Second Female Leads' Playbook

"Have you fallen in love with my beautiful stepsister?" I regretted it as soon as the question was out of my mouth. Must be the moonlight playing tricks at my eyes, it made me confused this high priest in front of me with the one in my memories. 

"I am just jo..." I stopped as I saw his expression. He raised his eyebrow skeptically, as if he could not believe I was that stupid. 

"Odette, who am I?" He heaved a huge sigh. 

"The high priest of darkness?" I did not understand where this was heading. 

"And is your stepsister in any way related to the word 'darkness'?" 

"But don't people tend to attract to things different from them? And she's a beauty and every single eligible young men who lay eyes on her fall in love with her..." 

"What kind of romance novels are you reading? Throw them away." He crossed his legs and stared at me with his blood red eyes and said with a smile, "If you have so much time to daydream, why don't you go back to the spell book. Too many daydreams are bad to your brain." 

I just didn't know what got hold of me a second ago. Why did I ask him such a question? He was a devil without heart. 

Any spells that could help that girl to recapture the heart of her sweetheart? Or at least show it to her that no matter what she did, her sweetheart had no hope coming back to her? 

I knew that perfume that made people fell in love with her seemed like a nice idea, but for some unknown reason this made me feel uneasy. It felt like I was controlling the heart of someone, the fire priest in this case. 

Hmm how about this? 

"You seem to have a plan." The high priest took a bite of the macaroon being held by his long and lean fingers. 

Anger started to boil inside me. That's the box of macaroons I bought this afternoon for my tea tomorrow. But this guy showed up in the middle of the night and refused to leave. After a while, he said he wanted some snacks. What should I do in the middle of the night aside from offering him the box of macaroons? This annoying guy. 

"Yes," I said with clenched teeth. He took another macaroon out of the box. The amount inside the box was dwindling. I glared at him. 

"Care to share what's in your mind? I can't read your mind. Except the dark emotions emitting from you." He smiled elegantly and picked up another macaroon. 

"Most of the men that followed Rachelle around fell in love at first sight. Most of the time, it's just a glorified way of saying they fall in love with her face. So what if Rachelle isn't the beauty she is?"

"You plan to ruin your stepsister's face?" Was that excitement I saw on his face? 

"No." I didn't dare. If my previous deeds of sabotaging Rachelle led me to being burnt on a stake or being hanged, I think ruining Rachelle's face would lead me to even worse kind of death. I'd rather not try it. To add injury to insult, I would probably be reborn after that. What's the difference from undergoing tortures and then reviving myself only to torment myself again? 

"I plan to use this spell to create an illusion in his mind so that whenever he looks at Rachelle, Rachelle looks like an average looking girl. Let's see if his love persists after this." 

"That's all?"

"No, I will also offer that girl a potion that wipes all memory of the priest from her mind for two days." 

"I don't think she will take it willingly."

"She will if I told her it's a test for her lover. If she suddenly stops caring for him, he'll realize how important she is. To make it authentic, the potion is necessary." 

"So it's the guy suffering at the end of the day."

"He deserves it." I shrugged. 

"Looking forward to your performance. See you later." With a wave, he was gone. At that moment, the sun began to rise. 

I stomped over to the coffee table for the remnants of my box of macaroons. That's when I realized the box was still full with only one missing macaroon. I could literally hear his soft chuckles. He was fooling me all along!

----------------

After preparing all day, I had finally finished the preparation. Now all I needed was to place the illusion spell on the fire priest, Kevin, now that I had sold the potion to his ex-sweetheart, Doris. She was unsure at first, but now that words had it that Kevin was going to treat his newly made friend to dinner this evening. Yes, the gossip between Kevin and Rachelle had spread all over town. I wonder who was this bored. This made her wanted to test her sweetheart. 

I was sitting in a cafe to wait for Rachelle and Kevin. Oh look who were the two slowly walking towards me? Henri was following closely behind Rachelle like a third wheel. Poor Henri. I pulled the fur cloak closer to me. When Kevin just walked past me, I mumbled the spell I practiced all morning at him. It's not a hard spell, it's just a dark twist to the elementary illusion spell we learnt when we were small. 

Kevin stumbled and then rubbed his eyes. That's when I knew the spell was in effect. 

"Do you think Kevin will fall out of love?" I asked the guy sitting across the table. 

"His response isn't as hilarious as I have thought," he said with a bored expression. 

"Just what are you expecting?" I asked in exasperation as he shrugged in response. 

It's always like this, I did some pranks under his order, he just watched on with a bored expression. He never watched till the end, his attention moved on to something else soon after. 

He stood up and offered me his hand. "Let's buy more macaroons." 

At the mention of macaroon, I fumed.. I ignored his hand and stomped away.