Chapter 5
FIVE
Joan got the text from Molly with Grace’s number not even an hour later, accompanied by a warning to not come on too strong. Also, please make sure to find a suitable outfit for tonight, Mom is worried you’re going to wear jeans.
Joan promptly texted Grace: Can we meet up today?
And was rewarded about thirty minutes later with: who is this?
Oh sorry, Joan Greenwood, we met yesterday? I’d love to take you out for coffee? I can meet you wherever you want
Perks of being unemployed.
*Unemployed with a trust fund.
respectfully, I don’t need a minder, I promise I will report on my findings the moment I have them.
Joan: One coffee date
She elected to skip over the minder accusations, because maybe if Grace felt like this was an order from the Greenwood family itself, she wouldn’t be inclined to blow her off, as Joan would be inclined to blow off a stranger who had somehow procured her phone number.
Joan had to wait another twenty minutes before Grace replied.
i can do 12:30. Buy me lunch
After a trip back uptown to shower and take intense psychic damage from her father, who tried to corner her into another conversation about the Manhattan architectural firms he wanted her to interview at, Joan took the regular subway to Brooklyn, because she had time to kill and because, if she was being very, very honest, she didn’t particularly enjoy watching witches cast.
She was old enough that she’d long ago accepted her own shortcomings, but after extensive therapy, she knew she hadn’t necessarily forgiven herself for them.
Even if she, long before her parents and aunt, had given up on herself—spitefully, hopelessly—she still saw people around her doing incredible things and felt acutely what she could not do.
Mik was a long shot. Maybe if a very smart person reverse engineered the spell on them, they’d uncover the basic mechanics of a witch’s power and determine why Joan could channel but not cast. And, critically, fix it.
And maybe then Joan’s depression would be cured and her skin would clear and her crops would flourish.
Or maybe the parameters of a spell geared toward granting a human the ability to channel magic could not realistically explain why a witch could channel but not create spells strong enough to contain the magic she pressed into them.
Joan was going to choose to live in the optimism though, if only privately, and quietly, and with a little hopeful thrill that she fostered in her like a tiny orb of light.
She hopped off at the 36th Street station, found the café Grace had picked, and realized she still had thirty minutes to kill. Enough time to order a chai, pull out her sketchbook, and idly draw as she tried to determine her next steps.
What was she actually going to ask Grace? How do you undo this mystery spell? The Greenwoods had already asked that, and Grace didn’t know yet. What are the potential side effects? Seeing Mik, Joan had a pretty good grasp on them.
“Ordered without me?” Grace said, appearing behind the chair in front of Joan suddenly enough that she yelped and sloshed her drink a little.
Grace raised an eyebrow as Joan dabbed at her hand with napkins. “You had a clear line of sight, how did you not see me coming?”
Joan fumbled with her sketchbook, hastily closing the scene on the café drawing, and checked her watch to confirm that no, it had not been thirty whole minutes, Grace was fifteen minutes early.
“I make no excuses for my idiocy,” Joan said, putting on a weak smile. “Thanks for meeting me. I ordered a drink to kill time.”
Grace thumped into her chair. “Well, I ordered food, so now you’re behind.”
Joan grumbled as she rose, because she did not, as a rule, miss meals. “Okay, power play.”
Grace’s smile was utterly beguiling. “Like forcing this meeting was a power play?”
A laugh burst out of Joan, soft and surprised. “Be right back.”
After ordering, Joan slid back into her chair and steeled herself for the coming conversation.
Sincerity, she would try that before the many tricks she’d seen her family use to get what they wanted.
“This meeting was not meant as a power play. As you will likely learn, I have very little power in my family. I needed to talk to you. Off the record.”
Grace was sitting neatly in her chair, in a way that almost reminded Joan of Valeria’s impeccable elegance. Her braids were tied back in a dark green headscarf this time, and she was in stylish work attire.
“Off the record,” Grace mused. “What is this about? I’m not inclined to do any more favors for the Greenwoods.
I only did it in the first place because Fiona’s been on me to try and establish myself in the New York scene so I can settle into an area of research and make a name for myself, like her. ”
Hostility toward Joan’s family, she was used to that.
It was intriguing, though, that Grace would take so bold a stance without a family to back her.
Joan had asked around the house as best she could that morning—Grace Collins had been born to two humans, one utterly unmagical and the other with sleeper witch genes, who never manifested the ability to channel.
They ran a pizzeria, and her entire family was in Atlanta, Georgia, not here.
If Fiona hadn’t noticed Grace and taken her in, she wouldn’t be on the radar of New York at all.
“I thought you hadn’t picked a borough to work for yet,” Joan said.
Grace tapped her fingers. “Who says I’m going to work for any borough? I have a chemical engineering degree; I can easily work only in the human world.”
Huh. A spellmaker shunning their gifts to stay out of the witch world? Grace Collins was only getting more interesting.
“Time’s ticking,” Grace said, as their food was delivered and she picked up her sandwich.
Alright, fuck it. Joan was getting bogged down in the big picture, trying to play politics when she should be focusing on the details.
In architecture, when Joan hit a dead end in one perspective, she swapped to a new one.
Forget plans, try elevations. Forget drawings, try models.
“Forget how the spell was made. My family asked you a string of questions yesterday, but what did we forget to ask you?”
Grace stopped eating. “What are you getting at?”
“You’re a spellmaker, we are not. And I won’t fall victim to the same ego that fuels my family.
What did we fail to ask you? I’m sure there’s something.
” Joan could already think of one thing; she’d thought the question herself—Grace said it was impossible to pull off this spell long term but hadn’t clarified its potential temporary possibilities.
If she was right, maybe whatever this was would wear off Mik eventually.
Grace’s long hesitation was filled to the brim with obvious suspicion, but she answered anyways.
“Power source. A spell like that is a constant drain, and you’d need to find some way to keep it automatically renewing.
You’re fighting against the human’s basic nature by granting them the ability to attract magic, casting ability aside.
There would have to be some constant level of magic expended.
Maybe with enough effort, you could take a look at the magic patterns in New York and see if there was somewhere it was all funneling.
The city’s in constant chaos, eating up and spitting out magic, but a spell this complex and this consistent, if tracked over time, might be visible. ”
This was terrible news for hiding Mik, but—“Did you tell my family this?”
Grace shrugged, picking up her sandwich. “Like you said, no one asked.”
“And you… aren’t worried about this ascended human? Enough to try and track them down? Or the witch who made up this spell? We have no idea what their motives are.” A new thought dawned on Joan in a burst of brilliance. “Or you’re working for someone else, helping them find the person first.”
“I can almost see the lightbulb above your head,” Grace said with a snort.
“But no, I’m not double agenting the Greenwoods.
I have a greater sense of self-preservation than that.
I personally don’t care if a human became a witch.
It doesn’t pay my bills or put food on my table.
I’m sure the witch did it for the chance at money—a spell like this could make you a modern-day king, with the right bidders, but that’s so boring.
Whoever did this was a genius. How does one make a human attract magic? ”
Grace launched into this topic with a curious gleam in her eye. “That’s interesting to me. While magic twists unconsciously through witches at some low level at all times, humans are never permeated.”
“Because it makes them sick?” Joan said, prompting her on as she ripped into her own sandwich. “The body’s natural defense against something that makes you unwell?”
“Right. So if humans have some level of protective barrier, then witches have a much more porous one. To make a human a witch, you’d need to punch a bunch of holes in that barrier to allow magic to flow through.
That’s how you unlock channeling, and casting is just a matter of learning spells, like all witches do. ”
Didn’t mean the spells would work.
“But that doesn’t solve the fact that humans aren’t made to process magic.” Grace was clearly energized by the thought, which didn’t seem like the actions of someone ready to give up spellmaking to work in the human world.
This all meant something profound to her.
“It’s an interesting reframing of the problem,” Grace theorized. “If we keep breaking it down into smaller pieces, the question isn’t how to get a human to cast, it’s how to get them access to magic. And it isn’t just how to get them access to magic, it’s how to make it so they can tolerate it.”