Page 22 of Warlocks Don’t Win (Singsong City #9)

Chapter

Twelve

I sat crammed between Winston and Jessica for a very long hour, my shoulder throbbing more with every bumpy mile.

Jessica only complained about the lack of leg room once.

Winston sprawled into the aisle and didn’t complain at all, at least not verbally.

The way he bumped against me every time he shifted, trying to stretch out in the narrow confines of our no-class seats spoke volumes.

Still, I’d bought them tickets instead of leaving them together in Bosty.

I shuddered at the thought of the two of them together.

“Does it hurt?” Winston murmured, his mouth so close to my ear he only needed to breathe the words to be heard.

His hair kept brushing my neck. Such gorgeous locks.

The rest of him was glamoured just enough to not be recognizable as Winston the Warlock.

I could see past it since he hadn’t put any real effort into it, and making a glamour that would fool people who already knew what you looked like took far more magic.

He was probably magically exhausted from creating a way door.

Those weren’t easy. My linked back-door in the shop had taken weeks.

Of course, I’d mostly done it to see if I could.

I could, and it was handy for avoiding some traffic, but not much else.

There was nowhere else I wanted to get to quickly.

I shivered from his breath on my skin. “Only the thought of paying for your tickets. I’m not sure why I let Jessica come along. I guess it’s an old habit that I’d hoped had died along with my mother.”

She elbowed me. “I’m right here. Don’t talk to him like I’m not even here. If you were so worried about money, you could, I don’t know, make some.”

“That’s right. You need to pay me back fees for using my name in your show.”

“How else was I supposed to find you? What did I ever do to deserve your abandonment?” Her eyes welled with fake tears. That was the Jessica I remembered, manipulative to the tear ducts.

Winston snorted. “You didn’t even show up for her trial.”

“Of course not! My mother died and people were talking like I did it, following in Clary’s footsteps!

I had to disappear so I didn’t end up like her.

It wouldn’t have helped her case, and its not like you should talk.

Doing nothing was a vast improvement over your betrayal.

Not that she shouldn’t have known better, being the kind of low-life, soulless, bottom-dweller that you are, but?—”

I cut her off by elbowing her in the stomach hard enough to knock the air out of her.

Only I was allowed to insult Winston. My husband.

Gulp. “You’re saying you created a television show for the sole purpose of luring me back home?

” I gave her a skeptical look. “When I first showed up, you weren’t happy to see me. ”

She shrugged. “Some weirdo came with Winston the Wicked and I’m supposed to believe it’s you? The Clary I knew wouldn’t ever forgive or forget that kind of betrayal. Of course the Clary I knew wouldn’t have fallen for his lies in the first place.” She glared at him past me.

I rolled my eyes and slouched back in my seat, done with this conversation. “Whatever. I don’t watch TV.”

She got a hurt look. “But we used to spend hours together watching those old shows. Gilligan’s Island, I Dream of Genie, Bewitched. You’re saying that you just stopped? Who even are you? Why haven’t you cursed Winston by now? What are you waiting for?”

I hunched my shoulders, trying to ignore her words and Winston’s silence.

He was brooding so loudly right up against my side.

My shoulder really was hurting. Why had I decided to leave Singsong City again?

Did Winston manipulate me into it? Sure.

There was a curse, and it was rooted in Sage House. Those were the facts. Irrevocable.

“Seriously, Clary,” Jessica continued, apparently not reading my body language. “It seems like you’re just stumbling around in the dark. You used to be so much…more.”

I rolled my eyes again, but didn’t say anything. What could I say to something so obviously true. I used to put effort into looking competent. And look where that got me. Squished on a train between two people I’d been avoiding for half of my life.

Winston broke his broody silence to say, “Looking competent is not the same as being competent. Appearances are meaningless without capability.” His voice was a delicious rumble. Why did it have to be so delicious?

“But stripes?” Jessica tugged on a strand of my hair to make a point.

That’s when Winston slid his arms around me and pulled me onto his lap, turning so he faced the aisle and Jessica was behind him.

I was on his lap. In public. No one could see us, but still.

He covered my shoulder with his hand and for a moment the pulsing ache was worse before it slowly got better.

“What are you doing?” I asked stiffly, trying not to notice how good he felt wrapped around me.

“I’m not going to let Jessica pull your hair like she’s a five year old bully who doesn’t understand personal boundaries.”

I blinked into those soft caramel eyes. “Right. Pulling my hair is so much more invasive than pulling all of me onto your lap.”

He felt so good, strong, right.

He brushed my nose with his and Jessica gagged. He murmured, “It’s the price of going to see my grandmother and Jessica without telling me about it. Either of them could have killed you.”

Jessica scoffed. “Hardly. She’s not easy to kill. Then again, she did go see Tabitha before me, and she could definitely have killed her so…”

I peered over Winston’s shoulder at Jessica, ignoring the other people in the car who weren’t looking at us, almost like this entire row was glamoured.

It was. And silenced. I’d learned how to do that early in my life because Jessica talked too much, and always had.

Something she said niggled at me. She’d said that people accused her of murdering her mother during my trial, not after.

“I thought Merta was killed during the battle to control the coven, after I’d been convicted.

Isn’t that what you said?” I frowned at Winston whose arms tightened around me.

I liked it so much. I couldn’t like being close to him, because I hated him.

Absolutely, but I couldn’t react too strongly, or I’d look like I liked it.

Or something. Panic. I was trying to focus on murders, but how was I supposed to do that when my soul-bound husband/enemy was wrapped around me?

He didn’t feel like my enemy. He felt like home, how he’d always felt.

He nodded, eyes so soft and melting. It was like his eyes weren’t thinking about murders either. “That’s what the reports said. Was she killed before, but no one reported it until later? I could have sworn that she was poisoned in a public place, full of witnesses.”

Jessica scowled over his shoulder at him. “Yeah, she was poisoned in the tea house. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t even there. Somehow that made it even more suspicious. That was a time when everyone was calling everyone a murderer. Clary’s whole thing started it. Your witness didn’t help.”

“But it was hemlock?” I asked, trying to focus on the important things. Why was it important? Hemlock was easy to access for anybody.

She shrugged again. “That’s what they say. I wasn’t around.” She’d always had issues with her mother. She probably felt guilty for not being too sad about her death. I didn’t have that problem. Issues aside, I’d gotten along with my mother almost unnaturally well.

“Do you think it was Tabitha, taking advantage of my mother’s death to grab as much power as possible?

” I asked, trying not to feel the death personally.

At the time, the idea of Tabitha being strong enough to control the coven was absurd.

No one would have expected it, but there she was, manipulating the coven like she was born to it.

“What happened to the investigation?” Winston asked.

“Let me guess. The case was closed without any further fuss, certainly without naming your murderer.” His voice was a low rumble, and his hand ran down my back in an entirely unnecessary way, so a ripple of shivers followed his touch.

And I was sitting on his lap. In public.

“Winston, if you don’t put me on my own seat, I’m going to turn you into a toad.” Enough was enough, and I couldn’t take any more. I was going to bite him, or kiss him. Flimsy glamours weren’t gonna cover the end of this story.

He raised a brow, looking down at my mouth. “Would you kiss me as a toad? Because if so, I’d say please do. Other than the fact that transfiguration into that particular animal is next to impossible.”

Jessica snorted. “Tell that to Evan.”

I flinched. “Don’t you dare.” My memories of the first football player I’d ever seduced into becoming my stalker were not happy ones.

“What?” Winston raised a brow, looking into my eyes that time. “You’ve managed to transfigure someone into a toad?”

“At eighteen,” she said, the traitor.

I glowered at her. “If you don’t stop talking, I’m going to turn you into a toad.”

She rolled her eyes. “We’re all toads. And then what?”

Nightmare. That’s what. I turned my scowl on Winston. “Put me down.”

He hesitated, looking at me with sharp curiosity. He slowly shifted, until I was in my own seat between him and Jessica and he was back in his. It felt so hard and cold and alone. That’s how pride always felt. Gloriously alone.

It was miraculously quiet for the rest of the trip.

I spent it thinking about toads, Evan, and how idiotic I’d been.

I was a senior in high school, and I wanted to experiment with my true magic, the succubus line my mother didn’t hide very well.

Or at all. She made it look easy: seduce a ne’er do well, charge full of magic, and bury his bones in the cemetery.

Evan was a ne’er do well if ever there was one.

Wealthy, handsome, but still targeted girls who didn’t want him, because everyone was supposed to want the golden boy.

It was too easy to seduce him, to drain the life out of him, but I couldn’t kill him. Instead, I wiped his memories and sent him on his way. He was a horrible person who had definitely deserved to die, but I couldn’t do it.

After that, his obsession built over time, starting with long stares from the distance, moving to notes in my locker, and then him trying to force himself on me.

That’s when I turned him into a toad and ran away to stay in Apple City with some of my friends.

I’d met Winston and was firmly against sucking life and magic out of anyone ever again.

Winston was wealthy, handsome, but also things Evan couldn’t begin to comprehend.

I had a hard time understanding justice, mercy, charity, and forgiveness, but I’d tried.

I read books on morality in the library.

Such exciting new ideas. I couldn’t be my mother, so I’d be something else instead.

Winston made goodness look easy. Being with him was the easiest thing of all.

And then the toad found me all the way in Apple City. In my bed. Waking up to a toad trying to have its way with me was quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen to me. Including jail. Jail was far, far better. No toads got through those thick walls.

And he could talk. Such a nasty mouth on that toad. I managed to paralyze him and wrap him up, then took him back home for my mother to deal with. She’d taken him by his muddy green, squeaky foot and said, “These things happen.”

It was like with the rats all over again. She never got angry at me for doing something magically stupid. Or personally stupid. Or anything at all. Until the last time. She’d been so angry, tried to kill me. I still wasn’t over that.

“Why did you turn someone into a frog?” Winston murmured, not looking precisely at me when we finally pulled into the station.

“It never happened,” I said, shifting to make sure my legs still had feeling in them.

Jessica sniffed. “You should have just killed him. Then you never would have run away to Apple City, met Winston, and began the decline of your happiness.”

“You ran away to Apple City to get away from him?” Winston asked as he stretched his legs out, wincing, also not looking at me.

I never wanted him to know how wicked I was, but then he found me caught directly after my mother’s murder. I wanted to be as good as he was, but we all knew otherwise. I shrugged. “I didn’t think he’d follow me all that way as a toad. I should have crossed a large body of water.”

“He followed you before that?”

I shrank down in the seat, but seriously, I was a convicted murder. “Sure. I tried to suck the life and magic out of him and ended up with a stalker. That’s why you don’t do things halfway. You have to commit to villainy and follow it through, or you’re setting yourself up for failure.”

“That’s the only explanation for your new look,” Jessica said, standing up. “Absolute and utter failure.”

Winston grabbed my hand, his large fingers locking around me. He stared at our hands wrapped together for a moment and then with a flash of heat, the pain in my shoulder dissolved, leaving me slightly numb instead.

I yanked my hand out of his and pushed him into the aisle. “Save your strength for the way door. Also, don’t touch me.”

He smiled slightly and stood, blocking the aisle so I could go in front of him. “I always wondered how you ended up in Apple City. Now I know.”

“Yeah, and knowing helps so much.”

He followed close behind me, not waiting for Jessica. Why were they so antagonistic towards each other? Not that I cared. Fine, I cared a stupid amount and always had. That’s why I had to get untangled from him before I forgot how much I hated him.