Chapter 10 #2
So she picked up the threads they’d left off on in the market and told Grace absolutely everything she could. By the time she was done, Grace had buzzed to let the LaMortes into the building, and then they were knocking on the front door.
Grace answered it, and CZ and Mik fell in through the door in a flurry of thrown elbows and curses, from where they’d clearly been wrestling a bit outside the door.
“Grace!” CZ said, straightening and brushing off his shirt. “Beautiful apartment.”
“Where’s Abel?” Grace asked.
“Broke off once we hit Bay Ridge. Mom called him in for something, what with him being so important and everything.”
Joan gave him a look, the one that was supposed to mean You are not your brother, and that’s a good thing.
CZ let out a breath, one that meant Sorry, didn’t mean to get too down. “He’ll link up with us tomorrow. Said he might have a trinket for Joan.”
“A trinket?” Grace asked.
“I love trinkets,” Joan said happily. Abel collected magic artifacts and occasionally passed on rings and bracelets and other jewelry to Joan if they ended up being unmagical or empty. Half the rings on Joan’s fingers now were from Abel.
“Something about a mind ward, just in case,” CZ said.
Mik coughed conspicuously. They were dressed rather ridiculously in one of CZ’s baseball caps, sunglasses, and a scarf, like a very obvious spy in a movie. They ripped the layers off, sweating.
“Hello, I’m Mik. The source of everyone’s problems these days,” they said, sticking out a hand that Grace shook. “Sorry you’ve been pulled into the crime ring.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Grace said. “If I go down, I’m taking Joan with me, which her family won’t like at all, so there might be some level of protection there.”
“Smart,” Joan said.
Mik made to remove their hand, but Grace held fast, giving them an intense stare.
“Whoa there,” Mik said, yanking their hand again.
CZ made his way into the kitchen to stand next to Joan, leaning down to whisper at her. “We trust her?”
“Mostly,” Joan whispered back. Magic danced around Grace, caressing her body. “I think she’s about to cast. Mik, hold still.”
Grace’s lips moved soundlessly, and her free hand floated up to twist in the air, where it hovered for a moment before her fists closed around a thread of magic that ran into Mik and she pulled.
Mik made a keening noise, and CZ tensed, but Joan held him back with a hand as Grace pulled out more threads of magic.
“There,” Grace said, blinking herself back into reality and finally dropping Mik’s hand. “That should help.”
Mik examined their hands. “I feel way lighter,” they whispered. “What did you do?”
“I can’t do a full seal on my own,” Grace said. “I could dim the magic a bit. We’ll have to try the magic tracing and the memory stuff tomorrow, I think. It’s been a long day for me; I’ll admit I’m tired.”
Mik’s fist bunched in their scarf. “Joan said you’d need four witches for a seal.”
“I could swing it with only one other witch, if they were really powerful,” Grace said.
“But two more would be safest. It might seem counterintuitive, but it takes an enormous amount of magic to strip it from someone else, and you usually need multiple people to net that much energy and then come up with a spell powerful enough to shape it. Come in, did CZ and Abel explain you’d be staying with me for a little? ”
“Ish,” Mik said. “Mostly they were zipping around, grabbing me and running. But I gathered the gist. Thanks for opening up your apartment.”
“She has a ghost roommate,” Joan added.
“I don’t know what that means,” Mik said cheerily, wandering into the living room, which had a TV and nothing else. “Did you just move in?”
“A few weeks ago,” Grace said. “Didn’t do a lot of furnishing.”
“Oh, I can help with that,” Joan said with no small amount of relief.
She was standing there twiddling her thumbs.
She pulled a credit card out of the back of her phone.
“Here, Grace, as thanks for your help, and Mik, as apology for your house arrest, feel free to engage in some retail therapy, on me.”
“There’s no need,” Grace said, eyes narrowing. “I don’t need charity.”
“What’s the budget?” Mik asked, accepting the card. They shrugged at Grace’s glare. “I’ve decided to embrace the fact that I am crashing on people’s floors. Whatever. She’s offering.”
“The budget,” CZ said with a little laugh. “Nice one.”
“I’m really quite wealthy,” Joan said. “Spend away.”
“Then why were you acting impressed by my rent?” Grace grumbled, snatching the card from Mik’s hands to examine it, like it might start spitting out money on the spot.
“Because that’s damn good rent in New York,” Joan said. “Not that I’m trying to deny my privilege.”
“Unemployed with a trust fund,” CZ said.
“Unemployed with a trust fund,” Joan agreed. “Okay, I, for one, am so tired. Can I sleep at your place tonight, CZ? I don’t know if the party is still raging at mine.”
“Are we sure it’s safe?” CZ asked. “I was contemplating crashing with Abel.”
“You can both stay here,” Grace said. She cleared her throat awkwardly. “If you want. I’ll conjure up mattresses for now, if you don’t mind sleeping without bed frames. We’ll resume our escapades in the morning.”
“Oh, we don’t want to be a bother,” Joan said.
At the same time, CZ waved his hand and replied, “Joan and I can figure out our own stuff, thanks though.”
Mik leaned toward Grace. “They’re such a unit. They talk in unison all the time, and when they’re not doing that, they kind of look at each other and somehow communicate telepathically. Is that a vampire thing?”
“It is not,” Grace said. “And I didn’t offer to be polite. I have two more bedrooms: Mik can have one, the happy couple can have the other.” There was a curious note to the last part of her sentence.
“We get that a lot,” Joan said. “But we’re not together.”
“Tragically, Joan has turned down all my advances,” CZ said in a bad fake British accent.
“I’m a lesbian,” Joan said. “And he has never been attracted to me; he’s lying. He once referred to me as a ‘sister’ while hitting on some guy, which feels pretty damning.”
“Why I oughtta…” CZ said half-heartedly, faking a punch.
“We’re still cool to share a room though,” Joan said.
“If you really meant it about staying a night. We’ll figure something out tomorrow.
No need to conjure something, especially something as big as a mattress; we can sleep on the floor.
We don’t want to drain your magic even faster.
” Witches could, in theory, conjure up any sort of physical object but were typically limited by size.
The larger an object, the more magic it took to create and the more magic it drained to keep the spell active and the object manifested.
Once that magic ran out, it would fizzle out of existence.
Grace was chewing on her lip, gaze darting between CZ, who was still talking in that terrible accent and posturing himself across the kitchen, and Joan, who was still in the jumpsuit Molly had laid out for her.
“I don’t say things I don’t mean,” Grace said, “and no guests of mine will sleep on the floor.” She pivoted, waving everyone down the hallway so she could assign rooms. “My mother would beat my ass if she heard I treated a visitor like that.”
Each was totally empty, but clean and without cobwebs.
Grace explained that Billy didn’t sleep and so had elected not to choose a bedroom for herself, instead appearing in the apartment at random.
She then conjured up king-size mattresses for both rooms, despite heavy protest, looking a bit weary after the fact, and after showing them the two bathrooms, she sent them all off to bed.
CZ didn’t really sleep more than about three hours a day, but he was content to scroll on his phone with a borrowed charger for hours on end, so Joan curled up at his side, back pressed to him.
Faster than she’d thought possible, she was asleep.