Written: A Reverse Harem Fantasy Romance (The Librarian's Coven Book 1) Page 4

  “I was, I attended very young.” And for a very brief amount of time. When Joanna raised an eyebrow at me I added, “I was fifteen.”

  Instead of shock or awe, she rolled her eyes at me. “Well that’s not fair,” she said. “Wait here, I’ll check this out for you and then we can walk out together.”

  “Let me see you home,” I said, and I told myself it was a reflex. I held my breath as she chewed at the inside of her lip.

  “I don’t want to trouble you,” she said.

  The tightness in my chest eased. “Staff housing, right? It’s on my way.” Which was a lie. It was in the opposite direction but it could have been miles away and not made a bit of difference.

  She stared at me for another moment and then nodded, “Alright. I forgot it would be dark and I think I would be jumping at every noise on my own. Did you bring your axe with you?”

  I laughed, and tried to cover my embarrassment with a hand over my eyes. “I was giving a lecture on alloys in weapons being affected by ley lines. I teach warfare strategy but I don’t generally carry weapons.”

  “I thought as much,” she said, smiling and filing away the check outs record. “That or juggling. I’ll get my coat.”

  She left the book on the counter for me and walked back into the room behind the circulation desk. It struck me then, seeing the sway of her hips and set of her shoulders and finding that I wanted to follow her in there, and out of the library and anywhere else she might be going. This was what Isaac and Aiden had been waiting for. That gut instinct of attraction and interest that came so easily for them and seemed all but absent in me. Except where they were concerned. And now Joanna.

  I was as eager to get back to the house to tell them as I was to see her home.

  She returned, a black jacket over her blouse and a canvas bag at her side, nearly overfull with the books inside. I followed her out of the library and into the cool night. I waited for the ease of conversation to return and then realized almost too late that I might have to start it myself.

  “Isaac and Aiden mentioned you,” I said, which was as close to a hint about the exact direction of our thoughts as I could bring myself to make.

  Her face froze as she walked at my side and my stomach sank, wondering if it was a misstep.

  “I think I’m a bit of an anomaly here,” she said. “I feel that way at least.”

  “I did as well,” I said, rushing to smooth away whatever awkwardness I’d created.

  “Well…” she mused, her face relaxing. “You were fifteen.”

  I coughed out a laugh. “I was. But Isaac felt the same too when he got his teaching position. He said you were from similar parts of Enmaire?”

  She nodded. “The middle of nowhere parts.”

  “The only person I know who really feels at ease everywhere he goes is Aiden,” I said and she laughed. “Canderfey is full of the unusual.”

  Her smile dropped. “That’s where I’m afraid I differ.” Before I could correct her she added, “What dangerous equipment will you be carrying to your next lecture?”

  I followed the subject change. Aiden or Isaac would be better at drawing her out than I was. It was enough that she was allowing me to walk with her, to spend a little more time examining this new connection and the way it thrummed with our synchronized steps.

  “Oh,” I said. “I keep the heavy artillery in my office. Too much of a pain to cart around.”

  It was enough for me to make her grin.

  6. Isaac

  I rolled the charcoal stick in my hand, smudging the black into my fingerprints. Every time I set the charcoal to paper the image grew more confused. Aiden’s profile, Callum’s hands…Joanna Wick’s tentative smile, all scattered across parchment in fragments.

  Aiden was sitting on the floor in front of me with his back against the couch, stringing and tuning his old guitar. His fingers smoothed down the fret, a whistle following, for the dozenth time that evening. I started to scribble the curve and swell of the guitar in his hands and ended with the familiar silhouette of a woman. I dropped the crayon to the paper and Aiden’s head lifted at the sound.

  “What if he doesn’t like her?” I asked.

  “He will,” Aiden said.

  He had probably known the question niggling at me for the past hour, only waited for the words to come spilling out to give his answer.

  “This is Callum,” I said, baffled by his certainty. “He doesn’t like…anyone but us.”

  Aiden smiled at that, it was an exaggeration but it was close. “Exactly. And he’s never been shy about his disinterest.” I grimaced and Aiden set the guitar aside, twisting on the floor to face me. “He already met her on the lawn.”

  “…Yes.” I said.

  “And he agreed to go see her tonight, which means he’s willing to consider her,” Aiden said, shrugging.

  “Or it means he’s feeling guilty, thinking he’s the one holding us up in finishing our coven,” I said.

  “Maybe. That will only go so far,” he said, reaching up to squeeze my knee. “I make sure to tell him how grateful I am that he’s so determined not to fall in love carelessly,” he added grinning. “It saves us so much time. But I think if he’s considering her it’s a good sign. It’s certainly progress.”

  “There’s a long jump between consideration and love,” I said, but Aiden’s optimism was infectious and I settled my hand with his, linking our fingers together. “It…it feels different, doesn’t it? Not just attraction but…”

  “The pull,” Aiden finished, nodding. “I remember the early days with you and Callum. Constantly running into each other. Knowing where to find you without knowing why. Making up excuses. Try,” he said. “Try and guess where she is now.”

  The answer felt ready and it wasn’t the time of night or any little scrap of information I’d gleaned from the two times of meeting her.

  “Home,” I said. “Alone, safe.”

  The front door opened and Aiden and I both stiffened. He pulled away to turn back to the living room entrance, picking the guitar up from the floor and settling it in his lap as if we hadn’t been spoiling hours waiting for Callum to return. It felt like long minutes before the front door shut and his footsteps sounded on the floorboards, drawing closer. He appeared in the doorway, a little windswept and pink cheeked, with a strange expression on his face. He looked puzzled to find us there, waiting for him. Puzzled to find himself standing in our home at all.

  I waited for Aiden to start in, to quiz him about the evening, but no one spoke at all for a very long time. Aiden’s shoulders were tight and he was practically holding his breath. Callum seemed to not know which way was up. My stomach was flipping giddily and I was about to launch myself off the couch and…I didn’t know what.

  “I think it might be her,” Callum said, staring down at the carpet as if he’d never seen it before.

  Aiden exhaled a shaky breath and my thoughts went skipping out of my head one by one.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Callum said, frowning at us both. “I don’t know what comes next?”

  I laughed at that and slapped my hand over my mouth, the taste of charcoal bitter on my tongue.

  “They call it wooing,” Aiden said, grin stretching over his face.

  Callum crossed the room with heavy steps and collapsed down to the couch next to me, his head dropping onto my shoulder.

  “I think she’s going to take a lot of convincing,” he said, wincing. Aiden scoffed but I had a sneaking suspicion Callum was right. Joanna wasn’t even calling herself a witch, she’d never imagine fitting herself into a coven.

  That, at least, I had an inkling of how to solve.

  7. Joanna

  The week finished with busy days in the library as classwork and foot traffic picked up in the narrow stacks. I landed in my bed each night with aching feet and settled into heavy, dreamless, sleeping that left me groggy and headachy again by morning. Finally, on Sunday, I woke up to the sky warming with orange ligh
t, and instead of dragging myself out, I closed my eyes and rolled over. It was my day off and for the first time all week I was planning on staying away from the library. I came downstairs hours later to my meager supplies in the kitchen and the still dreadfully bare space of my home. In the whole week all I’d managed to accumulate was some groceries, a lamp to read by in the evening, and a stack of books.

  It was time to get outside.

  I gathered up two books—one, a wishy washy text on everyday symbolism often over-looked due to generally being coincidental, and the other a magical reference of birds and their uses in spellwork—and my broad brimmed hat to set out for a walk. The campus was quiet in the morning, although I had walked through large groups making rowdy, colorful magics the night before so I wasn’t surprised. I stopped at the campus grocery for provisions and then found a dirt path at the farthest edge of campus to follow into the woods.

  I had the book on birds out in my hand as I walked deeper into the wilderness, sunlight mottling down through the tree branches to splash over the pages. At home we didn’t have dense woods like these but we had uneven walking paths and I’d learned to feel my way over them with a book in front of my nose at a young age. What I wasn’t used to was keeping track of which turns I took, since the flat, endless scenery of home made it easy to look out over a field and know where I was. I’d been walking through the chapter on the hawk when I heard my name and looked up, realizing how far I’d travelled and how little idea I had of how I’d gotten there.

  “Joanna!” he called again, and I turned to the left, seeing a clearing of trees where the sun was flooding in to land on the drying heads of wildflowers past their season. Isaac stood at the far side, a smaller canvas set up at his side and an arrangement of tools peeking up above the weeds. He waved his arm at me. “Follow the path left and come join me.”

  I followed his directions like a reflex. I hadn’t taken him up on his offer to visit the studio again but there was no good reason to avoid him now. And I honestly couldn’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than sitting in the sun reading, especially not with company like Isaac’s.

  He was sitting back at his canvas when I reached him, the scene of ringing trees and browning plants building on his painting, the shadows of the woods catching in dark umber browns and blues. There was a brick red coat spread over the ground next to his work spot and he nodded at it, smiling at me with dimples in his cheeks.

  “I don’t have a seat for company but I can offer velvet.”

  “My skirt can handle a little dirt better than that jacket,” I said, bending to pick it up.

  “Please,” he pressed. “I’ll feel like a good host. If you’d like to stay, that is.”

  “I think I better, I was halfway to finding myself very lost,” I said. “And you’re making those woods look too sinister for me to feel adventurous.”

  He wrinkled his nose at the painting. “I agree. It wasn’t my intention but the woods usually know better when I try to paint them,” he said.

  “It makes me feel like fall is coming,” I said and his smile returned at that, growing as I moved and sat down on his coat, feeling the burn of the sun warming the fabric under my fingers. “You’re sure I won’t bother you?” I asked.

  “I’m certain,” he said. “No more than I’ll be disturbing your reading, at least.”

  Which was not at all. Isaac was as studious to his work as I was to my book and the lack of conversation was filled in with the sounds of birds chattering and the trees creaking around us. It was as easy to sit in the quiet as it was to steal glances of him while he mixed a new color or leaned back and glared at the canvas in front of him. I pulled the sandwich I had bought at the grocery out of my bag and sat half of it down on a clear spot on his side table. He hummed and took it without really seeming to notice the offer.

  “Aiden and Callum spoke highly of you,” he said eventually.

  I had moved through my book into the subject of sparrows and it took me a few sentences before the words registered and I looked up from the page.

  “Your covenmates,” I said and he nodded, watching me. “I…you suit each other.”

  He glanced at his painting for a moment, adding a few brushstrokes and then looked back at me. “We do.” The corner of his mouth quirked up and there was a fierceness in his gaze like he was willing me to keep speaking. Heat was rising up my neck and I couldn’t think of a thing to say, couldn’t imagine a reason why these men would remark on me at all.

  “How did you meet?” I asked, because it seemed the only safe thing to land on.

  “Callum and I were new faculty in the same year. Aiden took it upon himself to mentor us.” Isaac smirked at his painting and shrugged his shoulders. “At first, I think Cal and I bonded over having zero idea of what to do with Aiden. He fills up the space he occupies and we were attempting to blend in to the background.” He turned to me and I looked down into my lap, not sure how to speak of the man. Aiden King both intimidated me and had a magnetic pull, leaving me with the urge to soak up the brightness that poured out of him.

  “But eventually you learn the gentleness in him,” Isaac continued in my silence. “I was happy to find a coven so quickly. I’d pulled up all my roots leaving Hammish and it gave me somewhere to plant myself.”

  I bit my lip and waited for him to continue, but he was more patient than me. Or he had become reabsorbed by his art just as I had become absorbed in the story.

  “And Callum?” I said, finding the curiosity outweighing the shyness.

  A line tightened on his forehead between his eyebrows and he fiddled with his paint palette while I waited.

  “He has a tendency to fight his own happiness,” Isaac said, voice quiet and blending with the rustle of the clearing. He cleared his throat and continued, “But Aiden is determined and I am patient. And we are as settled as we can be until our fourth joins us.”

  My heart thrummed in my chest and then ached bitterly as my stomach dropped. They would find someone like them, someone powerful and fascinating and beautiful. A witch who would not pale behind their glow. Not a shabby library clerk from the country who could barely keep herself from staring open mouthed at every new and strange thing she found in the world.

  “Would you like to try?” he asked, standing up from his seat.

  For a stupid, painful, moment I thought he’d followed where my head had travelled. Then he flicked his paintbrush in invitation, gesturing to the seat.

  “I’ll ruin it!” I said, glancing to the painting where the woods were growing deeper and the light stark on the canvas.

  “You won’t and even if you did it wouldn’t matter,” he said. He jumped forward, walking to where I was sitting and holding out his hand.

  “I don’t have any magic,” I said.

  His eyes tightened on my face. “That isn’t true. You have charms on your shoes to keep them clean and a charm on your bag to keep it from splitting.”

  “That’s…that’s just everyday things. It’s not enough.” And I wasn’t sure that I meant that in terms of the painting.

  He crouched down to the ground until he was eye level with me. “How do you know? It only takes a little and what’s the worst thing that could happen? You apply a bit of paint on the whole canvas that doesn’t tell the viewer ‘the woods are dark and dangerous today’? Try it.”

  It was not fair that someone should be so handsome and have a voice that sounded so warm and coaxing. I took his hand and let him pull me up from the ground. His thumb stroked over the back of my wrist and the thrill of the touch twined up my arm like a vine as he led me to the canvas. I sat down on the stool he had waiting, stiff and nervous, and he knelt in the grass next to me.