Now a tall, dark-haired mage sat to one side of me, and a witch with red hair on the other. The witch immediately turned her back and plunked down her backpack on the couch, presumably to put some space between us.
I fought not to react.
The mage didn’t seem bothered by me, at least.
Sneaking a look at his face, it struck me again that it really was bizarre how good-looking so many witches and mages were.
I’d only just started to pull a book on theurgic rituals out of my satchel, a new one I’d found at a tiny bookstore in Camden Town the day before, when the carriage lurched into motion. Settling back on the surprisingly comfortable cushion, I cracked open the book and began to read.
The mage sitting next to me only glanced at me, at first.
As the monoceri began to pick up speed, I felt his eyes on me more intently, however, and looked up cautiously to where he sat. He flushed at once, obviously feeling caught.
“Sorry,” he said, flustered. “Do I know you?”
I blinked. Then, remembering everything Alaric had been warning and lecturing me about for weeks, I tensed. A heavy feeling settled in my chest, but I kept my voice friendly.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“You’re sure?” He looked puzzled. “IswearI’ve seen you before. My friend thinks she knows you, too.” He motioned at the witch sitting on his other side. “I know that sounds like a line, but it’s really not. I’m positive we must’ve met somewhere, or?”
“You don’t know me.” I hesitated, then blurted, “I’m the hybrid. The half-Magical. You recognize me from the newspapers. That’s all it is.”
I tried to say it like it was nothing, as if they had hybrids everywhere in Magique, as if my face hadn’t been plastered all over gossip columns and news articles for months. Alaric already told me a lot of Magicals would likely act bizarre around me. He also warned me that the myths around humans and hybrids weren’t exactly flattering. Most seemed to see us as sex-crazed, animalistic, violent morons, from what I could tell.
It was more complicated than that, but that was the basic gist.
This new mage blinked at me in surprise, then glanced at his friend.
The witch sitting on his other side peered around him to look more closely at me in the dim carriage. She had a startling face, not only because it was extremely pretty and dimpled, but because she had lavender hair and shocking, lavender irises.
“So you are,” the new witch said, dumbfounded.
The red-haired witch on my other side, the one who’d stuck her large backpack between us and turned her back, giggled.
“I’m pretty used to that, from the bridging course.” I motioned behind me, and flushed. “If you want to sit somewhere else, I’m not bothered?”
“Why would we want to do that?” The lavender-eyed witch, who was clearly friendly enough with the dark-haired mage to feel comfortable leaning on his lap, arranged herself there to talk to me more easily. She sounded a touch offended. “Not all of us are close-minded, bigoted little weasels, you know. Or the daughters of weasels.”
She spoke up loudly at the end, clearly wanting to be heard.
The witch sitting behind me stiffened, and I noticed only then that her primal, perched on her shoulder, reallywasa rust-colored weasel. The weasel and its witch turned their heads and darted furious glares at the pretty, lavender-haired witch and her handsome friend. Then the red-head bent closer to her friends and the four of them began talking in agitated whispers.
I lifted an eyebrow, then turned to face the two Magicals who still hadn’t moved away, or attempted to shove bags between me and themselves. I noticed the lavender-eyed witch had a golden corgi made of light at her feet. The handsome, black-haired Magical had a golden lion. The two primals were scrabbling together on the carriage’s carpet, wrestling and snapping and growling, which looked even funnier than it might have, given they were identical in size.
The corgi tackled the lion just then, and they rolled over and over, each trying to gain an advantage.
I looked up at the black-haired mage.
“Do they always fight like that?” I asked curiously.
The two Magicals still hadn’t moved away.
The black-haired mage grinned at me, his mouth full of oddly-perfect, shockingly white teeth. He snorted at the wrestling primals.
“Always,” he assured me.
“Peach?” the lavender-haired witch offered, holding one out.
