastian finishes for me softly. I nod. “So your shift, it was, like… a magical discharge thing?”
I nod again. Everyone afterward used these words: Elizabeth’s parents, Professor Wallace, Beryl, Counselor Cooper. They say it in a certain way, though. It’s not neutral. It still leaves the blame properly at my feet. After all, only shapeshifters who carry magic inside us, able to break free from our skin without any conduit, are capable of this kind of thing. I was the one who discharged the magic. If I hadn’t done that, if I had better control, if I was a better student and a better person, she’d be alive, a beloved girlfriend and daughter.
“You loved her,” Bastian says. I stare at him. He doesn’t say it incredulously or jeeringly, just factually. There’s something aboutit that’s comforting. That it’s not an opinion. The sky is blue, life is shit, I loved and still love Elizabeth.
“It should have been me,” I say, voice harsh as I stare at a couple of swans swimming together. A pair. Inseparable. “I wish it had been. I’d do anything to change what happened, not that it matters.”
Counselor Cooper says that suicidal thoughts aren’t to be feared. When we fear them, we make them stronger. That, actually, suicidal thoughts are a part of us warning the rest of us that we’re really hurting inside. I feel like I didn’t need the warning. I feel like I’ve been bleeding inside since Elizabeth died and soon, I’ll bleed out with it. Silently and gradually, I’ll just stop existing, drowned in my own blood.
“But you know there are spells to resurrect the dead, right?”
I stare at him. For the first time, I wonder if I’ve got a completely wrong read on Bastian Chevret. I had him penned as a hot geek, the type who reads the classics and watches vintage horror movies and eventually goes out with some ecowarrior witch and starts a blog about their perfect polyamorous explorations as they backpack ethically through Europe. Maybe it’s because I’ve read too many Stephen King novels, but now I wonder if Bastian Chevret is more of a conspiracy theorist, Dr. Frankenstein wannabe.
