Lily’s temporary dorms were a lot further away from Margaret’s house. It occurred to me then that they might have multiple dorm buildings. Of course they did, she left the dorms with me yesterday. This one was a smaller building. Lily still had to swipe a card to get in, but there was no front desk person to not look at us.

Everything inside was slightly dirtier too. What decided who got to live in the nice dorm and who lived here?

Lily and I hadn’t said a word since agreeing to come here, which meant Lily’s fidgeting was slowly building. I didn’t understand it. She stood in front of Margaret, but now Lily was afraid?

Lily’s room was on the first floor and she silently invited me in. It was very clearly a temporary space, with no meaningful decoration. It was the same size and layout as Amy’s dorm room, which I took to mean it was standard. Just like Amy’s room, the window was covered by blinds.

I shrugged off my backpack onto the floor, pausing before I unzipped it. This would be the best chance to discuss what had happened, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

Lily had sat down in the center of the bed, staring at me. I realized I was looking at Lily the Brave again.

“Claire.” Her golden eyes felt like they were pinning me in place. She patted the spot on the bed next to her. “Can we please talk?”

“No?” I tried. Lily blinked, before sighing.

“Look, I’m trying to be nice about this but your mom threatened to kill me at least twice. If you don’t want to talk about your stuff, that’s fine. But we have to talk.”

She was right, that was the problem. It would be ridiculous not to talk about how I’d nearly gotten her killed.

I left my backpack on the floor where I’d been, sitting down to her right. I was reminded of the bench yesterday. It somehow didn’t feel like yesterday.

“Ok,” Lily began. “So first, how much danger am I in? Is… is your mom gonna kill me?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. I couldn’t look at her while I talked about this. “It’s not the first time I’ve told someone things I shouldn’t have. She hasn’t killed any of them so far.”

It was just Felicity, who wasn’t as vulnerable as Lily. I was lying without lying. Margaret would be proud.

“That’s good,” she let out a sigh of relief. “Though… you’re saying this has happened before?”

“There’s a reason Margaret calls it my weakness,” I said glumly. “We’re probably about to go meet one of them.” If I went anywhere near her apartment building, she would find a way to be there.

“R-right.” Lily glanced away awkwardly, but she rallied quickly. “Does she use that ice spell on you every time?”

I looked down at my hand, a few flakes of ice left.

“Yes,” I said. I tried not to fault her for being curious. I would be too. “Though it’s not an ice spell. It’s… a little complicated.”

Lily grabbed my hand with both of hers, absently rubbing away the last of the frost. I couldn’t help but look at her now.

“I would like to know,” she said. Her expression was gentle and earnest. There wasn’t any harm in indulging her.

“The best way to describe it would be as a curse. Our kind of magic, which would be eldritch magic, doesn’t treat curses as a separate category. It’s more a label that gets applied to some types of rituals.”

“Rituals are the magic circles you draw?”

I nodded, happy she was engaging. She was still rubbing the back of my hand lightly, but her eyes were focused on me.

“Right. So, curses usually refer to a ritual anchored to a specific person. Not many gods can do that, only something with some authority over connections or divination.”

Lily paused in her ministrations.

“Gods? Wait, so you get your magic from-”

“Not like you’re thinking,” I hurried to correct her. “They aren’t- they don’t care about us. Closer to Cthulhu than Zeus, and even that’s not fully right.”

Lily still seemed hesitant, but she nodded for me to continue.

“So our god, the Weaving, specializes in connections. It’s about how things relate to one another. That’s why, when you give it a concept like communication, it monitors the connection between people to detect if someone is lying. You can use that same kind of connection to find information about things. Like using a book to find its author.”

“Or like what Margaret did with the piece of the monster.”

I nodded again. I wanted to pull away from her for this next bit, I wasn’t sure I could handle it while she was- but she wouldn’t let me. Her grip tightened and after a moment I stopped trying.

“So you can use that same principle to directly affect the connected object. It’s a lot harder, and there are some defenses against it. But the stronger your connection is, the more you can do. If, for example, you could put a baby inside a ritual circle for a full day to really impress upon the god that you were talking about this specific collection of carbon atoms and that when skin cells fell off it didn’t become less of the target-” I was rambling, needed to focus, needed to breathe “-then you could get a nearly perfect connection. You could do almost anything to that baby. You could manifest the Quiet inside it or maybe the lost winter court or the Lantern no one really knows what they do but they probably could or maybe you push its soul out of alignment or maybe you just paralyze them some other way and make frost disguise it-”

Lily hugged me and I realized I was crying. I hated myself sometimes, how easy I was. But god if it didn’t feel good. A reminder that I was here instead of that icy hell, that I could feel something, someone. I felt the last of the aches from frozen muscles fading.

“Why?” I asked. Why, why do you care? I can’t give you anything. I might have just killed you.

When Lily spoke I could feel how the movements traveled from her body to mine.

“Claire, a few hours ago you put yourself through hell to save my life from a spider demon. I saw what that ritual did to you. I don’t think you remember all of it, but it was bad.” Her voice broke slightly. “And then you went and did it again to keep it from coming back for me. You knew, didn’t you, that she’d do that to you today? If it wasn’t showing me the house it would’ve been telling me your spells or… something else.”

I needed her to stop, needed her to stop thanking me for ruining everything and for not being smart enough-

“Can you tell me?” Lily asked. “What does it feel like? I could feel the chill in the air, but I can’t imagine what...”

“It’s…” I was happy about the question, something to focus on and explain, but it was difficult to describe. I leaned my head against her shoulder as I thought, the warmth comforting. “One of the possibilities I said, having my soul out of alignment. I don’t know if people have souls but that’s what it feels like. My body stops being mine. I can’t tell how long it lasts or even form a thought that complicated. I think the cold is just a side effect of whatever does that. It also hurts, but that’s less bad.”

I added the last part almost casually, as if I’d forgotten about it. Talking about the worst thing in my life like this was surreal. But somehow Lily let me do it.

“I just wanna check,” Lily said hesitantly. “I think you do, but you know that isn’t right, don’t you? I mean I know she’s your mom but that doesn’t mean-”

“I know,” I said. It wasn’t that much different than physical abuse. I imagined most people who hit their kids would rather do it magically if they knew how much worse that could be.

“But you can’t stop her,” Lily said sadly. I appreciated that she hadn’t stopped holding me, maybe understanding now what it meant. “Are you sure- I guess you can’t go to the police about your evil witch mom.”

“I tried that one already,” I said. I told her the story of when I went to the police as a child and what Margaret did to them. Lily was silent for a moment after I finished.

“Oh, that’s why they ignored Amy. I thought that was ridiculous, even for cops.” I started to apologize but before I could even say a word she cut me off. “Claire, you were six and being tortured. I don’t even know how that could be your fault.”

I let the words die in my throat, tears threatening to well up again. I didn’t deserve someone like Lily.

I let myself enjoy it for a while, the feeling of being safe in someone’s arms again. I had no idea how I had survived so long without this. After another few minutes though, I spoke up.

“As nice as this is, we should get going.” I pulled away from her, once again met by the cold air. I regretted the choice almost immediately, but it was necessary. “We have one more hell to go through and we’ll need to be back in time for the club.”

Lily nodded, standing up and stretching. I fought very hard not to watch. Really Claire, now of all times?

“After this one,” she said, “you need to let me do something for you. I have no idea how I’m supposed to pay you back for all this.”

“You’re already doing great,” I assured her.

I picked up my backpack, almost forgetting to take Lily’s clothes out first. She took them from me and just tossed them on the bed over her shoulder.

“Alright, what’s the hell this time?” Lily asked.

“We need help,” I said bluntly. “I thought we were looking for a hedge witch, someone with no training who found a bit of real magic by mistake. And maybe we still are, but that bit of magic they found was quite powerful. We almost died just running away from it. So, we’re going to talk to someone who deals with things like that. A monster hunter, for lack of a better word. But to get to her, we need to talk to someone else.”

“And this someone is the hell?” Lily guessed. I nodded. We would have to see her anyway, so it might as well be on my terms.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“She is the one person who can lie to me, my ex-girlfriend, and the first person I ever tried to kill. We need to talk to Felicity Doe.”

Lily giggled, which earned her a frown.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, you just said that so dramatically.”

“It’s an important part of being a witch,” I insisted. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling back. “I’ve had lessons on it.”

And that made Lily burst out laughing.

----------------------------------------

About a thirty-minute walk from the Reston campus was a shopping district. I wasn’t sure of the name of the area or if it was just an emergent phenomenon, one of those things that happens when you put a college in a place like Reston. It was far enough away from the campus that you didn’t have to feel like it was a part of the campus while being close enough that students could easily access it.

On a corner in that shopping district, there was a very peculiar store. The sign on the front called it “Charming Magicks” and promised all sorts of things. Good luck charms, protection against evil witches, tomes of ancient lore, and more. Every one of them was of the charlatan variety of magic. Lily and I were here to see the fortune teller.

Charming Magicks was not in the same direction as the Lunatic apartment complex. It was at a right angle to it. But I knew that whichever one I went to first, Felicity would be there, because Felicity’s magic was bullshit.

The bell rang as Lily and I walked through the door. We’d actually arrived here about five minutes ago, but we took a break in the next store over to let me catch my breath.

One of the customer attendants called over to us.

“Be right with you.”

I could go to the back to talk to Felicity now, but I decided to wait for the attendant to come over. Lily hadn’t quite believed me when I told her how much this place would bend over backward for me and I wanted her to see.

The store was far too large for how niche its market was, even in Reston. The lighting was kept intentionally dim through tinted windows and weak bulbs, presumably for the atmosphere. There were several aisles worth of trinkets, oils, and whatever else people told themselves was magic. In the back, there was a door cloaked in velvet fabric. There was only one other customer in the store, checking out with the attendant at the register.

The attendant was a tall brunette who had some light freckles on her cheeks. She finished up with her customer and walked over to us. Her eyes widened with a flash of recognition.

“Lily?”

What.

“Jessie, it’s good to see you.” Lily covered for my surprise. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

It took me a moment to remember who she was. The less liked friend of Amy.

“It’s a new thing-” and then Jessie looked at me and I got the reaction I was looking for. “Oh wow, you’re her. They have a photo of you in the back, are you like the boss’s daughter? I’ll go get Felicity.”

I gave Lily a smug grin and she gracefully admitted defeat.

“No need, we’ll head back ourselves,” I told Jessie. While we had her here, might as well. “I heard about Amy from Lily, how are you feeling?”

“I mean… not great?” Jessie said awkwardly. “I dunno how you’re supposed to feel, so I’ve just kinda been trying to keep going.”

“Me too,” Lily said. The animated gesturing was back with a vengeance. “I talked to Peter yesterday and he was very helpful. I know you said you didn’t know anything else, but are you sure?”

“Yeah, that was all I know. But the cops will have to reopen the case now that someone else died, right?”

Lily glanced over at me and I confirmed with a slight nod.

“They might,” Lily said. “It was good seeing you, Jessie.”

“You too.”

Jessie walked off towards some door by the register. Lily followed me towards a door on the side.

“Any interesting lies?” she asked.

“Nope, just that she was telling the truth when she said it was good to see you.”

Lily paused, seeming actually surprised.

“Oh, before I forget,” I said. The conversation with Jessie reminded me of something I should’ve brought up by now. “I can’t lie. Magically incapable, it’s the sacrifice for using the Weaving.”

“So you’ll need me to lie for you sometimes.” Lily nodded. Clever as always. “Anything I need to lie about here?”

I shook my head.

“No, almost all witches will know I can’t and want me to do the talking.”

Lily nodded her understanding as we made it to the velvet door. I took a deep breath and Lily reached out to squeeze my hand. I appreciated this new habit.

I reached for the doorknob only to find it turn itself and the door pulled open.

“Oh, Claire! What a surprise, do come in.”

Felicity looked like she was designed intentionally to be beautiful, which she had. She had emerald green eyes and strawberry blond hair that fell down her back in perfect curls. If you searched her mature features, which I could see Lily doing in the corner of my eye, you wouldn’t find a single blemish. She was even wearing soft red lipstick, which would never get in the way of anything because it wasn’t actually there.

The outfit it had selected today was a dark blue, short-sleeved blouse, and a ridiculously frilly gray skirt, naturally short enough to reveal her long legs in all their splendor. It always chose skirts because I liked skirts.

“It’s always a surprise,” I said, “and yet I know that’s not the glamour you wear for your customers.”

It was all fake. The kind of fake you could only get when someone spent hours on a computer making you look that good, brought to real life. So fake that it made communication think every word she said was a lie.

“I can change very quickly.” Felicity grinned like we were sharing a joke and I had to fight not to smile back. She spoke like she was royalty, always an air of elegance even in mischief.

“What..?” Lily seemed dumbstruck. Felicity tended to cause that kind of reaction, especially when she turned her glamour up to eleven like this.

Felicity walked back into the room to sit in her chair. Her steps were bouncy, like she was giddy at just the sight of me. It would be endearing if I didn’t know it was intentional.

The fortune teller’s room was only a bit bigger than Lily’s dorm room, which could’ve made an awkward fit if we’d all tried to move around each other. The back wall had a shelf with a wide variety of fake magical tools like a crystal ball and a dowsing rod. I wouldn’t have spotted the small door hidden by the dark against the far wall if I hadn’t known it was there.

“Did you not warn her about me?” Felicity asked. Lily was still openly staring with a violent blush on her face.

My heart skipped at the confirmation that Lily was interested in women. What was she seeing? It wouldn’t be the same thing I was. The glamour looked different to everyone, tailoring itself to their tastes.

“I did,” I said, “but it’s always a shock the first time. Felicity, this is Lily. She’s been inducted, by the way.”

Felicity’s beauty affected me too, but resentment was a great insulator against other emotions. I walked over to the table but didn’t sit down in the chair. Felicity raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment.

Felicity’s table was a dark oak wood and I saw tarot cards laid out on top of it. Only two cards were out of the deck, the magician and the reversed chariot. From what I remembered, it was too few for any sort of tarot reading. Two major arcana were quite unlikely to draw naturally, so was she trying to imply something with them?

“Shouldn’t her name be Rose?” Felicity asked.

“My older sister,” Lily said, coming up beside me. Amusingly, that seemed to have knocked her out of her shock.

“Some varieties of lilies are red,” I offered. Felicity’s eyes moved between Lily and me, coming to some conclusion.

“Wait,” Lily pointed at the cards on the table. “Is fortune telling real?”

“No,” I said immediately. “If it was, she’d be playing the stock market.”

Lily looked slightly disappointed.

“Are you certain I’m not? I could have a huge stock portfolio funding this place,” Felicity suggested airily.

“If you were, you’d have offered to cut me in to join your cult.”

“Bah,” she waved her hand. “You’ll have more than enough money once you kill Margaret. I wouldn’t try to bribe you.”

It would be so easy to fall back into the pattern of banter.

“I need to speak to Bethany,” I said instead.

Felicity grinned like she could tell what I was fighting.

“She’s out of town, something about a carnival? But perhaps I could help you with your monster problem. A lot of that is my side of the fence.”

That was a problem. The news that the Carnival was back was also concerning, to say the least, but not actionable. It also might be a lie, Felicity did enjoy being the only person who could do that.

“Your kind of problem doesn’t cause unraveling,” I said, a split second before realizing my mistake.

Felicity’s eyes widened.

“Unravel- What kind of monster are you dealing with?” She looked so concerned she must have practiced in the mirror.

“Sorry,” Lily jumped in. “Unraveling?”

“Unraveling is a side effect of powerful eldritch magic,” I explained. “Tears in reality between moments. You can train yourself to notice them, it’s how I knew to wake you up.”

“And it’s seldom caused by monsters,” Felicity added. “Which means you’re dealing with something serious. Let me help.”

“No,” I said immediately. Felicity had played me for years and I could already feel the bitterness I’d built failing under the weight of her charisma.

“Princess, I know you don’t like me-” I snorted, “-and that’s fine. You know I need to get to you to stay in the movement’s good graces.” Felicity slid from her seat gracefully and started walking towards me as she made her appeal. “And what that means for you is I’m about the only person in Reston you know for certain will keep you and your new girl safe from a monster. I’m a resource, so take advantage of me.” She finished with a wide smile, arms up only a step away.

Instincts I thought I’d cut away tried to pull me closer to her, to accept the implied embrace.

She wasn’t making a bad argument, but I couldn’t trust any of it, that was the problem with Felicity. She was an incredible actor, enough to convince me she was my friend for years while she used me to gather information for the cult. She had the only magic I’d ever seen that made someone immune to communication and by the end I’d thought I was in love with her, that’s how good she was.

I looked at Lily, her fierce blush renewed by something Felicity had said. If the hunter was gone, who else could I turn to? Everyone else in this town would demand things I didn’t want to give, while Felicity was offering herself freely.

Felicity was a skilled war witch. I knew she could handle herself in a fight, she’d done so to protect me before.

Oh god, I was going to do this. This morning I’d sat in front of the mirror wondering if I’d gone insane and now I was bringing Felicity with me as a bodyguard.

“Fine,” I said defeatedly. Felicity practically twirled around to the door behind her. I felt her skirt brush against my leg, how the hell did that work? I knew she always wore pants under the illusion.

“Just let me get my things and we can be on our way.”

“Don’t you need to be here?” Lily asked. “You can’t just leave your job.”

“I’m her job,” I said, breathing a little easier now that Felicity wasn’t so close. She had gone into the back room, ducking under the door slightly, but left it open to talk to us. From the angle I was standing, I couldn’t see the small couch off to one side.

“Not just you,” Felicity explained, “but you know you’re my favorite one. Also, this establishment runs at a loss. It’s mostly a recruiting ground for the movement.”

That didn’t seem to sit right with Lily. It didn’t sit right with me either, but Margaret had some kind of deal with the cult that let them be active in her territory.

Felicity reached into a drawer and pulled out a heavy black pistol. She put it… my mind couldn’t find continuity but one moment she was holding it by her leg and the next it vanished. Under the glamour then. An extra magazine of ammo disappeared in the same way.

Lily didn’t seem to have reacted to it. If she didn’t see unraveling she probably wouldn’t see that either. I made a mental note to teach her.

Felicity notably did not grab a pocket knife. She might’ve just already had it in her pocket, kept ready as emotional leverage against me.

She walked back into the room, ducking under the door again.

“So, where are we headed?” Felicity asked cheerfully.

“Your apartment,” I said.

“How bold!” Felicity said, not missing a beat.

I decided I had definitely gone insane.