Before I can let my imagination run too far down that path, Cass shakes his head and says, “There’s more. It seems she’s already bonded with a familiar. A snowy owl.”
“Shit. I’ve seen it,” I tell them. “A snowy owl appeared outside her tea shop seconds before the police arrived that day. It felt like a warning. I knew it was magickal, but didn’t think to associate it with a familiar. Stevie can barely conjure witchfire.”
“That’s… concerning.” Baz glances at Cass. “I thought you said she was totally uninitiated?”
“She is,” Cass confirms. “A familiar is unexpected at this early stage, but it’s not unheard of for a spirit-blessed. I don’t believe she can conjure it at will, though, and the bond isn’t yet strong enough for it to tune into her instincts with any reliability.”
“She’s a ticking time bomb,” Baz says. “That much power, no idea how to wield it, how to rein it in?”
“We’ll do our best to guide her,” Cass says. “Until then, we can’t reveal too much. She’s overwhelmed enough as it is.”
I rub my forehead, tension throbbing behind my eyes. Stevie thought her arrest turned her life upside down, that being forced to leave Tres Búhos was the worst thing to happen since her parents’ deaths.
But the poor woman had no idea how much darker and deadlier things were about to get.
“You should’ve relocated her when you had the chance,” I snap. “At least then she might’ve had a fighting chance.”
Cass doesn’t take the bait, just places a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “We need her here, Kirin,” he says gently, and when I look into his eyes, I see the same concern there. The same fears. “You’ve known that from the start.”
“Doesn’t make it any easier to swallow,” I say.
“At least we can protect her here.”
“Can we? We don’t even know where the danger will ultimately come from. Only that it will come. And we’re no closer to figuring this out than we were a month ago. A year. Five years.”
“But we are closer,” Ani says. “She’s here, right? And Anna seems to think she can unlock the prophecies. So for now, we hold on to that. Deal?”
We all agree, the tension falling away once again.
“We need to exercise extreme caution,” Cass says. “I don’t want anything provoking her familiar-response magick. If she feels threatened or backed into a corner, if her life is endangered in any way… Hell, even if she’s upset or anxious about something, the magick will surface and attempt to protect her. That’s fine in situations where her life is truly at stake, but right now, she has no control over it whatsoever.”
“Good point,” Baz says. “Last thing we need is her blowing up the dorms because she finds one of Chef Milbey’s cat hairs in her meatloaf.”
“It’s just seasoning,” Ani and I say with a laugh, repeating one of Chef’s oft-quoted responses.
“But it is a good point,” I say. “We need to keep her relaxed, focused on her work, and safe.”
“Right,” Cass says. “I don’t want anyone to know how powerful our witch truly is. Including the witch herself.”
“A familiar. Fuck me.” Baz shoves a hand into his hair, scratching his head. “How can she be so powerful, and so… so fucking ignorant?”
It’s all I can do not to deck the guy. A common feeling where Baz is concerned, but one I’m in no mood to indulge in tonight. We’ve got bigger concerns.
“She was kept in the dark her entire life,” I say, a bit defensively. But what the hell does Baz know? He’s spent all of five minutes with Stevie, most of that time staring at her breasts. “Her parents told her just enough to whet her curiosity, then forbid her from ever practicing her magick or even so much as cracking a book on the subject. And then they died. I get the feeling she’s spent every day since then trying to resist the temptation. And now she’s got no choice. She has to learn magick. To open up all the old Pandora’s Boxes her parents tried to nail shut. So ease up on her, okay?”
Baz raises a curious eyebrow, his eyes dancing with some new light.
“Interesting,” he says.
“If you took the time to talk to her instead of just hitting on her, you might learn something interesting about her too.”
Baz rolls his eyes. “So Webber’s got a thing for the jailbird, and we’re supposed to just trust—”
“I don’t have athingfor her. I’m just saying we shouldn’t make assumptions about her past or judge her for something she had no control over. She’s smart as hell and she’s eager to learn. And from what I’ve seen, she’s going to make one hell of a witch. One we’re all going to be thanking some day for saving our asses.”
Baz opens his mouth, thinks twice, shuts it. After a beat, he shakes his head and says, “I don’t get it, man. Her parents were basically Academy royalty. What the fuck happened? And why did they hide all this from her? They had to know it would come out eventually. She’s a spirit-blessed witch, for fuck’s sake. It doesn’t just go dormant.”
“I’m sure they believed they had no choice,” Cass says. “I don’t know the details of the situation here, what drove them to leave. Trello refuses to give more than the barest of sketches. But her parents… I’m sure they were looking out for her.”
