by S. M. Reine
They stepped and twirled and made magic with their bodies. James gazed down at the girl in his arms and thought about how beautiful she looked with her hair in an elegant chignon and her frozen smile.
When their names were called after the judging and he realized that they had won first prize, he didn’t give any thought to looping an arm around her lower back, pulling her tight against his body, and kissing her. She was still out of breath and too overwhelmed to fight back. She tasted like strawberries, just like he thought she would.
He expected her to slap him. But she just accepted her flowers and curtseyed to the cheering audience.
Then she pulled him backstage, and they kissed among the curtains until her mother found them and said it was time to leave. He was pretty sure he had gotten to touch her left breast at some point—he planned to never wash that hand again.
It was the best day of James’s entire life up until that moment.
“You could do better,” Aunt Pamela had said at the celebratory dinner later that night. Their family was talking loudly, laughing, recounting the performances of other witches. Nobody had heard her speak but James, whose father had let him have a beer with his steak, despite his mother’s protests. His head was buzzing and spinning.
“It doesn’t get better than first place,” James said.
“I mean Hannah,” Pamela said. “There are a lot of other girls—girls who are in the coven—that you would be better suited for.”
She must have spoken to Hannah’s mother. James was too tipsy to be embarrassed.
“You’re probably right,” he said, because he knew better than to argue with someone like Pamela. Unfortunately, his prompt agreement wasn’t enough to make her drop the subject.
She leaned in close. Several gray hairs fell into her face. “Please, just keep in mind that you’re not a normal man. You have responsibilities. Commitments. A destiny . Decisions have been made, agreements from the time before you were even born—”
“Relax. It’s not like I’m going to marry her, Auntie,” James said. That was a lie. He had already decided, somewhere between training together as adepts of the coven and a blue ribbon for first prize, that he was absolutely going to make her Mrs. Hannah Faulkner. But it was going to be a while before he convinced his future wife of that.
“Don’t be selfish,” Pamela said, like she could read his mind. “You owe everything to the coven.”
He drained the last dregs of beer from his glass and wondered what his dad would say if he tried to have another one. “I know that.”
Family dinners weren’t the best time to discuss such weighty subjects as destiny. Pamela sat back and joined a conversation with some second cousin that James barely knew, and he hoped that that would be the last time they talked about destiny.
Something changed with the coven after that night. The next several times that James walked into Landon’s house for an esbat, he found the senior members whispering about something, but they cut off immediately when they realized that James had joined them.
It was hard to worry about it too much when they welcomed his appearance like he was some kind of prince. They said flattering things and asked his opinion on important subjects. He was more than just welcome among the more experienced witches—he was wanted. Important. And Pamela was still teaching him paper magic, which nobody else knew how to do. He was happy to be the talk of the coven.
James got an inkling of what was wrong when he visited Landon’s house before the Imbolc ceremony. James heard someone say Hannah’s name through an open window, and he stopped to listen.
“Hannah’s family isn’t moving, after all,” someone said. Was that Pamela? “This could be dangerous. Did you know that they’re dating?”
The voice that responded sounded like Landon’s. “Who cares? He’s still just a boy. When the time comes, we’ll make sure he understands his responsibilities. He’ll do the right thing.”
“But when it’s time for the child—”
“That’s years away.”
“And what about Elise?” Pamela pushed.
Landon shushed her loudly. “Don’t talk about her. Not here.”
“Metaraon’s not going to like this if he finds out.”
“Then he’d better not find out about it. Let James have his fun! I wasn’t fifteen that long ago—I remember what it’s like. His little thing with Hannah will self-destruct sooner or later, with or without our intervention, and we can tell him then. But for now, we can relax.”
James slipped away as quietly as possible, heading for his parents’ car so that he could don his robes and prepare to lead the night’s ceremony.
His head whirled. What about children? What about Hannah? What about Elise?
None of it sounded good.
“Quit,” Hannah had said as they walked home, hand-in-hand, after another late night rehearsal. He had been telling her everything that had happened—even the part about his aunt being much too interested in their love life. “You need to quit the coven.”
“But I’m still not in the inner circle. There’s still so much I need to know,” James said, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. She used to look down on him, but he was rapidly approaching six feet tall, and now he looked down on her. He liked it much better that way.
“They’re spiraling like vultures waiting for you to fall over dead. It’s messing with you, it’s messing with me, and I don’t like any of it.” She leaned against him underneath his arm. “I told you a long time ago that I didn’t think you should initiate.”
“But I did.”
“But you did,” Hannah said. “This is only going to get worse. They’re going to get what they want, like they always do.” She glared at the street around them, like the entire coven was watching them saunter home in the darkness. “Maybe we should stop dating now, before they figure out some horrible way to make it happen. God knows what they’ll do next.”
“Maybe,” James said doubtfully.
“It would be easier.”
“Oh, yes. Much easier.”
“So it’s settled,” Hannah said. “We’ll just have to be friends. We can keep dancing. We’ll just stay out of this whole…destiny thing.”
“Friends,” James agreed. “Good idea.”
And that was that.
July 1989
Hannah Pritchard was one goddamn beautiful woman. Her skin was liquid, radiant gold. Her breasts were perfect handfuls. Her waist was so slender that it was almost possible to wrap two hands around her and have the fingertips meet. And all of that delicate, delicious perfection belonged entirely to James.
He ran his hands up her bare legs, cupped the curves of her hipbones, and traced the plane of her stomach to her ribs. She squirmed under his touch, giving a breathless giggle as she twisted onto her belly.
“Stop that,” she said, trying to kick James away with a bare, dainty foot. Her toes were crooked from years of dancing en pointe , and the pads of her feet were dirty. “You know how ticklish I am.”
James pressed his bare chest against her back. His hand slipped between her stomach and the blanket and traveled lower. “Of course I know. That’s why it’s so much fun,” he murmured into the back of her neck. She smelled like strawberries.
Hannah tipped her head back against his shoulder and sighed. The motion bared the long line of her throat. Such a sensual part of a woman—it was hard seeing those lines when she danced without getting embarrassingly aroused, which was a terrible thing to deal with when he was clad in nothing but a skin-tight bodysuit. He’d had more than a few awkwardly close calls with their traveling performance troupe over the years. There were many things he missed about being a professional dancer, but that was not one of them.
James’s fingers dipped between her legs, following the soft curls toward her most sensitive areas. “Mr. Faulkner,” she murmured with a little gasp, “you are not doing a very good job studying, are you?”
He bit gently into the soft skin of he
r shoulder, then sucked on the tiny imprints he left behind. “Oh, I’m studying. I’m studying very…hard.”
“You’re ridiculous. Pamela’s going to know you were up to something if you show up at the next esbat and don’t know the ritual.”
“I already know it perfectly,” he said. “I memorized their entire Book of Shadows last year, and I haven’t studied any of their stupid spells in months. I’m years ahead of those morons, which means that I’m free to study much more important things.”
She twisted onto her back and hooked her ankles around him. God, that look . James could barely control himself when she looked at him like that. “What important things do you mean, exactly?”
James was done with talking. He decided to show her.
Before he could do anything, the grass rustled beyond the shelter of their bushes, and voices rose in the distance.
“Over here should work. I recall a stream down that way…”
Hannah gasped, and it was only James’s hand over her mouth that muffled her even louder cry.
They held still for a long moment to listen to the intruders. Judging by their voices, it sounded like a family—a man, a woman, and a young girl. And they were heading straight for the bushes.
“Quickly,” James whispered, rolling off of Hannah.
He tried not to laugh as she jerked the picnic blanket around her shoulders. He flipped onto his back, arched his hips off the ground, and squirmed into his jeans. No time for underwear. He wasn’t even sure what he had done with it.
The voices came closer.
“I want to see if my favorite tree is still in the grove,” said a woman with a thick French accent. “Go on without me, ma cherie .”
“Where’s my bra?” Hannah hissed, splaying her hands to cover her small breasts.
James glimpsed a hint of pink under the leaves and snagged it for her. There was a ladybug on one of the straps. He flicked it off. “Here.”
The footsteps were just outside. Hannah pushed him. “Don’t let anyone see me!”
He spilled out of the bushes onto the grass…and looked straight up at the inverted face of Ariane Garin.
“Is that…little James Faulkner?” she asked as he scrambled to his feet. He straightened, and she had to tip her head back to meet his eyes. She covered a disbelieving laugh with her hand. “Not little anymore, I see!”
“Ariane,” he said, out of breath as he buttoned his jeans. “You are—well, I’m surprised to see you here.”
She was just as lovely as he remembered, albeit much shorter. Her cheeks dimpled when she smiled. “I hope it’s a pleasant surprise. Is it still James? Or are you something less formal now, like Jim?”
“James, please,” he said.
Ariane patted his cheek, wafting the smell of her shampoo towards him. “Always very serious.”
He glanced into the bushes, where Hannah was presumably still dressing. “Not quite as serious as I used to be,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if he imagined that he heard his girlfriend laughing or not. “I didn’t expect to see you here. Last I heard, you and Isaac were on some kind of secret mission.”
“That’s true. I’m only in town to visit with Pamela and Landon. It’s not an advertised trip, I’m afraid—we won’t be long.”
“I understand,” James said, even though he didn’t. “So, if you’re here to see Pamela, then…what are you doing here ?”
Ariane cast a glare around at the grassy fields. The sunlight shined through the leaves, dappling the path with dancing triangles of gold and green. “Here at the park? I’m searching for Christine’s memorial tree.”
“I thought I heard others with you.”
“Oh.” The tops of her cheeks turned pink. “Isaac and Elise are with me, of course.”
“There’s a new playground up that way,” James said. He gestured toward the opposite path on the other side of the stream. “The coven installed it for member children. It’s very popular.”
She dismissed the suggestion with a wave of her hand. “Elise doesn’t really play. She’ll be doing drills with her father in one of the clearings now.”
“Drills.” He blinked. “How old is she?”
“Nine years old,” Ariane said. Those dimples returned. She wrapped a curl around her finger and gave a little laugh. “The same age you were when we met. Isn’t it funny how that goes?”
“Very funny,” he said faintly.
A nine-year-old doing drills with Isaac. It had been a good decade since James had last seen the man, but he recalled him as being looming and frightening. He somehow doubted that Isaac would take it easy on anyone training with him, even his own daughter.
“Isaac and I have been invited to participate in some—well, I suppose some ‘secret missions,’ you might say. It will be dangerous. We thought that Pamela might like to keep Elise for a few months while we take care of things,” Ariane said. “Pamela is used to having young vagabonds in her house. Of course, Elise isn’t one for witchcraft, but I found my experience with the coven to be very educational.”
So educational that she had ended up pregnant just a few months later.
James hadn’t even seen the girl yet, but he suddenly felt very bad for Elise.
“I think Pamela’s busy now. Her studies have been consuming her,” he said. “In fact, her studies have been consuming me, too.”
Ariane shrugged. “Maybe.” It seemed to have only just occurred to her that James wasn’t wearing a shirt, and a mischievous look crossed her face. “What are you doing in the park, James?”
Hannah was silent in the bushes.
“Jogging,” he said, seizing on the first idea that drifted across his mind. He coughed into his hand. “And other kinds of exercise.”
Was that a very quiet giggle? Ariane didn’t seem to have heard anything.
“Well, perhaps you could help me find the memorial grove,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I visited. I’m not even sure I remember where it is.”
“Sure. So we’ll go look at her tree, then,” James said, raising his voice a little to make sure that Hannah would hear him. “It won’t take a minute.”
He started walking, maybe a bit too quickly to be subtle about it, and Ariane followed. She had matured into a composed, graceful woman. She drifted over the path without seeming to actually touch the ground. She wore a knee-length skirt and a simple blouse, but she would have been suited just as well to the kind of dresses that James imagined queens might wear.
“How is Hannah?” Ariane asked after they had left the bushes behind.
He twitched. “Why do you ask?”
She gave him a private smile. “Because I seem to remember that you were rather enamored with her.”
That was one word for it.
James gave the answer he had prepared for the coven when they asked the same thing. “Hannah and I partner together in dance competitions, but we don’t see each other outside rehearsal very much. It’s too stressful.” Ariane didn’t seem convinced, so he added, “And she’s a frosty bitch.”
She laughed. “Are you dating now?”
“No, of course not,” he said. “Frosty. I said that part, right?”
“You don’t have to let the coven control you, James. They’ve always had very specific ideas about who we are all meant to be, but they’re not the ones living our lives. I think it’s wonderful that you’ve found love, and it’s better for you to be with someone you care about than with whoever the coven thinks you should care about.”
They entered the memorial grove. The trees were all much younger here, and were encircled by protective rings of chicken wire; inside, miniature altars hugged the slender trunks. Some of the older trees had begun to grow around the statues of the Horned God and Mother Goddess.
James took Ariane to a tree with a placard that said “Christine Faulkner.” It seemed like it was growing a little slower than the others.
He waited in silence as she knelt and whispered to the tree in Fr
ench. She didn’t take long. After just a minute, she straightened and dried her cheeks. “Thank you, James,” she said. “I should find my daughter.”
A few moments earlier, he had wanted desperately to be far away from Ariane and her grief. But she still looked so sad. He told her, “I’ll walk with you.”
They moved through the park together, quiet and slow. The trees became denser as they moved upstream, so the only way that James could tell they were reaching Isaac and Elise was by the sound of metal clashing on metal. Ariane hadn’t been joking about running drills.
James saw a flash of red hair darting between the trees, but Elise was immediately concealed by her father’s shoulder as he moved in front of her. “Thank you for sharing Christine’s memorial with me,” Ariane said, drawing his attention back to her. She took one of his hands in both of hers and held it tight. “I miss her. She would have loved Elise—she’s such a beautiful soul.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” James said.
She patted his cheek again. “Remember, James: this is your life. Not Landon’s. And definitely not Metaraon’s.”
“Strange advice, coming from you.”
Ariane glanced at Isaac. Her smile slipped. “Not that strange.” She embraced James. He held her a little tighter than he really needed to, and then let go. “Goodbye, James.”
“Goodbye, Ariane.”
She joined her family, and James left.
“We need to talk,” Pamela said while the coven was grounding after a ritual.
James was sitting outside on the grass, propped on one elbow as he nibbled at a handful of nuts. He spit the shell onto the ground. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to miss our last lesson. Rehearsals ran long, and I promised the owner of the studio that I would teach the advanced ballet class, so—”
“That’s not what I want to talk about.”
A sense of dread securely fastened itself to his gut. Pamela must have found out that he was still dating Hannah, all protests aside. It didn’t surprise him. She knew goddamn everything.
