Page 18 of Reluctant Witch (A Course in Magic #2)

18

Ellie

As they walked through the tiny downtown area of Crenshaw, Ellie couldn’t stop herself from poking at the puzzle of the secret between them. “I can figure this out, you know? Aunt Hestia lives here without magic; that’s weird. She doesn’t want to be here, but I wanted her here. I have big memory gaps, and there is a larger secret.”

The admiring looks Prospero was darting at her made her feel powerful, made her want to revel in that, but she was coming to understand that she could not. Whatever the secret was, Prospero decided that it meant that they could not cross the very lines that Ellie was near desperate to cross.

And what if she’s right? What if one of us did something unforgivable?

“Tell me.” Ellie glanced at her wife. “I don’t want to force you, but… I can make you talk. I could force Walt, too. I think you are underestimating me.”

Prospero shot her a look of frustration. “I am not. I know you’re capable of hurting me. You’ve done so already.”

“How?” Ellie had been listening to Prospero castigate herself, but this was new. I was the one who hurt her ? “Why? When? How?”

Prospero stayed silent.

“Is that what I have to do to get answers? I could force you. Just tell me,” Ellie begged. Her whisper was overly loud, but everyone gave them a wide berth so it wasn’t as if their conversation would be repeated. Still Ellie stepped a little closer, holding Prospero’s arm securely enough that her own knuckles grazed the fabric of Prospero’s vest with every step.

“Things happened that I may not tell you.” Prospero glanced her way before she resumed looking at every witch they passed as if there were monsters hidden in plain sight. More than half of the witches squirmed under her scrutiny, and the fear in their expressions was undeniable.

“You want to tell me, don’t you? If I forced you, it wouldn’t even be your fault.…”

“You aren’t even supposed to know there’s something you forgot!” Prospero snapped.

Ellie released Prospero and pivoted to return to the cabin they’d left. “I’ll simply go back and ask Walter. I bet I can convince him to be reasonable—or maybe you can. Is that the answer, Prospero? Do I need you to slip into his mind and make him see reason?”

“Ellie!” Prospero grabbed her arm. “ No!”

Turning back to face Prospero, Ellie folded her arms and leveled a stare at her wife. “I’ll give you a choice. You either date me like we just met or I’m going to make you or him answer me. It’s either start over, interrogation, or we split up. I’m done with being pushed away by the woman I am spending my very long witchy life married to.”

All around them people were surreptitiously glancing their way.

“Ellie, you don’t know what you’re asking and—”

“Already established, dear.” Ellie tilted her head to look up at her wife. “You cannot tell me, but I cannot live this way. So we can start over, end this, or I can force—”

“Fine.” Prospero held out her hand and awkwardly said, “Hello. I’m Prospero.”

“Elleanor Brandeau. You should call me Ellie, though.” She took the extended hand in her own, not commenting on the way Prospero trembled. “I’d really like to have you under me, Prospero, so maybe we ought to go on a date.”

For a moment, Prospero’s mouth opened slightly, but no words escaped. Finally, she muttered, “You are absurd, Miss Brandeau.”

“Walk me to my room, Prospero.” Ellie started to walk toward the castle. “I’d be happy to come to your place and seduce you there, if you prefer. I need to plan a date and your seduction… things to do.”

“ You need to plan?”

Ellie gave her a look. “You may be older than me, so let me catch you up. In the modern world, both partners can lead. Dancing, seductions, dates.”

“I do recall you being rather assertive in the bedroom,” Prospero murmured.

“Plus I think you have a complicated task you have to address.” Ellie’s worry crept into her voice audibly. “If you die and miss our date hunting witches, I’ll be very, very disappointed in you.”

“Ellie…”

Ellie held up a hand before Prospero could explain anything. “I know you have responsibilities, but I want you to recall that you also have a reason to be careful.”

“Noted.” Prospero swallowed as if she was struggling to speak and then added, “I want you to know that I was at the edge of falling in love with you when… the things happened that you cannot recall.”

Ellie could not fathom how they had fought to the point that the Congress of Magic was involved. After a moment she smiled, a bit artificially, and asked, “Are we actually married?”

Prospero cleared her throat and said, “More or less.”

“So no.” Ellie shot her a look.

“I would marry you if you could forgive me,” Prospero confessed. “I offered.”

“I remember that… but then something happened. I hurt you, but you are apologizing for things you think I cannot know.” Ellie sighed. “Why can’t you just break the rules? I don’t see why that’s such a big…” Her words died. “You did break rules. Or I did?”

“Both.”

“What rules?” Ellie pressed. “List all of Crenshaw’s rules.”

“Not likely.” Prospero shook her head before motioning toward a shop that had neither sign nor display window. “Come with me. Be as scary as you’d like in here. Remind us both of how frightening you can be.”

Intrigued, Ellie tucked her unanswered questions away and accompanied her wife toward the blackened building a block or so away from where they’d stood. Ellie’s heart quickened at the menacing energy now radiating from Prospero.

And it clearly wasn’t just Ellie who noticed the shift. Anyone even tangentially in her path moved, as if there were an invisible cloud around Prospero that rolled out as she walked.

Ellie followed her at a slower pace, enjoying the look of her wife when she was being particularly frightening. Some people just had that menacing vibe to them. It wasn’t about size or muscle, she’d realized, but about the willingness to cross lines. Ellie had a stray thought that this was a thing that they shared, but that made little sense. She was simply a quiet librarian who sometimes made snakes in the forest to protect her home.

And threatened to confront the chief witch a few minutes ago.

That was a bluff, she tried to lie to herself.

It was not, the wicked part of Ellie’s mind argued.

Ellie stopped arguing with herself and turned her attention back to the now as Prospero spread her fingers and placed her hand on a darker section of the door. It wasn’t knocking, but Ellie was sure that it was the equivalent of that.

“Welcome to Crenshaw’s underground,” Prospero whispered. “Just so you know, I’ve only ever brought Scylla here.”

“Look at you, being all romantic,” Ellie teased.

“Not exactly,” Prospero muttered.

A moment later, the door opened.

Inside was the youngest person Ellie had seen in Crenshaw. He was sprawled atop a veritable tower of pillows. He looked like he was maybe twenty years old, but it was hard to be certain with how skeletal he was. His arms and legs reminded her of an arachnid, skinnier than they ought to be to support a body—even one that looked like dried husks. His eyes were the most unsettling part of him. The sclera wasn’t white like it ought to be. Instead, there were so many red lines that his eyes looked pink around a bright-blue pupil.

“Aw, you shouldn’t have, Prospy! A special trip to meet little ol’ me?” the boy rasped. “I’d have met your lady love sooner or later if—”

“Enough, Howie.” Prospero didn’t step in front of Ellie, like she typically did when she was feeling protective. She walked deeper into the den-like space. “I need a few things.”

“You do?” He pushed upward, so he was more or less sitting upright rather than flopped on his tower of pillows. “You never need things anymore.”

“Today, I do.”

He gave them an oily grin. “A little love potion?” He made a thrusting gesture with two extended fingers into his other hand.

Ellie gave him a dismissive look. “Howie, is it? If you think she needs a potion to satisfy a woman, you’re sadly mistaken.” She lowered her voice as if confessing a secret and added, “The best part of being with a woman is that a person never has to worry about being unsatisfied. With a man, though…” She shuddered exaggeratedly before glancing at her wife. “Can you imagine the horror?”

Prospero’s expression was unchanged. Dryly she said, “We all have our nightmares, love.”

And the spiderlike young man burst into cackles that were better suited for horror movies than anywhere else Ellie could imagine. “Your wife’s funny, Prospy.”

“I am aware of what she is.” Prospero crinkled her nose as she looked around the odd den. “You do remember our talk.”

“Sure do.” Howie slid down his mountain of funky pillows, scattering a few sequins and a tassel in the process. “Haven’t sold to anyone on your list of no-nos.” He gave an exaggerated nod. “Only a few sleepy stones to the average witches. No weapons to the Bad Guys.”

Ellie could hear the uppercase letters in that last term. “The New Economists?”

Howie side-eyed her. “They’re the Bad Guys. Heard that one of ’em got a gun from the outside.”

“How?” Ellie asked without thinking.

“Information isn’t free, Sexy.”

“Not my name.” Ellie stepped forward. Without thinking, she turned all of his pillows into feathers.

“Hey!” Howie swiped at the fluffy cloud currently filling the room like snow. “That’s actually cool, Builder Lady.”

“Still not my name, Howard.” Ellie glanced at the floor under his feet and turned it into mud.

His legs went out from under him, and he was suddenly sitting in a mud puddle with feathers all over him. He chortled. “You’re a ball breaker, aren’t you, Elleanor Brandeau? Back in the old days, someone would’ve broken you.” He turned his gaze to Prospero. “I’ll cut you a deal if you either loosen my restrictions or give me a favor from her.”

“I do not control her favors.” Prospero shook her head. “Which restrictions?”

“Let me have a crack at the new students if they find me.” The previously wretched man suddenly seemed a lot scarier. “You know what it takes to be able to even find my building, Lady Prospero.”

“If they do find you, I need to be told. Names and purchases,” Prospero said after a longer than normal pause.

Howie clapped his hands. “Excellent. I believe you now have a long line of credit in my store.”

Ellie looked around. All she saw were shelves upon shelves of tiny rocks. “What do you sell here?”

“Stones.” Howie gave her an expectant look. He pulled a tiny river-smoothed pebble from his pocket and held it out. “It’s a stoner store, get it?”

When she didn’t react or take it, he frowned. “That’s right. You get your happy from the monster lady, don’t you?”

“Magic can be embedded in natural items,” Prospero added helpfully. “Both violence aids and various other magic. Howie sells other things, but he mostly sells the basest sort. Intimate aids and pleasure stones and the like.”

“Feel- good magic.” He rolled the small pebble between his hands until it disintegrated. He stretched and made a happy noise that Ellie instantly wished she could scrub from her mind. “That was a quickie sample… but that’s not what you want, is it?” He turned his pleasure-blown pupils toward Prospero. “A little violence is your taste, eh? You want blood.”

“You heard about the falling of the barrier?” Prospero gave him a dark look. “ After it happened, I presume.”

“Yes, only after. Take a look in my head. No secrets from you, are there?” Howie oozed closer and tapped his temple with one of his bony fingers.

Ellie repressed a flinch of disgust. How a person covered in mud and feathers could still be so disquieting rather than pathetic was a mystery she had zero desire to contemplate. She just wanted to get out of this place—not ponder the reasons that the strange witch was so disconcerting.

“I put together a care package for my favorite monster because of the Incident at the barrier.” Howie scurried away toward a wall that was apparently a secret compartment. He looked over his shoulder. “No need to pretend you don’t know where I keep the goods. If you were less ethical, you could just rob me blind.” He giggled. “Least I don’t need to worry that you’ll rub me blind.”

“Just get the stones, Howie.”

“She wants my stones,” he quipped. He pulled out a burlap sack and held it aloft. “Some are the usual. A bit of knees taken out and bones breaking—the white stones—and a few bleeding from… you know, places. Those are the reds. A couple badgering ones. Those are the brown rocks.”

Prospero nodded. “Anything stronger?”

Howie paused. “I have a few extras that I made to see if I could.” He bent down and drew out a black sack. It looked like dirty oil made into fabric, not quite silk but shiny like something very similar to it. “You said I couldn’t sell things like these, but I thought experimenting was okay.”

Prospero strode forward. “I’ll take all of those.”

“Hey!” He reached forward like he was going to touch her.

And Ellie didn’t even blink before she had extended a section of the wooden cabinets on the wall. The wood reshaped into wood-wrought skeletal hands that held Howie fast. He dangled from those bony wooden hands.

“I could crush your wrists with a breath, you know?” Ellie mused.

For the first time since they’d stepped into his den, Howie looked afraid, and a part of Ellie that she didn’t generally acknowledge simmered. Mine. Prospero is mine, and no one touches what’s mine. She stepped in front of Prospero, close enough that Howie could kick her if he was foolish enough to do so.

“You ought to learn to use some manners when you talk to my wife,” Ellie said in a low voice. “I’m still a remedial witch, you know. I could just slip up and make a mistake.…” The grip on his wrists tightened a little more. “It would be an accident. No one to blame.”

Howie nodded. “Message received. The monster found herself someone just as fucking scary as she is.”

Prospero touched Ellie’s shoulder and said, “He’s not worth the guilt.”

“Maybe, but if he touches what’s mine, I’ll find that out.” Ellie stepped back, shoving her darker impulses somewhere down deep inside her where they struggled to quiet.

“Congrats on your nuptials,” Howie called as they walked away from him. “Hey? Hey? I’m still trapped here. Lady Prospero? Hello? Monster Bride?”

His voice followed after them as they left the building, stepping from the darkened room into the bright light.

Prospero stopped and looked at Ellie. “Will he be trapped there?”

“No. It’ll fade in about five minutes,” Ellie said, plucking a few stray feathers from her wife’s vest and one from her cleavage. “I guess I just… overreacted. I didn’t like his tone, and then he reached for you and—”

“Thank you.” Prospero lifted one hand to cup Ellie’s face. “You made me feel like I matter.”

Later Ellie could think about how she felt about her wife’s planned assassination of several witches. Right now, she couldn’t dwell long on that or on her own vicious streak. Being a witch had gifted her with a terrible power, and how well she managed that new power was a challenge no one had warned her she’d face.

For all the talk of staying or going, new houses, figuring out where she fit, protecting Crenshaw, and the why and ways of magic, the most alarming thing of all was turning out to be her own self-control. Her magic had become an extension of her will, and it was easy to see how the right—or wrong—sort of magic could be a deadly temptation.

After a lifetime without power, having it now is a heady thing.

“I suspect I may not be the scariest witch in Crenshaw anymore, love,” Prospero said quietly.

“Does that truly bother you?” Ellie asked hesitantly. She didn’t feel like a monster, but the drive to protect Prospero had been all-consuming. “That I can be menacing…?”

“Only if you remember everything and leave me,” Prospero said lightly. “Or worse. I’d hate to be your enemy, Miss Brandeau. I’m terrified of it.”

“So talk to me,” Ellie pleaded.

“I have followed the rules of Crenshaw longer than you’ve been alive,” Prospero said. “I broke them. For you. Because of you.”

“Once more then?”

“Has anyone told you that you are not one of the better angels, love?” Prospero asked wryly. “You tempt me to break every rule that I live by.…”

And for the first time, Ellie wondered if it might not be best that she not recall whatever had pushed them apart. Her temper was not traditionally monstrous, but with this power she now had… maybe that had changed a bit.