Otherworldly Discipline: A Witch's Lesson (12 page)

She just watched as he disappeared from the tree line, her cheeks still flushed, thinking that—even aside nearly being eaten by a water demon three weeks before—that was the single weirdest thing that had ever happened to her. She looked down at the velvet bag in her hand, grinned curiously, and then put it away into her dress’ pocket.

Ashcroft grumbled and slammed down a book from off the shelf. Charlotte had, without a doubt, the shortest attention span on the planet, and she had the audacity to blame him for it! She called what he was teaching boring—she said that a lot, and he never understood it. How could magic be boring? How could history be boring? How could knowledge be boring?

He didn’t care to discover. All he knew was that if the next time she pantomimed her fingers turning into a gun and then pointed it at her own hand in the ‘too bored to go on living’ gesture, he was going to cut a switch. And he told her just that—she was being childish and insulting, after all.

And then she went off the handle. But she had been doing that more and more often recently—he was beginning to believe that he was beginning to grate on her. Hopefully she was still out in the garden, letting off some steam. And more importantly, letting
him
let off some steam.

“Trouble in paradise?” Moriarty asked, leaning against the doorframe.

Ashcroft placed his hands on his hips. “We’re certainly not in paradise. She’s a handful.”

“She’s trying her best to impress you,” Moriarty mentioned, fingering some chipped paint on the doorframe.

Ashcroft wasn’t even about to believe that. “Then she’s
certainly
not doing a very good job of it!
It looks
to me
that she
is trying
her
best to ensure she sleeps on her belly tonight. She knows how to push all of my buttons, and she does it every day. Sometimes she keeps me from even seeing straight.”

Moriarty pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, opening his mouth to say something Ashcroft
had heard before
. Ashcroft cut his hand through the air and denied, “No, I’m not in love with her. Stop it.”

Moriarty made a humming sound and lit his cigarette. “I’m just saying,” Moriarty began, as if he’d said what he wanted to say to begin with, “that wizards have trouble… getting together. This is a dance they do. I’ve seen this a million times. There’s a power struggle, a blow out, and then they either destroy each other or stick to each other like glue. That’s why there’s so startlingly few of you, despite the fact that you’re immortal.”

“I think you’re full of it,” Ashcroft rumbled, although come to think of it… For as many flawless human and elf romances he’d seen, he couldn’t recall any wizard relationships that had gone off without a hitch… But that didn’t mean there weren’t
any.

Although…
C
ome to think of it, even Ashcroft’s own parents didn’t meet under any sort of love
story setting. His mother had tried to kill his father on several different occasions before his father was able to make love to her. The story had seemed odd when Ashcroft was a child—his parents were extremely affectionate and in love with each other. He couldn’t have imagined them any different.

Maybe there
was
some truth to what Moriarty noticed… No, never. She was his apprentice, his apprentice, his
apprentice!

Moriarty shrugged and blew a lungful of smoke towards him. “It’s like listening to street cats get together. You don’t know if they’re making love or killing each other until you open up your sock drawer and there’re five newborn kittens crapping all over your brand-new stockings…”

“I’m offended by the insinuation,” Ashcroft replied aloofly. “She’s a baby, Moriarty. She’s nineteen. She hasn’t even hit her immortality yet. It will be another hundred years before she’s mature enough to take as a wife, and I wouldn’t, because I’m her guardian.
Entrusted with her safety, her education…
It would be wrong and inappropriate on so many levels. What would the Wizard’s Circle say? Or my faction?”

“I wouldn’t worry about either, Master.” Moriarty shrugged. “They’d simply titter about it for awhile like the delicious gossip it is, and then live with it. You might as well succumb now, because it’s clear that you’ll eventually pull your head out of your ass and realize that Charlotte’s a cute little tart that needs more than a teacher and a firm hand, if you know what I mean.”

Ashcroft looked at Moriarty blankly.

“Sex, Master,” Moriarty sighed like he was talking to a child. “You’re going to slip up one of these days, you know it.” He flicked his cigarette into the fire, then changed the subject casually just as Ashcroft was opening his mouth to argue. “By the way, where is she? It’s about time for supper getting on, and the house is far too quiet.” With that question, Moriarty sauntered towards the dining room.

“She’s outside,” Ashcroft informed, following Moriarty out of the room.

“What do you mean she’s outside? Outside doing what? And why?” Moriarty asked, turning around.

“Just raking leaves. I figured if she wasn’t going to study, which she’d quite decided she wasn’t, she could work with her hands for awhile. Try to feel what it’s like to be productive,” Ashcroft replied brusquely.

“She doesn’t have the energy to do that sort of work, Master,” Moriarty chided, much to Ashcroft’s disdain.

“She had enough energy to goad me this morning,” Ashcroft assured.

He
had
always thought he was a patient man when it came to teasing—he lived with Moriarty, after all. But Moriarty knew the line. Charlotte mocked the line. That morning, Ashcroft had been talking about one of the few protection spells Byndians used, in fact, and her response was, “Or I could just bring you along and you can just bore them to death
.”
What made him wheel her out of the room, however
,
was when he asked if she was listening and she shrugged and said, “Yeah. Can’t you see me yawning
?
”

Moriarty didn’t look convinced, however. “Master, trust me when I say: she doesn’t have the energy. You’re just going to wear her out. She’s going to come in here in even a fouler mood, which in turn will get you into a fouler mood. And do you know where that leaves me? In the middle of it.” He looked weary as he added, “And I don’t like being in the middle of it, Master. I’ll have you know that I find it utterly exhausting playing referee.”

Charlotte took that moment to step into the main foyer, and Ashcroft could immediately see that she looked a little… off. Her face was flushed, her cheeks pink, her eyes dazed and dilated when she rounded into the dining room. Even her stride was tender, as if she was favoring one leg over the other.

Maybe Moriarty was right... Again
.
Lately that man had been very astute. Maybe Charlotte
didn’t have enough energy. Was she falling ill? Ashcroft’s eyes immediately rounded with concern. He’d nearly forgotten that Byndians were one immortal race that nearly had no constitution at all—they could become ill even after they reached immortality—they normally lived near herb wizards just to utilize that race’s skill at creating health potions
; and the herb wizards had abided that because the Byndian’s power of the Earth made plans grow faster
. “Charlotte?” he said, stepping up to her and immediately putting a hand over her forehead. “Are you alright?”

She nodded, looking up at him with dark, yet innocent eyes. “Uh huh,” she replied, but it didn’t really sound like she was listening.

“You have a fever,” he decreed, rubbing his knuckles across the side of her cheek. “I’m sending you to bed early tonight,” he promised.

She snapped out of the daze upon those words. “No, I’m fine.” She flinched away from his hand, looking as if he’d hurt her feelings. “I’m not a child. I can take care of myself.”

“Well, obviously not because you’ve gotten yourself sick,” he seethed. He took a deep breath. “Why don’t you just let me take care of you? I want to be nice to you!”

“Oh, and you’re doing a great job.” She rolled her eyes and sat down in the chair across from Moriarty, who was already filling his water glass
from
the wine bottle on the table, who was muttering under his breath,
“And here we go…”

Ashcroft stood there, completely dumbfounded. He found himself swallowing before shaking his head. “I don’t know how someone so pretty can be so spiteful.”

“And I don’t know how someone so ugly can be so insensitive.” She waved towards Moriarty and said, “Moriarty can afford to be an asshole because he’s at least attractive. You’re just a curmudgeonly old hermit who wouldn’t know what nice
even
looked like if it came up and bit you in the ass! Let me give you a hint-a-rooskie: it doesn’t have anything to do with cuffs that burn my skin off or forcing me to go out into the cold and work until I have blisters on my hands.”

He did his best to keep any sign of hurt off his face, making sure just an expression of rage kept on.

He remembered when he was a boy
a dragon tamer was a guest at the Archivist citadel. Young Ashcroft had followed the man around like a puppy until he saw the tamer’s arm eventually get burnt badly from the elbow down. Ashcroft was only seven at the time—he was scared senseless for a second or two, but the man never lost control of the dragon and got the giant reptile to submit to him within moments just by tightening the
reins
and slamming its boulder sized head into the ground until the dragon got tired of the struggle. Ashcroft remembered the man winking at him later and slapping him on the shoulder, saying, “If you let a dragon get away with burning you, you’ve just made him your master. He’s a cruel one, and will burn you all the more. But if you take him by the reigns right then and shorten the leash, he’ll realize that you’re the one in charge, and he’ll respect you for it and serve you better.”

It was clear—Ashcroft wasn’t going to think she was in charge by letting her burn him. He was going to have to shorten her leash and make her heel. “I
ha
ve had it, Charlotte. You’ve
run
me out of nice,” he warned. “Now you’ll to see how not nice I can be.” With that, he turned heel and marched from the room.

*
*
*

There was silence when Ashcroft left. They heard a door slam to the outside. “Maybe I went too far by calling him ugly,” Charlotte admitted flatly, swallowing. She really didn’t think that—not at all. She liked Ashcroft’s looks; although Moriarty had long divulged that the scars on his face were something that Ashcroft worried about incessantly.
It was one of the reasons he had never married—because women were repulsed by the looks of him.

Honestly, that was why she’d said it. To hurt him.

“You couldn’t just let him coddle you, could you? You just had to kick dirt in his eye?” Moriarty snapped at her.

Her shoulders slumped with shame at Moriarty’s prompt scolding. “Well, you see how quickly it escalates,” she defended. “And you know how exhausted I am, right?”

“He doesn’t. It’s not like you keep trying to sneak into HIS bed,” he replied crisply.

“Well, the last thing I want him to know is that I’m too afraid to go to sleep. He’d use that as ammunition! He treats me too much like I’m some kid as it is!”

Moriarty gulped down some wine. “Well, I hope you’re satisfied. You’ve just angered the gorilla in the monkey house
, my girl
. When he’s thrashing you—which he will—please bear in mind that it’s all your fault he’s doing so. He certainly doesn’t want you to think he’s a monster. If you’d just play the game like I told you to, you’d probably be getting spoiled rotten right about now. He’d give you anything you asked if you would just be nice to him!”

“I’m out of nice, Moriarty. I’m exhausted.”

“Tell Ashcroft. He’d take care of you.” Moriarty sounded exhausted himself.

“No,” she replied stubbornly.

“Fine. Enjoy your switching,” he replied unsympathetically.

Her eyes widened. “He went to get a switch?” she blanched. She’d never seen a switch before, but she read enough Mark Twain novels to know that she didn’t want to.

“Of course he did. What did you expect, here? You’ve made him run out of nice,” he reminded. “You heard the man.”

“Moriarty!” she gasped, frightened. “Talk him out of it!”

Moriarty calmly pulled his pocket watch out of his vest, glanced at it, and put it away. “No,” he drawled. “I’ve been off the clock for the last three minutes. What the master chooses to do with his snooty, snide apprentice is none of my concern.”

Charlotte shot out of her chair, incredulous that the man wasn’t going to help her at all. “You’re such a prick sometimes!” she cried, and then rushed out of the room and up to her bedroom to hide under her bed for the rest of the evening.

Although, she didn’t run fast enough. Ashcroft bounded back through the door and shouted, “Stay right
where you are
, young lady. I mean it!”