Page 12 of Reluctant Witch (A Course in Magic #2)

12

Ellie

When Ellie returned to her spartan living quarters, she did not expect to see her wife pacing outside her door.

“Hi…? What are you—” And then Ellie saw the blood. “Are you hurt? Should we go to the infirmary?” Ellie’s hands slid over Prospero’s bloodied cheek. No cut there. Then Ellie felt her sides and stomach. Not even a tear in the fabric. She couldn’t stop herself. “Where is it? Seriously? Where are you in—”

“Scylla’s blood. Not mine.” Prospero caught Ellie’s wrists, still standing on the threshold of the room. Her voice was more vulnerable than Ellie recalled ever hearing as she added, “I need your help.”

“ Scylla? Lord Scylla? Is she dead?”

“So far, no.” Prospero’s expression shifted into something terrifying in its grief, and any doubt that Ellie had about her wife’s ability to love deeply vanished. “If she dies…”

Ellie dragged Prospero into the room and closed the door. “Look, whatever else there is between us that’s fucked up, I am still here.” She shoved the cloak from Prospero’s shoulders and stepped back. “What happened?”

“She was shot,” Prospero muttered, not quite focused. “She is near death. I thought… I couldn’t find her pulse.”

At a word from Ellie, the tub started filling.

“She’d not dead, though, right?” Ellie said, half question and half statement.

“She can’t die.” Prospero’s jaw tightened. “I have to—”

“You have to wash away the blood.” Ellie started unfastening her wife’s vest. Prospero didn’t object. That alone was proof that she needed Ellie’s kindness just then. “Is that a rash? Are you allergic to blood ?”

“No. There was poison ivy, too, after… after I delivered Scylla to Mae.” Prospero’s voice wobbled. “I had to go retrieve one of them, the witches who hurt Scylla, and when the next witch slips—”

“You can’t go anywhere in this shape,” Ellie said gently. “Let me get Bernice to—”

Prospero’s hob popped into the room. She took one look at Prospero and vanished again. No more than a moment later, some of Prospero’s clothes appeared as if they were falling from empty air.

“… get you some clean clothes,” Ellie finished as she scooped up Prospero’s unbloodied clothes and put them on a nearby chair.

Without another word, she unbuttoned Prospero’s blouse.

Prospero made a pained noise and stepped backward, out of Ellie’s reach. “I need to handle the fallen barrier, and talk to Walt, and—”

“Yes, and I’ll help you after you aren’t dressed in blood,” Ellie said, thinking about how horrible it would be to wear clothes soaked in a friend’s blood. “A quick rinse. That’s all. Just wash away the blood. Five minutes won’t make or break the world.”

Prospero bowed her head, so she wasn’t looking at her. “I need privacy, Ellie. I don’t need help with bathing.”

Ellie froze. It stung. She took a washcloth, dipped it in the water, and wiped the blood from Prospero’s cheek. “I’m not going to take unfair advantage of you.”

“I don’t ever want to take advantage of you, either,” Prospero said, voice somehow even more raw. “I want to, but I will not.”

And something about that admission sliced to Ellie’s heart.

“Turn so I can be sure your back is okay,” Ellie insisted, not looking anywhere but Prospero’s face. Then she motioned to the tub. “Get the blood off. I’ll change clothes. Then we’ll go see Walter. Unified front and all that. Maybe he needs a reminder that I can leave here if he’s not going to let you tell me what I’ve forgotten.”

“Ellie…”

“He ordered it, didn’t he? Ordered you to make me forget things?” Ellie pressed. Maybe it was time to remind all of them that she was not, in fact, a remedial witch now. She might have been a reluctant witch, but she was not someone to be trifled with.

Afterward, when Prospero was dressed in something not soaked in blood, Ellie reached for her arm. “Let’s go. Off to see the wizard…”

“Chief witch,” Prospero corrected absently.

And Ellie made a mental note to catch Prospero up on a few pop-culture references when they weren’t midcrisis, but then they were suddenly standing outside a very modest cabin in the village.

“Please do not provoke the chief witch,” Prospero murmured as she held Ellie briefly.

Ellie looked at a small cottage. Whitewashed exterior, thatched roof. The tiny house reminded her of the ones she’d once seen in Ireland or Scotland.

Prospero wrapped a firm arm around Ellie’s middle. “He’s dangerous.”

“So are we.” Ellie closed her eyes, leaning her forehead against Prospero shoulder briefly while the hornets in her stomach from teleporting settled. Then she stepped back and said, “But I will attempt manners. For now.”

“Thank you.” Prospero rapped on the door, and it swung open so quickly that it seemed as if the hob on the other side had been waiting for their knock.

“C.W. is coming,” the wizened hob pronounced. He wandered off, trailing a knitted scarf in a clash of colors.

“C.W.?” Ellie asked quietly.

“Chief Witch.”

Ellie nodded. She didn’t recall being here before, but she should’ve been. Her wife regularly had business with the chief witch. They were surrounded by the scent of peat fire, but it brought no memories of being here previously.

They waited in the kitchen until they were more or less greeted by an irate old witch.

“Took you long enough,” he muttered, glaring at Prospero. “Just the three of them to retrieve: Allan, Aggie, and that young ’un, Jennifer. I expect you’ll fetch them.”

“Walt—”

“I handled Jaysen. He’ll likely be siphoned.” Walt stayed in the doorway, barely glancing at them. “You need to retrieve the others. Mae will fix Scylla. That one can work miracles.” He shook his head; the edge of a smile touched his lips for a flicker and was gone. “For now, I have Scylla’s bunch working on repairs. How is she?”

“Bullet’s out, but…” Prospero shrugged. “Mae wasn’t sure.”

“Oh, for the love of Fergus!” Walt threw up one hand dramatically. His other tugged on his beard as if it were a comfort object. “Guns and fallen barriers and missing witches. Someone else needs to be chief witch. Scylla’d be damn good at it. You would, too, but you have too many infernal enemies, girl.”

Prospero tensed.

Ellie resisted the urge to defend her. Instead, she stared at him. “Right, well, hand-waving and drama aside…”

“ What did you say?” Walt leveled a glare at Ellie that was impressively intimidating.

“Everyone here knows guns are stupid, right?” Ellie looked at Prospero and then back at the chief witch. “What are you doing other than leaving all the actual work to my wife? Ordering people to do what they’re already doing?”

Prospero visibly winced.

“Put a leash on her, Lady Prospero,” Walt said in a low voice.

Ellie idly took his knitting and started transforming it into shackles. “Try it. Please. Try forcing me to do anything. I am only in this world for her. ”

“We cannot find the others until they use magic,” Prospero said, stepping in between them. “This is no different from a new remedial witch. Until there is magic used or leaked…”

Walt looked suddenly old. “This is the problem with not being a villain, a killer, a despot, any of that. Good people try to live by their ideals, and sometimes that means we just wait.”

“Fuck that,” Ellie said.

Walt leveled a steely look at her. “Ah, to be so young and stupid…”

Ellie flashed her teeth at him in a feral scowl. “We don’t need to just wait. Prospero has already got Lord Scylla to the doctor, and she brought back the first of the escapees. I can work on fixing the barrier. Maybe interrogate the one who was brought here.…”

Prospero said nothing as she glanced back over her shoulder at Ellie quizzically.

“Interrogate?” Walt echoed.

“Why not? I feel like I could use some practice at extracting answers.” Ellie smiled tightly. “Are you going to try to tell me you’ve never done something awful with magic? I don’t know, ordered altering a mind?”

“Ellie…” Prospero said warningly.

Walt simply stared at Ellie for a long moment.

Ellie felt a nudging from her temper rise. I could make him listen, confess, just like I could make the witch Prospero brought back talk to us.

The chief witch was speaking to Prospero as if Ellie were no longer present. “Maybe there’s one of them that might make a good temporary house head…?”

“No.” Prospero sounded pained. “Scylla will recover.”

“Their illusion might hold until Scylla’s up.” The chief witch gestured toward the general direction of the barrier.

And Ellie knew that was what he was motioning toward. Her thoughts of interrogation fled as an image of the barrier filled her mind.

How do I know where it is? What it looks like?

She frowned at that thought. Maybe she remembered from when she arrived here? She could picture it, though, even the path to it. She was fairly sure she could find it—and knew what waited outside the barrier.

“Take me there,” Ellie told her wife, ignoring the chief witch now. He gave her an unpleasant feeling. She turned so she was looking mostly only at Prospero and said, “I don’t think I have the energy to fully build a wall, but I can weave some vines or something.…”

Ellie didn’t miss the way her wife glanced at Walter questioningly, as if she were asking permission for something. Ellie kept the old man in her peripheral vision, and his answering nod made fear trickle over her.

Why did Prospero look at him that way? Does he know what I forgot? What does the barrier have to do with it? Why does she obey him?

With the same surety that warned her when someone lied, Ellie knew that asking was dangerous. Her wife was dangerous. Prospero might be vulnerable right now, and she might genuinely want and care for Ellie, but Prospero made no secret of the fact that she would live, die, or kill for Crenshaw.

“Well, go on with you,” the chief witch ordered with obvious exasperation. “Even I can’t tell you where Aggie and the other two went until magic leaks or is used. You and the headmaster will feel it, too.” Walt made shooing motions at them, as if they were errant hens rather than grown women. He stepped closer and shooed again.

Prospero paused. Then she finally spoke. “I need permission, Walt.”

“For?”

“Justice,” Prospero said tightly. “Allan shot Scylla. Aggie—a head of house—was involved. We know that. I saw it in Scylla’s memory.”

“We will need a new head of house then.” Walt reached past her and opened the door. “Sondre’s the next in line for House Grendel. I’ll get a new headmaster figured out soon, and—”

“I don’t give a damn about who heads the house. I won’t be bringing back three badgers. Tell me I have sanction to do so. To question the next one and deal with the other two. Aggie and Allan are heads of house. ”

Walter sighed. “I know. It makes their treason worse. You may… handle Agnes and Allan as best you see fit. There will be no consequences to you—” He paused and glanced at Ellie. “— either of you or the headmaster if they can’t be brought back.”

Prospero bowed her head respectfully. “Consider it done.”

With that, Allan’s and Agnes’ death warrants were just sealed. Prospero had permission to kill. There was a slight chance that Walt meant siphoning, but that was as good as murder for a witch who was powerful or old or both. Two heads of house would die for their actions.

And Prospero would be the one to deliver that death—at her own request.