Black Wolf

by Steph Shangraw

  “Good.” Floria fetched two plates from the cupboard, deposited a large slice on each, and put one in the microwave on the island.

  Unexpected sounds of motion behind her made Aindry spin around; she relaxed immediately, as a light-skinned man with a lion’s-mane of silvery hair joined them in the kitchen. He must have been in a truly terrible accident, Aindry decided, to have been hurt badly enough to need a wheelchair—healer gifts usually worked extremely efficiently on their own bodies. It certainly explained all the little oddities about the house.

  “Wren, Aindry,” Floria said. “Ian just took her brother Jaisan upstairs for a bath.”

  “Hi,” Aindry said shyly.

  Wren wheeled the chair all the way into the kitchen, and nodded amiably. “Be nice to have kids around the house for a day or two. Make yourselves at home. I’m the resident healer, let me know if you need me.”

  The microwave beeped, and Floria handed Aindry the plate and a fork and knife. “Table’s right there, honey, go have a seat and eat. I’ll get you a glass of milk. And no silliness about not eating until your brother does,” she added sternly, as Aindry hesitated. “I’ll make sure he gets some as soon as he gets done. Sit, eat, I’m going to go track down clean clothes. You make sure she does, Wren.”

  Hours later, warm and clean and well-fed, Aindry and Jaisan snuggled into the twin beds in the room that had belonged to Floria and Wren’s daughters.

  “‘Night,” Jaisan said drowsily.

  Aindry smiled to herself, suddenly remembering this same day, eighteen years before. Remembering slipping quietly into her mother’s room, once the healer left, and peeking into the old-fashioned wooden cradle next to the bed, to see the two sleeping, rather funny-looking creatures that she’d been told were her new little brothers. Remembering her mother’s eyes opening, and her warm, if exhausted smile. Intent on finding them a meal and maybe a bed, she hadn’t thought of it until now.

  “Happy birthday, Jais,” she whispered.

  The Quicksilver Sphynx

  Miscellanea, April 1994

  Nick ‘Winter

  Well, we all survived winter, I think. Ever notice that everyone in Haven seems to be in higher spirits after the spring equinox? Beltaine’s coming! Check out the happenings on the back page! Beach bonfire with live music and the usual potluck? That’s hard to beat!

  Drua ‘Windstorm and Morey ‘Rowan are having a baby! It’s due in June (how come nobody told me until now?). And Haven gets another Aurelian-Lioren elf!

  Camilla Fitzgerald is moving away from us, to go to Falias in Newfoundland. Why is anyone’s guess, (don’t hit me, Sonja, I’m joking, Falias is a great place!) but I gather it has something to do with a newly-forming coven, possibly. I suppose we can stand to lose her for a good cause, and they don’t come any better than that, but Exotica won’t be the same without her there to play wonderful villains, right from lecherous human princes to angry faerie queens to vengeful ghosts.

  There’s a healer’s convention the 23rd and 24th (Saturday and Sunday). Don’t ask me about plans, Liam won’t tell me; if you’re a healer call Mandisa, she’s organizing it.

  There’s a witches’ convention coming up, too, the 14th and 15th of May (another weekend). If you’re a witch, call Dion and he’ll tell you what’s going on.

  The database idea is going well, Deanna ‘Sundark tells me, and I’m to thank everyone who for the last two months has given them so much information on gems and crystals. They’re going to put it on the library computers and they’re working on an effective way to put it on our very own BBS, so anyone who wants to access it can. The next subject is herbalism, so all you herbalists out there, sit down and list every kind of herb you use and what you do with them. Obviously, there’s more to the art than can be crammed in, but the idea is to get a wide range rather than extreme depth. Again, give it to Covens Sundark, Merrymoon, Moonstone, Dragonfire, Tabbycat or Harpsong, or to Grant Londry. In two or three months, I’ll let you know the next topic.

  We’re coming quickly up that time when Bryan keeps the library open extra hours for couple of months, and he has no one lined up yet to help out. If you’re interested, stop in and see him.

  And now, what everyone has been dreading: historical notes. Brydie Isadore was born April 18th, 1763. Morgan and Victoria were married April 23rd, the day after they met. No, not love at first sight. Victoria was born into a mundane family, almost condemned as a “witch,” and Morgan married her to get her out of there. He brought her home to Alessandria and Brydie, and a few months later Victoria was part of Starluck. She even left the most awesome sketches of her coven and their friends, and she signed them all, and they were still in the attic of their old house! Okay, Brittany’s standing right behind me so I have to be good. April 11th is the birthday of our other Adept, the one whose birthday it wasn’t back on October 19th. However, I’ve once again been forbidden to tell name or age. What is it with our Adepts, anyway?

  In April 1989, one of our standing mysteries occurred: a recently-founded village north-west of here, called Unity, died, apparently overnight. There’ve been rumours of survivors but nothing confirmed. Government investigation was inconclusive. Ours turned up the strong scent of werewolves but no elves or dryads, bizarre as that is. No one knows anything about who the wolves were, only that they died too. Nothing else gave any answers at all, despite all attempts with various scrying, seeing, and related techniques. At this point, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know.

  Enjoy spring and Beltaine!

  15

  Jesse made his way up the driveway to the door, hoping he was remembering the right house, and knocked.

  Zarah, who was, Jess thought, Deanna’s mother but he might be wrong, opened the door, and smiled. “Hello, Jesse. Come on in, I’ll call…”

  She didn’t need to; Gisela came racing down the stairs and narrowly avoided hitting Zarah.

  “Hey, Jess! You’re back! Took you long enough.”

  He couldn’t help grinning. “Well… despite things trying to keep me busy, you’re irresistible.”

  “No I’m not, just crazy.”

  “I went out to the house, but there’s no one there. They moved?”

  “Mmhmm. Cynthia’s been working on it for months trying to get a loan on her inheritance from her grandmother to buy it. She died a couple of years ago, but Cynthia’s not supposed to get it until she’s twenty-one next year. Nobody said anything ‘cause they wanted to surprise you. Wait until you see this place! And it has lots of bedrooms so you get your own room. Bye, Zarah. Let’s go, Jess! She really wanted this one because it was built like two hundred years ago, it was one of the first in Haven, and it was built by her ancestors and Kev’s and it’s made to be perfect for the kinds of magic they do.”

  She kept on, telling him the historical reasons why Coven Sundark deserved it, and the practical reasons why they wanted it—it had been designed to house an entire substantial coven and their children, among others. She refused to describe it, though.

  Outside the village proper, of course. It seemed like most houses were, around here, like everyone valued the private space. The village itself was primarily devoted to stores and schools and library and similar such public places.

  Gisela stopped in front of a six-foot grey stone wall. Or, actually, a greenish metal gate in it with a high arch overhead. The archway was large enough for the van to drive through and then some.

  “Here,” Gisela pronounced.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Go in.”

  How long must that wall be, if it surrounded all of this, and how much stone had it taken? Snow covered the ground yet, but he could still see trees in clusters, with clear space around them. Straight ahead, there was another sizeable arch, framing a view of the lake; there was another to the left, with trees beyond, but smaller and the gate was closed. There may have been to the right as well, but the house blocked that. The house belonged perfectly, huge and grey and sprawling irr
egularly across the landscape, in some places only one story, in some places three or possibly four, all porches and balconies and windows.

  “See?” Gisela said in delight.

  “Good god. Just how much is this inheritance of hers?”

  “She won’t tell. Not even her coven, I think. But it paid for the van and now for this, and I don’t think it’s all gone. Aren’t you going to go in? Or just stand here? Wait until me and Cynthia and Dia and Naomi and Nick and Liam get to work on the yard once the snow’s all gone!”

  “Where’s the door?”

  “Follow the driveway.”

  Past a two-car garage of similar stone set apart from the house, up onto a porch the size of the apartment he and Shaine shared. Double doors, of course, rich tawny wood, each carved with a crescent moon, horns facing outward, the two crescents flanking a six-armed star.

  “Just open it,” Gisela urged.

  “I feel like I should be expecting ghosts or something.”

  “No ghosts. We checked.”

  He glanced at her to see if she were serious. She was.

  The door was heavy, he found, pushing it open.

  There was a hallway right inside, with hooks for coats. He kept going without stopping, and stepped through a doorway into a larger hall with rooms all around it. The doors, all wood-trimmed glass, French doors he thought they were called, were all closed.

  “Hey, guys!” Gisela called. “Where are you?” It echoed eerily.

  “Upstairs,” Kevin called back. “Stay, I’m coming!”

  “Jesus. You could get lost in this place, I bet,” Jesse said.

  “I have a couple of times,” Gisela admitted. “It took me a while to find my way out. We’ll get used to it.”

  “In a hundred years or so.”

  Kevin came around a corner, paint splattered all over him, and grinned. “Hi, Jess. Thought I felt you come in. So. What do you think?”

  “Can’t you guys ever do anything on a normal scale? I mean, a big house, okay, but this is ridiculous!”

  “Does that mean you like it?”

  “That means I can’t believe it.”

  “Oh, it’s real. Nobody’s lived here for eleven years. It needs too much work to not be real. We started with right here, but the rest is still like something from a ghost story. Except bedrooms and a bathroom and a kitchen. We did those already, too, between everybody. Well, five bedrooms, one’s yours.”

  Gisela laughed. “Just wait ‘til you see it!”

  Jesse shook his head. “This place is unreal. Even more than the rest of Haven.”

  Kevin echoed the laugh. “Help us work on it for two days and you’ll never think again that it’s not real. It’s going to take us months to finish it inside.”

  “Good. At least you didn’t just step into a perfect mansion.”

  “It will be. Grand tour?”

  “Sure.” He shed backpack, jacket, and shoes, and followed Kevin. Gisela trailed along behind.

  He got lost quickly. Everything was old-looking, and dingy with disuse, but he thought that the house must once have been beautiful. There was surprisingly little dust.

  Kevin saved the bedrooms for last. Deanna’s was on the ground floor, with an enormous window that had a red maple outside that might be as old as the house. Bane’s second-floor room had its own small balcony, Bane’s familiar belongings not entirely filling the space. Cynthia’s, a short distance away, was bright with windows on three sides beginning two feet off the floor and continuing to the ceiling.

  “And, of course, yours and mine. You weren’t here to choose, so we thought about which one you’d like best and set it up just for you.”

  Up to the third floor. A broad hallway that went straight ahead, with a door at the end, and a doorway on each side.

  “Our territory,” Kevin said. “As in, our own bathroom, or it will be, right now I keep thinking something will come to life and try to drag me down the toilet, and there’s nothing else here but it and two rooms. Mine’s the right one, yours is left.”

  Jesse touched the handle of Kevin’s door. “Can I look?”

  “Sure. But you might want to see yours first.”

  Jesse hesitated, and decided to take the advice. He opened the other door.

  Kevin’s hand steadied him when Jesse dropped back a step in sheer disbelief.

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Completely. We’ve had a wonderful time. What you’re seeing is the contributions of a lot of people. This coven and ‘Sela, Covens Dandelion and Winter, Sam and Caitryn…”

  “Well? Go look around!” Gisela prompted.

  The room seemed like it should have been a small dance studio or something—well, other than the slanted ceiling that reduced the headroom along the far third of the space, broken by two windows that each had an honest-to-god window-seat. The walls were painted, he was sure freshly, in a plain soft creamy not-quite-white, a contrast to the dark shining wood floor and the dark curtains and the black-and-glass furniture.

  In the far end, head to the wall under a smaller window, stood a double bed; two small tables flanked it, a lamp on one and a clock-radio on the other. On the inner wall, overlooking the bed, were three shelves, and on one sat an expensive-looking compact stereo. At the nearer end, built out from the wall, was a sizeable closet of wood that almost matched the floor and near it a free-standing full-length mirror. Even the addition of a loveseat, more or less balancing the bed, failed to make it look crowded instead of comfortable.

  Everything, the rugs, the blankets on the bed and thrown over the loveseat, the curtains, was black or dark purple or grey or silver or combinations of them. Anything not upholstered was black metal and glass and silver. His favourite colours.

  “Jesus. That the size of our whole apartment!” And what was in it would have paid the rent on that apartment for at least two or three months, he was sure.

  “Like it?” Gisela asked.

  “Like it? It’s even more unreal than the rest! Let me believe it first! I’ve only been gone for four or five weeks, how the hell did you manage to do everything you just showed me? And why the hell would you…” He ran out of words.

  Kevin chuckled. “Because you’re special and we wanted to do something special for you. It’s absolutely and totally yours, everything in there. As for how… a dozen or so people working together, with a little magic thrown in, can accomplish a lot.” He gave him a gentle push into the room.

  “This has to have cost a fortune!”

  “Not as much as you think. Money wasn’t a big consideration anyway.”

  Jess collapsed on the loveseat, sinking in deeply, trying to assimilate this.

  “You don’t like it?” Gisela asked, frowning.

  Kevin laughed again. “I think he’s overwhelmed. Maybe nobody’s ever given him any good surprises before. Mine’s a mirror image, more or less. Tell you what. You stay here and come to grips with the fact that this is really truly yours, and I’ll get back to painting the bathroom downstairs.”

  “And I’ll go get your stuff,” Gisela said, darting away.

  “Why?” Jesse repeated.

  “It’s not an attempt to bribe you into staying, although the thought crossed a mind or six. Just to do something nice for you. You deserve it. And since you don’t have anyone else to do it for you, we did.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “We wouldn’t’ve done it if we didn’t want to.” The blonde departed, and Jess heard him on the stairs down.

  Gisela came only long enough to deliver his backpack before she was gone again.

  Jesse ran a hand over the blanket under him, thoughtfully. There was a lot of the silky stuff in the house, used for everything from clothes to sheets to curtains, like in this room… his room. It still made his skin tingle faintly, less so now than on his first visit to Haven; not an unpleasant sensation, but a little unsettling.

  What was it, anyway?

  More calm now, he explor
ed more closely. Behind the closet doors that folded back like a curtain of dark wood, there were hooks and shelves and drawers and bars and hangers—and clothes. A few things he knew he’d left here on his last visit but others he’d never seen, made of that silky stuff in the wild styles he’d seen Coven Sundark and others in Haven wearing, all black, purple, or silver-grey.

  He hesitated, but temptation won. He shed his jeans and T-shirt, and tried on a pair of loose black pants made of the silky material. They fit perfectly, unsurprisingly, though a drawstring waist did leave a lot of leeway. He found a grey shirt, with loose gathered sleeves, and pulled it on. Whisper-light, and totally seamless, like the pants. And a vest, also black. He gazed at himself in the ornately-iron-framed mirror, smiled at his reflection. It made him look abruptly younger, really seventeen. The slight tingling of the material was a distinctly sensual thrill, all over his skin…

  If he wanted to, while he was here, he could forgo his usual clothes entirely, stay entirely with the new stuff…

  Could, except he lacked the courage to even leave it on long now. It felt too much like deception, trying to pretend that he belonged here.

  I could be like them. I could learn, if I stayed here always.

  Damn it all, even though I’ve been telling myself over and over not to care, admit it. I care. Very much. They’re my friends, even if they don’t know everything about me. Well, I don’t know everything about them, either. That’s fair.

  He liked the Jesse looking back; that was the Jesse that should have been. He laid the fingertips of one hand against the glass, wishing with all he was that he could step through and trade places.

  Could you wish on a mirror? Maybe it was a magic mirror.

  “Hey, mirror,” he whispered. “Do you grant wishes? Can you make me like that Jesse instead of me?”

  The other Jesse just gazed back, but his dark eyes, grey-blue-green with a blue starburst around the pupil, looked very sad and lonely, and much older than the face they were in.

  Jesse shook himself. “What am I doing, talking to a mirror? I’m losing it. The insanity around here is getting to me.” He started to turn away; motion in the mirror made him turn back. Somewhere in the shadows behind the other Jesse, something was moving. Startled, he glanced behind him. Nothing there. Only in the mirror, a night-coloured wolf formed from the shadows, and pressed its head to the other Jesse’s thigh.