Page 3 of Witchlore
My parents are the ones who insisted I go here rather than a normal university, where, god forbid, I could study creative writing or sociology and maybe actually have a good time. Or rather, they told me if I didn’t come, they’d cut me off. With a choice between being homeless or coming to Demdike, I chose Demdike. Besides, anything is better than living under their roof. Just like the various Bible colleges in Manchester, Demdike only offers a degree infaith-based studies, four-year courses in witchlore. It’s generally for witches who come from covens and families who care about keeping the faith and craft alive, and witches who are actually good at doing witchcraft. Once every fifty years or so, they might get a shapeshifter come through. Unfortunately, for the last two years, that shapeshifter has been me.
It’s the first Monday in September and all the schools and colleges are going back, so obviously, the wet end-of-August weather has given way to glorious sunshine that bounces off the red brick and street art in vibrant primary colors. Despite my heaviness at having to face it all again, Manchester in the autumn sunshine—with its gothic façades, industrial edge, and yellowing leaves of the ginkgo trees blowing in the fresh breeze—lightens my step a little. I get lost in listening to music and smiling at hipsters walking their miniature dachshunds along the bustling streets. I stop in at my favorite coffee shop, Ezra’s, to shore myself up with some caffeine. When I pay, I rest a library book I need to return on French witchlore against the counter. When I move over to wait for my takeaway, a hipster with a goatee who’s also waiting snorts at me.
“You know science exists now, right?” he asks, nodding to my textbook.
I glare at him. I want to say,Yeah, and I’m a shapeshifter, put that in your science and smoke it,but, just to be a dick, say, “That’s discriminatory against my beliefs, you know. I feel oppressed.”
He rolls his eyes and looks at the witch working behind the counter who has just used a small spell, twisting her fingers over his cappuccino with a softly glowing peridot ring to produce some latte art of a cat.
“Can you remake that for me, please?” he says. “The proper way.”
She catches my eye as she tips the coffee out. Sometimes it’s just not worth the effort.
I pick up my coffee, smiling at the flawless latte leaf before it fades into bubbles, and stepping out onto Faraday Street. It’s nice and quiet today. Sometimes, there are antiwitchcraft protesters outside college, mostly conspiracy theorists who, along with thinking the world is flat and 5G transmits viruses, think witches are an arm of the shadow government. They’re convinced we herald the end of the world and are sitting on a vast stock of power we will one day use to destroy everyone, choosing to ignore the fact that those types of spells and the grimoires that held them were lost long ago or are hidden away by the Merlin Foundation. The ancient times, when witchcraft was on the lips of every monarch in Europe, when witches cast horoscopes for kings and brewed tonics for princes, have gone. Cursing and condemnatory magic has been lost, grimoires burned, and witches executed, old practices falling to the wayside. Spells dedicated to chaos have disappeared into the mists of time, and most modern employers look at witches with their little domestic spells that never last more than a few hours and consider them just part of a bizarre belief system and a source of a few helpful tricks for the office party. Besides, today most witches wouldn’t have the power to sustain bigger spells even if they came across them. A shapeshifter would, but that’s part of the reason why I’ve only ever had one witch friend, and why she’s dead.
“Is this Demdike College?”
I look up as I reach the front door. There is a tall, dark-haired guy standing on the pavement holding a takeaway coffee. He’s dressed like every other handsome student in Manchester, his denim jacket just the right level of distressed vintage, but he’s gota monster of a sapphire ring on his middle finger. It’s a dead giveaway. He’s either got a really weird fashion sense, or he’s a witch.
“Yes, this is it.” I look pointedly at the clearly ineffective sign.
“Right.” He shifts his backpack on his shoulder. “I wasn’t sure.”
“Okay.” I don’t know why he is talking to me. I look him over for clues as to whether maybe I know him. I take in his light brown skin, curly black hair, greenish brown eyes, the kind of casual stance with a straight back that comes to guys who know they’re impeccably good-looking. I’ve definitely never seen him before. I’d remember that dimple in his cheek when he smiles and he is still smiling at me, which is very weird. “You’re starting first year?”
“Third-year transfer. Witchlore and Witchcraft.”
“Ah. Me, too. Not the transfer bit, but everything else.”
I don’t have any words of welcome for this new person, so I just stare at his cup. Train station coffee is gross.
“Ezra’s,” I say abruptly.
“What?” He frowns.
“Ezra’s.” I point at his coffee cup and then to mine and then across the street. “The best coffee in the city.”
“Oh. Thank you.”Stillsmiling.
“You’re welcome.” I find myself smiling back, even though I don’t want to, not a bit, and it’s at that exact moment that Carl Lord slams his shoulder into me from behind, pushing me out of the way to open the front door of college.
“Watch it, shifter,” he snaps.
“Watch yourself, dickface,” I say back.Here we go,I think dismally.
“Heard about your ‘attempt.’” Carl mimes slashing his wrists and I hate that I blush. “Couldn’t even get that right, could you?”
“Work it up your arse,” I say.
“You wish.”
Carl Lord is the great gay gatekeeper. He’s handsome in that harsh, brutalist way; shockingly white skin, vivid blond thatch of hair, he looks like he should be on a Soviet poster for farming from the 1930s. He’s from Salford and he calls everyone “mate” and is built like a semiprofessional footballer. This has made him the Most Popular Queer in college and he hates my living guts.
“He’s jealous of you,” Elizabeth used to say. “You’re a shifter. You’re full of magic.”
If it’s true that Carl’s jealous of magic I can’t even control, he hides it under a crapload of disdain. Some of my father’s words of warning pop into my head again:They will always hate us. They will never trust us. Remember that.
Carl holds the door open and looks me up and down with some of that classic witch distrust. “I heard you’re a lad again.” He shakes his head in disgust as he lingers. There’s no point in telling him that I’m not a lad or a girl because he has never cared. He looks at the new guy. “Coming in, mate?”
