Chapter 6 Will #2
“Well—” Sage flipped another pancake. “—can you eat if I tell you to eat?”
This might be a test. Peter told me to behave. If it’s a test, I want to pass. I don’t want Sage to think I don’t respect him or that I really have no manners.
Will swallowed the saliva that was pooling in his mouth. “I’ll just wait for you.”
After a moment, Sage accepted that with a shrug. He covered what was left of the batter with plastic wrap, put it into the fridge after turning off the stove, then sat down at the table.
After Sage started eating, he watched with a wide grin plastered on his face as Will demolished half of the pancake tower with focused speed and precision.
Strawberry jam is even better than syrup. Who’d have thunk. This stuff is divine. Will glanced up. Did he make this? Can he make pancakes and jam?
Will stopped chewing only briefly when Sage got up to get the pot from the coffee machine and poured himself a mug on the way from the counter to the table. When the witch sat back down, Will resumed his chewing, but he was watching Sage. Sage was eyeing his coffee with a deep frown.
“You know, I forgot the sugar again yesterday,” Sage said.
Then he looked at the jar of strawberry jam. Will had used a spoon to scoop it out and slather it on his pancakes, and the spoon was still in there, the rose design on the end of it catching the afternoon light.
Will swallowed his mouthful. “You can’t be serious.”
“I can’t have my coffee black. It gives me the jitters.” He reached for the spoon still stuck in the jar of jam and plopped it as well as a good-sized amount of the jam into his mug.
Will’s eyes went wide.
Sage sniffed his coffee. “I think this isn’t too bad.” And then he drank it. “Well, it’s not good either. I really need to go get sugar.” He gulped down more of his strawberry-flavored coffee. “What?”
“Oh, nothing.” Will looked away quickly. “Um, thanks for agreeing to teach me magic. I don’t think I said that before, but I’m grateful. I’ll do my best to learn.”
Sage cleared his throat. He did not put down his strawberry coffee.
“I’m going to level with you. I’ve never taught anyone.
Not magic, not anything. Well, evidence would suggest I’m good at teaching shelter kittens to escape into the wild, but that’s incidental.
Anyway, I’ll try. Partly because Peter will be mad if you don’t, I dunno, ride a broomstick in the next two weeks. But mostly because I want to.”
Will nodded. “How do you know Peter? You work for him?”
Sage leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.
“Yeah, sometimes. I did his fancy warding. Gods, he’s so anal about every little thing.
‘Ward each window separately, Sage. Make sure the conservatory is double warded, Sage. Don’t ruin the warding with your flip-flops, Sage. ’ He also babysat me.”
Will perked up. “He what?”
Will wasn’t sure what kind of parent would ask Peter to watch their kid, and he had trouble imagining how that had gone. Had Peter done imaginary tea parties? Had he read stories? All of that seemed highly unlikely.
“Well, Granny was dating this Wiccan,” Sage said. “They do naked shit for solstices and equinoxes, and Granny felt I wasn’t old enough for naked shit. So she dropped me at Peter’s door and informed him he was supposed to keep me alive for a weekend or a few days, depending on the date.”
Will tried to imagine it, but his brain blanked out. Peter and children seemed anathema.
“You’re shitting me, right? This is a joke?”
“Nope.” Sage shook his head, the movement grand, showing off the sides of his face. He’d shaved, and his cheekbones were even more prominent now. “He made me practice my cursive, forced me to do accounting math, and never let me have any ice cream.”
“You are joking. Is this, like, witch hazing?”
Sage kept sipping his berry coffee. “I so wish, but no. Granny forced Peter to sit me and me to go get babysat even when I was way old enough for naked shit. She’d’ve been good at teaching you, because she managed to teach me everything I know.
Which is my long-winded way of reassuring you that I will honestly do my best here.
In the teaching department. As it were.”
“Cool.” Will felt his cheeks heat.
Huh. What’s that about?
“You have a phone?”
“No.”
“And no clothes?”
“None other than these.” Will plucked at his borrowed T-shirt.
Sage nodded. “Well, I need to go buy sugar anyway, so once you’re done with those pancakes, we’re heading to the mall. Sound good?”
“I, uhm…I don’t really have money. Peter gave me some, but—”
“Don’t worry about that. Apprentices usually get paid when they aren’t part of the family. Godsdamn injustice if you ask me, but that’s the rules.”
“But I haven’t done anything yet?”
Sage shrugged. “You know how to do the dishes?”
Will nodded, stuffed the last bit of pancake into his mouth, then jumped to his feet. He collected their plates and went about piling everything into the sink, turned on the water, and added some of the eco-friendly grapefruit-scented dish soap sitting next to the sink.
“Uhm, what’re you doing?” Sage asked from back at the table.
“I—the dishes?”
Will didn’t quite meet Sage’s eyes. He wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong, but his heart was speeding up, and panic was biting at the edges of his vision. Please don’t let me mess this up. Please don’t make him kick me to the curb.
Sage giggled. “Yeah, I see that. Focus on what you want and say: plates and forks come scrub, scrub, scrub. All stains and dirt, let’s clean you up.”
“Uhm, plates and forks…”
Sage mouthed rather than repeating himself.
“…come scrub, scrub, scrub. All stains and dirt, let’s clean you up?”
Will watched the sink and the plates in it. Nothing happened.
Sage pushed his own chair back and came over.
He patted Will on the shoulder, but Will hadn’t been prepared for that, and he was embarrassed about his magic not doing anything, and so he flinched.
Not a little. He flinched as if Sage had been about to strike him.
He ended up cowering halfway to the floor.
“Whoa.”
Will felt his face heating. “S-sorry. I… Sorry.”
“All good. My bad. Should’ve warned you before touching. Okay, but watch though.”
Sage said the exact same spell, slower. He enunciated every word of it, and almost before he was done speaking, the plates started cleaning themselves, aided by a sponge that jumped into the sink from a small soap dish that sat next to it.
Sage leaned against the counter and just watched as the plates rinsed themselves. They moved through the water as if pulled by invisible strings to do that too, then moved over to the drying rack where they stacked themselves neatly.
Will blinked. “I thought the cushions were strange. This is so fucking cool.”
Sage beamed at him. “Household magic should never be underrated. You can get by without it if you have a dishwasher.” He motioned at the kitchen, which was old but clean and clearly well cared for. “No dishwasher here though. Okay, you wanna see if you can get the towel to dry everything?”
Will nodded. “What do I say?”
“I usually go with: dry, towel, dry. Come dry, dry, dry. Not super sophisticated, but it gets the job done. The less complicated the task, the less fancy your spell has to be, as a rule of thumb.”
Will nodded. He focused, trying to concentrate on how it felt when he did magic, when he touched herbs and ground them into a paste while focusing on the outcome he wanted. He desperately wanted this to work. He needed Sage to see he could do real magic.
Will said the words, repeating the “dry, dry, dry” bit over and over in his head.
To his shock and elation, the white and blue striped towel that hung on a hook on the wall moved.
It was awkward, nothing like the smooth, flowing movements of the plates that were still rinsing themselves, but it did move, fluttering over to the dishes to soak up the water.
“Good job. Keep repeating it out loud a few times until it’s done. Makes it easier for a newbie to keep the spell going.”
Will did that. And it worked.
The magic running through Will was like nothing he had ever done before, but it worked. The towel moved and did his bidding, and it was…amazing. Will was ready to dry dishes for the rest of his life with magic, because why would anyone who could do this use a dishwasher?
They finished the rest of the dishes together, and after, Sage showed Will how to clean counters.
When they got into Sage’s car to head to the mall, Will was tired, almost as if he’d worked out, but in a good way. Even the prospect of spending money that wasn’t his seemed less daunting. Magic was wonderful, and Sage was an amazing teacher.