He said he would be giving me secret training this year so I could continue the secret mission to tap into the magic of the world of Wyrd and break away from the rigid control of the witch and warlock councils.
The road was getting increasingly disconcerting. It looked like a part of it had actually washed away and when we looked down there was a steep dropoff toward a rushing, rocky creek.
“We’re close. Maybe we should just park the car and walk from here,” Montague said, backing up from the scary road and parking. He grabbed his hat out of the back seat and jumped down. “Get you breaking a sweat so that incubus can lose his mind smelling your pheromones.” He gave my bottom a little smack as he walked up behind me when I got out of the car.
“Sounds like he’s not the only one losing his mind.” I wrapped my hands around Montague’s waist and gave him a kiss. Then I looked at the car and saw Firian’s face staring out the back window waiting for someone with hands to open the door.
“Would it help if you went back to Etherium for a little while?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “I want to hear every word Sturond has to say so I know everything I can know about breaking this spell and kissing the council goodbye. The last place I want to be is Etherium. The world where they tricked me.”
“Right. Right. I’m sorry.”
“His real name is Sturond!?” Montague asked.
“No. We’re just nerds.” We trekked up the hill through the mud. My legs were stronger than last year, I noticed, because I had spent a lot of the summer outside training. Although it was a warm summer day, there was a lot of shade and wind up here at a high elevation and it felt wonderful. I used my wand like a walking stick to help me climb the steep spots.
I could feel when we passed into the spot where the veil was thin between the real world and the magical world. We were getting close to the tree. But first, we came to a dark cave mouth along the path, the gap as tall as I was and about five feet wide, somewhat hidden by brush. Alec was standing outside with his easel, painting the cave, but when he saw us he dropped everything and ran to me.
He grabbed me, pressed me into the rocks, and gave me a deep kiss, his hands pouring into my hair like he was going to consume me.
Whoa.
There wasn’t much sense of propriety with Alec these days. His tongue thrust in my mouth like a preview of what was to come, as he lifted up my legs to rub his cock against my already soaked underwear through his pants. Having preheated my oven, he put me back down without sticking anything in it. I grabbed his shirt.
“Hey,” he said, a little breathlessly. “Hey, Monty. Firian. Good to see you.”
“I didn’t get that kind of greeting,” Montague said.
“You’re a gentleman,” I said. “Alec’s turned into a caveman. Complete with the cave art. So how private is that cave?”
“Not very,” Harris said, walking out of the cave’s dark maw so he could lean sexily in it and cross his arms.
I jabbed a finger at him. “You did that on purpose. Stop lurking. Alec, warn me next time.”
“I meant to. I just couldn’t even seem to speak until I had a little taste of you. You wanted an incubus? This is what you get.”
“Well, you might all want to tone it down,” Harris said. “Stuart is waiting to see you and you have some other visitors as well. There’s tea, so bottle up your emotions and put on your best tea face.”
“Other visitors? Who? Bad visitors?”
“Nah,” Alec said. “It’s an old friend of your grandmother’s.”
“Oh? Maybe I should change. I dressed for tromping in the woods.”
“Here.” Firian looked up at me and with a golden blink of his eyes, he glamoured my short shorts and exclusive Fortune’s Favor t-shirt (it came with a preorder of the art book) into a simple, flowy cotton dress with similar proportions, and my ratty sneakers into flats.
“That’s better,” Harris said. He was wearing black dress pants and dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, which I guess was Harris-casual.
Still, he looked…off, the more I looked at him. His clothes had a few wrinkles, and his hair was a little longer and disheveled. This seemed very unlike him. I hadn’t heard from him at all this summer. Maybe it was a rough time. I still gave him the finger as I walked into the cave.
Chapter Six
Charlotte
As we walked into the dark, moist, somewhat creepy entrance of the cave, I trusted that it was going to turn magical, and I was proven right as my eyes adjusted to the cozy, lantern-lit room inside. Sturond was sitting elegantly on a carved wooden chair while an older couple was sitting on the matching bench across from him, all of them sipping tea. Professor MacGuinness was there too, which I didn’t expect, but it made sense—he was kicked out of Merlin College. A few more chairs were gathered around, waiting for us, while a tall, dark-haired man stood in the shadows by a side table. I guess he was the butler or something. Sturond stood up to greet us, his blue silk robes brushing the worn rug on the floor.
“Glad you made it safely, Charlotte,” he said. “I have some people to introduce to you.”
But the woman was already on her feet, patting her fingertips together excitedly. “Charlotte! Oh, Charlotte! Can I hug you? I see your mum in you!” She had a sweet, high voice and a gentle face, her grey hair in a chignon.
“Sure—”
She was already hugging me as soon as I opened my mouth. She smelled like roses. She patted my cheeks. “You look like Sally, too. I’m her familiar. Your grandmother’s familiar.” She looked at Firian. “I suppose I’m your grandmother, in a way.”
Firian looked a little astonished. “I mean—in a way.”
“Oh, I know familiars aren’t considered to have family, but that’s how I think of it, anyway.”
My mouth fell open. “My grandmother’s familiar? You became human when she gave up her magic, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “I became human, and I married this dear old thing.” She patted the man on the head as he was trying to stand up to shake our heads.
“Good afternoon, lovely to meet you,” he said. He had a thick British accent while she had a faint one, since she must have grown up in America with my grandmother. He looked older than her, white haired, with thick glasses, and the charm of an old English actor. “I’m Richard de Witt.”
“And I’m Adia, but just—call me auntie.”
Mum? Auntie? My family sounded so much more adorable now.
She squeezed my hand and then clutched Richard’s arm as he shook hands with my guys, even offering a hand to Firian’s paw. Firian’s lip curled slightly, since I’m sure he felt like a dog doing a trick more than he was included, but he accepted the handshake.
“Your grandmother really wanted to be here,” Aunt Adia said. “But the council just hates her, and Stuart told me her sister was here. Catherine.” She shivered.
I was so relieved that someone from the family was here to explain this to me, and gave Stuart a grateful look. The butler poured some tea and handed a cup to me. It was delicate painted china with a pattern of purple and yellow pansies.
“Thank you, Orson,” Stuart said.
“I met Catherine. Samuel’s mother, right?” I said. “She turned Firian into a fox permanently.”
“Catherine will never forgive your grandmother,” Aunt Adia said. “She feels it was her fault for being a bad witch, taking up with the werewolves, and corrupting your mother, who in turn corrupted her own children and ruined the family name. As she sees it. She thinks it is all your grandmother’s fault that Ina lost her mind and now Samuel is dead.”
“Well, besides that they couldn’t really afford the plane tickets from Australia just now,” Richard said.
“I thought my grandparents were rock stars.”
“Oh, my dear, they blew it all on parties, clothes, cars, and drugs,” Richard said.
“Oh.” I was disappointed.
“Don’t be sad, that’s what you do when you’re a bl
oody rock star,” Richard said. “They saved enough for the house and land and I think they’re quite happy apart from all this mess and worrying over you kids.”
“Well, they should have Samuel’s money now, and so should you, Charlotte,” Adia said. “He wanted it split between his aunt and his niece, but the council seized his assets. They are trying to ruin your family and erase them from the magical world! It’s a disgrace! But—well, I’ll let Stuart talk. He has a plan.”
“I’m sorry,” Montague said. “Can I interrupt for a second and just ask—Stuart, what the hell is your real name? I can’t call you Stuart looking like that.”
“I prefer Stuart,” he said. “I really did grow up in Kansas. I was swapped with a human child.”
“A changeling? That’s real?”
“Yes. It’s long been the custom with the thirteenth child in any faery family. Not that too many families make it to thirteen children. My mother was busy. The thirteenth child is an odd bird, not unlucky, maybe even blessed, but the tradition was always to send them out. By being swapped I learned about the human world before I learned about my own. On my eighteenth birthday my parents came to me and told me the truth. I was packing up to go to college myself. It was certainly a surprise. My other identity wasn’t all a lie. I just played it up to keep the council off my trail. As long as I seemed like a nice nobody, they didn’t question where I came from.”
“You grew up thinking you were human? Did you fit in in the human world?”
“I mean, I was considered a little ‘bohemian’ for Topeka, but it was the 60s and radical views were in the air. My faery parents felt that I fit in the human world. They let me continue on with my plans, but I got very depressed that year and dropped out of Washburn. I got on a bus and went to Chicago, then I kept going. Ended up in New York trying to find myself. I met Ignatius and Samuel there, a little later, and that put me on course to become a warlock. I wasn’t quite a faery, after all, and I wasn’t quite a human, so it made sense to me to study that magic, and I had absorbed enough human that I pulled it off. Normally faery and human magic would be too different. I think only a changeling could.”
“So…you didn’t really know your parents?”
“I knew my human parents,” he said, and it hit me that of course faeries and even warlocks lived longer than ordinary humans so his human parents must have passed away. “It’s complicated. But that’s okay. Anyway, we have all had unconventional childhoods and I think fate brought us all together. Ignatius, Samuel, and me. Your grandmother and her wolves before us. And now—all of you.”
“If we can find a way for wizards and their familiars to go to Wyrd instead of Etherium or Sinistral, the council will lose their hold on all of us,” Professor MacGuinness said.
“So you are in on this too, Professor MacGuinness?” I asked.
“Oh, Samuel told me about this idea of Wyrd when we were in school together, and I was very skeptical. But since I was implicated in the arrest of Ignatius, I’m angry. I spent my whole life being a good, rule-abiding necromancer just to get tossed out like dishwater?”
“We can trust him,” Stuart said.
“If all goes as planned, Sally might even be able to get her magic back,” Auntie Adia said. “And I could turn into a bird again!”
She was the cutest frickin’ old lady I’d ever seen.
“You said the faeries control Wyrd,” Harris said. “But you’re a faery lord. So what is in our way?”
“Other faeries,” Stuart said. “The faery queen, particularly. The faeries seized control of Wyrd in ancient times and they are dead set on never allowing a witch or warlock to cross its doors, unless they swear servitude, which does us no good.”
“I can hardly blame them,” Harris said. “Humans tend to fuck up everything they touch, acting on an impulse. Faeries take the long view. What would we say to convince them that they should let us on their land?”
“Because we are all slowly dying,” Stuart said. “And Wyrd most of all. They do take the long view, but what they see on the horizon is the end of the magical world. They have become weak by hiding. And if the human world stops believing in Wyrd, it will be their loss as well. Etherium and Sinistral are adversaries. Wyrd is the power of acceptance and neutrality. It is sorely needed.”
“I might be too Catholic for this,” Montague said. “We’re really into the good and evil stuff…”
“I like it,” Alec said. “There isn’t enough acceptance in the magical world. I can see why the faeries were able to claim it. It fits with a naturalist world view. No good or evil in the forest. Humans are the ones who decide that stuff.”
Stuart smiled wryly. “You’re right. The battle between good and evil isn’t going anywhere. But Wyrd is a safe place for those who don’t fit within the ancient laws of Etherium and Sinistral.”
“So how are we supposed to do this, Stu?” I asked. “I assume you already went to the faeries and were like, hey, y’all are dying, and I know some nice warlocks and familiars who need a crash pad, and they were like, nah.”
“Yeah. That about sums it up.” Stuart sighed a little as he gracefully sat back down in his chair and wrapped one elegant hand around the arm while sipping his tea. Which, by the way, was delicious, like a mind-blowing Earl Grey with floral honey notes. “But I’m not giving up easily. I’ve been considering you kids and your crazy quest to take out the Withered Lord…”
“Oh dear,” Auntie Adia said. “I don’t like this at all. He’s a very, very evil demon.”
“He is, but his head would be quite a prize to bring to Wyrd.”
I threw up my hand. “Wait—a literal head?”
“Yes.”
“We have to bring them a head now? I’m not sure I signed up for this.”
“We’ll let the older vampires handle the head part,” Montague said. “I am sure Rayner wouldn’t blink.”
“Wyrd is unsettled when demons become too old and powerful,” Stuart said. “It’s part of their job to maintain the balance.”
“This sounds…ambitious, bordering on absurd,” Harris said. “My friends are much too young to be beheading demons. I still maintain that Charlotte and Alec should be nowhere hear this endeavor.”
“Why do you get to do it and not me, Harris? Because your ancestors did shit?” I asked.
“Oh, so you do want to do it?” he retorted. “You want to behead a demon, Charlotte?”
“You don’t want to behead a demon either!” I said. “Come on!”
Firian nudged me. Oh, right. I said ‘come on’ too much. I should have joined the debate team in high school, if I’d known how deep my life was going to get.
“I don’t want to hear another word about being excluded,” Alec said. “I broke the spell that bound me. I’m not denying my demon side any more. And if I have to behead another demon to keep Charlotte safe, I would do it.”
Harris gave Alec an I don’t even know who you are anymore look. Then his face steeled. There was a certain competitiveness to HAM, for sure, and Harris was the only one who wasn’t quite competing in the same arena. He wasn’t with me. “All right,” he said. “So we’re all in. We’re going to fight the Withered Lord, bring his head to the king of the faeries, and earn our place in the realm of Wyrd. Sounds solid.” He was a little sarcastic, but I think he also meant it.
Auntie Adia stood up, wringing her hands. “Stuart, I—I am very concerned about your willingness to put these children in danger!”
“I’ll fight with them,” Stuart said. “When the time comes.”
“I will too,” Professor MacGuinness said. “I’ve lost too many friends.”
“But they aren’t children, and even so, children will soon be adults,” Stuart said. “They have a right to fight when they have already dealt with adult pain. Sally put herself at great risk when she was a little younger still, didn’t she?”
“Yes, but she doesn’t want this for Charlotte! Neither do I!”
“Protecting Emil
y didn’t go very well,” Stuart said.
Adia sat back down and put her head in her hands. “No…”
I felt bad for her. She seemed like a very timid person, which matched most of the familiars I had encountered. Firian was an anomaly. It was probably hard for Adia to speak up. Firian was leaning against my leg, and then he walked over to Adia.
“Charlotte’s strength will be in having so many allies,” he said. “She wasn’t so alone as Emily was when she tried to save Ina.”
She nodded as Richard handed her a handkerchief.
“Maybe you’d all like a moment alone,” Richard suggested. “Just to be a family again.”
“I would. Thank you, darling. Would you care to take a walk, Charlotte?”
“Yes.” I whispered to Stuart, “Do you…have a bathroom? Caffeine.”
“I’ll show you the bathroom,” Harris said. “Such as it is.”
Oh, great. I just needed to pee. Now I was following Harris into the depths of the cave, after he had picked up a lantern. It was more extensive than I expected, with rooms that were surprisingly neat and dry, although very…earthen.
“That’ll be your bedroom,” Harris said, pointing at a room with two surprisingly elegant beds that seemed shaped from tree roots growing into a headboard and canopy shape. “There’s a toilet here. No plumbing, but there’s a basin of water and some soap. Take the lantern in with you.”
“When did you get here?”
His eyes leveled with mine, betraying some emotion, before he answered. “Two months ago.”
“Two months? You’ve been living here without plumbing for two months?”
“Yeah. I went home—briefly. It was rough. Let’s just say, if my parents had other sons I think I would’ve already been disowned.”
“Because…of this?”
“Let’s just say, nothing I’ve done has won me any points,” he said. “And I was losing these guys. They always had my back.” He waved vaguely toward the other room. “So I just left.”
“You can’t drive, right? Is one of your drivers on your side?”
A Fine Necromance Page 4
