When Magic Flows

A SECOND INVITATION

Allegra POV  

On the next day when I arrived at the training center, I saw that both Sybil and Alistair were waiting for me in the parking lot. Sybil was bouncing in the place, curious to know the whole story, while Alistair was delaying his entrance in the training center, pretending to be looking for something in his truck. Both looked expectantly to me, each one from their corner on the parking lot. I decided to waive at Alistair and went to my best friend’s side.

“What the hell happened to you yesterday, A?” She asked. “My mom texted me during class yesterday because your mom called her looking for you at our place, but you never showed up. What happened?”

“I had a huge fight with them, but for now everything seems to be fine now. Don’t worry.”

“But what could had made you leave your home and disappear most of the day?”

“Well, apparently there will be a contest over my hand because I’m taking too long to choose a life partner.” I rolled my eyes at no one in particular, but I was tired of explaining this story to people. I resigned myself that I could do nothing to avoid this damn contest, well, at least for now, so I decided that I did not want to talk about it. I just wanted to have a calm day at the training center, do my work, and start to strategize a way out of this whole mess. 

“I’m sorry, what did you just say? I had the impression you were telling me that you would be the prize of a stupid magical contest, but I am sure that I just heard it wrong,” she told me as ironically as she could.

“You heard it right,” I answered her. “That is the ugly truth, Sy, but honestly? I’m so tired of discussing this theme! It took a lot of my energy yesterday, and now I have to think hard about a way to get myself out of all this madness,” I told her.

“Wait a minute, A. You are telling me that you’re going to leave this subject like this as if someone gave you a blouse that is too large for you and you will have to return the gift?” She sounded astonished.

“No, not at all, girl, but I’m so done about it now that I just wanted to have a normal day, you know. Frankly, I miss my old problems now, and since I still have a bit of time before the ‘great announcement’, I intent do use it in my favor and build a plan to avoid the whole thing. But for today, let’s just cast some fun spells and make a giggle elixir.” I suggested to her. This was silly, I know, but why not?

Then we got arm to arm and entered the training center straight to our first class that was almost beginning. Today would be about protection too, but since now we were all able to cast a dome over the whole coven if necessary, we would train a little bit of combat along with protection. 

Mr. Palmer, our instructor, gave us the command to not cast any harmful spells in combat against the others. This class was about self-protection, and I found out that I was good at it, and this was fantastic. I did not want the coven to worry about a leader that was not capable to protect herself. It wasn’t harmless, though. I got a couple of bruises ducking from spells and Mary threw me a blast that I could not avoid. But in the end, it was a very interesting class and took my mind off the great problem that came up since yesterday. 

Before lunch, Alistair found me in the corridor, while I was waiting for Sybil to finish a curative for a small cut that she acquired in that theoretically non-violent class. 

“Hi, Alistair, nice to see you!” I decided to start this conversation.

“Hi, Allegra, how are you today?” he asked me

“Everything is fine, or at least it will be. I have faith.” I responded to him. I made a face because I did not want to talk about the circumstances that involved his visit yesterday. 

Seeing my reluctance, he decided to ignore the elephant in the room and started to talk about something else: “So, yesterday I was expecting to invite you to date next Friday night, but I never had the chance. How does that sound to you?”

“Yeah, this sounds fun!” I told him. “Where are we going?”

“How about dinner and a movie? I’ve heard that there is this new thriller movie that has a good review.”

“Sure! That sounds nice.” I loved going to the movies and I wouldn’t refuse a nice meal with a nice guy, so I accepted.

“Great! I’ll pick you up tomorrow at seven. Does this sound good?”

“Sound perfect.” I smiled at him and he smiled back.

“So, it’s a date!” He told loudly right at the moment that Sybil was leaving the nursery after her curative and I could see beyond Alistair that her jaw dropped. “Hi Sybil,” Alistair told her as he was leaving through the corridor.

Sybil came to my side, apparently still unable to close her mouth. 

“Oh, for heaven’s sake just say it,” I told her.

She seemed to have found a few words, but I was just able to make sense because I knew her for a while: “You. Him. When did it happen?”

“If I’m being honest, Sy, a lot happened in the last few days, and it was not just contest related, but maybe we can talk about boyfriends later because it’s lunchtime and I am starving,” I told her. 

I could see that she was beyond curious, but eventually, she accepted that I would not tell her a thing before I have been fed and responded: “Fine. You earned one hour, but one hour only. And then you are going to tell me what the heck is happening in your life, okay?”

“Yep. Now let’s go to the cafeteria. I can smell meatloaf and mashed potatoes.”

“Whoa! If you weren’t a witch, I would say you were a she-wolf, girl.” I laughed out loud at her comparison. 

“I’m just hungry, babe. Now let’s go fetch ourselves some food and we can talk later.”