Chapter 24 Last Night Of Yule
Last Night Of Yule
Varya did give Bones a pretty scathing look when we entered the sitting room.
When Bones wrapped his arm around my waist, holding me against him, she looked at me, and I did my best to smile at her reassuringly.
Alaric was sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs by the fire, swirling what looked like a glass of the family whiskey I still couldn’t seem to drink without coughing.
Bones took the couch, and tugged me down to sit next to him.
I’d barely gotten settled when he laid a present in my lap.
“Is it another cat?” Alaric asked with interest.
Varya looked at me, then at Bones, then back at me. “He gave you a cat?”
I smiled, I couldn’t help it. “He did,” I affirmed. “For my birthday last year.”
“Last year?” Varya looked at Alaric, who smirked, then back at me. “When is your birthday, Leda?”
“November,” I told her.
“She means two years ago,” Alaric commented, leaning towards Varya. “She means not this past birthday but the one before it. When we were all firsties.”
Varya’s eyes widened when I nodded.
Bones didn’t say a word, but nudged me with his arm.
Sighing a bit, I performed a quick mudra with one hand, and the presents I’d hidden in the wardrobe in the guest bedroom upstairs appeared in front of each person I’d tied them to. Varya and Bones both looked at their laps in surprise.
“Leda, you mustn’t’ve!” Varya proclaimed.
I looked at Alaric. “Yours is at Malcroix, I’m afraid,” I told him. “I didn’t know you’d be here tonight, or I would’ve had Nyx send it to me.”
He grinned, and a second present appeared in my lap. “If you say you like mine better than his, I’ll buy you a monocerus to ride,” he promised solemnly.
I snorted. “I’ve been informed that any attempt to mount a monocerus would be the last thing I did before my death,” I told him. “So I’m going to take that as a threat against my life, Alaric, not as motivation.”
“Figure of speech,” he said dismissively.
I’d already started pulling on the thick black ribbon enclosing the matte-black box Bones had placed in my lap.
He watched me, his arms over the back of the couch, not yet touching his own present.
Varya handed him a cup of tea, which he took and sipped, only taking his eyes off me long enough to thank her.
A velvet box lived under the black wrapping, and I found myself getting nervous.
He rolled his eyes at my hesitation, nudging me again.
“Don’t get paranoid,” he murmured.
Giving him a look that I hope conveyed I was going to kill him if it was something I would have to explain to his mother, I cracked open the box.
A long coil of gold sat inside, shaped like a snake.
It was gorgeous, and somehow otherworldly looking, like the art deco-styled cat ring he’d found me for my birthday.
I’d told him once, when he’d muttered something about snakes being on his family crest, that I liked snakes.
The fact he’d remembered that stunned me somehow.
I was pretty sure I’d said it over a year ago now.
I pulled the gold coil out of the velvet casing, and as soon as I touched it, it writhed over my wrist and wrapped around it.
I jumped a little, I couldn’t help it.
The way it moved actually looked and felt alive.
“Eye of Sekmet,” I said. “It’s gorgeous, Bones.” I looked up at him, feeling slightly mortified in spite of myself. “It doesn’t look real.”
Turning my arm to look at it, I realized something else.
“You spelled this,” I said. “I can feel you on it.”
He scoffed.
“Of course I spelled it,” he said, a little haughtily. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I just mean…” I looked up at him, puzzled. “You must have done it before. Before you got hurt.”
He rolled his eyes but didn’t answer my question.
“Let me show you?” he asked, indicating he’d like to do something to my gift.
When I nodded, he leaned closer, and murmured a word over the bracelet.
Before I could make sense of what word he’d used, other than to catch that it sounded like Sanskrit, the gold band lengthened and writhed up my arm.
It solidified into a bracelet on my upper arm, like what his mother wore, only still in the snake design.
I’d barely had time to admire it when he murmured a different word (“neck,” also in Sanskrit), and it writhed up my arm over the moonstone dress to coil around my neck.
Its muscular, scaly body squeezed me lightly, then adjusted, resting comfortably just above my collarbones.
“There’s one more thing,” he said, his voice soft. “Stroke its head and say, maam rakshatu, if you’re in trouble. That command won’t work for me. Only for you.”
My eyebrows rose.
Curious, I started to find its head with my fingers, but he caught hold of my hand, clucking at me humorously.
“Not here,” he warned softly, kissing my fingers. “I’ll show you when we’re in one of the experimental magic sheds.”
Alaric, who’d clearly been listening, laughed. “Only you would give your witch jewelry that might actually eat someone.”
Bones barely spared him a glance. He leaned back to my ear and murmured. “When you do that, it’ll also call me, incidentally. At least if I’m in any condition to hear it.”
I didn’t particularly like the last part of that and frowned at him.
Bones had picked up my present to him, though, and, remembering what I’d gotten him, I felt myself flush. There was no way Alaric wasn’t going to enjoy this far, far too much, particularly after what Bones had just given me.
I watched him slide off the green and gold ribbon, and crack open the box, which was significantly smaller than the one he’d given me.
He stared down at the contents, and, as usual, I couldn’t read his expression at all.
When he pulled it out of its casing, I saw him flinch, then hold it tightly in his hand. “Talk about me using my magic on your gift,” he murmured. He opened his fingers then, and examined the gold ring I’d found him in Bonescastle before I’d been banned from going there.
I knew it wouldn’t take him long to figure out what I’d done to it.
He chuckled. “It seems we had similar ideas in mind,” he said.
“What?” Alaric asked. “What similar ideas?”
“None of your business,” Bones said loftily, and put on the ring, which was in a design similar to the dragon tattoo on his arm.
The ring didn’t do anywhere near the tricks that the snake bracelet-necklace-armband did, but it did breath out a little plume of gold and green fire, nearly the exact same color as his eyes when I could see his magic in them.
I think some part of me thought it might be useful to convince anyone who noticed his eyes being strange that the unusual visuals actually came from the ring.
But the main point of it, he’d already figured out.
“You don’t have to wear it all the time,” I said, a little hastily. My voice grew quieter, but a bit more pointed. “But I’d appreciate if you did wear it when you decide to go out in the middle of the night to spy on dark rituals around a bunch of people who want you dead.”
Alaric was looking between us again.
“What?” he asked, when neither of us explained.
“What did I miss?” He looked down at the ring on Bones’s finger, and I saw his eyes narrow.
He must have been looking at it with his magic, because he broke out in a grin.
“You got him a tracking ring, Shadow? So you can have Cal on your own little leash? That’s hot. ”
Varya rolled her eyes, leaning over to smack Alaric on the arm.
“Yes, Alec.” She looked at me, beaming “It’s very romantic.” She gave her son a slightly disapproving look. “More romantic than a snake charmed to attack people.”
“She likes snakes,” Bones protested.
I laid a hand on his arm.
“I love it.” I looked at Varya. “I love it. Truly.”
Alaric continued to look highly amused. “You got her an attack-snake, and she got you a homing device.” He chuckled. “You are either the two most deliciously paranoid people I know, or you are perfect for one another. Possibly both.”
I cleared my throat, and picked up Alaric’s present.
As I did, Varya walked over and placed a wrapped box in Bones’s lap. It was larger than his lap, wrapped in silky paper of violet and pale green, like the Malcroix Bones school colors.
He smiled at her and kissed her cheek. “Yours is in the garden.”
Her eyebrow rose, and it looked so much like one of his expressions, I couldn’t help but smile. She caught my look and smiled back.
“We all go out, then?” she suggested. “After we open these?”
Caelum glanced at Leda, then at his mother. He didn’t say anything. I didn’t pick up on even a hint of a question in his glance, but his mother clearly noticed something.
“Oh, for the love of Isis, of course I got her a present,” Varya scolded.
I immediately felt mortified. “No,” I began reflexively, shaking my head. I wanted to elbow Bones in the stomach. Hard. “No, no. That’s absolutely not necessary––”
But Varya talked over me.
“She’s wearing it,” she said to Bones, motioning gracefully at me.
She gave me an apologetic look, even as she plunked down on the armchair she’d vacated to hand Bones his gift.
“It’s the jewelry, really,” she explained to me.
“I bought the dress in London yesterday while you were in the archive, so you’d have something to wear with it.
” She beamed at me. “It looks so good on you. I’m so relieved.
I would’ve been mortified if I’d guessed the sizing wrong. ”
I stared at her. “But it’s your dress. I saw you…” I trailed, realizing I’d been had. “You wanted to make sure I’d accept it,” I said, a little defeated. “You pretended it was a loan.”
She gave me a sly look and smiled. “Was I wrong?”
“No, but…”
“Do you not like what I picked out for you?” she asked, a little more haughtily. “You saved my son’s life. I realize a few trinkets don’t exactly convey the depth of that, but I’d hoped you might enjoy them a little.”
I flushed. “It’s not that, Mrs. Bones. They’re gorgeous. It’s just way too much––”