Chapter 6 #2
“You never are,” CZ said. “Go, confront your aunt about her illicit plans to reverse engineer a magic-granting spell, eat some canapés, come back here.”
“Easy,” Joan said, gathering her phone from where it was wedged in the couch, because it was getting to be time, and while her family likely wouldn’t notice if she was late, they would notice if she didn’t show up at all.
“Speaking of family,” CZ said too casually, “can we please ask Abel for help? If anyone knows if this spell is something brand-new or very old, it’ll be him and his stacks of occult knowledge.”
Joan, midway through jamming her phone in her pocket, paused. “CZ, you’re seriously telling me you called me before your brother?” Since vampires were often infertile, there was a large age gap between Abel and his brother. Over fifteen years. But they were close nonetheless.
CZ slumped onto the couch. “Is that really so unbelievable? Of course I called you. Only you would be reckless enough to become an accomplice, no questions asked.”
Joan’s eyes burned with unshed emotion. “Babe.”
CZ gave her one of his prettiest smiles. “Babe.” His expression dropped too soon. “And also, I was a bit ashamed to go to him.”
Joan knew the rest—CZ had long tried to measure up to his brother, heir to his pack, a leader to the community, and acutely felt that he was falling short. Asking him for help rather than being able to handle things alone… Joan gave him a sympathetic grimace.
“You should find out at this party or whatever if there are other witches you trust who can come seal me,” Mik said, crunching noisily in Joan’s ear.
Joan jumped with a little shriek at their stealthy movements. “What the hell!”
Mik crashed into the couch next to CZ. “You have to have friends, don’t you?”
CZ winced, flashed Joan an apologetic smile. “You’re looking at him.”
Mik snorted. “I’m so fucked, then.”
“Not fucked,” Joan said, regaining control of her heart so she could pull on her light coat.
“I’ll figure this out,” she muttered. Molly felt like an option, but not a good one.
Joan wasn’t completely sure she could trust her not to let something slip to their family, and even if they recruited her, they’d still need three more.
Better to find them all at once so no one could leak the news early. “And yes to Abel.”
He was a classics professor at Columbia, teaching standard mythology and translation classes to humans while serving as a leading expert in magical lore to those who knew better.
They definitely needed his help, at least in determining if this was a new spell or something old. They’d passed in over their heads roughly three crimes ago.
Joan returned to the Greenwood house to find a golden-yellow jumpsuit laid out on her bed with a blue sticky note on top that read Knew you weren’t gonna find something to wear.
And Joan knew it was Molly without a second thought. She donned the jumpsuit, a bit grumpy that it fit perfectly, and walked downstairs amid the growing swell of party noise.
The house looked almost the same as always: Polished wood. Priceless art. Expensive furniture. But everything seemed a bit brighter, like it was shimmering slightly, likely Selene’s doing. She specialized in illusion magic and could make any space look grander.
An increasingly large swarm of witches was passing through the front door, smiling at one another with false warmth and engaging in verbal sparring sharp enough for Joan to willingly slit her throat on.
She couldn’t linger on the stairs without drawing attention, but being swallowed up by the crowd felt impossible. Her hands started to sweat; she rubbed them on her thighs.
Come on, Joan. It was a simple party. It was every party she’d ever been to. She was just going to walk around. She was going to get skewered and cooked by every witch in the building who could spot weakness from ten miles away and would want to know what the youngest Greenwood was up to.
Nothing.
Some bad things.
Well, arguably, some good things that were bad only because they were in opposition to her family.
Joan watched said family navigate the foyer. Merlin was laughing boisterously with a group of men. Molly was surrounded by a semicircle of friends. Valeria was across the room with her wife, Ronnie, speaking with an old family friend.
Ronnie turned and caught Joan’s gaze, her eyes a light, almost-unnatural blue.
Aunt Val and Ronnie had been together for over thirty years, but Ronnie avoided witch society as much as she could, so Joan rarely saw her.
She leaned down to whisper something to Valeria, whose eyes flicked to Joan briefly before resettling on the person in front of her.
Which reminded Joan why she was here. There had to be some other solution to this crisis, one that didn’t make witches even more powerful gatekeepers than they already were.
She was going to confront her aunt about what Grace had said and do what she could to convince Valeria that thinking ethically about the repercussions of this spell and the concept of humans turning into witches was what was important here.
Not racing to get the spell before California to turn a fleet of loyal followers.
It would help if Joan could effectively convince Valeria that the spell was unfinished and not worth using—that it let the human channel but didn’t grant them a tolerance to magic.
They couldn’t scale it up without making a lot of people very sick.
But Joan couldn’t reveal how she knew that the spell had side effects.
She’d try it all anyways, and then she’d flee into the night and figure out her secondary problem—how to find a witch to help them track Mik’s magic back to its source, without asking any pesky questions. As the receipt had proven, Joan herself was not the one for the job.
She’d just taken another step when the room hushed, then surged, stopping her in her tracks.
Because there, entering now, was Astoria Wardwell.
She was dressed in a tailored black suit with a red vest peeking from underneath her jacket.
Her hair was down, curling around her shoulders, a deep brown shot through with warmer highlights that matched her brown skin.
A decade could change a lot; a decade could apparently change everything.
Last time Joan had seen the Wardwell heir, they’d both been fifteen and awkward, with acne and bodies they were so clearly uncomfortable in.
Joan had been a year away from coming out to her family.
Now Astoria was broad shouldered and fucking tall as hell.
Joan’s gaydar started screaming at her so loudly—I mean, what straight woman wears a suit that well?
—that she barely noticed the much shorter, slighter woman behind Astoria.
Skin pale, hair dark, features sharp. The two Californians were rapidly folded into the party, pulled in every direction by witches vying for their attention, equal parts starstruck and curious about the interlopers.
The short woman stood slightly in front of Astoria, steering conversations as Astoria looked broodily across the crowd, scanning it like a predator, until her eyes lit upon Joan.
And stuck.
And stuck.
Joan couldn’t look away.
“Joan Greenwood, back among the wolves,” said a woman with incredibly red lipstick, breaking Joan’s concentration and drawing her down the last two steps.
Her gaze followed Joan’s, and she smirked. “If my son stares any harder at that Wardwell girl, his eyes might pop right out.” She gestured toward the crowd watching Astoria. As if they were old friends. As if they were anything to each other.
Joan stopped a waiter to white-knuckle a flute of prosecco. She sipped it as a hot flash of repulsion overcame her. “Someone should remind him not to ogle. Who are you?”
A Greenwood never admitted they didn’t know anything. Joan knew every rule of the witch world; it was why she was so excellent at breaking them.
The woman laughed that stupid fake laugh they all employed so confidently. “Janet Proctor,” she said.
Ah, the Proctors were money magicians. They likely had little raw power but a great deal of subtle control over fickle things. They were, apparently, cutting business deals with Moon Creatures. And, apparently, had become important enough to be invited to the welcome party for Astoria Wardwell.
Joan noted that neither Grace nor Fiona seemed to be in attendance. They were useful enough to work for the Greenwoods, but not respected enough to appear among them.
“I hear you have trouble casting,” Janet was saying, a sly smile on her lips. “Is that so? My children, they were late bloomers, but now they’re such strong casters.”
“Can I help you with something, Janet?”
A Greenwood never showed impatience.
“You can, actually,” Janet said. She fluttered a hand to her chest, as if scandalized by Joan’s directness.
“This plan of your aunt’s… raiding the Night Market.
Is she really so desperate? The business that would be disrupted—well, isn’t there another way to get what we need out of the Moon Creatures?
I could certainly work my own contacts, if the sway of the Greenwoods is slipping—Valeria! It’s wonderful to see you.”
Joan’s arm was caught by her aunt, polite but a little rough.
Valeria smelled faintly of lavender. “Janet,” she said neutrally. “I need to borrow my niece.”
Sound had dimmed in Joan’s ears. What the hell was Janet talking about, raiding the Night Market? It was unthinkable—a violation of Moon Creature sovereignty. It was a plan straight out of California.