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The library is dusty, but it’s not dirty. Hecate doesn’t think it’s a distinction that would make sense to Pippa, who hates the library and the gray film it leaves over her school uniform, but to Hecate, the dust of the library is soothing. It promises solitude from her peers for the afternoon, something for which Hecate is profoundly grateful as she blows cobwebs off the top of a leathery volume titled Enchantments of the Flesh .
The leather is old, and oddly textured - cracked and brittle and thin. After a moment, Hecate places it in her memory. Her father had a set of books like this in his study, before he was arrested. It’s bound in human flesh.
Before she can stop herself, she drops the book to the table with a crash. Immediately her heart hammers, panic flooding her, and she takes deep breaths, counting in her head to calm herself down. Nobody has heard the crash; nobody is in the library except her. There is nobody to see her foolishness and judge her for it, so she will have to judge herself. She is sixteen years old, and although she has told nobody here, she is alone in the world. She therefore must behave like an adult; she is too old and too independent to be frightened of something as silly as human leather. Instead of revulsion, she should feel anticipation; only old and powerful spells would be encased in this kind of binding.
This is the reason she’s in the half-forgotten old wing of the library in the first place, of course. It’s her last year at Cackle’s Academy, and it would be wasteful to leave here without familiarizing herself with the school’s extensive collection of grimoires and ancient texts. Even if some of them are …. distasteful. Hecate can hear her father’s voice echoing in her head: do you know what makes a woman a real witch, Hecate? She takes what she wants, and lets nothing stand in her way. Until you can do that, you’re nothing but a girl.
Are you a witch or not? She asks herself silently, and settles herself at the table with the book, opening it with shaky hands.
A Spell For Creating Grate Luste
Being for the use of a wizard or witch with unreturned desyres
Hecate looks at the title of the first potion almost uncomprehendingly for a moment before it sinks in. “Enchantments of the Flesh” indeed - this isn’t a book of powerful spells. It’s a book of gross ones. She’s looking at a rape potion.
Unbidden, tears rise to her eyes, as the topic of the book brings back the other reason that she’s taken to hiding in the library most afternoons lately. Unreturned desyres indeed.
Pippa isn’t speaking to her.
Of course, it could just be that Pippa is still furious with her for skipping their broomstick water skiing display. But… it could also be something else. Because at the end of last term, before summer holidays, before Hecate’s father was arrested for cruel and unnatural use of magic, before her entire life was mangled and she was left holding the shreds of it - before all of that, Hecate had been found out by Pippa’s other closest friend, Ursula Hallow.
“Disgusting.” That’s what Ursula had called her. “I see the way you look at her and it’s disgusting, Hecate Hardbroom. There’s no place for inverts in a dormitory - we can’t sleep safely around you.”
Hecate skipped the broomstick display, and avoided Pippa, Ursula, and the rest of their stupid conniving little group for the remaining weeks of the term. She’d left for the summer uncertain whether Ursula had told Pippa about her or not.
When she came back, fatherless and brimming with cold fury, Hecate had wanted those old fears to seem petty and meaningless. Pippa avoiding her at the new term feast, Ursula smirking at her from across the table - none of that should compare to seeing him dragged away, should it?
It does. They’re a month into the school year now, and Hecate is discovering that she has an endless capacity to hurt. She hurts for her taken father, for his victims she hadn’t known about until it was far too late, for her long-dead mother who might have been one of them, for herself left all alone. It’s overwhelming, but somehow none of that stops her from hurting a little more every time she catches sight of Pippa’s long golden hair, and the frivolous pink clips she uses to hold it back. None of those larger agonies cancel out the electric way her breath catches at Pippa’s smile, or the shameful longing to touch that smooth skin.
She glances at the book and feels a sudden unwanted kinship with its creators, monstrous as they must have been. She knows what it’s like to be so unwanted, to have your love thrown back at you with disgust until you accept it and become disgusting. How can she judge them, when she’s a monster too?
There’d been some small part of her that had hoped. Some trusting inner self, that thought maybe once Ursula told, Pippa would reach out to her. Maybe Pippa could even…. But a month of silence had crushed that hope. And the ugly, wounded anger that fills Hecate whenever she lingers on it…. Well, she can understand how that ugliness would turn into the invention of these potions.
Cautiously, a little gingerly, she flips through the book’s pages. Most of the spells and potions are variations on that first one, and they all have similar base ingredients. Poppy or betel to confuse the mind, blood for power, a lock of the victim’s hair for control. Saffron or ginseng for their aphrodisiac properties, or occasionally something a little more exotic. They’re level four potions at most, and Hecate thinks that it should be harder than this to do such harm, but by her 6th year she knows that a spell’s difficulty is by no means proportionate to its effect.
Towards the back of the book, there’s one potion that’s different.
Being a Spell for Sensitivity , the title reads, and the ingredients are totally different than the rest of the potions. Hecate reads through them analytically, trying to figure out what they might do together. Ginger is a healing ingredient for the most part, and hasn’t shown up in the previous spells. Bat saliva is an enhancer, chili pepper rarely shows up in spells at all. There’s still the betel root, causing confusion, but the elements of control are gone from this spell - no blood, no hair, no cruelty.
Chilis tingle and burn where they touch your skin, Hecate realizes abruptly. This isn’t a spell to force sex upon anyone. Rather it’s an enhancement - a spell to make things more pleasurable. A spell for sensitivity indeed. Images invade her mind - of Pippa shuddering with desire as Hecate runs a hand along her stomach, of Pippa arching helplessly as Hecate takes her breasts into her hands, brings her mouth down to taste. She imagines for a moment what it would be like to have Pippa crying out in ecstasy beneath her -
But that fantasy is what makes her a monster, and it’s nothing she should allow herself to entertain. She slams the book shut and replaces it on the shelf, and then after a moment of thought, waves her fingers and convinces the dust and cobwebs to move back in place over it, so that no trace of her presence remains. It is not the sort of book that a suspected invert should be caught looking at, she thinks.
*
The book lingers in the back of her mind, but that’s to be expected. Magic - especially dark magic - has a mind of its own, and it doesn’t leave easily from anywhere it’s been invited in. Hecate is used to the sensation. She grew up on her father’s library, after all. The next afternoon in potions she feels herself reaching almost absent-mindedly for the betel, and a lifetime of discipline makes it easy to push away the compulsion and measure out her dragonfly wings instead.
“Why Hecate, are you sure you’ve got this quite right?” the simpering voice of Ursula Hallow comes from behind her, at Hecate’s workstation, and Hecate spins to see Ursula and her little hanger-on Phyllis standing over her cauldron.
They haven’t spoken to Hecate once all term. After years of being forced to tolerate Hecate on their outskirts to stay in Pippa’s good graces, Hecate thought maybe they’d just been so relieved to be rid of her that that would be the end of it. But no - she can see from the sly curl to Ursula’s lip that the loss of Pippa’s protection is going to mean a return to the ridiculous hazing tactics that had pervaded her first year at Cackle’s.
“I’m fairly confident in it,” she returns, and stalks over to see what damage they’ve inflicted. Sure enough, her potion, which had been a steady blue when she went to pick up her next set of ingredients, is now veering alarmingly toward brown. There’s a hint of cinnamon scent to the air, which would cause the discoloration as it interacted with the frog spawn. Cinnamon’s a stable ingredient, though - if she counteracts it with something equally stable, she can probably render it inert and save her work.
“Everything alright over here, girls?” Ms Switch comes to tower over them ominously, raising an eyebrow at them.
“It’s fine, Ms Switch - only Hecate’s bungled her potion, and we were trying to help her sort it out,” Ursula says sweetly, while Phyllis nods. To the side, Hecate sees Pippa’s head shoot up in alarm - apparently her bevvy of friends hadn’t gotten Pippa’s permission to resume torment. Hecate pushes aside the relief she feels. Pippa isn’t her friend anymore, and it doesn’t matter whether she’s on Hecate’s side or not. Hecate can’t afford to let it matter. She is a monster, and Pippa is a threat to the mask she wears.
“I’ve figured it out, Ms Switch,” she says, and puts a pinch of ground spiders’ tooth into her cauldron, hoping it’s enough. Surely the stupid girls wouldn’t have dumped in more cinnamon than that? They aren’t looking to cause an explosion. She stirs, and the potion returns to its smooth blue. Ursula’s face sours, while Phyllis looks vaguely impressed.
“How’d you do that?” she asks, and Ursula stomps on her foot. Hecate rolls her eyes; if she must have tormentors, she thinks she deserves competent ones.
“Well done, Hecate,” Ms Switch says. “Girls, return to your own bench, please.” She stays until they obey, her sharp eyes tracking them as they return, and Hecate knows that Ms Switch hasn’t bought their protestations of innocence.
She also knows it won’t matter. As she’d learned her first year, a certain amount of bullying is expected among young witches - Ursula had never so much gotten punished as she’d gotten points for style.
Hecate returns to her potion. Her hand hovers for a moment over the ginseng before she picks up her dragonflies.
After class, she packs up her things quickly, eager to beat the rush and avoid whatever fallout is coming her way. She’s not fast enough. Pippa catches up with her before she’s two feet down the hall. Hecate avoids looking directly at her, focusing instead on a book of African chants. She’s afraid of what she’ll see if she meets Pippa’s gaze. She still doesn’t know what Ursula has told her.
“Did they mess with your things again?” Pippa asks, and there’s a quiet anger building under her tone that is familiar from early in their friendship, before the other girls in their year had gotten the message: leave Hecate alone or face Pippa Pentangle’s pink wrath.
“Let it go,” Hecate mutters, still not looking up. “It’s not your problem anymore, Pippa.”
There’s a moment of silence. “Hiccup, please …. just tell me what I did,” Pippa whispers, and she sounds so anguished that Hecate has to stop and look up at last, has be be caught by those clear blue eyes, by the kindness on Pippa’s face that she’s never seen matched anywhere else. Her breath catches in her throat, and everything else falls away.
“Careful Pip - you won’t want to get too close, who knows what kind of dark magic she learned from her father.” Ursula joins them and the spell is broken as Hecate’s gaze snaps to her face instead, cold anger bursting to life within her.
She did learn dark magic from her father. Spells that Ursula Hallow can’t begin to dream of, and Hecate hopes Ursula can see that knowledge shining out of her as she maintains a steady stare, let’s a quiet smile begin to form around her lips. She knows it’s unnerving when she smiles.
But then - “What are you talking about? Hecate’s father doesn’t know dark magic,” Pippa says, sounding uncertain, confused. Ursula’s eyes light up with triumphant glee, even as she masks it with an expression of shock.
“Pippy darling, didn’t you hear ? Mr Hardbroom was arrested this summer - for magical torture. They think he killed at least seven people.” Pippa looks to Hecate, waiting for the denial, and when it doesn’t come, her mouth falls open in shock.
“Hic-” she begins, and then Ursula cuts her off.
“No wonder you’re a pervert, Hecate - I bet you learned it on his lap, didn’t you?” The way she says it, on his lap , implies all sorts of horrifying, disgusting things and Hecate is reacting before she can stop herself, reaching out to slap Ursula across the face.
There’s a beat of silence. Pippa’s face is scrunched up and bewildered. Phyllis’ jaw has dropped in shock. Ursula is taking stock of herself with all the confused fury of a person who has been hit far fewer times than they deserve.
Hecate is numb. Unlike Ursula, she’s been hit probably a bit more often than she deserves, but she’s never done the hitting before. It freezes her into place.
She’s not prepared for it when Ursula reaches out and grabs the watch from around her neck, pulling hard enough to snap the chain. There’s a shock of hurt as it breaks, and then a drop of blood sliding down the back of her neck.
“This is his, isn’t it?” Ursula sneers. “Your father was a monster who used his magic to torture people, and you’re wearing his watch around your neck like you’re proud of him. You’re just like him. You probably helped him - that’s why you’re an invert, that’s why you look at Pippa like that. You’re waiting to make her your next victim.” She steps forward, and the anger on her face is ugly and only half a step removed from fear. “Stay away from her, Hecate. Stay away from all of us!”
Hecate breaks and runs.
She gets as far as the patch of trees by the pond before she breaks down and begins to sob, loud wracking noises that don’t come with any tears, because her father had taught her better than to cry, damnit. She can be loud, here, at least. There’s nobody listening, nobody coming to find her. Hecate is alone, and loneliness is the only comfort left to her.
Ursula was right - it was his watch. And she shouldn’t have been wearing it proudly, because he really did do terrible, terrible things. He was a monster. But he gave it to her, once, when she mastered a difficult spell. He was proud of her, when nobody else in her life had ever been proud, and she had taken it so completely to heart. She knew he wouldn’t bother to lie - he told her often enough when she disgusted him. He was a monster, but he was still her father. And Ursula is right about something else: Hecate is a monster too.
But she didn’t choose to be. She didn’t choose to be raised by him, or to love him. She didn’t choose to be this tall, gangly, awkward creature, whose heart fills with an ugly yearning when she sees someone as beautiful and kind as Pippa. She sees her reflection in the small pond and she hates herself, but she hates the world more. How can it blame her for the things she didn’t choose to be?
Ursula’s just as monstrous as she is, Hecate thinks sullenly. She’s always looking for ways to pick at people, to tear into them with little cruelties. But she hides it behind blonde hair and a fast smile, and the world worships her. She wants those girls to know what it’s like - to be so out of control, to watch yourself be terrible and be unable to stop it.
And that’s when the book comes tapping at her mind again, reminding her. She knows a spell to make people lose control of themselves.
*
Brewing the potion isn’t hard. Hecate finishes it in an evening, which is just as well; she thinks that if it took any longer, she’d come to her senses and chicken out.
It’s fast enough work for her fury to carry her through to the end, and it’s only after she finishes brewing it that she has to stop and consider what she’s planning to do. She sits on her bed and examines the effervescent potion and thinks.
It’s undoubtedly a nice enough flavored potion - it’s a golden color from the ginger, and probably doesn’t taste entirely unlike a spicy gingerale. It’s not one of the sharp, bloody ones, filled with power and corruption. Hecate doesn’t want power over the other girls. She wants them to lose power over themselves. She wants them filled with the same burning need Pippa lights in her, just as horrified and just as unable to stop it as Hecate has always been.
She wants them to know what it feels like to be a monster.
It would be easy enough to sneak it into the punch one night at dinner, except that the effects of the potion aren’t exactly discriminating. What if a teacher came along with an extra chanting assignment, and they all writhed ecstatically against their chairs in the classroom? It would be mortifying, and then Hecate would get caught.
No. It has to be given in a controlled way. She needs the girls to take it and then go to their separate rooms afterward. If they don’t know it’s happening to anyone but them, they’ll think it’s because of them. They’ll think their bodies are betraying them. That’s the whole point of this.
Hecate’s musings are interrupted by a knock on the door, and in a panic, she tosses her ragged blanket over her still messy cauldron. Who would be knocking on her door after midnight? She can’t think of any explanation except the most horrifying one - somehow, she is caught already.
“Come in,” she calls in her crossest tone, and is grateful that she is too disciplined to let her voice shake, even when the end is nigh.
The door opens, and Pippa comes padding in, clad in her pink pajamas and a pair of white fuzzy slippers. Hecate stares at her, hardly able to believe it. Pippa’s hair is mussed, as though she’s already been in bed. In her hands, she’s holding Hecate’s watch, the chain still broken. Dried blood shines visible on the snapped edge, where the metal whipped into her neck.
“I brought this back for you,” Pippa says quietly, holding it out. When Hecate doesn’t take it, she pads further into the room, shutting the door behind her and dropping the watch onto Hecate’s rickety desk. “I’m sorry they took it. And Hecate, I’m so so sorry about your father.” She seats herself across from Hecate on the bed.
“Don’t be - Ursula’s right, he was a monster,” Hecate mutters.
“I know,” Pippa says solemnly. “And I know he was cruel to you sometimes. But I know you loved him anyways, so I’m sorry.”
Something in Hecate breaks. She can tell, because the noise of its breaking comes out of her, involuntary, like a grunt of pain almost, and then tears begin to run down her cheeks. All the anger that’s been overwhelming her this past month, making her cold - it starts to pour out of her at the first piece of compassion she is offered.
How does Pippa have this power over her? How is it that when she’s in the room, she pulls away all the layers of monstrosity and makes Hecate warm?
“Oh, Hiccup,” Pippa pulls her into her arms, jostling her into position so that she can rest Hecate’s head under her chin, even though Hecate is almost six inches taller than her. “It’s going to be alright, darling, really.” She holds Hecate close, murmuring soothing things to her until finally the tears subside, leaving Hecate wrung out and limp.
An awkward silence falls over them, and Hecate shifts away. Pippa stiffens, perhaps remembering at last that she is angry with Hecate. She glances away from her, looking around the room, and her gaze falls on Hecate’s blanket, thrown ridiculously over the obvious lump that is her cauldron.
“Hecate, what on earth is that?” Pippa asks, and Hecate feels the hot rush of shame through her. She waves her hand, and banishes the potion.
“An ill-thought out revenge plan,” she mutters. “I would have come to my senses with a night of sleep… I hope.” But she wouldn’t have, she knows. She was too intent on being angry, so that she wouldn’t have to feel any of the hurt or fear that Pippa has just siphoned so expertly out of her. She is every inch the monster that Ursula accuses her of being.
“You should go,” she tells Pippa. “Ursula’s a spoiled brat and an idiot, but she’s right about some things - you’ve no business being friends with someone like me.”
“Oh Hecate, for merlin’s sake - is that why you’ve dropped me like a bad hat? You think you’re not safe for me?” Pippa’s sharp gaze lands on her and doesn’t leave any room to hide. Hecate looks away rather than meet it head on.
“Hiccup - you aren’t your father,” Pippa tells her gently. “You’re not a monster.” Despite herself, a harsh laugh rips out of Hecate’s throat. For Pippa , of all people, to be reassuring her of her inner goodness, when Pippa doesn’t know what Hecate has thought - has felt -
“Guess again,” Hecate tells her hoarsely, and leans forward on the bed, pressing her mouth against Pippa’s in selfish confession.
Pippa’s lips are soft beneath hers. They taste like the vanilla-flavored chapstick that Pippa makes herself, and they have fallen open in shock. Hecate stays pressed against them for a moment longer, savoring this one moment that will have to console her through the inevitable fallout. She reaches up to stroke her fingers along Pippa’s soft cheek and Pippa lets out a sound, stunned, and Hecate pulls back at once, ashamed.
“I’m sorry, Pip, I’m so sorry,” she says, and she knows she’d be crying again if she had any tears left in her. She has no right to sully Pippa, beautiful sweet Pippa, who has never been anything but kind to her.
“Don’t you dare be sorry, Hecate Hardbroom,” Pippa whispers fiercely, and then she surges forward, reconnecting their lips with a force that almost knocks Hecate over, so that she has to reach out and balance herself as Pippa kisses her, demanding her participation.
“Wanting this doesn’t make you a monster, Hiccup,” she promises, her lips moving against Hecate’s to form the words, as though she can’t bear to pull back any further than that. She kisses her again lightly before she adds, “or if it does, then I’m a monster too.”
“You could never be,” Hecate promises, pulling back to look Pippa in the face. Pippa is smiling at her, eyes shining with unshed tears. She settles her head against Hecate’s shoulder curling in close, and Hecate dares to let herself run a wondering hand through Pippa’s hair.
“This isn’t something terrible or perverted, Hecate. It’s beautiful, the way I feel about you,” Pippa promises solemnly, and Hecate can only hold her close and be thankful for her benediction.
*
There’s one last thing to do.
Hecate sneaks out of bed and down to the library, finding the book again. It practically leaps off the shelf into her hands, as though it has been waiting for her to come back. She cradles it gently in the darkness as she whispers over it, a short spell familiar to her since childhood.
In moments it is ablaze, and she drops it to the floor, watching as it slowly turns to ash.
She is a witch. That means she takes what she wants, and doesn’t let anything stop her. And what Hecate Hardbroom wants is
not to be a monster.