by Rae Foxx
“I’m serious, Finn.” I wasn’t sure if he was trying to seduce me for more information, but with a voyeuristic librarian looking for payback, I was half-tempted to get out of there.
“So am I, honeybee. The librarian is a peeping tom, but she gives good information.”
“That wasn’t information. That was a riddle, and clearly a dead end.” I gestured wildly toward the shadows, hoping that she saw me. “She’s off her rocker and clearly split herself more than a few times.”
The shadows were still, the library echoing with whimpers and thuds. Finn lined my jaw with kisses as though he was laying a trail to find his way back home.
“Finn,” I whined impatiently, giving him a look when he didn’t respond, but he was smiling, clearly proud of himself. “The book is cloaked, honeybee.”
“Cloaked?”
“Concealed by magic. The ones they don’t want you to look at are hidden to most eyes.”
It sounded so mysterious when he said it like that, “So why keep them in the library if they don’t want anyone to see them?”
“Central location, I suppose. I’m assuming this book is large. The records of Covens must be substantial.” His arms slid from me as he stepped back toward the ladder, but instead of climbing it he began sniffing the shelves.
“Okay… You’re smelling paper. Do I need to be concerned?”
“Witches cast spells with the magic of the earth. The spell our dear Ms. Wilma speaks of has very specific ingredients and will scent of thyme and pine,” he said without looking up, still smelling the shelves. “I’m not sure if that’s the way it smells for shifters, but for me, I know these books by scent.”
Yep. Still going to be concerned.
I mean, how could I not be? Finn was bent over bookcases like one would be a flower, his long hair falling down near his face as he inhaled. Slowly.
Peacefully.
Damn. It just hit me. He looked sexy smelling books like he was some Greek statue or shit.
‘Man with knowledge and deep contemplation.’
I’d carve that, then I’d lick it.
Leave it to Finn to look sexy doing the weirdest things.
“Come,” Finn whispered and I could have sworn the shadows moved. “Smell here.”
Well, when I’m already aboard the crazy train, I might as well enjoy the ride.
Sauntering over to the shelf, I picked out the first book I saw, an old mustard-colored book with gothic letters. The letters, the leather, all of it was peeling and flaking away so badly that I couldn’t even read the words stamped onto the cover.
Lifting it to my nose, I could see what he meant. I didn’t get pine or thyme like he did, but instead, while I flipped through the pages, the scent of incense made me scrunch up my nose--like burning wood and the Earl Grey tea the food bank would sometimes give us. Not even close to what Finn smelled, but with the way he was smiling, I would guess I had chosen correctly.
I shrugged, close enough I guess.
I opened the book excitedly, ready for the surname ‘JUNIUS’ to be staring at me in big red letters. Instead, it was nothing but the same minuscule, tiny, handwriting in a language I couldn’t read. “It’s the same as the others,” I sighed, hope deflating pathetically.
“Hmmm.” Finn took the book from me, turning it over in his hands before slamming it shut, hitting it so hard that the crumples of colored leather and flakes of gold leafing fell to the ground, leaving a book bound in what looked to be green dragon scale behind.
“What the..?” I wasn’t even sure how to finish that question, Finn was already opening the book, revealing not the tiny cramped writing, but page after page of family trees.
“Jackpot,” he said, handing the book back to me.
Jackpot was something you said when you won ten dollars in Vegas. This was a gold mine.
Trees spread before me with names and dates and in some cases tiny drawings of faces or marriages or even death masks. Branch after branch, family after family. Right in the middle was the name we had spent the last hour searching for.
‘JUNIUS’
“Praise the Fae and his god-like nose.”
It was only then, as I glanced through all of the names and dates that I realized what was missing. Men-males. This was only a record of the matriarchs and their offspring. The men who had fathered the children were little more than a number next to ‘conception date.’
And here I was thinking my absentee father was the ultimate baby daddy.
Each branch ended with a name. Seeing as I was the unknown child of my mother, I scoured the last name on each brand, looking for the name Ivory.
It only took a minute to find it.
Or rather, not find it.
The end of that branch of the Junius line, the direct line from the first “Elnar Junius’, had been scratched out. I could only barely make out the letters I and Y.
Ivory Junius had been burned from their records as violently as a pre-teen picks as their first zit.
There was even a drop of blood, or maybe a dried tear.
“Well, shit,” I almost threw the book, but Finn snatched it back from me, staring at the same pockmarked branch. “This is a dead end.”
“Not a dead end, just another piece to the puzzle.” Damn Fae and his endless meandering positivity. I would have scowled at him but it wouldn’t have done any good.
“Explain,” I said, begging whatever wolf goddess ruled over me for patience. Because if he said what I thought he was going to say there was a high chance I was going to start yet another war between clans.
“Looks like we need to start asking witches questions.” Damn it. He said it. I was going to turn into a regular peace breaker at the rate I was headed. As if Pater wasn’t enough.
“I can’t walk up to them and say, ‘hey, my mom’s name was all burned out of your book, which I am sure means she is on like really good standing with you guys. Bet you’re glad to see me. Now tell me all your secrets’.”
He chuckled and kissed my temple. “No, I wouldn’t start with that. But perhaps joining one of their events, ask questions.”
“Events? I didn’t take witches for the social-mixer type.”
“You might be surprised,” Solstice is in a few days. If I know witches, there will be a gathering.”
“Why do I have a feeling this is going to be more frat party than when the shifters go all baby seal with oil.”
“Oh, Ivy Potter,” Finn sighed, pulling me into his chest as his hand dragged right down to cup my ass. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
Chapter 21
Witches were weird.
This was the conclusion I came to when I had dragged my ass out of bed before the gods had even decided that dawn should be a thing in order to attend their summer solstice celebration. I had foolishly assumed that solstice would be some kind of fire dance that would start at dusk and drag into the night.
Finn even had me ready to go full toga, get the frat experience without the college or some shit. I was ready for music and keg stands and all the stuff I had experienced in high school, but movies liked to pretend only happened for college kids.
Nope, turns out witches begin their celebration of solstice the exact minute that solstice begins.
Or, Two-thirty-five in the morning.
Fucking witches and their inappropriate ideas of celebration. Start in the evening and go until two, not the other way around.
But no, my sorry ass got dragged out of bed at one in the morning. Plenty of time to get showered, changed and out the door to the start of the party.
Except that I didn’t actually get out of bed until closer to two and I didn’t actually drag myself out the door until closer to three. Even now, trudging through the underbrush and through the trees, I was sure I wouldn’t even get there until closer to dawn.
So much for participating in something Finn had called “The Lighting of Dawn.” He was excited about it, which is why he was leading the charge, dod
ging around the darkened tree trunks like they could see past the black on black scheme the pre-dawn forest had turned into.
“Should we turn around?” I asked, stifling a yawn and nearly stumbling headfirst into yet another tree. It wouldn’t be the first one I had run into on this trek. My wolf wasn’t quite awake either. “By the time we get there, everyone will be asleep. Let’s just go back to bed.”
In response, Finn and Saxon laughed, my vampire falling into step beside me, sweeping me into his arms and catching me up to Finn, who picked up his pace without another word. Okay, so both of them were excited. Maybe they knew something I didn’t.
“I can promise you that no one will be sleeping,” Finn chuckled, giving me a smile before turning to the left and leading us through another bank of trees and off the path we had been following.
At least, I thought it was a path.
Thank God they weren’t relying on me to get them there. I may have witch blood in me, but I was even more witch-ignorant than I had been with shifters.
Calling them werewolves aside, at least I had movies to go off of.
But Witches? Unless they used voodoo dolls and spit blood and used curses to get revenge on people, I was going in blind. Maybe they wore those black pointy hats.
“A few might be passed out,” Saxon said, setting me back down on the ground. “If anything, that should make it easier to get the information you need.”
Okay, so maybe Finn’s original frat party assessment was correct.
I started after the other two, feeling like we were cutting through a rainforest. I hadn’t really known the dress code for a summer solstice with witches, so I’d settled on my old standby, cut-offs and a low-cut tank top.
Summery as fuck.
Well, summery if you didn’t have to forge your way through bushes and brambles. I could feel the points scratch along my legs, sharp little razors of pressure cutting into my skin.
“Enough of that,” Saxon said, sweeping me up. His lips were pulled into a tight line. Guess one of the thorns had struck gold.
I shrieked at the quick motion, half-expecting him to bite down on me. Hell, I could feel his heartbeat through his chest, the thunder beating against me like he had a pulse.
Because he didn’t have a pulse.
He didn’t have a heart.
And yet everything was vibrating against us.
“What is that?” I asked, turning from Saxon to the trees. The sound was echoing from the forest that parted a bit more with each step, revealing a golden light flickering between thick trunks. A massive fire burned just feet from us, the towering inferno breaking light through the trees from ground to sky. There was no way that didn’t have some kind of magic in it. Hell, looking at it made fire burn through my veins and spark like it wanted to go dance with its siblings.
The heavy beat of the drum grew louder with each step through the brush. Shrieks and chants and songs layered with the beat as the fire grew so bright we could feel the heat from here.
Dark shapes twisted through the flickering light as witches danced around the fire, they pranced to the beat. They laughed and moved as free as the day they were born.
“Holy mother of nudity,” I murmured under my breath as we broke through the last line of trees to the clearing and to the party that couldn’t even hold a candle to the battle orgy I had been forced into before. Even Saxon hissed through his teeth.
There wasn’t a drop of clothes on any of the dancers. Those who weren’t dancing stood in sheer robes that didn’t do much besides color the skin beneath in jewel-bright colors.
Reds, blues, greens, yellows, covered the clearing in sheer fabric draping that hung from trees, lay over the ground like carpets, and hung from branches. Sheets of fabric rippled in the breeze, a silent addition to the deep base of the drum, to the fiddle I hadn’t heard before. The hundreds of beaded bracelets and necklaces that were draped over everybody clanking with a music all their own.
Bodies, colors, jewelry, and above all -- mud. Mud ringed the fire so that as the dancers moved they splashed and played and smeared and coated each other with it.
You could tell who had danced and who had not by how thick of a layer of mud they were coated with. Witches and man-witches, warlocks I thought, writhed against each other in groups. Slowly and methodically, they ground their hips into the person behind or in front of them, or both, while their hands roamed anywhere they pleased. They barely covered up the underlying moans and sighs of pleasure as mud-coated hands marked their mates, their mate for the moment anyway. I had forgotten all the dates and names on that family tree.
It was beautiful in a way, watching them, feeling the music infect me, turning all of that energy inside of me into a live wire. Even my wolf welcomed it, bowed to it.
This was all me.
This was all magic.
This was all witch.
“And I thought the oily fights to the death were something,” I mumbled, taking a few steps into the clearing, my two mates following right behind me.
“Welcome!” A voice called over before we had entered the clearing all the way. A woman with a bright smile and not near enough mud waltzed right over to us, three others right on her heels.
She was tall, willowy, and covered with so many of those flowing fabrics that she looked almost as though she was made of a cloud.
If it wasn’t for the long lengths of her dark hair, I might have questioned if she was.
“Welcome to Lithia, a celebration of the Mother Earth and the gifts of summer,” she continued, hands in the air as though she was praying to the Mother Earth. Maybe she was. “Come, young one, join us.”
She walked closer, her friends flanking Saxon and Finn, who suddenly looked as worried as I was. Great, we had walked into some kind of trap. I half-expected Pater to come traipsing out from behind a tree trunk, laughing his head off.
No, wolf bastard. Instead, the witches began to remove our clothes.
All of our clothes.
I had been naked enough that I barely fought their hands. Saxon, however, was instantly snarling, his eyes red as he bared his fangs in warning.
The witches shrieked and stepped back. For one second, the feral vampire made an appearance before he cleared his throat and stepped back, phasing from feral to formal so fast I wasn’t even sure I had seen the red eyes he always kept so carefully hidden.
I guess vampires could be scary. I was delusional thinking Saxon was all book smart and debonair. I had seen some of that when he fucked me, but now I wanted more.
Now.
“They are with me,” I said, picking up on what was going on. “They are mine alone.”
I tacked that last one on as I stripped the last of my clothes, fully aware that Finn was doing the same. Saxon was still fangs out.
“We ask that everyone be ready to embrace the earth in these situations and give in to whatever sins the earth inspires in them…”
“I will not be participating in that,” Saxon cut in, his voice hard and cold. “I am here for Ivy.”
The woman’s plastered smile barely faltered, but even I could taste the anger in her aura, in her magic. Saxon wasn’t following the rules.
Damn, would you listen to me? One step into the clearing and it was like someone flipped a switch.
“Saxon can wait in the tree line then,” I said, turning to hand my clothes to him. I would be worried the guy was going to miss out, but he looked downright ecstatic.
“If it suits my blood queen,” he whispered, using a nickname I had only heard once before, but damn, if two words didn’t set my veins on fire any faster.
Saxon grabbed my clothes and Finn’s and with a quick kiss and a nipple flick, stepped back into the shadows without another word. I knew he wasn’t about to let me out of his sight, but a definite part of me was missing without him right there. Then again, I was glad I wouldn’t have to share.
“My name is Delaney, I’m the master of this year’s celebration,” the w
oman said once Saxon was gone. Finn’s hand wove around my waist protectively. The woman’s helpers had have faded into oblivion now that we were good and naked.
“I’m--”
“Ivy,” she cut me off with a smile and a glance to the blonde god who was pressing me against him. “And Finn. The Alpha of the Shifters, the Prince of the Fae, what a pleasure. Although we are missing your mate, it seems.” She gave me a knowing smile and my heart dropped.
“He was more interested in sleeping.” It wasn’t a lie, but everyone knew the witches and the shifters weren’t exactly best friends. Probably why she hightailed it over here and knew exactly who I was. I was like the clam coming to the clam bake.
“We do not judge the carnal pleasures of a woman. All of the men here come for the pleasure of the witches. All of the witches give in to their heart’s desire. Such is solstice.” I had never heard the word ‘orgy’ defined so eloquently like it was a dinner party, which I guess was how some orgies started, but still.
“What brings you here, Alpha Ivy?” Delaney said, her previously airy voice darkening as the glow of the fires reflected in her gray eyes. “Celebration? Joy of the earth? Or to bask in your own magic or to explore the pleasures which await you?”
Okay, so we were diving right in. I wasn’t good at beating around the bush, or… ummm…. There was far too much untamed bush around for me to use that analogy.
I decided to just go for it.
“I hadn’t realized there were witches at this school, not until yesterday.” Lies, of course. “I grew up mortal, as I’m sure you’ve heard, but after hearing about the missing witch I wanted to learn more.” Okay, so I was shit at bush-beating… god… I mean… I was good at lying.
“More about witches, or more about the one who is missing?” Guess it didn’t matter, Delaney clearly wasn’t missing anything.
“Both,” I gave her a smile, her answering smirk disbelieving. “More the history of witches, I guess. I did some research already. I was hoping someone could tell me more about the four pillars of witches, how they birthed the power in the beginning. Mostly, I want to know of the families that created power.”
