Bottomless pillows and absent siren voodoo

At the bottom of the double spirals staircase leading up to the separate girls and boys Spires there was a small inconspicuous door that stood open with a glimpse of overstuffed cushions strewn everywhere.  Frankly it looked better than a stolen peek in the hearth room Christmas morning.  I made an abrupt change of directions and decided a few minutes wallowing in a pillow twice as big as me wasn't going to hurt anything,   I didn't want to face my room and Cristina after a shift like that...  I wasn't sure what first shifts were supposed to look like, but I hoped they got easier otherwise it was highly possible I wouldn't survive another twenty-four hours here talking castle or no talking castle.  And I was supposed to start classes too?  

Apparently I wasn't the only one who thought rooms full of quiet and stuffed softness sounded heavenly because there on four other cushions were Cristina, Victoria and Lox sort of passed out with a glazed expression on their face.  A voluminous powder blue cushion groaned, "I think one more day here might kill me."  It had a very Tad like voice in its feathery depths.   Ah.  So I wasn't the only one.  I wasn't sure if that made me feel better or worse.

“They’re calling me Macbeth.’  Tad said, I could see half a face poking out.  

“Who’s Macbeth?” I asked, as I plopped down on a cushion so silky and deep I realized I may have a bit of real siren in me after all.  

“A human story where everyone dies.”  Cristina said, “Gosh, where’d you go to school Wilkes?”

“Nowhere.”  I said.  Not something I usually blurted out, but somewhere around the tenth hour and three hundred and twentieth bed pan, I’d stopped caring about a lot of things...that’s when I noticed a teakettle on a small magicked hearth.  Wait, there was coffee?   

“Nobody’s calling you Macbeth.” Victoria said. “At least you got to do real magic.”  

“I heard three interns whispering as we traveled from the thirteenth floor to the forty seventh...I definitely heard them say ‘Macbeth’ and real magic doesn’t count if you choke and can’t actually remember anything other than a death spell.”   Tad, said.  

“I swear if you say Macbeth one more time, I’m going to personally make you a permanent name tag.”  Cristina said.  “At least you weren’t completely overshadowed by star girl here.”  

“You wanted to be swallowed alive by a diseased cyclops?” I asked. I didn’t mention the bedpan part because so far everyone thought that was more funny than serious.   I mean dark magic was supposed to be obvious in a very evil league of evil sort of way...not in a bedpan that no one could figure out.  

“Yes, about that Lox and I were wondering how your skin is still so soft and delectably perfect after rolling around in flesh eating salivia”.  

“Don’t listen to her.”  Lox said.  “I believe my exact words were, “woah, she’s so hot even covered in goop”.”  

“Are you hitting on her?” Cristina asked.  “Disgusting.”  

“Would you rather I hit on you?  You’re kinda cute for a bloodsucker.”  

“Are you even allowed to be here? I thought demons were supposed to stay in the underworld.”

“Wait, what happend to Lucy?”  Tad asked.  “Is that the ruckus in Dires that everyone is talking about?  Dr. Groats started to spell anyone’s lips shut who talks about it.  

Oh wonderful, the whole castle knew now,and were using it at every chance to raise the annoyance level with my attending.  

“She was eaten by a Seafward Cyclops with a flesh eating fungi problem.”  Lox said.  “...Or she’d already choked and was trying to off herself...nobody’s quite sure which”    

“Almost” I corrected.  “almost got swallowed by an Ogre.”  

“But instead got rescued by the ever sought after Dr. Cargill.”  Lox said in a falsetto voice, clutching his chest and batting his eyelashes.  

That got Victoria’s attention.  “I thought you were emptying bedpans!” She said.  Far far away from my beloved Flynn, is what her words sounded like they really meant.  

“Yes, thus pissing off her royal vampireness.”  Lox said with a smirk.

“Oh please, I could care less how many skampy girls chase after Dr. Hot pants or whatever you two are calling him, I just don’t think it’s right  Wilkes stole my patient from me.”   Cristina said.   

“Us.”  Lox said scowling.  “He was my patient too.”  

I wasn’t sure what to say.  Oh well for a peaceful hide out in a  pile of bottomless pillows of bliss and quiet for a few minutes.

 “I didn’t get rescued by anyone.”  I said.  “and I didn’t do anything to your patient, except perhaps give you more work to do… for which I truly do apologize.  Would you believe me if I said it was a matter of life and death?”   

“She really doesn’t know.”  Lox said, to Cristina.  Was she making hissing sounds at me?  

“Know what?” I asked.

“Oh nothing, just that you cured our patient, and he’s currently blubbing his way home to the bottom of the ocean.”   Cristina said.  

Me?  But that was impossible.  I’d done nothing, unless you counted my brief stint as a piece of floss as life saving. “It had to be Flynn.”  I said.

This got Victoria’s raised eyebrows.  

“Dr. Cargill...whatever”  I said.  I couldn’t think of him as anything else other than uppity wizard boy, so after discarding that...Flynn was the next obvious choice that came out.  

“Ha, he wishes it was him.”  Lox said, finally seeming to find something amusing about the whole thing.  “He used a forced vomiting spell that sent you flying out like a half chewed cob, but otherwise he didn’t do anything.”   

“But that’s impossible…” I said.  

“Oh cut it.” Cristina said.  “I was starting to like you, but stop pretending like you aren’t enjoying wowing us all with your siren voodoo.”  

“But how am I doing it?”  I asked.

Well, at least that shut all four of them up.  They just sort of looked at me.  Cristina with a scowl, Lox with his arms crossed.  Tad and Victoria both with a quizzical expression on their face, their chins resting in their hands.   I took a deep breath.  

“Look, I think there’s been some sort of big mistake.”  I said.  How was I supposed to explain pig baths, rheumatic old wizards, a tiny village that smelled like fish… gray dresses...dozens of aunts who rolled over in their proverbial graves both (posthumously and presently) at my lack of siren magic.   “I can’t do anything special.  Do I look like a siren to you guys?”

The guys exchanged glances.  

“You’re doing it now.”  Cristina said.  

“Doing what?”  I asked.

But nobody had a chance to answer because at that moment my arm began to tingle, Tad pushed up his sleeve…. the scribblings on our arms!   Lox and Cristina were already halfway out the door.   

“You ready for this?”  I asked Tad.  It was the first time we’d been summoned and I felt a pull inside me (which mixed with half terror and a side of excitement was a  rather heady potion).    The earlier confusion I’d felt about which way went where was gone.  With the magic throbbing through my arm it made so much sense I felt silly not to have seen it before.  The scribblings...the candles… the castle.  They were all different parts to one thing.  St. Hernadines.  

“The Ogre did say to run, didn’t she?”  Tad asked.  His feet looked very much like they wanted to do the opposite, and were trying to take root into the floor.

“Yup.  We got this.”  I said.  He nodded and swallowed.  We took off after the others, because somewhere in this castle there was broken magic waiting for someone with a robe on to come in and fix it.  We could do this… I could do this.  

If only I actually believed myself.