8. Seb
SEB
He knew he was screwed from the moment he woke up and wished he were dead. Everything last night had been a mistake. Seb tried to trace his current predicament back to its roots but gave up when he lost track of the drinks after the first plastic cup of beer.
Sleeping with Gemma had been a bad idea.
The sex was good—the perfect, sloppy distraction from the black hole swallowing light in his head, and that was the problem.
Gemma shouldn’t have been a distraction.
Gemma liked him. Seb threw an arm across his face as the light stabbed him in the eyes. The sun was its own punishment.
Fuck.
He sat up and Gemma stirred. So did his stomach. He barely made it to the bathroom before hurling his guts into the toilet.
“Jesus, Seb!” Asher’s face registered its disgust acrobatically as he emerged into the living room, towel around his waist, cheek pushed against the wall as if that would provide relief. “How late were you up?”
Seb pressed his eyes closed against the question, against the day. He vaguely remembered the microwave clock at three AM as he and Gemma knocked around the kitchen, hooked together at the mouth, searching for snacks.
“Fuck,” he said aloud.
“Fucked,” Asher corrected. “It applies to your recent past, present, and immediate future.”
He wanted to tell Asher to shut up. He was pretty sure if he tried, he’d throw up again.
Asher’s girlfriend went to Dunmoody College of the Subtle Arts* in Savannah.
Dunmoody was a complex of mansions and courtyards tucked behind Spanish moss, high walls, and not-unfounded rumors of haunting.
They’d met on exchange and broke up roughly every other month.
Seb thought it was tied to a celestial cycle, but he wasn’t sure yet which one.
Instead, he returned to his room, which had acquired a musty, noxiously sweet aroma that did nothing for his stomach or his mood.
He crossed to the windows, creaking one open, and began getting dressed, staggering slowly into a pair of briefs, then his Cantrèa sweats.
In his bed, sheets twisted around her in a pythonic manner only a near-comatose person could possibly tolerate, Gemma woke.
She sat up with a groan and turned to face him, tugging the sheets around her chest, suddenly shy in the unforgiving late-morning light. Seb would have paid someone handsomely for an overcast sky.
“Hey,” she said by way of salutation, her caramelized-honey hair flattened on one side.
“Hey, uh…” He trailed off awkwardly, shirt in hand, flushing before someone who’d seen him in all sorts of unflattering positions the night before. He turned his back, tossing his shirt aside and rifling through his wardrobe to give Gemma time to find her underwear.
She slid into her pants, smiling demurely and tilting to display herself to best effect. “Want to get breakfast?”
Seb had braced himself for it, but he still felt the blow. The dagger of assholery slid neatly between his ribs as he settled on the bed, near but not next to her. He ran a hand over his face and into his hair, not hiding his grimace, knowing how it would be interpreted.
“I…honestly don’t think I could keep breakfast down.”
Gemma looked at her hands, now sandwiched between her luscious thighs. “Yeah, no, same actually.”
Here goes.
“This was…last night was…great.” Gemma closed her eyes, knowing, apparently, what was coming. Seb wished he could stop, wished he could want what she wanted, but he didn’t. He had no idea what he wanted; he just knew it wasn’t sitting next to him. “But.”
Gemma deflated.
“But I’m not in the market for serious, or even…consistent, right now. I’m sorry if that’s what you were hoping for.”
Gemma leaned into the out, as he knew she would, and somehow that was worse, watching her put pride above honesty, both of them knowing the truth.
“Yeah, no.” She shook her head a little too emphatically as she searched for her shirt.
“Me neither. It was just…yeah. Super fun.” She trailed her hand along his shoulder as she stood.
“Good luck later, not that you need it.”
What?
As soon as his door swung shut, he buried his head in his hands.
Fuck.
A scalding shower and several attempts at breakfast later, he collapsed on Tori’s bed, her golden raw-silk coverlet cool against his cheek.
She barely tossed a glance over her shoulder at him and continued editing the latest photo stream for her blog and growing social media empire.
Every inch of it had been grown in sweat and too many screen hours without a single spell, despite her major in Magic and Technology.
Magic and science loved each other for they worked much in the same way—they were the invisible forces that moved the world and could only be spoken to obliquely.
“And what does regret taste like this morning?”
Seb groaned. “This is your fault.” Then, “Strawberry lip balm and chickpeas.”
Tori turned and glared at him from within her satin robe and pajama set. “You did not eat all of my spicy chickpea puffs, Sebastian.”
He muttered into her duvet, “Gemma ate them.”
“You’re such a liar.” He could feel her eye roll. “I told you to stop drinking and you were an asshole. You deserve this.”
He sat up, pleading with his eyes. “I’ve thrown up three times already. Surely that’s adequate punishment. Fix me.”
“Fix yourself.”
“I can’t. I have a match later.”
Her forehead wrinkled as she calculated. He knew how much she loved Cantrèa and how much she lived vicariously through his career. “You’d seriously rather feel twice as bad later?”
“Obviously not, but I’d rather face the mother of all hangovers than lose to the lesser Braithwhite.”
It was Tori’s turn to grimace. “Fine. Headache or nausea? And—” She held up a hand to silence him as he opened his mouth. “You have to help me photograph my next three editorials.”
“Asher is—”
“And don’t you dare choose now to dip your toes into the waters of faux humility. Three editorials, one symptom.”
“Headache,” he sighed.
He didn’t really mind helping Tori with her fashion work—he knew things he wouldn’t otherwise because of it—what cutting on the bias meant, how to properly drape silk charmeuse if anyone ever asked, how to choose the correct cravat for dinner with his grandparents, how to properly take and pose for photographs, how to curate a photo feed.
The last two had paid out the most practical dividends thus far, and he always enjoyed the occasions when Tori used him as a model.
It was her love of fashion, women’s fashion, that had first lit the spark in Tori’s mind that she might be living in the wrong body, that had first put her parents on alert. He didn’t mind helping; he just…didn’t have the time. Any time.
“The future editor of Vogue Italia thanks you.”
He closed his eyes as Tori joined him on the bed and placed her cool fingertips on his temples.
She wasn’t actually curing his headache, just tricking his body into thinking it was gone.
Psycho-somesthetic spells like these were a devil’s bargain—they had a short half-life and came back twice as strong.
Nevertheless, he sighed in relief as the pain flowed away.
True healing ability was inherent, not learned, and incredibly rare. Anyone who possessed the capability went to a specialized school in Copenhagen and was guaranteed a cushy career and paycheck for life. Supposedly, Windermere’s chief medic made almost as much as Dean Meade.
“Thanks.”
“De rien. Make sure you get a car wash, by the way; we need her for one of the shoots.”
He pressed his lips together as he turned and went to try for breakfast yet again.
* For further reading on the history of Dunmoody and the other major North American institutions of AEtheric learning, please refer to Appendix B.