Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus: A Study In Mischief (A Lily Singer Adventures Novella) Page 4

  Chapter Four

  Not So Bad After All

  “And? What happened next?” Sir Kipling demanded, rising from his catloaf position in a rare show of interest.

  Sebastian, of course, didn’t understand him. But even the plaintive meow he undoubtedly heard didn’t register, so thoroughly was he lost in his own remembrances as he stared blankly at the floor.

  Lily herself felt a bit shaken. Remembering was one thing, but hearing it from her friend’s point of view was another thing entirely. Of course, she knew he was prone to exaggeration, but still…his avid descriptions had made her blush more than once as she kept her head down, filling bag after bag while he regaled Sir Kipling with their harrowing tale. She suspected he’d rather forgotten she was there. Not that her own storytelling was any less revealing. The question was, were either of them going to do anything about it?

  “Sorry, did you say something?” Sebastian asked, finally recalling his surroundings.

  “No, but Sir Kipling is rather annoyed with you at the moment.” She smiled. “I think I’d better take it from here. We have a long way to go yet and that kitchen isn’t going to clean itself.” She pulled the strings of her garbage bag shut, tying it off and setting it beside the row of similarly stuffed bags by the door, awaiting their final walk to the dumpster.

  Looking over his shoulder, Sebastian adopted a look of mournful despair. “Lil, have you seen my kitchen? I don’t think it’s a matter of a long way to go. I think we’d better just burn it down and build a new one. I scrubbed for minutes and minutes, and it looks just as bad as it did before.”

  “Minutes and minutes, huh?” Lily asked, lips twitching. “Why don’t you spend more than a few minutes at it and you might make some progress. Go on. Shoo.”

  With the face of a condemned man, Sebastian rose and wandered back into the kitchen. Lily shook her head, smiling as she snapped open a new garbage bag and got back to work. She was secretly relieved it was him in the kitchen and not her. She wouldn’t touch that sink with a ten-foot pole.

  “Now,” she said to Sir Kipling, “where were we…”

  About a year and a half ago. Oh yeah, and impending doom:

  Lily screamed. No one heard it but herself, of course. Maybe that’s why Sebastian called his ring the ring of cacophony, because you could make as much noise as you wanted without bothering anyone. Completely ridiculous, of course, just like its owner. Why had he pushed her aside? Her ward could have easily shrugged off such an attack and here he was being an idiot and throwing himself in the path of danger.

  These detached musings flashed through her mind even as she snapped her mouth shut, reluctant to look yet desperate to know. Heart pounding in her throat and a heavy weight of grief already crushing her lungs, she turned toward the fading blaze, expecting to see a charred corpse on the floor…and was astonished to see a very frazzled but unsinged Sebastian standing there, hands upraised in an involuntary attempt to protect his face.

  “What in the world?” she asked before remembering the ring. Twisting it, she looked up in time to see a shadowy figure in the middle of the room raise glowing hands, preparing another attack.

  “Watch out!” Lily cried, surging forward so her defensive shield caught the second bolt in its tracks, not a foot in front of Sebastian. Fortunately for them both, the attacks had little power behind them—another sign of this wizard’s amateur skills. With half a mind on her protective spell, she jerked Sebastian behind her before moving forward slowly, circling the figure and looking for an opening.

  “What happened back there,” she yelled behind her over the roar of another ball of flame.

  “One-shot ward.” He yelled back. “Friend gave it to me. Not sure where he got it. Amazed it worked.”

  He moved away and she had no time to question him further, not daring to take her attention off her quarry. Hoping he stayed out of the way, she carefully cast several bolts of pure energy, wanting only to disable, not injure. They fizzled out before they reached the figure. So, he knew how to defend as well as attack, she thought. At least he wasn’t totally incompetent.

  Suddenly, Sebastian’s form came diving out of the darkness. Her opponent, as focused on her as she was on him, didn’t see him coming and was tackled to the floor by the taller, heavier man.

  Scrambling to the door, Lily fumbled for the light switch. With a frantic flip, the lights came on, revealing Sebastian, triumphant, kneeling on the back of a young man who lay flat on the floor. The man’s hands were crossed behind him and Sebastian held them firmly, his loose coat belying the wiry strength of the frame beneath.

  “Mr. Blackwell!” Lily cried, hurrying forward. “Don’t hurt him. Let him up.”

  “After he just tried to kill us? No way.” He emphasized this with a jerk of his knee, putting more pressure on the young man’s back and eliciting a cry from his captive.

  “Owow! Get off me!”

  “Not a chance, you little creep.”

  Finally rounding the pair, Lily was horrified to see that the young man was even younger than she’d guessed. Gangly, with a pimple-ridden face, he couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen years old.

  “Good heavens, let him up, Mr. Blackwell. I insist. He’s just a boy!”

  “A boy who tried to roast your face off,” Sebastian protested.

  “Srr-y,” came a mumbled apology. The boy’s face was squashed into the floor, making it hard to speak.

  “See, he’s sorry. Now let him up,” Lily said.

  Grumbling, Sebastian straightened and hauled the boy to his feet, keeping a firm grip on his captive’s arms. “No funny business, or I’ll knock you out,” he warned.

  “Jeez, lighten up,” the boy mumbled, casting a dirty look over his shoulder.

  Ignoring their exchange, Lily took stock of the room. It was empty but for them, a small lamp, and a pile of books. It looked as if the boy had been sitting there, reading, when they’d burst in on him. Papers were scattered about, some blank, some covered in badly drawn dimmu runes—the written form of Enkinim, the language of magic.

  “What is all this?” she demanded, hands on hips.

  The boy looked away, a stubborn tilt to his chin.

  “Don’t make me tell my companion to hurt you,” Lily threatened. She would do nothing of the sort, of course, but he didn’t know that.

  “And if you lie, I’ll know,” Sebastian whispered in his ear, making the boy shiver.

  “Okay, okay. Lay off. I don’t know why you’re asking. My mother sent you, didn’t she? So you already know everything,” he said with a glare.

  “What?” Lily glanced at Sebastian, who shrugged in confusion. “No. No one sent us. We’re here to get back our books, which you stole.” She pointed accusingly at the pile at their feet.

  “Huh?” Now the boy looked just as bewildered as they did.

  Lily rubbed her temples. “Why don’t you start at the beginning, alright? And if you promise not to attack us, we can all sit down comfortably while you explain.”

  “Uh, okay…so can you let me go already?” he said after a pause in which Sebastian did not loosen his hold.

  Sebastian glared at Lily, as if all of this was her fault. She glared right back, and finally he gave in, letting go and stepping back.

  The boy brought his hands around to the front, rubbing his wrists and casting more dark looks over his shoulder, which Sebastian returned with much greater effect. Cowed, the boy sat down, looking at his hands. Lily sank to the floor to join him, while Sebastian remained standing behind, looming over them with arms crossed like some wrathful genie of old.

  “Let’s start with your name,” Lily said gently, trying not to let her annoyance show. What she really wanted was to throw this snot-nosed kid over her knee and whip the tar out of him for the trouble he’d made. But that was off the table, as was hiding and hoping it all went away. So talking seemed the best option—the less, the better.

  “My name is Seth. Seth Humphrey.”
<
br />   “Alright, Seth. My name is Lily Singer and this is—“

  “I already know who he is,” Seth cut in, glaring at the floor in lieu of looking upward at the man standing over him. “He’s the guy I hired to help me find my letter. The guy who betrayed me.”

  “Whaaaat?” Sebastian’s arms dropped in astonishment. “No way. You’re just a kid. That guy was a man.”

  “You mean like this kind of man,” Seth said, lowering his voice to a convincing baritone, a smug smile on his face.

  “Why you little—” Sebastian started forward, but Lily held up a hand, stopping him in his tracks.

  “Let him explain,” Lily said sternly, then gave Seth her death glare, the one she usually reserved for students caught with food or drink in her library. “Explain.”

  The boy wilted under her gaze. “My mom hates magic. She’s embarrassed to even be related to wizards. She knows I’m…I’m one of them but she thinks if she just ignores it I’ll forget about it. But I can’t. I have to learn magic.” The earnest pleading in the boy’s voice tugged at Lily’s heartstrings, but she tried not to let it show on her face. She needed the whole story first.

  “When uncle Osbert died—”

  “Wait, he was your uncle?” Lily interrupted, confused.

  “Well, no, not exactly.” Seth shrugged. “We were related, second or third cousins maybe, Mom never told me. But he was the only one in the family I knew of who was a wizard. I only found out because I overheard Mom complaining about him one time and I looked him up and begged him to teach me magic. Dad thinks she should let me learn if I want to, but he’s just a normal guy, so Mom thinks he doesn’t have a say.

  “Anyway, we’d been exchanging letters, because Mom would kill me if she caught me on the phone with him, and then…he died.” Seth choked up, sniffing and swiping a sleeve across his eyes. Lily waited silently for him to continue, not wanting to intrude. “So, yeah,” the boy finally said, “he’d promised to destroy all my letters after he got them, just in case. I know it’s silly but I was paranoid Mom would find out. The thing was, I’d sent him a letter a couple days before he…before he died, and I didn’t know if he’d had time to…you know, get rid of it. I managed to sneak over to search the house, but his stuff was already gone. Mom hates this place. She couldn’t wait to get rid of everything. I was terrified she’d find the letter so I did an online search and found this guy,” he jerked a thumb backward at Sebastian, “and hired him to find the letter first.” He fell silent, staring at the floor.

  “Okay,” Lily said slowly. “I think I follow you so far. But what happened next? Why did you steal the items from the auction house if you’d already hired Sebastian to find your letter?”

  “Because he ratted me out,” Seth said, glaring at the floor, though his ire was tinged with uncertainty. “At least, I thought he did. Last night I heard Mom talking on the phone with someone, and it sounded like him. I thought he’d figured out who I was and decided he’d get some kind of reward for ratting me out. So I decided I had to steal the stuff to find the letter myself.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Sebastian grumbled behind Seth. “Completely aside from the fact that compromising a paying job is stupid and just bad business, we had an agreement. I’m a professional. I keep my word and the confidentiality of my clients.” He glared down at the boy, looking more exasperated than angry.

  “Well…sorry,” Seth mumbled.

  “But that doesn’t explain why you attacked me, twice,” Sebastian continued, obviously not ready to let it go. “You know you could have seriously injured or killed someone with that bomb of yours. What if a random passerby had set it off instead of trained professionals?”

  Lily grinned to herself at his use of words but didn’t interrupt the interrogation.

  “What? No way! That thing wasn’t dangerous. It was just supposed to scare you and make you think you’d found my stash.” Seth seemed aghast.

  “Not dangerous!” Lily was surprised into exclaiming. “The concussive wave alone could have caused internal injury. Wait a minute…what word did you use to set the strength parameters?” she asked suspiciously.

  He told her.

  “No wonder,” Lily groaned, massaging her temples again. They were starting to throb. “You mixed up the words for ’strong’ and ‘weak.’ You, young man, should not be casting spells. Your grasp of Enkinim, while impressive for someone learning through mere letters, is incomplete, bordering on inaccurate, and your methods are sloppy. I’m astonished you haven’t killed yourself yet.”

  “Okay, so that explains the bomb, but why did you attack us when we came in?” Sebastian growled, not yet satisfied.

  “Oh yeah, sorry…uh, I guess I panicked. I figured Mom had sent you to, I don’t know, take away my magic or something. I didn’t think—”

  “Exactly,” Sebastian interrupted sternly. “You didn’t think.”

  “Take away your magic?” Lily asked, incredulous. “That’s not even possible, Seth. Who gave you such a ridiculous idea?”

  “I heard Mom talking about it with Dad. She was worried it was going to mess up my life and wished there was a way she could get rid of it.” He sank lower and lower, his shoulders bent under the weight of his words.

  Lily sighed, seeing herself in the boy before her. Her mother hadn’t tried to take her magic away, just hidden it from her all her life and refused to discuss it, even after Madam Barrington had apprenticed her. She knew what it was like to feel rejected by your family for who you were. “Look,” she began gently, then hesitated, trying to fathom what to say. She wasn’t good at relationships, much less giving advice about them. “I’m sure your mother loves you. She’s just scared,” she finally said, settling for what she hoped was the truth. “Magic can be very dangerous, especially if you aren’t properly trained. Maybe someone she knew got hurt when she was young, and that’s why she doesn’t want you learning. Maybe you should ask her about it sometime.”

  Seth shook his head. “No way. She goes into a fit if I even say the word magic.”

  “Well,” Lily said, sighing, “at least keep an open mind. She’s a person, too, with hopes and fears just like you. Even if she does a bad job of showing it, I’m sure she wants what’s best for you.”

  “A fat lot of good that does me. What about what I want?”

  Sebastian finally relented, coming around to crouch in front of the boy, a concerned look on his face. “Sometimes what you want isn’t good for you. Believe me, I know from experience,” he said, a pained look on his face.

  “But I’m a wizard. Magic is in my blood. What’s wrong with that?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with it,” Lily assured him. “But sometimes there is a right time and place to pursue it. Right now, you’re under your mother’s roof, and she has a right to say what goes on under it. You might accidentally burn the house down practicing magic without a proper instructor. That’s not your house, it’s your mother’s, so I’d say her concerns are legitimate.”

  Seth opened his mouth to protest, but Lily held up her hand. “You’ve already seen the damage you can do by accident, so I have a deal to make with you.”

  “Yeah, what is it?” Seth asked suspiciously.

  Lily fixed him with her sternest look. “We promise not to tell your mother about all this if you promise not to use magic until you turn eighteen and are a legal adult.”

  “What! But that’s so far away!”

  “And if you don’t wait, you might not even be alive to see it,” Lily said, unrelenting. “I’m not saying you can’t keep studying Enkinim. It will take you years to learn it properly, anyway, and memorizing words doesn’t hurt anything. Just don’t use it. Once you turn eighteen you can find a proper instructor who will teach you safely, and your mother can’t do a thing about it. Alright?”

  “Alright,” Seth agreed, defeated. “But how will I find a teacher?”

  Lily sighed, resisting the temptation to hide her
head in her hands. This was the opposite of what she was going for. But what choice did she have? She would never forgive herself if this reckless youth got himself hurt simply because she wanted to be left alone.

  “You can come find me. I work at McCain Library of Agnes Scott College. Got that? Say it back to me. Good. I won’t teach you, mind,” she warned, “but I can help you find someone.”

  Seth nodded, a pathetic look of gratitude on his face.

  Lily closed her eyes, trying to think if there was anything else she needed to say. Feeling a strong hand gently lift her own, she started, eyes flying open. It was Sebastian, taking his ring off her finger. She tried not to squirm.

  “Here,” he said, holding the ring out to Seth. “Take this.”

  “What is it?” the boy asked, eyes wide as he reverently took the artifact.

  “My ring of ca—well, a ring,” he finished, looking wistful. “If you turn it like this”—he demonstrated—“everything you do and say will be silent. So you can practice your Enkinim without your mom hearing.”

  Lily smiled inwardly, touched by Sebastian’s generosity and concern, minus the gruffness.

  “Wow, thanks a lot, Mr. Blackwell,” Seth said, eyes riveted on the gift.

  “Don’t mention it,” Sebastian grumbled. “Just stay out of trouble, alright? And you still owe me for the job.”

  “But you didn’t find the letter, I found it myself,” Seth protested, pointing to a folded piece of paper sticking out of one of the books on the floor.

  “Because you stole the books, you little pipsqueak. You’re lucky we didn’t call the police, and you’re going to pay up, or I still might. You’d better not have been fibbing about the price.”

  “No, I’m good for it.” Seth gave the older man a defiant look.

  “You better be, or I might just take that nice-looking car parked outside in lieu of payment,” Sebastian half-joked, half-threatened.

  Seth blanched white. “That’s one of my mom’s cars. She thinks I’m studying at a friend’s house and she’ll kill me if I bring it back with so much as a scratch. I promise, I’ll pay.”

  “Good.”

  “And I’m taking the books,” Lily added. “They were fairly paid for at auction and are not yours to keep.”

  “Aww, come on. I need those!”

  “You will have plenty of time to study magic when you’re older,” Lily said, standing and gathering the books. “You have a lot of growing up to do first. My advice would be to go learn some sense before you try your hand at magic again, if you want to live to be a man.”

  “And make up with your mom, okay?” Sebastian added quietly. “You never know when it will be too late.”

  Lily glanced sharply at him, noting the haunted look in his eyes. She wondered what had happened to give him that look.

  Though his admonition was meant for Seth, it gave her own heart a pang as well, thinking about her estranged mother. She’d never really forgiven her for hiding magic all those years, not to mention refusing to tell her who her family was. While she certainly loved her farmer stepfather and half siblings, they weren’t her people. She’d dreamed her whole life about finding her real family…or at least her biological family. Opening up old wounds with her mother wouldn’t accomplish that goal. Better let sleeping dogs lie.

  “I’ll…try,” Seth promised.

  Sebastian reached down, offering the boy a hand up. “Good. Now let’s get out of here. If someone sees this light on we’ll all be in trouble.”

  They hurried downstairs and outside, closing and locking the house behind them. Sebastian and Lily walked Seth to his car and saw him off, watching his headlights disappear into the deepening gloom of the cold winter’s night.

  “Do you think he’ll keep his promise?” Sebastian asked.

  Lily shivered. “I hope so, for his sake.”

  Subdued, they climbed into Lily’s car. By silent but mutual agreement, Sebastian was the one behind the wheel. Despite her earlier protestations that he was just as southern as she, he clearly proved he was much better at driving on the ice, bringing them safely back to the dark parking lot of the auction house. Lily kept her mouth shut, figuring that if she didn’t say anything about it, she could pretend it never happened.

  Sebastian parked beside his car—a very beat-up and ancient-looking specimen, Lily noticed—and withdrew the keys from the ignition, dropping them in Lily’s lap.

  They sat in silence, neither seeming to want to move.

  “So…” Sebastian finally began, then trailed off.

  Lily remained silent, not knowing what to say.

  “I guess this is goodbye.” He finally said what they were both thinking, then rushed forward, words tripping over themselves to get out of his mouth. “Not that it has to be. I mean, if you want to, I get it. That is, want to say goodbye. But you don’t have to, because I don’t really mind, but, well…um…” he trailed off, stymied by her silence.

  In reality, Lily was keeping her mouth shut because if she opened it, she wasn’t sure she could hold back a grin. It was ridiculous, of course. Utterly insane. But for some odd reason, she liked this smug, foolhardy, irritating witch. Contrary to her preconceived notions, he was not the selfish, greedy figure she’d imagined. He seemed to really care about people, even if he did have a funny way of showing it. When it came down to it, despite questionable methods and a cocky attitude, he was alright.

  “You’re not what I expected,” she finally said, once she’d gotten her cheek muscles under control.

  “Yeah? You’re not so bad yourself,” he shot back, grinning from ear to ear.

  Unable to hold back any longer, Lily gave in and let the smile she’d been fighting emerge, though not with quite the same unadulterated glee as her new friend. “Perhaps we could work together again in the future,” she said, careful to keep her tone professional. It wouldn’t do to be too encouraging, or she’d never be rid of him. “If you have a job, you can find me at McCain Library during open hours. Though I’m not sure what Madam Barrington would think of—

  “Wait, Madam who?” Sebastian asked, a look of abject horror on his face.

  Lily stared at him, confused. “Madam Barrington. My mentor and teacher in the wizarding arts.”

  “Not Ethel Barrington? Looks like a withered old bat? Acts so stiff you’d think there was a pine-cone up her—”

  “She most certainly does not!” Lily cut him off, aghast. “And what do you care who my mentor is?”

  “Uh…well…she and I aren’t exactly…um, bosom buddies, shall we say.”

  Lily’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

  “Weeeell, she’s my aunt. Great-great-aunt to be exact. And she hates witches.”

  This, Lily thought with a sigh, was going to be an interesting partnership.

  Epilogue

  “And that’s how we met,” Lily finished, tying off a final bag of trash to set by the door. They weren’t anywhere near being done, but she’d made a significant dent in the living room, and Sebastian—despite his protestations of impossibility—had actually managed to get the sink clean. Well, not clean, really. But it was no longer a biohazard.

  “Fascinating,” Sir Kipling opined, rising to stretch the kinks out of his back, then settling into an upright, watchful pose. “Perhaps you ought to write it down. It would make quite the book.”

  “What? No, don’t be silly.” Lily shook her head. “No one wants to read about two people arguing all the time.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Sir Kipling disagreed, eyes narrowed to contented slits. “A witch and wizard having adventures together? You two make quite the pair.”

  “Nonsense,” Lily muttered, ducking her head to avoid her cat’s piercing gaze. Of course she protested—what self-respecting introvert wouldn’t—but the truth was, she rather agreed. They did make a good pair. And they had managed to survive a surprising number of ridiculous situations. She wondered what such a story would be called: The Adventures of a Respectab
le Wizard and Her Scandalous Witch Companion? No, too long, even if it was accurate. Singer & Blackwell, Inc? No, she didn’t want to be lumped together in his questionable “professional witch” business. It needed to be nice and simple, yet descriptive—

  “Are you two done making out in there?” Sebastian called from the kitchen. This was followed by the sound of spurting water, a glug glug of protesting plumbing, and then a minor explosion. Sebastian emerged, the front of his body covered in a film of water and tiny bits of green goo.

  “Drain is clear,” he informed them, swiping his face with a finger and examining the specimen of muck he’d retrieved.

  “That is absolutely revolting,” Lily said, face screwed up in disgust as she scooted away. “You should go take a shower. Right now.”

  “Probably. I guess we should call it quits for tonight?”

  “Most definitely. But don’t think you can wiggle out of finishing,” she warned him, finger raised. “Tomorrow we tackle the bedroom and bathroom.”

  “I’m actually rather looking forward to it,” Sebastian grinned, taking a deep breath of air and puffing out his chest in a heroic pose. “With you around it’s like one big adventure. Oh, how did Kip like the story, by the way?”

  “He said we—” she stopped, realizing that Sebastian’s ego was quite substantial already without needing any help. One mention of him in a book and she would never hear the end of it. “—we make a good team,” she finished, slightly out of breath.

  “That we do,” he agreed. “No pile of trash nor pit of muck can withstand our mighty wonder-twin powers!” Whistling happily, he wandered off in the direction of the bathroom.

  Lily watched him go, shaking her head in amusement. He was a trip, that one. But she was lucky to have his friendship. It seemed like there was nothing they couldn’t do, as long as they did it together.

  Deeming it safe, Sir Kipling descended from the couch to rub on Lily’s ankles, begging a petting out of her. She crouched, stroking his soft, silky head, lost in thought. Maybe it should be The Adventures of Lily and Sebastian? No, too informal. How about The Wizard, the Witch, and the Talking Cat? Hmm, too descriptive. Maybe they could swap the wording around and…

  The End

  For more of Lily and Sebastian’s grand escapades, turn the page to read a sample of Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus: Beginnings - the Lily Singer Adventures, Book 1.

  Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus: Beginnings

  (PREVIEW)