by A. L. Tyler
I learned things from him, and he learned things from me. I came to enjoy his presence, and Charlie’s, when they were around. Then, I came to prefer it.
On the night that he hit me hard across the face, though, I knew I had to get rid of him.
Charlie was the one who came to me that night as I stood by the workbench holding ice to my cheek and trying to find a spell to kill him. I didn’t have one, and I knew it—the magic of my ancestors wasn’t about hatred, revenge, or death. There were a few curses that I had learned from Stark, but none of them were bad enough, and I hadn’t managed to work any of them on my own. But, oh, how I wanted a spell to kill him that night.
Charlie took the ice from my hand and touched my face. I expected it to hurt, but the pain went away. I touched my cheek and the swelling was gone. He had healed me.
He already seemed to know, but he asked anyways. “Tell me what happened.”
I didn’t know. His rage seemed to come out of nowhere, and Charlie told me that was how the end usually came about with Stark’s relationships. He tired of his games after so long, and then things got ugly. Impatience and boredom had always been weak spots for the warlock.
Charlie lamented my situation with me, because I knew it wasn’t going to end with a mutual parting of ways now. He said that he would help me any way that he could, and told me that even as close as they were, he had tired of Stark’s tirades long ago. I had seen Charlie do terrible things at Stark’s request, but I knew they were different because of how they treated me when we were alone.
I eventually asked Charlie why he had hidden my heart when we first met. It was one of those late nights when I was sitting by the workbench, nursing my wounds and wishing I came from more vindictive stock. He hesitated before telling me that I reminded him of a friend he’d had a long time ago. She was a kind witch who had been his first bridge into this world. He had watched her die, ripped apart by werewolves, and he couldn’t take seeing it again if it could be avoided.
Charlie soothed my nervous anger and healed my wounds. We had talked during the year I was with Stark, but never like we did that night. Our friendship didn’t last long after that, because Stark had heard a rumor that there were leprechauns hiding in a small town down south. He left to investigate, and he left Charlie behind, fearful I might be harvested if the rumor had attracted others of his kind.
Our late nights got later. Our talks became more personal. Our dislike of Stark and his crude methods became more mutual. Once again, it became more than I should have allowed.
I had met at least a dozen warlocks in my life, and none of them had the bond that Stark did with Charlie, because Charlie wasn’t his slave. Charlie came and went as he pleased. He insulted Stark, and Stark returned the slights in kind. They disagreed, and fought, and apologized, and gave each other gifts and trophies of their conquests. They were friends that only the centuries together could forge.
I intended it as revenge when I took Charlie to my bed, and compared to our early attempts on each others’ lives, it seemed innocent enough. I think there was a taste of that motive for Charlie, too. It was revenge, but to us, it became so much more. I never told Stark that it happened, and neither did Charlie, and Stark was too prideful to even consider the possibility that someone could betray him without his knowledge. He never saw it.
I probably should have felt guilty for what I was doing, but like I said, seclusion and an objective absence of judgment breeds a dangerous indifference.
Some time later, Stark needed werewolf claws for one of his spells. Charlie often liked to tell me certain anecdotes while we laid in bed together, but this time was different.
“We tracked it to a house,” he said. “But the werewolf wasn’t home. His child answered the door instead.”
Charlie swallowed. He didn’t look at me.
“He killed him, after meeting his kid?” I pressed, frowning.
Charlie closed his eyes, shaking his head. “He killed the kid. He didn’t want to have to wait.”
He sat up in bed, rubbing his hands over his face. I was horrified, but I didn’t know why Charlie was. In the hundreds of years they had been together, he had surely seen or done worse.
“Charlie?” I sat up behind him to put my hands on his shoulders.
“They won’t work for the spell,” he said. “Children usually don’t work for this purpose, and he knows that. We’re going to have to find the guy and kill him anyway. And Stark knows who you are.”
I laid my cheek against his shoulder, confused. “What?”
“He knows who you are,” Charlie repeated. “He knows about the book. He’s been waiting you out, trying to find it. The time here is a drop in the bucket compared to all the years he’s lived, though this is the most patient I’ve ever seen him. I think he was hoping to win your affections. He’s starting to doubt that plan. He’s done. He’s going to kill you for the book, Kendra.”
I felt dread rise in my chest. I didn’t understand how it was possible for Stark to know about the book, but he had surprised me before. Charlie grabbed me by the shoulders to put some distance between us.
The look in his eyes as he analyzed me was so emotionless that it scared me. “I’m going to sever the bond. I won’t let him do it.”
It was like he had kicked me in the gut. “Charlie, no, if you do that—”
He would likely die. He knew. But so would Stark, and that was his plan. He wanted to weaken his master enough that I could kill him, and if Charlie had survived the ordeal, we would be reunited when I summoned him.
I told him I wouldn’t allow it. He said he was ready to die. He fell into a depression over it that we both had to hide from Stark. Friend or not, Charlie was afraid of being cast aside or burned up in a spell if Stark felt his usefulness had run its course. Meanwhile, I flirted like my life depended on it. It did.
I found a way, an old spell from an even older book, that would allow a demon to secretly take a second bridge, but the items that the spell called for weren’t easy to come by. I told Charlie I would become his bridge, and then we would get around Stark’s protection spells by leaving him in the Other Side instead of trying to kill him. We made plans for him to become a human, like me, but building a soul for him was going to be much harder. It would be worse, even, than the ingredients to make me his bridge behind Stark’s back.
I made a deal with him. I gave him my hair and made him promise that he wouldn’t sever the link with Stark unless all of our plans had already failed, and if I died before he did, I promised him my soul so that he could be human.
It was all downhill from there.
Charlie nearly gave us up several times as the weeks passed by. I could see him fighting himself not to say or do anything every time I became the object of Stark’s affections. It was worse when I was the object of his frustrations and anger.
But I told him we would make it out alive, and that was what mattered. He held to our deal.
A decade and a broken curse later, and it was finally done.
I turned over, resting my chin on Charlie’s chest and smiling at him, and he closed his eyes and smiled back. We were back in the greenhouse, just like old times, and he had reopened the hidden doors to the apartment I kept for myself down the hall from the office.
The employees had been dismissed that day, well-compensated for their time and with a bonus for the lack of notice on their layoff. I didn’t need them. Plants liked me, and they had a way of taking care of themselves in my presence. Charlie took care of everything else.
He wrapped his arms around me, sighing as I laid my head on his shoulder.
“I’m not a babysitter,” he said.
“I’m sorry.” I would be saying it for a long time. I was okay with that. “What is she like now? Anise?”
“She prefers Annie,” he said. “Or Thorn. That’s what I’ve been calling her.”
I exhaled a subtle, surprised laugh. “Like Stark used to call me? That’s dark.”
&nb
sp; “It seemed fitting at the time, and then it stuck,” he said quickly. “Why? Lyssa is your apprentice. You’re considering taking on Annie, too? That’s awfully gregarious of you.”
“I can’t abandon her,” I said, looking out the window at the tiny crescent moon. Charlie had taken a liking to her, more so than he had ever expressed for the idea of Lyssa, and it took a special disposition to work with demons. He had used the collected resources for his mortality spell to spare her the servitude of demonhood. He hadn’t used all of everything because she started out human, and a reversal was easier than a full conversion, but I knew the true measure of what he had sacrificed for her. It would take us a decade, at least, to gather those things again. “She’ll be a pariah if people ever find out.”
“You think Lyssa is going to tell?”
“These things have a way of getting out,” I said. “Did she retain anything?”
He paused a little too long.
“Charlie?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “She isn’t especially talented, that’s all. I suppose we could have made her try harder, but she really just wants her life to go back to normal. Poor girl.”
“Hmm. She’ll never get that now that she’s been seen in public with you,” I joked.
Charlie smiled, but then he looked at me, very seriously. “She’s a good girl. She has a good heart, and she doesn’t like keeping secrets that could hurt people. There’s something I have to tell you. It’s about the book.”
I sat up, frowning as I looked down at him. I leaned over to grab my robe off the floor and slipped it around my shoulders. “It’s safe, isn’t it?”
“It’s safe,” he said. “Annie’s friend, Gates, she read it. But she didn’t know what to do with it.”
I closed my eyes, shaking my head. “No, she couldn’t have. I hid that book under Althaea’s skull. Only a Hawthorn could have taken it from under there.”
“A Hawthorn did, as I understand it,” Charlie said carefully. “And Annie then handed it to her friend, who became the first person who was not a Hawthorn to read it since it was written.”
Standing still in the bedroom, I felt a chill fall over me. It was one of the most sacred books in all of existence, passed down from blood to blood in a succession that had gone on for hundreds of years. The spells in that book had gained power with every time it had been passed down in my family, right down to me. There wasn’t much room left, but I had committed my knowledge of Charlie, the demon with empathy, to its pages. “Charlie, did you read the book?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know what the significance of that event is?”
He tilted his head, and I saw the concern etched on his brow. Whatever he was about to say, it was going to make it worse. He took a deep breath.
“I was there when Althaea started that book,” he said. “I know the first spells in there. What I suspect them to be, anyways. I was her familiar, and I recognized you the first time I saw you. I thought it was fate, at first, but I guess it was inevitable that I would encounter one of Althaea’s descendants eventually. Stark hunted down enough witches over the years. I knew you. I didn’t want to see him kill you, and that’s why I offered to hide your heart. That’s why, when Stark had already decided to butcher you for parts, I told him about you. I told him about the book I thought you had in your possession. Kendra…Kendra!”
I turned away from him and then out the door. It was completely dark in the greenhouse, and I tripped over a hose as I attempted to storm out.
I could accept that Charlie had been Althaea’s familiar. It made sense. But his betrayal…if he was her familiar, he knew the true importance of that book, and those spells, and what they were capable of.
And he had handed over the knowledge of them to a warlock.
Banishment. I heard the word in my mother’s voice. That was the sentence for witches who told others. Our secrets, and the way we kept parts of ourselves unknown, were both our shield and our sword. To hand them over to a villain—and warlocks were truly the worst I could think of—meant death to all of us. Banishment was the punishment to be handed down to Charlie for such a betrayal.
And I felt the tears stinging my eyes, because I knew I wouldn’t do it. In a way, I felt that it was my penance for all the people I had hurt by falling in love with him. I had traded my sword and shield for Charlie.
I stopped myself at the workbench after stubbing my toe on a misplaced shovel. If I didn’t stop, I would shed blood on the grounds, and that came with all manner of complications.
Charlie came up behind me.
“I did it to keep you alive,” he said. “It was the only card I had left to play.”
I grimaced, but I understood. I had done things, too, in the name of saving a lover. When he put a hand on my shoulder, I laid mine over it, and I heard him breathe a sigh of relief.
He had saved my life. But now Stark knew. And Draven’s anger at having been denied once had finally driven him to trickery and deceit. If anyone ever got a hold of that book, many more lives could be lost.
Martha jumped up on the workbench, and she meowed softly, as though she were asking what was wrong.. I laid a hand on her head.
She was my friend, but I would never let her out of her cat prison again. I couldn’t even imagine the selfish desire that had brought her to my nieces’ door, especially knowing what would befall them the moment she laid eyes on them.
Others were going to come looking for Martha when she didn’t report back. Her brother, at least, and probably a husband as well. I had never been fond of vampires or their effects on the plants that were my livelihood. I was going to have to either draw my nieces near or else push them very far away before Draven arrived.
And even outside of that problem, I wondered how I was ever going to tell them that Martha, now a cat, was their aunt.
End of Preview
Hawthorn Witches Novella #4: Vampires & Vinca
Coming February 2016
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About the Author
I grew up in Broomfield, Colorado, reading and creating art. (But mostly reading.) I am a second generation trekkie, a fan of obscure anime and most science fiction and fantasy on television today, and I have dressed up to attend the conventions. I proudly have a time turner and a tribble sitting next to the VHS copies of Star Wars on my shelf at home--still seeking a sonic screwdriver to add to the mix.
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