Page 55 of Witchlore
We drink; we talk about conjuring circles but then conjuring circles turns into talking about witchcraft in general, Bastian telling me about cool spells he and Shasta saw when they went on holiday to Haiti to visit their second cousins, and me hesitantly revealing some of the things I’ve seen my parents do. Soon, the book with its terrifying illustration is closed, the threat of the Black Shuck tucked away for the night and reduced to a coaster for the nachos we ordered.
“You’re really good at all this, all this serious, intense magic,” I say, folding a napkin into a crane. “You’re what my father would call a prodigy, I think.”
“Coming from a shifter, I’ll take the compliment.” He smiles. “But magic doesn’t have to be serious.”
He gently takes the crane from my fingers.
“May I?”
I nod nervously as he sets his hand into the preparatory triangle, his ring glowing softly. Then he links his thumbs and floats his fingers, and suddenly, the little crane is endowed with the luminous blue glow of Bastian’s magic and its tiny napkin wings flap slowly.
“Magic doesn’t have to be permanent to mean something,” Bastian says quietly.
“Whoa.” I stare at it with a slow grin, feeling a flush in my cheeks as the crane wobbles on the air and then descends into my palm. No one has ever done this, made a spell just for me, to impress me or to bring me joy. “That’s amazing.”
“No,you’reamazing.”
Bastian smiles at me. It’s that same grin that I’ve started toget used to: unguarded and affectionate. It flusters me. Being redheaded now means that when I blush, I blush all over. My words are stuck in my throat. I want to say thank you but all I can think isNot as amazing as you.I try not to look at Bastian but he’s still grinning, like he knows exactly what he’s doing. I get that nauseating flip-flop feeling that I associate with either anxiety or kissing. I can’t just be imagining this, can I? This must be real, the way he keeps touching me and I want him to and the drink he bought me and the beautiful secluded garden that seems like the perfect place for a first date? The kind of date I never got to go on with Elizabeth.
“Do you want another?” he asks, looking at our empty glasses.Yes,I think,very much,andno, no I absolutely must not have another drink.
“Um, no,” I say, making a show of looking at my phone. “I should get back, I think.”
“Okay.” Bastian doesn’t seem flustered by my abrupt manner, standing up and smiling at me. “I’ll walk you.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m fine.” I stand up and grab my coat, as if this one declination has pushed me over an edge and now I cannot sit in this space with him and pretend everything is normal. His smile is faltering. I know he’s realizing that I’m trying to run away from him and there is a horrible churning in my guts for doing this when he’s been so kind. I fumble in my pocket. “Let me pay for my drink.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He’s averting his eyes from me now, his manner becoming more withdrawn as he pulls on his own coat and follows me through the crowded bar. When we step onto the street the rain has blown itself out for a moment, the damp air and flapping awning blowing noisily around us as we stare awkwardly at one another.
“Bye, then,” I say, attempting a bright tone as I turn my collar up against the chill.
“Did you not like it?” he asks abruptly, nodding toward the bar. “Was it… I don’t know, too much?”
I look at him, standing in his black coat and jeans, hands stuffed into his pockets and shoulders hunched to his ears, skin catching the golden glow from inside filtered through a misted window. He’s been kind to me, too kind for me to lie.
“I liked it,” I say helplessly. “I just… I’ve never done something like this before. Elizabeth and I, we didn’t…”
He frowns and I pause, shaking my head, because I’m making myself feel worse just by speaking. Still Bastian waits, eyes fixed steadily on me, as if I’m going to say something that will push him into movement.
“Yeah, I liked it a lot,” I repeat, looking at my boots. “It’s just… Elizabeth stuff.”
When I look up at Bastian, he’s still watching me. Then he steps forward and pulls something out of his pocket, offering it to me. It’s the crane I made, the one he enchanted to fly.
“Maybe when she’s back it’ll be different,” he says, carefully tipping the crane into my hand. “Maybe you’ll do stuff like this.”
For some reason, that feels wrong to imagine. To fantasize that the evening was different, that Elizabeth was in Bastian’s place. I gently close my hand around the crane, still a little warm from Bastian’s magic, and tuck it into my pocket.
“Maybe,” I say, turning away. “See you later.”
The next week after our nondate is a bit weird. Bastian is just as kind and cordial as always and we spend the same amount oftime together, but something has dropped down between us. He doesn’t hug me like he did before and I try not to miss it. I tell myself it’s for the best, of course it is, because soon we will have resurrected Elizabeth, and I don’t want to have to explain to my girlfriend why I’ve been flirting with someone else. We both focus on the Black Shuck. I find myself practicing drawing conjuring and exorcism circles everywhere, copying diagrams Bastian has shown me by sketching my toe across the carpet while waiting for the kettle to boil or outlining them on the fogged-up mirror after a shower. I am also paying urgent attention in any of my classes that mention hell dimensions.
On Thursday we have our Medieval Witchlore class for third-and fourth-years with Professor Wallace and the seminar is on exorcisms. I am on the edge of my seat the entire time, taking frantic notes as he talks.
“… Of course, the last big Manchester exorcism was the cathedral hellhound, the Black Shuck, exorcized in 1910,” he says, and my stomach clenches. My pen stops on the page and I listen avidly. “Prior to its exorcism, it was considered a haunting, the curse laid on it pulling it through to our world at certain points in the moon cycles. Nowadays, however, it is utterly benign, unable to break through without magical intervention.”
“But theycanbreak through?” I find myself asking.
“Scared of ghosts, shifter?” Carl calls. “Makes sense. She’ddefinitelybe coming back to haunt your arse.”
