Page 56 of Big Little Spells

He makes that sound like a spell. Like a vision made real. Something flickers at the edge of my sight, a girl in a white dress, high on a dark hill... I don’t have to turn to look. I know it’s me, and more, that it’s his vision of this moment, not mine.

Though up this high above St. Cyprian, in the thick dark of the most sensual night of the year, I can’t quite tell the difference.

“Georgie says the incantation for prom is different than it used to be,” I say to disrupt the silence that broods there between us, suggestive and deep. “Did you know that?”

He does not respond. There’s the faint hint of tightening in the vicinity of his soaring cheekbones, but that’s it. I don’t actually expect him to launch into chapter and verse on the subject, but it seems like information the very first Praeceptor should know.

I keep going. “And that four-hundred-pound book you gave me may have shown her that, but it hasn’t shown me anything.” I don’t want to let him know how hard I’ve tried with it either. That feels like weakness. I might as well fall down and show him my belly.

And you know what? That image is not helpful.

He manages to look disdainful without seeming to change a single thing about his expression or the way he stands there, languid and at his ease despite the suit he’s still wearing that would make anyone else look stuffy. “Perhaps when you’re finally willing to put childishness aside and come to the book without so many objects meant to dull your power, you’ll find an answer.”

It rankles, the words dull and childishness, when it’s really about control. Still, part of me can’t help but wonder... But I need the control. It’s how I’ve made it this far. Using my piercings to ground me literally gets me through the day.

“I don’t really get why you’re so obsessed with my piercings, Nicholas, but if you’re wondering how they feel, I’m sure there are any number of piercing studios in the greater St. Louis area that would be happy to help you out with that. Maybe a Prince Albert?”

He does not react to this invitation, though I feel certain he knows the purpose of a Prince Albert piercing. I feel equally certain that after centuries of practice, he doesn’t need help finding a woman’s G-spot. More things I probably don’t need to think about right now.

Nicholas’s eyes gleam, but all he does is gesture at the stairs. “We will do our ritual on the roof.”

“Sounds safe.”

“The ritual is one you should have read about in your book.”

“The only ritual for Beltane in that book was all about walking through fire. All cloaks and daggers and eye of newt. No doubt originating right around the time you were born in darkness and crawled out of the primordial black ooze.”

I congratulate myself on how tough I sound when the truth is, I’ve never had a real Beltane. I was seventeen the last time I was here, meaning no one was interested in letting me sneak off to the real, adult fires. I made do, mind you, but then I was exiled—meaning, I’ve never had a fully magical, adult Beltane night in my life.

I tell myself that’s why I yearn to attempt the kind of magic this ritual promises.

As long as it’s with him. Because if I die in June, I might as well go out having Beltaned with the witchiest of them all.

That might even be true. Though it’s certainly not the whole truth.

I wonder what he can read in me. I can still see his past, cluttering up the air around us like a kaleidoscope of the lives he’s led, but I don’t have that kind of history. And anyway, he’s powerful, but he’s not a Diviner...

I’m pretty sure I’m just telling myself what I want to hear at this point.

“You’ll need to work on your translating skills,” Nicholas tells me in that annoyingly unruffled way of his. “There are no newts involved.”

He starts toward the stairs, apparently certain that I’ll follow him. I want to turn around and leave, just to make a point. But I want this more, whatever this is. A Beltane in a white dress like all the snatches of his misspent past I can see before me. Like that vision of me who’s been here before, inhabiting this moment completely.

Nicholas never looks back to see if I’m following him. He leads me up the winding staircase, up and up. As I climb up behind him, one flight after the next, I think he really has a thing for stairs. But then I start to consider the fact he hasn’t corrected any of my other assumptions about the ritual. Like walking through fire, for example.

I can’t say I find that appealing in general, much less after all the metaphoric burning I’ve been doing lately. My repeatedly scorched hand flexes of its own accord.

There’s no need to fear burning, he says, directly inside me, in case I want to keep pretending I’m anything but one more book the world’s greatest Praeceptor can read at will. You should only fear those who wish to see you burn.

“I’m pretty sure they’re the ones who fear me,” I retort. Because it’s true. The Joywood keep proving it.

Nicholas stops then, turning to me as I trudge up the last couple of steps and see that we’re actually at the top of the stairs, at last. But I don’t celebrate that as much as I should, because there’s something like approval in his eyes. I wish I didn’t want to see it there. I wish I didn’t feel, shamefully, as if I need this man’s approval.

But here we are. Daddy issues for the win.

At least Nicholas is hot.

He moves to open the door just there where the roof pitches, then motions for me to step through it and into the thick Beltane midnight. We’re high up on the top of his magical mansion, and I hesitate in the doorway, aware of the wind against my face, this far up. I can see St. Cyprian down below me, a ribbon of light, and the rivers like dark black arteries beneath the moon. And tonight, everywhere, I see the dance of bonfires from Beltane celebrations large and small.

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