A Witch Among Warlocks: The Complete Series Box Set

by Lidiya Foxglove

  I slid it on my finger. It fit better on my pointing finger than the ring finger.

  “I think her hands were a little bigger than yours,” he said. “She was taller.” He wrapped his hand around mine. “I know she would want you to have it. But I also know that my Emily wanted her daughter to be safe. She wouldn’t ask you to join up with a demon. So just…enjoy school and learn…whatever stuff peaceful witches learn.”

  “I’ll try.” I gave him a hug and we ate our ice cream while watching a standup special on Netflix, then I walked upstairs to my room, still staring at the ring. It was way too late to be safe, but I couldn’t tell Dad that. This was going to be a difficult summer. I wanted to be honest with him but I knew I couldn’t. He’d be so nervous for me. It was much better for him to think school was getting easier.

  “Firian,” I whispered.

  Firian materialized on my bed, looking downright cross as usual these days, golden eyes slitted as he rested his head down on his paws and glared at me. Who knew a fox could have so many facial expressions?

  “Can I cuddle you?”

  “No.”

  I did it anyway. I wrapped my hands around his neck and buried my face in his fur. He smelled like woodsmoke and forest. “Dad gave me Mom’s ring.” I showed him. “He talked about her more than he ever has before…”

  “Are you okay?” Firian asked.

  “No. Not really. Even if I save her from the Withered Lord, it’ll never be like it should be. I can’t even imagine what it would be like. Is she just going to…like…find a normal job and vacuum? Sleep in Dad’s bed? Talk to Grandma during holidays? How can things ever work out? And I might put myself in terrible danger working with these vampires and trying to take down a demon. But I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  Firian looked up at me and gave my cheek a small, comforting lick. I grinned at him, even as my heart shattered to look at him. I wanted his arms around me instead of my arms around him. I wanted more than that, too. But definitely not as a fox.

  “Well, first things first,” I said.

  “You need to train,” Firian said. “Didn’t Stuart give you a list?”

  “Yeah…” I was supposed to meditate outside for an hour every day, gather and analyze forest specimens, and Firian was going to help me work my way through a book he’d given me called “Training Wards for Defense” so we could practice tapping into Wyrd magic later. Both of us were born into using Ethereal magic, so it wouldn’t be easy. We would have to sneak by the wards put up by the faery kingdom who controlled Wyrd. This was getting into some deep stuff.

  Also, I was not supposed to turn on my computer or use any more electricity than necessary. And with Firian trapped as a fox, I wasn’t getting any action either.

  I sighed. “This is going to suck,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me how much your summer is going to suck,” Firian said. “I don’t even have thumbs.”

  Chapter Two

  Alec

  I couldn’t have been more different than my father, and I’d spent my whole life being ashamed of it.

  My dad was known world-wide as a maker of potions and tinctures. He was the last guy you would ever imagine to be seduced by a succubus, but those were exactly the sort of people who always did get seduced: the kind of person who buried themselves in their work and bottled up their sex drive, leaving them vulnerable to a weak moment when a gorgeous woman suddenly paid attention to them and offered to give them the night of their lives.

  My poor dad was one of the unlucky ones, in that my mom decided he would be a good father for a child. While most wizards could keep their indiscretions private, my dad got a knock on his door in the middle of the night and opened it to find a bassinet with me in it and a note. I’m sure his reaction must have been something like, Oh shit.

  I’d always known that, too. I didn’t doubt that he loved me, but he was proud of me when I was a good student, and he was extremely embarrassed when I was sent home from school for ‘inappropriate behavior’. It was an all-boys school, of course, and that probably tempered the worst of it, but I was already putting out incubus charm and some of the boys were vulnerable to it.

  As I got old enough to understand, well, I was embarrassed too. The kids in my school were way too young for an incubus classmate. I didn’t understand my sex drive and neither did they. It was even worse if he tried to bring me to family gatherings or social events where girls were present.

  My familiar was the only thing that saved me at first. She was so shy she never appeared in human form or talked to anyone but me, but if I lost control, she would give me a spider bite. She wasn’t venomous to me, but it still hurt. At the same time, I kind of liked it. It turned me on that a girl was biting me. Yes. That is true. Even though she rarely even let me see her girl form. That’s how bad it was to be a damn incubus. I would have a sexual fantasy about anything.

  So my dad did some research into pattern magic and that was when I got my first tattoo. If I started feeling aroused I just had to trace my finger along the pattern inked on my arm and it calmed everything down. That got me through school without too much incident. I wanted so much for my dad not to regret that I’d been born, and for him to be proud of me. Over the years, I managed to get much better about repressing and hiding my incubus side.

  Until I met Charlotte.

  At first I thought it was just because she was a girl thrown into my all-guy environment. Her pure female scent was too much to resist. Master Blair locked down my magic so I couldn’t touch her, but I still invaded her dreams at night—against my will. I wanted to be angry at the teachers for giving me, of all people, a female roommate, but she was so delicious I couldn’t bring myself to ask for her removal.

  Over the last two years, she had become so much more.

  Sure, my body wanted her from day one, but that made me want to shy back from her as much as anything. I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want to wreck her life like my mom seducing my dad.

  Two years of living with her, and everything had changed. I was comfortable with her. I’d never been comfortable with a girl before. Sometimes, for a second, I even forgot how much I wanted her.

  For a second.

  She was so damned cute. I wasn’t the only one who thought so. For an incubus, this was a dream scenario. I wanted to resist her for four years, but that was before I realized how the council would hurt her. How they’d take Firian away from her.

  I didn’t break the spell so I could fuck her. I broke the spell so I could hold her.

  But yeah, of course I fucked her too. It was mind blowing, to have sex with someone you loved.

  Now, she was hundreds of miles away.

  “Alec?” Dad called from the attic as I walked in the door of our old farmhouse.

  “Hey, I’ll come up,” I called back. I walked up the steep, very-well worn stairs that twisted upward into a semi-finished attic. This was one of Dad’s work rooms. Most of the house was a work room. Potion making was a messy business. There was a lot of collecting, drying, extracting, distilling, pounding and grinding. There was almost nothing that couldn’t be a potion ingredient, and hardly anyone in the world with Dad’s depth of knowledge.

  I respect the hell out of my dad, but we did not exactly understand each other. I’m a Pisces. He’s a Virgo. In our pagan coven, that was enough to get an understanding nod from anyone. He hardly saw me, but when I came upstairs he was buried in some work with a raven’s body.

  “Let me wash my hands,” he said, finally standing up and turning the knob of a rickety sink. Water spurted out reluctantly. He washed up to his forearms. He was dirty and even a little bloody. We looked more alike than people realized because my incubus magic made them think I was a lot more attractive than him, plus my mom had darker skin and this was generally solid English and German wizard territory. I also worked out while he hunched over tables all day. We had the same shape of nose and mouth, the same nearsighted eyes, the same hands.

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nbsp; “Dad,” I said. “I’m just gonna spit this out. Mom is dead.”

  “Oh—er—how did you know that?”

  “Have you looked at the memoriam book this year?”

  “No, I really never have time for that and I’m just not inclined to be nosy. Dead? Really? She was young, wasn’t she? What was the cause?”

  “Lung cancer.”

  “Ahh. Yes, well, that isn’t really a surprise.” He dried off his hands and looked at me. “Are you—upset?”

  To say emotions weren’t Dad’s forte was an understatement. He tried. He just didn’t get the whole range of them. He had some emotions, but he was sort of like a robot that had been programmed for a sensible, practical range. I felt like he would have made a good loyal butler in another life. He was great at making dinner and pressing my clothes and I knew he cared about me because that was how you knew when he cared about anything: when he devoted time to it.

  “A little,” I said.

  “Oh. Well…was there anything you needed to say? I have dinner on the stove waiting for us already.”

  I sighed. “I don’t know if there’s anything to say. I’m just upset. Charlotte actually summoned her when we had our necromancy class.”

  “Did she now?”

  “Yeah. And she showed up but she got angry at Charlotte. She said I needed to stop pretending to be a warlock and be an incubus. She felt that Charlotte was in the way.”

  “And Charlotte? Is she in the way?” Dad asked. “Of your studies, I mean?”

  “No. I think Charlotte might actually improve my studies,” I said, knowing this might get contentious.

  I could see him tense a little. “What do you mean?” He lifted the lid on a pot of chili downstairs. Our kitchen was like every other magical household in the region: an old gas stove, a small fridge, battered wooden cabinets, a farmhouse table with a thousand nicks in the old wood, the smell of herbs in the air. Light fell on the floor in predictable patterns on floors that were always clean and polished but were very, very old. This house was built by my ancestors who came to America in the 1700s, a common story among magic families, and I had grown up with the sense that old Lyrman ghosts were watching me.

  “I mean…I’m in love with her.”

  “You’re so young,” Dad said. “And with your magic, how can you—”

  I cut him off. “I know because of my magic. I gave it two years. I got to know her. The whole time, believe me, I wanted her—but I got to know her first.”

  “Did you touch her? Did you—”

  “I broke the spell that kept me from touching her,” I said. “And yeah, we did things.”

  “Alec.” His voice was soft, simmering with the slow build of his anger. It would never go above a simmer, really, but that was just as bad. “I don’t think I really need to tell you how unwise this is. Your skill in artistic magic was coming along so well. You know what will happen now. You’ll be thinking of her all the time.”

  “That’s true, but maybe I need to think of her. Maybe I need a muse,” I said. “I need someone I can focus on because all these feelings aren’t going away. They’re part of me. We can use magic to hold them back, but Char told me she likes me as I am. She told me I should just—be an incubus.”

  “I’ve been hearing a lot of things about Charlotte,” Dad said. “The stories don’t reassure me about your closeness to her. I know that trying to keep you from school or forbidding you from seeing her would be pointless…”

  “I knew you’d say this shit.” I crossed my arms. “You asked me if I was upset about Mom dying? Yeah. I am. I’m upset because she was half of what I am, and you just want that half to go away.”

  “I’m not trying to be cruel, Alec. I’m just pragmatic. I had to repress your impulses or you might have—forced yourself on others.”

  “You know I wouldn’t do that. I’m not some mindless demon. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But Charlotte wants me as much as I want her.”

  “I doubt that.”

  I slapped the table. “You ‘doubt’ it?”

  “I mean, she is under the influence of magic. You can never know what she wants. And we know so little about where her fate is going. You are not the sort of person who should be with a controversial girl. When you finish school and come of age and have proven yourself as a warlock, your prospects will be really very good. At that point, the elders will be less concerned with your mother’s blood because you will have shown that level of discipline. And as I’ve said, we’ll find you a good match through the council.”

  “I’m with Charlotte now. I don’t want anyone else.”

  His chili was really good. What a waste of flavor. We ate in annoyed silence.

  Dad didn’t fight me. He believed—rightly—that telling a child no only led to rebellion. But he radiated disappointment. I could just feel him thinking that I was his only child and that he had failed. He didn’t know what to do with me.

  And I had to come to the hard realization that I couldn’t please him anymore. He was never going to approve of me being an incubus.

  So it was time to stop even trying.

  “I’m still going to be a great warlock,” I said, as I was finally finishing up my bowl. I mean, Dad could cook. The chili had perfect heat and multiple levels of flavor. Even when I was pissed off I couldn’t help enjoying it. “But I’m going to be a great incubus too.”

  “I don’t know if there is such a thing as a great incubus.”

  “Fuck. Of course you’d say something like that.” His eyes tracked me as I stood up, cool and judgmental. He didn’t apologize or try to stop me from leaving the room or react much at all. “Well, I’m proving you wrong.”

  I washed out my bowl and then tromped upstairs. I tried not to let my dad get to me, but I had always tried to be what he wanted. When it came to Charlotte, I couldn’t do it anymore. I had gotten a taste of what it was like when someone accepted me for who I really was, and I couldn’t stop now.

  I wanted to talk to her so badly, but the only telephone in our house was downstairs off the kitchen. We didn’t have internet in the house either. One witch in our little hamlet ran an internet ‘cafe’ on her enclosed porch so the rest of us could keep the corrupting devices out of our houses.

  Damnit. I was aching for Charlotte so badly. Just to hear her voice or see her face—anything. Summer was going to kill me. I traced my tattoos to calm down my urges, but you know what? Tattoos that control sex drive don’t help when you just miss someone’s presence.

  I threw open a sketch pad instead. I didn’t usually draw people. My subjects were all from the magical world. Magical artists used the power of capturing an image to control the world around them. This was why a lot of religions cautioned against making images of people or gods. Even humans knew that if you painted someone, you could gain influence over them. Lately I’d been trying to paint the Withered Lord. I’d never seen him, but I could still piece together his essence from accounts. When school was over, the rest of my friends planned to battle this demon, and my best shot at helping them out was to weaken him with my artwork.

  But I didn’t feel like drawing a demon today.

  It was her essence I wanted to capture.

  It was Charlotte I wanted under my sway. It was Charlotte I wanted to do things to, but I didn’t want to hurt her. Quite the opposite. The magic for seduction wasn’t really that different from the magic of controlling a demon…but it was a lot more pleasurable.

  I broke out the ink pens and the watercolors. First, a sketch. Loose, feeling like her more than it looked like her exactly. I would draw her from the back. Her hair was often in a ponytail, dancing with her movements. There were always wispy hairs coming out of the ponytail, softening her face. The curve of a shoulder, waist, hip, beneath the small men’s uniform. She was always animated, her hands busy. I drew one of them trailing down as if to brush flowers or Firian’s fur. I paused before realizing I did sort of miss Firian too. He’d become a part of the landsca
pe, and I took great pleasure in watching her enjoy him. I filled him in, a thick fox coat and pointed ears at her side. While I gave her the uniform suit jacket and the white cuffs of a dress shirt peeking out of her sleeves, I decided to give her a mini skirt and knee socks because this was my art so why not draw her sexy legs?

  Having put down the lines in black ink, I let colors seep into the paper. I tinted her with red and golden shades, warm colors like fire. She was like fire. Like warmth, like home. Her desire fed me and I felt like I couldn’t live without it now.

  When I was done, the picture was suitable for all ages. I could have painted her otherwise, but that didn’t feel right. Not yet. It still captured her sensuality, her beauty. This was just the beginning.

  My dad was never going to understand this feeling. He was wrong. She was under the influence of my magic, sure. But it wasn’t true that I could never know what she wanted.

  I knew what she wanted. I knew I would make her happy every day of her life.

  Now that I had made love to Charlotte, I wasn’t going to go back to the way I was. I couldn’t hold back anymore.

  Chapter Three

  Charlotte

  It had been a while since I dreamed of Alec.

  Do you ever have dreams that are so real that in the dream you’re like, I think this is a dream but maybe there’s a way to hold onto it forever? And the whole dream you’re trying to find a way?

  That was how Alec dreams were. They were super clear. I remembered every second of them.

  In the dream, I woke up in bed and at first I thought I was waking up for real, but then I realized that Alec was sitting in my computer chair, and oh damn, all he was wearing was some low-cut black briefs. And he was sketching me.