Page 13 of The Witch & the Tiger

This wasn’t the first time Martin was called into Professor Umber’s office. The dragon shifter professor glared at him, sharp and calculating. They were joined a moment later by Professor Z’Hana, an older, stern-faced woman though not quite as old as the infamous potions lecturer.

Both professors examined him wordlessly for a moment, and he didn’t know why.

“It seems we have failed in our duty of care to our students,” Z’Hana finally said, arms folded. “Something like this should have been obvious from the start. His sister was asking me questions, sharing her concerns, but this…”

What the hell were they talking about?

“It’s not the kind that’s affected by telling the truth, at least.” Professor Umber also folded his arms, mirroring Z’Hana’s posture. “We’d see an entirely different pattern in that case. We should speak to the principal, however.”

“What’s going on? Do I need to be here?” Martin asked, a little annoyed they were speaking as if he were a deaf-mute.

“Yes, sorry,” Umber said. “Though you might want to sit down.” He pushed an uncomfortable-looking wooden chair toward Martin, who made no move toward it.

Now Z’Hana spoke. “What we wished to discuss with you is to perhaps extend some of our assistance in your search for your missing friend. Your sister has given me some information. And it seems that we have not been providing the kind of help a student of ours deserves.”

“Wait, what? Really?” Martin gaped at them, unwilling for a second to believe since no one had really tried to help him aside from his sister. His parents’ help consisted of persuading him every other day to think about his future and return to school, not wanting him to waste his time on the very thing that bothered him the most. As for other friends… none here were as close to him. It made for a terribly lonely five months.

“It turns out your search most likely aligns with something we’re also investigating,” Z’Hana said. “Something that’s also affected Umber’s nephew recently. Something that I suppose we will need to send out a formal warning about to the other academies. I really don’t want to have to deal with the Archon lot again…”

Umber snorted.

“What happened with your nephew?” Martin asked, surprised to hear that the professor even had a nephew. The professors didn’t share much about their personal lives with their students.

“He was enchanted.” Umber said, frowning, “by a member of what we believe to be the Unseelie Court. Are you familiar with the courts, boy?”

“Uh… I know of the fae realm and a little of the courts, but not a lot.”

“That’s about the extent of what we expect you to know.” The dragon professor glanced toward Z’Hana as if debating what to say next. “We have some reason to believe they are meddling more in the affairs of mortals, making contracts and deals when they should be keeping to themselves. It’s dangerous for the fae to do too much. It… can cause some strange things to happen in our reality.”

A cold wind seemed to rip through Martin as he realized what the professors were driving at and why they’d brought him in from the dining hall, plucking him from an otherwise lovely bonding opportunity with a sorely needed friend after everything that had happened.

Strange things happen in our reality.

“Strange things… like perhaps an entire coast appearing in a place where it shouldn’t be?” he whispered.

“Something like that,” Umber agreed. “We want to also assist you in searching for this place. From my understanding, though, it sounds like a temporal location, not a permanent one, like the swamp or the wildland areas.”

“Temporal locations are extraordinarily infuriating,” Z’Hana growled, looking far more dangerous and more like how Martin imagined a professor specialized in curses and dark magic would look like. “You’ll get ones that may only appear on a Tuesday morning every twenty years or every time Halley’s Comet appears.” Now, her gaze focused on Martin. “We’ll be asking you questions relating to the circumstances of this location. You’ve probably answered many of them already, but we’ll need everything.”

“What changed your mind?” Martin asked. “Why are you now more willing to assist me now when you wouldn’t before?”

“Because,” Umber said, drawing himself up regally, “as I said, my nephew was enchanted by an Unseelie agent. It also appears you, too, have been enchanted by something fae, most likely Unseelie as well.”

Martin froze, trying to process the information. With those words, the cloud in his head disappeared. He became painfully aware of a strange, pale green light just on the edge of his vision. When he turned to the side, he couldn’t actually see it, but it continued to float there, maddeningly just out of reach. “Am I crazy, or is something glowing?”

“You’re not crazy. You have a green glow emanating from your back.” Umber went into a drawer and dug out a hand mirror. “Here. You can see it in this.”

He held the mirror to Martin, and for the first time, Martin saw the green glow wisping from his back in what appeared to be a circular pattern. “What?”

“You have a magical glamour on you at the moment. It’ll appear like that on your skin,” Z’Hana said. “You’ll barely notice it unless you drink a potion of Truesight, which reveals enchantments temporarily.”

“But I didn’t drink a potion…?” His voice trailed off. His mind swept back to when he sat at the dining hall table with Willow. He recalled the bottled drink she’d given to him, which he’d drunk without question.

“We asked Willow to give the potion to you, but without you knowing,” Umber said. “For a good reason. It can be very dangerous to inform certain enchanted people that they’re enchanted. There are a select few enchantments that trigger a cascade reaction if their enchanted subject ever finds out. Thankfully, those types are very rare. However, we didn’t want to take the risk.”

The tiny tinge of betrayal faded away as he considered the professor’s statement. Yes… he did remember something vaguely about enchantments and glamours, although nothing about devastating consequences should a person find out about it. Still, it wasn’t nice to think of Willow being complicit in that. It explained some of her nervous energy, though he’d thought it was related to being nervous around him because she wanted him to like her almost as much as he liked her.

The vague sense of betrayal turned to disappointment, further compounded by the fact that the professors planned to help him now only because it tied in with some things they’d noticed. It hadn’t mattered before. It had taken them five months to wake up and pay him some attention.

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