“Yeah, sure,” she said. “I’ll send you a text when I’m free.”
“Cool,” he said, with an adorable puppy-dog smile. For a moment, they just stood there awkwardly, basking in the oddness of it all. Just when she was about to leave again, he pointed out the thing that had started squirming inside her jacket. She squeezed hard against it, willing it to stop. The cat responded in kind by digging a set of claws through her shirt and piercing her stomach. She had to stop the visual wince on her face from reaching Callum’s enforcer-like perception.
“What’s in your blazer?” he asked.
Fuck.
“Oh, just a bunch of books, you know.”No, he didn’t know, Avery.What books fucking squirmed?
“Books,” he repeated, giving her the look. “Well, I am an enforcer, so I’ll need you to open your blazer, Miss Alarch, in the name of the school’s safety.”
She froze, her heartbeat thundering in her ears. It’s not like there was anything wrong with summoning a familiar. It was expected. Why she hid it was an entirely different story. One she didn’t want to explain yet. One she didn’t know how to explain yet. She was the type that needed about three to five business days to process what the fuck just happened.
“No?” he pressed.
Like a child, she shook her head. She had no explanation for what squirmed beneath her blazer. He put a hand over his heart in a mock gesture. “Fine, keep your secrets. You’re free to go, Miss Alarch,” he said, and smiled.
Thank the goddess. He was just playing around. She almost forgot that not everyone was a hard-ass like her sister. She gave him a grateful smile and climbed the stairs to her dorm.
By the time she reached the top, she was embarrassingly out of breath. She supposed that lying in bed and mourning her dad for a year would do that. She still did swim, but not nearly as much as she used to. Instead, she had focused all of her energy on studying and trying to summon a familiar. Her body was only catching back up. With one hand, she opened the wooden door to her dorm, holding the sleeping cat in the other. After the squirming, it now hardly stirred with the jarring movement or the sound the hinges made as the door shut behind them.
The dorm was silent, but the weight of the day was deafening. She set the blazer down on her bed with the sleeping cat still inside. The rise and fall of its small chest was a steady rhythm, unlike her heart, which had been pounding since the summoning. Kneeling, she ran her hand over the small creature, almost in disbelief that it was real. The fur was soft under her fingers.
Until it wasn’t. Fingers ran over fur matted with mud, the scents of damp earth and sea wafting under her nose. Some of the debris crumbled away under her touch, along with the salt matting the fur, but the more she looked, the more she found.
Guilt opened a cavern in her chest. The cat was filthy. What had she done?
She shivered. Dammit, she had left the window open, and it was as cold as her mother. Leaving the cat to sleep on the bed, she crossed the room and kneeled by the fireplace. One day, hopefully soon, she would be able to light this with a flick of a finger, but their bond wasn’t formed enough yet for her to summon her familiar’s magic on a whim. Neither would she feel good about pulling energy from something that was already unconscious. So, it was the old-fashioned way instead.
She piled sticks under kindling, and the fireplace roared to life. It drenched the otherwise dark room in an orange hue, the soft crackling singing along with the birds outside. The smell of woodsmoke was like a comforting embrace, and it constantly lingered in her dorm from how much she used it.
The clock ticking in the corner reminded her of the time. It was the day before fourth-year started, and she hadn’t even begun to get ready yet. She left the small cat on the bed to have a shower and quickly changed into a clean uniform. By the time she was dressed, the cat was still asleep. She cringed at the amount of dirt left on it, but the last thing she wanted was to disturb it. She had gone a year without a familiar. She could go another day.
Rain drizzledon the stone footpaths, and students lingered in the quadrangle where orientation markets had been set up. The students at Caerwyn amused themselves with many things—clubs, sports, parties. Avery used to be involved in all of them, but since her father passed and her inability to summon a familiar became evident, all of it fell away.
She passed the lacrosse players back from their training. The women’s and men’s teams were talking among themselves, including her sister, Gwyn, the captain of the women’s team. She was talking to Julian fucking Ainsworth, the captain of the men’s team. Gwyn tossed her long black hair behind her, smiling at something he said.
Goddess, he was a slimy cunt. A part of her wanted to go up to them, to protect her sister from making the same mistake she did.
Before she could make a decision, she heard her name.
“Avery!” She swiveled her head to see Maya standing next to the swim team tent, where some of her old teammates huddled from the rain.
They were once among her closest friends. Then she became a social pariah for not having summoned a familiar, and given who her mother was, she was expected to be among the first. It was a long fall down to the bottom, and it had been plastered with half-assed pranks and vitriolic rumors. She was shunned with the same iciness as a medieval wench who had been bedded out of wedlock. Blasphemous.
Reluctantly, she moved her feet toward the group of girls and the familiars huddled around them, giving them a tight smile as they evaded all contact with thy wench. Avery didn’t bother to make small talk, knowing it would lead to nothing but awkwardness. If they were plants, she wouldn’t ignore them; she would fertilize and water them so they would grow the fuck up, if she didn’t let them die like her own house plant. Maya was the only one who had stuck by her.
She wondered if it would change now she had a familiar, albeit a house cat. Even though a cat wasn’t particularly powerful, she and the cat would do many wonderful things together. Mostly out of spite. A silent guilt gnawed at her heart like little rats did with a big block of cheese. Despite it being an incredible achievement and a necessary milestone, she had done something forbidden.Cheatedin getting a familiar. Although she supposed that witches cheated in many things, and technically, it wasn’t the first forbidden thing she had done. After all, she had been drinking in her dorm room last night. She supposed it wasn’t nearly as up there as literally using blood magic.
Still, if it were the only choice between a life of being a glorified prisoner on this island and one of freedom, she would have done it again and again.
Maya pulled her away by the arm before she had to stand there for too long, the girls muttering about some transfer students from the other witch provinces she couldn’t care less about. She found it entirely unfair that they could travel as students and she could not. Her mother had denied her when she applied because she would just widen the sphere of embarrassment for her family.
“I keep trying to talk them into letting you back on the team,” Maya said.
“Please don’t. I’d rather shit in my hands and clap than swim with them again.”
“You’re so dramatic.”
