Chapter 6 #3
Joan twisted like a heat-seeking missile, hoping to catch sight of Astoria, but Valeria’s grip was unyielding.
Unable to find Astoria, Joan focused her nuclear capacity on her aunt, attempting to incinerate Valeria with her mind.
Her mouth was halfway through launching the first word of the admonishment swimming to life in her brain when Valeria squeezed, hard enough to really hurt, cutting off Joan’s speech with a small, pained whimper.
The currents of the room shifted, sweeping Janet off to other schemes.
The Greenwood matriarch, still strong-arming Joan, pulled her along to the back terrace.
The stone balcony was drenched in roses, gaudily so, supernaturally vibrant.
“Where have you been all day?” Valeria asked. “Why were you in Brooklyn with Grace Collins?”
“Can you unhand me?” Joan said as forcefully as she could manage through gritted teeth.
Valeria let go with a noise of scorn deep in her throat, and Joan shook out her arm finally, mercifully.
“You were having me followed?”
Valeria shook her head and snapped her fingers, refilling Joan’s champagne glass with prosecco and taking it from her hands.
It looked like some sort of time magic variation, turning back the clock on the cup to mimic a previous state.
Her specialty. “You children are constantly underestimating me.”
Joan rested her hands on the railing, the roses and thorns alike tangling with her fingers in glee. She slipped them off and shook her hand, blood welling from a cut. “I have some concerns.”
“Don’t you always,” Valeria muttered. The world gusted, an uncharacteristic chill for early June. “What is it this time, Joan?”
Valeria’s tone grated. Joan worked to tamp down on her frustration. “Grace says she told you how to reverse this new spell. You seal the person’s magic. But you want her to recreate it anyways, why? You said we weren’t going to use it to turn a bajillion humans.”
Please don’t say what I think you’re going to say.
“No, that’s your father’s ill-founded idea.
I have no intentions of pursuing half-baked plans.
There must be systems in place before such a thing can happen,” Valeria said.
“Ways to train these new witches. We have to think through who gets turned, and how. This is not a move to make out of rabid fear. We are not afraid of the humans or the vampires or the fae, in the same way the predator does not fear its prey. Fear begets recklessness, and we are at the top of the food chain. Even without the numbers in our favor.”
There it is.
Valeria was working herself up a little bit.
“Do you have any idea how many people covet our power? We are one major event away from mass unrest. The Greenwoods are a very small family, and our reputation protects us. If people didn’t trust and fear me, we’d have witches invoking the Scales Law to duel me every other day. ”
“Why not make it illegal, then?” Joan countered. The duels were a relic of a time when titles and land were more formal, but a powerful relic nonetheless.
“You, who’s always railing against our authoritarian rule, want me to take a foundational witch custom and make it illegal? One of the only checks on our family’s power? Make up your mind, Joan.”
Chastised, Joan couldn’t come up with a good response.
Witches were suckers for custom and tradition, and duels were rare because those who won tended to be those with more thorough witch educations, and the already rich and powerful could afford those educations.
Power was in settled lines these days; it was a suicide mission to try and challenge them.
Valeria continued, refilling and draining her glass again.
“No, we’ll be careful here. We need to determine how this spell might impact the balance of the magic world and its intersection with the human one.
All answers to be determined once I know the exact parameters of this magic.
Its costs and consequences. And whoever this witch is who wrote it, I’ll need them in my employ. ”
Even after all they did to Mik? It’s not finished, Joan wanted to tell her. It makes you sick.
Valeria’s gaze was eagle-eyed. “Why do you look guilty?”
Joan straightened. Denying was easiest, but the Greenwoods were born liars; she’d been doing it since she was eight and Merlin had told her to stop crying in public.
“Because you didn’t say we weren’t going to do it, you said it was a question of when.
The magical world’s social and economic stratification will worsen if you swell the witch population.
You may not feel guilt about that, but I do. ”
“And why do you feel this magic should be suppressed?” Valeria asked.
She always seemed to be debating Joan, but it was a falsehood in itself—Merlin shut you down fast when you didn’t have a chance.
Molly was a people pleaser, and she made sure to actually consider your viewpoint.
But Valeria’s methods were insidious; she’d argue you into a corner just to make you feel heard, but her mind wasn’t changed by other people. She was the great Valeria Greenwood.
As Grace had said, when the Greenwoods spoke, the magic world bent unquestioningly toward them.
“Janet Proctor says you’re eyeing the Moon Creatures,” Joan said. “And the Night Market. Tell me that part isn’t true, at least.”
“We know the transformed human was casting within its borders, and they’re likely still being harbored there. It would be the perfect place to hide; not enough witches go there to recognize something going on, so casting magic might go mostly unnoticed.”
A jolt seized Joan. They were closer to Mik’s trail than she’d thought, which meant they were closer to CZ’s than she’d thought.
Joan had family protection, but Mik and CZ weren’t witches—if they were discovered, Mik could be taken and CZ exiled or heavily sanctioned or really anything the Greenwoods might deem appropriate, despite the influence of his family.
Even if the LaMortes did shield him, it would be a huge blow to witch-vampire relations.
“Casting magic is negated within the market’s wards; it’s not just unnoticeable. Why would you look there?” Joan said, and to her own ears, her tone sounded level, a fact as disturbing as it was reassuring.
Valeria refilled her glass again. “You think no one’s clever enough to have figured out how to get around that? I can think of three options off the top of my head—pocket realm, portal to another location, ward nullification in a small area of effect. Think, Joan.”
Joan was thinking. She was thinking so hard, it felt like her brain was going to burn to a crisp. It wasn’t that she was opposed to this magic; it was that she opposed how badly everyone seemed to want it. “You’re trying to race California to the spell. You don’t know what it might do—”
“Do you, Joan?” Valeria interrupted, eyes narrowing. “Do you know what this spell might do?”
“Of course not.” It was smooth, so smooth, easy.
Joan injected some frustration into her tone.
“But we should slow down. Everyone’s trying to figure this out, not just witches and not just New York.
We should think about the repercussions of this, what could happen if a place like California gets a spell that can swell their ranks.
They’re already essentially a police state—”
“Exactly, Joan, exactly,” Valeria said. “That’s why we’ll get to it first, because I am the lesser evil here, because casting magic in the hands of Moon Creatures will drive the magical world to war.
Because this spell in the hands of Poppy Wardwell and her daughter will drive the Moon Creatures even further into the dirt. ”
Scorn roiled in Joan, sharp and cresting. “But this magic in the hands of Valeria Greenwood, well, all will be right in the world.”
Valeria sighed. It looked involuntary, a true bit of exasperation. “What on earth is behind this latest act of rebellion? When will you settle into your place here? You’re impossible, so much like your father. In the end, it’s always nothing but posturing with you two.”
Joan might as well have been slapped in the face for the impact it had on her. Her fingers clenched the banister; her clothing felt suddenly too tight. “What?”
“Joan,” Valeria said, clearly struggling to say it patiently.
“I absolutely adore you. You are strong-willed and curious and have been that way since you were a child. But you’re also twenty-five, and I am nearly three times your age, and I know what is best for the magical world.
Please trust that with this spell in hand, I will make the right decisions.
Stop trying to work against us all the time and put your head down. You don’t always have to fight.”
Joan’s fingers curved and straightened. It was all too easy to cut to the core of her.
You’re like your father. That shouldn’t have stopped her in her tracks as thoroughly as it did.
But for all Valeria’s great evils, she still spoke to Joan like a person, and so Joan had always preferred her aunt and her straightforwardness to her own parents.
“It’s not just about what you do with this spell, Aunt Val. It’s about what you’re willing to do to get there. I know you can be a decent person. Leave Moon Creatures alone. Do not invade the Night Market.”
“I won’t sit idly by,” Valeria said.
“Then defend Moon Creatures from people who think it’s their right to invade the market,” Joan countered. “And promise me that when you figure out this spell, you aren’t going to use it for the direct benefit of the Greenwoods and crush the other magical factions of this city beneath your heel.”
Valeria’s eyes softened uncharacteristically. “A promise, Joan? That’s what you think still holds power? We aren’t children.”
Joan’s eyes burned with frustration. Everything she said was wrong and naive. All she was in the eyes of people like the Proctors was the weakest link in the Greenwood family chain.
“When are you going to do it?” Joan asked. “Invade the market.”
Valeria looked genuinely pitying, which after everything shouldn’t have felt like such a sledgehammer to the chest, but it did. It did. “So you can warn them? I don’t think so.”
“You can’t even trust me with family secrets?”
“Don’t make me answer that.”
Joan blinked away the tears prickling at her eyes. “I’ll see myself out,” she said coolly.
“This is your own home,” Valeria protested.
But it wasn’t, not really. Joan walked through the wide-open French doors and melded with the crowd.