26. Training Montage
Training Montage
The cheerful morning sun streaming through the dining room windows made Luna want to throw up.
Not that she was thinking about Elias Shaw. Not the way he smelled faintly of cedar and soap, even after a century in the Void. Not the way he had of fussing with his tie when things got uncomfortable. Not how he’d looked at her after they kissed.
Nope. Not thinking about any of that.
“—and honestly, the absolute nerve of that guy,” Delilah was sawing into her Belgian waffle with unnecessary violence.
“Stealing from you like some common pickpocket. After everything you did for him! Rescuing him from the Void, saving his ungrateful ass multiple times, putting up with his outdated, misogynistic—”
“He wasn’t like that,” said Luna, regretting it instantly.
Delilah’s fork paused mid-air. “Are you defending him right now?”
“No! I’m just saying . . .” Luna stabbed at her own breakfast “. . . he did treat me like an equal. That’s all.”
Her big sister rolled her eyes. “What does he want, a medal? How about the lying? The thievery?” Delilah was really hitting her stride now. “The man is basically a really well-dressed tapeworm. Charming on the outside, parasitic on the inside—”
“Okay, steady on there, Del.” Scarlett reached across the table to pat her sister’s hand. “Dial it back a smidge.”
“Why?” Delilah demanded. “You saying he didn’t earn a comparison to intestinal parasites?”
“Sure, but . . . Life is funny sometimes. What if Luna forgives him at some point? You’re going to have a lot of backpedaling to do.”
“What?” sputtered Luna. “There is zero chance that I would ever forgive that duplicitous, antiquated, token-stealing piece of—”
“See, now you’re in the spirit.” Delilah grinned.
“—with his stupid perfect hair and his stupid cufflinks and his stupid stories. There will never be anything between me and Elias Shaw. Ever. I mean it.”
Scarlett shrugged her older-sister shrug that said she knew things Luna didn’t. “If you say so.”
“I do say so!”
“Great! Then it’s settled.” Scarlett reached for the syrup. “He’s a terrible person, and you’re well rid of him. Now, can we please talk business? We have approximately forty-eight hours to make sure we can counter every spell in Vex’s stupid app, and I’d really like to not screw this up.”
Luna took a deep breath, grateful for the change of subject.
“Right. Yes. The plan.” She pulled out a folded piece of paper covered in her careful handwriting.
“We don’t know which spells Vex will try to demonstrate, so we’ve got to break them all.
Polly’s teaching love spells at the bookstore, Aphra’s handling glamours with the younger witches, Mama’s doing portals at All Who Wander—”
“And I’ve got general spellbreaking here at the inn,” Delilah added. “Basically ‘everything that doesn’t fit in another category.’ Should be a true disaster.”
“It’ll be fine.” Scarlett squeezed her sister’s shoulder. “You’re an excellent teacher.”
“I’m not, though.”
“You taught Luna how to properly fold fitted sheets. That’s basically witchcraft in itself.”
Scarlett stood, brushing crumbs from her shirt. “Come on, Luna. Let’s go make the rounds, see how everyone’s doing. Del, you good here?”
“I’m good.” Delilah was already mentally preparing her lesson plan; Luna could tell by the way her eyes had gone slightly unfocused. “Just . . . maybe keep your phones on? In case anyone accidentally vanishes someone or turns them into furniture or whatever fresh hell awaits us today?”
“Optimistic as always,” Scarlett said cheerfully. “That’s what I love about you.”
As they headed for the door, Luna caught sight of her tired reflection in one of the lobby mirrors. Not just physically tired, though she was that, in spades. More like her soul was tired. The kind of tired that came from trusting someone and being proven catastrophically wrong.
Stop it. The town is counting on you. Fall apart after Vex is defeated.
If only her heart would listen.
* * *
Spellbound Books smelled intensely of roses, which was either good news or bad, depending on how Polly’s love spell class was going.
From the look on Polly’s face when Luna and Scarlett walked in, things were drifting toward “bad.” She spotted the Melrose sisters, and her expression moved from exasperation to relief. “Oh, thank the gods. Reinforcements.”
The bookstore had been transformed into a makeshift classroom, with chairs arranged in a circle.
Around the room, about a dozen witches of varying ages were working in pairs, one casting a love spell and the other breaking it.
One young witch had apparently succeeded in casting a love spell, but her partner failed to break it in time.
Now she was gazing adoringly at a bookshelf, luxuriously running her fingers along the spines of Patricia Highsmith novels and sighing.
“All morning long,” Polly muttered. “At this rate, half my inventory will be inappropriately fondled.”
“Well . . .” Luna tried to sound encouraging. “How’s it going overall?”
“See for yourself.” Polly gestured helplessly.
“We don’t usually practice breaking spells.
We learn how to make spells work, not how to ruin them.
Marissa over there keeps falling in love with inanimate objects.
And Jennifer—” she pointed to a middle-aged witch in the corner “—somehow managed to make that fern attracted to her.” Indeed, the plant appeared to be straining toward Jennifer like a love-struck teenager.
“Love magic is tricky,” Polly lowered her voice, “because it involves emotional energy, which is inherently unstable.”
“But they’re getting it?” Luna pressed. “Sort of?”
“Sort of.” Polly turned back to her class. “All right, everyone! Let’s try again. Switch partners, please. And Marissa? Please stop touching my inventory. Those books have been through enough.”
As they left the bookstore, Scarlett linked her arm through Luna’s. “See? It’s going to be fine.”
Luna had to laugh. “That looked fine to you?”
“Eh. They’ll figure it out. We’re going to embarrass the hell out of Vex, save Oak Haven, and you’ll forget all about you-know-who.”
“Scarlett, who could you possibly mean?”
She gave her baby sister a squeeze. “There ya go.”
* * *
“I’m just saying, Brad Pitt is like a thousand years old!” The teenager, Luna thought her name was Sophie, protested. “If Vex tried to make himself look like Brad Pitt, literally nobody would care.”
“Goodness, he’s not that old!” When Luna and Scarlett arrived at the yarn store, Aphra was teaching a group of young witches how to cast and then break an attractiveness glamour.”
“He’s got jowls,” another teen interjected. “Like, serious jowls.”
“It’s called aging,” Aphra protested. “And it’s a natural part of—you know what, never mind. Fine. Not Brad Pitt. Leonardo DiCaprio?”
The collective groan from the teenagers indicated this was also not an acceptable answer.
“He’s all bloated,” Violet said matter-of-factly. She was sprawled in one of Aphra’s armchairs, looking less goth than usual in a simple black T-shirt and jeans. “No shade, but he’s not the vibe anymore.”
“Then who is ‘the vibe’?” Aphra demanded.
“Timothée Chalamet,” three voices said in unison.
“Jacob Elordi,” two others added.
“Trent Alexander-Arnold,” Sophie said dreamily, “but that might just be me.”
“Ooh, not just you,” giggled Violet. “Good one.”
Like the bookstore, Sometimes a Great Notion had also become a classroom.
The young witches sat in a circle, while their various glamours made a kaleidoscope of shifting appearances.
One moment, a witch looked like herself, the next she was a dead ringer for someone else entirely. The effect was disorienting.
“How’s it going?” Scarlett asked, trying not to smile.
“Very well.” Aphra gestured at her students. “I mean, apparently, I’m too much of a relic to identify attractive human beings. But beyond that, things seem to be working. They’re all quite good at breaking glamours. Watch this: Violet, show them.”
Violet stood up and pulled out her phone. With a few taps, she activated CastR’s glamour function. Immediately, her features began to change: sharper cheekbones, different eye color, longer hair. Within seconds, she looked like a completely different person.
“Now,” Aphra instructed, “Sophie, you break it.”
Sophie stepped forward, making a small gesture with her hand. The glamour shattered like glass, and Violet was herself again.
“That was four seconds,” Aphra said with satisfaction. “When we started, it took her thirty. They’re learning fast. How are things at the other locations?”
“Polly’s students are falling in love with furniture,” Scarlett reported. “But she assures us she’s making progress.”
“Good to hear.” Aphra grinned. “All right, girls—let’s run it again. And someone please explain to me who Trent Alexander-Arnold is, because apparently I’m a fossil.”
As they left the yarn store behind, Luna felt another small spark of hope. Maybe they could actually pull this off.
* * *
“I’m going to duck in and say hi to Nate,” Scarlett said as they approached his family’s store, Williams Hardware. “You okay waiting out here for a minute?”
“No problem.” She was grateful to have a few minutes alone.
Scarlett disappeared into the store, her purposeful stride suggested that “saying hi” was a euphemism for something Luna tried not to picture.
She wandered up to the porch where the Earls were looking very busy indeed.
Nine and Ten were cleaning weapons that probably belonged in a museum.
Eleven had laid out an array of wicked-looking daggers, and Twelve was doing something complicated with a length of rope that looked suspiciously like he was practicing making a noose.
“Gentlemen,” Luna said carefully. “What, uh . . . what’s happening here?”
“Preparing for battle!” Nine announced cheerfully. “Can’t be too careful when dealing with enemy forces.”