Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“Yeah.” I flush because it’s an absurd word, an old-fashioned one, but it’s the best word I have without using the word that’s truly in mind: “chivalrous.” Like a romantic knight in an epic medieval poem.
The word gives me a little pulse, deep in my abdomen, but that probably says more about the kind of reading material I find sexy than it does about him.
“Well, gallant or not, it’s two weeks of suspension.” He sighs heavily.
“What about Carl?”
“Only two days.”
“What?” I exclaim. “Why?”
“Because only one of us used ‘witchcraft that is inappropriate for an educational context,’” Bastian says, smiling wryly. “I’ve been given a warning, too, and been told I’ll be very closely watched until the end of the year.”
“God, it’s so hypocritical.” I shake my head. “If Carl had known the spell you used, he wouldn’t have hesitated.”
“He wouldn’t have had the power for it.” Bastian’s voice is dismissive as he looks down at my hands. “Did it stop?”
“Yeah, as soon as I stopped touching you.” I berate myself for wording it so gracelessly and blush like a flipping tomato, but Bastian only nods thoughtfully.
“That’s weird,” he says. “Maybe it means our magic is compatible or something like that? I know some witches work in pairs for certain crafts, partners within covens and stuff. I can look into it.”
I’ve heard of such things but I’ve never imagined I could be part of them.
To be a shifter is to be solitary or only with other shifters, and to be me is to be lonely.
Plus, the idea of a shapeshifter sharing magic with a witch in any way at all is so taboo I actually start to sweat a little.
From nervousness or anticipation, I can’t quite tell.
Even between witches such things are considered unusual at best and dangerously misguided at worst.
“You’d want to try that?” I ask awkwardly. “With a shifter?”
“I’d be up for exploring it with a witch, if I found someone who I was genuinely magically compatible with. I think the benefits outweigh the risks.” He shrugs. “Why wouldn’t I do it with you?”
Because my father would murder the both of us if he found out, I think.
I still remember his characterization of powerful witches: Of course, they would rip the magic out of our blood if they could.
Despite those warnings, ingrained deep in my psyche, I’m not averse to the idea.
Quite the opposite. I want to feel the way I felt when I touched Bastian and my hand felt more alive with something new than it ever has.
“Maybe,” I say, trying to conceal how shockingly keen I suddenly feel. “Maybe it will help us with the Black Shuck. If you still want to do it?”
I wonder if he’s thinking that all of this is a lot of trouble for a potential place at the Merlin Foundation, especially if he’s on thin ice at college.
“Totally. We’ll go to the cathedral next Tuesday,” he says. “We’re nearly finished.”
“Yeah. We are.” I feel weird, suddenly, like when I’m reading a good book and I realize I’m over halfway through and suddenly I try to read slower. “I mean, maybe we could do it next month?”
“No, we want to do the final spell at Samhain, if we can,” Bastian says. “Otherwise we’ll have to wait until the winter solstice and that’s not until the end of December.”
I don’t have a reason to disagree. If we do this, I get Elizabeth back and everyone will leave me alone.
Everyone will know that I didn’t do anything wrong, because she’ll be here, telling them, telling her mother the truth, and proving that our relationship was real.
Is real. Then I won’t be alone anymore, and everything will be the way it was supposed to be. So why do I feel so hesitant?
“Lando?” Bastian presses.
“Sounds good,” I say with a smile and a nod.
October 25 comes around much too quickly for my liking, but I wonder if there’s ever a good time to conjure a hellhound.
I read up on the old ghost stories about the Black Shuck from before it was exorcized.
Like Professor Wallace said, it was certainly a menace, a grim portent of death, said to murder anyone who looked it in the face.
As the days pass, I get strange flashes while I’m riding the tram or getting dressed, cruel imaginative visions of angry eyes and slavering teeth.
I’ve not really seen Bastian since the incident at college, but I wonder if that might be because he’s buckling down to keep on top of his college work while he’s suspended.
We’ve been messaging almost every day but I realize quickly how easy it is to be lonely without him studying beside me in the library or getting a quick coffee with me in between classes.
On the night of the new moon, I follow Bastian’s instructions to wait until it’s truly dark to catch the ten o’clock tram into town.
I huddle inside my peacoat and think about the blue plaid coat that Elizabeth wore last winter.
It’s suddenly bizarre that the seasons are turning and Elizabeth isn’t seeing the leaves fall.
It’s a lurch of feeling, like I forgot something, but it doesn’t stab me between the ribs like it used to.
Counselor Cooper once told me that recovery can be held back by fear: the fear of moving on, of being happy again.
Tonight, with my breath steaming the cold window of the tram, the black night rushing by, the seasons themselves are reminding me of it.
The weather is anticipating winter, wet and blustery with a deeper chill in the air than usual.
As I walk past the town hall and through St. Ann’s Square, there are paper pumpkins hung in the trees, their little faces catching the light from the streetlamps.
It’s a particular experience, walking through a wintery city on a weeknight before Halloween.
Decorations stand inanimate and unwatched, waiting for human eyes to bring them to life, and there’s an eerie aura to the quiet city.
The cold weather is keeping everyone at home, tucked up warm.
When I walk into the empty cathedral square, the building glows with titian spotlights illuminating the astonishing gothic facade, turning the pale sandstone rust colored.
The ancient tower looms over the square, its turrets twisting up into the black night, lost from view.
This is where the Black Shuck has haunted and hunted for generations, and I shiver, my eyes catching on shadows.
Bastian is standing by the huge metal gates in front of the door and when he spots me, he smiles so widely.
I try not to notice the pleasurable churn in my chest, despite the rising anxiety in my legs.
“Hey,” he says. “It’s been ages.”
“It’s been eight days,” I scoff, but that only makes him smile more.
“You counted.”
I ignore him and point at his eye.
“This doesn’t look too bad.”
It’s no longer as swollen or red. There is a nauseating yellow tinge to it and a little splurge of brown broken blood vessels that look to still be healing, but it’s better than Carl’s, which honestly still looks purple as hell.
“Oh, yeah.” Bastian looks sheepish. “I have a really good recipe for a bruise paste.”
“Handmade?” He nods shyly and I grin. “You just have to be the smartest person, don’t you?”
Bastian shrugs but I can tell the compliment has sort of flustered him.
“Are you ready to meet the Black Shuck?” he asks. I can’t possibly answer that positively so I nervously nod at the chunky padlock on the cathedral-gated door.
“We’re not breaking in here, are we?”
“No, there’s a spot down here behind the wall we can use.” Bastian holds out his hand expectantly. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
I slowly withdraw a hand from my pocket and take his.
It feels so natural to be pulled along by him and I can’t stop myself imagining what we’ll look like to anyone who walks past us.
A pair in a relationship, maybe. A gay couple on their way home from the village, or two men on a first date.
Or in love. That last thought gives me a thrill, deep in my gut, and I can’t help squeezing his hand. If he notices he doesn’t say anything.
“Here,” Bastian says, choosing a shadowy spot on the cathedral grass between two trees, away from the streetlights.
Hidden by the wall on one side and the cathedral on the other, hopefully no one will see us.
He drops my hand and starts to unload everything we need out of his satchel.
I bend down and open the library book to the spell Bastian wants to use.
He’s pulling a jar of something dark and red out of his satchel: the blood necessary for forming a conjuring circle.
“Rank,” I mutter. Just looking at it makes me queasy.
“It’s only pig’s blood.” He pulls the lid off it and brings out a paintbrush, beginning to sketch a pentagram on the grass. “There’s salt in my bag. Can you do the containment circle?”
I pull out a bottle of sea salt and pour it in a circle, just like I’ve been practicing over and over.
Conjuring like this requires corresponding shapes, the pig’s-blood pentagram inside a pentagon to act as a portal and the salt circle to contain it with the specific markings inside it.
Having something to concentrate on quiets the steady thrum of unease running through me.
But still, when I’m finished, it hits me again: Holy hell, are we really doing this?
Bastian has finished the blood pentagram and is standing inside my circle, the book open on the grass in front of him.
“There’s a pair of tweezers in my bag,” he says. “Can you get them out?”
“And what are these for?” I pull them out of the pocket. They’re sharp, long, and vicious looking.
“They’re for you.” Bastian is holding his hands in front of him in the preparatory triangle. “Once I’ve conjured it and trapped it, you’re going to pinch some fur from it.”