Page 57 of Witchlore
Now she is looking at me with that same expression, her blue eyes, which are so much like Elizabeth’s, completely cold.
“What are you doing here?” I blurt out, without meaning to. She looks about as happy to run into me as I am to run into her.
“The miracle is that you are still here, shifter,” she says. When it happened, she lobbied hard for my expulsion from college, but Professor Wallace was clear that since it was a “first offense” and hadn’t happened on college grounds or even during term time, it had nothing to do with my college performance.
“I never meant—” I stammer out, thinking that saying something must be better than saying nothing. “I didn’t know what she had planned to do, it was a secret, she didn’t tell me.”
“My only child is dead because of you,” she says, stuffing her hands into her pockets. “Your intentions mean nothing.”
She drops her unfinished cigarette and stamps on it with the heel of her red snakeskin boot, clearly more desperate to get away from me than to absorb more nicotine. I stare down at the stub and wonder if she wishes she could grind me to dust the same way. Then she turns and walks up the stone steps and into college. I watch her go and think I should have listened to Bastian. I should have bunked off. I wonder, if I had told her I was trying to make up for it, that I was trying to bring Elizabeth back, would she have been happy or angrier? I suddenly have an uncomfortable feeling that even if we manage to resurrect Elizabeth, her mother will never see me as anything other than a murderer.
“Hey, Lando, are you okay?” I jump when someone touches my elbow. Bastian is standing next to me, his cheeks flushed with the exertion of walking through the cold wind.
“Of course,” I say mechanically. “Let’s get this over with.”
I keep my eyes peeled for Dr. Toppings as Bastian and I walk to the main library, barely listening as he tells me about his research. I imagine those snakeskin boots marching her all the way to Professor Wallace’s office to demand my expulsion again. My mind races through all the terrible things she could say—violent young person, a threat to others, no control, killed my daughter—then we reach the library door and I see her. She’s removed her coat, she’s standing in front of a PowerPoint that has the wordsDANGEROUS MAGIC: THE THREATS OF MAGICAL DISCHARGEon it. I stumble to a dismayed halt, as other students brush past us and find seats.
“Lando?” Bastian frowns at me, then looks at the PowerPointand Dr. Toppings standing talking to Professor Wallace. His eyes widen when he sees the title. “Is that—”
“Elizabeth’s mother.” I cannot believe that she’s chosen to do this, to talk about her own daughter’s death in front of four hundred students, but I’ve clearly underestimated how much she hates me. My breathing is shallow and I feel like I’m going to be sick. “This is about me.”
“Come here, come on,” Bastian urges, grabbing my arm and guiding me back out into the corridor, out of the flow of students entering the library. I lean against the wall and try to catch my breath, but it’s like I can only breathe in and not out. “It’s not going to be about you.”
“She hates me,” I gasp out. “She blames me. She told me it should have been me.”
“Shit,” Bastian mutters, rubbing my arm up and down. “It’s okay, look, follow my breathing.”
He takes my hand and presses it against his chest. His hand is warm, his sapphire ring catching the light. I can feel the steady thump of his heartbeat through his T-shirt and he breathes in, holding my gaze, and then out steadily. I mimic him, my own breath stuttering, my heart trying to jump through my rib cage.
“It shouldn’t have been you, it shouldn’t have beenanyone,it was an accident,” Bastian whispers. The entire world is his hazel eyes, his steady heartbeat, and the rise and fall of his chest. “Just breathe, it’s going to be okay.”
“Oh, you’re still hanging with the shifter, Chevret?”
It’s like someone has burst the little bubble of safety I feel around Bastian and I’m aware, again, that we’re in a public place and Carl bloody Lord is staring at us. He’s looking me up and down, a sneeron his lips. I find myself, without meaning to, gripping Bastian’s hand. I’m even more surprised when he grips it back.
“Can you piss off, please?” Bastian says coolly.
“Ooh, touchy.” Carl smirks, fixing his eyes on where Bastian’s hand is holding mine. Then his eyes flicker to Bastian. “I guess you fancy him more now he’s a bloke again?”
“Not a bloke,” I manage to snap out. Carl leers at me.
“Yeah, but you are in all the ways that matter.” The look he gives me is so derisive, so sly and greedy, that suddenly I’m back in first year and he’s pushing me against the wall of the library. Then he looks at Bastian. “Right, Chevret?”
Bastian drops my hand. For a horrible second, I’m sure that Bastian agrees with Carl, that somehow Carl has got to him and ruined this for me, too, but that’s not what happens. Instead, in a single fluid motion, the blue shine of his ring pouring strength and magic into his fist, Bastian punches Carl in the face.
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
“Bastian!” I exclaim as Carl staggers back, falling to the floor. Students around us start yelling and panicking, and I’m sure I can hear Professor Wallace shouting something in the library.
“Fuck me, that hurt,” Bastian gasps, and I get the sense that this might be the first time he has ever punched someone. He shakes out his trembling hand and I try to grab him, to pull him back, but Carl is scrambling to his feet with a particularly ugly look on his face before launching himself at Bastian with a guttural growl. I’ve never seen a sober fight up close and I’m distantly surprised by the lack of finesse in the whole thing, and how it just seems to be two people with their bodies locked together trying to get out of one another’s grip long enough to throw a punch.
“What the hell is happening?” someone yells, and suddenly Kira is there, trying to pull Carl away as I grab the back of Bastian’s jacket, dragging him out of reach. Somehow, he’s come away with a cut lip and a bruised eyebrow. “Carl, stop it!”
“He started it!” Carl yells, and then he’s twisting his fingers; the particular smell of his magic, which always reminds me of overripe bananas, is pungent as his ring glows pink and a directional blast of heat, sharp and scorching, pushes through theair toward us. “Because he’s fucking obsessed with that bloody shifter—”
“Fuck OFF, Lord!” Bastian yells back, and he raises his hands above his head in a quick sequence that I recognize from our night with the boggart. There is a blinding blast of ancient Cornish magic, so bright it’s physical, knocking Carl and Kira and me off our feet and sending students screaming into the library and running down the hallway. The air is thick with the scent of bonfires at their peak, and I struggle to my feet, grabbing Bastian’s arm and pulling it down.
“Bastian, no!” I yell. I’ve never touched a witch in the middle of a spell before and something weird happens when I do. My own hands glow, not with Bastian’s blue light from his ring, but with a pearly white sheen, the same as I do before I shapeshift. Bastian and I both stare down at my hand, utterly distracted by it.
