20. Vīgintī
Vīgintī
Rumor Malefic
For some reason unknown to me or, more likely, pushed very far down within my psyche…
I stayed in Riot’s bed that night. I told myself it was because I didn’t know my way around the castle yet, and I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of running into an animated skeleton or talking mouse in the wee hours of the night, all of which were true… but was it the whole truth?
I don’t know.
He had helped me through a spider attack.
A part of me hoped he’d come back to bed and we’d finish what we started before Spade Killjoy Blackthorne rudely interrupted us. Where did they go at midnight? If it weren’t for the homecoming of my magical little grimoire, I might have followed them.
A Hex to Compel a Foolish Man… I didn’t dare read the spell in Riot’s room. Who knew what enchantments he had hidden in the headboard and walls.
Foolish men indeed… and now I knew there were actually three Blackthorne boys. Where was the third brother? What sort of hell did he bring to the table?
The next morning, light shone behind the closed white curtains. Riot hadn’t come back to bed last night.
The door to the bedroom squeaked slowly open, and I half expected a skeleton to clamber in… but nothing appeared. Sitting up, I assessed the room.
Suddenly, something jumped onto the bed and I yelped. Relief softened my shoulders as Soot purred his way into my lap. His soft fur greeted my palms as I gathered both him and my grimoire, leaving Riot’s bed empty and unmade.
Meanwhile, my body remained untouched and annoyed.
Did Spade always burst into rooms like he owned the place?
I guess he did own the place, but still, what was his problem?
It’s not like he had any real responsibilities since abandoning his lordship duties.
He lounged around his creepy castle, waited on by skeletons, wasting his magic on transfixing ordinary objects. What a sad, pathetic man.
The grimoire’s magic thrummed, like the beat of a sparrow’s enchanted wings, as I held it to my chest. Shuffling past moving canvases, I swore a bust of a stone statue turned to watch me pass. A shiver of unease trailed down my back as I approached the landing.
Tick, tock, tick, tock…
Quietly, I made to tiptoe past the grandfather clock.
Its eyes still haunted my nightmares, and I did not want a repeat encounter of its stare boring into my back.
Just as I thought I’d eased past and was safe at the top of the winding staircase, it clanked and whirled, breaking the eerie silence of the estate.
Spinning around, I caught its eyes open below the moon dial, the hands of the clock still moving backwards.
“A broken, haunted grandfather clock. How useless—like everything else in this dusty mess of a castle,” I grumbled.
Blinking slowly, I watched as the grandfather clock’s hands hung above his mouth like a rotating mustache. “The only broken and haunted one here is you.” he replied.
A puff of indignation left my throat. I put a hand on my hip. “Is that so? Goddess, the last thing I need is a clock insulting me. You can’t even tell time.”
“Neither can you.”
“Screw you.” I waved off the clock and turned to descend the stairs, my cat on my heels.
The clock called after me, his voice low but surly. “Your shirt is on backwards.”
“Is not?—“
No buttons striped down the center of my blouse.
Yes, okay, my shirt was on backwards. I must have hastily gotten it turned around when I was…
cuddling Riot and his stupid brother slammed into the room.
“Great, I’ve been embarrassed by a clock,” I mumbled to the feline prancing at my ankles.
“What other horrors await me in the Blackthorne lair today?”
As I rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs, reaching the dusty, hollow foyer once more, a faint simmer and the aroma of salty meat reached my senses.
My mouth watered. While my sister Prism ate like a bird, I ate like a male twice my size.
Meat, especially, was my main diet staple, but I would also frequently finish Prism’s plate of greens and mushrooms she never finished.
Where did the food here in the castle come from?
Who prepared it?
Was that… bacon I smelt?
All questions that deserved an immediate answer.
My stomach growled in confirmation. Following the heavy scent and sounds of cookware clinking, a painting on the wall caught my attention.
This wasn’t a landscape like all the others, it was a portrait.
This was the first time I’d seen a painting of a face grace the castle walls.
A man with eyes of different colors stared back at me.
One eye jade and one copper. Shaggy, curly silver hair framed his chiseled, handsome features.
Despite the tone of his curls, his face was that of a young man, probably in his mid-twenties.
My glance dropped to his full lips below his strong nose. Whoever he was, he had an air of prestige and a glint of mischief in his expression. I inspected the painting closely, wondering why this person deserved a canvas. A friend? I couldn’t imagine Spade and Riot having friends.
The cat at my feet meowed, and the man painted on the canvas became animated, flashing a smile. Something in my heart twisted, but I wasn’t sure why.
Another meow.
“Okay, okay, let’s find some food.” I hushed my familiar, giving his ear a scratch. The grimoire hummed in my hold, begging for me to use it.
I wanted to.
I would.
But first, bacon.
Sizzles and pops, along with the clanging of dishes, pulled me into a kitchen the size of my entire cottage plus three.
The space held multiple wood burning ovens, stoves with hot pans but no visible fire.
Wooden tables overflowed with everything from cut fruits, stacks of meats, and fresh breads.
It was almost, almost , enough sumptuousness to ignore the tall, lanky skeletons that manned their stations, dicing vegetables and carting trays around.
Cautiously, I grabbed a plate and filled it with bacon and sausage.
When I assessed the room, none of the moving bones turned their skulls toward me.
Each busied themselves with their task, so I hustled and filled three plates with food.
You know, enough so I wouldn’t have to come back and be around the bones again that day.
“Is that one wearing a chef’s hat?” I absently asked my cat as I backed out of the doorway, my grimoire tucked under my arm, one plate balancing on my wrist while I clutched the other two. “You’re right,” I answered the gray cat as he looked up at my balancing act. “I should have gotten more.”
Much to my luck, I evaded running into a Blackthorne, moving statue, mouse, lycanthrope, or bones on the way down the hall. Wow, that was quite a bit of odd and spooky things to be thankful to avoid.
This place was weird.
Back in my room, my bed had been made, curtains opened, and a basket of fresh cut melon was left on a small breakfast table by the window.
Shoving the basket aside with my elbow, I set down my plates of meat.
Meanwhile, my gray cat hopped up on the window’s ledge, gazing out over the graves.
He sniffed at the sausage I offered him but didn’t take a bite.
Crispy bacon crunched between my teeth, and I licked grease off my fingers before opening my grimoire.
Thumbing through the pages, I found the book’s most recent hex.
The one that had excited me so thoroughly, I’d shuffled from Riot’s room that morning.
Had he returned? Was he disappointed to find his bed empty?
I hoped so. I may have been willing to sleep with him, but that didn’t make him any less of a prick.
“A prick who will soon be hexed to do my bidding,” I said aloud to the cat. “Now, how’s this go…”
A Hex to Compel a Foolish Man
Claws, teeth, blood, bone.
He’s a fool, he knows it, time to come home.
No more hiding, time to act
Keep it simple, stupid
No turning back.
This dumbass needs this. Just say it a few times. No further tools required. Trust me, you’ve got all you need right in front of you. Have fun. Try not to scream.
That was… specific and intriguing. Again, this grimoire didn’t read like any other I’d ever seen, even apart from the disappearing and reappearing spells.
It was as if it were bewitched into giving me what I needed, when I needed it.
More than that… it seemed like the author was speaking to me directly?
No, that couldn’t be. Could it?
That begged the question as it burrowed deep into my mind. Who did this grimoire belong to?
Shoving a whole sausage link into my mouth, I wiped my hands on my pants.
My words were ridiculously muffled. My ancestry line were somewhere beyond the veil, rubbing their temples at how absurd I must have sounded.
Had any other Malefic witches performed a hex with a mouth full of meat?
Just me? I did like being the first of anything.
“A Hex to Compel a Foolish Man.”
The cat’s head quickly turned toward me from his perch.
“Claws, teeth, blood, bone.
He’s a fool, he knows it, time to come home.”
A loud meow screeched in my periphery as the pages of the grimoire glowed, its magic buzzing into my fingertips.
“No more hiding, time to act
Keep it simple, stupid
No turning back.”
The room rumbled, and the magic shocked me like a bolt of lightning, a slight zap of static. Suddenly, the pages’ glow faded, and the tingling in my bones silenced.
Shock and terror lit in my chest as I looked toward my cat in the window…
to see… he was not a cat. A man with shaggy, curly gray hair perched on the windowsill.
Cat ears protruded from his head, and two multi-colored eyes surveyed me.
One jade, one copper—I’d seen these eyes before, in a painting.
Only now instead of round pupils, were elongated slits.
The cat-man eased into a small grimace of a smile. “Dammit all to hell… I guess the cat’s out of the bag. Hello, I’m Twenty Blackthorne.”