The Spell Caster

Chapter 3

LAYLA

I blew out a breath.

“How are you feeling? Your arm got pretty banged up, and you haven’t rested,” I said.

“I’ll live,” Costi said dryly. “Tell me what’s going on. Why were you trying so hard to get me in trouble?”

“You’re always in trouble!”

His lips turned upward on one side, and I fought the urge to throw a pillow at his face. I’d save my revenge, biding my time until the cut on his forehead healed. “I’m a guardian now. I’m a changed man.”

I scoffed. He looked at me intently from under languid eyelashes, waiting for my answer to his question.

“I’m… useless.” I dropped my eyes from his as I confessed. “I can’t fight.” I touched the talon cut on my shoulder. I couldn’t believe how helpless I was. It was an embarrassment. No training, no weapon, not even basic self-defense. Spell casters were sitting ducks.

Costi made a dismissive noise. “Fighting is my job.”

“But they could have hurt you a lot worse. You could have died , and I couldn’t do anything!”

Costi dropped his foot from my bed. He leaned forward to cradle my chin carefully with his calloused fingers, tilting my head up to look at him. “But you did. You got them.”

My gaze drifted to his arm. The sleeve of his tee was rolled up, and he’d wound a fresh bandage around his injury. Inked lines of vines and flowers curled above the fabric.

“No,” he said with finality. “It was your first time casting, and we were caught off guard. Don’t you dare feel guilty. You were amazing.” The last part came out in a rush of breath.

Still cupping my face, his gray eyes were warm, glowing with something. Fate, he was… he was proud of me. The knowledge lit up my insides before I was doused by another wave of self-loathing. I pulled away from him.

“But that’s the thing. I shouldn’t have been able to do that. I never summoned a familiar. I wouldn’t even believe I cast at all if I hadn’t felt the spell.”

Costi frowned in thought. “Never heard of anything like this.”

“Me neither.”

“You said… the summoning didn’t work.”

I nodded slowly, nibbling at the inside of my cheek while I worked up the courage to admit how badly I had failed. I owed him an explanation.

“The day after I graduated, I had my summoning room reserved,” I began. Costi nodded, leaning forward with his good arm propped up on his leg. “I learned how to do circle spells in school. They aren’t too hard once you do the same one a few times, they just take forever to trace. So, that day, I traced the summoning circle and pushed the magic in. I felt it catch and burn up just like it’s supposed to.” I picked at a loose synthetic thread on the hotel blanket.

Costi watched me silently, with a serious expression.

I swallowed, my throat feeling tight. “I waited, but my familiar didn’t appear… and then I didn’t know what to do…” I’d been keeping this in so long.

I hadn’t seen Costi in ages. Holly was pushing me out. I didn’t have any other friends. I’d had no one to turn to, and I’d been so, so scared.

He made a small sound in the back of his throat and pulled me up off the bed into his arms before I realized I was crying.

Now that I’d opened the door, everything came tumbling out. “I tried over and over, and it never worked. And then suddenly I can cast spells without a familiar? There’s something wrong with me.” I shuddered miserably, the tears I had been holding back for months tracking down my cheeks.

Costi leaned his cheek on top of my head. He smelled good, like soap with a hint of sandalwood. “There’s nothing wrong with you. We’ll figure this out.”

Something subtle shifted inside me, like a light being turned on in another room. I couldn’t ever remember feeling safe like this, having someone figure it out with me. His body was solid against mine, this warrior who would fling angels over a railing with his bare hands to protect me. Fate, he saved my life .

He ran a hand over my head, stroking my hair gently.

I untangled myself from him in a hurry, my cheeks burning painfully. “S-Sorry,” I mumbled, unable to look up at him, my mind caught in an awkward mess. I felt like a child, crying about my problems like this.

“Don’t be.”

I scrubbed at my eyes and cleared my throat, trying to push the sobs back down. “I decided I would try one last time, and if it didn’t work, I would give it up. I didn’t have much of a plan, I just wanted to get away from my mother for a while. She already hates me enough.”

“No one could hate you,” Costi murmured.

I didn’t argue, but I knew the truth. “I’m sorry I let you down,” I said, nearly a whisper.

“Me?” He looked genuinely shocked. “Why would you think that?”

“I ruined our plans to pair up. I know you were waiting for me, but you can’t just go without a spell caster, especially with all of this going on.” I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling chilled in the sterile hotel room.

Costi scrubbed a hand through his hair, then opened his lips and closed them again.

I blinked at him, my stomach twisting in alarm. It wasn’t like him to be nervous.

“I thought… maybe you didn’t want me. As a guardian.”

My mouth popped open. “No, I—”

His ringtone sounded, and he cursed under his breath, grabbing the phone from his pocket. “Holly,” he said, looking at the screen with a wince. “She’s probably wondering what happened.”

“Oh… you should, um…” My heart turned over painfully. Holly and Costi were still friends? Of course they were. It made sense. It was only me she had decided to ditch.

“Hey,” he barked into the phone.

“Where are you? Everyone’s saying you got hurt and left already. What’s going on?”

I could hear Holly’s reply clearly even though it wasn’t meant for me. Her singsong voice carrying through the phone made me tear up all over again. I sat on the edge of the bed, ducking my head to examine the frantic pattern of the bedspread.

Costi turned, bringing a hand to the back of his neck. “In town. We’re evacuating to the Mountain Circle.”

“ We? ”

“Layla’s with me,” Costi rumbled.

Holly was quiet for a moment. “Is that a good idea? ”

“Don’t.” Costi pushed a hand through his still-damp hair again, turning on his heel to pace away from me while he talked. He listened, agitated. “I know perfectly well,” he said, turning his eyes on me.

Costi sighed and scrubbed a hand down his face once he had tapped the phone off. “You heard?”

“Yeah, a little.” I fidgeted.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

But I’d been worried about it for more than a year.

The three of us spent our childhood together. From the outside, we looked like an unlikely group. I was a cherished young initiate spell caster, Holly an ordinary witch who was the daughter of a chef and a food server, and Costi… once they had slapped him with the label Troubled, people assumed all sorts of things about him.

But we understood each other in a way that other witches didn’t. I never quite fit in—loved for my potential and not myself, hanging back shyly on the outskirts of every group. Holly didn’t talk about her home life much, but she was eager to escape it. Costi’s kindness and intelligence went overlooked because his English was bad and he didn’t take direction well. We were the ones left behind by the rest of our society.

Until Holly pulled away without explanation, they were my closest friends—really my only friends. With Holly gone and Costi training as a guardian, my life became empty in a way I hadn’t really recovered from.

“Why does she hate me?” I asked through a tight throat.

Costi rubbed at the back of his neck. “I don’t know what her problem is these days,” he said, looking away. “She’s… got some ideas about how things should be.”

Well, that cleared up exactly nothing. “What do you mean?”

Costi dropped onto the second bed, putting his elbow over his eyes. “Everyone’s got all these ideas. They don’t mean a damn thing.”

He didn’t explain further.

After a moment, I said, “Costi, thank you.”

He let his arm fall and turned slightly so he could catch my gaze. “Hm?”

“You… you kept me alive. Fought for me. Stopped Councilor Luna from asking about my magic. Got me out of there. Thank you .”

He paused a moment. “You never treated me like I was Troubled. I’d fight angels for you any time.”

***

I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but the stress and messed-up schedule caught up to me. I slept through the rest of the day, only waking to eat the pizza Costi had ordered, then slept through most of the night as well. We left early—as soon as the car was available.

I was feeling much better as Costi began to navigate the city streets like he was a born outsider. I vibrated with excitement in my seat, restrained by the safety belt. “Does it go faster?”

He gave a downright evil-sounding chuckle. “Just wait ’til we get on the highway,” he promised ominously.

It turned out the car went a lot faster. Costi smirked as he punched the pedal all the way down and I shrieked in terrified delight.

I watched the scenery fly past as we drove. Forests, bridges, cities full of buildings—I hadn’t ever really considered how people on the outside lived or just how many of them there were. Far more than witches, and almost none of them aware of us or the war. It was strange to think that the thing I had dedicated my whole life to just didn’t exist to them. They just lived.

Out here, my problems felt distant.

We would be driving for quite a while, so I slipped off my shoes and drew my legs up onto the seat. “What’s it like outside?”

Costi steered with his good arm, tapping his pointer finger on the wheel. “Different.”

I turned my head to hide a smile at his very Costi-like short response. “You went all around during training.” Guardians had an intense four-year course after they graduated from school.

“Yeah,” he said. “Mostly following up on reports and tracking down nests. A few times I went out with teams to watch an extermination.”

So that had been his first time fighting angels too. “How do you think they found us?”

“Don’t know, but that was more than some random angels following a guardian team back to the Circle.”

He was right. The attack had been coordinated. Deliberate.

“But how? They’re just… creatures.” Everything we had been taught suggested the angels were mindless, without thoughts or emotions. Incredibly dangerous and virtually indestructible, but more akin to animals than humans. Ancient witch myths about the war between good and evil were one thing, but in the real world, angels did not pick up weapons and mount an organized offensive.

“Don’t know that either, but we better figure it out fast.”

The world outside the car passed quietly.

“You’ve been okay?” Costi interrupted my churning thoughts. “After I graduated and went into training, I mean. You didn’t mention anyone giving you trouble.”

“I was fine, just… lonely.” When we were younger, some of the witch kids would pick on me when Costi wasn’t around. I tried to keep it from him—I knew he would confront them, and he was already marked as Troubled. But he always knew. “I missed you.” And Holly , I thought with a pang.

“Me too,” he said gruffly. Costi ran his hand along the steering wheel. “It’s been hard to get away.”

I frowned. “The guardians don’t give you any free time?”

“Not a lot. They don’t think it’s good for us. The structure’s supposed to help us focus.”

“ What? That’s miserable.”

Costi huffed out a laugh. “Fucking hate it.”

The witch Circles prided ourselves on our peacefulness. Unlike the outside world, we strove for inner balance, allowing every witch the freedom to follow their bliss. But our harmonious life came with a price. Those with violent or antisocial traits were not welcome among us.

From childhood, Costi was marked as one of the Troubled. They were supposed to receive extra guidance and care, but it seemed like he’d only ever been ignored and outcast.

Once grown, the Troubled had few options. Costi’s future had always been as set in stone as mine.

As we drove, he coached me through using the map on my phone for navigation.

Once I could no longer avoid it, I opened my messaging app.

Are you there? I hope everything is going well with your new job. That was my last text to Holly from over a year ago, unanswered.

Then her text from this morning. I don’t know what you said to him, but you have to stop making Costi drop everything and come running every time you have a problem.

Shame flooded me, and I thumbed my phone screen off, looking out the window. I hadn’t made him come with me.

“You okay?”

I sighed. “I’m… sorry about all this. I know you have more important things than hauling me around.”

He scoffed. “Don’t start with that. And don’t let anybody else give you shit about it either.”

He always had an eerily accurate sense of what was going on with me, even when I didn’t tell him the details.

“And me?” he went on. “I’ll get a medal for protecting and escorting our new secret weapon.”

“Some secret weapon.” I rolled my eyes. “There’s no way to turn me on.”

Costi gave a dark laugh.

My face flushed hot once I realized what I’d said, and I wanted to hide. I’d walked right into that. But he’d picked it up and run with it. We never joked… like that . I wasn’t sure how to continue.

“You wanna try Greek food with me?” he asked mildly, saving me from myself. “I saw a place last time I came through here.”

“You haven’t had it before?”

“I’m sure I did when I was little. I don’t remember. I kinda want to try it.”

“Let’s do it,” I said, smiling.

Costi gave me the name of the restaurant, and I set the phone to give us directions. It didn’t seem too far off the highway before we came to yet another shopping center. The entire highway was lined from one end to the other with towns. There seemed to be an endless number of gas stations and shops.

He pushed the glass door open over my head and let me walk in before him. I was amused by the little chime that went off to announce our entrance. The delicious scent of spices filled the small space. A few outsiders were eating at the tables, but no one else was waiting, so we went straight to the counter.

An older man with a bushy mustache and tanned skin like ours greeted us warmly. “Hello, come on up. What can I get for you?”

I had been a little worried that everyone in the outside would distrust us like the hotel lady, but this man seemed nice.

“What’s good?” Costi asked.

“Have you tried Greek food before?” We shook our heads as he continued. “No? Where are you from? You look like you could be my cousins.”

“He was born in Greece, but not me,” I said.

“Hey! Maybe you are my cousin.” He looked Costi up and down with a chuckle. “Maybe not. My cousins are all short.”

Costi gave a half grin at his antics.

“What part of Greece are you from?”

“Not sure, really.” Costi shrugged. “I don’t remember much. I left when I was seven, don’t know my family.”

“That’s a sad thing. You don’t speak any Greek?”

“I remember some prayers and songs and stuff. Can’t speak it at all.” Costi pushed up the hair at the back of his neck.

“Let’s hear,” the man said eagerly. “I can tell you north or south, maybe.”

“It’s probably awful,” Costi muttered.

“Come on, give it a try,”

Shrugging, Costi sang a quick phrase, beautiful words tumbling from his lips that tugged at my soul. I didn’t think I’d ever heard him sing before. That voice . Low and raw, like he’d been screaming.

Fate, he should be a singer.

He’d never mentioned that he remembered any Greek. It was a travesty that he didn’t know more. It sounded like putting words to magic. I absolutely loved it.

“Ah? So bad I can’t understand it,” the man laughed. “Is that supposed to be Greek?”

Costi shrugged with a good-natured smirk. “Told you.”

The man helped us order, and soon we were scooping foods from way too many dishes, each one more delicious than the last. I could get used to the food outside.

“Costi,” I started as he finished the food I had given up on. All that muscle must have required a ridiculous amount of fuel. “Do you… I mean, when you were little, were you there? During the attack?”

He raised his eyes to me, putting down his spoon. “I must have been, but I don’t remember anything. Maybe they hid me. I’m not traumatized.”

“You spent our entire childhood mouthing off, fighting, and getting in trouble,” I pointed out with a flat look.

Costi gave me a wicked half grin, and my heart tripped over itself. “Nah, that’s not trauma. I’m like that naturally.”

I quickly looked down at my plate, disturbed by my reaction. “What… what do you remember? If you want to tell me…”

He was thoughtful for a moment. Tinny pop music played softly in the background. “I think about it a lot, but there’s not much. I remember my mom. She liked singing—she taught me a lot of little songs. We lived by the ocean, but the water was a lot bluer than back at the Northern Sea. Warmer, more sun.”

I felt a twinge of sadness. It sounded like a happy life that had been stolen from him. “Do you remember coming to the Circle?”

Costi shook his head. “I remember you, though, in the park. You were so tiny. I just wanted to… I don’t know… protect you or something. I think I had a little sister, and you reminded me of her.”

My heart warmed. It was my earliest memory, playing in the park with Costi. I hadn’t heard the full story until I was older—how the adults had realized that he wasn’t anyone’s child and couldn’t speak English. At first, they thought he had wandered in from outside, but he had the look of witches with his dusky skin and light eyes, and he could sense magic.

The attack in Greece had happened only weeks before—it was all too clear what had occurred. Someone had abandoned him in the American Circle that was easiest to get to from Europe. We never found out who or why. They never came forward. As far as anyone knew, Costi was the only survivor of that tragedy.

Diana Blackthorn, an older witch who hadn’t ever wanted a partner or her own children, fostered Costi until he was old enough to join the guardians.

“I never knew. I’m sorry you missed growing up with them. Your mom and little sister.”

I wondered if anyone had gone back to investigate. What went so completely wrong that the angels were able to raze that Circle to the ground? Had it been the same as Northern Sea? Was there anything left? Records or something?

Costi shrugged. “I got to grow up with you.”

After he had scraped every dish clean and been teased for it by the shopkeeper, we got back in the car. The highways turned to hills as the daylight turned gold and slipped away, and we finally passed the sign that declared “Welcome to West Virginia.”

We arrived at the Mountain Circle well after dark.