"Can I come in?" Leaning sideways a little, I tried to see past Sylvana to the interior of her place. "I've got high-end chocolates, a bottle of Twinkleberry wine, and I need a place to sleep tonight. It's okay if you say no; I can go stay at my office." Sylvana stepped aside to let me in.
I peeked around her and noted that like all the spaces inhabited by someone in possession of magical abilities, it was much nicer on the inside than it appeared on the outside. It must have been a witch who coined the phrase never judge a book by its cover. Fresh paint covered the walls; the floors were sparkling clean, and the décor possessed a bohemian vibe that fit my mother's appearance and temperament to a T.
"Did anyone follow you here? Are you in serious trouble?" I couldn't tell from her tone whether she was more concerned for herself or me.
I've had a really, really bad day, and I want my Mommy. Except I couldn't say that because we didn't have that kind of relationship and I wasn't sure we ever would.
"No. I... never mind." I turned to leave.
"Wait. I'm sorry for sounding paranoid. Please don't go. I'd like us to get past this awkward phase. Of course, you're welcome to stay the night, and if you don't want to talk about what happened, that's okay, too." A pause, "did you say Twinkleberry wine?"
"From Terra's private stash. Don't be fooled by the name; it's potent stuff."
"Oh, my Goddess, it's been twenty-five years." Sylvana's eyes were sparkling as she nipped the bottle out of my bag. Who needs a corkscrew when you have magic? The cork flew into the corner, and she took a long gulp of the dangerous brew, right out of the bottle.
Several sips in, Sylvana seemed more relaxed than I'd ever seen her, and I sensed her defenses were down, as were my own inhibitions. I figured I'd start the questioning off at a slow pace, with a fairly innocuous query that I probably could have learned from the books in my sanctum if I'd taken the time to look. "Explain to me how the aging thing works. How old was Grandmother?"
Sylvana sighed, "It pains me that you have to ask; didn't one of the other witches ever tell you anything? Cleo, Beatrix, not even Listora? And what about your faerie godmothers? We're talking Witch 101 here."
"I don't know any of those people. And I don't know any other witches save for Serena Snodgrass, and she wouldn't pee on me if I were on fire--she'd sooner douse me in gasoline. As for my godmothers, I'm not entirely sure why they do the things they do. Considering none of us thought I'd ever come into my magic, I'm guessing they figured giving me a lot of details that were never going to apply to me was cruel and unusual punishment on top of insult to injury." I still had a nagging need to defend them, even though I'd have loved to curse the lot of them with butt boils at that particular moment.
"Well, Clara was 225 when she had me; but I was only 25 when she imprisoned me in the nexus. My grandmother died at least 100 years before I was born. Mother would never tell me what happened to her; said it was a family secret I wasn't ready to know. I don't think she'd have ever considered me an adult, but that's probably the way of all parents. Youth is not merely tied to appearance with us; age is measured in experience and power commanded. You'd think the latter would have earned me at least a measure of respect, considering how evenly my magic matched hers, even taking into account her two additional centuries."
"So that's why even in the pictures I've seen she looks more like my sister than my grandmother?"
"Yes, but I think most of those were taken before I was born. Having children speeds the process--at least until the child comes of age. I think that's part of why she treated me with such contempt. Your grandmother was vain and resented the fact that as I grew older, she aged as well. A decade doesn't seem like much, but when you've become accustomed to the same appearance in the mirror for more than two centuries, it stings. Especially when you're a Balefire."
"Why would that matter?"
I thought I heard her mutter something about "damnable faeries" and "own story," but chose to let it slide just this once, in order to get the answers I craved.
"Balefire witches have been Keepers of the Flame for thousands of years--since the beginning of time, some say; few know the real story--and there has never been another family line. We are descendants of the original Balefire clan. Had you allowed the flame to extinguish, one of the Messengers would have been tapped to take your place--but she wouldn't have been a true Balefire."
The look of bewilderment on my face must have clued her in that she'd lost me again, and with a sigh, Sylvana continued in further detail, "The Messengers? The witches who come to take the flame. How do you think it gets from our tiny little city to every corner of the earth?"
I'd rather be turned into a warty toad than answer that question.
"We witches have always kept our secrets close to our hearts, and what I'm about to tell you is one of our most highly guarded. Thousands of years ago, the Fae were in the throes of a civil war. One contingent, the Black Court, or Unseelie, hated all non-Fae and forbade all faeries from consorting with other beings--humans and witches being at the top of the list.
The Seelie, or White Court, resented being told who they could mate with and banded together; some had no interest in mixing but fought against the decree on principle alone. The first Balefire witch, Esmerelda, was the wife of a great wizard. He had a half-Fae sister, who he died protecting, leaving Esmerelda and their young daughter alone and vulnerable.
Oberon, the Unseelie prince, came looking for them, but fell in love with Esmerelda at first sight and refused to harm either her or her daughter. He turned to the light, made Esmerelda immortal so that they could be together forever, and then she convinced her brother and sister witches to join the fight against the Unseelie.
Our side won by a slim margin--many say we did so only because the prince betrayed his family--but that's not all there was to it. According to Balefire lore, Esmerelda crafted a special flame to protect against the Black Court--and we struck an accord with the Seelie: we would keep the flame alive, and in return, the Fae would serve as protectors to our kind while in our realm."
"What happened to Esmerelda and the Prince, then, if they were immortal?"
"You know that time works differently in Faerie, right? Well, they both made a promise to return; the prince was now a king, and Esmerelda his queen--they left four Seelie princesses in charge in their absence--a mere year in Fae time--and stayed on earth for a hundred years.
The newly anointed king bestowed the power of prolonged life unto Esmerelda's daughter, who by then had married a human and had no wish to be immortal. She agreed to tend the flame and pass it on as long as the King extended his gift to all witchkind, ensuring the Unseelie would be unable to reenter our realm even if the Balefire line died out.
Unfortunately, the ban included King Oberon and Esmerelda by extension. They're still there, ruling over the Faelands."
It was a lot of history to take in, especially with my brain slightly buzzed on Twinkleberry wine, so I let the story lie while I moved on to other topics.
I wanted to hear about my father, so I asked her to tell me about him.
It was a classic tale of boy meets girl. Sylvana glossed right over the fact that she'd had to sneak out of the house, cloud the mind of the bouncer outside a club she was too young to be in, and had been well lubed on Long Island iced teas when my father spotted her doing her best impression of a stripper. That's not exactly how she described it, but my imagination filled in the blanks well enough.
"Our eyes met, and I knew. You believe in love at first sight, right?" A safe assumption given my choice of profession. "He was perfect and beautiful and intense. Sexy as sin and twice as confident."
As she talked, I could picture it in my head. My half-brother, Jett, had shown me a memory of our father and I could see why Sylvana had fallen so fast and so hard. Neither baby nor winged child carrying a bow and arrow as portrayed on the top of Valentine chocolate boxes, Cupid's earthly incarnation could have gone by the name Hunky McHunkerson.
Chiseled jawline, piercing eyes, lips that begged for kisses. And eww, that's my father I'm talking about here. Still, it's hard to have any daughterly feelings for a man you'd never met. From what I'd seen, he and my mother would have made a striking couple.
Sylvana described the developing relationship in glowing, romantic terms, but what it boiled down to was that once she set her sights on him, my mother pursued Cupid with all the tender mercy of a lioness stalking her prey. God of love or not, my father never stood a chance.
"Do you have any idea where he is?" I asked, not sure if I wanted to know the answer.
Sylvana sighed, "I have plenty of ideas, but nothing concrete." That's all she would say on the subject, save to toast our second glass of Twinkleberry wine in his honor. By the time I'd drained my cup to the dregs once more, my tongue was looser than usual, and Sylvana had blithely turned the conversation toward my upbringing. All faerie insults aside, for once, it was as if she understood that the hurt and anger I was feeling would subside eventually and I would forgive the godmothers. Or maybe that was giving her too much credit, and she just didn't want to chance ticking me off again.
"Terra once charmed a boy in my class so that his nose grew like Pinocchio's whenever he lied. It was a foot long and covered in purple spots by the time the janitor found him crying in a restroom stall. Then she refused to lift the curse, and finally, Evian had to wipe both his and the janitor's memory to keep the poor kid out of the loony bin!" I wiped tears of laughter from my eyes.
"That's nothing; Clara performed a similar spell on one of my boyfriends from high school; except a little further south than his nose! He said it took him all night to get rid of it and then refused to speak to me for the rest of the year."
I could barely breathe but managed to choke out, "Magical Viagra, that's hilarious," only to be met with a blank look from Sylvana. Oh, yeah, she'd been gone so long she had no idea what I was talking about.
We traded stories until the sun and moon had swapped places, long after any normal person's bedtime. I'd always been a night owl, and Sylvana showed no signs of falling asleep anytime soon, making me wonder if late hours were the norm for her also.
"...he can't handle it when a bird flies through the backyard, even in human form." I giggled, recounting some of Salem's more ridiculous antics.
"Endora never liked them either; I think it's just a cat thing, regardless of the form."
"Endora, like from Bewitched?" I hedged a guess.
"Yes, exactly," my mother said brightly. I smiled internally; we had both named our familiars after characters from television shows about witches.
"What happened to her, anyway. I mean, you're not dead..."
"I might as well have been. She couldn't track me down there, and I have a feeling whatever kept her rooted to this mortal coil let her go when I disappeared." Sylvana appeared saddened by the thought. "However, I was only her fourth witch, so I guess she's out there somewhere."
She watched me intently while I debated asking her another loaded question.
"How did you know I needed help awakening? That's why you erected the magic shop and pretended to be Athena, right?"
"Of course. I knew there was no way you could have ascended without the Stone of Blood, and since I'd had it on me all those years--rotting away in the nexus where its power was nullified--I guessed you required my assistance."
Well, that made sense, but it wasn't something I hadn't deduced on my own.
"Right, but how did you know I'd happen to pass by that particular location. Sinful--the candy store I was visiting that night--is considered a hidden gem in the city; that area of town isn't heavily traveled, so how did you know where to put your little pop-up shop?"
I already knew the answer--there was no other explanation--but I wanted to hear it straight from her lips.
"I followed you," Sylvana admitted, her cheeks turning a delicate pink in the first blush I'd seen cross her face, "those six months were among the worst in my life. Coming out of that Nexus to find out how many years had passed--I sort of lost track of time, you know--I can't tell you how that felt. Not that I need to," she added hastily, "you've dealt with enough pain of your own, I'm sure you can commiserate. Anyway, I realized I had missed all of it--your entire life--and I'd never get it back. I could tell the Balefire had been reduced to coals, but when I tried to approach the house, I got knocked clear off the front steps by a burst of faerie magic. That drained my power reserve, and I knew the only time I'd be allowed through the door was on Beltane. Of course, you know that if I'd waited for Beltane, the Balefire would have gone out and you'd have turned into an ordinary human. I certainly wasn't about to let that happen, so I spent some time searching for your father, and when that didn't pan out, I called in an old debt and forged a glamour even you couldn't pierce."
"But why?" I interrupted, driving at the answer I wanted most of all, "just because you couldn't come in through the front door didn't mean you couldn't approach me on neutral ground--my office, for example, or you could have used one of those secret entrances to the house..." The pain showed on my face, and I got the distinct impression my mother desperately wanted to avoid coming clean.
"Because I was scared, Alexis. Is that so hard to understand? Forget about the worry that you'd have some preconceived notion of who I was; it was possible you'd been poisoned against me years ago, or that you'd just be angry like you were when I froze Delta, and refuse to talk to me at all. The more immediate concern was your family. I realize you are used to being surrounded by Fae magic, but traditionally faerie godmothers don't make their presence known to the witches they protect. What Terra," I could tell just speaking the name was difficult for Sylvana, but she kept her tone neutral, "has done for you is quite unusual--I'm not sure you understand just how unusual. Their purpose, as I have always understood it, is to guide us from harm when they can. The ability to do so requires powerful magic, and I believe part of the reason they stay hidden is that it doesn't always mix well with our own. You mentioned having had a hard time with spells lately--I wonder if your proximity to your godmothers is part of the reason."
I wasn't about to tell her that I'd flat-out lied about my spells going wonky because I'd needed Salem to inform said faeries of Sylvana's unexpected presence in my bedroom. I already knew that different types of magic didn't always work well together, but I was living proof that striking the right balance made the whole stronger than the two separate halves. I was different; I was special--maybe that meant whatever implications mixing Fae and witch magic carried didn't apply to me.
"I hope you can understand why I acted the way I did, and that you believe me when I say I came to you as soon as I possibly could."
"I believe that you believe that. And that's enough for me. People make mistakes, and they deserve to be forgiven and allowed to move on. I won't hold it against you anymore. But if you ever disappear on me again, don't bother coming back."
"Understood."
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sylvana was still snoozing when I woke up the next morning, needing coffee in an IV, and one of Vaeta's faerie wine hangover tonics. I think if I'd gone home and asked her for one, she'd have spiked it with Drano, given the state of our relationship at that moment.
I knotted my hair into a messy bun, scrubbed my face with some handmade cleanser on the counter in the bathroom (that made my cheeks feel like a baby's butt, by the way) and headed out for provisions. The bright early afternoon sunlight had me digging into the depths of my massive purse for a pair of sunglasses, though they did nothing whatsoever to relieve the pounding headache settling into that sensitive spot right between my eyes.
Three blocks down from where Sylvana slept, blissfully ignorant of my departure or destination, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention just before something hit me in the shoulder, hard, knocking me into a narrow space between two buildings and out of sight. Before I had a chance to counter, everything turned black.
&n
bsp; I couldn't have been unconscious for more than a few minutes. The sun was still in approximately the same place in the sky as it was when I exited Sylvana's apartment, and I was only a handful of steps away from where I'd been ambushed, propped up against the cobbled stone exterior of the coffee shop next door. People walked back and forth past the mouth of the alley, within feet of where I sat, but none of them seemed to take notice. A thick layer of magic clung to the sides of the building like plastic wrap, concealing us in plain sight.
Yeah, us. I wasn't alone. Delta the Fiach was facing me, squatting on her heels and holding the same giant rapier in both of her hands, the blade resting on the ground between my knees. Son of a witch.
Obviously, I was supposed to sit still, what with Delta's clearly implied ability to put me out of commission with a few well-timed flicks of her sword, but I panicked anyway and tried to raise my hands to defend myself--except I couldn't. My wrists were wrapped together in my lap, wound round and round with a thin silver chain that glowed sapphire blue against my skin. Magical handcuffs. With them clamped tight, I couldn't even light a candle, much less find a way of defending myself.
"Terra!" I screamed as loud as I could. For the first time in my life, she didn't show up at my side instantly.
"She can't hear you. It's a barrier. Very simple magic really; if they knew of its existence, they could break it in an instant. The trouble is--they don't. Now, first things first. I'm not going to hurt you." Delta sheathed the sword and sat across from me, intentionally keeping her empty hands in plain sight as she spoke.
"But you are going to listen to me this time, you slippery little witch. I'm done chasing you and trying to circumvent your mother's little repelling spell. You know she's got you warded into oblivion? Tracked, too. I've never met a Fate Weaver who was a bigger puppet on a string."
I glared across the meager three feet between us and straight into Delta's eyes. Sure, she said she wouldn't hurt me, but what kind of fool would I have to be to believe that? "You've never met another Fate Weaver, period. I'm the only one."
All Spell is Breaking Loose: Lexi Balefire: Matchmaking Witch (Fate Weaver Book 2) Page 16
