Written: A Reverse Harem Fantasy Romance (The Librarian's Coven Book 1) Page 7

  “Gwen sent me for The Arcanary,” she said, pointing to a book near my hand. “But I suspect now she sent me up to meet you since we’ve been gossiping about you.”

  I turned away to cover my surprise, grabbing The Arcanary as an excuse. She was waiting, expression even and patient, when I turned back.

  “What is there to gossip about?” I asked.

  “Oh,” she waved her hand in the air and then grabbed the book I held out. “It depends on what you’re interested in. For some it’s where you came from. And for others it’s the company you keep,” she paused at that, and I suspected she had a little interest there too. She grinned and then shrugged. “Personally, I’m fascinated to know what you can do.”

  “Most days I’m lucky to manage alphabetization,” I said, my voice clipping.

  “Who could blame you, with this lot?” she asked looking at the shelves around us.

  “Hildy?” Gwen appeared from around the corner. “There you are. And Joanna, of course. Why are you still here?”

  Hildy leaned towards Gwen as the other woman approached, and Gwen’s arm wrapped around her waist. I noted that no matter how Gwen dressed—a lot like me—she never looked drab. Even next to all that silk and embroidery and perfume.

  “Just because you work the extra hours doesn’t mean you’re paid for them, now mark your place and come with me,” Gwen said to me. She looked to Hildy and added, “The others are waiting.”

  “I was going to stay and read,” I said. I wasn’t the only one who hung around outside of their shift and I hadn’t gotten in trouble for it before now.

  “And then go home and eat, what? A tomato and cheese sandwich?” Gwen asked, raising her eyebrows. “Come have dinner with us.”

  I pulled my notebook from my pocket and came down the ladder steps, writing down the shelf I had stopped at and needs rearranged to author’s last name NOT publication.

  “The other library staff?” I asked, tucking the notebook away.

  “Book mice?” Hildy laughed. “Nooo. Dinner with our coven.”

  “Don’t say no,” Gwen said as I opened my mouth in surprise. “Or I won’t offer again, and you’ll miss very good cooking.”

  “Oh yes, you must come,” Hildy echoed.

  I swallowed down my excuse and made to follow the two women down to the lobby. “Gwen…how did you know what I was planning to eat?”

  “I’m clairvoyant,” Gwen said.

  “She spied in your lunch box,” Hildy said, winking at me over her shoulder.

  Downstairs, waiting for us, or at least for Gwen and Hildy were the others. A man, straight and thin as an arrow who was elegant as Hildy and as sharply focused as Gwen with moon pale skin and short black hair. At his side was a petite person, beautiful and fae with catlike green eyes and wispy blonde hair brushing high, golden cheekbones. They ignored gender entirely in body and dress, and they looked like a magical creature’s best impression of a human. Canderfey seemed the place for that kind of thing and Gwen was probably too matter of fact to care.

  “Joanna Wick,” Gwen said, gesturing to me. “My covenmates, Hildy Samanta, Tatsuo Ito,” she said, and the man stepped forward to shake my hand as she finished with, “And Bryce Gast.”

  Bryce smiled at me and it was toothy and edged and left me more certain than ever that they were not strictly human. But it was Tatsuo that walked at my side through the campus, while Bryce walked to the front to lead our party.

  “How are you settling?” he asked, with his hands folded together at his back.

  “Alright, I think,” I said slowly. The library was enjoyable at least, it was everything else that left me not knowing which way was up.

  “Do you enjoy your work?”

  “I love my work,” I said, happy to have a simple question. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever really wanted to do.”

  “That is a blessing,” he said. “I have yet to decide what I enjoy in work.”

  Hildy looked over her shoulder at that and they smiled softly at one another.

  “What have you tried?” I asked.

  “Oh, aura healing, astrology, herbalism, phrenology, predictive hallucinations…”

  I started to laugh as the list went on, not certain whether or not he was teasing me but enjoying the variety all the same. Tatsuo’s smile deepened in response.

  “What are you trying now?” I asked, interrupting the list after ‘beekeeping.’

  “Writing,” Tatsuo said, raising his eyebrows at me.

  “What kind of writing?” I asked, taking the bait.

  “Trance writing, it’s a wonderful process for working out the subconscious,” he said. “You should try it.”

  “I’m not sure I’d like what came out,” I said and Gwen snorted ahead of us.

  “It’s only words,” Tatsuo said with heavy sweetness and Gwen eyed him over her glasses.

  We reached the neighborhood at the north edge of campus where permanent faculty lived. The houses were beautiful, tall and broad and colorful, built for covens and families rather than individuals. There were gardens in the front yards already planted with bright orange blossoms hearty enough for the coming chill of fall.

  Gwen and her coven lived in a sprawling cornflower blue house with cream shutters and a porch wrapping from the front steps all the way to the back of the house. The yard was surrounded by a tidy hedge and the view through the windows into the house was obstructed with pale blue lace curtains. It had the look of Hildy about it but even Bryce, wild and quiet, seemed settled and comfortable as they walked up the steps to the front door.

  Tatsuo and I made to turn up the walkway to the house and my eye was caught by another, down at the end of the block. A red brick beast of a house, narrower and taller than the others around it, sat glowing in the sunset. I couldn’t see much, just bay windows curving out into a trim yard, and several chimneys stretching up into the sky, one of them spitting a little trickle of smoke. I turned away at the first pang in my chest. There was no reason to feel it but I was certain that was their house, Isaac and Aiden and Callum’s.

  Tatsuo had walked ahead without me and the four of them waited on the porch for me. A perfect set, elegant and powerful with a fascinating, delicate, ferocity. Tatsuo and Hildy had their arms around each other’s waists and Hildy’s knowing smile had been replaced with something fragile and private. Bryce’s hand was in Gwen’s, possibly an effort on the latter’s part to keep them patient while they waited on me.

  I hurried up to the steps, begging my mind to quit wishing for something I was not meant for.

  10. Joanna

  The next morning I found that someone else had managed to organize the divination shelf I’d been working on, and this time had managed to make it stick. I was a little jealous and a bit disappointed in myself for not handling the work myself. It was as if I was being shown proof that even training as a simple librarian, here in Canderfey I failed to measure up. It put a fire in my belly and I finished my shelving on a tear of speed and set to bullying the books to rights in the restricted section for the rest of the day.

  I caught sight of myself in a window near the end of the day—hair in a mess sticking at odd angles around my head, my hands and white shirt smudged with dust and old ink, and my cheeks red with exertion. I remembered that I had agreed to see Isaac, to sit for a sketch, after I was done at the library and I wondered if I couldn’t sneak home first. Not that I had much better to wear or any chance of fixing hair that refused to do anything other than what it liked. I tried anyway, combing my fingers through tangled curls as I turned away from the window and found Callum Pike waiting for me at the end of the aisle, eyes wide and startled.

  “You look like you’ve been in an argument,” he said.

  “Only with books,” I answered.

  “The rumors are true?” he asked, coming closer with his arms full of books. “They rearrange themselves.”

  “That or you professors are playing tricks on me,” I said, narrowing my eye
s at him.

  His cheeks pinked and my stomach churned. “I used to sneak up here as a student,” he said, looking around. “Woollard always caught me, dragged me out by earlobes.”

  “She does that to me sometimes too,” I said.

  Callum laughed and it was a surprised noise, like I had caught him in a trap of humor he hadn’t expected. I thought of the way Isaac spoke of him and wondered if a laugh was a rare sound from Callum.

  “Isaac mentioned he’d be seeing you later, for a portrait,” Callum said, stepping closer. Closer than librarians and professors really needed to stand but farther than my skin ached to have him.

  “I’m afraid I will be the first person to fail at being the subject of a portrait,” I admitted.

  “You’ll do better than me,” he said, grinning like the sun. “He has yet to manage it and we’ve known each other for over a decade.”

  From the back of my thoughts came the image of the hawk, wounded and screaming and still soaring, and I realized the color of the copper feathers matched Callum’s hair, that the glaring green eyes of the painting were fixed to my face now. I wasn’t sure how right he was about that claim but I couldn’t find my voice to correct him.

  “I look forward to seeing it, either way,” he said and this time I realized I had been the one to step forward, searching his expression for the hawk in the painting.

  “I’ve never been very good at being looked at,” I said, which was a thought I hadn’t meant to speak aloud, but there it was and it was true.

  “You’ll have practice,” he said.

  I was getting practice right now and it made my heartbeat pound in my ears and my skin felt charged and sensitive to the air against it. And I didn’t feel shy or embarrassed under Callum’s gaze at all. If anything, I felt like I was stretching up to him, trying to catch more of that sunlight feeling. That being looked at should only be the precursor to being touched.

  “Joanna,” he said, and his eyes flicked down to my mouth where my lips were parted and catching a breath.

  The books shifted between us, pushed aside and he had done that trick again; the one where what he was holding seemed to fit itself away. But I was distracted by his now free hand reaching up to cup my jaw and lift my chin. I blinked and my eyelids felt heavy as I watched him bend his head to mine, nose brushing across my cheek before his lips settled over mine, slanted and pulling gently.

  It was a kiss but it felt something like the flying of Aiden playing the Wing Horn and something like the burn of connection while painting with Isaac’s brush and canvas. And something like lifting my face up to the sky to feel the burn of the sun on my skin.

  I was on my toes, hands reaching for something to hold onto, when Callum nipped at my bottom lip and heat burst in my belly and the world—and good sense—returned to my head.

  I yanked myself away, steps tripping backwards and my hands clapping over my mouth.

  “I’m sorry!” I said, and my eyes searched the library around us, seeing no one. The relief was a heavy, queasy feeling in the moment.

  “No, Joanna, I-” he started, face torn and twisted with deep lines digging into his forehead.

  “You have a coven,” I hissed and watched him swallow his words, expression falling. “And I have no right-”

  “You have every right,” he said. His hand reached out for me and I fell back a step. My stomach twisted as he winced but his shoulders set straight and he fixed his eyes to mine and said, “We want you. In the coven, with us. I shouldn’t have pushed but…”

  He trailed off as my head shook, back and forth in the rapid beat of my heart pounding. I closed my eyes, covering them with a shaking hand as a bone deep disbelief battled with the pathetic part of me wishing for the words to be true.

  “I’m not a witch,” I said and my voice was dry in my throat.

  “You are,” he said, but I heard the uncertainty. “Surely there must be something…all the librarians at Canderfey can do something.”

  I lowered my hand and looked up at him.

  I swallowed. “But I’m not a librarian. And I probably won’t be. I can barely keep dust off the shelves.”

  It was something in his expression, the way his eyes darted over the shelves like he was scrambling for an answer as he said, “We’ll…think of something.”

  “Is this a joke?” I asked, flat and low. My stomach sank. Outside the bells for the hour echoed over the campus.

  Callum’s face went blank with surprise. “A joke?”

  It had to be. It made more sense that they were laughing at me than that…that I could be of actual interest to them. The knots in my gut hardened to pits.

  “The three of you finding the least likely person to ever- ever be worthy of you,” I spat, feeling triumphant in anger, in seeing his face sharpen at my words. “And then you all chase her around the campus. What did you want? To seduce me? You could have done it without the charade of sweetness. Or is me being foolish enough to fall for the fantasy part of the fun?”

  “Joanna, stop. None of that is true,” he said. But the sweet, earnest bend of his voice was paired with the tight anger in his face.

  I still wanted to believe. It was in the shake of my hands and the way my heart seemed to thrash inside it’s cage and the stupid tears gathering at the corners of my eyes. With all the self-disgust I could muster I stared at Callum and said, “I want you to leave me alone. All three of you.”

  I had to push past him to get to the stairs. It was after five and I was free to leave the library and I burnt on the inside knowing I would not even want to come back the next day or the day after. He didn’t grab for me but his voice pleaded my name as I edged around him and without the tangle of his expression the tone curled around me, drawing at my weakness. I whimpered as the tears spilled over and I ran to the stairs, steps skidding.

  “Please, wait,” he whispered, words cracking.

  I ignored the stares in the library, grabbing my bag and rushing out onto the lawn as classes let out. It was easier to be invisible, head ducked down, in the crowd of students busy with themselves. I thought I would make it to my house and I knew the walk well enough to follow it with my eyes on the ground, but I forgot where else it would lead me.

  “Joanna,” Isaac said, a gentle hand on my elbow and a kiss on my wet cheek as I was pulled to a stop. I looked up as he drew back and his wide smile fell. “What’s happened?”

  “Get away from me,” I whispered, but it could barely be heard over the tears in my throat and the crowd around us.

  He heard it and the reaction was as sudden as if I had struck him with my fist. But it smoothed away and he huddled in closer, broad shoulders blocking me from the bustle around us.

  “Please,” he said, head lowering almost to mine. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Callum kissed me.” I hadn’t meant to say it but it was easier than shoving Isaac away in all this crowd. Than making a bigger idiot of myself at this university than I already had managed to.

  Isaac’s eyes lightened for a moment but they searched my face. He didn’t look triumphant or angry or jealous. He just looked…concerned.

  I didn’t want Isaac to be a liar. More than the others, even, I wanted Isaac to be a friend to me. An honest one.

  “We can go into my office,” he said and I looked over his shoulder. I had walked directly past the Burgess Building on my way home. “I was getting you flowers,” he added, lifting up a bouquet of crimson roses. “For the portrait.”