Chapter 18 Communication #2
“I hate to tell you, Shadow, but in all likelihood, you’d just get your cousin killed if you did that.
You might get some inkling of what percentage of the Praecuri have been compromised by Dark Cathedral in the process, but I doubt that knowledge will do you much good.
Especially since you’d likely get taken out by a fire-curse or hauled off to prison, right after they silenced your cousin, his wife, and anyone else who got in their way. ”
I stared at him, clenching my jaw as his words sank in.
Bones’s expression hardened as he stared back.
“…Or maybe you planned on going after them alone?” His tone grew mocking. “Maybe your arrogance is so great, you think you can take out an organization that’s been around since the time of the Pharaohs, single-handed? Was that your plan, Shadow?”
I didn’t answer. I could practically see the mask waver in and out over his features now.
His magic was charging up again too, even though he’d just drained it.
When I didn’t speak after a few seconds, Bones exhaled, rubbing his eyes with two of his fingers.
Something about that, and the way he looked around the room blearily afterwards, reminded me, again, where we were.
“Do you have a way to get me out of here?” I asked.
He looked over at me, and frowned.
After a pause, he nodded, once. “Don’t worry about that.”
“You have flatmates though, right?” I felt a twinge of nerves. “Aren’t they going to wonder who you’re in here with? And who you’re shouting at right now?”
“I don’t have flatmates,” he said. “Anyway, the room’s protected. No one can hear anything. I could set off an explosion in here and it wouldn’t matter.”
I frowned back. No flatmates?
My mind went to the map of colleges I’d looked at, maybe a few hundred times by now.
At various points, I’d studied every room in Valarian, and in Grathrock.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t wondered which was his.
I’d guessed he must be housed on one of the lower floors, since I’d never run into him in a corridor or anywhere near any of the toilets.
I’d never run into him above the ground floor of either college at all.
I’d only ever seen him in the dining halls, the common spaces, the lower-level balconies, the foyers, and, occasionally, in the kitchens.
I glanced back towards the largest window of his room.
It struck me again that it was floor to ceiling, with iron framing, unlike any window I’d seen inside any room in either Grathrock or Valarian.
His bedroom was enormous, too, easily three times as large as mine in Valarian, with four or five times as many bookshelves, and a whole study across from the bed.
He also had three separate doors in the walls.
The long wall nearest to the bed was curved, as was the wall where his enormous desk stood, under a second window only slightly smaller than the one by the bed.
The reality of that tall, half-curtained window near his desk sunk in only then.
He had windows on both sides.
How was that possible?
Being significantly more awake now, something else hit me when I looked back towards the window by the bed.
While our views were roughly similar, the angle of his was a lot higher than mine.
Miranda, Jolie, and I shared a room on Valarian’s highest floor, but Bones’s room was significantly higher than that.
Moreover, his line of sight to The Eyrie and Devil’s Fall was much more head-on.
He was closer to both. His window stood nearly due south of The Eyrie, in particular, whereas my view aimed more to the northwest. Even from his bed, without me standing by the window, I could see both landmarks in significantly more detail.
We were further west here, and not by a small amount. My bedroom in Valarian was the furthest west in the entire building, which is how I had the view I did.
We weren’t in Valarian College.
“You live in Malcroix Mansion,” I said, bewildered.
When I glanced at him, he quirked an eyebrow at me.
“I told you my family owns the building,” he said.
When I didn’t say anything to that, he cleared his throat.
“The school doesn’t use this tower for anything,” he added.
“It served as temporary housing for visiting professors for a while, under my great-grandfather’s tenure as headmaster, but now they generally give them an actual house in Bonescastle.
If I wasn’t attending classes right now, this entire part of the mansion would remain locked. ”
“You lived here last year, too?” I asked, still dumbfounded.
He shrugged, but avoided my eyes.
“It’s been set aside for my family’s use since the buildings and grounds were donated to the school,” he said, a little defensively. “It’s really not that crazy, Shadow. I told you before, my family still owns most of this land, and all but one of the buildings on it.”
I couldn’t help it though, I let out a half-laugh. “No wonder you have such a revolving door of witches. You’ve got your own bachelor pad in the middle of campus.”
Inexplicably, his mood went from faintly uncomfortable to annoyed.
He glared at me, then started to get up from the bed.
“I need a shower,” he said, rising from the mattress to give me a haughty look. “You can have one when I’ve finished. Then we’ll find something you can wear out of here.”
I stared up at him, bewildered at his abrupt change in tone, not to mention the abrupt end to our entire conversation.
So we were done talking about Alaric, I guess?
I’d managed to derail our relatively friendly interaction, just by asking him about his living arrangements and making a stupid joke about his endless parade of sexual conquests?
“Gods.” I let out a disbelieving laugh as I stared at him from under the canopy. “What on earth did I do now? Was it because I had the audacity to be shocked, once more, at your family’s obscene wealth, and the fact that you live on a different planet than me?”
When his expression remained closed, I bit my lip.
“Or was it me pointing out the quite obvious fact that you’re the biggest slut in school that’s got you all annoyed?
” I made my words teasing. “Would you rather if I threw a fit, Bones? Had an absolute tantrum because you’ve chosen to go through witches like we’re all just shiny new outfits you can don and discard whenever you’re bored of how they look on you? ”
His gold eyes flashed with real irritation.
Oh, it was definitely the witches comment, then.
He looked like he wanted to say something, then seemed to change his mind, or maybe simply thought better of it. In either case, he looked away, tightening his jaw.
“There’s an espresso maker on the counter,” he said, aiming a finger towards his study. “Cream in the icebox by the standing lamp. Mugs in the cabinet. I just sent the spell to turn on the machine. It should be ready in a few minutes. Have as much as you want.”
“Gods, how many times did you call me a slag and a whore last year?” I asked, now getting annoyed myself. “And I wasn’t even doing anything. You can hardly get on me about teasing you, when it’s actually warranted.”
All his resolve seemed to go out the window the instant my words left my mouth.
He glared at me, and emotion flared shockingly in his eyes.
“I’m not shagging anyone, Shadow!” he snarled.
I blinked, more in surprise than anything.
Then I snorted, sitting back. “Right.”
Fury blazed in his gold irises. He glared at me, his hands curling into fists.
“You just helpfully pointed out what a pathetic fuck I am… that I dance whenever my father says dance.” His stare narrowed on my face.
“You know all about me, don’t you? You certainly seem to think you do.
I don’t do anything that might displease my father.
Which naturally implies I also do things I know will please him, yes?
Like going through women at a pace he approves of, thus reassuring him I’ll never grow attached to any one of them? ”
I opened my mouth, about to laugh at him, to tell him he was absolutely ridiculous and mental and that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. But when I saw the look in his eyes, I didn’t. I closed my mouth for a few seconds instead, studying his expression incredulously.
“You’re shagging half the school for your father?”
“Not only for him,” he retorted. “He asked me a number of pointed questions last year that I struggled to answer… and this seemed to be the only solution that satisfied him.”
I stared at him, now even more incredulous.
More than that, I was confused.
His bizarre little speech raised about a million more questions than it answered, and even more questions the longer I thought about it.
His voice sharpened. “You’re so interested in my living quarters… why do you think he houses me here, anyway? You think I couldn’t have lived in the dorms, had he allowed it? You think it was the school that mandated I sleep up here?”
I watched him warily now.
Was he saying he was some kind of prisoner? Even here, at Malcroix?
A lot of different things were coming together in my mind though, as I watched him glare at me.
The fact that I never saw him off campus, in Bonescastle.
The fact that he could only ever go out in London on certain nights, and Alaric told me he often had to leave in the middle of one of their outings due to his father calling him home.
Staring at Bones’s bare upper body, I grew conscious of something else.
I’d never really seen him shirtless in full sunlight before. Now I couldn’t help but stare at the number of scars that decorated his skin, scars I’d forgotten to look at or think about while he’d been lying next to me in his bed.
I couldn’t look away from them now. My eyes kept getting drawn to a denser configuration on his chest, the ones that looked like symbols, not just random marks, just below where I’d seen those gold hieroglyphs glow while he operated his magic.
What the fuck had his father done to him?
Most of those scars looked old. Really old. Like he’d gotten them young.
He didn’t seem to notice my stare, or even my silence.
“…It was live here, or be watched every second of every fucking day,” he was growling now, gesturing angrily with a hand and arm.
“Being in here affords me at least the illusion of privacy. Even if it’s only when I’m alone.
I needed something that was mine, and this was the best I could fucking do.
My father doesn’t exactly make deals with me, Shadow.
As it is, I have to be really damned careful how many protection spells I cast…
and how I block and remove whatever he tries to leave behind whenever he blesses me with one of his visits. ”
I fought to follow his words.
I got the gist of some of it, but there were still too many gaps.
Unlike what was usual with him, however, I had my doubts those gaps and missing pieces were intentional this time.
I more got the impression he was trying to tell me too many things at once, and he couldn’t quite track where he was beginning and what he was leaving out.
I wasn’t even sure how to redirect him with a question.
“Maybe you should just fucking listen to me, then,” he growled, obviously hearing me. “I’m trying to explain it, Shadow. You wanted me to talk, so I’m fucking talking––”
“I know you are.” I kept my voice calm, even as I realized he was right.
“I appreciate you talking to me, but you might need to start more from the beginning.” I took a breath.
“What is it your father is forcing you to do? Why would he care where you sleep at night? And what does that have to do with who you happen to be shagging? Are you saying he’s somehow––”
“I’m. Not. Shagging. Them.” He enunciated each word viciously.
“Gods. How much clearer do I need to be? I snog them, sure. Publicly, where I can, at least when it’s not too obvious, so at least some of it gets back to my father.
I bring a handful of them back here for the same reason.
I fool around with the ones I can in the ways that I can.
Then I generally knock them out, implant memories, and let them sleep it off.
The next day, they think we’ve fucked, but we haven’t. Understand?”
I stared at him, feeling the blood drain out of my face. “No.”
“That wasn’t clear? Really?”
“It’s clear. It’s also completely mental. You can’t possibly be serious––”
“I’m absolutely serious. Why? You’re appalled? You’re judging me for this now?” he asked. “I’m not raping them, Shadow. I’m doing the exact opposite.”
“But why?” I stared at him, feeling a kind of horror crawl over me as his words continued to sink in. “You’ve deliberately crafted a false reputation for yourself, just so your father won’t think you’re in a relationship with someone? Why in the gods would you do that?”
He didn’t answer, but I saw his jaw tick as he stared at me.
After a long-feeling pause, he averted his gaze.
“He knows about some of my magical problems, but not all of them,” he said, his voice lower, but also harsher, his expression more closed.
“If he had any idea how little control I actually have over certain aspects of my magic…” He glanced at me, his eyes glowing faintly.
“Well, let’s just say, it wouldn’t only be Alec who got dragged out of university. ”
I think my jaw had unhinged completely by then.
I gaped at him, still fighting to read between the lines of what he’d said, but more than that, what he hadn’t. Something about that seemed to anger him, too.
“Gods and devils, Shadow. Did you really think I was lying all this time?” His jaw ticked again. “I told you I can’t share my magic with people. I told you I’d hurt people I tried it with. How many experiments do you suppose it would take, before I killed someone?”
My eyes widened even more, but finally, something had clicked.
Was he seriously telling me he couldn’t have sex with any of them?
Jesus Samhain Christ. Was he telling me he was a virgin?
Cold fury seeped into his words. “Fuck off, Shadow.”
“I’m not judging you,” I said, frustrated.
“The Underworlds you’re not––”
“I’m not,” I snapped. “And what you said just now, it’s not entirely true anyway, Bones,” I pointed out. “Maybe you can’t share your magic with all witches, or even a lot of witches, but clearly, there are at least some you can.” I swallowed, then shrugged. “I mean… you can share it with me.”
There was a silence.
Then he let out a cynical, disbelieving laugh.
“Trust me,” he said harshly. “The thought had crossed my mind, mongrel.”
Whatever look must have come to my face, it made him look away.
For a few seconds, neither of us said anything.