Gods of Chaos (Red Magic) (13 page)

Her eyes bored into me. “That doesn’t matter. Did you not listen to my warning?”

The strain of the past months and the continued interference of the gods finally caught up to me, and I snapped. “I don’t care what you’re here to warn me about! I didn’t ask for your help, and I’m sick of the gods using me as a pawn in their stupid games. I want you to leave. Now.”

I opened the door, but Freya didn’t move. She kept staring at me, and when I saw pity on her face, I looked away.

“You do not understand. I do not know if you will ever understand. But not all gods want to use you for their own gains.”

I forced myself to meet her eyes. “How would I know that?”

“You will have to trust someone, Darlena.”

I shook my head. “Not tonight.”

Freya rose smoothly, gliding toward the door. “Then I hope that when you do decide to give your trust, you choose wisely. I fear that you may be the undoing of the world.”

Her words echoed Loki’s, and I stared at her, numb. Freya nodded once to me, her eyes stony, and then slipped into the hall. The door swung closed behind her.

The next morning, I woke up early. Even though I hadn’t tried Izzy’s trick with bread and honey yet, I felt restored, and for the first time since I left the States, my head didn’t feel fuzzy.

I ordered room service and ate a big breakfast, lounging around in my pajamas and sipping my coffee. Since I didn’t have anything better to do, I decided to check my email again. There was a response from Mom, which I’d been expecting, and also an email from Justin. Seeing his name in my inbox gave me tingles, but another email caught my eye before I could read what Justin had sent.

The sender was someone named “Dr. T. Farren,” and the subject made me pause: “RE: Isadora.”

I hesitated for a moment, but then I clicked on the email. My palms were sweaty by the time I was done reading, and my heart had started racing. Dr. Farren the director of Izzy’s school, and she’d emailed me to discuss some “concerns” she had regarding my “relationship” with Izzy. She wanted to meet me in person this morning to discuss the “safety” of her students. How the woman even knew about me was a mystery. I’d only met Izzy for the first time yesterday, but evidently my dangerous Red reputation was all the woman needed to know.

Glowering at the computer, I typed the name of Izzy’s school into a search engine. Although no magical school would put full information up on the Internet where Nons could find it, I was pretty good at reading between the lines, and I needed some information before I replied to Dr. Farren’s pushy letter.

Izzy’s school, like Trinity, hid behind a veneer of religious language: Lady on the Lake was an exclusive girls’ preparatory academy where values and faith were taught side by side with the core subjects. I chuckled at that. Parents probably saw that line and got excited, envisioning science labs and literature classes, but I knew what the core subjects of a Witchcraft school were. I’d have to ask Izzy if her school offered divination; that was an elective at Trinity, but I’d never gotten the chance to take it. If they offered divination, it might explain why Dr. Farren knew about me so fast.

Without bothering to reply to the email, I bundled up and walked to Lady on the Lake to meet with the director. At least she was willing to meet me, I thought, as I glanced nervously up at the wrought-iron gates separating the school from the streets of Edinburgh. From the tone of her email, she might have rather just come after me in the night to boot me out of Scotland, but there was no way I was going to let her or her school intimidate me.

There was a pedestrian gate beside the towering gate, and it was unlocked. The fence reminded me of Trinity, and I faltered for a beat, feeling homesickness and anger wash over me. If I hadn’t been kicked out of Trinity for declaring Red, who knows how much more I could have learned. When I was able to move again, my footsteps crunched across the frozen brown lawn; even though Edinburgh was far to the north, snow seemed an uncommon occurrence. In that way, I mused, it shared something in common with North Carolina. As I walked, I wondered fleetingly about the coming ice storm Justin had mentioned; maybe I would try to call home later in the day, just to check on everyone. I hadn’t had a chance to read the emails he and Mom had sent, and I felt disconnected from them after so much time.

Lost in thought, I looked up and realized that I was standing in the foyer of the school building. Where Trinity felt like it wanted to be an old-world academy, Lady on the Lake had no pretensions: it simply was. The sweeping hallway around me reminded me of illustrations of cathedrals that I’d studied in my history class, and the black and white checkered floor beneath my feet had a shine to it that could only mean it was real marble. This school made Trinity look like a cheap imitation.

My boots squeaked on the glistening floor, echoing in the empty hall, and I paused, suddenly nervous. What if Dr. Farren had only asked to meet me to hand me over to Marcus for further questioning, or worse, to Hecate?

“You’ll have to trust somebody sometime,” I muttered to myself, recalling my visitation from Freya.
I might as well start now
. I couldn’t do this on my own, and I sure wasn’t ready to trust the gods.

A plain wooden door opened to my left, and a severe woman in a gray tweed suit stepped into the hall. Her heels clicked on the floor, and her steely hair was pulled away from her caramel skin in a perfect bun. I felt like a small child standing there in my ratty jeans and coat, and I jumped when she spoke.

“You must be Darlena. I’ve been expecting you. Come.” She had a faint accent, but I couldn’t place it. She turned sharply and I followed her through the doorway, not sure what to expect. Dr. Farren hardly looked like the kind of person who would run an eclectic, open-minded magical school; she looked more like the kind of principal who kept a paddle over her desk. Maybe I’d made a mistake in coming there.

Her office was a surprise: instead of a desk, she had floor pillows stacked at odd angles on a woven grass rug. She saw my expression and chuckled.

“The office will change to suit my needs at any given time. Today, we’re just having a casual meeting, are we not?”

I nodded uncertainly, looking around. A tray sat on the floor, holding two mismatched porcelain cups, a silver kettle, and sugar. Dr. Farren sank gracefully to the floor, folding her knees beneath her, and tossed a red pillow to me. Not sure what else to do, I joined her, sitting across the tea service from the strange woman.

“Would you like tea?” She held out a small wooden box, and when I opened it, I was assaulted by a variety of smells. I grabbed a tea bag at random and set it in the cup she offered. She nodded and made her own selection, pouring steaming water out of the kettle with concentration.

Finally, she sat back. “Now it steeps, and we can speak. Why are you here?”

Her bluntness was surprising, after the polite tea exchange, but I realized that everything about this woman was going to surprise me. “I’m here to find help.”

She nodded. “I had the sense that you were not here to do harm. But why contact Isadora?”

I shrugged, wondering how much she knew. “I thought she might be able to help me with a magical problem.”

“Such as?”

I paused to stir sugar into my tea. “She knows someone I need to talk to, and he won’t talk to me on his own.”

Dr. Farren’s jaw stiffened. “So you are using the girl to gain access to her brother.”

When she put it like that, I sounded awful. I took a sip of tea and winced as it burned the roof of my mouth, and I hurried to set the cup down. “Yes. No. I don’t know. It’s not like that.”

“You had better decide which truth you want to tell me, Darlena Agara, for I am fast losing patience with you.”

“I’m a Red Witch.”

The woman stared at me impassively. “So I gathered, if you seek help from Isadora’s brother.”

I gaped at her. “Look, how do you know so much about me? What did Izzy tell you?”

“She told me nothing. It was my patron who warned me about you. I want to know exactly what you’re doing here, and what you want with my students. If you lie to me, I will know it.”

I studied her face, and after a moment, I nodded. “I practice Red magic.”

“You told me that already.”

“I know. But that’s why I’m here: I don’t want to be the next Red Witch to die.”

Her gaze was sharp, and I fought the urge to squirm when she looked at me. “Why would such a thing be your fate?”

My hands were shaking as I reached for the tea. “I’ve made a powerful enemy. I want to use Red magic to bring balance of chaos, and Hec—someone—doesn’t like that.”

Dr. Farren stared at me levelly. I had to admire the woman; I’d just dropped a lot of shit into her lap, and she didn’t even flinch. “Why would the goddess you speak of want to stand in the way of balance? She is the keeper of the crossroads, the patron of travelers. Surely there is nothing that represents balance more than choice and movement?” Her eyebrows arched as she spoke, her disbelief obvious.

I was surprised that my issues with Hecate didn’t faze her, but I tried not to show it. “I don’t know. I just know that Hecate has tried to kill me before, and failed.”

“The Queen of Witches does not fail, Darlena.”

I paused, sipping my tea. I eyed her critically. “Then how do you explain what’s happened to me?”

Dr. Farren leaned back against a gold cushion, stirring her tea with a faraway expression. “I am not sure. My patron told me a bit about you, and I have learned more by meeting you. But whatever the whole truth, it is clear that you are a Witch of some consequence.”

I spilled tea onto my lap. “What makes you say that?”

She laughed. “Look at those who have found an interest in you! For that matter, look at the magic you practice: there are only ever three Reds in the world, and weak Witches never hold the post.”

“But if I’m so powerful, why can’t I seem to make anything work?”

“What is it you feel you cannot do?”

Frustrated, I pulled my long hair into my fist and started twisting it. “I can’t work against the Queen alone! That’s why I came here; if another Red Witch stands with me, we won’t be vulnerable. Alone, I’m an easy target. I need to win, I need to beat the Queen, or more people will die.”

“Power isn’t about always winning. It’s about wise use, weighing the costs and values of action before acting.”

“I don’t know enough about Red magic to do that.” It was hard to admit that to her, but it was the truth.

Her eyes bored into me again. “You know a great deal more than you think.”

I didn’t know what she meant. It was clear that I knew nothing; every time I used Red magic, it ended with disaster. The room fell silent as I thought back on all the destruction I’d caused. I fiddled with my tea bag. It split, the leaves pooling quickly in the bottom of my cup. “Dang it!”

The director smiled slightly. “Give it here.”

I looked at her. “What are you going to do?”

“Watch. Maybe learn.”

I handed her my cup with the clump of tea in the bottom, and she cupped it with both hands, her long fingers encircling it. Her gray head bent over the tea, her eyes staring intently into the bottom of the cup. I watched, fascinated.

“I didn’t know tea reading was still considered a magical art.”