11.
Calista had once thought that if she could escape the life she had, if she could live with someone like Severus, that she would immediately be happy and her problems would fade away, but she found that reality wasn't nearly so neat and simple. There were still days when the memory of things her mother had done replayed vividly in her mind, and made her feel frightened and small; and then, almost without fail, her fear would transition into anger, because that was a much easier thing for her to feel.
She preferred the anger, by far: It was hard, and solid, and charged. It felt like something solid inside her, something tangible that she could name. Fear, on the other hand… it made her feel quivery and weak, like all her edges were blurred, or like her insides were trying to leap out of her skin. And besides, anger felt like a choice, while fear felt forced on her.
And even though she had promised to try not to make her father worry, had long ago told him that her plan wasn't to be mean to him, she was still disobedient and argumentative more than she knew she ought to be. It was like a compulsion, once she had gotten him teetering on the brink of anger, to push him there. And why, she could never explain, because she hated when he was angry; she liked it much better when they were getting along, when he was teaching her something, or answering her exhaustive questions, or even… well, she would never say so, couldn't even think it properly without feeling a rush of shame and embarrassment, but she liked it when he hugged her.
But that, the being affectionate - that was something that happened mostly after her nightmares, or sometimes during a very serious talk, and she thought that probably he was embarrassed by it just as much as she was - he must have thought, during those times, that she was a dreadful baby.
Once… just one time, she had started yelling in the middle of the night, for no reason at all, just so he would come and comfort her. But then, when he'd come running, and she could see alarm written all over his face, she'd felt horribly guilty, wished she'd never done it. He did try to hug her, too, that time, but by then she was beyond mortified by what she'd done, and pushed him away.
For a long time, it was a cycle of trying to wriggle her way close to him, emotionally speaking, and then relentlessly pushing back against him, distancing herself, and vexing him on purpose. Then she'd feel awful, and start the whole cycle over again, and she wished she knew why she kept on doing it, because when she thought about it, all she really wanted was to get close, and stay there.
For his part, Severus tried to have as much patience as he could, but she did make it very difficult sometimes. On some level, he understood some of what was happening, understood that, for reasons she probably couldn't even put into words, she felt like she had to test him, make certain that he wasn't going to abandon her, no matter what she put him through. He didn't understand why it had to go on so long, why she had to put them both through this cycle over and over, but he wasn't going to give up; partly, because he cared a great deal for her, even when she was a miserable brat, and partly, damn it, out of sheer stubbornness, because he didn't want her to win. And, yes, he supposed that looking at their situation in a win/loss light was probably unhealthy, but there it was, just the same.
The other constant cycle they faced was the cycle of her nightmares; they would dwindle whenever he gave her potions, consistently, to help her sleep, but eventually, the dreams would start coming again, and he would have to give her higher dosages, and on and on, and he knew that she was developing a dependency on them, so he'd have to start the pattern in reverse, cutting her down to lower and lower amounts, and in between starting back up again, he gave it at least a month, so that her body would stop expecting the potion, and would be receptive to its effects once again.
Something curious happened, as well; he had always, since entering her mind, anyway, been able to feel her alarm when she was having a nightmare (well, nearly always - there had been one time when he'd felt nothing, but she'd started yelling for help, and he'd gone in and she said it was another nightmare) but, sometime when she was around nine or so, he'd started feeling something more.
He found that he would become aware, sometimes, of a sort of brushing against his outermost barrier, and whenever he went to find Calista after this, she had been wanting him, for something. To ask him a question, or to show him something in a book, or, sometimes, because she had remembered something that made her too afraid to want to be alone. He'd asked her about the brushing, but she didn't seem to have any idea what he was talking about.
And then, with the alarm. He found that sometimes, he could predict that he was about to feel it several moments before he actually did - it was like the buzzing of a bee outside a double-paned window; it would seep slowly into his consciousness, and then, once he had become aware of it, it was impossible to ignore. A few times, when he'd had this feeling, he'd managed to wake her up before she had a nightmare, or before it got particularly bad anyway, because she'd wake just slightly confused, and when he asked her if she'd been having a dream, she replied that she wasn't sure.
He thought, at first, that it must be another example of latent magical talent, that she must unconsciously be reaching out to him through legilimency, and perhaps that was partly it, but the longer it went on, the more he couldn't help but feel that there was some other factor at play. Perhaps it was the fact that they both had some talent for legilimency, but then, he'd been around legilimens that were quite more advanced than her, and never felt anything like this. Then he speculated that it could have something to do with their genetic bond, but why hadn't he felt it so keenly before this?
He'd tried using the phenomenon as further proof to show Calista that she was a witch; surely, even if she didn't realise it, she must have had some control, consciously or not, because it felt like her mind was reaching out towards him, and not the other way around, but she remained unconvinced until the day she cast her first spell.
When that happened, it had been such a small, inconsequential circumstance, and yet the moment had been monumental for her.
During one of their potions lessons, he had been supervising while she carefully followed the directions to make Boil-Cure Potion, a mixture that Severus often used as one of the first assignments for his first-years, as the nature of it allowed a very small chance for dangerous mistakes, a reason that suited it to be one of the first that Calista attempted by herself. While she had been measuring out porcupine quills, she had glanced at the cauldron of horned slugs nearby, and a flame erupted suddenly beneath it, sending the slimy solution into a gentle simmer. She had been so surprised that she dropped the quills, and they rolled across the surface of the worktop in all directions, some of them even falling to the floor.
Calista had stared at the cauldron in disbelief, and then looked at her father, as if for reassurance that she wasn't imagining what had just happened. Severus, who had been reasonably sure that something like this would happen soon, simply nodded at her. "Congratulations," he said, with a small smile, "Now, you should pick those quills up, and add them to the cauldron before it boils."
The potion had come out a little too thick and was more like a paste, but it still performed the function it was made for, and Calista had come away from that lesson with a boost to her self-esteem that was far greater than she would have received simply from getting the potion to come out right, anyway.
Almost as soon as Calista had inadvertently cast that first spell, there were dozens more. She found, to her utter delight, that she actually had a knack for wandlessly lighting fires, and she could light the candelabra in her room, too, without pressing the button at its base.
Without a doubt, however, Calista's favorite bit of magic to work involved the endless unidentifiable drawings she produced. One of the newfound talents she discovered was indeed an unusual, if somewhat useless, ability to manipulate the lines of her drawings after they had been produced, by willing them to look more like the way she had imagined them when she had set out to draw them. Suddenly, all of the indeterminable scribbles stuck on the walls of their flat became drawings. The vast majority of them were of cats. Severus would never tell Calista, but he preferred the scribbles.
As for the cat, Yellow, it had more than made itself at home. It seemed to have an innate ability to know exactly where Severus was intending to walk or sit, and could be counted on to be precisely in his way at all times. When the cat wasn't busy getting in Severus' way, it followed Calista around like a small, furry, and very annoying shadow, which pleased the little girl so immensely that sometimes it was the only circumstance that kept Severus from 'accidentally' letting the cat get lost outside the castle. He found himself anxiously awaiting the days when the cat would go off to live in Calista's House dormitory once she started at school, but then of course he'd have to let Calista go at the same time, so perhaps he wasn't too eager yet, after all.
He wondered, not for the first time, which House she would be sorted into; of course, he wanted her to be in his House, but he thought she might be a better fit for Ravenclaw, since as far as he could tell, she didn't really have any particular ambitions, except perhaps to annoy him. But then, she was fiercely competitive, and had a thirst for knowledge, and what ambitions had he really had at her age except to grow up to be powerful, and to have some friends of his own kind? He supposed it didn't really matter, as long as she wasn't in Gryffindor, mainly because he didn't think he could stand seven years of direct, rivalrous competition between his House and hers. Ah, and also because most of the Gryffindors he'd known growing up had been arrogant pricks - but he'd try not to hold that against her, if that's where she was Sorted.
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
Severus woke in the middle of the night, for no reason at all. There was no sudden noise, no light streaming in from the hall, not even the psychic alarm from Calista that he was used to blaming for waking him from a dead sleep. He rolled over, closed his eyes, and tried to return to sleep.
And then, for just an instant, he did feel a sudden, fierce prick of alarm, and he threw the covers off - but then, it was gone, and he wasn't even certain that he had really felt it - perhaps he'd only expected to feel it, and had imagined for a few seconds that he did. Well, he was awake now, at any rate, so it couldn't hurt to check on Calista, just in case.
He pulled his robes on, went out into the hall. Odd. Her bedroom door was completely shut; she usually slept with it ajar. He turned the knob, pushed the door open.
She didn't have her nightlight on; perhaps it had burnt out. She'd had it more than a year, after all, and that was all it was guaranteed for. He lit his wand, squinted at her in the dim light.
She was sleeping, and her eyes were moving like mad beneath their lids; she was clearly dreaming, but he still didn't feel alarm emanating from her, and she didn't appear particularly restless. Perhaps she was actually having a good dream, for once.
He paused over her bed before he left. She had a hank of hair across her face, partly in her her mouth. He brushed it aside, lightly touching her forehead as he did so, and -
- cold, icy cold rage hurt and danger -
A flash of something went through his mind, disappeared as soon as he had lifted his fingers from her skin. It wasn't… it wasn't alarm, though. It was… and he thought he must be going mad from losing so much sleep to all of her nightmares, because it felt like a threat.
Experimentally, he touched her forehead again. For another fraction of an instant -
- fight and vengeance and snarling, crushing rage -
And then her eyes snapped open, and she sat up, pushing his hand away from her. He expected her to say something, but she only turned her face away from him.
"Calista?" he ventured, reaching for her shoulder, "Is everything all right?"
She turned back to him, looked up - and then, something happened which had not happened in a very long time. A shuttered, blank look came across her eyes, like a wall.
"Are you… did you have the dream, again?" What else could it be?
"No," she said, and her voice came out hard and flat, a tone he hadn't heard from her since probably a month after she'd first spoken to him. "Leave me alone."
She was… well, she was guarded, against him, and she hadn't been that way, apparently hadn't felt the need to be that way in ages. He couldn't help but feel wounded; hadn't they got past this a long time ago?
And damn it, she had a nerve, treating him that way when he was just making sure she was okay, when so often in the middle of the night, she wasn't.
"Fine," he said shortly, and left her room. But he couldn't sleep after that, couldn't get over the fact that she'd been so dismissive. He would have blamed it on leftover fear from a nightmare, but he didn't feel any sense of alarm from her, so it seemed to be something else.
The next morning, though, she seemed more or less back to normal. She was a little quieter than usual, perhaps, but she answered back at breakfast whenever he asked her anything, and there was nothing unusual in her eyes or her expression. He wanted to ask her about the night before, but couldn't quite bring himself to.
In the afternoon, when he went into his office between classes, she was in there, spread out on the floor drawing pictures on a loose sheet of parchment, and she even smiled at him when he came in. It was as if the previous night, her coldness, the barrier in front of her eyes, had never happened.
He sat down at his desk, reviewed his lesson plan for later that afternoon. He could hear the soft friction of her crayons on the parchment, and when that stopped, she scrambled to her feet and stepped over to his desk, handing him the picture. She hadn't bothered to enchant it, or perhaps she hadn't been able to - her magic still didn't always work when she wanted it to - because it was little more than a mass of green and black scribbles.
"Another cat?" he asked ruefully.
She shook her head. "It's a snake," she said, "I think."
"You think?"
She nodded. "It wasn't my idea."
Severus raised his brow at her. "Er… okay. Well, thank you, then."
He took the picture, set it aside on the far corner of his desk. "I'll hang it up later."
"You don't have to," she said, and shrugged. Then she turned around and left, and he heard, dimly, the door to their flat opening and closing.
She was acting a bit strange, but not abnormal enough to worry him; he went back to his lesson plan.
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
She'd been just slightly quieter than normal all week, but she seemed mostly herself whenever he spoke to her, and she wasn't having any nightmares, even though they were in the month where he wasn't giving her any sleeping potions, so he wasn't particularly concerned, although he was still bothered by that one night - but maybe it had something to do with being off the potion, again, and he was trying not to focus on it too much.
Then, one day, he was reading in his study when she came in and took a sheet of parchment from the little writing desk. He looked up over the top of his book when she entered.
"What happened to your books, anyway? I haven't seen you writing in either of them in a long time. Did you finally manage to fill them both?"
"The sketchbook is full," she said, "The other one is… sometimes it's full, but sometimes it's all blank," she wrinkled her nose, as if the oddity of this had only just now occurred to her.
"You mean, it was blank, but now it's full?"
"No," and she looked at him as if he were daft, "I mean just what I said. It's full today."
Something tickled the back of his mind. And then, he remembered something, a flash of a memory from months and months ago. It's not full, she had said, There's always one page left.
"Calista," he said, setting the book down on his lap, but keeping his page with his index finger. "Your book, the one you've had for a long time… May I see it?"
She shrugged, set down the piece of paper she'd grabbed, on top of a stack of books that sat on the surface of his writing desk. "I guess so."
She disappeared from the room, and returned a minute later, holding the little book that she'd had the very first time he met her. At the time, all of the pages had appeared to be blank, but she'd been writing in it an awful lot since then, so it was reasonable to expect that they wouldn't be anymore.
She held the book out to him, and he took his finger out of his own book so he could take it from her and examine it properly. It was thick, many of the pages crinkled and folded and torn; it definitely seemed as if she'd had it for a long time. As he expected, it was filled with pen-marks and pencil scrawls. Some of the pages held hastily scrawled words, but many of them were completely illegible. He flipped through them; it was as she'd said, every page was full. There were a few that even looked as if she'd written over them more than once. There was something about it, though… he felt, plainly, that there was some kind of magic in the book, though he didn't know right off what sort of magic it was.
She was watching him keenly, he noticed.
"It's certainly full," he remarked, turning it over in his hands, "Calista, where did you get this?"
She narrowed her eyes. "Wait… you… you can see things on the pages?" she asked, sounding very surprised.
"Is there a reason why I shouldn't be able to?" he asked, suddenly suspicious, even though the book didn't really feel dangerous.
"No one else can," she said, and she sounded almost as if she were accusing him of something, "Every time anyone's ever taken it away from me, they say it's all full of mouldy, blank paper."
"Who's taken it away from you?" he wondered. Were they all Muggles? Was that the magic in the book, to prevent the writing in it from being seen by Muggles?
"The people at the orphanage. And… and at the house I was at before that." She curled her lip. "And she took it away, loads of times."
Not Muggles, then. Something else.
"Where did you get it in the first place?" he asked again.
"I found it," she said, defensively. "It's mine."
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "I know it's yours. But where did you find it?"
"I… I forget, exactly," she said, and he searched her face. She seemed to be telling the truth. "It was in our house, somewhere. In her house."
"Did it have writing in it when you found it?"
"Of course not," she said scornfully, "How would I write in it then? Can I have it back now?"
"Not yet," he said, "I want to look it over first, make sure there isn't Dark magic in it."
"What? But that's not fair! It's mine!"
"Yes," he said slowly, drawing the word out, and exhaling through his teeth. "We've been over that. Nevertheless, I am going to inspect it for curses before you can have it back."
"This isn't fair," she said again, loudly, as if it were the ultimate argument. The cat sidled into the room then, sat down by Calista's feet, and glared at him, as if he, too, thought it wasn't fair.
"Has that ever worked for you? Even once?" He had been annoyed, before; now that the damn cat was throwing its two cents in, he was far more than that.
"Well… no."
"Then please, stop saying it," he snarled. Then the cat stood up, arched its back, and he added spitefully, "Or, I swear, if I hear it one more time, I'm going to throw that bloody cat out the window."
"Go ahead," she said, fiercely, and Severus was shocked into a momentary silence. She wasn't, couldn't be, that callous, could she? Or perhaps she knew he was bluffing… but at this precise moment, he wasn't even sure he was bluffing...
"We live in a dungeon," she said, "It's not exactly a long drop."
Damn it. "I didn't mean our window," he said, but even to his own ears he sounded petulant. He flushed.
"The book is yours," he said hastily, and then he drew himself up, inhaled. "But you are mine, and I'm not giving you the book back until I'm certain it's safe."
There; that was properly authoritative, wasn't it?
An odd flash of an expression crossed her features; was she smiling? But it was gone as quick as he had seen it, and she folded her arms defiantly. The cat gave him another reproachful glare, but settled itself back down at Calista's feet.
"Of course it's safe," she said, but he could tell her heart wasn't in the argument anymore, "It's a book."
"What does that have to do with it being safe?"
"I'm just saying, you never hear about anyone being attacked by a book, do you?"
"Ah, actually, yes, I do. Attacked, spied upon, and possessed, as a matter of fact. And this particular book is alarming to me because you've had it nearly your whole life and never bothered to mention that it was full of magic - or did you not even know, which is even worse - and now you've stopped writing in it, and suddenly your nightmares have all but stopped?"
She blinked at him, several times in rapid succession.
"You don't… you don't really think the book has anything to do with it," she said, in a tone that was somewhere between a denial and a question.
"I don't know," he said, "Which is why I need to examine it. Can we ever - just once - play a fun little game where I tell you something and you just accept that what I say is the way it's going to be?"
"You could have told me you thought it had something to do with my bad dreams," she said.
"I did mention Dark magic."
She shifted, looked uncomfortably between his face and the book in his hands.
"You… you're not going to read it, are you?" Her features pinched together in concern.
"I wasn't going to," he said, locking eyes with her, "But should I?"
"No," she said, emphatically, and then she must have correctly interpreted his look, because she added, "And it's not because I did anything bad, it's just… I… sometimes I use it like a… you know, like a diary. It's… it's private," she said, borrowing a word he had used, when she'd once wanted to look in the second drawer in his writing desk for more paper, the one that was usually locked.
He looked at her a moment longer; she held his gaze, so she was either being honest, or she had gotten much better at concealing when she was not.
"I may have to look through it to figure out precisely how it's been enchanted," he said, "But I will try to read as little of it as possible."
"When can I have it back?" she asked moodily, even though it was true when he'd said that he hadn't seen her writing in it in quite a long time.
He sighed. "I'll give it back to you after I figure out the enchantment," he said, "As long as it isn't dangerous."
She wavered a moment, then finally left, picking up the loose parchment from on top of his writing desk on her way. The cat leapt up, followed at her heels.
Top of the Astronomy Tower, he thought sourly in the cat's direction, How's that for a window?
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
Logically, if the journal Calista kept had been found in the Lestrange home, it should have belonged to them, or perhaps it could have been something that Bellatrix had brought with her when she'd married Rodolphus, but if that were so, it evidently hadn't been very important to either of them, because it held no markings that would indicate it belonged to an old wizarding family.
He'd been to Bellatrix's childhood home at Grimmauld Place, to visit Narcissa before she'd married Lucius Malfoy, and everything they owned seemed to be stamped or embossed with the Black Family Crest. He had no reason to believe that the Lestranges wouldn't have done the same; and besides, the book felt old, but not old. He suspected, upon examination, that it had belonged to someone else before Calista, but it simply did not feel like something that had been around for more than a generation or two.
There was a certain feel to old magic, a powerful antiquity, and this book did not have any of that, although there was something about it...there had to be, or why else would the pages have appeared like nothing more than - what had she said - mouldy, blank paper - to everyone but Calista, and now, him?
He flipped through it again; still, pages and pages of her words and markings flew by; he stopped when he saw, at a flash of a glance, a scrawled word that looked an awful lot like 'father'. He flipped back through, found the page again. He had promised her that he wouldn't read anything he didn't need to to decipher the enchantment… but then, he was the only one besides Calista who could read the words, so perhaps there was some clue in whatever she had written about him that explained that. He told himself that he would stop reading if he came across anything that would potentially embarrass her.
This page was one of the ones that was not too difficult to decipher; would have been plainly legible, if she didn't have such atrocious handwriting. It had gotten a little bit better lately (probably from the practise of copying lines so many times as a punishment), and this page was clearer than her writing had been on the potions list she'd given him, so this must have been more recent than that.
I can't believe my father let me get a cat even though he hates cats I know he does because you don't call things you like sodding little hairballs well I bet he would call me that if I was being really bad but he would not really mean it and I think he does mean it about yellow but it must mean that he likes me a lot I like him too. The things I don't like are stupid rules and vegetables and writing the same things over and over but I guess it is okay because mostly I like everything here but my father I like the most I would live outside if we had to -
Severus tore his eyes from the page. This, clearly, was not where the secret to the book's magic was hidden, and although seeing her say in writing that she liked him, not once but twice, warmed him a bit more than he was comfortable admitting, he had promised not to read more than he had to.
He flipped through the pages again. He caught phrases, here and there -
I like cats they are nice
it looked like a marshmallow bean but it tasted like socks
make a potion today
but none of it appeared at all useful. He started turning the pages more slowly, scanning them quickly for anything that sounded important, forcing himself to skip everything that wasn't, even when it mentioned him. Although, that did spare him from reading Merlin knew how many pages about bean flavours and cats, so there was that silver lining, he thought.
The second run through, a few passages did jump out at him, because they mentioned her dreams, or Bellatrix.
sometimes I am scared that she will get out of the prison and come hurt me again but my father said he will protect me but I hope he knows that she is very good at magic even though she is a bad person I wish it could be only good people can be good at magic and bad people would be bad at it
I hate the dream and even when it goes away my back is still feeling like cuts and it hurts sometimes and I keep thinking it is bleeding everywhere again and sometimes I can even see the blood on my blankets and what if I die from having no blood but then there isn't blood but then there is and it takes a long time for there to not be any and it is so cold just like before I think blood must make you warm and when it goes away you turn cold I hate cold except snow I like snow
wish I just had no mother and then I would not have bad dreams but maybe now I have no mother because I do not see her anymore and that is good
There was one entry too, that had clearly been written before any of the others, had almost certainly been written while she was being held at the Order headquarters:
thay no mum is bad thay sed it and thay sed i wil shoo her war thay liv but i wont
The entries she'd written about Bellatrix, and about her nightmares, were chilling, perhaps even more so for the fact that they were scattered amongst passages written about cats and candy, but, so far as he could tell, nothing written in the book had anything to do with whatever enchantment was on it. How, then, could he read it when no one else could?
It couldn't be because of their genetic bond, because Bellatrix couldn't read it, and besides, even he hadn't always been able to read it; he distinctly remembered seeing blank pages, long ago, just as everyone else had.
Well, perhaps that was it, then - what had changed, from when he'd first met her until now? An awful lot, actually, but there had to be something concrete, didn't there? He had used legilimency on her - perhaps the book was attuned to her mind specifically, and now that he had touched her mind he could read it too?
If only he could remember if he had ever actually seen writing in it before, and when, perhaps he could narrow it down for certain. He had seen her writing in it, and he'd assumed that she'd been filling pages, but had he ever actually seen writing on them for himself, before she'd handed the book to him the other day?
Something caught in his brain, and he replayed his last few thoughts. she'd handed the book to him and then he remembered precisely what she'd said: Everyone who's ever taken it away from me says it's full of mouldy, blank pages.
No - it couldn't really be that simple, could it? Well, there was only one way to find out.
The next day, he gave her the journal back.
"Did you read it?" she asked, anxiously, before adding, nearly as an afterthought, "Were there any curses on it?"
"I glanced through it for clues as to the magic embedded in it, as I said I would," he said, "I didn't read the majority of it, nor did I find any curses on it."
Of course, if his experiment failed, he would take the book back and continue to check it, but she didn't need to know that.
He watched surreptitiously to see where she put it away - she kept it, evidently, in the top drawer of her wardrobe, which was precisely where he would have looked for it, anyway. He'd rather expected something a bit more clever, but perhaps she'd never thought about hiding it, since no one before him had ever been able to read it, anyway.
Later, when they were both in his office - he pretending to correct essays while she read a book - he waited until she seemed absorbed, and then slipped out of his office and into their flat. He went into her bedroom - he had actually never been in it while she wasn't since she'd come to stay with him - and opened the top drawer of her wardrobe. Sitting right on top of a pile of clean, but unfolded, laundry was the tatty little book. He picked it up, flipped through the pages -
And they were blank. Every single page in the book was - well, mouldy and blank. Bloody hell. He closed her drawer, and brought the book with him back to his office for one final test.
"Calista," he said, entering the office, "I need you to do something."
She looked up, indignation plain on her face, and leapt up from the chair she'd been sitting in, the book she was reading falling facedown onto the ground. He winced, until he saw it was only one of her cat books. "Hey! That's my book!"
"I assure you, I am still as aware of that fact as I ever was." He held the book out to her. "I need you to hand the book to me."
"Er… why?"
"I think I've figured out the spell on it; just hand it to me, would you?"
"You still won't read it, right?"
"No," he said exasperated, "But will you hand the damn thing over?"
She scowled, but held it out. He took it from her, opened the cover -
It was filled with pages and pages of scribbles and hastily scrawled words. He flipped through it, quickly, to verify that it was exactly the same as before, and then he handed it right back to her, and chuckled.
"It's so simple," he said, "You just need to hand it to someone, and they can read it. But no one ever asked you for it before, did they?"
"No," she said reflecting, "They just took it."
"Well," he said, "At least I know for certain it isn't cursed, now."
"Didn't you… know that already, when you gave it back?"
"I was reasonably certain," he said, "But I had to try taking it from you to make absolutely sure, didn't I?"
"I guess." She picked up her other book off the floor, set it on her chair. "So if I put my book away now, you can't read it, right?"
"That would be correct."
She nodded, satisfied. "Good."
She brushed past him, book in hand. He reached out to open the door for her at the same that she reached for the knob herself. Their hands touched -
- seething, twisting, coiling rage, hurt you -
He started, pulled his hand back.
"Calista!" he yelled, because he didn't know what else to say.
She started, now, looked up at him, a question in her eyes.
He peered at her, but she looked - normal. Well, a bit shaken perhaps, but there was nothing in her that matched what he had just felt, nothing in her eyes besides surprise and uncertainty.
"What was that for?" she asked, understandably startled.
"I -" he reached for her again, touched the side of her face with his hand.
He felt the warm skin of her cheek, and nothing else.
What in the fuck was that?
"Nothing," he said, "Nevermind."
"Ooookay," she said, and she backed out of his office, looking at him as if he had gone completely mental.
He hadn't, had he?