The Dance of the Wicked [Black Hat x Reader]

15: Astute

  Friday. The big day.

  She didn't think that she'd end up staying in the manor for the whole week, and she didn't know if this entire event-- if you could call it that-- had something to do with it, but a part of her still felt a bit guilty for exposing her employees like this. She tried to make sure that the bots weren't as aggressive as she heard they were, even asking Dr. Flug to let her try one of them so she could actually make sure that once the day comes she'd know exactly what to do for everyone and maybe have the doctor do some quick alterations to lessen the mild confusion and nausea that comes after being mind controlled.

  After making sure of those things, she had retreated back to her own office to rearrange her bookshelf. It had been a while since she'd last dusted the entire thing, and she wanted to make sure none of the books had been eaten away by any mites-- a lesson she'd learned after leaving a collection of well-loved books she's collected back in the 1900's, only to come home to it all being eaten away by those nasty ants. May the souls of those books rest in peace because she had ended up burning the entire thing to the ground and had the entire cottage replaced right after.

  Which brought her thoughts back to Black Hat's question. Was it the same cottage as it was before when all of it had been replaced with a new one? The answer to that was yes, and no. It was still her cottage, same interior and the same everything. It was just made more modern and had less chances of getting mites to chew away at her shelves and books. No, because she had burnt the previous cottage to the ground.

  Now. Where was she?

  Oh right. Cleaning bookshelves.

  She had stacked her books in the small coffee table when she wiped out the sides of dust, and after making sure that everything was pristine, she had walked back to her books and wanted to rearrange them by order of the date that she had gotten them.

  That was when she realized something. Most books were bound by leather that had a reddish undertone-- 5 books among the pile, in fact. Even the one Black Hat had given her. She had 3 more books that had a cyan undertone, while the 7 last spell books were black lined with white on the sides.

  Curious, she had taken the book she had read with Black Hat and the one she had first received from him out of the pile, already knowing what they were about. Then, she opened through the rest of the books, her brows furrowed in focus.

  She didn't bother reading through most of them, just enough to get the information she needed to tell Black Hat.

  "The spells don't work for me!" She basically yelled after bursting into Black Hat's office, one of each of the colored books tucked under her arm. Black Hat didn't look amused by her sudden entrance, the phone pressed against his ear as he lifted a hand up to her to wait. He said a quick grumble to the phone before bringing it down, arching a brow as he turned his full attention back to her.

  "What is it?"

  She brought the three books to his desk, one red, one cyan, one with white.

  "It's just like the colors you told me about!" She pointed to the book that they had recently finished. "This one-- red-- has spells that I can cast." Then she points to the rest, the cyan and the white. "These two-- I tried every simple spell I could find earlier this morning and I couldn't do any of them, not even spark a single wisp of magic out of my fingers whenever I think about casting the spell."

  Black Hat had asked to see it for himself, shrugging off his coat and hanging it on the armrest of his chair and instructing her to try. Even holding her hand as he once did when he summoned the big ass rat in the city before. But nothing.