Chapter 8 #2
I hovered a hand over the little stuffed figure, crude stitching making a face on its bulbous head and pins poking out of it.
“Because it doesn’t have any magic in it,” I told her.
Mason had taught both Jackson and I how to feel for magic in an object so that we wouldn’t accidentally trigger something—whether a curse or some other kind of spell.
“Well, not yet,” she countered. “I haven’t linked it to anyone.”
I felt my eyebrows go up. “Are you planning to?”
She flopped down onto her stylish futon, which was covered with brightly colored pillows with patterns of skulls, bones, birds, and little knives. “Well, since the ’rents offed themselves, no, not particularly.”
I blinked. “I thought they died in a car accident?”
Violette sighed. “They did,” she replied, toying with the end of one lock of hair. “But it was because they were going to that stupid ritual that they were out that late.”
I sat in the recliner positioned at an angle to the futon, both facing a surprisingly large-screen TV.
I angled my body toward her. “Did they go to a lot of rituals?” I asked, more because I wasn’t sure what else to say without completely changing the topic of conversation, although I was fairly certain that the conversational path I’d just chosen wasn’t appropriate, either.
If she was bothered by the question, Vi didn’t show it, instead rolling her eyes.
“God, so many,” she answered. “Every stupid solstice and equinox, but—” She mock-waggled a finger at me.
“—Don’t mistake that for some dirty witchcraft shit, because we don’t do that.
We do proper magic. Learned magic.” She rolled her eyes again.
“Far as I can tell, it’s the same shit.”
“It isn’t,” I told her. “It works differently.”
She tilted her head to the side. “You’re telling me our stuck-up pathetic excuses for parents were actually right about something?” She sounded both annoyed and incredulous.
I shrugged. “Mason says that even a broken clock is right twice a day,” I said.
She snorted. “I still say magic is magic,” she said.
“I mean, it is,” I agreed. “But warlock magic and witch magic are different. Not saying one is better than the other, but they aren’t the same.”
“I know,” she replied. “But does it matter?”
“I mean, if you’re trying to learn it, it does,” I said.
“The way it works, the way you practice,” I waved a hand.
“My magic is different from yours. You see magic on people, like Ward does. I don’t.
I can’t. I can feel it, but I can’t see it.
How I do magic is different, too. Will power, not cantrips or spells.
” I knew witches could use spells and sigils, but they were focus objects that could help to channel a witch’s magic or to hold it somewhere that wasn’t in a witch’s body, like over a doorway in a protective sigil.
Vi let out a soft grunt. “Fine, but it shouldn’t matter what kind of magic I have or you have other than that. Just like it shouldn’t matter that I have boobs and you’ve got… a man-package.”
I stared at her. “A man-package?” I repeated.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to say it,” she informed me. “You’re my brother. Ew.”
I laughed, even though that made very little sense to me. I understood the point she was getting at—that anatomy or gender shouldn’t dictate whether or not one should be seen as worthy of human rights. I borrowed one of Mason’s phrases: “Fair enough.”
Vi studied me with her grey-green eyes. “Do you think one is better than the other?” she asked me, her voice serious, but with a hint of something I couldn’t identify.
“No,” I told her honestly. “But I definitely know more witches who I think are more ethical than most of the warlocks I’ve met.”
She grimaced. “I don’t know how many witches I’ve ever met,” she admitted. “But I’ve met a lot of warlocks who are total dicks.”
I smiled. “Me and Mason, at least,” I said. “And Jackson, if he’s ever come in while you’ve been there.”
She nodded. “Once,” she replied.
“I hope we’re not dicks,” I said.
She flashed a smile. “Nah. But you’re not like all witchy, either,” she remarked.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It’s not an insult,” she said quickly.
“I didn’t take it as one,” I told her. “I just don’t know what it means.
” Although I was comfortable around Violette, I didn’t always understand her.
That wasn’t anything new for me, since I was used to not always understanding people, but every time I asked her to clarify or explain something, she seemed to worry that I was upset or angry with her.
“Oh,” came her response, her cheeks turning slightly pink. “I, uh.” She thought about it for a little bit. “I guess like, old-school?”
I raised my eyebrows, showing her with my expression that her explanation hadn’t clarified anything.
“You know, like black cats and mushrooms and plants and shit.”
I’d been to Mason’s house, and while he and Ward had a cat, Peveril was brown and tan. They had some house plants and very impressive gardens, but I didn’t think they had mushrooms. “I—don’t follow,” I admitted.
Vi looked frustrated. “Like, cottage-y. Old lady in the woods-y. Lots of bracelets and crystals and shit.” She pulled out her phone and tapped at it, then leaned forward and held it out for me to see.
The image on the screen was of a woman wearing a black broomstick-style skirt, a tied rope belt, crocheted sweater over a shapeless dark tunic, several pendants, bangles, dangling beaded earrings, and sporting wild, frizzy brown hair and a cat on one shoulder, her dark eyes wide in a pale face.
“Ah,” I said. “No, I don’t think any of us is particularly witchy in that sense.”
“Exactly,” she replied, nodding. “Like, I’m more witchy than you guys.”
I smiled. “Yes,” I agreed, “although not completely.”
She grinned at me. “I’m too punk to be that witchy.”
I had no idea what it meant to be punk, but I also assumed that I probably didn’t actually care, since I got the impression it had something to do with style and fashion, so I didn’t bother asking. Instead, I smiled back at her in a way that I meant to indicate agreement or approval.
Maybe I’d done it wrong, but Violette frowned a bit. “Why does it matter?” she demanded. “Why does anyone give any shits whether you’re a witch or I’m a warlock or you’re a psychic or anyone else is whatever they are?”
I felt my eyebrows going up. “What do you mean?” I asked.
She grabbed one of the decorative pillows, squeezing it, her expression angry. “I mean all this… stupid bullshit about the Magic Free Movement. People talking about how Arcanids don’t deserve rights. How you and I don’t deserve rights because we have magic. Because we’re unnatural.”
I sighed. “I don’t have an answer for that question,” I told her, which was true. I didn’t understand why people cared so much whether or not other people had magic. Or why some people cared what kind of magic, whether innate or the result of an Arcanavirus infection.
I wondered if those people thought differently about people like Taavi or Zane, who had been born as what they were, rather than people like me and Hart and Mason—who had become what we were as a result of disease.
I knew the more radical MFMers certainly wouldn’t care, at least not much, but there were still differences of opinion, even within the ranks of hate-groups like the MFM.
“It’s stupid,” Vi said, her tone angry. “It’s selfish and stupid and bigoted.”
I didn’t disagree, but I wasn’t sure what she wanted from me.
She glared at me. “Why doesn’t it make you angry?” she demanded.
I smothered a sigh, knowing that people didn’t really like it if you sighed at something they said.
I tried to answer her honestly, although I also didn’t want to make her angrier.
“I—I don’t like it,” I said, slowly and carefully.
Watching her to see how she was taking what I was saying.
“I wish people didn’t think the way they do most of the time, honestly,” I continued.
“But people holding signs and protesting just doesn’t feel as important to me as…
what happened at Tranquil Brook. What the Ordo did. ”
She was still frowning, but she asked, “What’s the Ordo? And what did they do?”
This time, I did let out a long sigh. “They were behind Tranquil Brook,” I said softly. “But they were also killing Arcanids. Sacrificing them.” I let out a helpless shrug. “I just can’t get as upset about words and protests when there are people out there like that.”
Vi leaned forward, still holding the pillow.
“But it’s because of people protesting and carrying signs and lobbying for bigoted laws that people like that feel justified in what they’re doing,” she said, her voice intense.
“Because we let people publicly fucking debate whether or not the rest of us are worthy of being considered people.”
Now I frowned, because what she said made a certain amount of sense. But it also made me immediately feel guilty about not realizing the same thing, and guilty again for not being able to be as angry about it as she clearly was.
And as much as I knew Ward and Hart also were.
What did it say about me, that I didn’t care as much about how protests and anti-Arcanid legislation impacted some of the people I cared about? Like Mason and Hart… and Raj, although as a shifter, he could pass—if he wanted to—as human most of the time.
And that made my frown deepen, because while I knew he was a shifter, it made me re-evaluate how he acted in public, thinking about whether or not he seemed to hide his shifter senses, whether he kept his surprisingly gold eyes downcast, whether he kept his movements more human-speed because he was matching mine or because he didn’t want people to know what he was.
And then I had to think about what I thought about that.