Page 70 of Witchlore
My ready protests catch in my throat.Please,I think to no one in particular.Please don’t let this be true.
“Look, I’m really proud of you for standing up to Carl.” Kira’s brown eyes are earnest. “I had no idea he was so awful. I don’t want you to be tangled up with someone else like him.”
“You’re proud of me?” I sneer angrily, my voice raising to a shout. “You think you have therightto say that to me while you compare Bastian toCarl?”
Just the thought is a kick in the chest. Kira gives me a mournful, almost pitying look that honestly makes me want to scream in her face:You don’t know him like I know him!
“Look.” She flips the file open. I immediately look up to the sky, as if afraid the words are going to jump up and assault my eyes. “Please, Lando, you have to know the truth.”
I thought Bastian had told me all the truth he had, the truth about Shasta and his parents, the truth about how he felt about me. Was it possible that he was still keeping something back? Hating myself, I look down. The top page is the most recent. It’s an assessment of Bastian from his last college in London. The words jump in front of my eyes: “Reckless, unfocused, too intelligent for his own good, arrogant in a way that disregards the safety of others.” There’s a comment that leaps off the page, striking me right in the breastbone, knocking the wind out of me: “Bastian Chevret befriended Cameron Mackay, knowing that she struggled to fit in due to her shapeshifter status. He preyed upon her social vulnerability to manipulate her in the worst way.” I think about the first day I met Bastian, how quickly he learned from Carl Lord that I was a shifter, and then he didn’t leave me alone. A horrible thought leaps in my mind:Did he single me out because he could manipulate me, too?
“I know he’s had a troubled life,” Kira says softly. “But someone died, Lando. Cameron Mackay died. I couldn’t stand by and let that happen to you.”
“It’s bullshit.” I let the file drop to the ground sloppily, its pages spewing into the wind, but Kira doesn’t even move, she just stares at me.
“It’s right there,” she says. “You read it.”
“You made it up.” I’m breathing heavily, and I really do think I might be sick if I can’t sit down and get control of myself soon. “You’re trying to take something away from me because you think I took Elizabeth away from you.”
“Elizabeth died. It wasn’t your fault. I’ve never said it is—”
“You don’t have to say it!” I yell. “You neverspoketo me the whole time Elizabeth and I were together! I could feel your witch prejudice from miles away—”
“I didn’t speak to you because Elizabeth was terrified that somehow her mum would find out about you, so she asked me to keep up appearances at school, to pretend like you weren’t dating, like you and I didn’t know each other.” Her eyes are shiny but her voice is harsh. “You assume I’m prejudiced because I’m a witch, but you know nothing about me or my family. My ancestors emigrated from Morocco in the nineteenth century, we weren’t evenherefor the witch trials, we have nothing to do with this British prejudice, andyouare not the first shapeshifter to live in this city, Orlando!”
“If all of that’s true, then why are you doing this?” I gesture to the file.
“Because it’s what Elizabeth would want me to do,” Kira says fervently. “Every day I think to myself, I’m alive and she’s not and it’s the worst thing, but what does she want me to do?”
“And you think it’s this?” I yell. “Taking this away from me?”
“Telling you the truth. Keeping you safe.” Kira’s eyes are glistening with tears. “I’m not a liar, Lando. Whatever else you think about me. Do you really think I’d lie to you about this?”
I know the answer has to be no, but that means too many terrible things for me to possibly accept.
“Stay away from us,” I say, turning to leave.
“No, wait!” Her eyes are frantic and she’s reaching into her coat pocket. “There’s something else I have to show you—”
I cannot possibly take any more of her revelations.
“No,” I say, and I run away from her, fast, through Stevenson Square, down toward Piccadilly Gardens, back toward Bastian. To the place where I feel safe.
CHAPTERTWENTY-SIX
As I speed walk past the library, I tell myself it has to be a misunderstanding. All of it. If Bastian had tried to do the spell before, he would have told me, wouldn’t he? Yet the words in that report keep spinning back to me:He preyed upon her social vulnerability.By the time I’m at Bastian’s door and he’s buzzing me inside, I’m breathing heavily, staring at my form in the lift mirror and wondering why I don’t look different. The person I have feelings for might have lied to me about everything. How can I possibly look the same?
Bastian opens the door to the flat. He looks amazing, dressed in a pair of plaid pajama trousers and a worn T-shirt. His hair is wet as he smiles so broadly, leaning in to kiss me. I can’t help running my fingers through it.They all must be wrong,I think, inhaling the scent of his coconut conditioner.Maybe the girl died and he was blamed, just like I was for Elizabeth. Maybe someone bullied him and pinned it on him. Maybe Kira’s lying.There are so many possibilities that I’m certain, in that moment, what I read in that file cannot be true. It just can’t be.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, trying to act normally as he kisses me on the lips. He still tastes the same. How can he possiblybe a completely different person, a person who lied to me, and still taste the same?
“Bit less stiff today,” Bastian groans, making his way back to the sofa. His recovery has been slow but steady since Tuesday. “Could do with a coffee. How was your last class?”
“Fine,” I say, thinking,After it, I listened to someone say horrible things about you.I sort of hate myself for even entertaining the possibility of it. How could I think that the person smiling so easily in front of me, looking at me like I’m the center of the world, could ever hurt anyone? “I’ll make you a coffee, don’t get up.”
It’s a worthy act of penance for my failure to throw that file in Kira’s face. I approach the behemoth of a coffee machine, all shiny bells and whistles, and carefully check the compartment.
“You’re out of beans,” I say. I’m surprised by how on edge I feel in a place that has been so comfortable to me all week. It’s as if all the terrible things I read and that Kira told me have infected the air in the flat, like a virus I’ve brought in with me.
