“Thank you, fuck. It’s been a nightmare. Back-to-back classes all day and a new shipment of stuff from the Traog Deserts that have to be catalogued and then someone’s great aunt died and they decided to just dump all their shit on our doorstep so we had to sort it out. There was a bunch of enchanted jewellery in there. Can youbelievethat? Despicable. Anyone could have picked it up.”
“Ah, so that’s why Kroy had a batch of cool new shit tonight. Got myself a wicked new shirt.”
“Did you stop by there on the way here?” Willan asks, rushing up the stairs.
“Yeah, he always lets me know when he’s got new stuff in. I’ll probably go back there after here and get it all set up in the system for him.”
Willan stops mid-step, then pivots carefully to look at me. He’s already taller than me so he looms over me in the narrow stairwell.
“Well, now I feel like an asshole. I invited you around to hang out and now you’ve landed yourself a third job.” He hesitates,his head cocking to the side. “This is not the glamorous life I envisioned for you.”
My laugh surprises me as much as it does him.
“Yeah, well, I’ve always been a hard worker. It’s just that my hard work back in the day used to just be petty crime and general mayhem. I tried the glamorous life when I was living with Laurence. It’s kinda boring.”
Shrewd eyes peer right through me.
“Yeah, I can see that for you.” He turns abruptly, which is impressive with the narrow depth of the stairs. “Come on. Sooner we get started, sooner we finish and we can do something fun.”
He races ahead of me in quick, efficient steps that have me hurrying to catch up to him.
“I picked up some blood earlier today. It’s in the fridge in there. Help yourself, okay? I asked Finn what type you like and it should be the same as what you and Kai have in the fridge at home.” At the top of the stairs he waves his hand towards a door with ‘STAFF ONLY’ printed in bold, silver letters. A wind brushes past and the door pops open with a soft click, revealing a small kitchen.
“You didn’t have to do that.” The kind gesture hits somewhere between my sternum and my guts. “But thank you.”
Willan brushes me off just as easily as he opened the door, striding ahead to the door labelled‘Classroom 1’ in the same silver scrolly text. His long oqic flutters around his thighs with his steps. There’s no embroidery on his oqic tonight, but a silver broach in the shape of a spider pins the double lapel to his right shoulder.
Instinctively, Willan moves behind the big wooden desk at the head of the room. Technically, Willan isn’t a teacher, more of a tutor or instructor, but he has the vibes down pat. I mean, if his braids weren’t giving away his frazzled state. Most people don’trealise how important braids are to our clan. We wear them in all different forms from the moment our hair’s long enough to plait, our parents weaving in protective spells or blessings. Not everyone wears theirs as intricately as Willan. There is a definite skill to it, but complexity doesn’t equal strength. It’s about mindfully weaving your intentions.
“Still, I appreciate it.” I look around the classroom. Three long wooden tables are set in a U shape in the centre of the room, with shelves and magical diagrams lining the walls. “So, Teach, what are we doing?”
This time it’s Willan raising an eyebrow at me, pinning me with a mockingly disapproving look. Really inconveniently, the whole naughty teacher thing really does it for me.
“I need all of this.” He waves a hand over the stacks of miscellaneous occult items, then holds up a stack of black velvet bags with The Magnifitestique Mage embroidered on the front. “In these. One of everything.” He crosses his arms and stares me down, looking down his nose at me. The only way it could be more perfect is if he was wearing glasses. “Think you can handle it?”
My laugh is unsteady, because all the limited blood in my body is rushing to my dick, making me feel kind of giddy.
“Yeah, I think I can manage that.”
“Excellent. I’ll be here. Trying to not let my brain rot out my ears.” He drops heavily into his seat and I realise I’m dismissed, so I quickly get to work laying out the bags in a production line.
It’s an easy job, too. And a quiet one, apart from Willan’s sighing and muttering and the scratching of his pen. Each time I go back to his desk to collect something new to divvy out, I find myself more and more desperate to interrupt the silence, but I don’t want to interrupt his work.
“So, how’d you end up working here?” I find the courage to ask as I walk along depositing crystals on each of the bag packs.
Willan sighs hard before answering.
“I have Egbert to thank for that. He came to visit a few years back. He saw how things were lining up with my brother. Egbert never really agreed with everything that happened. Which kind of makes sense if he’s been in contact with you.” He stops marking as he mentally connects the dots, pen poised in the air, head tipped to the side and ponytail swinging. Thankfully, he moves on so we don’t have to rehash the past again. “Anyway, he offered for me to come and train up under him. I was sort of floating around between things up on the mountain, not sure what I wanted to do with myself. I even considered getting a job in town for a bit, or going to university to become an actual teacher. He told me to come and spend the summer here, and then one of the old instructors left and I picked up the novice class and it just snowballed from there.”
“Sounds like you found your place.”
“Yeah, well, it may not be forever, but it’s good for now.”
Keeping my face down, I peer at Willan through my lashes. “Never would have pegged you as a teacher growing up, but now you’re all grown up, I can really see it.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“I dunno, you just have this way about you. Confident. Kinda bossy. Stern.”
