itsjustashadow (itsjustashadow) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2020-01-09 08:09:00 |
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Entry tags: | #january 2018, liam, liam x ophelia, ophelia |
Who: Liam and Phee
When: lunchtime, Wednesday, Jan 10th
Where: school
Status: Complete
It took Phee until Wednesday to really catch up with Liam, which sucked, but the first week back from winter break was always hard and she’d been so distracted all day Monday. She’d texted him on Tuesday night just to say hi and see if he was okay, but they hadn’t chatted for very long. It was hard to talk about over text. Phee wanted to really spend a little time with him, so she’d told Greg that morning that she wanted to have lunch with Liam. She’d brought her lunch to make that easier, and they could always duck into the band room to eat if he wanted some privacy. Phee did, honestly. She didn’t have many people to talk magic with, and even fewer who were actually her age. She was still trying to process everything that had happened, and she needed an understanding ear.
When the lunch bell rang, Phee hurried to grab her stuff and power-walked down the hall to Liam’s locker to catch him before he could get lost in the cafeteria crowd. He was there with his locker open, she saw with a relieved smile. “Hey,” Phee said, her tone light as she stepped in next to him to get his attention. “You wanna eat with me?”
Liam had been hoping to catch Ophelia, but was also reluctant to approach her when she was sitting with Greg and the rest of the football team. Or basketball team. Or whichever team he was playing with at the moment. It made him aware of how different he was from them, the jocks that ran the school, even though he was on the track team himself. He didn’t like people knocking him to the ground and he was pretty sure any one of those guys could do so with their pinky if they thought he was annoying them. He figured they’d catch up eventually and was pleased when she showed up at his locker before lunch. “Sure,” he smiled, switching out his books and grabbing his lunch bag. “Where you wanna sit? Just not with Greg. I mean, I like him, he’s cool, but the rest of those guys are just, you know, they’re--they’re a little much. And that’s saying something coming from me, you know?”
Phee tried to avoid sitting with Greg’s friends as much as she could, but one could only avoid the cafeteria for so long, and they tended to gather around wherever Greg was, so it happened anyway. They were a Lot for her to deal with herself, so she had plenty of sympathy for Liam’s caveat about where to eat lunch. She laughed a bit and waved it off, her cheeks getting a bit pink. She felt the urge to apologize for them all, or her connection to them, but they weren’t her responsibility and she wasn’t sorry she was dating Greg, so she pushed it down. “It’s cool, yeah I figured that, I can’t stand them either,” she told Liam. Phee hooked her arm through his and started to steer him down the hall. “We can go to the band room, it’s quieter.”
“It’s not all of them,” Liam said apologetically. “Your brother’s nice.” When he wasn’t possessed, that was, but he was smart enough not to say so. He knew it wasn’t Sebastian that had been taunting his mother, but it still creeped him out. It had been Sebastian’s voice that had said those things, his body that had fought against the bindings that held him. Maybe if he knew Sebastian better it would be easier to separate the two, but Liam thought he might steer clear of him for a bit. “How’s he doing, by the way? I thought I saw him in the halls this morning. He feeling okay?” He was being nosey now, but he couldn’t help it. She was the only one he could talk to about what had gone down over the weekend and they’d barely had a chance to talk.
Sebastian wasn’t a bully, quite the opposite, but he was one of the older popular kids, so there was a degree of intimidation that was just built into the high school hierarchy. Sometimes even Phee felt it when he was surrounded by all of his friends. Her smile faded a bit at the questions, but she didn’t blame Liam for asking. She would have too, if their positions were reversed. “He’s doing okay,” she said, glancing over at him, then sighed a bit. “He’s ... dealing, anyway. But like, none of it is easy to deal with, as you can imagine.” It was probably for the best if most people steered clear of him for a bit, for Sebastian’s sake, but you couldn’t exactly tell the whole school that, and he hadn’t wanted to stay home any longer. Phee just hoped he would talk to her if he needed to. She gave Liam’s arm a little squeeze. “How about you? All of that was fucking crazy, right? You okay?”
It was hard for Liam to imagine what dealing with something like that would look like. If it was him, would he be withdrawn and quiet, or would it send him into some sort of spiral? Just knowing that some other being could potentially possess him had freaked him out, the threat made all the more real by knowing someone it had happened to and seeing what it took to reverse it. “I’m okay, but it’s all kind of insane. Every time I think I know what’s out there another door gets blown wide open and I feel like I’m gaping like an idiot. I didn’t even remember that he took my blood until he threw it back in my mom’s face. How do you forget something like that?” He knew not to give people his blood, yet Sebastian had managed to talk him into it. No, not Sebastian, Baron. He had to get that straight.
Phee had imagined what it might have been like to be taken over by some other force completely beyond your control, and every scenario she thought of was horrible. She hated to think about being at the mercy of something so alien and evil, being used shady shit and not even being aware of it. It made her want to hug Sebastian over and over again and tell him she was so sorry and she was there for him, but she’d already done that and after a point she knew it had to get annoying. It was all over now, there was nothing anybody could do to take it back, they just had to move forward. Phee was nodding sympathetically as Liam talked, but she got a weird feeling between her shoulder blades when he mentioned Sebastian taking his blood. Something tugged in her mind, like she’d forgotten something, and she hesitated for a beat before she pulled the band room door open to let them in. “She ... when did she take your blood?” she asked him, looking over with a furrowed brow. Phee didn’t recall Baron saying that during the ritual, but everything had been so chaotic and scary, that was understandable.
“I dunno, like...mid-December?” Liam said, his face scrunching up as he tried to remember. The whole thing felt like a dream to him, evading him no matter how hard he tried to remember. “I think I was at the library? I don’t remember much except thinking that it was wrong, that I shouldn’t give it to him, but he’d been-- she’d been convincing.” He rubbed at his hand where the faintest of scars was etched into his palm. The scar itself didn’t bother him, he imagined it was the first of many, but not remembering the details made it weird. “She told me to forget about it and I did. I never thought I was weak minded till I realized how easy it had been for her.” In fact, Baron could’ve killed him, but she hadn’t. His only explanation for that was that she hadn’t wanted that much blood on Sebastian’s hands if she was planning on taking over his body. Or maybe it just wasn’t necessary.
This whole line of conversation was making her feel weird, and Phee got a chill as she realized why. Not only had Baron influenced her to try and get Zania’s blood, she’d taken some of Phee’s too. She remembered it now, all in a flash, Sebastian coming into her room to tell her he needed blood from their line and his own was tainted. She stopped and stared into empty space for a few heartbeats as it came back to her. Phee felt thoroughly creeped out all of the sudden, but she tried to shake it off, blinking rapidly and bringing her attention back to Liam. “Don’t ... don’t feel weak. Try not to, anyway. She was stupidly powerful, and she like, mind-controlled me too,” she said softly. Phee walked them to an unoccupied corner of the big band room and lowered herself to the floor with a sigh.
“I wonder what you have to do to have power like that,” Liam said as he took a seat beside her. If the spell was listed in their grimoire, his mother had managed to hide it from him, which meant it was dark. Not that he ever wanted to do something like that. It felt like such a violation that it infuriated him if he thought about it too much, made even worse by the fact that he could do nothing about it. Liam turned his thoughts elsewhere, to the power he’d found more intriguing than frightening. “She was no match for the coven though. I know there’s not seven of us, but we should have our own coven,” he said with a little smile. “I’m so glad you can practice now. It sucked not being able to really talk to you about it.” Phee was still pretty new to magic, but Liam thought she could still catch up. It would just take a little work.
Phee just shook her head to the first part -- she had to imagine it took some dark magic to get that kind of skill. Not that she knew a whole lot about that kind of thing, which just made all of it even more frustrating. She couldn’t help but think that if they’d been taught more, they would’ve been better prepared for something like this. But who knew. Even her dad hadn’t known anything was wrong, a fact that Phee wasn’t sure how to process. “What like, me, you, and Bash?” she asked, a smile of her own surfacing. “Three’s not a bad number. But yeah, the coven was ... pretty amazing. I’m glad I can finally talk about it, I just wish I knew more, you know?” She sighed as she pulled her lunch out and started to unpack her sandwich. “I feel so like ... helpless now.”
“You’re not helpless,” Liam told her, rambling along as he unpacked his lunch. “You’re just unprepared. I am too. But we’ll get better. We’ve got people to teach us and no one says we have to operate in silos just because our parents did. Three’s not much, I don’t expect us to be able to do anything like what we saw the other night, but it’s not a bad start. And if we could find an air, we’d have all four elements represented. That’s even better than the coven had. They were almost all fire and air. It was, like, suffocating in there. I kept thinking Nic Castell would cool it off, but I guess he didn’t want to mess with the juju they had going on in the circle.” He stopped to take a bite of food, giving her a second to get a word in. The whole thing had been scary, but incredibly cool and she was the only one he could really talk to it about. Brynn and Jen knew he was a witch, but the rest seemed pretty private. He was pretty sure Sebastian wouldn’t want people knowing what went down.
“Yeah, balanced elements probably would’ve been even better,” Phee said. It wasn’t exactly a criticism, but it made her feel smart as well as kind of like a kid telling adults how to do their jobs. They’d all been accomplished witches, from what she knew of them, and they’d done great work. It had definitely been hot in there, though. “I can run it by Sebastian, see if he’d be interested in any group magic. Honestly we could probably all learn faster together,” she mused. Phee took a bite of her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. “I’m going to talk to Zania Castell about learning more stuff soon too. If Dad won’t teach us more, like right now.” Her tone was a bit urgent, but there wasn’t much to be done about it right then, so it was a waste of energy. “I want to be more useful than like, making plants grow, you know?”
“Zania’s smart. Like, she seems to know a little bit about everything. My mom once told me that if Zan wanted to, she’d be a lot more powerful, but I kinda got the feeling that she was glad that wasn’t the case,” Liam smiled. “I think she’d be a good resource. I’m still jealous that she’s teaching you. And if your dad teaches you stuff, great! I can totally share what I know and we’ll get you knowing more than how to make plants grow in no time.” It was a cool skill, but he totally got why she wanted to expand her knowledge. He’d gotten bored with making fires before he even turned fourteen. He still did it, probably too often, but he’d wanted more. “So, I gotta ask, what’s Greg think of all this? Does he know?”
Phee hoped Liam’s optimism was well-placed. She really liked Zania, and she hoped to learn a lot from her, but she also felt kind of cheated that her parents weren’t the ones teaching her. Them, both of them. All three, if Trip had any interest. They should’ve been bored of doing the basics with their elements years ago. But she couldn’t change the past and neither could her parents. She just hoped they were more supportive of them growing magically going forward. “Yes, let’s all exchange all the notes we have as much as possible,” she said, trying not to sound too grumbly about it. The question about Greg was nicely distracting, and Phee gave a rueful sort of smile. “He’s ... overwhelmed,” she said, giving a soft little laugh. “He’s trying really hard to be understanding, but I just told him about the whole ritual and Bash being possessed like, Monday. He had no idea about any of it. I just wish stuff would stop happening that I have to tell him about.” Or that he was witness to -- she thought about what had happened with Jules and felt another pang of guilt.
“It’s a lot,” Liam agreed with a little laugh of his own. “At least he’s not in the middle of it. I know my dad handles all the magic stuff better when he doesn’t get pulled in. I never know what to tell my friends and what to keep quiet about. Like, I think Jen could handle anything, but I don’t want to scare Brynn off.” He’d wanted to tell Brynn all about the ritual, but it really dove right in to the darker side of magic and the dangers of living in Point Pleasant. He also wanted to avoid outing the McCarthys as witches, since Brynn went to school with them. It wasn’t his secret to tell and he knew to keep it unless telling her was necessary. In this case, he’d just wanted to gossip, so he kept it to himself.
The bad thing was, Greg had gotten pulled into the middle of it, at least during the incident with Jules. That had sounded even more terrifying than what Phee had witnessed at the ritual, if she was being honest. Magic and possession were one thing, holes in reality that led to some other dimension with scary grinning monsters was another level of fucked up. It made Phee want to find Jules and give her a big hug, but she wasn’t supposed to know anything, so she couldn’t and it would probably be weird anyway. Phee couldn’t tell Liam any of that though, so she focused on what else he said instead. “Brynn ... Chapman? What do you mean, scare her off?” she asked with a curious little nose-wrinkle. She started to smile at him. “Have you been holding out on me?”
It hadn’t been his intention to casually drop Brynn’s name when he hadn’t mentioned her before, but Liam had actually forgotten that he’d been keeping the whole thing quiet. With everything that had gone on over the holidays, he was well beyond associating Brynn with the mask, despite that being their initial contact. “I might’ve forgotten to mention that we’ve been hanging out,” Liam smiled. “We’re going to the play this weekend and I asked her to the dance. And she said yes. I still can’t believe she said yes.” Even though they’d been getting along fine, he’d been sure they were only friends and that asking her out on a date would ruin that. But she’d said yes and, to him, the dance was a date unless one of them specifically tacked on “just as friends.” Neither one of them had.
Phee didn’t know Brynn personally, but she knew of her in that small-school sort of way. The news made her smile brightly at Liam. Finally, something positive and not terrifying! Well, maybe terrifying for him in a different way, but at least it wasn’t the life-threatening kind of terror, just the nerve-wracking kind. “That’s awesome,” she told her friend, still smiling. “Good luck, hope it goes well. I’ll be there too, but like, I promise not to hover and coo at how cute you two are and embarrass you.” She was teasing, because she would never do that anyway, but it was cute to see Liam taking someone out. Phee knew things hadn’t quite gone how he wanted with Jen, and she was glad he was interested in somebody else now.
“No cooing!” Liam said, laughing but also serious. “It’s really new and, and while we’ve hung out, it’s never really been a date. I don’t want to make a big deal of it in case her friends…” He didn’t say it, but the person he was most worried about was Brynn’s cousin. They didn’t talk a lot about Victoria, which was probably a good thing, but Liam knew they were close. If anyone could talk her out of it, it would be her. “We didn’t say it was a date, but I felt like it was implied, but I don’t want her to feel pressured, you know? And I don’t want it to be too weird if she changes her mind.”
Phee could read between the lines and see that ‘friends’ pretty much meant ‘Victoria,’ and she felt sympathy for him. She could relate -- even though her brother was popular, putting her foot into that world by starting to date Greg had been intimidating. And she’d paid a price for it for a while. Luckily the harassment had stopped, the mean ones having moved on to something else to occupy their tiny mean brains. Phee took another bite of her lunch and rolled her eyes with obvious affection. “You’re overthinking it,” she told him sagely. “If she didn’t want to go out with you, she just would’ve said no. So just go and have fun and let it be what it is, see how the vibe is.” She didn’t want to say it, but she was pretty sure Brynn wasn’t as socially awkward and inexperienced as Jen was, so hopefully there wouldn’t be similar confusion about date versus not-date.
“I know,” Liam sighed as he smiled. “I’m just nervous. I really like her and I don’t want to screw this up. Everyone else makes it look so easy.” He was hoping that once they figured out what they were it wouldn’t be so complicated, but he’d never been in a relationship long enough to get to that part. “So, what day are you going to go see the play? If you’re going Saturday evening, we’ll come say hi.” He figured she had to be going if her brother was in it, though the image of Greg trying to follow Shakespeare gave him a little mental laugh. He wasn’t sure why he assumed the jocks couldn’t follow it, seeing as he kind of sat on the fringes of that group and he had no problem with it, but Shakespeare and football just didn’t match up in his head.
“Ummm ... I’m not sure about Saturday, I’ll definitely be there Friday for the opening night one,” she said, pursing her lips thoughtfully. Attending all of the performances would probably be the best Sisterly thing to do, but did she really want to sit through the same play a half dozen times, or however many? Phee wasn’t sure. “We’ll see, I’ll let you know. I’m not sure which Mom and Dad are going to, either,” she said, giving Liam a little smile. Her parents had better be coming to at least one of the shows, anyway, or Phee was going to be really pissed at them. Her brother had worked hard on this play, and he deserved to have some recognition for something good, for fuck’s sake. “But dude, like ... everyone’s just pretending it’s easy. Relationships and stuff. It’s not, for anybody. At least not like, keeping them running smoothly. So don’t stress it, okay? You’re normal.”
“Then everyone else hides it well,” he grinned. “I feel like such a spaz.” And yet, Brynn still seemed to like him, so he supposed he was doing okay, at least so far. Liam didn’t quite follow why Ophelia would be at the Saturday performance if she was going to the Friday one, but he and his sisters barely even spoke so what did he know about sibling obligations? Going to one was supportive, but all three was excessive, if you asked him. “I’m really hoping things settle down a bit. I feel like we could all use a breather. I can’t believe I’m saying this, cause I like the weird shit, but I’d really like things to be normal and low-key for a while.”
Phee could definitely relate to feeling like a spaz about liking someone. She definitely did around Greg sometimes. He just made her all fluttery and he was so cool -- even if he was a secret dork -- and everybody liked him, it made her wonder often what he saw in her. But then they got to see each other and there was no mistaking how he looked at her. That was where the truth was. Hopefully Liam would get there with someone. Phee gave a little snort and nodded as she finished up her sandwich. “There’s a big difference between fun weird shit and scary weird shit, and I’m so over the latter,” she agreed. “So ... fingers crossed for more peace.” Phee pulled out a baggie of pretzels to munch on. “But at least like, now we know we’ve got a huge resource if we really need it. A coven’s a big deal, seems like.”
“Right? I kind of got the feeling they’d only pull together like that for a crisis, but it’s nice to know they’re there,” Liam agreed. “I always kind of wonder what sort of magic everyone practices on a normal basis. Like, the O’Reillys are such a mystery, out in that big house, doing who knows what. And did you see their familiar? I kind of thought familiars were just animals and such, but he’s, like, a person.” Knox was both intimidating and infinitely cool at the same time. Liam wanted to know how they’d summoned him and what he could do, but knew better than to play twenty questions when they were busy trying to banish Baron. If he had another chance though, he might have to inquire.
Phee wondered vaguely when the next crisis would come. It seemed to be a never ending line of bullshit, most of it scary. Could the coven have stopped the fog and the monsters inside of it if they’d been working together? Could they help with Jules’s portal-opening hand problems? Phee didn’t know, nor did she feel like she could ask anyone. It was good to know they all would collaborate if, she just had no idea what would make them deem it necessary. “Oh is that who that big guy was?” Phee asked, trying to focus on something besides doom and gloom. She grinned a little. “He was hot. I was wondering why he wasn’t in the circle too. But yeah whenever I thought about familiars, I only thought about like ... black cats and stuff. My parents never talk about them.” Phee shrugged.
“Me too, but apparently some can be human shaped. Or can take a human shape,” Liam said, though he was assuming this based on what he'd seen. Knox was definitely human looking. “I wondered why he wasn’t in the circle too, or Nic Castell, ‘cause I thought more would be better, but my mom said they wanted one from each of the Six families, plus one from Baron’s. Something about the power of seven.” He didn’t understand why they’d added Reagan to the workings of the spell, since she made eight, but maybe it was different because she was in the inner circle, a person to pass all the magic through once she gained her own back. “Did you know that someone could lose their magic? I didn’t even know that was a thing before then.”
Her parents hadn’t been inclined to explain much to her about the ritual, but judging from the coaching Caius had given them at the beginning, maybe they hadn’t known much themselves. A lot had happened really fast, she hadn’t thought to question the process they’d gone through. Phee’s eyes widened at the last topic and she shook her head, looking vaguely horrified. “No, and I can’t even imagine,” she said. “It’s so ... a part of me, you know?” And she didn’t have a fraction of the experience that Reagan Kelly did. Phee had to think it would be like losing a limb very suddenly or something. She pitched her voice lower and murmured, “Makes me wonder like, what she was getting into to make that happen.”
Liam knew he’d be devastated if he ever lost his magic and he didn’t even do that much with it. It was just a part of who he was and losing it would be like losing a limb or one of his senses. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s something that just accidentally happens. It’s not a form of backlash, so… I dunno. Seems like they might’ve been messing with something they shouldn’t have, but who knows. I’ve always heard that Reagan is a pretty competent witch and I wouldn’t want to mess with the D’Onofrios, though I’ve always thought that it’s got to suck for Sera. Can you imagine if your brothers had magic and you didn’t?”
Phee felt like there was some story there, that maybe it had been told to her parents, but it hadn’t made its way to her. Which kind of sucked, because now that the danger was over, she wanted to know every single detail about what they’d all done and why they’d had to do it. She just wanted to know more in general. Liam couldn’t help with that particular frustration though, so she tried to nudge it aside for the moment. Phee wrinkled her nose and made an ‘ugh’ sort of sound at the very thought. “No, I can’t,” she said with a sigh. “They’re already like ... both annoyingly better than me at everything, they’d be insufferable if they were witches and I wasn’t.” She gave a little grin to show she was at least halfway joking, but really, it was true. “I never really thought about Sera not having magic though ... does like, everybody else know that? I swear nobody tells us anything.”
“Hey, they’re not better,” Liam smiled. “Does Bash have an awesome boyfriend? Can Trip do anything with his element? I bet he can’t even-- I don’t even know what his element is.” Which was kind of weird, but he’d only seen Ophelia’s older brother a handful of times in his entire life. “I don’t think they talk about it, but the D’Onofrio line is one of the Six and Sera’s definitely not a witch. I mean, I haven’t spent a lot of time around her, but I can tell. Like, can’t you feel it? With me?” He wondered if anyone had ever introduced that concept to Ophelia and suddenly doubted it. They’d spent a lot of time not talking about their magic, so he’d not brought it up with her, but he’d known for a good long while what she was, even before she told him.
Phee cringed a tiny bit at the ‘awesome boyfriend’ bit, since that was a minefield for her poor brother, but she let it pass. “Trip like ... doesn’t want his magic, as far as I know. He tries to avoid doing anything with it, I think. But it’s hard to tell from so far away, he like, almost never comes home anymore, it drives Mom crazy.” The rest of what Liam had said was more interesting to her, and Phee gave a vague little frown as she thought about it. She’d never thoroughly considered how some people just felt different to her, it wasn’t a skill she had honed much, perhaps chalking it up to mere intuition and vibes. But now that Liam brought it up, it seemed obvious. She could feel it. “I guess ... yeah, I can,” she said, sounding a little awed by it. “I just never hang out around Sera D’Onofrio, and ... I dunno, I never really knew what that feeling was, I guess.”
“I can’t imagine not wanting my magic,” Liam said as he finished off his chips. Even if it had come to him later in life, he’d have wanted to do whatever he could to learn it. “We’re not friends or anything, she probably doesn’t even know who I am, but she sat in front of me in English last year,” he said with a shrug. It occurred to him then that she was probably friends with Brynn, both being cheerleaders. For all the time they spent together, they didn’t talk a lot about their friends. “I can’t usually tell what someone’s element is unless they’re like me. It’s like I can feel the fire reach out to mine. Maybe I could learn to identify the others if I spent more time around them? I don’t know.”
Maybe someday she would get Trip to open up about why he rejected this part of himself and their family so readily, but it wouldn’t happen anytime soon. She knew he thought she was still a kid, but Phee felt like she’d matured way beyond her years, just in the past six months or so. She was growing up. As she crumpled up her trash, she looked curiously at Liam. “What does mine feel like to you?” she asked. Liam had been allowed to learn about and do magic longer than she had, maybe his sense of things was easier for him to describe than it was for her. Liam knew she was earth oriented, maybe that would help him learn the differences.
Liam’s brows drew together as he thought about that for a moment. He could identify her magic, but he’d never had to put that feeling into words and doing so was harder than he’d expected. “It’s like… fresh? Crisp? Um… like biting into an apple,” he said with a little laugh. “I don’t want to say fruity because that’s not it, but it kind of reminds me of spring. But you’re actually the only earth witch I know, so I’m not sure how much of that is your magic and how much is you.” It felt much more personal now that he’d said it and he hoped she was okay with that answer. At least he hadn’t said something stupid like it reminded him of dirt.
Phee waited patiently while he thought, then his words drew a slow smile out of her. “That’s really lovely, actually,” she said, feeling pleased and warm in the chest. Magic like a fresh apple, she liked that. “Okay, let me try with yours.” Without waiting for an answer, Phee closed her eyes and went quiet, taking a couple of slow deep breaths to help her concentrate as she tried to reach out and find Liam’s magic. It didn’t feel like something she could do with her brain, it had to come from deeper. She found that thing that made him feel different than everybody out and tried to make it more clear. “It’s kinda like ... sparklers,” she murmured. “Like ... energetic and bright. Or one of those big bonfires on the beach, just not as ... hot? I guess?” She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “Does that sound stupid?”
“No, not at all,” Liam grinned. “It’s actually really cool. I can’t think of anything better than that. It’s like, happy memories that involve fire or something.” He’d noticed that there was a sense of fire, but not actual heat, and he got the opposite from the few water witches he knew. It was like they were cool, but not cold. “We’ve gotta start doing more magic together. I think then we’d really get a feel for it. I just don’t know what we could do recreationally. I’ll have to ask my mom.” He didn’t think she’d object, so long as they weren’t doing something reckless, and Ophelia was one of the most responsible people he knew. She had to be cool with it.
Liam was warm to Phee, but not in a burning-hot sort of way. She wasn’t sure if her perception was different because so much of her own magic had warmth to it too, or what. “I would love to practice with you,” she said with a smile. She would love to practice with anybody, but maybe doing it with a friend would be more fun than family, like it would lack the association to all of that frustration. Phee felt that way about doing magic in Zania’s greenhouse too. “We’re gonna go all ... Dumbledore’s Army and teach ourselves all the important shit,” she said. Phee gave an eye roll and glanced at the clock up on the wall. Lunch was almost over, but at least it had been productive.
“We really should,” Liam grinned. “Screw all that ‘you don’t need to know that yet’ bullshit. We’ll teach ourselves and be prepared next time some big crisis rolls into town.” All he could think of was how useless he’d felt in the fog when being a witch should have helped him in some way. The only benefit was that he probably could have kept them warm if they’d stayed in the shop, but considering there’d been no food that really hadn’t been a great option. He didn’t know if there was a spell to help bring food to him, but it would be nice to at least know what was out there. Defense would be good too, of course. “I’m actually going to try a kind of walkie-talkie like spell with Brynn sometime next week, or this weekend. If that works, I’ll be sure to share it with you. It’d be nice to have if our phones ever crap out on us again.”
“I think like, the world has totally blown that excuse out of the water,” Phee agreed. It was painfully obvious now that they needed to know as much as possible to protect themselves. It was a matter of survival now, and surely all of their parents and mentors wanted them to survive, for gods’ sake. They couldn’t be around all the time, and something that shut down mobility and communication like the fog was terrifying. Phee’s brows went up and her eyes widened a bit at the last part. “That’s a thing?” she asked, obviously impressed. “Well hell yeah, that’d be awesome if you can do it. Let me know how it goes.” She started to get her stuff and get up since the bell was about to ring.
“Yeah, I’ve heard about it being done with mirrors, but that’s a bit more complicated if you want to add the visual. I’m just aiming for the audio this go round,” Liam smiled, packing up his stuff and finishing off his soda before the bell rang. He was excited about the prospect of new magic, excited to share it with Brynn, but also looking forward to trading spells with Phee. It was a good plan, so long as they actually found things to contribute. “We should do this more often,” he said as he pulled his backpack onto his shoulder. “Or, like, after school, when we can try out magic and stuff.”
“Like magical Facetime,” Phee murmured and let out a titter as they headed toward the band room doors. That would come in so handy, especially if she could connect with people who weren’t witches themselves. Being cut off from Greg during the fog had been super scary even without everything else on top of it. “But yeah, we totally should,” she said, smiling at Liam. “Comparing notes might be what saves us at some point, who knows. But we’ll totally do it more.” She reached out to give him a half-hug before they headed out into the hallway. “I’ll talk to you soon, yeah? Lemme know how it goes with Brynn.” Phee grinned a bit.
“‘Course,” Liam grinned back at Phee, returning her half-hug before heading in the opposite direction. “See you later!” It felt like things were falling back into place, in some ways even better than before. They had a new year ahead of them and Liam was feeling especially optimistic this time around. He was going to learn more magic, with friends as a plus, and had a date to the dance, and possibly a girlfriend, though he knew better than to put labels on things this early on. But overall, things were good. It looked like they were finally coming out the other side of a long spell of bad.