Chapter Thirteen
Over the next two weeks, I find myself reading the diary in The Witchlore of Bodies whenever I have a spare minute.
It’s becoming an old friend. It feels miraculous to read the story of someone like me, and they are so honest about their feelings, the agonies of their life, and the terror of not being accepted.
Seeing it down on paper makes me feel less alone.
Bastian and I also start studying together.
He mercifully doesn’t question the way I try to avoid being inside college apart from classes, and we meet up to write essays in coffee shops or book the music rooms in the Manchester Central Library so he can practice witchcraft and I can practice pointless hand waving.
I love working in there, the anonymity of being just one of thousands of students and visitors in the city sitting in the beautiful paneled circular reading room with its dynamic domed ceiling and the way the smallest movement of someone’s chair echoes all the way around the stone.
It’s nicer, however, to have someone to sit beside, to watch my laptop while I go to the loo, to share crisps with and guard the rare, coveted plug sockets with.
In my weekly call with Counselor Cooper, she even says that it seems my mood is improving.
I think it might be. I tell myself over and over that it’s not real, it’s not friendship, it’s just companionship.
It’s still better than being alone all the time.
“We need to make a plan for the next stage of the spell,” Bastian says on Thursday, when we are in one of the small music rooms. It’s toasty warm, despite the cooling autumnal air outside, because Bastian’s been trying to teach me his grandfather’s Haitian heating spell.
The power of his has left him sweaty, standing in just his T-shirt.
“Okay.” I fruitlessly move my hands into a few forms. Nothing happens.
“You need to lift your thumb up higher on the Logi’s Spear,” he says, lifting the edge of his baggy T-shirt to wipe his sweaty forehead.
I’m grateful for this, that he offers correction on my form even if it yields no results, unlike everyone else, who just make me feel useless.
“The bone from Kilgrimol, you said it’s near Blackpool.
I looked it up and it’s on the coast, a town called … Lytham?”
“Yeah, I know it,” I say lightly, trying not to sound like I really know it. I perform the movement again with my thumb more rigid and Bastian nods approvingly.
“I thought we could go on Sunday.”
“I have to work on Sunday.” I pause. “But I have a whole weekend off next week, we could go then. Or you could go on your own, I guess.”
Part of me wants him to say that’s exactly what he’ll do, and then I don’t have to reckon with going back to those familiar beaches and that long, open sky.
Another part of me likes that I have someone to do things with now, to study with, to go places with.
Yes, the boggart was terrifying, but there are no boggarts that I know of in Lytham.
“Next Saturday is great,” he says. “I’d like to try and get to the final stage by Samhain, or we’ll have to wait until the winter solstice.”
Samhain is six weeks away. It seems impossible to me that Bastian will still want to hang out with me in six weeks, but the thought that maybe he will makes my cheeks flush.
“Sounds good,” I say.
On the Friday before we’re due to go to Lytham, the last day of September, I actually find myself getting excited about our trip.
“I’ll drive us tomorrow,” Bastian says.
“I didn’t know you drive.”
“Yep, passed last summer.” Bastian pulls on his satchel as we prepare to leave the library after a day’s studying.
“And you’re good at it?” I follow him down the wide marble stairs, past the snowy white sculpture of the Reading Girl. “Like, you didn’t reverse into a bollard or kill any hedgehogs during your lessons?”
“No and no. I did, however, run over my driving instructor’s foot on my first lesson.”
“That does not fill me with confidence.”
Bastian grins and I realize I like this, the ease with which we can joke with one another, the way it’s almost becoming normal now.
We’ve reached the bottom of the stairs, the blue light from the stained-glass windows reflecting weakly on the floor, when Kira Tavi steps into my path.
Today she’s dressed in a dark green long-sleeved jumpsuit that, to my mind, makes her look like a classy astronaut.
“Hiya,” she says, shooting Bastian a curious look before turning back to me. “Can I speak to you? Alone?”
“I’ll wait out front,” Bastian says. I nod and follow Kira under the arches into the library café, bustling with old people having a coffee, babies sucking on orange juice cartons, and students having a snack and watching TV on their phones before heading upstairs.
She’s set up on one of the white plastic booth tables with her laptop out and a coffee and sandwich beside it.
I wonder, suddenly, if she’s been waiting for me.
After all, she usually studies with her little crew of high achievers in the college library.
“Join me,” she says, gesturing to the blue bench opposite her in a way that makes me feel like this is a job interview and I’ve walked into her office.
I sit down warily on the edge of the cushioned plastic.
I don’t slide all the way in opposite her and don’t take off my bag.
I already get the sense I might want to make a quick escape.
“I’ve got a tram to catch,” I say. Kira nods and folds her hands. She’s changed her manicure. Now it’s all autumnal browns and yellows, very seasonal.
“Just a quick catch-up, that’s all.” She smiles. It doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “How’s it going in your new form?”
“It’s fine.” I look at her blankly. “Is this a peer mentoring thing?”
I was under the impression those meetings would be taking place in college. I didn’t realize I’d signed up to be randomly accosted anywhere in Manchester and asked about my deepest secrets.
“No, I just…” Kira tilts her head to the side in a way I find instantly patronizing. “How’s it going with Bastian?”
I frown. This is definitely not a peer mentoring question. This almost feels like a friend question. Which would make a lot more sense if Kira and I were, in any way, friends.
“Why are you asking that?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing at all,” she babbles, in a way that makes me aware that it is definitely something. “It’s just … maybe be careful around him.”
“What?”
“Well, it’s just, he’s new and you’re … you.” I flinch at that, all the old catcalls rising in my memory: Abnormal. Shifter. Freak. “And you never know what people’s motives are.”
I feel a red-hot flare of anger rising up inside of me and a flush filling my cheeks. The unmitigated gall of her astounds me. It’s the kind of rage that makes my hands shake and my throat tighten and irritating tears prickle at the corners of my eyes.
“You’re wondering what possible reason someone like him could have for hanging around with a weirdo shifter like me,” I start, my voice trembling as I try to keep it under control in a public place. “It couldn’t be that he just likes me, could it?”
“I’m not saying that at all!” Kira’s eyes widen. “I’m worried about you, we don’t know anything about him—”
“And knowing something about a person makes them better, does it? Makes them safer?” I lean forward as all my resentment against everyone in college who has ever made my life hell pours out on Kira Tavi.
“I’ve known nearly everyone in college for two years and my girlfriend died and still no one even cares that it happened to me!
Instead, they just act like it’s all my fault!
So you can fucking shove your fake concern up your ruddy arse! ”
I stand up, struggling to pull the other strap of my rucksack on, my emotions so high they are making my hands move awkwardly, as if my rage has given them some kind of jitters.
There are two middle-aged women having tea and scones at the next table, subtly gawking at us as they spread jam.
I have a feeling that I have not been as quiet as I could have been.
I need to get out of here, now, because the last thing I want to do is cry in front of an audience.
“It didn’t just happen to you,” Kira says. Her eyes are shimmering slightly but her voice is clear. An impending sense of dread rises inside of me. I imagine this is what Pandora felt like, this sense that I’ve started something I’m not ready for.
“I was the one who was there, Kira,” I say, thinking that if I can cut her off at the knees with this then she’ll stop talking and she can’t say the devastating things that I can see building in her glassy eyes. “Don’t tell me how it happened.”
“I’m not going to. What I meant was that you talk about what happened like it only happened to you.
” Kira’s voice hasn’t changed volume, but her south Manchester tone is so sharp it could cut me.
“She had parents who loved her, parents who are getting a divorce now. She had a coven, a family of witches bigger than you imagine; there are loads of people who were completely devastated by this. She might have been your girlfriend, but she wasn’t just yours, Lando. ”
It’s too much to bear, so I turn and walk away from her, my heart racing, hoping she doesn’t follow me, and my cheeks burning as I bustle past the scone ladies watching me flee.
I’m practically panting as I go through the circular doors, jogging down the marble steps to see Bastian leaning against one of the library pillars, watching the rain hammer down against the stone flags of St. Peter’s Square.
“Are you okay?” he asks, frowning. I nod, struggling to catch my breath.
My face is damp from the rain mist and I stare out at passing businessmen hurrying through the downpour with umbrellas.
Rain like this always clears the square; bustling tour groups, usually standing in front of the war memorial and the statue of Mrs. Pankhurst, are huddled for shelter under the cover of the library’s portico front, the rain practically falling in sheets between the columns.
It’s too many bodies and a small space, and right now, I’d rather be out there, in the dreadful weather, than inside with Kira Tavi.
“I’ve got a tram to catch,” I say to Bastian, pulling my hood up and preparing to run across the sheets of water covering the square and the tram tracks.
“Wait.” Bastian grabs my arm to stop me, moving closer so he isn’t overheard. He smells like rain and sweat and damp wool. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
No, not at all, I answer in my head. It’s not just my fault she’s dead, it’s my fault dozens of people are devastated.
“Yep,” I say. Even if Kira was trying to tell me something truthful, that maybe Bastian isn’t everything he seems, even if it’s somehow all a big lie, what does it matter?
The point of all this is to get Elizabeth back and then maybe everything that Kira said won’t be so damaging.
Her parents will be healed, her friends will be comforted, and I won’t have to bear the weight of the guilt of all those things, because if she hadn’t been with me, she would never have died in the first place.
When Bastian continues to look at me, I add, “I just need to get on with this. The spell.”
His frown clears and a particularly knowing look crosses his face.
“We are,” he says. “Lytham next and then we’ll be two ingredients down.”
“Two down,” I repeat, the words a spell in themselves, pushing me on, back to Elizabeth. Two down. We step out into the rain. Together.