Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Jack
Thankfully, my dads stopped pestering me by the time that Tabby showed up at the door. I half expected to see the little group of witches that trailed behind her too and was grateful when it was only her on my doorstep.
“Hey,” I greeted, holding the door open for her. “Thanks for coming all the way here. I know it would have been easier for you to do this at the academy.”
“No, no.” Tabby smiled, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she stepped into the foyer. “This is better, actually. I can see you in your natural habitat, and plus, we won’t have the other students being nosy.”
Her head swiveled one way and then the other, taking in the high ceilings and fancy chandelier that shined rainbows on the wall during the day. I used to lay under it as a child with my mom, seeing how many rainbows we could count before they disappeared with the sun.
“Natural habitat, huh?” I chuckled. “Why does that make me feel like some kind of animal in the zoo?”
Tabby’s mismatched colored eyes widened. “Oh, no! That’s not what I meant at all.” She clung to her bag, spinning around to face me. “I just meant the place you’re most comfortable at.”
Where I was most comfortable? Maybe once upon a time, it was here in my family home.
Ever since I became a hunter, this had been more of a secondary place of comfort to the barracks and sounds of training all around me.
Then more recently, the place I felt most safe was in the arms of Julian or Tate.
And, even now, Kyren. Even if he wouldn’t admit it yet.
Pushing those thoughts away, I rubbed my hands together. “Want something to drink before we get started?”
“Oh, yeah, sure, thank you,” Tabby rambled, following after me at a distracted pace while her eyes ate up everything around her.
We stepped into the kitchen where my mom sat at the counter, shoveling a plate of pancakes into her mouth while my dads, Rayne, Wynn, and Darren, looked on with amusement. Our cook stood at the stove, turning as we walked in.
“Oh, hey, Jack,” she greeted me with a wide smile. “Want some pancakes? There’s plenty to go around.”
“No, thanks, Tabby.” Then I paused and frowned. “Uh… Tabby, this is our cook, also Tabby.”
Tabby the witch nodded shyly toward Tabby the cook, her hands tightening around her bag. “Nice name.”
Our cook giggled. “Right back at you.”
I let the awkward silence hang in the air for a moment, my parents watching quietly from the sidelines before I clapped my hands together and continued with the introductions.
“I’m sure you remember my parents from the assembly.” I gestured to the four of them.
“Oh, hi.” Tabby nervously waved a small hand. “Thank you for letting us use your home.”
“No problem,” my mom said through a mouthful of food, earning her a disapproving look from Darren.
“Don’t worry we don’t bite,” Rayne commented with a wide fanged grin.
“Haha.” I rolled my eyes at his theatrics trying to show Tabby he was just messing around.
“Welcome to our home,” Wynn said, approaching her. He took her hand in his own lifting it to his lips with a small smile. “We should be the ones thanking you. Anything you can tell us about our little miracle would be greatly appreciated.”
Tabby’s face turned as red as a tomato as she stuttered over her words. “I — um — I’ll try my best. Please be… welcome. Oh, crap — uh.”
My mom giggled, no longer eating. “Don’t mind Wynn. He’s a huge flirt. He can’t help himself.” She grabbed him by the elbow, pulling him toward her with an amused look. The fact that she hadn’t gotten angry at my dad for shamelessly flirting Tabby showed how strong their relationship really was.
Shaking my head, I opened the fridge and pulled a couple of water bottles out. I handed one to Tabby and then placed a hand on her on the shoulder.
“Don’t mind them. They think they’re funny.”
“Uh, oh. Okay.” Tabby ducked her head, staring down at her water.
I shot my parents a look that said, “Really?” before ushering the witch out of the kitchen. I led her back through the dining room and down the hallway toward the library.
I paused briefly outside the training room door, listening to the sound of my dads, Drake and Allister, battling it out. By the sound of it, Allister was winning this time.
“Are we going in there?” Tabby asked her eyes wide, hearing the grunts and thuds coming from inside.
“Not unless you think things are going to get physical?” I arched a brow at her. When she shook her head, I nodded and continued down the hallway.
Once we reached the library, I pushed open one of the two double doors, gesturing for Tabby to go inside.
Clutching her bag to her chest, Tabby walked in ahead of me, her eyes darting from side to side.
“You know…” I began, following after her through the lines of bookshelves. “For a witch at a supernatural school, you don’t seem very comfortable around supernaturals.”
Tabby laughed nervously. “Oh, yeah, well, other witches I can handle. We might have magic, but we’re still mostly human.”
“Are all witches like that?” I asked, bringing her to a sitting area near the fireplace. I gestured for her to take a seat on the couch, while I took up residence in one of the armchairs opposite of her.
Tabby chewed on her lower lip, her eyes squinting as she thought. “I mean, some are, but most are so enamored by the others that they don’t really take the proper precautions. They forget that, unlike vampires and werewolves, we’re still breakable.”
I hummed. “Yeah, I could see that. But you have magic.” I pointed my water at her before twisting the lid off and taking a sip. “Can’t you just turn them into a toad if any of them tried to, you know, eat you?”
“Uh… I guess.” Tabby wrapped her hands around her bottle of water, not opening it, her fingers rubbing up and down the condensation coming off the sides of it. “I mean, if we knew how.”
My brows shot up. “What do you mean know how? Don’t you?”
“I mean, sure, I know how… theoretically.” Tabby grimaced, tapping the lid of her water bottle.
“I don’t understand.”
Tabby sighed. “Most witches know basic spells. Charms. Transmogrification. Glamours. Potion making. The usual.” She paused, her eyes lifting to mine a kind of despair in her mismatched eyes. “Then there are others… like me. Who focus more on the academic side of things.”
“What does that mean?” I cocked my head to the side.
Her voice was small. So small that I barely could make out her words even with my super hearing. “I can’t do magic.”
“Oh. Oh! Tabby!” I blinked, realizing what that meant. “Why would you risk coming to the academy if you can’t do magic? You can’t even defend yourself.”
Tabby’s face changed, a fierce look of determination taking over. “Hey, I’m as much a witch as any of the others. My family’s line goes back for hundreds of years. My ancestors were sorcerers to kings and queens. So what if I don’t have any of that flashy magic?”
She set her water aside as she opened her bag and started pulling out notebooks and a large tome. “I have something better. Intellect.”
“Oh, really?” Trying to sound enthusiastic but mentally concocting a plan to keep an eye on the witch while she was at the academy. Could I get a hunter to shadow her?
I worried about telling my parents. They might do something drastic like refusing to let witches attend the academy that didn’t have actual physical magic. And I couldn’t do that to Tabby. Not when she was helping me figure out my own powers.
“So…” Tabby placed the thick tome on the coffee table in front of her.
Its cover was made of an aged leather, the spine laced up with some kind of rubbery looking string. There were words written on the front at some point but they had worn off long ago.
Tabby flicked through the pages until she landed on the one she wanted and then pulling open her notebook. “Enough about me. Let’s talk about you.”
“Me? Oh, yeah. Okay. What do you want to know?” I crossed one leg over the other and leaned back in my chair.
Staring at me like she was some kind of therapist and I was her patient. I supposed in a way I was. If I couldn’t get my powers under control that could be my future. Locked away in a padded room where I couldn’t accidentally hurt anyone.
Taking a deep breath to remind myself that it wasn’t going to happen. That was why Tabby was here, I prepared myself for her questions.
Tabby peered down at her notebook, twirling a pen between her fingers. “Let’s start at the beginning. When were you born?”
“You want to know my birthday?” My lips twisted to the side. Did that really matter?
“It doesn’t need to be the exact date,” Tabby clarified, quickly. “How old are you will suffice?”
Then why didn’t she say that in the first place?
“I’m twenty-five.”
Tabby scribbled in her notebook. “And was it a normal pregnancy?”
My lips pursed. What the fuck? “Uh… I’ve never been pregnant.”
Tabby’s eyes flicked up to mine. “I meant, your mom.”
“Oh,” I said then shrugged. “How the hell am I supposed to know?”
“You never talked about it?”
I shrugged a shoulder again. “It never came up.”
That wasn’t completely true. My mom and dads had talked about what they were like when she was pregnant with me.
It had been dramatic and scary as hell. The previous council had basically tried lock my mom away until she gave birth so they could steal me as a baby.
Apparently, my birth was an unknown variable that they couldn’t allow to walk around in the world on its own.
They’d basically given my parents the choice of giving me up or they would kill me.
Obviously, that didn’t set well with my parents and that conflict was basically how my parents ended up heading the new council. However, Tabby didn’t need to know all of that.
“Okay, we’ll move on for now. But knowing more about the birth would help see the overall picture.” Tabby nodded, seeming to talk more to herself than to me.
“I can go ask her?” I braced my hands on the sides of the chair and prepared to stand.
Waving me off, Tabby pointed at something on her notebook. “I have that both your biological parents are human servants. Correct?”
“Yep.”
Tabby paused, tapping her face with her pen, her eyes moving toward the door. “So your dads… which one…?”
“Darren,” I provided for her with a smile, used to having to explain how our whole family lineage worked. “He’s the only human among them besides my mom.”
“And he and your mother are bound to…” She glanced down at her notes. “Antoine?”
I nodded.
If all the questions were going to be like this, then I was in for a long night. Sipping on my water, I wished I’d grabbed something stronger. Like coffee or a shot of adrenaline.
Thirty minutes and twenty million questions later, Tabby finally got to the part that I really cared about. My powers.
“So…” She folded her arms over her lap, staring intently at me. “Show me your powers.”
I sat up straight, fingers curled into the arms of the chair. “Uh… I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
The terror of what I’d done to the crows and almost done to Tate made the muscles in my throat close up.
Tabby cocked her head to the side. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what your powers do.”
The thought of using my powers on purpose, even in a secure location, sent a shiver of anxiety through me. What if I can’t make it work? What if I did? What if Tabby ended up under my influence for the rest of her life?
No. I couldn’t do it.
“Jack…” Tabby pushed, the weight of her expectant gaze making the sick feeling worse.
“I don’t know how you can help me with them, anyway,” I snapped, crossing my arms over my chest. “You don’t even have powers of your own.”
Tabby blinked at me, then sniffed not seeming as offended as I thought she might have been by my words.
“Just because I don’t have magic of my own doesn’t mean I can’t help you.
I’ve spent years studying other magic. Read thousands of books.
I know just about everything to know about all different types of magic. ”
She flicked through her notebook, naming off the different types of magic she’d studied. “The creation of the first werewolf. How vampires came to be. Necromancy. Shapeshifting. What I’m trying to say is that I’m the best shot you’ve got.”
My eyes shifted to the side, avoiding her probing gaze.
“Unless… you want to just wait and see? Because we all know how well that works out.”
I knew she was right. I could pretend like my powers didn’t exist until the next time they reared their ugly head and who knew who would be in the line of fire then? My mom? My dads? One of the guys? Or even an innocent bystander.
“Fine.” I blew out a breath, leaning forward my hands laced between my knees. “I’ll tell you about my powers.”