Page 51 of Witchlore
“Good morning.”
I look up to see Bastian pushing open the door to the bedroom with his foot, carrying two cups of coffee. He’s still wearing the T-shirt he slept in but he’s put on his jeans from yesterday. I anxiously pull my hoodie back on, covering my bare chest. Blushing furiously, aware that he might have seen the scars on my bare arm, I pop my head out of it and quickly grab the coffee from him. “You managed to make the machine work, then.”
“That thing is a beast.” Bastian shakes his head, leaning againstthe door and sipping his coffee as I pull my knees up inside my hoodie, like I used to do when I was little. Bastian smiles broadly over the top of his coffee cup. “You look good.”
I feel like my heart stops for a second.
“What, like a boy?” I ask sarcastically, giving him a glare.
“No.” Bastian looks entirely bemused. “Like you. You just look like you, with your hoodie… I don’t know, it’s cute.”
My cheeks heat up and I get that buzzy, mosquito/butterfly feeling in my stomach.Cute. Adorable.Would he keep saying these things if he didn’t mean them? Elizabeth’s face surges to the front of my mind and I feel so guilty I have to look away from him.
“Shall we get going after our coffee?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, sitting down on the edge of the bed beside me. The way he moves on so easily makes me think that I’ve imagined it. He didn’t mean to call me cute in that way, just that it’s a cute hoodie.Of course he doesn’t feel that way about me.That chiding thought is immediately chased by the thought,Why would I care if he does?
“I have something to ask you,” Bastian says.
“Okay.”
“Are you sure you want to keep going with the spell?”
“Why would you ask me that?” I frown, sipping my coffee.
“Because you nearly died last night, and I need to know you’re not going to pull that kind of thing with the Black Shuck. It’s too dangerous. We can’t muck about.”
“What is it, anyway?” I try to remember the words from the spell:hair of the Black Shuck that stalks holy ground.“Some kind of werewolf?”
I say that half as a joke and then I realize that I don’t actually know if werewolves are extinct.Elizabeth would know,I think.
“It’s a hellhound.”
“Oh.” My stomach clenches. “A real hellhound? That’s… much worse than a boggart.”
Hellhounds are not magical creatures, not really, not in the sense that selkies or boggarts are, which exist in our world alongside us. Hellhounds are made of magic and exist in other dimensions. Historically, ancient witches used spells to pull them through to lay curses on people or places. And now we’re going to try and pull one through to give it a haircut.
“Yes, it is, and I need to know you’re not going to do something… unexpected.”
I can tell he is holding back and I remember the things we yelled at one another on the beach last night:You’re so fucking reckless!He seems to be following my train of thought, because he leans closer before going on, his voice earnest.
“You were right yesterday. I fucked up by not telling you about my selkie plan beforehand. I should have, because we’re a team, Lando. We have to act like it.”
“We do?” I look at him a little skeptically. I appreciate the apology and everything, but I’m not going to say so if he’s just going to dump on all the ways I’m a bad teammate.
“Both of us.” He nods. “We’ll plan everything to do with the Black Shuck together, and… I know you can’t control your shapeshifting but you can’t just go off and decide you’re going to throw yourself into danger when we’re facing down a hellhound. There’s too much at stake and you’re too valuable. Okay?”
I remember the deal I made with the selkie to value my own life. The first taste of coffee in my mouth has mingled with the salt residue around my lips into something bitter. Does Bastian value me because he needs me for the spell, or because he valuesme? Either way, he saved my life twice, but faced with a literal hellhound, he might not be able to do it again.
“Okay. I can… be more careful,” I say. “I don’t know why I keep shifting but I can try and pay more attention to it. Maybe, I dunno, warn you. There’s not much more I can do than that.”
“You don’t need to do anything more. Like I said, I know you can’t control it.” His voice is incredibly reassuring. “I just want us to be on the same page.”
“We are.”
He smiles at me. It’s distracting so I cough into my coffee and try to change the subject.
“So when will we do it?”
