Page 17 of Witchlore
“No—shit—” I gasp out, staring at my boots as they whiz round and round in red circles, smelling an upturned mushed takeaway that’s been spilled a few paces away, ground into the pavement by passing pedestrians. I’m trying to remember everything Counselor Cooper told me about panic attacks but the only thing I can think of is that she told me they typically go in cycles of ten minutes, and right now, ten minutes seems like an impossibly long time.Breathe, for fuck’s sake.
“Do you want me to help you?” Bastian bends down to stare into my face and I nod at him viciously, hating him for making me ask. Bastian grabs my arm, pulling it around his waist and then putting his arm around my shoulders, holding me upright and starting to walk us in long steady strides down into Spinningfields, the rising skyscrapers glaring down at me with their glistening points and sharp, unkind edges. “Come on, I live around here. Breathe in time with our steps, okay? Concentrate on the out breath, not the in breath.”
He’s speaking in this clipped, commanding voice that makesme think he was probably the captain of his school newspaper or maybe the orienteering club. How do men like him always have this prime minister/sergeant major mode of existence that kicks in? Where do they get it from? Is it all private school or is some of it just cisgender masculine magic? I don’t have any of the answers, but wondering about it does help my breathing slow down as we stop outside a glass door with neat green lollipop hedges in pots outside of it. I think he’s lost or he’s going to ask for directions or something, but Bastian leans forward and types a code into the console and the door buzzes. He maneuvers us through it sideways, since his arm is still clamped across my shoulders.
“You don’t live here,” I mutter, looking at the brushed chrome letter boxes and the concierge desk with an orchid on it. Everything around us is gold finishes and mirrors and marble and makes my chest feel even tighter.
“Yeah, I do, so?” He presses the gold button next to the lift and the doors open. It looks tiny. Suddenly, all I can see are the walls of the cave, closing around me as I shift and I hear Elizabeth’s scream.
“You donotlive here,” I say, sliding out from under his arm and ignoring the dizziness I feel when I’m not being steadied by him.
“Will you just get in the bloody lift?” Bastian demands, slamming a hand against the doors as they close. The woman in the neat black uniform at the concierge desk is trying not to stare at us.
“No, I’m claustrophobic,” I lie, staring at the small space. “We’ll do the stairs.”
“You can barely breathe and you want to climb twenty flights of stairs?” Bastian demands.
“Twenty?” I gasp, pressing a hand against the wall, feeling so sick suddenly. “You live in the penthouse?”
“Get in.” Bastian reaches out and grabs my arm. I’m too weak to stop him and I stumble inside. The doors close on me with a soft chime. Immediately, my skin itches and I glare at him but when we lurch upward, I feel too nauseous to even yell at him. I just gulp heavily and bend over. I’m surprised when I feel Bastian’s hand rubbing up and down my back.
“It’s okay, take slow breaths,” he says quietly. “In and out… In… and out…”
I listen to the inane lift music and do what he says. I’m a little bit annoyed when it starts to work.
“In… and out…” Bastian intones softly above me, stroking my back in time with his words. I realize this is the first time I’ve been touched like this since Elizabeth died. “In… and out…”
The familiar touch is comforting. I need to put a stop to it. I pull away and stand up, avoiding his eyes and coughing.
“You’re like a meditation app,” I say, hating my voice for shaking. “Did you go on one of those world tours of waterfalls to find inner peace? A spiritual gap year?”
I try not to stare at how weird my new ears look in the mirror. It’s always like this when I shift. For months after, I catch myself and realize there are still parts of me I wouldn’t recognize in a lineup.
“You just make stuff up about me, don’t you?” Bastian says, giving me a sideways look.
“Is any of it wrong?” I snap.
“Most of it,” he says calmly. I scowl at him. It’s really unfair that I’ve been vulnerable and messy in front of him and he’s just the same: unruffled and sardonic.
“Well, I’m not wrong about this,” I say flatly. “You’re rich.”
“I’m not rich, my dad is rich.”
“That’s something only rich people say.” I snort.
“What else do rich people say?” Bastian shoots me a kind of fond, frustrated look.
“I don’t know, stuff about ponies?”
I’m surprised when Bastian laughs.
“Come on,” he says, and he puts a hand on my back as the door opens. I try not to jump. “Let’s go and get you something to drink.”
Bastian puts his key in a door that is just on the other side of the lift as it opens. My jaw almost drops. I know that there’s a bar in Spinningfields where you can sit at the top of a skyscraper in a garden that looks over the city, but I never thought that people couldlivein places like this. It’s an open-plan kitchen and living room, the kind with a sunken fire pit in the middle and a kitchen so shiny that it looks like it’s from the future. The windows are floor to ceiling, a panoramic view of the skyscrapers, canals, cranes, and train tracks spilling out toward the green fields in the south. Right now, the sunset is blazing and making the industrial chrome shimmer in every direction. I have a sudden flash of memory of my parents’ cluttered living room in their crumbling Georgian red-brick semidetached. My parents have lived for nearly three hundred years between them, they have a Blitz spirit attitude and prefer hoarding rather than spending, so this is completely out of my comfort zone.
“This looks like something out of a TV show about teenage billionaires who live in Dubai,” I say.
“I’d watch it,” says Bastian. He walks me toward the sofa while he goes to the kitchen. As soon as I sit down, I can breathe easier. “Water okay?”
