Chapter 8 Unhappy Alone
Unhappy Alone
Idon’t know when I expected to see Bones again.
I walked away from him, and it didn’t fully hit me that he was back, and seemingly in relatively good shape physically, not until he’d already disappeared. I also realized I had absolutely no idea where he’d gone, or what he’d meant by “things he needed to do.”
Alaric seemed to be having the opposite compulsion.
Meaning, rather than parting ways with me as quickly as possible, he seemed strangely reluctant to leave my side, or, more likely, I guessed, to be alone.
He followed me up to my room when we got back to Valarian.
He followed me inside without asking and sat on my couch with Wraith while I lit a fire with magic, made tea for him, and we ordered brunch.
Wraith, who meowed plaintively when she saw who I was with, ignored me completely and leapt immediately onto Alaric’s lap.
From there, she promptly proceeded to knead his wool trousers with her claws, then curl up into a little black ball and purr loudly as he rubbed her ears and face.
I left them there to get reacquainted, and disappeared into my room, and then my shower.
It was absolutely heavenly, standing under the hot water.
I took an excessively long shower as a result, then changed into slim-fitting trousers and a long, sky-blue jumper I bought in London, and rejoined Wraith and Alaric in the common room.
A cheese and tomato omelet with scallions greeted me, along with toast and jam, fried mushrooms and potatoes, and slightly-burnt sausage.
Alaric was well into all of it, and feeding Wraith bits of sausage from his plate with his fingers.
“You really shouldn’t do that,” I scolded.
“So you’ve said a few hundred times now,” he murmured, not looking up from Wraith’s very pink tongue as she licked the grease off his fingers. “But little Wraithy-poo missed her Uncle Alaric. Didn’t you, Snookums?”
Wraith meowed plaintively as if she both agreed and also hadn’t forgiven him yet for disappearing.
I snorted, and plunked down on the couch next to them.
I pulled the plate of omelet to my lap, but the first thing I brought to my lips was my second mug of coffee for the day.
The shower had helped to steam some of the alcohol out of my system, and thankfully, Caelum’s potion had cut the most painful and stomach-sick elements of my hangover, but I still felt exhausted, and like I’d been mildly run over by a lorry.
I dug into the omelet and potatoes, and that helped, too.
I tried to think through everything swirling around in my head, but my mind kept wanting to return to Bones, to the cane and his limp, and where he’d gone after we’d left for Valarian.
I had a vague anxiety that he was off researching the ritual performed on Alaric, and probably other things I very much wanted to be a part of.
Why hadn’t I asked him to meet me at the library, and set a specific time? Bones was generally quite good with being on time for things.
As it was, we’d left no later meeting arrangement, and I had no idea when he might deign to stop by. Since he hadn’t exactly left the invitation open for either Alaric or me to return to his place, I had to assume he’d be coming to us, and only when he was good and ready.
I finished off the omelet, the potatoes, the mushrooms, one sausage, and a little more than half of my four pieces of toast, and then I was so full I wanted a nap.
Leaning back on the couch, I took my coffee mug with me and drew in my feet.
Only then did I feel eyes on me and turn.
Alaric and Wraith were both staring at me, one with hazel eyes and the other with green.
Wraith looked at me wrathfully, like she still hadn’t forgiven me, likely for being gone all night (and maybe because I wasn’t more offended that she’d chosen Alaric over me to make her point).
More than anything, though, I got the sense she was feeling a bit clingy and needy and uneasy with both of us.
As for Alaric himself, he looked at me with undisguised glee.
“Stop it,” I warned him.
“Oh, you have to tell me!” he burst out, as if he’d been holding it in with every ounce of his willpower until I gave him the slightest opening. “You have to, Leda. I absolutely insist you tell me every filthy, sordid, squelching detail––”
“Absolutely not,” I grimaced.
Alaric’s mouth pursed in disbelief as he looked at me. “I don’t think you understand the gravity of this,” he said finally. “He called you his witch.”
I felt my cheeks heat, but only scoffed. “So?”
“Do you know the number of times I’ve heard Cal call anyone, witch or mage, his anything over the eleven or so years I’ve known him?”
I exhaled, exaggerating my impatience. “No, Alaric. Nor do I––”
“ZERO,” Alaric said, holding up his fingers and thumb in the corresponding shape.
“Exactly no times, Leda. Never. Not once. Zilch. Not even with Warrington back when they were dating in middle school and he was significantly more wide-eyed and innocent than he is now. Even back then, he would get visibly and vocally annoyed whenever anyone suggested the two of them might be a thing. He’d insist they were just friends who fucked occasionally. ”
I grimaced, unable to keep it off my face.
I’d known he’d been with Warrington, of course.
I’d seen the two of them grind on one another at last year’s Eleusínia Myst?ria dance, so the sexual nature of their relationship was hardly something he’d kept a secret.
From what I could tell at that same dance, they’d likely still been operating as “friends with benefits,” at that point, at least. I had no idea when that ended, or whether it had still been the case right up until the night he asked me for exclusivity, and really, it was none of my business.
Did I really need that visual right then, though?
No, I decidedly did not.
Somehow, the thought of the two of them together brought that pain back to my chest, and the dull throb that made my teeth and temples hurt.
Worse than the physical effects, that more insidious feeling of unease returned, the same one I’d tried to shake the entire time I’d been in the shower, and really, since that morning his father tried to kill both of us.
That one was harder to explain, even to myself.
The creeping, aching, compulsive feeling made my skin crawl, my hands restless, my mind scattered and difficult to focus. It made me feel like an addict, like there was something wrong with me. It also embarrassed me, and made me wonder if Bones had noticed.
I tried to convince myself it was all in my head.
Truthfully, though, I’d been dealing with some version of it off and on for a while now.
It really started the year before, after our fight at the fountain.
It got worse in the summer, then marginally better for a while, only to grow gradually and exponentially worse since we’d started spending a lot of time together again.
I tried to tell myself it was Bones’s high-octane, family-label whiskey that Alaric and I had drunk to excess the night before, but I didn’t believe it.
If I was less of a coward, I’d ask Bones himself, but I honestly wasn’t sure I was ready for the look he might give me, or what he might suggest as the cause of my problem.
Unfortunately, Alaric noticed something in my face while I thought all those things.
And, being the wanker he was, he decided to run with it.
“Horus’s beak, you’re not jealous?” Alaric managed to sound simultaneously appalled, delighted, and a little bewildered. “You’re jealous of Warrington? What in the gods is going on with the two of you? I insist that you tell me everything at once!”
I swallowed back that feeling of unease, and rolled my eyes.
“No,” I said.
“Please! You can’t possibly––”
“I absolutely can,” I said. “I’m not talking about it, Alaric. Please do shut up.” I stared into the fire as I said the last part, my voice close to harsh.
Silence filled the spaces between us.
Realizing how I’d sounded, and that I’d never spoken to him like that before, I looked over when Alaric didn’t break the silence. I fought between extremes of guilt and annoyance when I saw his wide-eyed look, and clasped my hands between my knees.
“I can’t,” I told him, my voice subdued. “I really can’t.”
That, at least, felt true.
Whatever Bones called me, I had no idea how he’d feel about me talking to Alaric about our whatever-it-was.
Moreover, I’d barely talked to him about it, so anything I said would be mostly speculation anyway.
I still wasn’t sure what I was even allowed to say, given how paranoid he was about other people knowing things about him, and his magic in particular.
Either way, I wasn’t lying to Alaric when I said I couldn’t talk about it now. I needed to talk to Bones first. That felt true.
It must’ve felt true to Alaric, too, because he didn’t ask me again.
Not right then, at least.
I did end up showing Alaric my notes on everything I’d learned so far, or tried to learn, about what Alaric and Bones called “bridging” spells and what I’d, in my mind, called “magical possession” up until the night before.
I’d used a spell to bind the loose pages of parchment I’d been scribbling on since the second half of my first year at Malcroix, starting with what my aunt had done to me, and augmented in the past month by what I’d learned about Bones and his father.
I obviously didn’t know anything about the last piece yet, meaning Alaric’s own tattoo and ritual, since I’d only just learned about that the night before.
The book I’d created had grown thick, despite all the gaps in my information.
I already had a second stack of loose parchment which I’d eventually pull into some kind of “Volume 2.” For now, I tried to keep it organized roughly into sections, although my categories were pretty scattered and filled with multiple tangents.
Obviously, the gold tattoos were something I knew nothing about.
I hadn’t really made connections between Bones and his father, and me and my aunt, much less Alaric and whatever Dark Cathedral had done to him, until the last few hours, so I hadn’t realized the significance of the gold tattoos, or even that they were anything other than personal to Bones.
My back and forth, hemming and hawing about whether to talk to Alaric about any of this, which I’d struggled with the night before, basically vanished after Bones reappeared. Now that I knew it was something Bones felt comfortable speaking about with Alaric openly, all of those hesitations left me.
Also, it was maybe just easy to lean on Alaric for this.
I’d grown used to the way he thought about things, after working with him on chimaeras and ancient languages and mythological references over the majority of the summer, not to mention all the work we’d done on tracing and tracking spells.
I didn’t mention to him that I had a separate stack of parchment pages and notes about magical disorders that had to do with Bones personally.
I sat there silently instead, reading a book I’d picked up on blood magic while Alaric sat on the couch a few feet away, reading through my thick, bound copy of notes, his brow furrowed like it always was when he was concentrating.
Whenever I glanced at him, Wraith still sat in his lap, curled up and half sprawled on the book. Alaric only moved her paw occasionally to read and to turn the page, then my cat settled back in, purring loudly enough that I could hear it on the other side of the couch.
Watching him with my cat, I felt even guiltier that I’d yelled at him.
That guilt worsened when I remembered how long he’d been gone, the small amount he’d told me about how he’d spent that time at his father’s mansion, and the fact that I still didn’t really understand what had been done to his magic.
When I remembered how he’d looked after I’d helped him add a layer to Bones’s chimaeras, that guilt made my stomach hurt.
“Alaric,” I began, looking up from the book when I couldn’t move past it.
Before I could manage the next set of words, someone knocked loudly on the door.
Both of us jumped.
We both turned to look.
Then, exchanging nervous looks with my friend, I got up from the couch and walked to the door. My heart was pounding, enough that I realized I was both expecting and looking for Bones with my magic, and growing increasingly tense when I didn’t feel him.
My uneasiness worsened when I extended my magic out further and he still wasn’t there. Right at the moment my hand fell on the door handle, right as I’d begun to twist it open, I stretched my magic out too far.
What is it, Shadow? His voice was strangely clear, nearly brusque. What’s wrong?
Is it you out there? I asked, my thoughts softer than his. At my door?
I had already turned the handle entirely.
I was already in the process of opening the door.
No, he thought back. Alarm sharpened his mental voice, sending magical current through my skin and around my teeth. Leda, don’t open the fucking door––
But it was too late for that, too.