Page 48 of Witchlore
My heart thumps quietly. He’s so sincere that it’s hard not to trust him, but all I can do is nod. Bastian crunches some more almonds and as I look at the orange flames licking the air, I wonder why it’s a complete stranger who’s the first person to tell me that what Carl did was so wrong.
“Can I ask you something else?” Bastian asks in between licking salt off his fingers.
“Okay,” I say warily. I really don’t want him to ask more about Carl, about the terrible crush of confusing emotions that lived inside of me that year, a ferocious need to protect the first friendship I ever had battling against a horrified growing urgency to reveal just how awful he truly was. Always overshadowed by his snide voice in my head, scaring me into silence:Who’s going to believe you, shifter?
“Why aren’t you good at witchcraft? Really?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re full of magic,” Bastian says earnestly. “I’ve seen you shift your form twice; you clearly have more power inside you than I could ever dream of. I understand that you can’t control your shifts, but surely spells should work for you.”
The last person to be this interested in my shifting was Elizabeth. I wonder what she would think about me sitting in my parents’ living room with a guy in his boxers. Instantly, I feel guilty and eat another Oreo.
“Just born dysfunctional, I guess.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Bastian insists thoughtfully. “Something must be stopping it.”
“Yeah, me,” I say sharply. “Don’t you think my parents triedeverything to get it out of me? Different routines and spells and… punishments.”
I take a deep breath and try to forget how it felt to be shut away inside this house, knowing I couldn’t go out unless I learned to do something I didn’t understand.
“That’s not what I mean,” Bastian says. “I think your parents were wrong, I don’t think it’s you. If they gave magic according to effort, you’d be Merlin.”
“Thanks.” I snort with laughter.
“So it can’t be you, can it?” he says emphatically. “You know spells, you’ve studied witchlore and witchcraft, you’re capable of shapeshifting, and you do it with seriously incredible amounts of power. It’s something else that’s stopping you.”
This is dangerously close to the train of thought that took me to the cave with Elizabeth. I won’t go there again.
“I don’t know,” I say, looking away from the beautiful sapphire ring on his finger. “I try, I really do. I can sense it in other people, I can smell magic in the air around me and sometimes taste it. I just… can’t do it.”
“Wait, you can smell witchcraft?” Bastian frowns.
“No, not spells, but a witch’s own magic, like yours smells like a bonfire and Elizabeth’s…”
I stop speaking, suddenly assaulted by the memory of the smell of almonds.
“That’s unusual. Is it a shapeshifter thing?” Bastian asks, frowning.
“No, I think it’s a me thing,” I say. “I just got really good at paying attention to magic since I can’t do it.”
The first magic I learned to sense this way was my parents.’ Better than hearing creaks on the stairs, sniffing for whiffs of theirmagic on the air taught me how to scent them out, avoid them if I needed to, hide if necessary. But I can’t explain that to Bastian, it makes me sound like a paranoid loser.
“Or you’re even more powerful than you realize,” Bastian says softly. There’s a fervent glow in his brown eyes when he says that and I look away, uncomfortable. Elizabeth looked at me that way, as if I would be able to do something amazing. Then she died. I fumble under the coffee table for the TV controller.
“Want to watch something?”
“Sure.”
I turn on the TV and let the sudden burst of noise and color distract me from darker thoughts.
“Up here,” I say, leading the way along the corridor when it’s finally time to turn in. We’ve eaten all the snacks. My father has the snacking tastes of a twelve-year-old child from the sixties and I feel weirdly delighted that he will be deprived upon his return.
“Um, is this… okay?” Bastian asks, sounding nervous for the first time, and I wonder why. It can’t be sharing a bedroom with me, not someone like Bastian who looks like he goes to the kind of parties where people sleep on top of each other like a pile of drunk hamsters.
“It’s fine, it’s massive,” I say, opening the door. The guest room is sparse: yellowing blue-and-white-striped wallpaper, a threadbare rug over cold floorboards, and a severe iron-framed king-sized bed. I think I see Bastian’s shoulders droop in relief. I guess my parents are partly using the room as storage, judging by the paintings and photographs leaning against the walls, waiting to be hung properly, and the stacked piles of vintage hatboxes.
“Hey, who did this one?” he asks, pointing at a small canvas leaning against the bottom of the wardrobe. I recognize it from my younger years, a painting I did of myself as a selkie. I’m honestly surprised they haven’t sent it to the charity shop.
