Chapter Four #2
“Because I was there,” I say sharply, and I tell the truth, mainly because not saying it is a knot in my throat that I can’t undo.
“When she died. I don’t know, we were in this cave, she wanted to do this spell that she said would boost my magic, so I’d actually be able to cast a spell for a change.
…” He doesn’t even look a little bit surprised.
Of course, he’ll have already heard from our classmates how inept I am at both shifting and witchcraft.
“She didn’t, like, explain, and then she started doing the spell and I…” I take a shuddering breath, remembering the feeling of light and magic roaring agonizingly through my bones. “I shifted, my magic was weirdly intense, it pushed her, she fell and when I came round…”
“It was too late?” Bastian finishes for me softly. I nod. “So your shift, it was, like … a magical discharge thing?”
I nod again. Everyone afterward used these words: Elizabeth’s parents, Professor Wallace, Beryl, Counselor Cooper.
They say it in a certain way, though. It’s not neutral.
It still leaves the blame properly at my feet.
After all, only shapeshifters who carry magic inside us, able to break free from our skin without any conduit, are capable of this kind of thing.
I was the one who discharged the magic. If I hadn’t done that, if I had better control, if I was a better student and a better person, she’d be alive, a beloved girlfriend and daughter.
“You loved her,” Bastian says. I stare at him. He doesn’t say it incredulously or jeeringly, just factually. There’s something about it that’s comforting. That it’s not an opinion. The sky is blue, life is shit, I loved and still love Elizabeth.
“It should have been me,” I say, voice harsh as I stare at a couple of swans swimming together. A pair. Inseparable. “I wish it had been. I’d do anything to change what happened, not that it matters.”
Counselor Cooper says that suicidal thoughts aren’t to be feared.
When we fear them, we make them stronger.
That, actually, suicidal thoughts are a part of us warning the rest of us that we’re really hurting inside.
I feel like I didn’t need the warning. I feel like I’ve been bleeding inside since Elizabeth died and soon, I’ll bleed out with it.
Silently and gradually, I’ll just stop existing, drowned in my own blood.
“But you know there are spells to resurrect the dead, right?”
I stare at him. For the first time, I wonder if I’ve got a completely wrong read on Bastian Chevret.
I had him penned as a hot geek, the type who reads the classics and watches vintage horror movies and eventually goes out with some ecowarrior witch and starts a blog about their perfect polyamorous explorations as they backpack ethically through Europe.
Maybe it’s because I’ve read too many Stephen King novels, but now I wonder if Bastian Chevret is more of a conspiracy theorist, Dr. Frankenstein wannabe.
“Are you taking the piss?”
“No.” He looks puzzled by the notion that he would be. “There’s this grimoire—”
“Don’t twat about with me,” I say. “I might be shit at witchcraft and shapeshifting, but I do actually listen in lectures. I know there’s no existing grimoire with resurrection spells in it, and if there ever was, it would be locked away somewhere!
Even if it wasn’t, what would be the point of resurrecting someone for two minutes? No witchcraft is permanent anymore—”
“It’s not a witch’s grimoire, it’s a shapeshifter’s grimoire. It’s a permanent spell.” He says it so casually, like this isn’t something out of a history book, extinct as the dodo.
“If there was a shifter book about resurrection, I’d know.”
“Would you?” Bastian raises his eyebrows. “Because you’re the authority on shapeshifter stuff, right? What with not being able to control your own powers and everything?”
I shoot him a filthy look because it’s a low blow and completely correct.
“We could find it, you know,” he says. “The book. I mean, we don’t need to find it, I know where it is. We could … use it.”
“And do what? Resurrect my girlfriend?”
“Isn’t it worth trying?” he says.
I stare at him, wondering: Where the hell did this person come from? That, however, isn’t the question that comes out of my mouth.
“Why would you even want to do this?”
“I’m interested in the book, and I want to work for the Merlin Foundation one day.
” Bastian takes off his jacket. I can see a string of necklaces over his T-shirt.
Some look like traditional Cornish charms, snake-bone necklaces to increase power or dried rowan berries for protection, but some seem to be from cultures less familiar to me.
I think I spy an Obeah fetish necklace similar to something I’ve seen in my textbooks referencing Afro-Creole magic.
All of them together speak to one thing: he’s clearly part of a family that values old magic, maybe a coven that reveres it.
Most UK covens today don’t bother with charms and poppets or other ancient magical practices, no longer having the power to sustain them.
They give healing balms to their kids instead of painkillers, celebrate their religious and cultural holidays with food and gatherings, and prepare their children for lives lived blended with the human world.
Then there are the more isolated, secretive covens.
It’s generally suspected that these witches are more powerful than the average, that they hoard ancient spells and talents, just like Bastian’s many charms and tokens.
The only thing my father ever said about witches from ancient covens was: They are the only witches worth our time.
Of course, they would rip the magic out of our blood if they could.
“Oh, I get it,” I say. “You’re in one of those covens, right? Like a Shipton coven? You’re a The Witch Will Rise person, aren’t you?”
“I don’t have a coven right now.” He tangles his fingers in one of the charms, a small, polished bone dipped in silver with what looks like a Vodou symbol carved into the metal.
“But, yeah, I’ve got a professional interest. I need my dissertation next year to get the Merlin Foundation’s attention.
Rediscovering a resurrection spell would be the perfect subject.
Successfully performing a resurrection spell would be even better. ”
“You think you can do a permanent resurrection spell?”
The look he gives me is cold. It is pretty impolite for a shapeshifter to question a witch’s magic, but he’s been pretty impolite about my abilities so I think we’re even.
“I think I’ve got game, yeah,” he says. “And even documenting an attempt would get their attention, maybe get me a job offer at one of their research centers when I’ve graduated.”
Most witches find jobs in the wider world that blend in, keeping a separation between their professional life and their faith practices.
Others will only work in witch-owned businesses.
There are a plethora of witch-led meditation studios, talisman shops, and forest apothecaries; Beryl, for example, owns a crystal shop in Chorlton and sells blessed topaz and speciality blended fertility teas that smell like an old lady’s knicker drawer.
Then there is the Merlin Foundation, the political group that protects all magic users and magical creatures.
It’s got some long, boring history about how it started by repealing the 1736 Act Against Witchcraft.
They’re involved in government, all witchlore educational institutions are accredited by them, and most shapeshifters in some way either work for them or consult for them.
It’s basically the only place where shifters and witches work together.
They don’t generally recruit; instead they handpick from covens, and like everything in witch culture, family is important.
I’ve never met a witch before who had the balls to think they could just capture their attention.
Bastian only looks back at me expectantly.
I start to think he might be in earnest.
“Seriously? You want to resurrect my girlfriend so the Merlin Foundation recruits you?” I say.
“Yeah,” he says, without a moment of doubt. “Why not?”
Looking at Bastian, everything about him now makes sense: the intelligence that isn’t quite geekiness, the beauty that isn’t quite sexy; it’s academic drive, I see it now. I’m looking at a person who wants magical prowess and nothing else. That is probably the last thing I need.
“You’re twisted.” I stand up and put my coffee cup in the recycling bin. “We’re done.”
“Wait, here—” He picks up my phone from where it’s sitting on the bench, holds it in front of my face to unlock it, and before I can stop him, is tapping something onto the screen. “That’s my number. If you change your mind.”
He hands it back. I stare down at the new contact. BBB.
“BBB?” I frown.
“Bastian Balthazar—”
“Bux.” I nod. “The name of the kid in The Neverending Story.”
“Classic piece of German fantasy literature.” He smiles suddenly. “Message me.”
For a second, it’s enticing, then I remember what he wants.
“No,” I say. I walk away from him, thinking about how Bastian Chevret must have a few screws loose, because who else but a deeply warped person offers to resurrect the girlfriend of someone they’ve just met?
When I return to college, I see none other than Carl Lord outside the door, kissing a pretty first-year.
Poor sod, I think. It doesn’t bother me, seeing Carl with someone else (other than vague disgust) but the look on this tragic first-year’s face—the excitement, the gratitude—brings the past back to me.
I used to look at Elizabeth like that and suddenly I am heavy with everything that’s been taken.
One thought crystallizes in my head: at least with Bastian’s plan, I
wouldn’t be standing here, so weighed down by all the broken things. At least
I would be moving, I would be doing something. Which is better than what I am
right now, bloody useless and utterly helpless. Even if he is weird, what does it
matter? Everything worth losing I’ve already lost. I pull out my phone and
send a message to BBB: I’m
in.