Warlock 4 - Preview Chapter

Chapter

We spent a lazy Tuesday lounging around the living room, taking turns with the console to play games … that is, get annihilated by Felicity.

I thought it was about time we formed a guild or something so we could play with her, rather than competing. We also needed more systems, but there was limited space.

Maybe we’d need a dedicated gaming room with a dozen consoles and PCs. I’d mention that to Cassandra, since she had a list of everything we wanted in housing.

Sam was the one currently being trounced by Felicity and the cat-witch wasn’t even bothering to change her spot between kills, because Sam was just laughing and rushing the position with guns blazing and shouting about luscious buttocks.

Morgan was curled up in one of the chairs, delicately carving at a hunk of wood she’d been working on for several days. It was for practice, not anything in particular — she’d always wanted to work with materials other than the modeling clay she made most things out of, but hadn’t had a chance in the foster home. Personal knives were frowned upon.

Cassandra was curled up with her head on the couch’s arm and her feet in my lap for me to rub, while Priscilla mirrored her on my other side, giving me two sets of feet to massage.

I alternated between them with one hand while I scrolled my phone.

We hadn’t made a decision on the Europe trip yet, since Magistra Cassian was still trying to find out if anyone over there had heard of a baby of Baba Yaga’s line going missing … without letting word of the question get to — well, anyone of Baba Yaga’s line, but especially not Baba Yaga herself.

We’d heard very little concrete, which didn’t look good for us going.

I frowned and tapped an ad with my thumb, a little curious why it kept showing up in my feed. It was interesting, no doubt, but not something I was particularly into —

I blinked as I returned to my feed and saw a new ad.

This one was, at least, pretty sexy and —

I blinked again, thinking, then stared at the TV screen for a minute.

The TV, because that was where Felicity technically “was” to me, since she was playing from her room.

I frowned. I’d been noticing Felicity seemed to be unhappy at times. It was a thing with her ears and sometimes her whiskers that I recognized from our years together. I might not have known she wasn’t just a cat then, but I’d come to recognize when the cat was upset about something.

Usually, these days, that happened when the girls were talking about date-stuff and I’d realized that Felicity and I didn’t spend as much time together, just the two of us, as we used to. Back at the foster home, it had just been me, Morgan, and Felicity — and a lot of times, just me and Felicity, if Morgan was busy with homework or something.

I thought about it some more and realized even though Felicity had been going out with us when we went somewhere as a group, she kind of got lost in the crowd — easy enough when she was using glamour to do exactly that, I suppose, but also there was only so much interaction between any two of a group that large. The only other time we really interacted, other than her sitting in laps, was playing video games … and that mostly consisted of her performing inappropriate animations over my slowly fading corpse.

It would be nice to spend some time with just the two of us.

I looked at my phone again.

It might also be an opportunity to talk to Felicity about showing me her catgirl form again. It was something I kept meaning to talk to her about it and convince her my reaction then wouldn’t happen again … but it was so easy to put stuff like that off when we were so comfortable here at home.

And probably a scarier thing for Felicity to think about now, since there were so many more people here now. People she knew and would see every day if I reacted stupidly again.

I tapped my screen.

Good idea? Bad idea? Could I convince Felicity?

Oh, well, it wasn’t like the tickets were that expensive if she said no.

I thought about it — I guess you could say I plotted — the rest of the day, then pulled Rachel aside on the way in to dinner. Sam paused with us.

“Hey,” I whispered to Rachel, “I need to ask you something.”

The three of us huddled just outside the dining room and I kept an eye on the stairs in case Felicity came down.

“Sure, what?”

“Would you mind if we put off your date-night this weekend? Just for a couple days?”

“It’s our sex night, too,” Rachel said.

“I know,” I said. “And we might miss that, too — I might get home late.”

Rachel frowned. “Okay, I guess?”

“Home?” Sam asked. “You going somewhere without us?”

“I’m thinking of something,” I said. “Not sure if it’ll happen yet, but I wanted to make sure Rachel would be okay with putting off our weekend plans.”

Sam’s eyes widened and she craned her neck to see into the dining room.

“Something special?” she asked. “Who? Priscilla?” Her eyes widened. “Are you going to tell Morgan to just do it already?”

I cleared my throat. “Quiet, okay? I just —”

I heard a door shut upstairs and stopped talking, giving the girls a warning look.

“Fel —”

Sam’s hand clamped over Rachel’s mouth.

“Felicity?” Sam whispered.

“Shush!” I cocked my head, listening, and heard a second door close, so Felicity would be in the bathroom for a few minutes.

“I found something I think she’d like and … I think she’s feeling left out. She kind of looks sad when we’re discussing date nights and stuff. Plus, I miss her.”

“Mmfer?”

Sam took her hand off Rachel’s mouth.

“Miss her? We live together.”

I nodded. “Yeah, but back at the foster home Felicity and I did a lot of stuff together — just the two of us. I miss that. Well, I guess I did stuff and she watched.”

Sam grinned and raised her eyebrows. “What kind of stuff?”

“Nothing you’re thinking of.”

“I bet she peeked.” Sam turned to Rachel. “Do you think she peeked?”

“She didn’t peek,” I said.

“How would you know?”

“I’d … thanks. Thank you for putting that suspicion in my head.”

I was not going to contemplate whether the three-hundred year old cat-witch had ever watched me … do things.

I glanced up the stairs again.

As soon as Rachel had agreed, my mind had started working on the other side — how to get Felicity to agree.

“Okay,” I said, the idea beginning to form. “Here’s what I need you to do.”

*

One thing about living with the girls for so long was that I had many excellent examples of how to manipulate me — many of which were universally applicable.

If I suggested what I had in mind to Felicity, she’d almost certainly decline, because the other girls were always a little jealous of the time they spent with me and Felicity wouldn’t want to interfere with that, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was something we should do.

Peter had once told me to trust the coven bond and, though Felicity wasn’t in the coven or even an initiata, it was such a strong feeling that I couldn’t ignore it.

To be honest, I’d had a similarly strong feeling that I should see what was at the top of the big tree in Mrs. Bradley’s front yard when I was in eighth grade and that … well, spending three Saturdays helping Mrs. Bradley replant the flowers I’d crushed had been the least unpleasant part of the result.

Once we all had plates and had started eating, I nudged Sam with my foot to start things out — the nerves weren’t going to get any better, so might as well go for it.

Sam nudged Rachel with her foot.

“What? Oh! Um, Noah?”

“Yeah?”

Rachel cleared her throat. “I, um, know we have a date Saturday, but, um, there’s this new spellstick documentary that’s dropping and I really want to see it right away so I can discuss it with everybody in the forums … and there’s going to be a watch party channel, so we can all react live and, well, would you mind if I did that instead? You know I really like spellstick and this is a big spellstick … thing.”

I kind of wished Sam was on the schedule for Saturday, because Rachel couldn’t lie worth shit.

“Yeah, sure, that’s okay — I didn’t have anything big planned for us.”

“Thanks, I’m really sorry, but it’s, um, you know, a spellstick thing and I really like — what? Oh!” Rachel looked down at her plate, having been kicked again by Sam. “Thanks.”

I cleared my throat to divert attention from how red Rachel was.

“I kind of was looking forward to getting out of the house for a while, though,” I said, musing. “Hey, Felicity? We haven’t just hung out together for a while, would you like to spend Saturday with me?”

The sound of silverware on plates stilled as Felicity looked up from her plate at me.

The two of us? Alone?

“Sure,” I said, deliberately clinking my fork a little harder than necessary to get the others to get a little more casual about it.

Would not one of the others be better suited to what was your date-night? I believe Cassandra has expressed an interest in more dates before she is too gravid to be comfortable leaving the couch.

“That’s not what I said,” Cassandra protested.

“Was it what you meant?” Morgan asked.

“Look, I — ow!” Cassandra glared at Sam, then sighed. “I have a bunch of Conclave paperwork I have to finish and submit before we leave for Stockholm.”

“There’s Conclave paperwork?” I asked, wondering if Cassandra had made it up or there really was.

“Everything has paperwork.”

I nodded and shared a look with Sam.

See, I knew Felicity wouldn’t agree to go out with me — especially on the official date-night or day — when all the girls were constantly wanting more time, so they all had to be busy. But I also didn’t want her to think she was my last choice, so I asked her first. Now the girls just had to all have reasonable excuses for not going and Felicity could be my first choice without feeling bad. I thought it was pretty clever.

“Sam?” I asked.

Sam shook her head. “Beach volleyball fin — ow!”

“Sorry,” Rachel muttered. “My leg twitched.”

I sighed — if this kept up, the girls were going to have to wear shin guards to dinner.

I looked down the table.

“Priscilla? Morgan?”

“Sorry, I have a video call with my mom,” Priscilla said. “She wants my help with a seating chart for my cousin’s binding-dinner so the other cousins don’t wind up killing each other.”

“Mel was going to show me how to carve onyx this weekend,” Morgan said. “Right, Mel?”

Sometimes the absence of movement draws the attention just as much as movement, which was why I found myself staring at Rachel and Sam, both of whom were frozen in place, eyes wide.

Mel was looking at Morgan, head cocked to one side.

Fuck.

I’d told Rachel and Sam to talk to the others — meaning the girls. Cassandra, Priscilla, and Morgan. But Morgan must have thought “everyone” would include Mel.

There hadn’t been a plan for what excuse each of the girls would give, they were just making shit up … which was, admittedly, a pretty big gap in my planning, but we weren’t doing some vast conspiracy-thing here.

So Morgan had made up something that would make sense and included Mel … but Mel didn’t know what was going on.

I stared at Mel, willing her to get it and play along.

Her eyes narrowed and scanned us, then she looked at Felicity and her face softened.

“Yes, dear,” she said to Morgan. “Onyx is quite difficult and we’ll likely be at it all weekend.”

I sighed, both with relief and a bit of drama — hopefully not too much.

“Oh, well.” I looked down at my plate. “I guess I can find something to do alone.”

The clinking of silverware on plates resumed, if a bit muted and tentative.

If the others are unavailable, I … could join you. If you wish.