Page 11 of Muddled Magic

No sooner did I enter the hallway did I hear the front door slam and footsteps pounding up the polished stairs.

Thistle thorns, he’s so quick!

The hallway rug muffled the passage of my own mad dash deeper into the manor. Grandmother’s office was on the opposite end of the massive house, but there was no straight way to get there. The manor had been expanded upon as necessary to accommodate the growth of the family through the generations, and while everything matched in style of gleaming hardwood and cozy stonework and plants hanging or potted everywhere, it was a hodgepodge of twisting passageways and staircases. While Marten had indeed joined me on the second floor, there was no guarantee that our paths would cross until the very last moment.

I put on a burst of speed, the rug bunching under my feet as I strafed around a corner. My heartbeat drowned out the sounds of Marten’s passage, and without casting a Scouting Spell, I wouldn’t know how close, or how far away, he was from intercepting me.

What would he do if he caught me? It’s not like he could lock me up in the cellar or something? Right?

Finally, the twists and turns brought me to the hallway that ended in a stained glass window. The tinted glass colored the white flowers of the potted peace lily and stretched a rainbow across the floor. It may as well have been a finish line.

There was only one door in this hallway, marked by an antique brass knob. There was a gasp behind me as I seized the dahlia-shaped knob, the many petals digging into my palm as my hand tightened. Marten was right there in the Y-shaped hallway junction, just two lunging steps away from me.

As he took those lunging steps, my wrist twisted, the door swinging open and practically sucking me into the office. His hand passed through the locks of my ponytail as he stumbled past, and then I was slamming the door shut, bracing it with my shoulder, and twisting the key in the lock just as he rammed into the door on the other side. The impact jostled me away, and I took another fearful step back as he roared, “Meadow!”

As a figure rose from the antique desk, I now had someone to fear other than my enraged brother.

Grandmother.

Grandmother Iris’s ivy-green eyes were snapping as she smoothly crossed from her desk to the door, the Persian rug muffling her footsteps. Gulping, I backed up a step, towards the sitting area by the hearth opposite the desk, but Grandmother diverted to the door.

I didn’t see her hands move, nor sense a flare of magic, but the door suddenly unlocked and opened all in one motion, and the potted ferns to either side of the doorway sprang to life, wrapping around Marten’s wrists and ankles and waist, keeping him firmly on the other side of the threshold.

“You will cease your assault on my office door and wait in the hall, Marten Tod Hawthorne,” she instructed, her voice soft and dangerous.

“She turned coneflowers into flechette rounds!”

“Then you can spend your time in the hall digging them out of wherever they don’t belong. In. Silence.”

He gave me a murderous glare. “Yes, Grandmother.”

The ferns released him, slammed the door shut in his face, locked it, and shrank back to their normal unassuming selves.

Then the Hawthorne matriarch turned her searing gaze at me. “Yes, Meadow? What is the reason why you and your brother, both intelligent and reasonable adults, just thundered through the manor like enraged rhinoceroses?”

I gulped again and straightened, as one must always have good posture when addressing Grandmother Iris. She did not tolerate sniveling hunchbacks. “I-I wanted—need—to talk to you, Grandmother. P-please.”

“It must be something serious indeed if you needed to abandon your work and burst into my office without my permission.”

“Yes. A-and I apologize for that. It was never my intention, except…” I glanced nervously at the door, wondering if it would hold, and wet my dry lips.

Grandmother gestured to the sitting area in front of the hearth with a little sweep of her hand. “Let’s get to it then.”

Mindful of the exquisite upholstery, I removed my gardening apron to turn inside out and use as a cover sheet before sitting down in the luxurious armchair, but Grandmother stopped me with a simple, “Nothing a spell can’t clean. Tea?”

“Yes, please.”

Though she had been the one to offer me the tea, I was the one who lurched forward to the porcelain set on the little table between us, pouring some calming lemon balm tea first into my grandmother’s cup and then my own, adding a drizzle of honey to each. She settled in her armchair, settling her saucer in her lap as she took a sip, lifting expectant eyebrows. “Well?”

“Why did you choose Marten and not me?” I blurted.

After another sip, Grandmother settled her cup back in her saucer and slid the set onto the table before folding her hands in her lap. “Is that what you want, Meadow?”

“I mean, I’m your personal student. Wasn’t this what you were grooming me for this entire time? To join the Circle of Nine? To become the next, well, you?” It’s all I’d ever studied to be.

“I’m helping you achieve your greatest potential, Meadow. That and being a robed elder, or following in my footsteps, aren’t necessarily the same thing.”

The teacup rattled in the saucer I held in my hands. “What?”

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