Written: A Reverse Harem Fantasy Romance (The Librarian's Coven Book 1) Page 8

  They would outshine me by far, I thought.

  “I only want to help, Joanna, I promise,” he said, gray blue eyes aching like a storm cloud about to burst.

  If Isaac was a liar, he was the best of them.

  I nodded and whispered, “Alright.”

  His hand at my elbow slid down to my hand and I followed him up the stairs of the arts building. I kept my eyes fixed to his back as chattering students curved around us until we were up to the third floor. Isaac held the door open for me and left it open by an inch behind us.

  He had a corner office with windows on two walls and it looked as though he had converted the small space into another studio for himself. Smaller easels took up more room than the minuscule desk pushed into the corner next to a closet door. The space smelled like him and felt inhabited by him and against my better judgement I could feel the tension easing out of me. He pulled the desk chair out for me and grabbed a low stool for himself after putting the bundle of roses together in a short, black vase. He pulled the stool close, until our knees were almost touching, and then he simply waited.

  “He said that you want me in your coven,” I said, watching him.

  “That’s true,” he said, without any hesitation. He smiled a little and then added, “Although I think we agreed to talk to you about it as a group. After some time.”

  “Isaac, that’s not how it works. You need a witch,” I said.

  “We do,” he said nodding.

  I raised my eyebrows, waiting for him to catch up but his smile only flickered back. “I’m not one,” I said.

  “I think you might be,” he said. “I haven’t said anything to the others yet. Because you deserve to know first, of course.”

  I released something between a laugh and a cough. “Do you honestly think I could have missed it somehow? I’m twenty-seven years old.”

  “Are you?” he asked, smiling. “I guessed about that.”

  “Isaac,” I said, feeling something like panic rising up in my chest. I had been so angry with Callum, at the very idea he suggested. Certain that it must be a trick or a lie. It didn’t seem fair that it could feel silly and sweet here with Isaac. “I don’t understand. If you aren’t sure that I am a witch, how can you even think of me being in the coven?”

  “I haven’t thought of anything else since meeting you,” Isaac said and my heart beat paused for a moment, as if to listen. “Neither have the others, I think. Aiden could care less if you had magic or not, honestly. Callum just assumes you must.”

  “I don’t,” I said, trying to press the words to him, into his head. Because it hurt more to think he might really want me, when I was so unfit to be in a coven, than it did to think he was making fun of me.

  “What did you say to Callum?” he asked.

  I looked down into my lap, fidgeting with my bag where it sat. “I thought you were all making fun of me.”

  “Oh, Joanna.” He jumped off the stool he’d been sitting on and came to kneel in front of me, lifting my hands from my lap and fitting them in his own. “It’s not that. I swear to you. We may have been clumsy, but I promise we were sincere.”

  I blinked a new bout of tears away, staring out the window and Isaac waited at my feet, thumbs making patterns over my knuckles.

  “If you were a witch,” he started, soft and slow. “Would you accept our invitation? At least consider us?”

  I chewed at the inside of my mouth for a long minute, and then looked to him. “Yes,” I whispered.

  He beamed at me, lifting my hands to kiss them, before standing up from the floor and crossing to one of his easels. He brought me a stick of white chalk. “Take this,” he said.

  I took it, forehead furrowing in confusion at the leap between my confession and this.

  “I don’t want an art lesson right now,” I said.

  He grinned and pulled me up from the chair. “It isn’t an art lesson, it’s a magic lesson,” he said. He dragged me a foot over to stand in front of the closet door.

  “I’m not sure I want that either,” I mumbled.

  Isaac’s hands were warm around my waist as he stood behind me, and he pressed a kiss to the back of my neck. His breath was in my hair and his hands squeezed once on my sides before releasing me and stepping back.

  “Write on the door,” he said, and then after I’d stared at him for too long he added, “With the chalk.”

  I frowned at him and then lifted the chalk up to scribble on the door. This is sil-

  “No, no, no.” Isaac rushed forward to grab my hand and stop the sentence. “Not that.”

  “But it’s true,” I said, raising my eyebrows.

  He opened his mouth to respond and then shut it again, glancing between me and the door. “Wipe that off and…and write ‘door’,” he said.

  “That’s even sillier.”

  “Joanna,” he said, voice dropping. He was at my side, our shoulders brushing and we were close enough in height that I would only need to twist and lift on my toes a bit to be kissing him. His eyes flicked down to my lips and I thought he would do it, but then he looked to the door. “It will only take a minute to humor me. And if I’m wrong it won’t change how I feel or Callum feels or Aiden feels about you.”

  I wasn’t sure how to explain that while I returned their feelings, I didn’t feel prepared for them.

  I sighed and reached up, smudging the chalk away with the heel of my hand. “Door,” I said, writing the word out in clear, square letters.

  “Now, ‘to’,” Isaac said.

  I wrote ‘to.’

  “Now think of a place it might lead to, other than the closet,” he said, giving me a significant look. “And then write that place.”

  Like an escape route, I thought. And then I wrote ‘my bedroom.’

  He smiled at my work, all four words of it, and then we stared at each other.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now you open it,” he said, as if it should be obvious. And his eyes were bright and his grin was twitching, waiting to grow brighter.

  I looked at the door blankly. “Isaac, I’ve read about portals and you don’t make them with chalk and a few words in a tidy hand. There’s…runes and preparation, and meditation and-“

  “Open the door, Joanna,” he said, lips pressed to my cheek.

  11. Aiden

  “I’ve bungled it!”

  The front door slammed shut and I looked up from the violin I’d been sanding just in time to watch Callum storm into the living room, fists in his hair as if he were trying to pull the whole lot out at once.

  “Bungled what?” I asked.

  “Joanna,” Callum sighed, collapsing into an arm chair. His face was crashing down to the floor with a weight that dripped down his whole body. “I’ve ruined it. Again. Aide, I’m so sorry. You and Isaac are better off without me. You’d have a prop-”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” I said, cutting him short. “We’re all but useless without you. Now tell me what happened.”

  “She thinks it’s a joke,” Callum whispered, head dropping to the back of the chair. “Worse, she thinks she’s the butt of it. I went wrong somewhere and now…”

  I set the violin down on the low table in front of me and brushed the sawdust away into nothing before standing. Callum looked as though he were halfway to coming up with a spell to disintegrate himself. It struck me suddenly. Callum looked awful. Over a woman.

  “You like her,” I said, trying and failing not to grin.

  He groaned and rolled his head to glare at me, but it melted quickly into an agonized twist of his expression. “I want her,” he said. “You’re right. She’s…she feels like she should fit, right here,” he said, gesturing to the space between us.

  I crossed the room and bent over him, kissing his forehead. “You haven’t bungled anything,” I said. He was still glaring up at me, but that was fair since I was probably still smiling. But a lovesick Callum? That was new. And worth a little good humor. “Not alone,” I a
dded. “We went about this wrong. We’ll approach her together. Invite her to dinner. Be the decent gentleman we are rather than cornering her from all sides like a pack of starving wolves.”

  “I feel starved when I look at her,” Callum whispered.

  I laughed at his grimace. “About damn time, Pike. Now, where did you leave her?”

  “She ran out of the library,” he said, and his nails were nearly digging grooves into the arms of the chair. “Told me to stay away from her. All of us.”

  My eyes widened at that. “That’s…what did you do to her?”

  “Kissed her,” Callum said and I congratulated myself at not laughing at the announcement or the way his bottom lip was threatening to pout.

  “I see. Well we better go get Isaac before we find her,” I said.

  “Should we?” Callum asked. “Find her, that is. Wouldn’t it be better to…give her space?”

  “Maybe, but I think Isaac has a better read on her emotions. And they were supposed to meet today so he’ll be worrying. Come on. No sulking, yet,” I said, grabbing his elbows and pulling him up from the chair.

  “Wasn’t sulking,” he muttered but his feet dragged as he followed me.

  12. Joanna

  My hand was on the door handle when Isaac’s office door swung open and Aiden and Callum ran in. It was the first time I had ever been in their company altogether and the effect was immediate. I felt settled and excited at the same time, grounded and light. I knew that something inside of me, deeper than my thoughts or the nervous anxiety that twisted me up in knots around them, had made the decision for me. I wanted these men. I wanted the magic that would make me worth being with them.

  “Ah,” Aiden said, upon seeing me.

  Callum behind him froze in his tracks and then stared down at the floor and I knew I owed him an apology for what I’d said.

  “It’s good that you’re here, but it’s important that you don’t interrupt,” Isaac said to them. And then after turning to me and then back again he added, “We’d better close the door.”

  Both men stepped inside and shut the door behind them, but Callum hugged himself to the wall as if he were scared to come closer. The anger I had seen in the library was turned inwards and I wanted to leave the little closet door project behind to speak to him. Isaac caught my eye and shook his head slightly.

  “Just to know,” he said to me.

  I twisted the handle and swung the door out, still staring back at Isaac, prepared for his disappointment. But the sunlight from the street outside my bedroom window hit my cheek and I looked through the doorway, mouth falling open. Inside of the little narrow closet door was my creaky bed, with books and nightclothes tossed on the covers, and my small case I had travelled with against the wall, and my tiny dresser. And the window overlooking the street on a part of campus that couldn’t even be seen from the Burgess Building.

  “That’s…what is that?” Callum asked. He was behind me, next to Isaac staring through the door.

  “My bedroom,” I said, words dumb on my tongue.

  “No, the magic,” he said, and all of his reserve from moments ago had been replaced with studious curiosity. “It’s not a portal, it’s more…refined?”

  “It’s a door,” Isaac said shrugging.

  “How much did you help?” Aiden asked.

  “I gave her chalk,” Isaac said. “Drawing chalk.”

  “And directions,” I added, edging closer to the doorway. Isaac snorted behind me.

  “Can I- can I walk through?” I asked.

  “Wait,” Callum said, stopping me with a hand in my path. “Let me.”

  He had to bend to fit through the door and he stepped inside with enough caution that I half expected the door frame or my bedroom to collapse in on him. But nothing happened. And standing inside my bedroom, studying every surface, Callum looked more confused than ever. Also, a great deal taller. A half thought at the back of my mind pointed out that he wouldn’t even fit in the bed.

  “How?” he asked, turning back to us, staring across a few feet of floorboards and more than half a mile of the campus.

  “She wrote it,” Isaac said, a hand settling at the small of my back. He looked down at me and said, “Just like you wrote ‘books to find’ and texts that had been missing for hundreds of years suddenly reappeared.”

  “Or a shelf that stayed organized,” I said under my breath. I had always made lists and directions for myself. But they had always been mundane things. A need for a sunny day, a list of ingredients for the market, a return date on a book.

  And no one in Bridgeston had missed a due date in all my time at the library.

  “And that haunting you added to my painting is yours too,” Isaac said. “My students won’t even look at it. I thought it would be a good test. Painting and writing have more similarities than most fields of magic.”

  “I didn’t know writing was a field of magic,” Aiden said, joining Isaac and I in watching Callum squint and frown at the wall around my bedroom door.

  “Runes, sigils,” Callum said.

  “But just words?” Aiden tossed back.

  Callum only covered his frown with hand, scratching at his beard.

  “I imagine giving you a rune would be like giving you a hammer,” Callum said to me.

  “I never used one, I thought…” my voice tangled in my throat. “I didn’t know…”

  And then I was crying again for an entirely different reason. Aiden’s arm wrapped heavily over my shoulder and I leaned into his side.

  “You’re a witch, love,” he said, and then kissed the top of my head.

  Callum stopped his pacing upon seeing my tears and I tried not to laugh as he looked between Isaac and Aiden with a bit of panic on his face.

  “Do you mind if we leave the door here a bit longer?” Isaac asked me. “We can go inside and have…”

  “Tea,” I said nodding, wiping away the tears that had snuck out. “Or will we be stuck between the office and my bedroom?”

  “One way to find out,” Callum said. And he looked excited to do so.

  I expected to feel something upon crossing the threshold. A push of air or some kind of friction, but it was as if Isaac’s closet had always led to my room. And when we were all inside, which only furthered the point that my bedroom was far too small for any one of the men let alone all three, I shut the door behind us. And like nothing, it was my door. Wider and taller than the closet’s and in a different shade of wood.

  “It’s a surprisingly elegant construction,” Callum said and it took me half a beat to realize he didn’t mean anything to do with my house.

  I turned the handle again, and this time the door swung in on my room and waiting outside was the small little alcove at the top of the stairs.

  “That is magic,” Aiden said from behind me and the tone of his voice warmed the back of my neck.

  The space downstairs wasn’t much better in terms of fitting the four of us. I only had two chairs at my little table and when Isaac tried to join me in the kitchen to help with the tea we may as well have been dancing for how close we had to stand together. When I put the kettle on the stove Isaac wrapped his arm around my waist and leaned in to whisper.