The City of Crows by Bethany Lovejoy (novels in english .txt) 📗

after having a conversation with her. I wouldn’t want you to miss your boyfriend.”

“He is not my boyfriend,” I informed her, hastily adjusting my shirt. Shoes would have to wait, I decided as I charged towards the door. “If anything, he’s the furthest thing from it.”

Yvie took the news well, if anything too well. In fact, one could tell that she relished in it. Her eyebrows raised higher, her hips swung more dramatically, and she could not wipe the shit-eating grin from her face. Anything to get me into Magictown, anything to start trouble. And more than either of those reasons, anything to relieve herself from boredom. She listened to Leo with way too much interest and sought to make him far too comfortable.

She laid on the couch, her long form stretched over the expanse of cushions as she dominated the space. With every stretch of her limbs, her feet traveled further down the couch, heels now dug into Leo’s leg as he squished against the other arm. I’d not thought to warn him; Yvie owned every room she entered. That’s why, unless you were ready to cuddle up, everyone else sat on the floor.

I rested my face against the side of the coffee table as I looked at him; the man was uncomfortable and yet engaged with Yvie. She’d not given us a useful bit of information, but she had regaled us with stories of her time in Magictown. To him, every single trip this alleycat took was a grand adventure. It was amusing, to say the least; he looked like a small child listening to a fairytale. When Yvie mentioned only the smallest acts of magic his head would nod, disappointment coating his features the second she mentioned droplets of water melting away the spells. I hadn’t told him stories, I wanted to stay on the business side of things… but, there was something about the way that he couldn’t hide his reactions. I suppose he was the sort of person that a girl would want to tell everything to.

Leo was, in his own way, magical.

“And then it started to rain,” Yvie breathed, tears in the corner of her eyes as she recounted leading the neighborhood children on another chase around the neighborhood. “And the poor guy’s nose went back to the way it looked before. He was so mad, I thought he’d just about kill me there. Good thing Rowan was around, roughed him up a bit and made sure that he couldn’t touch me. Those were the old days though, when he and Lyra were dating-”

I cleared my throat, shooting her a warning look.

“--Very old days, long gone,” Yvie stumbled, a heavy grimace playing on her features. She knew better than to get into that topic when we had guests, there were few limits to our friendship, but that was one of them. Beside her, Leo shifted, a look of confusion on his features that Yvie responded to with an awkward smile.

He settled back in beside her, concerned but unquestioning. That was one of the nice things about Leo; he knew when to stop asking questions.

The air lapsed into a momentarily awkward silence, and Yvie quickly clambered to fill it. “So, Magictown, witches, curses,” she cringed. “I suppose the easiest place to start is... do you know exactly who cursed your family?”

“He doesn’t,” I answered for him, eyes flashing towards him to affirm the fact. The less he talked to Yvie, the better. As it was, it seemed like he was all too capable of getting her to say too much. “Again, he wasn’t the one who got cursed initially, and if we’re being technical, it was his great grandfather.”

“Well then, it’s just as simple as a little name drop and some veiled threats to get that information, isn’t it?” Yvie asked, quirking her head as if it was an obvious solution. “I mean, I highly doubt the Society of the History of Magic is going to argue with you. Thankfully we’re not exactly talking about a centuries-long curse, that life span has been getting ten years shorter every round.”

“My family is from Vietnam,” Leo began, “I’m a second-generation American. ”

“Doesn’t matter,” Yvie interrupted. “It’s still worth a shot, if she or any member of her family within three generations left the country, or even bothered to register properly, then her name’s recorded in one of the spell records by Leo’s. And if Lyra so much as mutters mommy dearest’s name,” I shot her a scowl, “then she’s in. And if one of your witchy woman’s ancestors are alive, the odds are that you two could go about things the simple way and write to them to remove the curse. Way better than trying to do the absolute impossible here, and way less likely to upset her bloodline if you were somehow able to remove the curse without permission.”

“Right,” I began sarcastically before Leo could so much as open his mouth. “And in the years upon years that Leo’s father and grandfather had to solve this problem, they didn’t think to write a letter? Not to discredit your brilliance here, but I have a little bit of faith here that those two might have been able to remember the witch’s name. Considering the fact that they thought to get my name written down, perhaps…”

Yvie groaned, her head falling back against the couch, “gotcha, you’re right.”

“Nice try, though,” Leo said quietly. “I would have loved for it to be that easy.”

“Right then,” Yvie continued. “Magic, real magic. Spells that don’t fade. I mean, that’s…” She sucked in her cheeks, thinking. “I’ve heard whisperings, just rumors, but that’s-- You’d need more than that, wouldn’t you? Good witches don’t exactly go around looking for more power, the ones I know are content. You’d have to venture a little out of our circle…”

“Your circle?” Leo asked.

“We don’t exactly hang out with criminals,” Yvie deadpanned, a trace of annoyance to her voice. “I mean, not all aspects