Every Witch Demon but Mine (Maeren Series Book 1)

by Mercedes Jade

  What new game was this?

  “Of course,” she replied.

  Perhaps she had been too quick to make their family look weak. They were not sycophants, without their own strengths.

  They had come here as warriors to plead their case against the demons to the previous queen of their kingdom.

  She held her cup out to Jill and mouthed ‘hotter’ to her, watching for Kim’s reaction as Jill demonstrated fine control over her fire.

  Jill heated the temperature of the tea only a couple of degrees more and kept the cup handle cool enough for Elizabeth to handle.

  Elizabeth smiled. “An underdog isn’t only a human concept. Hidden talents and perseverance are supposed to win the day. It makes for great movies and sells books. Real life actually kicks you in the ribs until you’re down.”

  Kim waited patiently for Elizabeth to sip her hot tea.

  It was tempting to keep holding her cup to have something between them. Elizabeth still felt like Kim was probing for something.

  She put her cup down with a mannerless clink on the saucer. She could always toss it for a distraction if they had to run.

  “Actually, an underdog is a human concept. Maerenians believe magic makes might. There are no underdogs. Have you never wondered why vampire after vampire falls for your simple magic tricks and ends up meeting the end of your stake?”

  Tricks? Her power wasn’t parlour magic!

  “You told her about my lightning?” Elizabeth growled at her mother through her telepathy.

  “No, I kept that secret. I told Kim that you hide in the shadows and hunt like a human, using your air sparingly, as a distraction. Stop using lightning!” her mother snapped back in frigid tones conveyed perfectly by Elizabeth’s magic.

  Kim was probing her, but it wasn’t for a weakness! She wanted to know Elizabeth’s strengths.

  Bloody sharp tack, this one!

  She shyly smiled at Kim as if she’d been caught flirting with an inappropriate swain. Not quite innocent but harmless, really.

  “Males are egotistical. Give them a set of fangs and magic fingers and they think they’re Gods, especially next to a weak witch who has been banished to the human realm. They never see me coming,” Elizabeth bragged, relieved her real secret was safe.

  Kim nodded in a way that said ‘just so’ as she acknowledged the problem with male superiority.

  “In Maeren, males have forgotten the power of their concubines, mothers, and sisters. They have grown complacent,” Kim said. She looked at each of them in turn. “Witches are still thought to be the weaker sex. That may even be true in terms of magical limits. But the true weakness is found in the Maerenian males who dismiss us. They’re leaving themselves unprepared for real competition.”

  That sounded positively rebellious. Maeren was a male-dominated society. Witches were breeders and bleeders.

  Still, her mother stayed quiet.

  What had these older witches been plotting?

  “What exactly are you proposing we do?” Elizabeth asked, darting her gaze to her mother.

  Kim should think of Elizabeth as a weak, anemic air witch. It had been her cover forever.

  Was she expecting Jill to fight?

  Jill’s dual strengths of fire and earth were trapped in a witch that would rather heal the world than fight it.

  Her sensei ought to know the student better by now.

  Their mother explained. “Something has to be done about the demons. Elizabeth, you are a slayer. Jill, you are the perfect match for a fire prince and our entry to a royal harem.”

  Okay, so Elizabeth had been given permission to stab things. Perhaps this trip to hell wouldn’t be as horrible as she’d first thought.

  Jill was going to flirt with a prince. How hard could that be?

  Maybe the older witches were onto something here. If they could actually get entry into the royal court, it would be much easier to ferret out high-level treason.

  Only someone highly placed would dare flaunt the king’s laws with such disregard for his own safety.

  Someone who was building a demon army.

  "Wait a minute!” Jill almost screeched before anything further about the plan could be discussed. “How come Elizabeth gets all the fun and I have to feed some spoiled prince?”

  There was that—blood feeding was a requirement of any potential harem member. Elizabeth had completely forgotten for a moment how different courtship rituals were in Maeren from the human realm.

  “Of course, you would complain about playing a princess,” Elizabeth retorted, trying to cool Jill’s panic before it could fire up by redirecting her concerns.

  Her sister had issues with feeding males. Their mother was well aware of it.

  “I don’t see why it has to be me,” Jill muttered. “I’ve trained to fight just as hard as you! I should be able to have fun, too.”

  Jill was the obvious choice for a harem because of her desirable fire magic. She also was a healer, no matter how good her combat skills. The slaying had always been left up to Elizabeth.

  “I would not classify staking the demon in the park last night as fun. You realize, breathing in demon dust is like smoking a pack a day to my lungs? And don't even get me started on the lame, evil-character banter. Those demon jokes are a century old, just like they look. I would rather dress up and simper at a prince, instead of sneaking around in the dark after another juiced-up demon-junkie looking for his next hit.”

  “Unless you have found a way to become invisible, Elizabeth, you’d better be ready to dress up and simper as well. We all should stick together. Jill is the bait and you are the hook.”

  Damn it. The merits of this idea were quickly being buried.

  “If we are the bait and hook, then what are you,” Jill asked their mother.

  “The reel to yank them in.”

  The smile their mother gave them was more shark-like than any demon they would be fishing. To say their mother was not fond of demons was a huge understatement.

  Oh, Maeren. Their mother’s mind was already made up to accept this mission.

  Pity the demon that got in the way of her mother’s path of cold vengeance. Her mother didn’t have an ounce of forgiveness in her for the terrible wrongs done to them.

  Elizabeth glanced at Kim, judging her reaction to their threat.

  They weren’t here for a tea party. This was a war council.

  “We would never expect you girls to do this without guidance. We need your cooperation. I can’t return to Maeren myself, but I can help prepare you for what needs to be done,” Kim said and poured them all more tea.

  Screw the mouse act.

  “I’m going to go stake whoever is responsible for this demon invasion. Right between the ribs, pop the sac of foul magic around his heart, and twist the wood in his chest until its slivers are embedded for making me go back to Maeren,” she bluntly stated.

  Kim blew on her tea while Elizabeth gave the graphic, violent proposal.

  “Well, I hope so, or else your mother has greatly exaggerated your prowess, dear.”

  Kim smiled at her over her cup.

  Elizabeth froze in her seat.

  There was the sharp, teeth-baring grin of a witch that made the King of Maeren sweat. It was a take-no-prisoners smirk, a hint of the power and determination, hidden within her refined looks, as barbaric as any Elizabeth had delivered.

  It said Elizabeth wasn’t the only monster in the room.

  “Do you have a plan for this assassination beyond ‘stake everything with fangs and a problem with authority’?” Elizabeth prompted.

  "Yes, we do have a plan,” her mother said.

  She sipped her tea, in no rush to impart the plan.

  Elizabeth tapped her toes with impatience.

  "How long have you had a plan?” she asked, curious.

  Surely, they hadn't come up with all this on the spot.

  “Not long,” her mother said. “Didn't it seem strange to you that the demon was w
aiting in the park alone with no humans around to feed on? You rushed right into a trap.”

  Ugh. This lecture, again. She knew last night hadn’t been reprimand enough for disobeying the rules.

  “There was no trap. It was his second time around, so he was probably hiding from me,” Elizabeth countered.

  Mother put down her teacup.

  “He was the third demon that you came upon all alone. The vampires you usually stake were always in the middle of a feed. They dash over here and grab the nearest human. None of them like to stay here long because of the magic drain and the sun. It's like when you hold your breath and dive down to the bottom of the pool to get a ring. You don't waste time getting back to the surface as soon as possible. So, why are these demons suddenly swimming in circles at the bottom of the pool?”

  Put like that, it did sound like a trap, with the demons as bloodthirsty sharks.

  Her mother’s fear was more understandable as well as the anger. It seemed like Elizabeth had willfully placed herself in danger.

  “The demons are fishing for you!” Jill said, sounding horrified.

  Kim refilled their mother's cup.

  “Risking your life on taking down the hounds isn’t going to stop the hunt,” Kim said.

  Was that concern or censure?

  Elizabeth swallowed the last sip of her tea and decided it had been both.

  “You don’t need to worry about me,” she told Kim. “I’m the wicked witch.”

  “Even wickedness needs to be sharpened to keep its dark edge,” Kim said. “Will you let an older witch show you a trick or two?”

  Elizabeth looked over at her sister and her mother, then back at Kim.

  “Yes.”

  They were going to do this. It was time to return to the hell they had left behind and bury the monsters properly.

  How to Train a Slayer

  Hidden Meanings

  “How many Maerenian glyphs do you know?”

  Elizabeth looked up from her pink-chalk drawing of a wobbly circle.

  “Including what you taught me?” she clarified.

  It had only been a week of training. Glyphs had started this afternoon.

  Kim’s eyebrows went up at Elizabeth’s question, but she nodded agreement.

  “I think I almost have the word for this last glyph down, so a grand total of two,” Elizabeth announced, flashing the requisite number of fingers.

  “I know all the basic glyphs and many of the advanced, earth-healing glyphs,” Jill injected into the conversation.

  Jill was squatting as if sitting on a chair. Her hips and knees were at perfect ninety-degree angles. She looked straight ahead, so the stack of books on her head didn’t slip.

  The fire crackled and burned under her bare feet from the freshly raked coals she stood upon, shielding their heat. She was also shielding the wooden floor underneath the coals, which made the entire thing doubly tricky.

  “Brown-nose,” Elizabeth teased.

  Jill had already learned glyphs to practice earth spells with their mother. Many potions involved glyphs that they used in magical healing.

  Elizabeth’s power simply made things go boom and she went home.

  “You used to know all the basics,” her mother declared. “You spoke late but you loved to read to yourself. Don’t you remember pointing out the glyphs in your books to me?”

  Elizabeth shook her head in denial.

  “Well, we did stop using them. I never brought any of your baby books with me from Maeren. It could be you forgot it without practice, like a second language,” her mother deduced, taking the blame.

  “I never showed interest,” Elizabeth replied, stopping her mother from making excuses for her.

  “I didn’t realize the importance of glyphs,” Elizabeth told Kim. “Please, teach me.”

  “Of course, I will. We’ll focus on glyphs you need for the tracking spell for now, but later, I want you to come for magic lessons and theory when Jill does her kendo practice.”

  The offer was generous. It implied they were going to remain friends after this mission.

  To truly benefit from lessons, she would have to reveal her lightning to Kim. That wasn’t something she was ready to do yet.

  “My magic isn’t really strong enough to be worth all that effort,” Elizabeth declined. “I don’t want to waste your time.”

  Kim made a nonsensical sound of inner focus. She bent down and quickly sketched out the glyph Elizabeth had been trying to get right, using blue chalk right over Elizabeth's messy lines so she could see the errors.

  Elizabeth immediately tried again.

  “I never waste my time,” Kim spoke when she was done, straightening up. “You will have to come to the lessons fully charged and ready to sweat,” she added.

  “Do the intersecting lines cross like a T or an X?” Elizabeth asked, changing the subject.

  Perhaps after all this was done, her mother would deem it safe to reveal her magic to Kim. The banished witch couldn’t harm them with her knowledge locked away in the human realm.

  Her mother’s familiarity with fire was limited, but Kim would be able to teach her advanced techniques, even if she couldn’t demonstrate them herself any longer.

  “More like an angle symbol from trig,” Jill said, injecting herself into the conversation again.

  Her sister knew she hated math and now she was making fun of her in front of their old math teacher.

  “How can you even see what we’re doing from over there?” she grumped.

  “You drew it so big that the international space station could report it as a new crop circle,” Jill exaggerated.

  Her mother clicked over, wearing heels in the dojo despite the polished wooden floors.

  “Do you want us to draw lines for you to practice smaller proportions?” her mother asked, obviously siding with Jill.

  “Does size really matter?” Elizabeth questioned.

  “It does if you run out of room to write the entire spell. I’m not sure how much space you will have if the portal is within the castle, which is highly likely,” Kim said.

  They had a theory that most of the demons coming over from Maeren to the human realm were entering from the same portal.

  The king had been mentioned, as well as an unspecified fire general, by the last demon Elizabeth had staked.

  They postulated that meant the portal being used for transporting demons over here could very well be hidden inside the castle, near the traitor they were hunting down.

  Kim had said there were many hidden entrances in the castle walls and tunnels when she lived there.

  Tracking down who entered the portal once Elizabeth found one that was suspicious, relied on getting this spell perfect.

  Kim wouldn’t be able to hover over her shoulder while she drew her glyphs in Maeren.

  “How about I draw them and you trace?” Jill suggested.

  “You just want to get out of your hell pit!” Elizabeth accused.

  “Tracing isn’t a bad idea. If Jill learns the glyphs and spell, then she can help you if you encounter difficulties in Maeren,” Kim said.

  Were they giving up on her already?

  It had been two glyphs! Jill had been standing on the coals for only ten minutes!

  Elizabeth could have slept on the coals and woke up tomorrow after a good day’s rest without a single singed toe.

  Not that she could say anything since her magic was so secret.

  “You don’t have to do this alone,” her mother said.

  She offered Elizabeth a hand up out of the concrete platform, sunken beneath the wooden floor for spelling. Familiar earth strength gripped her hand.

  “Use your magic to learn from your sister.”

  “Thanks,” she told her mother, accepting the help up and the telepathic advice.

  It wouldn’t hurt to let Jill expand her knowledge about magic. Learning from mind-to-mind was actually her preferred method. She could take her sister’s muscle memory and ma
ke it her own.

  Jill would be safe. Elizabeth would get her sister into some spoiled prince’s harem and out of harm’s way once they were at court.

  “Okay, come show me what I’m doing wrong,” she called over to her younger sister.

  Jill pulled all the fire out of the coals as soon as she got the okay, resorbing the heat before sending the lifeless coal to a metal bucket, by the door, with her earth. She slipped into her slippers and walked over to the sunken concrete platform, the books sliding off of her head halfway there.

  The books were caught by their mother’s air before they thudded to the floor.

  Jill was soaked in sweat.

  “Tomorrow, you will repeat the coal and books for thirty minutes. I want you to practice sending heat from the coal into a small hot-air balloon to keep it floating,” Kim told Jill as if drawing glyphs for a complicated spell was taking a break.

  “Yes, sensei,” Jill respectfully agreed with her long-time teacher.

  Perhaps it was good that Kim didn’t know how strong Elizabeth’s magic really was, or else, she would develop similar training tortures for her, too.

  Kim quickly listed the glyphs she wanted for the tracking spell in order, having to bend down and draw a few that even Jill didn’t know, much to Elizabeth’s vindication.

  Their mother didn’t let her stand around and gloat, floating Jill’s books onto her head and telling her to straighten up.

  “I don’t need good posture to stake vampires,” she complained.

  “Magic requires clean lines when you pull from your chi,” her mother insisted. “Get up on the stool and stand on the toes of your right foot only.”

  “If I break a leg falling, I want a potion before you fix it,” she demanded.

  Earth healing was too painful most of the time to be tolerated without a sedative, even her mother’s famously rapid healing.

  “Air witches don’t fall,” her mother retorted.

  Well, yeah.

  “Fire witches don’t get burned,” she muttered under her breath, aware that practice injuries were common.

  She got up on the stool, using her air judiciously, here and there, to balance and keep the books from falling, too.