Warlock 4 - Preview Chapters

“All right, let’s take a seat and get started — you can call me Magistra Blackwood.”

“I am not calling you … whatever the fuck that is,” Morgan told Cassandra.

“It’s like professor, teacher, or something,” I whispered to her.

Morgan raised an eyebrow. “I could have come up with ‘or something’ myself.”

“Quiet down,” Cassandra said, “and take your seats.”

“Humor her,” I whispered to Morgan, sitting opposite Cassandra at the dining table.

The girls had decided that hiring a tutor when we already had so many witches in the house — including Mel and Felicity — didn’t make sense and they’d just go ahead and teach us themselves.

The blonde witch had gone all-out for our first tutoring session. I don’t know if she’d been deliberately going for sexy teacher, but she’d certainly achieved it — tight, black skirt ending at mid-thigh, stockings, crisp, white shirt unbuttoned just a little too far, and the remaining buttons looking like they’d pop any minute — her breasts really had gotten larger. I decided the black glasses seeming to underline the bit of a bun her hair was in made it most likely to be a deliberate choice.

I admired the way the tight skirt showed every undulation of her buttocks as she turned to write “Magistra Blackwood” on the whiteboard propped on the dining room’s sideboard.

“You look very nice today, Magistra Blackwood,” I told her, sitting up straight.

That the tutoring sessions were going to happen was a given. Even Morgan admitted she’d rather go into her first year at Willowmere being a little less clueless than I had — and everybody, including me, agreed I should be a little less clueless than I was.

If the girls wanted to make it more interesting, that was fine with me.

Cassandra nodded at me. “Thank you, Magellus Blackwood.”

Morgan shook her head, rubbing her temples.

“Now,” Cassandra went on, “allow me to introduce the rest of the faculty for this summer session —” Sam, Rachel, and Priscilla came in to flank Cassandra. “— Magistra Blackwood, Magistra Blackwood, and … Magistra probably-should-just-get-on-with-it-but-she’s-getting-greedy-about-dates-Blackwood. For brevity, you may refer to her as Magistra Blackwood.”

Yes, the other girls were similarly dressed.

“You guys are sick,” Morgan muttered. “Just … sick.”

“Hey,” I whispered. “If we have to be stuck in summer witch-school, we should at least have fun with —”

“Quiet!” Rachel yelled, smacking a ruler down on the dining table with an echoing crack!

Morgan and I both jumped.

“Please watch the finish, dear,” Mel called from the kitchen. “I’ve had that table a very long time.”

“Sorry, Melaina!” Rachel called, then glared at Morgan and me. “Just look what you made me do.”

“This is your idea of fun?” Morgan whispered.

*

Being tutored by the girls really wasn’t that bad.

Rachel never used her ruler on us — or anyone, I was guessing to Sam’s disappointment. At least Sam couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off the thing.

I was really going to have to do something about the two of them soon.

Probably after we got back from the trip, but before the Conclave. A date night with Sam fell in that time, which would be a good opportunity.

“So,” Sam said, adjusting her clear-lensed glasses down her nose and peering at the leather-bound book she was taking from Rachel … who had just finished telling us about the witch Families beginning to form in the mid-1700s. “That brings us to seventeen eighty-eight and the founding of Willowmere.”

“Somewhat earlier than that, dear,” Mel called from the kitchen.

“But the book says — um, yeah.”

Mel’s eyebrow was arched as she brought us a tray of milk and cookies.

It was snack time.

I liked snack time.

“The book’s not particularly wrong,” Mel went on. “Seventeen eighty-eight was the official founding, I suppose, when the charter was bound to the land, but Willowmere as an idea had existed for years. I bought the land in …” She pursed her lips. “Seventeen forty-nine.” She cocked her head at the girls. “And you girls have no idea how lucky you are these days. Having to put on the glamour of a fat old man simply to buy a bit of land was always terribly annoying.”

Morgan’s eyes lit up and she pointed at Cassandra.

“Hah! I knew it was ‘on’ not ‘up!’”

Cassandra rolled her eyes while Rachel narrowed hers and raised her ruler.

“Pay attention!”

Morgan sighed. “Sorry, Magistra Blackwood.”

Rachel nodded. “Better. Please, go on, Magistra Blackwood.”

Mel sighed. “In any case, that’s when Felicity had recovered from her ordeal enough to concentrate on learning all the things one should about being a witch. It was also around the time that I was able to pay attention to much other than caring for her and I found, in looking for a place for the two of us, that a number of young witches were similarly lacking a place.

“Some were displaced by other Trials — those were still happening here and there in Europe — others were newly arrived from Europe for other reasons. There was war again there, not to mention famine in Ireland, the Jacobites drove some out of Scotland, and more. I gathered some few of those together and we went to what became Willowmere.”

She nodded to Rachel.

“In between the two events, I traveled to a Winthrop coven in Massachusetts and the Veil began forming. That made Willowmere a bit more secure, as well, since the mundanes were less likely to jump immediately to witches to explain us.”

“Is that the reason for the name?” I asked. “To hide it better?”

I’d been curious about that since last year, but … there was a lot I’d been curious about over the last year, so I was still catching up. While the witches referred to it simply as Willowmere or Willowmere College, the sign at the head of the driveway read Willowmere Institute for Advanced Cultural Studies.

Mel shook her head. “To the mundanes, Willowmere has never been a college of any sort. At first, that was due to, well, women weren’t generally admitted to college or university at the time, so an entire campus of witches in the wilds of the New World would seem quite odd. We began as a sanitarium — Willowmere Springs Restorative Home for Young Ladies.” Mel smiled. “Given it began as only myself and a few dozen young witches, I did often wish we truly were simply a place to recover from the vapors for a time. A feeling shared, I’m sure, by your other instructors to this day.”

Cassandra nodded. “If it was anything like dealing with these two, I know what you mean.”

“Keep digging, Elsa.”

Rachel narrowed her eyes and tapped her ruler in her palm.

Morgan sighed. “So it’s not a college?”

She sounded disappointed — Morgan had dreamed of going to college ever since I’d met her, even though she knew it was unlikely.

“Not in the mundane-sense,” Mel said. “It’s not as though we offer degrees in law or business or such things, and for those witches who interact with the mundanes in those realms, the mundane institutions are better suited for the paperwork involved.” She shook her head. “No, calling it a college publicly would bring us regulations and oversight we prefer not to deal with. A non-profit ‘institute’ can hide any number of things, you’ll find.”

I scribbled a couple notes — I was pretty sure this wouldn’t be on the quiz, but didn’t want to take the chance.

“So when was that?” I asked. “The Veil?”

The girls looked at me.

I spread my hands.

“Nobody ever told me the year,” I said.

“Seventeen seventy-six,” Mel said, then must have understood the look on my face, because she shook her head rapidly. “No, no, I doubt very much the Veil had any effect on the mundane events of that year. Those fellows had no help from witches — we were far too busy with other matters. Though I’d have brought them a warning or two from Athens if I’d thought they might listen.”

Mel poured herself a glass of milk and dunked in a brownie-chunk, double-fudge, chewing thoughtfully.

That seemed like a good idea, so I grabbed one for myself. The brownie chunks were chewy, the edges crispy, and the center gooey — I had no complaints.

“It took a few years after the Veil formed before the covens felt they’d truly been forgotten by the mundanes and grew confident enough to reach out and communicate beyond their own extended families, but everyone desired, needed, better connections, which made the idea of Willowmere even more desirable. I had the thought to model Willowmere on the more elite English boarding schools, someplace where … Samantha?”

Sam was staring eagerly at Mel, eyes wide.

Mel’s eyebrow went up again. “I believe we’re thinking of English boarding schools in two very different ways, dear.”

Sam’s shoulders slumped.

Mel’s lip twitched. “At least for purposes of this conversation.”

She shrugged.

“Enough of the girls were interested in staying on to teach — well, girls … we’d been together near forty years in some cases. But we did have a good start on most subjects, as we’d spent those forty years with me passing on as much as I could to them. First a few covens, then more, thought it was a good idea — it let the young witches from all over meet each other, as well as the young warlocks.”

“What happened with the warlocks?” I asked.

“Sympsychophonos,” Mel said. “One of the results of closer communication was the discovery that far more witches were disappearing than anyone thought might be the case — both in the new United States and back in Europe. The response was … overzealous.” She sighed. “Most of the warlocks committing the killings were born to the Outcasts — there were fewer means of communication for them to find each other in those days, so identifying who went missing and who might be responsible was quite difficult, especially if the warlock kept on the move.”

Mel shook her head, face sad.

“I’m afraid most witches overreacted rather badly to discovering that. They not only began attributing every witch’s disappearance or death to a rogue warlock, which started blinding them to the Patriarchy’s actions, but it bolstered those who were already of the opinion that covens should be led by a single high priestess, and not by a warlock at all, beginning the isolation warlocks live in today.”

“Maybe the six warlocks coming to Willowmere next year will help change that?” I suggested.

“Both Evelina and I rather hope so,” Mel said. “Those young men will be from Independent Families — they’ve always been less restrictive, since they tend to be smaller and have more interactions with each other rather than having everything done within their own Family.”

“Did you teach then, too?” Morgan asked.

Mel shook her head. “Not the new students — I spent my time supporting the original faculty and left the administration and teaching to them — there were times I thought I was teaching something to the Magistra only the day before she stood in front of her class to teach it to her students. Also, while I could recognize the benefits Willowmere brought, I suppose I’d become used to the solitude I’d experienced while searching after the Death, then with Felicity. I wonder sometimes, what might have gone differently if I’d remained more involved.”

Cassandra’s phone alarm beeped, signaling the end of History You Should Just Know 101 and the start of Veil Etiquette for Mundanes — An Introduction.

“Five minute break,” Cassandra announced. “Please thank our visiting lecturer, Magistra Blackwood.”

“Thank you, Magistra Blackwood,” Morgan and I echoed.

“You’re welcome, dears.” Mel took the snack-time tray back to the kitchen. “Lunch will be in ninety minutes or so.”

All of us perked up at the reminder — Friday was Pizza Day and Mel had somehow elevated rectangle pizza so that it was both nostalgic and very nearly a fine dining experience.

Yes, we had plastic trays.

Honestly, I think if we weren’t so crowded for space, the girls might have set up a classroom, complete with desks, for this.

Morgan and I really were learning a lot, though. Basic stuff that all the witches learned in childhood, yeah, but it was all new to us and gave context to things I’d learned at Willowmere but didn’t really grasp the whole picture.

“Right,” Cassandra said, rubbing her hands together. “So, since you’re insisting on trying to talk to the Fieldings tomorrow, today’s class will be on the kind of power games Family Heads play.”