Page 25 of Wicked Endeavors

“Because of the tours?” Marisol began serving herself as soon as she sat down, already ravenous for eggs and bread.

“Because we’re friends. The opening ceremony was much more fun with you to talk to.”

Marisol privately agreed. In the time before Teo retrieved her so they could make their goodbyes, she’d found Noelia to be a spirited conversation partner. She seemed to know a little bit about everyone, and her observations were witty instead of malicious. After a while, Marisol’s laughter had become genuine.

It had been too long since she’d had a friend. She had to be so, so careful.

“Tell me more about them,” she said. “The tours. You’re sick of doing them, but you surely can’t be sick of talking about them. Especially to someone who knows so little about the Coronet.”

Noelia sighed her way through an explanation of the Coronet from a witch’s point of view. She described it as though it were a job interview where the employer was the one desperate to be considered; rumors inevitably raced through the Trident of the strongest of the young witches, and those with the most potential were courted the hardest.

“It’s more stressful than it sounds from the other side,” she finished, having drained her goblet. “It’s illegal to do any magic aside from that of your House, so you have to be really careful about your choice. Witches caught trying have been executed.”

“Wait, really?” Marisol blinked as though this was new information. “Why, I thought it was impossible.”

“No, it’s possible. The coven mark hones power, but it can’t take that power away. When I do House magic, it strengthens every reaper.” She picked at her bread, the sun making her braid crown glow gold. “But if I do any other kind of magic, it drains my fellow reapers to activate the unfamiliar spell. I can do it, but I—and House Muerte—would be weaker for it, you know? Our coven marks ensure that we thrive or fail together.”

“May I?” Marisol held out her hand, and Noelia placed hers atop it, wrist up, so she could study the small tattoo. The black skull that she’d seen in the garden was more intricate than she’d realized, darker toward the center and lightening to a chestnut brown at the eyes. “You got this last year?”

“‘In every ending, there is a beginning,’” Noelia confirmed, with the motto of House Muerte. “I like it here. It’s easy to fear reapers because of the nature of their magic, but destruction isn’t always a negative thing. Sometimes, it’s the first step to rebirth.” Noelia pulled her hand back, gazing down at her own mark. “We can rescue people trapped by debris. We can create an empty space for a new house. We can make our pimples disappear. Smooth skin at the flick of a wrist!”

Marisol laughed, using her fork to stab a piece of bread and chase the last of the jam on her plate. She wiped at the corner of her mouth with a napkin and then glanced back toward the glass doors. “Where’s the washroom?”

“Down the hall to the right,” Noelia said, pouring herself another goblet of orange juice. Her hand hovered over a roll of bread. “Do you need me to take you?”

“I won’t drag you from your meal. ‘Down the hall to the right’ is easy enough to remember.”

Noelia flashed a grateful smile and took a huge bite.

The washroom was one of three doors at the end of the hallway, but Marisol found it on her second try. She checked to make sure it was empty and then went to the mirror to watch her skin ripple as she reconstructed her appearance. Aside from the whisper of power within her, wielding morpher magic didn’t feel like anything. Changing her face and dress to that of one of the witches she’d seen sparring downstairs—red hair, brown eyes, high cheekbones—took no effort after months of training, but it was disorienting. She had been a Vinyet for so long that putting on yet another form felt wrong.

Marisol touched her now-narrow chin, finger-combed her now-straight hair, and adjusted the bodice of her now-lavender dress. Then she left the washroom with the confidence of someone who belonged here.

House Muerte was a maze of identical hallways and shadowed staircases. The sounds of life and laughter sang from every door, closed or open, but the corridors were so empty it was like walking among ghosts. Most of the rooms she passed appeared to be bedrooms or common rooms; nowhere she imagined a Magister would hide a spirits-blessed plant. She found a storage closet with cleaning supplies, a library so unused that just opening the door shattered a shimmering spiderweb, and a set of stairs that led into an empty office. Rifling through the desk for a potential map turned up nothing more substantial than a grocery list and a class schedule: BREAKFAST, PRACTICALS, FREE STUDY, DINNER.

With roughly two minutes before Noelia would begin to get suspicious of how long she’d been gone, Marisol worked her way downstairs to the ground floor. There, she heard faint birdsong. She followed the tug of nature farther into the castle until she was slowed by voices. The air was fragrant with clove and mint, with undertones of earth and powder. A light breeze misted the corridor, and the door up ahead was outlined with light that didn’t flicker. As if its source was not a lantern but the sun itself.

Carefully, she cracked it open. Before her was a magnificent courtyard garden. Ornately sheared hedges in geometric shapes surrounded a wide, rectangular pool. Pines trimmed into perfect triangles were placed at each corner, and white marble the same shade as the statues outlined the turquoise water. Cobblestone paths split around either side of the reflecting pool and met again at the other end to form a plaza. Flowering bushes shaded stone benches, with pearl-white flowers fluttering in the breeze.

Witches sat on the benches, lay in the grass, or leaned against the trees, talking, laughing, reading, practicing their magic. An older witch pointed at clusters of dead leaves on the hedges and made them disappear in a flash of power. Two more held court by the reflecting pool, swapping stories with a small audience of friends. Marisol yanked the door closed as quietly as she could, her pulse skipping.

The witch who she was impersonating was among that audience.

“Juana?”

Her pulse stopped entirely. Noelia stood halfway down the corridor, a troubled expression on her face. She was staring right at her, so she assumed that Juana was the name of the witch whose face she’d stolen. If Noelia went into the courtyard, if she saw a second Juana sitting by the pool—

“What’s wrong?” Marisol said, her smooth tone masking her panic. “I thought you had a friend over.”

“The weather is nice, so I wanted to take her on a carriage ride around the city. But she went to the washroom for so long that I had to check on her. No one is in there.”

“She probably got lost.” Sweat rolled down the line of Marisol’s spine. She forced a smile. “This House was built to confuse.”

Noelia’s answering smile was brief. “You’re not wrong. I was going to ask if any of the others have seen her.”

“In here?” Marisol wrinkled her borrowed nose. “Unlikely. Why don’t you check the top floor and I’ll check the floor below? She’s probably on one of those.”

“I suppose…”