Walt tugged on his frothy beard again. “She’s always been right about this, you know. Magic unleashed over there will cause problems. Try not to die. I don’t want to figure out another new house head for Grendel.”
“But when I’m not with her over there—”
“Yes, yes, get the boy settled.” Walt gestured as if he were waving away a bad smell. Then the old witch turned and marched off through the hallway, muttering something about “boils on bottoms” that Sondre was fine not hearing.
16Maggie
“Do you know where the headmaster is?” Maggie asked one of the assorted castle hobs. This one stared out of a tall window with a portrait of several witches in medieval garb. The characters in the stained glass shifted every so often, as if they were restless. All the while, the levitating hob stared into the distance.
“Excuse me?” Maggie tried again.
“Dark days,” the hob muttered. He looked down at her. “Do you like being a witch, Margaret Lynch?”
Maggie paused. It was an odd feeling to be called by her full name, especially with such a loaded question.Do I?She liked parts of it, but there were issues. Her lack of memory, her worry over her son, her sense that the man she was married to was notreallyher spouse…
“It’s better than dying in the accident,” she said bluntly. “Do Ilikeit? Parts of it, but I miss my career. I miss mattering. I miss music. Things here aren’t perfect, but it’s generally good in a lot of ways, too.”
The hob nodded. “I am Norton.”
“Norton,” she echoed. “Are you okay?”
“No. I don’t think I am.” The hob sighed, glancing back out the window. “But Crenshaw will right itself. Order is like that.”
For a moment Maggie wasn’t sure what to say. The hobs were friendly-ish, but they had their own society and enforced a sort of line between themselves and witches. Sometimes, she could believe that there were only a few hobs around, but the hobs seemed to have multiplied today, like a nest of the tiny beings had burst from within the castle walls. They were everywhere.
“Can I help?” she asked carefully, thinking back to reluctant witnesses and trembling victims.
“Are you a rule follower, Margaret Lynch?” The hob seemed to stare into her, seeing things that she couldn’t always conceal as well as she tried. “In your heart of hearts?”
“Not really.”
“Be who you are, then. That’s why you’re a witch.” The hob shook his head. “Break the rules they use to bind you. It’s that or… despair.”
Maggie’s heart twinged. Sometimes, she thought she’d never learn to deal with desperate people, and right now, the hob in front of her was one of many she’d met in her lifebeforeCrenshaw andwithinCrenshaw. She reached out, as if to touch the hob’s arm. Her hand was too big, though, so she extended two fingers and rested them on his arm.
Norton looked back at her. “We only want witches to be happy, safe,here.”
“I don’t like all of it, but I am grateful for it. For Crenshaw. For a safe place to raise my son and… a long life.” Maggie wasn’t lying. One couldn’t lie to a hob or a witch very successfully. “Does that make sense?”
“It does. Grateful is good to hear.” Norton patted her wrist. “Smart witch. You need to help them. The maker and the singer.”
“Thewho?”
“You’ll figure it out, Maggie. Break the rules, and help.” Then he smiled. “You seek the headmasher, no?”
“I do.”
“Walk toward the sick,” Norton said, nodding toward the passage near the staircase to the lower levels where the infirmary was. “He is there now.”
A thread of jealousy threatened to creep up at the thought of Sondre there with the doctor. They had history, and she was gorgeous.He picked me, though. He’s happy with me.
The words she reminded herself with seemed hollow, but there was nothing to do. She could either cope with her moments of jealous possessiveness or she could let them poison their burgeoning romance. She vowed not to become that person, bitter and suspicious, but even as she lectured herself, she walked just a little bit faster.
When she rounded a corner, she saw him. He looked more like a warrior than a scholar, and she was grateful that he was both brawny and brilliant.And all mine.He smiled when he saw her, and that look, that unfiltered joy and hunger, told her everything there was to know. She had no reason to doubt his interest.
She did have reason to doubt his state of mind. He looked like he’d just been through a wringer. Maggie wasn’t expecting to find her husband looking so harried, but she also wasn’t expecting the rush of relief she felt upon finding him. It was as if a tight cord inside her loosened just enough that her lungs could expand the whole way.
Ask the doctor about magical anxiety medicine.
