Chapter Three: The Capture of Natalie Bryce
After my graduation from St. Circe's, I was remanded to the care of Rowan Bryce, the primary signatory on my student contract. The school had to satisfy the contract, or else the signers (co-Headmistresses Lily and Sauvage) would have a magical obligation to Bryce, which he could force them (magically) to obey. And I didn't want Lily magically indebted to the Bryce men… Sauvage, I'd have had less of a problem with, but even she probably didn't deserve that shitstorm of concentrated malice. And I (who had amended the contract with my own blood) would have been on the hook for about half. But my understanding is that half of a powerful blood pact is not something to fuck around with, and Rowan was a good enough warlock without handing him a ten-stroke handicap. So I'd fooled him into thinking I was helpless, and he'd taken me into his home to use and abuse as his property - not so different from what he'd done with his cousin, Elizabeth, though I imagine he'd have been even less soft-hearted with me.
I spent less than a day at his estate, though. After he tried to offer my sexual services to a man named George Singer, a warlock of modest power who Rowan owed favors to, I had poor rapey George cut his manhood off with a letter opener. Successfully, from what I hear, though he made a partial recovery thanks to magic (sad face). Then I escaped to Lily's using the ring she'd given me. I stayed there a few days, though I couldn't stay for long - Lily was still on thin ice after the stunt Simone and I pulled at the winter festival, and it wouldn't do for her to hide a witch wanted by one of the most powerful warlocks in the country - and a warlock whose father happened to be on the St. Circe's Board of Directors.
"You should stay longer," Lily told me. "You aren't ready yet."
She was absolutely right but, headstrong as ever, I shook my head. "I'm as ready as I'm going to be. I'm going out there and I'm going to make Rowan Bryce pay for what he did to Amanda and me… I'm taking Seven More Summonings." This was one of the books of 'forbidden knowledge' I'd acquired. I'd found it in a rubbish pile in room A011 in the administration building's basement, actually, thanks to a helpful brownie that Simone had summoned.
"If they find that, we'll all be in trouble. I'd rather you kept that here…"
I huffed. "Fine. Then I'll be coming back on the weekends to study it…"
"And any other time you feel unsafe." Lily kissed my forehead - Lily, who'd once relished in punishing me as a rapist deserving of comeuppance, was my 'Mother Witch'. She mothered me as much as my real mother ever had. She'd also convinced herself that Simone and I were the realization of a prophecy foretelling the end of the 'Gangling Men', who somehow held the world of witches and warlocks beneath their pale and boney thumbs. "Promise me you'll come right away."
"Yes, mother," I said with a roll of my emerald-green eyes.
I ended up stopping by to study from the book a few times a week and laid out rituals to summon whatever struck my fancy out in the garden. Technically, I was supposed swap the book with Simone on a regular basis, but since she could stop by Lily's at pretty much a moment's notice, she wasn't too annoyed about having to share it that way - sometimes, we stopped by at the same time, and we'd just lay next to one another on the big upstairs couch, flipping through pages and whispering to one another our ideas for variations of the rituals we could try. I came by often enough that Lily had no trouble gauging when I stopped showing up because I'd been captured by the Gangling Men.
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As the longtime Headmistress of St. Circe's and a member of the staff long before that, Lily had mad connections. Several generations of witches knew her well, and most who knew her well regarded her fondly. It was no particular problem for her to set me up with a job, especially not when she introduced me as 'the most promising young witch I have ever seen' - full stop, no qualifiers.
She sent the recommendation out and the reply came from Kyra Bradley literally twenty minutes later. She sent it via email, which Lily was still pretty iffy on - as modern as she likes to seem, Lily is over a century old (but only barely, she's likely to emphasize), and magic also does pretty questionable things to electronics. There is a workaround - anything that's been exposed to magic for more than ten or twelve years develops an innate permissivity to it (that is, a loss of resistance), so witches and warlocks these days stockpile the latest electronics (powered off - if you power them on and then do some fancy witchcraft, even if the thing doesn't outright break, it'll never work quite right) and then bust them out to use a dozen or so years later. Somewhere, deep in one of the sanctuaries of the Sisterhood of the Starry Night, there's a stockpile of 1st generation iPhones just waiting to be unboxed. For her desktop computer, Lily had an old Pentium 4 running Linux that could just about manage three browser tabs. She was very proud about having reset the password herself.
"Should I say something about your computer skills?" she'd asked me. I told her I was sure my witchcraft skills would be praise enough.
I got a job at SyphoPharm almost immediately. Kyra Bradley had graduated from St. Circe's perhaps a dozen years ago and proceeded to get some additional schooling in biochemistry. She founded a pharmaceutical company to make use of both skills, basically coming up with travel-sized potions that masqueraded as medicine and could even pass some first- and second-level analysis by 'regular' scientists. Anything more complicated than that was likely to both turn up irregularities or turn their equipment to slag (or both). A few witches and warlocks had tried something similar in previous decades, but they had problems with potion half-lives - after a few days, even the best potions start to lose serious juice. Kyra had the bright idea to leave the last step of the potion-making undone and have that bit get done by the saliva, stomach acid, or intestinal microbiota (depending on the potion), and it worked pretty well.
"Lily says you're good. How familiar are you with potions?" she asked me on my first day. Kyra was all-business all the time.
"I'm very good for a beginner or shit for a pro."
"You're teachable, then," she nodded and then dropped all 1374 pages of 'Modern Alchemy' on her desk. "Read this by next Wednesday. You'll have to start entry level like everybody else - eighty thousand firm and we'll see where you are after a year. Will that work?"
"Thank you!" I tried to hug her, but she held me back and shook my hand. A good witch and a good person, but not especially touchy-feely.
My time at SyphoPharm, brief though it was, turned out to be a boon. I'd been learning magic for all of about eight months at that point, and so my education in it was uneven. Even the most talented witch cannot become good at many things, let alone everything, in eight months. And, despite potions being one of the very first things I'd done, magically speaking, they were among my weakest areas of magical study. So I got down to studying Agrippa Clay's (the cousin of St. Circe's own Dr. Clay) Modern Alchemy and went for long walks through the Sacramento suburbs picking up reagents for potions and occasionally doing a summoning to keep up the practice - a different summoning at a different place each time, of course, to keep things safe.
People constantly told me to be safe, usually while sort-of hitting on me. Plenty of thirty year-old dudes think it's a-ok to hit on a sixteen year-old as long as she looks hot enough… which might be hypocritical for me to complain about, but when you're physically actually-sixteen and some significant part of your identity has been reshaped my magic to match the age, it's not creepy or gross to do things with 'other' teenagers… or so Amanda Bryce convinced me whenever I openly worried about my relationship with Cassie, Magnus, and Liam. In any case, I looked like a pretty teenager wandering through Sacramento by herself, and lots of guys tried to play 'concerned citizen' with me.
"It's dangerous walking alone at evening," they might say. "Want me to walk you home?"
"No, I'm good," I'd reply - and I was. After Kyra Bradley and two or three of her senior people, I was probably the most dangerous thing in the whole valley.
The closest I got to actual trouble was getting pulled aside by a police officer on my way to the gym - I did weights and yoga three times a week and gymnastics three times a week to keep up my skills. I could magic myself taller, stronger, whatever I wanted, but real changes to your true body reflect in your magic even more so than potion effects (which, since they affect your physical physiology, can have real bodily effects, but no 'momentum' in the way that natural body changes do). I got pulled aside on my way to yoga and accused of being truant from school. I had to walk with the officer back to my car and show her my company ID to convince her I was gainfully employed at SyphoPharm and not a high school kid with a fake ID playing hookie - the dangers of looking young.
Toward the end of June, as I got settled into my job and grew more comfortable with my surroundings, I started thinking seriously about revenge against the Bryce men. Our Mistress's Creed stated:
Remember well the Creed of the Mistress, for it is the Writ of your Order, and She shall not be defied:
1) Do as thou wilt; judge and be judged. That is the first rule.
2) Do not subvert Freewill; all offerings must be freely given.
3) The strong shall dominate the weak; do so in kindness, for one day you shall be the weak.
4) Do not teach our ways to the uninitiated; our ways are not their ways.
5) Respect sanctuary when offered, even from the Enemy.
The only one of those rules I'd ever broken knowingly was #4, when I taught Simone a bunch of basic stuff before she was initiated into the coven. But the Bryce men were guilty of violating 2 and 3 at the very least, important fucking rules, and I intended to shove a heaping dose of Rule 1 down their throats… admittedly, they weren't bound to the creed. Whatever the big coven for warlocks was, they probably had some equivalent but subtly different ruleset to follow. But my creed said I could do whatever I wanted to them, provided I followed rules 2-5.
But the Bryces had a lot of power. At least a dozen lesser warlocks acted as their tributaries and they had quite a few witches in their pockets, too (though those were mostly, technically, also members of the sisterhood). They were probably worth billions of dollars (you will not find most witches and warlocks on the Forbes list, but many of them should be there). And, in terms of experience and raw magical power, Rowan Bryce gave Lily a run for her money - he was the real deal. I was hopelessly overmatched… and yet I might secure the advantage if I could deduce Rowan Bryce's True Name…
"Let me get this straight," Simone said. "You want to summon… Mistress Starlight… to give you Rowan Bryce's True Name?"
"Almost," I said. That wasn't quite it - I had, on several occasions, caught fleeting glimpses of some deeply intuitive way to, if not detect a witch's True Name, at least come very close. I'd felt it when I figured out Marie von Schurr's witch name (and subsequently turned her into a gorilla for about fifteen seconds, to great effect) and I'd felt it more strongly when I chose my own name from among the Vault of Stars at my naming ceremony on that starry winter night. And, if Mistress Starlight could lead me to that intuition again, I might gain power over my enemies and avenge myself.
Simone flipped to the Starlight Summoning at the very back of Seven More Summonings. She read all three pages of it, her brow adorably knit in concentration. She shook her head. "This doesn't even read like a summoning. It sounds like an interpretive dance with expensive props. One of the ingredients is 'a chorus of voices'. How would you even manage that? A voice recorder?"
"That's a good idea," I said, jotting it down in a note. "I'm going to give it a try… what's the worst that could happen?"
"It's a summoning, Natalie. The worst that could happen is, I dunno, you summon the devil?"
"You don't even believe in the devil," I said.
"Something horrible, then. Shit, I mean… half the things in Seven Summonings are creepy as hell, and none of them called for a chorus of voices or…" she flipped the page. "Or essence of despair?"
"Tears, obviously," I said. "I have a good cry once or twice a week… no problem, right?"
On a side-note, I definitely had some unresolved issues to work through. If you add my name to the list of witches who have some degree of emotional trauma to work through, I think you'll have pretty much all of us. My sisters are powerful, beautiful, and brilliant, but most of them went through some rough times to get there. I copied the ingredients for the starlight summoning down. The symbology, as complex as it was, would have taken weeks to transcribe (this is why you can't just go around copying magic books - magical symbols don't exist in two dimensions, so you can't simply scribble them onto an envelope with a Bic pen). But the ingredients were as straightforward as Grandma Warner's pecan pie recipe - a chorus of voices, the essence of despair, and a clear voice of hope. Three items, nuanced and open to interpretation, but something that you could scribble onto the back of an envelope with a Bic pen, which is what I did.
"Be careful."
"I always am," I lied. "Shit… I'm going to be late for my personal trainer!"
"Oh! Nat, wait… Cassie wanted me to give this to you!"
It was an invitation to the Summer Formal - each student was allowed to invite a girl or boy of her choosing, and Cassie had chosen me! Not that she got much choice - Liam was already going to be there, and Cassie was only fuckbuddies with Magnus because he was my Boy. Our tetrad was a happy little diamond, with Cassie and Magnus to either side of me and Liam across - I liked him well enough, but we were unlikely to get up to anything X-rated if one of the others wasn't also there.
"And Magnus wanted me to give you this!"
It was an invitation to the same formal. Why they'd given them to Simone instead of just mailing me, I was unsure. Well… in Cassie's case, I think she was worried about her dirty talk not getting past the campus censor.
"Tell them both yes," I said.
"I'm not going to be your little cupid," Simone said.
"Fine… then I guess our friends will just have to wonder why Natalie doesn't love them… all because Simone Clayton couldn't be bothered to give a letter to two people she was already going to see."
She rolled her eyes. "Fine. What should I tell them? Which one?"
"Both! Just give the letters back!" I rummaged through my purse and pulled out some lipstick, my favorite color of lavender-pink, applied a bit too much, and put a great big kiss on top of the wine-red kiss mark on Cassie's invitation (it was like we were kissing through paper, I liked to think) and another on top of the little flower pressing that Magnus had put onto his. Then I took the flower as a memento (so my kiss mark had a little flower-shaped negative space in it - very classy, Natalie!). Then I wrote YES! next to both kiss-marks in purple ink. The once-masculine Martin Warner was, I'm sure, cringing somewhere deep within me. But once you subtracted out the (admittedly numerous) inclinations of a very libidinous teenage girl, I was still very much the person I'd always been underneath.
+++++
After that, I prepared - Foremost, I prepared for the Summer Formal, held on the second to last day of school before St. Circe's two-week summer break (and the last school day after that was basically just getting ready for break). And I prepared for the Starlight Summoning. Essence of despair (tears)? Check. A chorus of voices? A cheap recorder that could do playback and distortion would do the trick. Being electronic, it might not survive the summoning, but it didn't have to. Seven silver tokens? I had at least seven pieces of silver jewelry, right? Actually, I only had five, but I could pick up more on my shopping trip for a gown for the formal.
I went shopping with Naomi Economides, one of the QA girls at SyphoPharm. She was only a hedge witch… 'only' - that's unfair and I shouldn't be elitist like that. Some 'hedge' witches are as magically-talented as the average St. Circe's girl, and Naomi wasn't too far from that. She was an 'informally-schooled' witch with a degree in pharmacology, which made her a good fit for the company.
"Where are we going to find anything in your size?" Naomi asked. She'd had at least a little work done, herself ('work' in the witching community meaning magic rather than plastic surgery). Standing a very elegant 5'7" or so with a patrician face and dark curls, she could have sauntered right off of Persephone's krater.
"What do you mean?" I asked. "Anywhere. We could go to Men's Big & Tall if we wanted to. How about here?"
"You think 'Julie's Boutique' will have a tailor in? It's not exactly high street."
Now… in my normal circles at St. Circe's, 'high street' was usually said with a derogatory sneer. You got your clothes custom-made and custom-fitted or else you were being gauche. That's the kind of girl who gets sent to a $1.1 million a year school (yes, there was a tuition bump in the new year - everywhere experiences tuition bloat). Of course, I wasn't the kind of girl who sneered at off-the-rack fashion- I'd been a girl for less than a year, and I was damned if I was going to start womanhood out as a spoiled princess.
"It doesn't have to be high street," I shrugged. "I've got a good feeling about Julie."
That good feeling was that Julie's Boutique was right over a ley wrinkle (not a very strong one, but there it was), and I could feel little ripples of magic coming off at the intersection. Naomi wasn't as attuned to it as I was, but she felt the ripples by the time we walked into the place. And, if that hadn't given it away, Julie (I assumed) had about five pieces of pentangle jewelry and a bunch of gothic lace expertly sewn onto her dress (not that it looked bad, but I was glad she separated her personal fashion from that of the shop). The shop itself was a bit cramped, a little store-front in a nondescript development a few blocks from McKinley Park, but Julie sure had a lot of stock, everything from 'tastefully' super-shredded jeans up to what looked to be a velvet opera gown.
"Hi, Julie!" I stuck out my hand and we shook - and Julie couldn’t help but see my tattoos, pink and green and violet patterns snaking about my arms… actively snaking about my arms, because they were, in fact magical. I figured going for the witch angle was a good bet to keep her from targeting me as a high schooler (though, in point of fact, I was physically sixteen and shopping for a dress for a very elite high school formal).
"Wow… oh wow," Julie said. "You're, like, a real witch!"
"Aren't you?"
"I mean… sort of." Now Julie couldn't quite bring herself to make eye contact with me. She glanced to Naomi to gauge her witchiness. "I mean I am… but I'm not sure I've got any witch dresses or magical dresses or anything. Mostly, I use it to help speed up the sewing, do mending, and so on."
I got Julie to show me her stock - which, she admitted with a blush, didn't contain anything in my size - very petite, generally slim, and curvy in ways designed (literally) in the exact areas needed to capture lusty gazes. Not a very common body profile. How a witch could get into fashion without knowing a sizing spell was beyond me. It was one of the first things I'd learned, and one of the most straightforward things you could do. Working with inanimate matter was pretty easy compared to things involving living plants or animals, let alone people. I eventually found a green evening gown, two-toned green and festooned with a beautiful floral print that I thought would go well with my tattoos. It still had the JC Penney, Size 10 tag on it, but clearly Julie had made some tasteful alterations, including the leg sash and a front designed to be flattering to a busty gal (like myself).
"I love it!" I said. "How much?"
Julie told me how much. "But it's a size ten," she added.
I handed her my card and waited to sign the receipt until making any changes. It's considered rude, at the very least, to alter another witch's property without permission. At St. Circe's, we had a whole wardrobe to choose from - and it was pretty much common property, so there was no taboo against minor alteration. But you'd never do it for a dress you'd borrowed from a friend, even if you could change it right back. Certainly not without permission. But once the dress was mine, I plucked a fiery orange hair from my head and tied it around the shoulder strap of the dress. Exactly two symbols was all it took to change the dress - it shrank and shifted before our eyes to be an exact fit for me.
"Holy shit!" Naomi said, mouth agape. "Are you fucking serious?"
"As a very fashionable heart attack," I said. "You understand that you cannot let any non-witches see this trick, right?"
Julie's eyes went wide - beautiful, baby-blue eyes that detracted a bit from her 'gothic witch' look. "You'll show me how?"
Of course I would. I'd never show a fashionista that trick and not show her how I'd done it. I'm not a monster. So, of course I showed her how - Julie and Naomi both. She'd never seen anything like it - most of the Sisters of the Starry Night employed at SyphoPharm were none too generous in teaching their tricks to hedge witches. Not even utterly harmless, really easy tricks like clothes resizing. Well… really easy tricks for some people. Teaching Julie took way longer than I'd anticipated. I'd watched Cassie do the trick exactly once, and then I was able to do it as soon as I learned the symbol pair… but not all witches are so quick. Naomi got the hang of it after maybe half an hour, and it took the two of us another hour to finally hammer the technique into poor Julie the almost-witch. Teaching either of them the symbols was hopeless, because both of them insisted on tracing them in only three dimensions (strange but true), but they were able to get pulse patterning. That's the magical equivalent of binary code, way clunkier and more awkward than using a natural language (e.g. like witching symbols), but something that anybody with half a spark for magic can work out, albeit some more easily than others. At least Julie rewarded us for our time.
"I can't believe she gave me a dress!" Naomi gushed afterward.
"She tried to give me like three dresses," I sighed. "Giving you one was the compromise."
"I'm so glad Kyra hired you! I'm buying you a drink! Um… you're over twenty-one, right?"
According to my ID I wasn't, but that didn't mean I couldn't pass whenever I wanted - a little confabulation trick on my ID and some minor alterations to my face and both could pass for mid-twenties. I just had to be mindful - if my phone was turned on when I did anything past very minor tricks, I was likely to brick it, and I didn't want to brick another smartphone with haphazard witchcraft. After 'ritas at Goldbug Café, and now slightly tipsy, I got some inadvisably high and strappy heels and a cream-green clutch to complete my ensemble and, swishing it around, I was ready to drop some jaws at the Summer Formal. Waiting two whole days was going to be excruciating. I completely forgot about the silver jewelry - it wouldn't have mattered, anyway.
Uh… part 2? (Pfft, clearly not paying attention.)