Page 24 of Reluctant Witch (A Course in Magic #2)

24

Ellie

A memory came crashing over Ellie. The force of the accompanying emotions made her stumble and fall.

“Ellie.” Prospero took a step closer. “I’m relieved to find you.”

“No.” Ellie raised a hand, and the diner’s floor lifted up like the asphalt serpents and the forest serpents once had. This time, though, Ellie had better control of it. It was no illusion. No accident. She stared at the woman she’d been falling in love with, and Ellie willed that black-tiled floor into a cage. She willed the silvered barstools into steel bars around it.

Doubly caged, Prospero stared at Ellie. “You’re making a mistake.”

“Let me go. Don’t pursue us,” Ellie half begged, half demanded, and then she ran out the door and jumped into the waiting car. Maggie was seated there.

When Ellie opened her eyes, her brain felt overcharged from the image of creating a cage around her wife. She’d been in the other world with Maggie Lynch, the headmaster’s new wife.

Does she remember? Was that why she cornered me?

Why can’t I remember her if I was running away with her?

Was I with Maggie? Unfaithful to Prospero?

It hit Ellie with a sickening force that she had apparently run away from her wife with another woman. That thing she’d forgotten? It was apparently that she cheated on her wife with another student there.

No wonder Prospero keeps rejecting me.

Ellie had more questions than she knew what to do with since she remembered jumping into a car with Maggie. It was very clearly an erased memory, not a dream. Ellie was certain of that. Ellie was unsettled by the thought that she was hunted over there— by my wife! —just as the current escaped witches were.

Witches aren’t allowed to go to that world! I don’t even know Maggie. I can’t recall a single conversation we’ve had until yesterday.…

And that was the crux of the problem, though. Ellie couldn’t recall it. That wasn’t the same as it not happening. It was simply that Ellie had no recollection of it. Which means Prospero erased more than a memory of whatever was happening there.… What else don’t I know?

Ellie walked through the increasingly busy castle. The hallways were filled with witches she didn’t recognize, and most of them had carts of belongings. Some were more like old-fashioned train trolleys, stacked with trunks and boxes and baskets. A few looked more like luggage carts. One woman who seemed to have an enormous bustle under her dress was carrying a raccoon that was wearing a bonnet. Odder still, the raccoon was swaddled as if were an infant.

The raccoon, for its part, looked perfectly content to be wrapped in a baby blanket—or maybe it was simply tolerant of the witch’s actions.

“Make way,” the witch barked out. “If you lollygaggers wake the baby, I’ll make you wish you’d never met me.”

“I wish that already, Bells.” An older man in a pair of overalls that had seen better days shook his head and made eye contact with Ellie. “Silly bird can’t tell a forest beast from a baby.”

Ignoring him and everyone else, the witch swayed exaggeratedly as she ploughed through the hall with a luggage cart in front of her like a cowcatcher on the front of a train. Her other arm was wrapped around her “baby.”

At her side, the Norwegian singer from her remedial-magic classes said, “Hello, Ellie.”

“Axell.” Ellie eyed him suspiciously, thinking back to their recent interrupted conversation. He knew things she ought to know. Of that, she was certain. “I’m looking for Maggie.”

He smiled wider and said quickly, “Maggie is your friend, Ellie. You are close, and then this last week you stopped talking suddenly. Both of you.” He stared at her like she ought to be understanding his peculiar pronouncements. “You can tell this is true, ja ?”

“Yes.” Ellie’s eyes looked at him appraisingly. “Were we friends?”

“No, but I would like that.” He beamed at her. “I am Maggie’s friend now. You? You are frightening. Like your wife.”

They paused to let the raccoon in the bonnet run past them. The little furry fellow had escaped his swaddle, but he still had on the bonnet and what looked like pink gingham bloomers and a dress. Ellie had the distinct impression that her sense of “normal” was long gone, but even with the adjustments of a magical world, the raccoon in bloomers was still a bit odd.

“Well, grab the baby, you ninnies!” The overalls-clad witch strode past them like a warrior on a mission. “C’mere, Chester.”

Axell and Ellie watched as the man used some sort of magical energy to reach out and swoop Chester the raccoon up into his arms.

“Arabella worries,” he told the chubby mammal.

It chittered at him, and the man listened as if he understood. Then he frowned. “Just eat your porridge for her. I’ll fix you a nice plate of eggs and crayfish when she goes out with the ladies.”

If anyone had told Ellie that raccoons and badgers were often people before she’d lived in Crenshaw, she’d have thought they were liars. She glanced at the man as he came back toward her.

“Are people turned into raccoons for a different crime than badgers?”

The man in overalls stopped, scowled at her, and announced, “Chester is not a criminal, miss. He’s a raccoon born and bred.”

Then he carried the raccoon away as it chittered angrily at her. She didn’t understand a word he said, but she knew it was angry.

“Sorry,” she called after the raccoon. “I wasn’t trying to be rude!”

Ellie wasn’t sure what to think. Raccoons were raccoons, but badgers were people who had committed crimes…? She shook her head and turned back to Axell. “Right. Maggie was my friend.”

For a moment, Axell’s expression was torn, as if he was weighing the risks of having this conversation.

“I won’t tell anyone who told me.”

“Come.” He walked away, weaving around the new residents until they reached a door that was closed. He glanced back at her and pointed at the door. “Magic the lock.”

It was an odd request, but she understood what he meant. She readjusted the locking mechanism so the door swung open. Inside the room was a stack of binders that she recognized.

“My research!” She grabbed one of her Missing files and flipped it open. Dan Monahan’s face stared back at her. “I have your boyfriend’s information.…”

“ Ja. ” Axell flopped down on the bed. “You knew about some students when you came here.”

Absently, Ellie flipped the pages. There was an article about Maggie, too. Ellie skimmed it.

MISSING LAWYER

RALEIGH—The search for 44-year-old Margaret Lynch continues this week. “Ms. Lynch careened off the road. Evidence suggests the mother of one was day-drinking,” local sheriff Bill Bamberg explained. “Maybe she caught a ride with someone. Maybe she planned the whole thing.”

Lynch, an attorney, was last seen by her teen son, who was knocked unconscious in the crash. Several campers saw the two that weekend, but there were no witnesses to the accident. “Maggie was in over her head at work, but there were no cases likely to lead to foul play,” her ex-husband explained. “I think this was her cowardice. We were in a custody discussion, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she was trying to kidnap our son.” Authorities are hoping someone will reach out with information on Ms. Lynch’s situation.

Ellie ran her hand over the sleeve that held the newsprint article. She had been collecting the stories of the missing for as long as she could recall. She sorted them by type and resolution, updated them. These binders were the work of a lifetime.

Why are they sitting in a sealed room in a castle in Crenshaw?

Ellie looked around the room for a moment. She walked to the window and saw a tree there. Ellie felt her own magic vibrating from outside the window. She had made the tree.

This was my room, she realized.

For a moment, she remembered standing there before. Not in this exact spot, but near this tree. Maggie was there at that point, too. “Where to next? If we’re going to slip off our ‘campus,’ where do we go?” That meant Maggie had been in this room, too.

But I don’t remember knowing her.

“Why don’t I remember reading this?” Ellie asked, pointing at the binder, which was flopped open to the article about Maggie. “Or making that?” She gestured over her shoulder this time, toward the window.

“Maggie does not remember, either.” Axell held Ellie’s gaze. “You both forgot many things. We are helping her know now that her son is safe.”

“Does everyone know that I… left?”

He shrugged. “I watch the people I like, the people Daniel likes… and those he fears.”

Ellie couldn’t figure out what could’ve happened to make Dan fear her, but she suspected that with her power, fear was not a surprising reaction. She was, after all, a research librarian, and here Axell was offering himself up like a book of clues and evidence.

“Did I hurt him?”

“No.”

“Did I hurt you?” she asked.

Axell smiled. “That would hurt him, but no.”

“Did I hurt Maggie?”

“No. You didn’t hurt anyone, I think. Maybe Lady Prospero.” Axell paused before adding, “I was not where you were, so I do not know all the things. I think you did not, though.”

As Ellie tried to think of the best questions, Axell watched her, and it struck her that he could have just told her more than he did. Instead, she felt like she was pulling the answers from him—but that he wanted her to do that. He obviously was trying to prompt and shape her inquiries.

“Why can’t you just tell me?” Ellie looked down at the fruiting tree. She’d made that. Her power was to shift and create. She remade things.

For a moment, Axell looked wary. “I cannot break all the rules, Ellie. I told you: some people have power, and some are disposable.” He looked toward the door, where voices were rising and falling. “And some people have influence.… You have power. I have neither power nor influence. I am a cog here.”

“Oh, I’m sure you—”

“I like this not mattering, Ellie. I want to be a cog, not in the center.” Axell gave her a very sad smile that seemed much older than he looked. “Over there, I was someone in the center. People watched me. It was too much focus. Here? I am a cog, but also… being only a cog means I can be disposed.”

It was an ominous statement. Disposed? What sort of person disposed of others? Her mind filled in a few answers before she even finished thinking the question. My wife. Maggie’s husband. The chief witch. It took only a fraction of a moment to have several answers.

“What’s his gift? Dan’s? Explain it more.”

And Axell’s smile blossomed widely. “Daniel… enhances. If I want to sing, Dan will make my magic larger so the whole of the castle could hear. He can make any magic stronger.”

The import of what Axell wanted her to understand was suddenly crystal clear. Dan’s magic strengthened other magic, and previously, Prospero hadn’t been able to erase Ellie’s memories. With Dan’s help, Prospero must have done so. Whatever Ellie forgot involved Maggie, and that was the secret between them.

Ellie looked at Axell and asked, “Shall I pretend we never talked about this?”

“Maybe we say only that I removed you from the hallway where the crowds were big. That is a true thing, not lies.” Axell gave her a wide-eyed, innocent look. “I was trying to be a friend, Elleanor Brandeau of the House of Thesis. It is not right what they did.”

Then he was gone, and Ellie was left in what had once apparently been her room. She could see why they hadn’t returned her to it. There was an entire binder on her classmates. I thought I lost that or didn’t bring it here to Crenshaw. And there was a giant apple tree. She’d obviously climbed down that tree with Maggie.

A part of Ellie thought that it was ridiculous that she be asked to forget as much as she had. That same part of her thought that this was overreaction if the crime in question was infidelity. And a tiny voice whispered, How far would Prospero go to keep someone powerful at her side who was completely devoted to her?

Even without all her memories, Ellie had no illusions that her wife was a gentle soul. She was currently hunting witches who had shot Scylla and exposed Crenshaw. Prospero was a witch who evoked rightful fear in anyone who crossed her.

And I left Prospero, caged her, and ran away with Maggie.

Whatever the reason for those choices, Ellie had no trouble believing that Prospero had not wanted to let Ellie go… or that if she found out now that Ellie realized the things she had, Maggie and Daniel and Axell were at risk. They were not impervious to mind magic.

So why didn’t she erase Dan and Axell’s memories?

Surely, Prospero had to realize that, in time, Ellie would piece it all together.

That thought hit her like a fist to the throat, and Ellie let out a gasp. Prospero was far from careless. She had talked about having to visit multiple people to adjust memories, and yet in this case, she had not.

And she knew I researched the missing.

Could she have wanted this to happen? Wanted me to figure it out? Prospero followed the laws as much as she had to, but she was the queen of loopholes. Ellie was realizing that as she’d started to find ways to get her wife back into her arms.

That possibility shifted the weight of things that Ellie was starting to figure out. She had no doubt of her wife’s regard or the fact that Prospero did desire her. Prospero couldn’t act on that desire as long as Ellie couldn’t remember.…

She wants me to figure it out! Ellie grinned to herself. Being given a puzzle to solve with Prospero as the prize at the end was a rather perfect seduction for Ellie. So I’ll figure out the rest, and in the end, we’ll be okay.

The loss of memories had only lasted a few days, but they had an eternity in front of them, and Ellie had to believe that the parts she recalled were larger than the parts she’d been forced to forget.

We can make it work.

Can’t we?

Was I unfaithful?

Was it a power grab?

Was I a part of the New Economists? Running away like they had?

There were answers to be had, and her mind was steadily finding more and more of them. She wanted to work things out. First, though, she needed Prospero to come home safely.