Page 30 of Warlocks Don’t Win (Singsong City #9)

Chapter

Seventeen

B usiness in Apple City was great, other than dealing with Tolly. No one wanted to get close enough to her to talk to me, so I had Winston stand outside with her like an ominous cloud of dark magic.

“I’ll give you a good deal if you tell me what’s going on with the Warlock,” the tall elf with the dark waxed brows said, glancing at the man who guarded the front door with my skunk.

“Mr. Carter, you wouldn’t be interested in a gaudy movie star’s idle gossip, would you?”

He blinked at me and then narrowed his eyes at Winston.

I could tell when he slipped through the glamour by his beady-eyed fascination as he turned back to me, lips pressed together.

“Are you working for the show, or are you dressing the Warlock Detective personally ? You can tell me. I never repeat gossip, idle or otherwise.”

I should be used to the humiliation, but I could feel the heat rising up my neck a centimeter at a time. “Mr. Carter, I’m here for my shop, not the Warlock Detective.” I frowned at the pink shoes made of rose petals. “These are ridiculous. No wonder you’re trying to get them out of here.”

He sniffed, affronted by my near insult. “They are bespelled magnificence. Only a true magic user could appreciate them.”

Mm hm. They were ridiculous. Still, his price was good. He really did want them out of his shop. I’d have to check them later for curses. “Fine. I’ll take the whole lot. They’ll go with the floral pants section.”

He winced. “Don’t tell me, Stripes.”

I flashed him a smile and then after payment and boxing, I left the shop, handing Winston the package before I stepped out into the crowd, him a step behind.

“Where to next?” he asked, disappearing the package like he’d done to all the others. It had been nice to do the usual rounds and take unwanted goods off the illustrious sellers in Apple City. Made me feel like a skunk in a garbage can. Took me back to my roots. Which were still green and purple.

Mr. Carter was watching us out the window, no doubt analyzing the way I was interacting with the famous Warlock.

“You really are a natural born porter. It’s a pity that I’m finished with my shopping.”

He gave me a smile, showing that dimple that wasn’t nearly manly enough. “I have a house here if you’d like to dress, or we could stay at a hotel.”

I frowned at Tolly while thoughts of Winston, hotels, and dressing got mixed up in my head.

Finally I snatched her away from him, burying my face in her fur while I tried not to have a complete breakdown.

The last ball was so horrible. What were the odds that this one would be any less traumatic?

Nope. I wasn’t betting on that kind of thing.

Would it be better to be at a hotel or his place?

I was going as his wife, so not going to his house would look suspicious.

“Your house,” I said, voice muffled in her fur.

He put his arm in mine and led me to the street. A car pulled up, big, black, sturdy-looking, and the next thing I knew, we were in the back seat, staring at each other, me still holding Tolly like a lifeline.

“You had a car following us?”

“The packages are in the trunk. How do you carry so many packages without a porter?” His eyes were so sweet, like he was looking forward to taking me into his fancy house in Apple City where all the respectable people lived.

I missed Singsong already. The train ride had been awful, even though he got a sleeping car so we didn’t have to be cramped together like sausages encased in plastic.

He was there, and there were beds behind us the entire trip.

“Do you like sausages?” I blurted out.

His smile flashed again, showing that shamefully weak dimple. “Your sausage rolls make life worth living.”

“Yes, but that’s mostly magic. Just generic sausages you get on the street.”

“Oh.” He frowned. “You’d like to stop on the way to get some street sausages? I’ll ask the driver to see to it.”

I nodded like that’s what I’d been thinking about.

What had I been thinking about? His dimple, and the way his broad shoulders stretched his magic coat that needed patching.

I needed to patch it properly, like all the packages I’d gotten, all the made things that had problems that I’d worked so hard to know how to fix.

I fixed shape, color, style, but also spells, reworking them so they actually, well, worked.

The coat was perfect except in its age and shabbiness.

Winston wasn’t shabby. Like his two hundred dollar haircut and the hair serums that went with it.

There was no way he made his own hair serums out of clary sage.

“Where did you get your coat?”

He looked down at the patched and pieced leather. “It was my father’s.”

“Ah. The one who died.” Ugh. Could I throw myself out of the moving car and die? No. The traffic was too slow. I’d probably just sprain an ankle.

He nodded soberly. “He wasn’t wearing it at the time.”

“Too bad. It has a lot of protections on it. Maybe would have kept him alive.” Yeah. Too bad. Could I be any less sensitive?

“Do you know why there are so few male neutral magic users?”

Was I supposed to know this? “Neutral magic doesn’t attract those who want flashy power.

Also, Warlock is traditionally an insult.

To be honest, I didn’t hear the term a lot before you did the whole, ‘Warlock Detective’ thing.

I guess you can manipulate anything, including what used to be derogatory.

Like Warlock’s Kiss. You made the term cool and so they made a band out of it.

Not sure where the beards came from, though. ”

“Oath Breaker. I named my show as a confession to you. I know I betrayed you. But I want to take that betrayal and turn it into something good. Not neutral. Good. Yes, neutral magic is about relationships, with nature, with others, instead of taking something raw and forming into an entirely different element. To be honest, I haven’t been a very neutral magic user for a long time.

I’ve focused on the light side of magic.

Healing, rooting out evil, bringing truth to light.

Not because I’m light or good, but because you are. ”

My head throbbed. “I officially have a headache. You’re saying that I’m a light user?

I mean, with my mother’s magic, I’ve done some really interesting thing all over the spectrum using the magic already imbued in clothing, but that’s not what I am, particularly not on the light side.

It’s just safer to use than dark magic, and my insurance isn’t the best. Why are we having this conversation? ”

The car stopped and the driver got out to get sausages from a vendor on the corner.

Win leaned closer, capturing my hands while his soft eyes burned with sincerity. “I can be anything you want me to be, anything you need me to be. Just say the word.”

I pulled my hands back. “Obviously. You were the most manipulative person I knew and that was before years of acting. You can be anything and make anyone anything. So what?”

He studied me. “I did try to take a death curse for you.”

“Yep. And…”

“I would rather die than let you die.”

This conversation was making my chest squeeze painfully. Everything with him was pain or pleasure. “Probably has something to do with your parent’s deaths. Have you seen a therapist? You can go with Parody.”

“I did mention that I love you.”

Yep. Pain. “I still haven’t figured out why you’d say something that ridiculous, particularly after you made sure to tell me all about how all the time we were together, when you were supposed to be my madly in love fiancé, was just a ruse.”

“You’re so…perfect.”

That got my attention. I glared at him. “Perfectly striped.”

“I love it. Can I touch it?”

I pulled back. “No. I don’t need you to judge my lack of proper conditioning.”

“I love that you don’t care about proper conditioning. I love that you have accepted that you don’t have to be perfect to be perfectly Clary Sage.”

“I’m not Clary Sage. I’m Stripes, or I was. This isn’t me choosing to be weird. This is me cursed to be weird.”

His smile flickered. “Right, because you weren’t ever actually different from the perfectly presented witch you were when we met. That was the real you.”

I blinked at him while my pulse pounded in my throat.

“That was as real as I knew how to be. You’re a manipulator who can make people question absolutely everything about themselves and the world around them.

What you did with Parody, that wasn’t on the light side of magic.

That was very, very dark. Not like I can judge.

I raised my father’s bones, which is probably darker than stealing someone’s will.

But is it really? Taking someone’s will is always dark.

Why wasn’t your father wearing that coat?

Was he tired of manipulation? Did he want a different life?

Why would that bother someone enough to kill them?

They didn’t kill you. You must have wondered why they’d kill them and not you.

Did they want you to be chasing shadows for the rest of your life?

It gave you purpose most neutral magic users don’t have, particularly Warlocks.

Home brew, bad beards, that’s the gist of it.

You haven’t ever been truly neutral, not ever. ”

He stared at me and then closed his eyes and sank against the seat. “So perfect,” he murmured.

I punched his shoulder. “What a stupid thing to say!”