Chapter 15
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
EMBER
The Familiar will not appear until the Allwitch tastes her first sip of magic from the Circle of Seven. That is to say, an Aspirant will gain her Familiar after Selection.
— Charley Starvos, Echelon to the
School of Creation Magic
Leland returned in the morning, with a witch at his side who I assumed was Skye Ambrosia — never mind I’d told him not to come.
He hadn’t shaved, he was smiling more than usual, and there was a lighter, refreshed aspect to him.
I suspected I knew the reason. His short sleeves were annoyingly tight around his biceps, but I tore my eyes from his arms — his Death Bonds — and took in Skye for a minute.
A black cat sat on the top porch step behind her.
“Hi. Hello,” she greeted me. “Leland says you need bras.”
I opened my mouth to yell at him, but —
“You look nice today,” he said, a corner of his mouth twitching upward.
My eyes rolled. I was wearing his sweatshirt.
“Does she?” Skye tilted her head in assessment. “The impression I was getting was more like” — her head tilted the other direction — “wounded?”
“Ember,” Leland said. “This is Skye. You’ll be in the same year. Skye, please be nice to Ember.”
“Hi,” I said. “Not wounded.”
“Sure,” said Skye, unconvinced.
She had the most sparkling green eyes I’d ever seen, the brightness of them contrasted by her short, deep-black hair, which was shaved on the sides, and a short side bang fell over her left eyebrow.
She’d cut the sleeves off her oversized T-shirt to show off her tattooed arms and rib cage, pairing the baggy shirt with fitted black pants partially tucked into laced-up boots.
Careful not to stare too much, I quickly glanced at one of her tattoos, a watercolor one on her upper arm of a cat chasing a dragonfly.
I stepped back from the door, inviting them in and trying my best to look energetic and pleasant. The cat, which I guessed was Skye’s Familiar, wandered in behind her and leapt on the table. Skye surveyed the layout of the living room, taking stock of all the doors and windows.
Leland met my eyes then lifted his chin toward the porch. “What’s with the keg?” he asked.
I looked up at the ceiling, contemplating my answer.
I doubted “Jaxan slashed the flask after I refused to make a Dark Deal with him” was the right thing to say in front of the Echelon Hector Ambrosia’s daughter.
Even if she did seem different, with her laid-back clothes and six silver rings across her fingers and thumbs.
“Technically, it’s a half keg,” Skye, who I had thought wasn’t paying attention, added helpfully.
“I’m surprised you don’t know this. And why do you have one?
You don’t realllly seem like the party type.
” Her eyebrows wrinkled as her eyes passed over me like she was considering changing her answer, then they flattened.
Like her ears, her eyebrows were heavily pierced, her jewelry a diverse assembly of stainless-steel studs, large pieces of black plastic, and tiny sparkles that somehow all fit together organically.
Some of her studs were spikes, and I could tell she put a lot of thought into every single one.
What went well together. What was too much. Rebellious — but not.
“What’s with the half keg?” asked Leland.
I shrugged so it wouldn’t seem like a big deal. “My flask is broken.”
“Your flask is broken?”
“As of last night,” I informed him, attempting to sound upbeat as I marched to the kitchen, where the bacon was cooling. Even with my back turned, I felt Leland’s eyes on me, judging my perky tone.
He walked up behind me in the kitchen, missing every cue that I was still mad about the coin and the lying, about the night I’d had with Jaxan while he was at a brothel, about his Death Bond being the only reason he wanted me here, and about the fact that, if I didn’t play along, someone he cared about was going to die.
I could no longer hope to find the portal and go back home. I had to stay until Selection, otherwise I’d end up inadvertently killing someone.
It had been too long since my last sip of moonale for me to feel numb. Withdrawals were my new normal, and that included thinly veiled blood rage, thinnest around Leland.
I removed a small bowl from a cabinet and banged it on the counter, then reached for tongs.
Skye joined, the three of us crowding around the butcher block island in the small, cornered-off kitchen.
Four, if you counted the cat, who had relocated from the living room to perch in between a mosaic bowl of grapes and the sheet of freshly cooked bacon on the counter.
I was careful with how many glances I stole at it, wanting the cat to approach me on its own terms. I was also a little unnerved. With its glowing, green eyes, it watched me closely. And they were the same eyes as Skye’s, I noticed.
Leland caught me sneaking a glance at the cat on the counter and gave me a weird look.
I steeled my eyes and smiled tightly. “Would you like anything to drink? Or is there another reason you’re standing so close?”
“You’re . . . interesting this morning,” he said, frowning at my fake smile. “Something happen?”
I wasn’t interesting. I was stuck.
“I think, where Blackburns are concerned, it’s safe to assume something is always happening,” Skye said.
“Several things happened,” I said. “Including the revelation that it’s time for me to embrace Everden.
Wear your clothes. Spend your money. And, I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear, react to things with my mouth.
” I twitched my lips for him. “I figured if I have to be here, why not make the most of it?”
Skye leaned into Leland. “Do we believe her?” she asked.
“No,” Leland said, directly at me. “We don’t.”
Ignoring them, I used the tongs to transfer half the bacon into a bowl.
I hadn’t lied to him. This was the new plan; it had been since I’d figured out Leland’s Dark Deal was likely tied to a Death Bond.
That being uncooperative could have serious consequences.
That me fighting to go back home could kill someone.
Skye popped a grape in her mouth, her green eyes darting between me and Leland. “Huh,” she said, realizing something. “So are you guys like a — ”
“No.” I shoved the bowl of bacon in front of her. “Bacon?”
She pushed the bowl back toward Leland, shooting him a death glare.
“Thanks, Ember,” said Leland, taking the bowl in his hand and walking off. “Skye’s a vegetarian.”
“What?”
“I don’t eat meat,” Skye offered.
I let out a tight exhale. He had told me she liked bacon, a lie I hadn’t heard because he’d said it in a message. He did nothing to hide his amusement, half smiling, half sucking on a piece of bacon in a way that —
I dumped the sheet of leftover bacon in the garbage, banging out the crumbs to release my frustration. Clang. Clang. Clang. Skye slow-clapped.
“Tell me you’re not shopping with us,” I said, and by us, I obviously meant me and Skye, who I already liked more than Leland.
Especially because her father was the Echelon to the School of Elemental Magic, and if she had a Familiar, that meant she was an Aspirant who might know more than Leland did about managing withdrawals.
“Not staying — just stopped by to eat,” he said. And grinned. Then he set a velvet drawstring bag full of coins on the counter, which Skye snatched and immediately dumped upside down.
An endless stream of gold coins clanged and thudded as they piled up. It had to be at least fifty gold. Way too much. But I remembered his threat to double it, as well as my commitment to making his Deal easier for him, and said nothing.
“Spend all of it,” Leland said. “Shopkeepers aren’t going to sell to you, so Skye will have to initiate the transactions.
Or you can offer a bribe. I’ll be downtown if you need anything.
” He came up behind me, close, and dropped a thermos on the counter beside me that I guessed was full of moonale. “Try not to combust.”
* * *
There was a faster way to get downtown than how Skye wanted to go, but when I’d suggested porting, she’d turned whiter than death and claimed we didn’t have time to be slowed down by my motion sickness.
I’d mostly worked through my portstop-induced motion sickness by that point. But I said nothing. On foot it was.
The glass scrying orb followed and people stared, though never at the black cat tethered to Skye’s every movement, or its uncanny way of anticipating her random and roundabout methods of getting places, and her frequent, unannounced turns that sent me stumbling into tall, wet patches of grass.
I was standing in a bed of yellow daylilies, waiting for Skye to tell me why she’d suddenly needed to zag, when the cat looped back to herd me along.
It was the first time it had approached me, gently nudging my legs with the press of its head.
I wanted it to like me, so I did what it said.
I caught up to Skye as the long path to town began to veer steeply down. “Who’s the cat?” I asked.
“The tiny angelic lion? That’s Nova. But don’t address her publicly please. She will come to you as she pleases.”
“Nova,” I said out loud to remember. “She’s your Familiar. When did you get her?”
“Did you not hear the tall one say we’re in the same year?” Skye glanced to her left, and I waited for her to finish her round of surveillance before we continued. “I haven’t been to Selection. How would I have a Familiar?”
The reason I asked.
I knew from The Allwitch Affliction that Familiars didn’t materialize until Selection.
But I wondered — because of Ash — if there were exceptions.
If some Aspirants were born with a Familiar while others never got one.
Ash had never mentioned a Familiar in her letters.
Then again, she also never mentioned being an Aspirant.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just thought . . .”