Chapter 28 Promise Me
Promise Me
Present Day
Valarian College Dormitory
Malcroix Bones Academy
Jolie was helping me with my Halloween costume when the words blurted out of me.
I hadn’t meant to say them.
Honestly, I’d never meant to ask her anything about it at all.
After the afternoon I’d had, arguing with Bones for something like the twentieth time that week, even as he shouted commands at me, criticized my fighting stance, made me do sit-ups when I couldn’t remember the last attack spell he’d taught me, and lobbed magic at me when I was too angry and distracted to fight back, I guess I wasn’t completely in my right mind.
After I’d showered and changed from that, I’d spent over an hour on Jolie’s costume, winding cloth bandages around her arms, legs, and naked torso, magicking the ends together with spells, and, once I’d gotten her covered in a way she was happy with, using more spells to add flourishes like fake blood, rotted-looking bits on the bandages, blackened fingernails, scars, and greyed skin.
Once I’d done that much, I got more creative.
I added red earth and sand texture to the bandages, making her look like she’d just crawled out from a desert grave.
I cast an illusion that made some of her fingers look like they were only bone, and did the same with part of her jaw.
When I asked her if she wanted me to go all out and add cuts and maggots and that kind of thing, she shuddered and said emphatically no, so I decided to leave the decayed bits as they were.
I’d been dubbed the resident All Hallow’s Eve expert, so I’d been put in charge of designing, or at least identifying, “authentic” costumes for each of them.
After I’d given everyone a list of traditional Halloween costumes from Overworld, Jolie chose “Egyptian Mummy,” Draken “Werewolf,” and Miranda decided to go with “Vampire,” and went all-out on the Victorian angle.
Luc decided he liked the sound of “Mad Scientist,” Nyx chose “Ghoul or Dark Spirit,” and Darragh got it in his head to be “Dead Pirate.” Dervish Walker, who’d also decided to tag along, opted for “Zombie.”
Even now, Miranda was working on Dervish in the other room. We’d decided to split up our group into pairs, so that no one’s costumes would look too much alike. Everyone was supposed to meet up downstairs at six-thirty.
No one liked make-up as much as Miranda, and no one was as good at it, either, so I knew she’d do an amazing job on not only her own costume, but also Dervish’s.
For the same reason, I was determined not to let Jolie down.
After I’d made her suitably gross, I added Ancient Egyptian flourishes to balance things out, including iridescent-blue scarab beetles that crawled all over her, shimmers of golden hieroglyphs that rippled around her limbs, and a gorgeous Egyptian necklace of lapis lazuli.
I also magicked her a half-broken, golden, skull mask for her face.
She loved it.
“Oh my goddess!” she squealed. “This is perfect, Leda! I absolutely adore it!”
I felt some of my anxiety ease.
I watched her as she stared at herself in the mirror, a huge smile on her face.
I hadn’t had much opportunity to design costumes in Overworld, whether for myself or anyone else, so I’d mostly been winging it.
I knew “authenticity” didn’t matter, per se, as there was no real comparison to costumes on Earth, but I wanted her to like it.
“It’s not too scary?” I asked, watching her bird of paradise primal looking at her with alarm from where it perched on the mirror frame. It kept hiding by the curtain where it flapped its wings, its eyes wide with nervous curiosity.
“They’re supposed to be scary, right?” Jolie asked.
I nodded. “Traditionally, yes.”
“What are we doing for you now?” she demanded, turning on me. “I didn’t hear what you’d picked out for yourself, but it better be good! You know Miranda. She’s going to be hugely competitive about this, and she’ll be absolutely furious if we just let her win, without even putting up a good fight.”
I grinned when I realized Jolie had been thinking along the same lines as me.
“What about Frankenstein’s monster?” I asked. “The female kind, I mean. I could be Bride of Frankenstein?”
Jolie frowned. “You’re going to have to explain to me what that is.”
After I used a lot of words, and a few chimaeric illusions, to show Jolie the Bride of Frankenstein, Jolie dove in with enthusiasm.
She had me don a long, black dress of hers that no longer fit her, and altered it magically first to tighten and shorten it, then to shred the hems. She used some other cloth scraps to lengthen the sleeves, then shredded those, too.
She spent the longest time making freakishly real-looking seams along different parts of my body, including my neck, so that I looked like I’d been sewn together, and changing the skin tones slightly for different “parts” to really sell the effect.
It was when she was working on my hair, coaxing it into a crazy bouffant with jagged streaks of white-grey through the sides, that the question blurted out of me.
Like I said, I really hadn’t intended to ask it.
I hadn’t intended to ever ask her about that, although I’d suspected he’d meant her when he first ranted about “one of your friends” in that empty classroom.
“Did you…” My throat closed, right before I glanced up, meeting Jolie’s eyes. “With Bones,” I said, feeling my jaw harden. “Did you sleep with him?”
Jolie froze where she’d bent over my hair, a magicked comb in one hand.
One look at her face, and I knew the answer.
She stared at me, her normally stunning, light-brown eyes now an opaque, murky white from my spells.
Even through all of my distortions and tweaks, I saw her eyes widen, her full mouth drop slightly open.
I couldn’t help thinking about how beautiful she was, how she looked pretty even now, with all of that crap distorting her face.
I definitely felt the understanding reach her magical aura. Once it had, anger hardened her features, selling the mummy illusion more than my spells ever could.
“He told you,” she said.
I hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”
“What an absolute prick he is.” She visibly fumed as she straightened, the comb now gripped tightly in her hand.
“I didn’t sleep with him, Leda,” she said next, looking down at me, that fury even more pronounced.
She hesitated, then admitted, “I did snog him, and let him do far more than I should’ve done.
He found me in Nice, already plastered, only a few days after you left me to return to London. ”
I swallowed, nodding in understanding.
Then I remembered something else.
“Frederick?” I asked, caution in my voice. “That was right around when you two broke it off, wasn’t it? Didn’t he end things with you right after I left?”
She looked at me, her expression even angrier.
“You know the insane part?” she snapped.
“He was actually charming. And yes, it was right after Frederick. It was the day of, really, only a few hours after we’d had our big blowout, and Caelum Bones, of all people, shows up in the same bar where I went to lick my wounds.
He acted all sympathetic when he caught me crying, ordered me drinks, made me laugh, let me rant half the night.
And even you have to admit he’s fit as hell… ”
I nodded, my expression neutral.
“He is,” I conceded.
Jolie shook her head, grimacing. “I knew it was a mistake. I didn’t go home with him, thank Isis, but I felt like an absolute idiot the next day.
I’d really hoped he’d keep his mouth shut about it, at least. He has a horrible rep, of course, everyone knows that.
He’s practically the textbook definition of a dog with three dicks.
But I’d never heard of him telling tales.
He’s just ridiculously successful at getting witches to shag him…
and frankly, I can see why. He can really turn it on when he wants to. ”
She shrugged, her dead-colored eyes thoughtful as her jaw firmed.
“He’s unfairly good at kissing, too,” she added sourly. “Obnoxiously so, really. I admit, I was tempted to go with him when he offered… only to be insanely relieved I hadn’t the next day. It was mortifying enough, having to see his love bites all over my neck when I looked in the hotel mirror.”
I swallowed, but only when she wasn’t looking at me.
When she glanced back in my direction, I smiled, and squeezed her hand where it hung down next to me. “Don’t worry about it. Honestly. We’ve all done that kind of thing at one time or another. I definitely did in Overworld, and with far less of an excuse.”
“You didn’t do it with a racist prick, I’d bet,” she muttered, annoyed. “Gods, Leda. I’m so sorry. I know how awful he is to you––”
“I did plenty of idiotic things, believe me,” I insisted. “I just haven’t had much opportunity here, as most mages wouldn’t touch me if you paid them.”
She bit her lip, gauging my face.
“Are you going to tell Mir?” she asked, nerves in her voice. “Or Drake?”
I scoffed, but honestly, I was a little hurt.
“Absolutely not,” I said. “Gods, no. Why would I do that? You know how Draken is about him. He’d rant for weeks.
And it’s none of their business, anyway.
” I looked at her, saw the worry in her eyes, and forced another smile.
“I’d never do that to you, Jolie. I won’t even give Bones shit for being a arsehole for telling me.
Really, I shouldn’t have asked you about it at all.
Especially since he so obviously wanted me to. ”
Relief reached her eyes only then. She smiled at me, and the smile managed to look like hers, even through the layers of magic and make-up.
“Well, if you ever need a really, unbelievably big favor,” she said sheepishly. “You now have excellent blackmail material.”
I laughed, but it caught somewhere in my throat.
Later, after she left my room, her bird of paradise primal winging through the air behind her, I sat on my bed, staring at the fireplace for far too long.