Chapter Twenty-One #2
Bastian smiles at me. It’s that same grin that I’ve started to get used to: unguarded and affectionate.
It flusters me. Being redheaded now means that when I blush, I blush all over.
My words are stuck in my throat. I want to say thank you but all I can think is Not as amazing as you.
I try not to look at Bastian but he’s still grinning, like he knows exactly what he’s doing.
I get that nauseating flip-flop feeling that I associate with either anxiety or kissing.
I can’t just be imagining this, can I? This must be real, the way he keeps touching me and I want him to and the drink he bought me and the beautiful secluded garden that seems like the perfect place for a first date?
The kind of date I never got to go on with Elizabeth.
“Do you want another?” he asks, looking at our empty glasses. Yes, I think, very much, and no, no I absolutely must not have another drink.
“Um, no,” I say, making a show of looking at my phone. “I should get back, I think.”
“Okay.” Bastian doesn’t seem flustered by my abrupt manner, standing up and smiling at me. “I’ll walk you.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m fine.” I stand up and grab my coat, as if this one declination has pushed me over an edge and now I cannot sit in this space with him and pretend everything is normal.
His smile is faltering. I know he’s realizing that I’m trying to run away from him and there is a horrible churning in my guts for doing this when he’s been so kind.
I fumble in my pocket. “Let me pay for my drink.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He’s averting his eyes from me now, his manner becoming more withdrawn as he pulls on his own coat and follows me through the crowded bar.
When we step onto the street the rain has blown itself out for a moment, the damp air and flapping awning blowing noisily around us as we stare awkwardly at one another.
“Bye, then,” I say, attempting a bright tone as I turn my collar up against the chill.
“Did you not like it?” he asks abruptly, nodding toward the bar. “Was it … I don’t know, too much?”
I look at him, standing in his black coat and jeans, hands stuffed into his pockets and shoulders hunched to his ears, skin catching the golden glow from inside filtered through a misted window. He’s been kind to me, too kind for me to lie.
“I liked it,” I say helplessly. “I just … I’ve never done something like this before. Elizabeth and I, we didn’t…”
He frowns and I pause, shaking my head, because I’m making myself feel worse just by speaking. Still Bastian waits, eyes fixed steadily on me, as if I’m going to say something that will push him into movement.
“Yeah, I liked it a lot,” I repeat, looking at my boots. “It’s just … Elizabeth stuff.”
When I look up at Bastian, he’s still watching me. Then he steps forward and pulls something out of his pocket, offering it to me. It’s the crane I made, the one he enchanted to fly.
“Maybe when she’s back it’ll be different,” he says, carefully tipping the crane into my hand. “Maybe you’ll do stuff like this.”
For some reason, that feels wrong to imagine. To fantasize that the evening was different, that Elizabeth was in Bastian’s place. I gently close my hand around the crane, still a little warm from Bastian’s magic, and tuck it into my pocket.
“Maybe,” I say, turning away. “See you later.”
The next week after our nondate is a bit weird.
Bastian is just as kind and cordial as always and we spend the same amount of time together, but something has dropped down between us.
He doesn’t hug me like he did before and I try not to miss it.
I tell myself it’s for the best, of course it is, because soon we will have resurrected Elizabeth, and I don’t want to have to explain to my girlfriend why I’ve been flirting with someone else.
We both focus on the Black Shuck. I find myself practicing drawing conjuring and exorcism circles everywhere, copying diagrams Bastian has shown me by sketching my toe across the carpet while waiting for the kettle to boil or outlining them on the fogged-up mirror after a shower.
I am also paying urgent attention in any of my classes that mention hell dimensions.
On Thursday we have our Medieval Witchlore class for third-and fourth-years with Professor Wallace and the seminar is on exorcisms. I am on the edge of my seat the entire time, taking frantic notes as he talks.
“… Of course, the last big Manchester exorcism was the cathedral hellhound, the Black Shuck, exorcized in 1910,” he says, and my stomach clenches.
My pen stops on the page and I listen avidly.
“Prior to its exorcism, it was considered a haunting, the curse laid on it pulling it through to our world at certain points in the moon cycles. Nowadays, however, it is utterly benign, unable to break through without magical intervention.”
“But they can break through?” I find myself asking.
“Scared of ghosts, shifter?” Carl calls. “Makes sense. She’d definitely be coming back to haunt your arse.”
“Shut up,” Kira mutters to him, shooting me a look that seems both curious and a little nervous.
“Only if summoned, Lando. Or if they are still operating under a previous curse and haven’t been exorcized,” Professor Wallace says, smiling at me.
He clearly thinks my questions are a sign of renewed academic rigor rather than desperation not to accidentally unleash a hellhound in the city center.
“This one did wreak havoc in the 1800s. Many humans died. But the Merlin Foundation intervened.”
“How did they do it?” I ask. “What spells?”
Bastian, who is sitting next to me, stands on my boot under the table. I can tell it’s a warning to shut up, but I move my foot away and try not to be distracted by the sensation of his knee pressed against mine.
“Sometimes, the oldest ways are the best, products that already have power woven into them. There’s a reason that magical blood, holy water, and holy fire have such prominent cultural representations,” Professor Wallace says, looking at his watch.
“That’s all our time today. Please remember to check your college emails, there is a compulsory all-college seminar on Monday. ”
“How compulsory, sir?” Carl asks, deliberately bumping into my shoulder on his way to the door. Bastian glares at the back of his head with enough acid to burn through paper.
“Very, Carl,” Professor Wallace says.
“Come on,” Bastian mutters to me, taking my arm and jostling me out of the seminar room before I’ve even had a chance to pull my coat on. “What was that about?”
“Just asking questions,” I mumble, gently pulling my arm away to lean against the wall a few meters from the door. Farther down the corridor, Carl and his mates are bunched together, glancing back at us and laughing. I try to ignore them. “This is way more dangerous than the others, isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah, kind of.” Bastian fiddles with the strap on his bag and shoots Carl a vicious glare when his cackling laughter reaches us. “But it’s going to be okay.”
“What if we set it loose?”
“We won’t.” Bastian fixes his expression back on me and it softens.
In a way that’s actually really unhelpful.
I have to stare at the drama society’s poster for last year’s production of The Crucible to stop from blushing.
“But you can’t go on asking questions like that, you’re going to draw attention. ”
“They’ll just think it’s academic interest.”
Bastian opens his mouth and I’m sure he’s about to say no one will believe the student who never speaks up in class has suddenly been imbued with curiosity overnight, but Kira walks past, looking curiously at us both and then down at the book I’m holding about conjuring spells. Maybe he’s onto something.
“Better not to risk it,” Bastian mutters. “Lunch?”
I think I should probably say no, better to keep my distance, but Kira is lingering and so is Carl, both clearly intent on interception that I don’t feel up to facing.
“Sure.”
“Did you see the email about the mandatory seminar on Monday?” Bastian asks me when we’re sharing a cone of chips in St. Ann’s Square. “Is that a regular thing they do at Demdike?”
“I’ve never seen it before.” We both checked our emails while waiting for our food. All it says is that it’s for everyone and attendance will be taken.
“We could bunk it off,” he says.
“For someone so literate you have an interesting interpretation of the word ‘mandatory.’”
“Fine, we’ll be obedient.” He bites the straw of his milkshake and grins at me, suddenly so stupidly charming, I have to look down at the bench. I find myself drawing an exorcism circle in the raindrops, joining them up into the right shapes.
“Hey, that’s pretty good,” he says.
“Yeah, if you have a need of someone to perfectly sketch one and tell you everything about it without actually being able to use one, I’m your person,” I say sarcastically.
“I find I have a need for exactly that person,” he says, and then nudges his shoulder against mine.
I suck in my breath. I think he might press against me, to let me feel more of the warmth of his body, but he doesn’t.
He goes back to drinking his milkshake and watching my nervous fingers.
Suddenly, I wonder how it will be when Elizabeth is back.
Will I still feel this odd, irritating sense of lost potential when he sits near me like this?
Or will these troubling feelings vanish, and I’ll be perfectly satisfied with my new friend and my old girlfriend?
The idea doesn’t comfort me the way that I think it should.
“Only twelve days to go,” he says. “Then we’re one step closer to the end.”
“Yeah.” My mouth is a lot drier than I expect it to be and my stomach drops with anticipation. When I think about the wild eyes of the Black Shuck in the picture from the book, it seems way too soon. “Twelve days.”