“Well, we are human too,” I said. “Aren’t we?”
“I don’t really know what we are,” he muttered.
Chapter Eight
Jenny
What are we?
I thought about that a lot, since I was in bed recovering, and I had a lot of time to think. I knew I wasn’t really a toad or I wouldn’t be wondering what I was, or why I was born with Bernard and would die with Bernard, like every familiar. Why was I tied to this man who called me useless and tried to kill me?
I carried a knot in my gut, all the time, just knowing that Bernard had hurt me. I didn’t want to see him ever again.
Yet, he was always on my mind. I still worried about him. Something inside me was trapped under him and couldn’t get out.
Thanks to Bevan’s potions and poultices, and good food, I felt better every day and soon I was out of bed and offering to help him out.
Being with Bevan was a world away from being near Bernard. I was never tense with him. He patiently showed me how he made different potions and tonics. He helped me learn to identify the unfamiliar herbs that grew in his garden. A familiar should have known all about different herbs, apparently, but Mrs. Franch didn’t keep a garden. I only had dried ones from the market and I mostly used them for cooking and teas, not real magic.
But I didn’t just learn about spells, I learned about Bevan, and I learned what having a crush really felt like—like the greatest joy and total agony at once. I was so happy to be near him, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him even when I tried. I learned that he could whistle, and sleep very soundly while sitting up, so I could have the bed, and that he always walked like gravity didn’t affect him—he would drop into a crouch and then pop up again and climb a tree or a ladder the next minute, somehow existing on more layers of the world’s surface than most people.
I learned that his animal form was a bat.
“An attractive kind of bat,” he added.
I didn’t say that I would probably find him an attractive bat even if he had one of those weird noses and beady little eyes. “I’m a little jealous! I wish I could fly.”
“Maybe you could fly with me if you trust me to hold you in my toes.”
“I don’t think I do.”
“Ah, well. Your loss, then.”
“No one wants to see a splatted toad!”
“I wouldn’t splat you. Do I look like a man who would let something happen to my passenger?”
I smiled and shook my head. “But still…no. I’m afraid of heights.”
He looked like he wanted to touch me, just then.
“Toads are the perfect garden familiars,” he said. “I have a lot to teach you before you go.”
My heart stopped for a second. No, don’t make me go! I didn’t ever want to look desperate, though. “But you will teach me?”
His eyes gave me his real answer. “I feel obligated,” he said.
“I think it might take me a long time to learn.”
He was showing me how to get the gel from the center of an aloe leaf. His hands were quick, and his jaw tightened whenever he was working on something. He had one particular curl of hair that sat over each of his ears, the same on both sides, that I fixed my eyes on sometimes. I always wanted to touch that lock of hair for some reason.
I love him, I thought. I don’t know if I should, but it doesn’t matter. I just do. I love him in a way I’ve never ever loved Bernard. I wish he was my wizard instead.
He was talking to me about the spell, just saying practical words in his everyday tone, and it was so simple and felt so right and I loved every moment of it. He was saying something offhand about Helena. She had saved my life, Helena…but when he mentioned her it spoiled the moment.
“You must really love this witch of yours.”
He paused. “I do love Helena…but she also loves me. She trusts me, but she doesn’t lean on me when she can get things done herself.” He added, “I’m usually alone. I like it that way.”
“I see.”
“Well,” he amended. “I don’t mean…I like being alone all the time. Just that Hel and I don’t really need each other that much. We’re adults.”
“I always thought Bernard needed me,” I said. “But…I’m starting to think it was different than I thought it was. That needing someone…has to go both ways, to some extent. Do you think?”
“Absolutely,” Bevan said without hesitation. “Doesn’t matter if you’re a familiar or a wizard. You can’t just demand that you need someone without giving something in return.”
Bevan let me know, in those simple words, that he would never expect me to return to Bernard. He didn’t see me as a servant, or think I had any duty to him. His words freed me as much as any spell could.
I was swept by a need for this man that I didn’t want to deny. I reached for his hands. I wanted to touch his skin and feel how warm he was. When he took them, I went farther. I put my arms around his waist and embraced him, because I wanted to stay here with him. “I’m scared that I might be forced to go back.”
He moved his hands to my shoulders. “If you are forced back…I’ll come and get you.”
That was when I knew—it wasn’t just me. He felt something too, and he wasn’t just being nice. Warmth flooded my skin down to my soul at his touch. So this is how it feels when someone wants to protect you…
“We can enter into an official apprenticeship so I can teach you how to cast spells. And we’ll make it a blood agreement. But then you have to do as I say for seven years,” he said, trying to look a little more aloof, almost teasing.
I hoped he wasn’t teasing.
I couldn’t imagine Bevan would ever ask me to do anything that I didn’t very much want to do.
“I will!”
He grabbed a knife from the counter and made a thin cut in his palm, then handed it to me. We clasped hands to make a blood oath, and my body felt like a flame, hot and trembling. “You’re my apprentice now,” he said. “I’ll teach you Ethereal magic, and because we have this bond, I’ll be able to find you and have at least some claim to you. If the worst should happen.”
People often marvel at coincidences and strange moments of timing, but there’s a reason they happen. The world is full of patterns, of little winks and tricks and gifts that come from the universe; at least, I think so. This was one of them, but it felt more like an awful trick than a gift.
I suddenly felt Bernard calling me across the worlds, and the call was so strong that it seized up my body and threatened to pull me away from Bevan, no matter how hard I fought. I tried to fight, of course. I started thrashing like I was working against a tide, trying to hang onto Bevan, but the call grew stronger. I heard his furious voice.
Jenny! Jenny, come home to me now!
I screamed, digging my fingers into Bevan’s rolled up shirtsleeves. “I’m being called back!”
“Shit. Shit! Jenny, look at me. You have to resist. We have a bond now so focus on that. Just in the nick of time.”
Our bond was nothing compared to the warlock whose life had always been bound with mine. “You know I can’t refuse his call…Bevan, I’m sorry…I’m sorry…you’re sweet but you’re still just a familiar…,” I sobbed, because right now I did feel like a useless toad. I was just a familiar too. Bevan wasn’t my warlock. He was Helena’s familiar, and we were both helpless in the face of those ties.