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  “Balls?” Harris asked.

  “Yes. They originated with the Hapsburgs in Austria.”

  “Yes, they did,” Harris said, clearly uninterested.

  Daisy waved at me. “Hey girl! You are so adorable!”

  “Daisy,” Harris said warningly.

  Daisy weirded me out a little. She was like…friendly? Why?

  “Yeah, adorable. I try,” I said. “I saw that everyone else was going for empress of the universe so I went for ‘crazy lady’.”

  Daisy laughed. “I wish I could pull off something like this. You are too cute for words, you and Mr. Fox over here. How scandalous. Stuart!” she bellowed across the room. “Stuuu. Get over here. Professor Jablonsky in the house!”

  “Oh, hello,” Stuart said, wandering over. “I was—making sure the punch was—I think someone really got in there and spiked it. How are you, Daisy?“

  “Forget about the punch! You want to dance?”

  “Well, sure. Why not? Ignatius, you might want to look at that punch, though.”

  My brow furrowed. “Wait—why is this happening?” I asked no one in particular as gorgeous eighteen-ish year old Daisy wanted to dance with a middle aged man wearing a rust-colored 1970s suit with huge lapels with the widest, polyesteriest tie that had ever been created. He clearly knew how to waltz on a technical level but it was also clear he had no sense of rhythm at all. I dimly remembered Master Blair telling me he was a great dancer.

  “You even brought your familiar to the ball?” Harris asked, interrupting my confusion. “Then again, why am I even asking?” He waved a dismissive hand at me. “We all know the drill with you by now.”

  “And I know the drill with you, too. So we’re all on the same page.”

  The Locke brothers, at least, had the good sense to leave me alone after the demon attack, but I was getting a lot of stares and hearing whispers behind me.

  “Harris—why don’t you enjoy the festivities instead of getting hung up on a girl you don’t actually like? Drusilla West looks like she could use a dance partner,” Master Blair said.

  “All right. I see. If you want to protect her from the truth, Blair.” Harris gave me an icy look and strode off. He did ask Drusilla West to dance, immediately, and a hot spike of annoyance went through me.

  I should have felt reassured that Master Blair was defending me, but I didn’t.

  “No boy invited you to the ball, m’dear?” Master Blair asked.

  “Look—I just want to relax and mind my own business. I’m going to go have some of the spiked punch.”

  Master Blair grimaced. “Soon, I really will need you to start demonstrating your best side. I know you hold Samuel Caruthers’ power and a repeat of the St. Augustine incident isn’t what he had in mind.”

  “Oh, you need me? Well, maybe you should clue in the other professors to actually teach me something and then I wouldn’t need Firian all the time. But Firian also happens to be my best and only friend here. Whatever—I don’t know what to tell any of you. And I’m not your ‘dear’.”

  I went to the refreshments table and poured myself a glass of the punch, from the cut glass punch bowl into a perfect matching glass. As soon as I picked up the glass, my name appeared in gold on the side. No big red cups and Sharpies at a witch ball. Another girl was standing there spreading caviar on a cracker. She gave me a weird look and quickly moved away.

  “I guess the caviar is all ours,” Firian said, as the partygoers formed a wide berth around the refreshments table.

  “Yay,” I said feebly.

  I watched the other girls in the arms of handsome men, swirling around the floor. They knew their place in the world. They were welcome. They weren’t wearing their lost, now Sinistral, mother’s pink party dress and standing out like a quirky Molly Ringwald character wandered into a serious period film. And they got to go home for Christmas too, I’m sure.

  “Clearly, this isn’t getting better,” Firian said. “So you might as well stop caring.”

  “I’m not sure how long I can be tough. Doesn’t it bother you how people treat you? Or does that not affect familiars the same way?”

  “I suppose it does affect me differently,” he said. “All I care about is you. I don’t give a crap about the rest of these people.”

  “Oh.”

  He gave me a crooked smile. “Too weird?” He paused. “If I thought me leaving would make everything fall into place for you, I would leave. Familiars also know when their witch is ready to live without them.”

  “Does that mean you’ll leave me someday?”

  “Only if you’re ever ready,” he said. “If—we’re ever…” He trailed off and it was obvious that he wasn’t hoping for me to be ready.

  I wonder where Alec and Montague are. Not that it matters. But it is odd that I haven’t even seen them…

  Daisy twirled away from Stuart and came over my way. She helped herself to the food. “Man. Crazy, right?”

  I wasn’t sure what part of this was crazy, but it seemed a fair assessment. “So you know Stuart?”

  “Yeah, yeah, we see him at the Midwestern Magical Conference every year. He knows my parents. He’s pretty cool for a seventy-year-old man, right?”

  “Well, if you put it like that, I guess he’s…okay.”

  She grinned. “So…tell me all about it.”

  “School?”

  “Learning warlock magic.”

  Another girl walked up to us, although she still kept a little distance. “Daisy? Are you friends with her?”

  “Yeah we’re friends! C’mere, c’mere. I’m asking her about going to Merlin College.”

  “Uh…I don’t think so… Shouldn’t you be with Harris?”

  “He was dancing with Dru and now I don’t know where he went. Plenty of time for us to get busy later.”

  “Well, we’re all hanging out over there,” the other witch said.

  “Okay, whatever, Kathleen. Blah,” Daisy said, making a shoo-shoo gesture at her.

  “Why are you being nice to me?” I asked, increasingly baffled. “I can’t imagine Harris said anything good about me, and if you haven’t noticed, everyone hates me.”

  “That’s impossible because I don’t hate anyone,” Daisy said. “I can be a catty-ass bitch but only if you deserve it. I don’t hate anyone. Anyway, I’m richer than her.”

  “Fair reasoning,” Firian said.

  “I’m selfish,” Daisy said. “I want to be the most powerful witch. But no one’s letting me learn warlock magic. So here you are, learning fire magic and necromancy, while I’m stuck with the usual girly woo-woo. You’re a threat to me. So naturally I want to be your friend.”

  I finally relaxed. “I’m going to disappoint you, then. I haven’t been learning much of anything.”

  “You haven’t been learning anything? At Merlin College?”

  “I don’t know how much Harris told you…”

  “He doesn’t tell me nearly enough. Real quiet, that one. I heard you set the main hall on fire or something.”

  “Yeah, I tend to start fires and attract demons. I scare people. I’m not so much a student as a prisoner.”

  “How disappointing,” she said. “I thought you were going to be the girl to break the fourth wall.”

  “The fourth—do you mean the glass ceiling?”

  “Oh. Yeah, maybe that one.” Daisy checked her face in a compact and snapped it shut just as quickly. Maybe she was just admiring herself. “All us girls are super jealous—I mean, not the ones here, obviously, but my cooler friends back in Chicago. I guess I can go back home and tell them not to be.”

  “Wait…” I didn’t like the idea of Daisy telling her cool Chicago friends that I was a huge disappointment. “I’m trying to keep it on the down low, but I might take matters into my own hands.”

  “That’s true,” Firian said, jumping right in. “I’m going to teach her magic personally. If the professors won’t teach her, we’ll do it after hours. We have the resource
s of Merlin College and she has inherited the powers of Samuel Caruthers.”

  “Ohhh, I gotcha, girl. I gotcha.” She winked. “I won’t tell. Samuel Caruthers? You know him? He’s hot as fire.” She started making a sort of triple decker sandwich of caviar and crackers.

  “He’s my uncle.”

  “Damn. So it’s creepy if you fantasize about him.”

  “He’s also dead.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. I guess you can fantasize about him if you want to.”

  “I didn’t mean that!”

  “Hmm! That’s so true. I don’t want to piss off a dead guy. By the way, I am so sorry about him dying.”

  “Thank you for working your way to that. I never actually met him, though, so it’s all right.”

  She saw Harris walk back in across the room, with Alec and Montague behind him, and she nodded at me. “Later,” she whispered.

  I saw Harris looking at me. The other guys were heading my way. Daisy came up to Harris from behind and punched his arm.

  “So Harris is planning on spending the rest of his life with her,” I said. “That’s fascinating.”

  “He can hardly contain his enthusiasm,” Firian said, as Daisy dragged him back onto the dance floor.

  Chapter Thirty

  Harris

  “Hey, before we go in, I want to talk to you guys about something,” Alec said, as we were walking toward Guinevere Hall.

  “Of course,” Monty said.

  “Charlotte just told me that she isn’t allowed to go home to her dad for Christmas,” Alec said. “Master Blair told her just now.”

  Shit. That news hit me, because I knew Charlotte was homesick. I knew what it was like to be homesick, only for me, it went in the other direction. I couldn’t wait to go back to school at the end of summer. My family didn’t get me, but Alec and Monty did. We didn’t get all sentimental about it, not even close, but I think it was universally understood.

  Still, sympathy was not the Harrison Nicolescu brand. “Forbidden from going home for Christmas?” I said. “Hell, that doesn’t sound bad to me.”

  “Charlotte misses her dad a lot,” Alec said. “She doesn’t talk about it much, but I can tell.”

  “It’s true,” Monty said. “She’s not accustomed to this world and she’s had so many terrifying encounters with magic since she arrived. I’m sure she’s been looking forward to an escape all semester.”

  “She seems pretty tough to me,” I said. “I’m sure she can handle it.”

  “I’m sure she can handle it, yes,” Monty said. “But it must be a grave disappointment.”

  “Why are you such a dick when it comes to her?” Alec asked me. “All I’m saying is that she’s hurting right now, and we should go easy on her tonight. It wouldn’t kill us to ask her for a dance, so she feels included.”

  I had an unpleasant heavy feeling in my stomach at the thought of this dance. Dancing with Charlotte? No way. Talk about damaging the brand.

  “Daisy will be dancing with other people too,” Monty said. “She always does.”

  Daisy. I’d seen her earlier. She was, as usual, enthusiastic, sort of flaky on the surface, and extremely beautiful. She was a little much to handle. But she was no fool either. She had graduated at the top of her class, just as I graduated at the top of mine, before going on to university. I always felt like, under the surface, she was as conniving and tough as the greatest of witches.

  I really thought I’d settled on her. So why this dread about walking through the doors? The thought of seeing my girl again, especially now that I was starting to feel more decided that she was my girl, should have me excited.

  “You guys are so hung up on this very human girl. Staying away from her has worked out just fine, hasn’t it?”

  “I might be changing,” Monty said. “But it isn’t all for the worse. Harris, I used to think you were one of my best friends, but now I’m starting to see that you’re actually just immature.”

  I went still, trying to keep cool and not show any genuine concern that I might be losing this friendship. “Are you sure you want to stand by a statement like that, Montague?”

  “Hey, hey.” Alex nudged us each back a step. “Let’s not tear ourselves apart over this. I’m just saying, maybe this is one night where we could show Charlotte some sympathy. Ask her for one dance.”

  “Fine. Whatever you guys want to do.”

  I walked ahead of them, feeling pretty annoyed about the whole thing, but I got annoyed easily, so this wasn’t exactly an unfamiliar feeling. Charlotte annoyed me particularly, I thought—she didn’t belong here. She was messing up the brotherhood.

  Then I saw her across the room.

  Fuck.

  Why did it seem like, out of all the beautiful witches in the room in their diamonds and stilettos, Chanel and Dior, or the famous magical couture houses like Rue or Magie Noire to match my Armani, did my eyes go to the girl wearing an absolutely absurd, tasteless pink dress? The girl who, instead of precious gems, was wearing a necklace with little beads that looked handmade by a fellow high school student, and ballet flats?

  Alec asked Charlotte to dance. I saw Monty behind him, claiming her next. The relief in her eyes. The unselfconscious grin that broke out on her face.

  “Hey, champ.” Daisy surprised me, cuffing my arm. “Are you judging that poor girl? I don’t think she can afford Prada. But I like her. I hope they give her a chance to actually kick ass.”

  “At some point, I think she might stop waiting for a chance,” I said, giving Daisy a small smile, more smug than friendly, but she liked that, as most girls did. “But I don’t really care about her. How are you?”

  “Exhausted. It’s a long drive. And you know the new car has too many gadgets in it. Grandma likes her climate controls and music. My magic feels sapped.”

  “You don’t need magic at a ball.”

  “How do you think I look so pretty all the time?” She smiled at me coyly. But I could see the insecurity in her, when her magic was even slightly diminished. Daisy was five when her parents were killed in one of the most violent Sinistral attacks of the modern era. She didn’t like even the slightest bit of vulnerability.

  “But, this is a ball,” she said, grabbing my arm. “So y’all get ready because I’m about to get this party popping!” she said loudly.

  If Charlotte had said a thing like that, it would only have added to her outcast status, but since Daisy said it, some girls went “woo!” and one of the senior guys said, “I spiked the punch!”

  My mother’s words immediately came to mind: Daisy has the best credentials, the best inheritance. If you marry her, don’t worry—I will teach her the east coast ways in no time.

  When she said ‘teach’ she meant ‘control’ and when she said ‘east coast ways’ she meant ‘how we do things in this house’.

  I knew that once I married Daisy, her own wild streak would be tamed, and no parties would ever become ‘popping’ under the disapproving eyes of the Nicolescu family. She would be tolerated for her family name, her skill, and the whopping inheritance she was about to get when her grandmother died.

  “So,” Daisy said, eyes flicking up to me as she leaned against my shoulder. “Does this mean I won?”

  “Won what? Me?”

  “Of course. I know your mother was weighing options. But I’m better than them. New York warlocks and Chicago witches. Classic.”

  “Yeah, I guess you won,” I said, with a shrug.

  “Oh, okay, Mr. Whatever.”

  The thing that really got under my skin was knowing that Daisy would conform.

  Sure, a spark would remain. She might let loose in the bedroom for me. But in the end, Daisy wanted that power. She had ambitions. She wanted revenge for the Sinistrals who killed her parents, and as she saw it, a lax council who allowed it to happen. She would use my wealth and name to get her own seat on the witches’ council someday.

  So what? Ambition is an admirable quality, isn’t it?
r />   Do you think you would be happy with someone like Charlotte, then? I had to laugh at myself. I certainly was too smart to throw away my future for a girl.

  Let Monty and Alec have her.

  I put my arms around Daisy and held her close. She gave me a smile that seemed sort of…knowing. I was well aware that she was beautiful and I was handsome, but something…

  Something was missing.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Charlotte

  “Charlotte. You look really beautiful tonight,” Alec said.

  “And you also do, too. Handsome,” I said, in something resembling English, because I was so relieved. So so relieved.

  “I’m sorry we’re late,” Montague said.

  Of course, there was expectation that these two guys should save me from the ball, but the way they looked at me, I knew they understood. I needed them. And I was really, really happy to see them. I didn’t realize how much until just now.

  “Can I have this dance?” Alec asked.

  “I’ll take the next one,” Montague said.

  But there was also Firian, the most faithful and protective of all. “Firian—“ I said, not knowing what to say to him.

  “That’s what you’re here for,” he said. “To dance with warlocks.”

  But the look in his eyes—well. It wasn’t quite as happy. What could I say? “I’ll—be back,” I said. “Enjoy the food.”

  “I can’t actually touch your skin,” Alec said. “So we’ll have to be a bit careful.” He put a hand on my waist and just two fingers on my shoulder, over the thinner strap of my dress. I followed suit.

  “Do you know how to waltz?” he asked.

  “Do I know how to waltz? That’s like asking if I know how to roller skate.” I grinned at him. “But I can’t be much worse than Professor Jablonsky and he’s getting a truly weird amount of attention.”

  “Yeah…he’s like…the cult classic of Merlin College. Well…I don’t actually know how to waltz either. I’ve always avoided girls so I never learned.”

  “We can just stumble around.”

  “I’m fine with that.”