The 13th Mage

by Inelia Benz

  There would be no danger in his state of infancy, no one could trace him after death, and no one would suspect. The plan was so cunning, so appalling, so unthinkable and for one simple reason, elders had no idea how powerful witches could be. In their majority they thought witches were amateurs at the art of mage. No one in their right mind would go through the trouble of dying, and its consequences, to become something lesser than they were before.

  Owen could taste victory with his entire being. He closed his eyes and felt the glory of power, the Staff in his hand, held up high. Rossini looking up at him in defeat, kneeling down before The Great Owen, kissing the Staff and vowing to honor and obey the new Staff Holder.

  Victory!

  The bell rang.

  It took him a few seconds to realize where he was and that bells usually meant someone at the door wanted his attention.

  The bell rang again.

  He looked out of his study window. It was a young woman, a bit too thin, her nose matching the red of her curly hair. Must be Irish, and she’s cold, Owen thought.

  He felt for her aura, she was a mortal. As he opened the door the woman gasped and fainted. He sometimes produced that reaction in mortal women so it didn’t surprise him. He noticed the creature was more a child then a woman, he also noticed he had seen her before, she was very familiar. It disturbed him not to place her straight away but he knew with the amount of memories he held this one would make its way to the top soon enough and didn’t think more about it. He picked up the girl and her suitcase and took them to the living room.

  He looked into her face and his heart started thumping hard. She was the most enchanting being he had seen, ever.

  “Sean?” She whispered.

  “No, my name is Owen.”

  “Sean?” She said again and opened her eyes, “you bastard!” she screamed and slapped him across the face so hard it sent tears to his eyes.

  It was a long time since he felt tears in his eyes, but her rage at him seemed to destroy him.

  “I’m sorry! You fainted, I just brought you in because you fainted, I have no intention of hurting you,” he said trying to calm her down.

  “No intentions of hurting me huh? You left me without a word! I wanted to die,” she said breaking down in sobs.

  “Me? I have never… I don’t think we’ve met before. But maybe we did? You do look so familiar”

  Owen tried hard to remember all the women he had met in the last few months, but he was sure this one was not one of them. He wouldn’t have left this one. He couldn’t even leave her side now. Besides, she was a little too young for him to have sex with, he would have stayed with her until she became a woman, and then he would have had sex with her. He loved her.

  “Oh, Sean, I’m pregnant, you knew it didn’t you, that Saturday, the last Saturday…” she had gone through every minute of that morning, had seen the guilt in his face a hundred times over, he knew the condom had broken and hadn’t said anything. He simply left.

  “I’m terribly sorry madam, but I think you must be confusing me with someone else. My name is Owen, Owen O’Neil.”

  “Owen O’Neil? You are Sean’s twin brother?”

  She sat up and looked at the young man in front of her. “But he said his twin brother died at birth… another lie I guess.”

  Suddenly the whole truth dawned on her, Sean had lied. “I am sorry about hitting you, I thought you were him,” she said clearing her eyes, “you are different though, your voice is different. Your eyes, well they are… older, I don’t know, something about them. But you are so much like him. Where is Sean? Can I speak to him?”

  “I don’t know of any Sean, I don’t have a… brother.”

  Having said it he didn’t believe it himself. It felt untrue, but why? Did he have a brother? Yes, he did. Owen felt his chest contract.

  “Please, just tell him that I … that I don’t mind, if he felt he had to leave… well…” She started sobbing again, and Owen felt he wanted to make her better, make her happy again. Then he felt a tiny little presence.

  “You are pregnant!” He said moving away, stumbling over the furniture behind him.

  “Yes, it’s Sean’s. Does he live here too?”

  “No, I live on my own, this is my, I mean, my grandfather’s house. He gave me permission to use it while I stayed in London, which might be a long time, but there again it might not, I haven’t decided yet. What brought you here?”

  He was babbling. He was seventeen hundred years old and he was babbling in front of a mortal girl who was a couple of decades old, if that. That did it, he would accelerate the aging process, the risks were high but staying this age was even riskier, he was losing his mind and heart.

  “I came about the work, housekeeper. Mrs. Crow said she would ring you about me, she said you were looking for a housekeeper… ” The girl said, her voice trailing off into an incoherent whisper as she realized she didn’t particularly want to work for Sean or his identical twin brother.

  “Mrs. Crow? The phone hasn’t been fitted yet…”

  She reached into her bag and handed him a letter.

  Dear Owen, this child needs your help. Make sure nothing happens to her. Protect her from the Shadow Ones. A.

  It was a letter from Aeoife, he felt a wave of remorse going through his body. He hadn’t tried to contact her yet. What was worse was that he hadn’t contacted her in all these centuries, never a “hello” or a “thank you” note. He had meant to get in contact with her since he arrived in London, but hadn’t got round to it yet, something always seemed to pop up. And if she had tried to contact him she would have found it rather difficult, he had a habit of making his location invisible to all mages except the Staff Holder.

  He touched the words with the tip of his fingers and closed his eyes, he felt Aeoife listening and told her the girl had arrived safely. Aeoife sent him a wave of motherly advice and closed the link.

  If he had to protect the girl from the shadow ones it meant she was about to become a mage, which might also explain why he had seen something familiar in her. But not why he felt so attracted to her. He searched deep into her aura and saw it, the fetus had a tiny little purple light in her heart, it wasn’t the mother to be who would be a mage it was the recently conceived girl child.

  A child having a child, he thought. A mortal giving birth to an immortal.

  He guessed from Aeoife’s letter that it was his turn to give back what he had been given. Protection and preparation, fostering a mage to be.

  The baby must be the Thirteenth whatever.

  He was meant to be a baby’s protector, not become a baby himself. He felt disappointed. This confused him.

  “Yes, of course,” he said wondering if Aeoife had located him via the ad he had placed in the newspaper, she was one of the few people who knew this house belonged to him.

  The young woman mumbled something, got up, straightened herself and picked up her suitcase.

  “I think this is a mistake, I can’t work here, it’s a mistake,” she said walking toward the door.

  “No, don’t go!” he said, making her come to a full stop. He hadn’t meant it to be an Order but that is how it came out, “I mean, please stay, have a cup of tea, it will make you feel much better, and we can talk about what to do next.”

  He was begging. His inner battle was unbearable, how could he be begging to a mortal! He could make her sing and dance with just a word. But he didn’t want to, he wanted her to be with him because she wanted to, that’s all.

  She was shivering from head to toe, and Owen realized it was not just from the cold.

  “Calm down, you are safe here.”

  The girl relaxed considerably.

  She knew it wasn’t Sean, she could feel he wasn’t Sean, but she couldn’t just walk away from him. There was something about him, something in his eyes that felt right. And besides, if she stayed, sooner or later she would find out about Sean. She didn’t believe in coincidences and this was too stran
ge to be a coincidence. She remembered thinking it odd when Mrs. Crow mentioned Owen’s name, it was the same name Sean had said his baby brother had been given, but it was a common enough name. But for him to be identical to Sean was no coincidence, this was Sean’s brother and sooner or later someone would tell her the truth. She would stay.

  “Can I speak to your grandfather?” She asked.

  “No! I mean, he’s in Brazil, he lives there you know. Married to a beauty queen. I am in charge here,” he babbled again, this had to stop.

  She smiled, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply you were not in charge, it’s just that I thought maybe I could speak to your grandfather... maybe he knows something about... well, about Sean, the brother you don’t have.”

  She hadn’t meant it to sound sarcastic, but by the look on Owen’s face that was the way it was interpreted.

  “Something is obviously happening here that I don’t quite understand. I am not saying this Sean person doesn’t exist, but I can assure you that my grandfather knows nothing about him. I am the sole inheritor of the O’Neil Estate. My mother died at childbirth and my father died when I was a child.”

  Jennifer was taken by surprise, Mrs. Crow hadn’t mentioned the fact that Owen was orphaned, Sean said he was an orphan too. At least he hadn’t lied to her about that.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “Don’t worry about it, wasn’t very close to my father really, he died in a car accident a while back. And I didn’t really get to meet my mother at all. Tell me a little about yourself.”

  “I… bring references, and I can clean and cook very well and I am very responsible.”

  Own picked up the envelopes the girl was holding out to him, he put them in his pocket and reached for her suitcase.

  “Mrs. Crow said she knows you very well, she said you wouldn’t mind the pregnancy, I promise it won’t get in the way, I am very strong and so far haven’t had any problems.”

  “Well, as long as you are feeling fine, that’s the important thing. What else did she say?”

  “She told me a bit about you, by the sound of it I thought you were an old man, I mean, I don’t mean old… Well, you know.”

  “How old are you?” He asked as they went back to the living room.

  “Old enough.”

  “That’s a good age, and I see you are healthy and strong.”

  She smiled, “twenty three, I am twenty three,” she added in a stronger voice.

  “You have the job,” he said, “the kitchen is down the back stairs, look around see what you need for food and cleaning, the builders have the place in a mess but I suspect they will be finished before the end of the month. I want lunch ready for one, don’t worry too much about the cleaning aspect for now, we’ll sort that out when the builders leave. My study is out of bounds, no one goes in there. I want afternoon tea by four and supper by six thirty. Your quarters are down the corridor next to the kitchen. You’ll find your bedroom, your own sitting room and bathroom. I’m sure you’ll be quite comfortable once it is all cleaned up. There are no men allowed in the house. Tuesday is your day off. Make sure you spend it outside the house. Now you better go and put on some suitable clothes and get working.”

  She stood there staring at him for a moment and smiled.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not used to taking orders from people my age. I’ll get used to it, where did you say my room was?”

  “Down the hall beside kitchen, what did you say your name was?”

  “Jennifer, Jennifer Stone, nice to meet you Owen O’Neil,” she answered taking his hand. An electric bolt met her and traveled up her arm taking her by surprise. Owen looked at his hand puzzled.

  “Must be static energy,” she said, but it didn’t feel like static energy, it felt like she had known Owen all her life, it was probably his amazing similarity to Sean, and that was what she told herself.

  She had such soft hands, beautiful hands. Owen had felt her essence through her hand. He could feel someone else there too, someone like him. He tried to reach for that entity.

  “I’ll go to my room then,” she said, breaking the spell.

  Owen stopped staring, “yes.”

  Chapter 6

  It wasn’t that she felt lonely, although she did. It was the strangeness of the place that got to her. By the time she’d been at Oak Place a week she had realized that Owen was not a normal young man. The builders commented on it too, it was like working for a 90 year old, now she understood why Mrs. Crow had spoken about him that way.

  He gave the impression of being very young at first, but after a while he seemed very set in his ways, very old fashioned and too knowledgeable for man in his twenties. She’d found out his real age when a birthday card arrived from his firm of solicitors. It was so sad to be orphaned, she thought, to have solicitors sending you birthday cards instead of your parents. She got him one herself and bought a birthday cake as well.

  She wondered how Sean was spending his twenty fifth birthday.

  Owen had been very touched with the detail, he was left speechless.

  After Jennifer and the builders sang him Happy Birthday and eat the cake he went into this study and didn’t come out until the next day. She was sure he was holding back the tears.

  Maybe people hadn’t been kind to him before, she thought.

  She concluded that Owen wore his body and didn’t actually live in it like a normal person did. Even thinking of a body as something one lived in was new to Jennifer, who had never actually thought about things like that before. She would have to find the local library and get a book about it.

  The builders were extremely fast at their work, no problems, no increases in budget, no delays, it was quite exceptional, and the house was finished in no time at all.

  When the decorator firm moved in there were a few arguments about fashion and taste, which Owen as the owner finally won, and they too were finished in no time at all.

  After all the workmen had gone Jennifer found herself with a lot of time in her hands, especially during the day. Her duties were very few and the house seemed to stay clean all on its own, except perhaps for the attic.

  The attic was everything Jennifer thought an attic should be. Covered in a thick layer of dust, every object had to be cleaned before being identified. It was the kind of place that gave her a tingle in her stomach, like the storeroom in her mother’s bookshop, or the old section of the public library back home.

  Old chests filled with long forgotten priced possessions, toys, clothes, shoes, books. There were books piled from ceiling to floor in every crook and cranny. She didn’t know much about antiques but the books alone she knew must be worth a fortune.

  Owen never went up there. When she mentioned the attic he just nodded and scribbled something in his little notebook. When she mentioned cleaning it he nodded again and told her to do whatever she pleased with it, when scribbled something else in his note book and walked away.

  Armed with duster and pan she spent the first day simply sitting in the middle of the room taking it all in.

  There were no light fittings in the attic so she polished a couple of large candleholders and bought candles to fit, it gave the room an eerie feeling, like being shot into a remote past where time had stood still.

  Some of the chests had belonged to previous staff, she could tell by the content. Others were more refined.

  A couple of weeks into her discovery she found a chest that had probably belonged to one of Owen’s ancestors. There was an embroidered box with the portrait of a beautiful young woman inside it. She was wearing a purple dress and hat. With the portrait there was a collection of letters addressed to a young man called Owen and signed “yours forever, A.” They were passionate letters filled with yearning. A married woman, married to someone much older than herself, obviously an arranged marriage. The letters were to her lover, Jennifer looked at the dates, some quick math revealed the lover to have been Owen’s great-grandfather. They span two whole dec
ades, and then suddenly stopped. She spent three evenings reading them, she would make herself a cup of hot chocolate and retire to the attic where she would light the candles and sit on a strange contraption she felt must be for sitting on.

  She wondered what had happened to the rest of the letters, if there had been any. Maybe the lovers had been caught, or maybe one of them had died. She looked for more letters from “A”, but there were no more, not in the attic at any rate.

  The thought of looking for them in Owen’s study when he wasn’t there crossed her mind, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. There was absolutely no reason they should be there, but the promise of finding them was too great.

  Thinking better of it Jennifer decided to take the letters to Owen and asking him if there were any more of them, maybe he knew what happened to the lovers.

  Owen’s face became ashen grey. He sat quietly holding the letters in his hands while Jennifer told him all about them. When she finished he stroked the letters gently and handed them back.

  “She died of a miscarriage,” he said, “at thirty-seven. In those days it was a common occurrence. I… I think my great-grandfather could have done something to save her. He was schooled in medical matters. But he didn’t find out about her death until she failed to arrive at their meeting place.”

  “That is so sad,” said Jennifer looking down at the worn letters, “he must have been heartbroken, poor man. They used to meet in Brighton you know, once a month without fail, twice in the summer.”

  She must have been seventeen when they met, she thought. Married off at seventeen.

  Owen got up to go to his study, “it’s best if you put them back where you found them,” he said.

  She watched him walk away, he was upset about something but she couldn’t recall if he had been upset before she showed him the letters or whether the letters had upset him. Then the realization hit her, his mother had died at childbirth and this woman had died due to a miscarriage. She had been so thoughtless in asking him about it! She should have known better.