A Witch Among Warlocks

The Complete Series

Lidiya Foxglove

Copyright © 2018-2020 by Lidiya Foxglove

Cover art © 2020 by https://www.deviantart.com/moonchild-ljilja

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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The Fairer Hex

Chapter One

Charlotte

“Charlotte!” Dad screamed my name from downstairs, interrupting a pretty important fight with a dragon in my favorite MMORPG.

“Just a sec!” I screamed back.

“Charlotte! I need an explanation right now!” He was getting that high-pitched voice he gets when the raccoons are in our trash.

I had absolutely no clue what he could need an explanation about, seeing as I had no life and had not done anything out of the ordinary, but it sounded important.

“Charlotte!”

omg, I hastily wrote. i have to go. i’m so sorry. emergency unfolding in-house. brb.

The rest of my fellow adventurers freaked out on me, but my sexy elf warrior girlfriend/boyfriend Firia said, You’d better talk to him. The rest of us can handle it.

uhh…how did you know it was ‘him’?

I just assumed it was your dad.

oh yeah well you’re right. thx.

It was a weird moment because I was pretty sure I’d never told Firia that my Mom was gone and I wondered how he guessed the emergency wasn’t burnt toast or something, but I didn’t have time to fully ponder it. I had to check on Dad. Anyway, Firia was awesome for not getting upset at me for ditching on the dragon fight, seeing as my brooding mage character Larius had the pivotal dark spells for defeating said dragon. Firia was also the closest thing I had to a boyfriend. We’d been playing Fortune’s Favor for years. I met him on Christmas when Dad gifted me a year’s subscription, and we’d stuck together through a lot of fights. Before long, we were flirting. A couple months in we figured out that we had each chosen avatars of the opposite gender, but we were having fun anyway, so I called him “my girlfriend” in the game.

Of course, I was fully aware Firia could be lying and was not really an eighteen year old guy but was actually like…a fifty year old guy, or whatever. We’d never taken it off the game. Whenever I tried, he got cagey. Which was probably a warning sign, and his hot babe elf avatar might not be a good sign either, but maybe he was just a self-conscious nerd boy. At least he took all my hassling about sexism in the gaming industry without getting upset.

I padded down the stairs. Dad was standing at the dining room table, staring at an envelope that sat in the middle of the wooden surface, looking at it like it was poisoned.

“Dad? What’s wrong?” I stood on the first step, shoving my hands in my pockets. “Something came in the mail?”

“Is there something you aren’t telling me about?” he cried.

“Um…no? I don’t think so. I’m eighteen. I guess there might be something.” I laughed, but then I realized this was going beyond my dad’s usual level of overreaction. “Hey, what’s up? Just tell me.”

My dad and I had a thing going. We were opposite in a lot of ways. He was fun and also had a tendency to overreact. I was stubborn but chill. He liked loud music, barbecuing, tattoos. I liked magical-sounding soundtracks, gaming, pajama pants. It wasn’t unheard of for him to freak out over nothing. I went to look at the letter. Maybe the bill from our annual checkup was more than he expected or something.

“I don’t know how to explain all of this,” he said. “Shit. I wish y—”

I shot him a look. It seemed like, for all the world, he was going to say that he wished my mom was here. I could hear the ghost of the “your” when he cut himself off.

He never talked about Mom.

I saw the return address on the envelope.

Merlin College

P. O. Box 332

Small Hollow, NC

“You’re freaking out about ‘Merlin College’? What is that? Sounds like spam.” I started opening it.

He grabbed it from my hand and slammed it on the table. “No. It’s not spam. It’s a reckoning, that’s what it is. I thought you were safe from all this. I thought your mom—like—sealed that stuff up. Were you talking to your elf friend online?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Maybe I should make him explain it. Nah, you’re my daughter.”

“Him? Firia? What does he have to do with it?”

He took a deep breath. “Your mother had magical blood. I believe this letter is from a witches’ college. That’s why it’s so nondescript.”

“Well, I’m already going to college, so…” I’m not sure why I said that first. Like, when you get your Hogwarts letter do you go, oh dang, but I already sent in my paperwork to the Montessori school? “Magical blood? What do you mean?”

“Your mom’s mother was an Ethereal witch from a very old witch family. Her father was a Sinistral demon who could turn into a wolf. So a werewolf, basically. I mean—let me back up. Magic is real. You know that, right? Deep down, I’m sure you know that.”

Admittedly, I believed in magic longer than other kids, because my dad played along with all my childhood games, built fairy houses with me and was very insistent about offerings for Santa Claus. And yet… “Did the neighbors sell you drugs or something?”

“I wish. Your mother was supposed to protect you from this shit!” He grabbed a stuffed cat that I had seated at the dining room table because I was a dork, and threw it on the floor.

My heart was beating pretty fast at this point. “Be nice to Jiji! Calm down.” I grabbed the letter and ripped it open.

Dear Mr. Char Byrne,

Your application has been accepted. You will attend Merlin College, the elite school for warlocks, with a starting date of September 12th. We were stunned by your test results and are thrilled to have you with us. Please be packed and prepared on that day, as we will send a vehicle for you. Please refer to the attached list of items that are not acceptable at Merlin College and familiarize yourself with the rules of conduct.

We look forward to meeting you,

Ignatius Blair

Dean of Merlin College

“God, the list of stuff I can’t take to Merlin College is ten times longer than the acceptance letter. What the hell? Warlocks? Why do they think I’m a boy? They think my name is ‘Char Byrne’.” I laughed. “I mean, whatever, I just won’t go.”

“Warlocks?” He looked at the letter. “Oh—okay. This must be a mistake. They got you mixed up with someone else. We’ll write and tell them you’re a girl and that you’re not going to any magic schools.”

“Wait. Let’s start with, why did you not tell me this sooner and why am I not going to magic school? Magic school sounds awesome.”

“It isn’t. At least, that’s what they tell me. But I don’t want you having anything to do with that. It can get you killed. There are all these other planes, and magical creatures in conflict with each other, and…it’s bad news. It didn’t do my relationship with your mom any favors, that’s for sure. When we were growing up, she was never interested in magic. But then…when you were a baby…she got sucked in. Like a cult. Power is addictive and she’d never known what it was like. That was what we fought over. But she had bound your magic, so you wouldn’t suffer the same fate.”

“She bound my magic so I wouldn’t be powerful?”

“So you would be a normal girl,” he said. “Who doesn’t get killed by some demon or something.”

“And you just figured you’d lie to me about all of this?”

“Yeah—see—she could explain it better.”

“I don’t know about that. This is ridiculous.”

“It’s not ridiculous. It’s to protect you. The magical life is bad fucking news, Charlotte. Remember how you used to be afraid there was a shadow monster in the closet? And you’d scream in the middle of the night? ‘Daddy! Check the closet!’ I spent hours telling you there was no monster. But if I let you become a witch, there might really be a monster in there. And I wouldn’t be able to protect you. Witches and warlocks and all the other magical creatures in this world are battling for power, and you do not need to be in the middle of that. I want you to sleep soundly at night.”

“Oh…”

“So, you’re right, we’ll just write them back and tell them they’ve got you confused with someone else. It just shook me up. Sometimes I get scared that they’re going to try to suck you in, like they did to your mom.” He grabbed an envelope and some stamps from the desk, and then a legal pad with a grocery list on it.

“Maybe you should use stationery?” I asked. “Just a thought?”

“Like I have stationery. Who writes letters anymore?”

“I have some! I’ve never used it! Wait right here.” I ran upstairs. My computer was still on but I’d been logged out of the game.

I wonder why Dad mentioned Firia? That was weird.

I logged back in while I dug around for some decorative paper I’d had since I was a kid. I was pretty sure it had like, a Sanrio dog on it or something, but that was still better than a legal pad.

When I logged back in, I was back in the town. I’d missed out on the whole dragon thing. It looked like Firia was still on.

I sent a private message.

hey, Firia, have you ever spoken to my dad?

There was a pause and then she/he said, So…did he reveal my secret identity or something?

Hard to say if he was joking or not. no…what is it?

Did he reveal all the secrets of the universe?

a few…do you believe that magic is real?

I’m coming over.

wait, what?

He didn’t say anything else. I dug out the stationery and then I heard the doorbell ring.

“Charlotte!” Dad yelled. “I thought you were just grabbing paper! You went and talked to him.”

“‘Him’?”

“Just come downstairs. I guess it’s time you met.”

Chapter Two

Charlotte

Sure enough…there was a guy at the door.

But I had never seen him before. Ever.

Well, I didn’t think I’d seen him anyway. Admittedly, I didn’t look at the neighbors much, so if he was wearing a hat, maybe I wouldn’t notice if one of them was this attractive.

Stupid me.

His golden eyes froze me in place. They felt like eyes I knew, even as they had some unfathomable wild quality, but I had no idea why. I would’ve remembered him.

“Well, well,” he said. “You finally get to lay eyes on me. What a day. Something must have happened.”

“Yes,” Dad said. “Come in. It was a letter from a magic school. I think it’s all a big mistake, though.”

This unfamiliar guy, whom my dad seemed to know suspiciously well, walked in and gave me a brief smile like he knew me. I was trying very hard not to stare.

He was tall, slender, and somewhat ethereal looking, tawny hair tinged with a rusty red. His skin was pale, but not in a sickly way, or even a “too much time playing video games” way. It had an inner glow, like he had an intense and expensive skincare regimen imported from South Korea.

Pretty sure he didn’t, though. He was just naturally gorgeous.

He also had really good posture. So…like, no way was this the guy that spent hours playing MMORPGs with me.

His eyes and smile had sort of a sly twinkle. He exuded confidence, even wearing a rumpled t-shirt and sweatpants. It’s like when you see mega celebrities caught by the paparazzi like, being normal, but even then you’re like, nuh-uh, no one is that hot in real life.

“I’m Firia,” he said, offering a hand. “Or, properly, Firian. I am your familiar.”

“Muh wut?” I asked. I mean, that was how it came out. His beauty was distracting. “I thought you’d be more of a…”

“Female elf in armor?” he asked. “Well, then I wonder why you don’t have long white hair and an eyepatch.”

Actually, I thought you’d be more of a slobby geek. I didn’t say that. Especially since that meant that I was now the slobby geek. My dark hair was pulled back in a ratty ponytail and I was wearing faded, pilling leggings and a shirt that said “Reach for the Stars! Read-A-Thon 2008 Central Library”. And then, a huge cardigan because Dad blasted the air conditioning. I didn’t have a skincare regimen from South Korea either, that was for sure.

“Let me see the letter,” Firian said.

“Here.” I gave it to him. Anything to get him to stop looking at me.

“Hmm,” he said. “Merlin? That’s very strange. Merlin College is the crème de la crème of warlock schools. It doesn’t even accept applications. You have to be recommended and tested by an alumni of the school. Who do they think you are?”

“I don’t know…”

“Well, anyone can mess up paperwork, huh?” Dad said. “I’ll just—is this the stationery you wanted me to use? With this bear on it?”

“It’s a dog. Yes. It’s better than what you were using! But I can write it, Dad. It’s girly stationery. The letter is to me so I’ll answer.”

“I’d feel better writing it myself,” he said. “I don’t really want you having any contact with them.”

“He’s paranoid,” Firian said.

“Well, while he’s writing I guess you can explain yourself. My familiar? What does that mean? Did you find me in the game and get close to me on purpose?”

“Of course I did,” he said. “It was the perfect way to keep some connection to your life without exposing you to magic. I am your bridge to the magical world. I can take the form of a human or an animal, and I can travel to the magical world freely. I am here to protect you. And so I have.”

“You’re my age?”

“Yes. Exactly your age. As all familiars are. I was born because you were born.”

“You’re my brother?”

“No, no, no. Just your familiar.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well, I don’t have parents,” he said. “And I don’t need them. You can do magic, and I am magic. You’re from this plane, and I’m from Etherium. The other plane. One of them, anyway.”

“Are we…supposed to…what are we supposed to do with each other?”

“Magic,” he said. “But your magic was bound.” He shrugged. “I understand. The witch world is somewhat troubled in this past century.”

“So you guys are just going to throw all this at me now, but I still can’t become a witch. What do I do with this information? I’m supposed to be going to frickin’ normal college in a few weeks. Now that just sounds…”

“Great,” Dad said. “It sounds great. I’m so proud of you. I never went to college.”

“And now everyone goes to college. And gets stuck with student loans and dumb degrees.”

He looked crushed. “What is this? You were so excited when you got in.”

“Well, times have changed.”

He started writing. ‘Dear Mr. Blair’. “Do I address him as Dean Blair?” he said. “Never mind. He should never have sent you this letter anyway so I’m not going to get fancy.”

“You’re deflecting.”

“He’s protecting you,” Firian said. “As we just explained.”

“You just blew in out of nowhere,” I said. “And you’ve been spying on me. So I don’t want to hear it.”

“I wasn’t spying. I was just playing the game with you. I made myself sick playing that game, just so you know. Magical beings aren’t supposed to use electricity, and I got completely obsessed with that quest for the black coins—well, actually, I guess I was spying in the yard.”

“In the yard?”

“I’m the fox,” he said. “In your yard.”

“The fox?”

“You kept trying to feed me dog food when you were younger.”

“I know about the fox. You’re the fox. In the yard.”

He nodded.

Maybe that was why some part of me recognized him.

“And you knew this, Dad?”

“Yes. I did. You’re handling this really well, by the way.” He stopped writing. “I’m actually really relieved it’s all out in the open. I think you’ll feel a lot better when we’ve all had time to really talk about it. This letter was a good thing, actually. I’d been wondering how to tell you and it just—shoved me off the fence. You and Firian can finally get to know each other.”

Firian peered in the kitchen. “At this point, it hardly matters,” he said. “Usually, familiars retreat by the time a witch is grown. I would only appear to help Charlotte cast a spell. I’ve just been hanging around to make sure the sealing of her magic ‘took’. So…” He opened the fridge and took out one of my dad’s beers. “Once you’re in college, out in the world for good, I’ll take a step back.”

“How often has he been over here?” I asked. “Drinking your beer while underage?”

“I’m not the police,” Dad said. “And—he lives in the backyard. He came over sometimes while you were at school. He watched the movies you won’t watch with me.”

“You—you—you lied to me? About all of this?”

“I know,” Dad said. “I just didn’t know how to tell you.”

“I used to play outside naked while the fox in our yard was actually a boy!”

Firian took a drink and sauntered over to me, an enticing smile on his perfect lips. I was starting to feel like I probably shouldn’t think he was attractive. “Rage all you like. But your dad was trying to protect you. From things so horrifying that if you saw them once, you would wake up screaming from nightmares for the rest of your life. Your mother flirted with the darkness.” He paused. “More than flirted…”

“Oh…?”

“She joined the dark side,” Dad said. “Basically.”

I was shaken. Dad always told me that Mom left. He was vague about the details, so I had assumed some country song scenario. Another man, a restless heart, that deal. “And we can’t save her?”

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m human. And you’re a kid. Well, you’re not a kid, I know, but you’re my kid, and I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you too.” His voice was low and intense, and it made my stomach plunge. We were really close. I couldn’t deny that my dad would do absolutely anything to protect me. It must be torturous, I realized, to lose my mom to some evil force or something, and be helpless to stop it because he was human.

“I just want you to go to college, and make friends, and enjoy yourself, and be happy. I want to help you set up a house one day. I want to come over and fix your toilet leak. I want you to come over for Thanksgiving for my fried turkey. I want normal shit for you because I love you and that’s the only reason I would ever lie to you.”

“Okay, Dad. I understand.” I gave him a hug.

He nodded, and got back to his letter to Merlin College.

I looked at Firian. “What about you?”

“I’m coming over for fried turkey this year,” he said.

Chapter Three

Charlotte

I tried to get back to normal after that, just like my dad wanted. I was still heading off to college soon. I had my usual hobbies. But the next time I tried to play my game, I was antsy. I’d been spending years pretending to be this badass dark mage in the game, and my little relationship between Lord Larius and Firia was like a fan fic I was writing.

But now it was ruined. I knew Firia was really Firian, and…

Is my mom a real life badass dark mage, then?

“Where do you actually live?” I asked Firian. He was now invited to dinner with us. “You don’t really live in the backyard, right?”

“I live in that cabin up on the ridge,” he said, pointing out the window.

We lived sort of in the middle of nowhere, in the northern part of Georgia, where the Appalachian mountains begin. Dad had grown up in Atlanta, and he always seemed like a city guy, but he also had an antisocial quality that had driven him out here, to a cheap plot of land and a house he fixed up himself. We were surrounded by low, forested mountains and the cabin Firian mentioned was the only house we could see from our own windows. But it was on the next mountain over, and very small.

“I thought that was a vacation rental,” I said.

“Sometimes it is,” he said. “I rent out the cabin during the tourist season, and go live in the woods or in the magical realm. I don’t need a lot of money, but that’s just enough.”

“Can I come over some time?”

“If you insist. It’s not much.”

“Well…I don’t insist.” Firian wasn’t that welcoming when I tried to get to know him. I wasn’t sure if I liked having him around or not. I was irritated that he and Dad knew each other already, and although he was willing to answer questions, he didn’t really let me in on his actual life.

“I don’t know if Firian has much of a life,” Dad said, after Firian had left and he was washing the dishes while I dried. “His life is centered around you, kid. That was how your mom’s familiar was. They’re not really human, they just look human.”

“Centered around me? Well, then, why wouldn’t he invite me over?”

He shrugged. “I don’t really understand them.”

“What was mom’s familiar like?”

“I hardly ever saw her. She spent most of her time in the ethereal realm. She took the form of a falcon. Real quiet. Your mom didn’t practice magic until right at the end, so she had no reason to ever show up. Usually, when you grow up, your familiar doesn’t hang around unless you need them. So, when you’re in college you probably won’t see Firian again.”

“Oh.” I bristled. “Why are we even bothering to have him over for dinner, then?”

“You should get to know him a little bit,” Dad said. “Just in case any trouble ever pops up, he’ll be there for you. He can appear near you, wherever you go. Anyway, you already know him, don’t you? From your game?”

“That’s…not the same.”

I thought Firia was my geeky internet boyfriend, which was at least better than nothing. We had spent hours playing the game together and chatting. I didn’t know what to think.

That weekend, Dad was off working some job—he was a handyman, and sometimes he ended up fixing stuff for people on weekends or at weird hours—and I was home alone. I was antsy, so I made some scones. I was a firm believer in baking as a meditation, but then you had to deal with the aftermath: a big pile of flour, sugar, and butter. So I decided to take a walk to Firian’s cabin.

That was probably why I made the scones to begin with, I realized. I needed an excuse.

Outside, the weather was gorgeous. A light breeze stirred the forest around me, and just the right amount of sun filtered through to warm me. I walked down our mountain and then realized that the cabin was farther away than I thought, and also more uphill.

A fox face peeked out of the brush. “Charlotte?”

“Gyaah!” I almost dropped the basket of scones. “How did you talk with a fox mouth?”

“Well, I’m not really a fox. I’m magical.”

“Riiight…well, I just made a huge batch of scones, so I thought…”

He transformed, right before my eyes, into a guy again. Thankfully, he was fully dressed, because I could not handle a schlong right now.

“All of these?” He lifted the cloth covering the scones, and grabbed one to eat now.

“I thought I could…bring them up to you.”

He frowned. “There is a reason why I never told you about me,” he said. “You don’t need a familiar. You have a human life ahead of you, and I would just be in the way. It’s best if you don’t have to explain me to anyone. The truth’s out. Good. But we can’t get close.”

“Why do you and dad get to decide all of this? What if I want to get to know you?”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with my breathtakingly good looks, does it?” he asked.

“No!” I might have protested too vigorously. Truth be told, he was even better looking out here in the woods. The light seemed to give his skin and hair a particular glow. His eyes were off the charts gorgeous. He had appeared in a flannel shirt and jeans, which made him seem like an ethereal lumberjack. The shirt was touchably soft. His fingernails were a little pointed like claws. It was a strange combination. He wasn’t classically rugged, but I had no doubt he could chop the hell out of some wood.

“Because…I could change up my appearance,” he was saying while I had weird fantasies about him swinging an axe into a log.

“That’s not necessary.”

“Do you think you could make it up this slope on foot if you tried?”

“Sure I could. I live on a mountain. I’m in shape.” Admittedly, his mountain was more steep than my mountain.

He grabbed the basket. “Thanks for the scones. I’ll see you later.” He leapt up the rocks, out of reach.

“Hey! I didn’t say you could have all of those!” I threw a pinecone at him, and of course, I missed. “Fine. Jerk.”

I was kicking things on the path as I trekked back up to my own house.

I’d never asked to have a familiar following me around. Well, he was leaving anyway. Fine.

I checked the mailbox on my way up. There was another letter from the school.

Dear Mr. Byrne,

I’m afraid that one cannot simply opt out of attendance to Merlin College. I do not quite understand what you mean by Char being a ‘girl’, but if your son is ‘transgender’, well, our current policy at Merlin College remains to consider gender assignment based on birth for the purposes of learning magic. The test has already been administered and he has been accepted to the school. We will be sending a vehicle for him, and if he refuses admittance to the school, the council will be paying him a visit, if you understand my meaning. Merlin College is one of the top three schools for warlocks in the entire world, and once an applicant has pledged to attend, there are consequences for refusal. I understand that you are a human so you may not fully appreciate what this means for your son.

Char WILL attend Merlin College and it will be our pleasure to be his instructors.

Sincerely,

Ignatius Blair

“What the hell?” I said to the empty room.

This keeps getting weirder. I didn’t apply to go to this school! They think I was born a boy!?

Also, I was getting the feeling this was not a campus with like, safe spaces.

I was starting to feel paranoid. Was I born a boy?

You are not going to go check. You know you’re a girl. This school is confusing you with someone else.

An hour later I was knocking on Firian’s door.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah—I—“

“Can you breathe?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, I have to admit, I am mildly impressed you got here at all.” He held open the door. “Come in. Sit down. Deep breaths.” He handed me a cup of water.

The cabin was nice inside. Very small. Very cabin-y. Like, if you like logs, you’d like the cabin. It had one room on the ground floor and a sleeping loft accessed by a ladder, a wood stove, a tiny kitchen, a couple of large chairs carved from wood with cushions, and a desk with a computer.

“I got another letter from the Merlin College… It’s really weird.” I handed it to him.

“Let me see…” He perused. That was definitely the right verb. “Hmm. You’re right. This is very strange.”

“Are they going to drag me there kicking and screaming?”

“Only if you plan to kick and scream.” He arched a brow at me.

“Well—I can’t go.”

“I guess we’ll see what happens. Someone wants you at this school. Someone forged your acceptance test…somehow.”

“You think?”

“I can’t imagine they’re just mixing up names.”

“Who would do that?”

“I don’t know.” He paused, folding the letter. “We could take up the matter with the council and fight it. You really had your heart set on going to the University of Georgia, didn’t you?”

“You’re being sarcastic,” I said.

Obviously, since I’d known him online for a while, he’d been a witness to the entire college application rigamarole. Dad nagging me about grades and extracurriculars, so I’d be competitive, trying to get scholarships, applying, getting rejected by my top two choices, threatening to go work in retail for the rest of my life, blah blah. It was a pretty familiar story. Dad wanted me to be a more exceptional child than I was. He hadn’t gone to college, he had made some screwed up choices when he was younger, so it took him a while to get this far, ‘this far’ being a small town handyman. He wanted a better life for me.

But who cared? I loved my dad. I loved our easygoing life. I thought I would have been okay with staying here and taking care of him. I had already been sick to my stomach thinking about leaving him alone here.

“You’re worrying about him, aren’t you?” Firian asked.

“Yeah, I…”

My whole mood had changed since the letter came. I had no idea what to major in at the University of Georgia, but I couldn’t stop thinking about learning magic.

“I worry about him too. But he can take care of himself.” Firian perched in the other chair. Everything about his movements was a little more graceful and wild than other guys. It was part of the reason he seemed a lot older than me. “You’ve had a couple of days to think about this, Charlotte.” He raised an eyebrow. “What do you think? We should have told you a long time ago, shouldn’t we?”

“Yes. You should have.”

“At some point, it probably has crossed your mind that you would like to know more about the magical world.”

I nodded. “Like…why am I spending hours sitting at a computer pretending to be a mage when I could be a real one?”

“It sounds like these people from Merlin College are coming for you,” he said. “Like it or not. Witches take their hierarchy very seriously. If you applied to attend this school, it would be a scandal to refuse. I would have to help you take it up with the council, and I can’t guarantee an outcome. I have no pull in the magical world. But…I’m sure we would sort it out eventually. The other option is…you could try it out.”

“It’s an all-boys school, right?”

“Yes.”

“So they’ll reject me when they find out I’m really a girl.”

“Perhaps.” He gave me a conspiratorial look and whirled back into the kitchen. It was almost like he just teleported; just one minute he was standing and in one smooth motion he was back by the stove turning on the coffeemaker.

“What’s that look?”

“Well…you’re right. They might reject you. If they bother to—you know—inspect. However, you already passed the test.”

“But I didn’t pass the test! I don’t know what they’re talking about!”

“All I’m saying is, maybe you should just see what happens.”

“Is that what you want, Firian?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” he said, but I didn’t buy that for a second.

“Familiars are probably happier casting magic,” I said. “That’s why you exist, right?” This whole situation was still confusing to me. “You really don’t have any family? You only exist because of me?”

“I was born from your magic,” he said. “That isn’t to say I don’t have my own existence. You might say familiars are the avatar for magic. We take human form from magic so we can communicate with witches. You can cast magic on your own, yes, but to tap into true power, you need me.”

“So you’re the physical embodiment of my magic.”

He nodded.

“Is that weird for you?”

“Why would it be?”

“If I die, do you die too?”

“No,” he said. “I retire to Etherium. But it’s true that familiars don’t often outlive their witches by much. There’s not much point in going on, I guess. But I have hobbies. So I think I’ll be fine.” He sounded almost like he was joking. It was hard to tell.

I stared at the letter while he made us some coffee; to go with the scones, I guess. I was trying to read his body language while he wasn’t looking at me. He seemed pretty laissez-faire, but he wanted me to actually use my magic. I knew it. What good was a familiar’s life if the witch he was attached to never learned any magic?

“Firian? I—I think I should go. If they’ll have me.”

“Ah.”

“That’s what you wanted, right?”

“It’s your decision.”

“Dad won’t like it. But…I need to know more about my mom, I think.”

He handed me the coffee. “Yes…I think you do.”

“Anyway, I’m not going to be able to concentrate on my classes about normal stuff until I understand what I’d be missing.”

Then again, considering I was headed to a school for elite warlocks, where I would be the only girl on campus, I might have some other issues with concentration.

Chapter Four

Charlotte

Whatever I decided, it seemed like I really didn’t have much choice. On September 12th, I woke up wondering if anything would happen. It seemed like just an ordinary day. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, my phone rang at eight am and I freaked out but it was just some credit card scam. Dad was making scrambled eggs. He seemed nervous. He never stopped stirring the eggs.

We ate over-scrambled eggs. All was well.

And then, an old black car crawled up our driveway. We heard the engine coming. We both moved to the window in silence. It looked like it came out of a 1940s noir film. There was no question that the warlocks had arrived.

My heart was pounding.

“Shit,” Dad said. “Where’s Firian?”

“Here.” Firian walked out of the bathroom and we both yelped.

“I apologize,” he said. “I thought it might scare you even more if I just appeared in the middle of the living room.”

“You teleported into our bathroom?”

“I shifted into the Ethereal realm and then reappeared. That’s what familiars do. I sensed your distress.”

“Man, where were you when Kelly was bullying me in middle school?”

“I can’t really protect you from humans,” he said, frowning.

The doors of the car opened and a man stepped out. He was dressed in a belted black trench coat and a hat tilted at a slightly rakish angle, some papers tucked under his arm. He was a handsome older man, and he looked like he meant business as he marched up our steep driveway. I was feeling really uncomfortable with this situation. I couldn’t imagine getting in a car with a strange, lone man. He banged on the door a second later.

“Well, are you going to answer the door or just freeze?” Firian asked. “I shouldn’t open it. A familiar playing butler? What kind of impression would that make?”

Dad snapped to life and threw the door open. I ran after him. We had to face whatever this was together.

“Greetings,” the man said. “My name is Mr. Flores, of the Flores clan. I’m the head of admissions at the Merlin Academy, and I’m here for Mr. Byrne.”

“Charlotte,” I said. “I’m a girl.”

“You auditioned to attend our school. You were male at that time. What’s going on?”

“I—I didn’t. I wasn’t. I’ve never been ‘male’. I’ve never auditioned for your school.”

“I have all the notes here. You were recommended by Samuel Caruthers himself.”

“Who is that?”

“The renowned necromancer, Samuel Caruthers,” he said impatiently, like I was being willfully ignorant.

“Uh…”

Mr. Flores glanced at my familiar somewhat judgmentally, I thought. Firian gave him a cool look in response.

“I must admit, you do look more feminine than you did at the audition.”

“Did the boobs tip you off?” I crossed my arms.

“I—I was not—looking at those,” Mr. Flores said.

“Someone posing as Charlotte auditioned to attend your school?” Dad said. “Recommended by Samuel Caruthers? Her grandmother was a Caruthers, but we don’t know the rest of the family.”

“Yes. I auditioned a young man named Char Byrne who looked just like you, except…boyish.” Mr. Flores shook his head at his paperwork. “I am not easily fooled. I don’t know why anyone would go to all the trouble of a deception like this.”

“I don’t either!” I said.

I still wasn’t sure what I wanted out of this encounter but I couldn’t turn away. I mean, this guy had driven right to my house in a 1940s car to pick me up. And I had a boy doppelganger?

“Admission to Merlin College is extremely serious,” he said. “We only admit boys who exhibit a tendency for prime or ‘sans pareil’ status. Students of Merlin College are the future leaders of the world. Attendance is, per the council, mandatory, because we do not allow students of that level of talent to simply run around unchecked, potentially tempted by dark magic.”

“But I’m not the person who auditioned,” I said. “I’ve never even used my magic.”

“Her mother blocked it,” Dad said.

“One of the greatest dark witches of the last century rose under similar circumstances. Her powers were blocked in childhood, but once released, she proved to be most dangerous. And like you, Char, she also had tainted blood.”

“Tainted blood? Are you talking about my dad?”

“No, I’m talking about your grandparents,” he said. “A witch who was lost to us, and a Sinistral low demon—to be specific, a werewolf.”

“No part of my kid’s blood is tainted,” Dad said. “And this makes no sense. Charlotte’s been right here all along. I never told her anything about her origins. Maybe you should talk to Samuel Caruthers.”

“Samuel Caruthers…” He looked a little distressed. “May I use your telephone?”

From the way he asked, I could tell he wasn’t asking because sometimes service was spotty out here. He just didn’t have any phone, period.

Dad unlocked his cell phone and handed it over. Mr. Flores looked like he didn’t know how to use it, but he didn’t ask for help, he just swept back down the driveway toward his car. We watched him poking at it for a little while before he put it to his ear.

“Dad, he could steal stuff off your phone,” I said.

“I’m not worried. I know how magical people are. They can barely turn on a television.”

Mr. Flores talked to someone softly, but urgently.

I turned to ask Firian about this, and I realized he had vanished.

“You’re not going with him,” Dad said. “No matter what.”

Mr. Flores came back, locking onto me with his eyes. “Miss Byrne, I just spoke to Master Blair. You need to come to Merlin College. Yes, your technical status as a ‘witch’ will be an unusual precedent, but we need to find out what’s going on. Maybe we need to keep you safe from someone.”

“I understand,” Dad said. “Keeping Charlotte safe is all that matters. Did you pack a bag?”

“Dad? I thought you said—“

Mr. Flores gave me an insistent look. “I cast a small enchantment on your father to minimize his distress. Did you pack a bag? You will not need clothes. Merlin College has a uniform.”

“A uniform? At college? A boy’s uniform?”

“This is not an ordinary college,” he said. “This school is attended by warlocks so potentially powerful that they must be protected. We’ll try to get you transferred to Morgana College, our sister school, but in the meantime…”

“Go on, Charlotte,” Dad said. “It’s for the best. I could never have saved you from…all of this.”

“Dad! You’re…not yourself right now. Turn him back right now or I’m not going anywhere.”

Firian walked back into the room. His hair had a leaf in it. “Go pack, Charlotte,” he said. “We were naive for trying to avoid it, weren’t we…?” He looked somber as he looked at Mr. Flores.

“Apparently so,” Mr. Flores said. “But there’s still plenty of time. Luckily…someone was looking out for you.”

Chapter Five

Charlotte

The drive was long enough for me to go through a few stages of excitement, grief, and terror. I hadn’t really gotten to say a proper goodbye to my dad because he was enchanted, and I wasn’t sure if I was being kidnapped or not. Firian was with me, but it wasn’t like I really knew him either. Plus, he kept staring out the window with this contemplative look on his face, stroking his claws across his chin, and whenever I asked him what he was thinking about, he just said, “Lots of things.”

“Lots of things?”

“Lots.”

“Are you messing with me?”

“Now why would I do that?” He turned back to the window.

I had already gotten the picture that I wasn’t supposed to rely too much on my familiar, like, emotionally. So maybe he was infuriating on purpose, so I wouldn’t lean on him.

I wondered what would happen if Dad was right, and the magical world really was dangerous, and something happened to me, leaving him all alone.

I took a lot of deep breaths. We drove down a lot of lonely and somewhat treacherous mountain roads, passing no large towns, until finally, when we seemed to be utterly in the middle of nowhere, we reached a pair of black iron gates. Mr. Flores waved his hand, and they opened for him.

We drove down a long driveway. I saw a couple of guys wandering around in groups. It looked like orientation was going on. Thick forest surrounded the school on all sides.

The campus buildings were dotted throughout the forest behind the tall iron fence, gorgeous old structures that had Gilded Age glamour. The classes were in stone buildings and the dorms were big Victorian houses. I felt like a more important person just being here. I also felt very exposed. As soon as I stepped out of the car, people were staring at me.

I seemed to be the only girl in the whole place.

“Am I the only girl in the whole place?” I asked Mr. Flores.

“No, there’s…the—there’s a girl working in the kitchen,” he said, but even as he said it even he seemed to realize it was a dumb answer. “Oh—Master Blair’s having his office redecorated. There’s a woman doing that, too.”

Uh-huh.

The only. Girl. In the whole. Place.

I followed Mr. Flores in the doors of the main hall. Inside, there was a stained glass skylight, and a floor tiled with a picture of the zodiac, and a gilded balcony, with dark wooden paneled walls. We went upstairs, passing more boys. Handsome boys. Beautiful boys. Gorgeous boys. A wide variety of different kinds of attractive boys. Mr. Flores had gotten way ahead of me.

I must have had a look on my face that was, um, revealing. Firian reached over and shut my mouth with his finger.

“Try not to be so obvious,” he whispered.

“Jerk.”

“Remember, witches and warlocks learn how to make themselves more attractive.”

“What do you mean ‘remember’? I never knew that in the first place.”

“Yes. I suppose we would all know that you don’t know that, just to look at you.”

“Why are you such an ass if you’re supposed to be my magical assistant?”

“That’s why. Because I’m your magical assistant. We’re supposed to have snarky one-liners. Like in a Disney movie.”

“But you’re not—“

He took a step back and transformed into a fox. “Better?”

“No,” I said, through gritted teeth. “Now everyone’s looking at us.”

“This is no time to mess around,” Mr. Flores said, impatient. “Familiar, it would probably be best if you returned to Etherium.”

“I’m staying here,” Firian said. “Charlotte doesn’t know enough about this world to feel safe on her own yet.”

“Well, then, you can at least wait outside.”

We entered through an old wooden door that creaked, into the office of Dean Blair. It was lined with bookshelves, and a huge desk dominating the center of the room. Behind the desk, tall windows looked out over the campus green.

I was fully expecting an old wizard with a long white beard. No reason. Just…every book ever.

Instead, I got an ageless, elven-looking man with artfully shaggy brown hair. He was wearing a waistcoat with a fitted dress shirt and had a big black ring on one finger, which I assumed did some intense magical thing. Unless books just totally lied to me on all counts.

“Master Blair. This is the student presumed to be Char Byrne. As I said, he is actually a she. Charlotte.”

“You checked?” ‘Master’ Blair’s lips pursed in disapproval as he rose to greet me. “I’m not sure that is really the way for an admissions officer to behave…”

“No one needs to check,” I said. “I’m a girl. I was born a girl, and I’ve always been a girl, with girl parts, a girl brain, and a girl identity. I don’t know Samuel Caruthers. I never took the admissions test. This entire thing is a total shock to me. I didn’t even know my mother was a witch or that I had a familiar or anything.”

“You’re shaking.” Master Blair patted my shoulder. “Well…Mr. Flores feels that you must attend our school, until we understand what happened. We don’t know if someone is trying to hurt you, or hurt us, or…”

“I would not guess that this is good,” Mr. Flores said. “Let’s put it that way.”

“This is a boy’s school, though,” I said. “So that’s…going to be strange.”

“Yes. Witches and warlocks are usually segregated all through their education because they learn different magic,” Master Blair said. “We could send you over to Morgana College…”

“Yes, that’s what I would advise,” Mr. Flores said.

“But if you are truly a great sans pareil…I would rather have you here,” Master Blair said softly. It made me nervous. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to help me, or he thought I was something special to make use of.

“Will I get to see my dad?”

“You will have holidays,” he said, in a tone that wasn’t too encouraging. “Charlotte…more than anything, you must be very curious to know more about your mother. Your mother’s clan. Who sent you here. And magic in general…”

He had me there. “Yes, please. I’m dying to know.”

“You’re in good hands. Merlin College is your new home.”

Hey, that was not an answer. What a tease.

“What about the classes?” I asked. “This is a university, right? Don’t I have to know magic already in order to attend?”

“We can work with that,” Master Blair said dismissively. “Let’s talk business. Charlotte Byrne…let’s see…we’re putting you in Lancelot House. Do you like the Arthurian theme we have going? It’s stupid,” he said, testily. “What a pre-Raphaelite conceit that is. Anyway, we have you rooming with…Alec Lyrman.”

“Lyrman? With a young lady?” Mr. Flores gave Master Blair a look like he was crazy.

“Well, we’re very full,” Master Blair said. “And it will be good for him. We’ll take care of Alec. He won’t be able to hurt you. Mr. Flores, you can hand her off to Benton for some proper clothes.”

“I hope you won’t hurt someone for my sake,” I said.

“Heh…no. We’ll teach him self control. Very fitting, very fitting.”

Mr. Flores was already moving me out the door, just as I was getting concerned that Master Blair was going to enchant some poor boy’s dick so it electrocuted him when he looked at me wrong or something. But I guess it wasn’t my business.

Chapter Six

Charlotte

There was a small shop on campus where students could purchase their wardrobes out of a select number of pieces. They were all very classic. They looked handsome on guys, I must say. Dress shirts and pants, ties in a few different striped combinations, a few styles of jackets and coats, even cloaks if you really wanted to be a guy who can pull off a cloak. I guess I would find out who that was.

I didn’t see any pajama pants, yoga pants, sweatpants, leggings, hoodies, or shirts that referenced one episode of Game of Thrones, so I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do.

“If your familiar is going to accompany you,” said Benton, the guy running the shop, who seemed like he might also be more comfortable in sweatpants and a shirt that referenced an episode of Game of Thrones, “he needs to be dressed properly as well.”

Firian was back in human form at this time, although he was keeping a little distance from me. He was wearing a nondescript t-shirt and shorts and ratty Converse, which was kind of hilarious when I considered that he manifested all of his clothes.

“I’m just a familiar,” he said.

“Yes, but there’s a dress code here. I’m sure you’ve heard this is the premiere warlock school in America. So you can’t just bum around.”

“I think that’s racist,” Firian said. “This dress code seeks to maintain a white male Western-dominated status quo.”

Benton looked at him with a dull, unchanged expression. “I don’t…I don’t know. They’re the rules. Everyone wears this stuff.”

Firian looked at me. “So, now you know that’s not going to work.”

“Are you making fun of me? I wasn’t going to say anything. And that’s not how I talk.”

“That’s how everyone on the internet talks,” Firian said. “I didn’t learn it from Etherium, that’s for sure.”

“Is this because I told you that Firia’s outfit is impractical for battle?”

“Okay, well, you still need to change,” Benton told Firian. “You can’t walk around here like that. You’re a familiar so I know you can change right now.”

Firian looked annoyed, but he stepped into a dressing room. He came out a second later in a wrinkled untucked dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and dress pants.

Benton gave me a nasty look like I needed to tame my familiar.

“You look miserable,” I told Benton.

I don’t think I made any friends in the uniform store. I found some extra-small shirts and pants with a subtle plaid print, plus a blazer that fit me pretty well. I was not used to dressing like this, but I did look kind of cute in the mirror. More grown-up and sophisticated.

As I was giving myself the final once-over in the mirror before asking how the heck I was supposed to pay for this anyway, because the shirts alone cost fifty dollars, the door burst open and a guy walked in.

I mean, of course it was a guy. That was obviously a given unless a random kitchen girl or Master Blair’s decorator came looking for me.

Actually, it was two guys. Another one came in behind the first.

“So it’s true,” the first guy said, looking at me. “A witch at warlock school.”

“Greetings,” the second guy said.

The first guy was very buttoned down with his tie knotted as tight against his neck as it could go, short hair combed back like he went to the hairdresser and said ‘give me the rich douche’. He was very blonde, like his eyebrows were disappearing, with very blue eyes, and he was almost as tall as Firian. He had the look of a prick who was used to having everything his way.

The second guy had longer black hair and had perfectly roguish facial hair. He was shorter but had just as much presence as the other guy. He was wearing like, a velvet smoking jacket that I didn’t see for sale. I could already sense it was going to be hard to tell who was gay around here and I swear none of these guys seemed like they could possibly be freshmen or even young enough to be in college at all.

Then again, I already felt older myself, wearing a uniform. Maybe there’s something to this ‘wearing real clothes’ thing.

“I’m not so sure we should be greeting her,” the first guy said. “This is obviously part of some sort of a plot. Where did you come from?” He came right up to me before Firian put himself between the two of us.

“Of course,” the guy said. “You brought your familiar with you. What are you, a five year old?”

“No. I don’t know what’s going on,” I said. “I didn’t even know I was a witch until a couple of weeks ago, and I don’t know if I want to be here either. I came from Georgia. Since you asked.”

“Oh, you’re hiding something all right,” he said. “And I’m going to find out what it is.”

“But…I’m not, though.”

“There has never been a witch at a warlock school,” the guy said. “We practice the masculine arcane arts. You have your own things to do. And your very presence here, your energy, is going to disrupt our studies. I will be filing a complaint with the council, and unlike your family, my family has not been tainted by any Sinistral blood. So you’d better be careful around here and if you do anything to hurt Alec, you’re going to hear from me.”

“I’m not—“ I tried to defend myself, but having said his piece, he was already leaving.

“Is he friends with Alec?” I asked the other guy, who was still standing there.

“Yes. Alec is our friend,” the guy said. “But I’m sorry Harris was kind of a dick.” He offered a hand. “I’m Montague Xarra. You’ll see us around. We’re in the same dorm.”

I offered up my hand and was met with a strong grip. “Montague Xarra. That’s quite a name.”

“Well, I’m quite a guy.” He flashed me a smile. He had very white, very sharp teeth. Like, very sharp. “I’d better go after him, but, I’ll see you. By the way—“ He turned at the door before shutting it. “—you wear the uniform very well.”

“I’d stay away from him,” Firian said.

“Why? He seemed nice.”

“He seemed aggressive.”

“You’re not jealous, are you?” I teased.

“Pfffh.” He made a face of disdain. “I’m just protecting you. How are we paying for this?”

“You have a clothing allowance,” Benton said. “Which you’re well under.”

“Okay. I guess I’m good for now. Let’s look at the room.”

Chapter Seven

Charlotte

The dorm was a four-story house with a big porch and a tower, painted a dramatic dark red color with blue trim. Since it was still early in the fall, all the windows were open downstairs, where a guy was in the common room, reading. He glanced at me and then did a double-take.

“Hey there,” I said.

“Whu—huh—it’s true,” he gasped.

“Yes. I’m a girl. Hello. I think my room is upstairs?”

He was just staring.

“This is deeply weird,” I whispered to Firian.

We went up the creaky old stairs. The whole place felt very old-fashioned and it took me a second to realize why. There was almost no electricity. A few lights on the walls, yes, but I didn’t see any televisions, computers, charging phones, heaters, or anything.

My room turned out to be on the top floor, up in the converted attic space. There was just one room here, with a low slanted ceiling and a small bathroom tucked in the corner.

“So…it’s you…” A low, sexy voice emerged from behind an easel in one of the dim corners.

“Oh—you must be Alec.”

Alec stood up, crouching a little as he made his way over, or else he would knock his head on the roof. Most guys wouldn’t, but Alec was particularly tall, and his shoulders strained his white shirt. His necktie was hanging undone around his neck. His clothes were wrinkled. He was reading a book called “The World Between”, and wearing glasses with dark frames that made him look perfectly collegiate chic. He had black hair, eyes that were slightly reddish and predatory, and light brown, warmly toned skin. A line of symbols was tattooed down one of his arms from wrist to…well, wherever it ended, while the other arm had Celtic knots ringing his wrist. And his trim fitting black pants had a—um—bulge.

This is my roommate? Holy birth control. I felt like I might conceive just from looking at him.

“That’s my name,” he said, taking a few more steps closer to me, and then giving Firian a look. “You must be Charlotte. And this is…your familiar?”

“Yes,” Firian said.

They locked eyes and Firian bristled.

“Does your familiar always follow you around?” Alec asked.

“For now,” I said. “He’s my friend and protector.”

“Protector? Yes. You will need it.”

This was ridiculously awkward, but I figured the best way to diffuse that was just to act normal. “So, I’m guessing this is my side of the room?” One side was obviously less lived in. The walls were bare and the bed was made with a plain blue blanket. Alec’s side had all kinds of weird art covering the walls, paintings that seemed to portray magical creatures.

“So, you paint?” I asked, as I started unpacking my bag.

“Yes,” he said. “I paint the other realm.”

“They’re very nice,” I said.

He gave me a somewhat bemused look.

My skin was tingling all over. Even when I tried to focus on unpacking, my eyes kept gravitating to him like a magnet. My breath grew a little more shallow, and heat coiled inside my core.

He’s so sexy. This should be a crime. Still, I should be able to get ahold of myself. Am I sweating? Ugh. I wiped my forehead. It is a little hot up here in the attic. Look, he’s sweating too. It’s not just me.

“Can I open the windows?”

“Of course.” Alec went back to his painting. His hand moved. Sexy hand. Grasping brush. Red paint. I was mesmerized, my brain turning to mush, tracking the strokes.

Windows, I reminded myself.

I staggered over to one of them and struggled to wrench it open. It was a big, old, heavy wooden frame and the sash cords were broken.

“Do you need help with that?” Alec easily lifted it and propped it up with a stick. “These attic windows are shit.”

“Thanks…”

Firian opened the other windows before Alec could get to them. They looked at each other again, tension crackling. Alec dragged a hand through his hair, looking a bit pained. “This isn’t your world,” he said to Firian.

“I know that. But I can’t leave yet.”

Firian sat down on a chair now, watching me unpack my laptop, phone, and cords. I found one outlet. “Hmm…I guess we’ll charge your laptop when my phone is done charging,” I told Firian. Alec kept staring at me as I plugged things in.

“Your phone won’t work here,” he said.

I checked. “Aw…crap. How am I supposed to call my dad?”

“On the house phone.”

“The house phone?”

“You didn’t read the school rules at all, huh?”

“I didn’t really…intend to come here.”

“We are each allowed one electrical outlet for our use,” he said. “Cell phones don’t work at all. Electricity weakens our magic, so I would rather not use anything at all. I would request that if you’re going to use your computer, you do it when I’m not here, or in the common room or library.” Then he looked at Firian. “Him, too. How do you have a laptop, man?”

“Everyone here has such an attitude,” I said, but even then I ended up saying it in this weirdly sexy voice.

“Stop,” Firian said, waving his arms. “What are you doing to her?”

“I’m not trying to do anything.”

“But you are doing something.”

“I’m an incubus,” Alec said.

“I knew it,” Firian said. “He’s seeping out magic to attract you, Charlotte. You can’t have him as a roommate. Sleeping in the same room as him!?”

“Dean Blair said they were giving him some kind of spell,” I said.

“Yes,” Alec said. “Don’t worry. I can’t touch you. He said it would be a good control exercise. And if I want to be a warlock of note, I need to be a master of control. I’m glad you’re here. This is…excellent practice for me.” His voice sounded the way chocolate melting on a Lindt commercial looks.

“So his father must have been an incubus,” Firian said.

“Actually, my mother was a succubus,” Alec said. “But my dad raised me.”

“Me too!” I said. I didn’t meet people who were raised by their dads very often.

“I don’t trust women very much,” Alec said. “But I can’t help being drawn to them. And they can’t help being drawn to me. So…you will be attracted to me constantly. It’ll be a nuisance to both of us.”

“We’ll see about that,” I said. Who was I kidding, but I said it anyway, just to assert myself.

“It’s just the way it is. You can’t fight magic. Everyone in this dorm is…”

“What?”

“At risk,” he said. “For turning to the sinistral realm for our magic.”

“And that’s the dark side?”

Firian nodded. “It’s not evil, but it’s darker. And there are evil things there.”

“Lots of kids flirt with becoming a sinistral,” Alec said. “Villains are cool. But the reality of it is, my mom used my dad. She seduced him, sucked his energy, and then dumped me off on him when I was four years old after determining I wasn’t ruthless enough to be a part of her world. Villains aren’t cool at all, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“Noted. At least you’re an honorable incubus, I guess.” I smiled at him. He gave me a look back like, oh, you little fool, cursed to gaze upon my beauty for the next year or four…

Well, now that I knew what was going on, I could resist the urgent pull in my loins. Surely.

I wondered if Firian…like…could see me when I was sleeping and knew when I was awake, and knew if I was bad or good, so…

I might not be as popular here as I thought. So far I had a preppy jerk who hated me and an incubus who didn’t trust women. I took a few beloved possessions from my bag to spruce up my room: plushie kitty, plushie llama, plushie cloud with a face. A photo of me and Dad. A little framed painting of an octopus floating underwater; I found it meditative, and I’d also brought my yoga mat. Some incense.

“Are you a hippie girl?” Alec asked.

“No. Not really, but I try to stay in tune with, you know, the spiritual side I guess.”

“That’s good,” he said. “That’s what being a powerful witch is all about.”

“But I’m more of a gamer if I’m going to label myself.”

“What game?”

“Fortune’s Fate.”

He shrugged. “On the computer?”

“Yes. Firian plays with me.”

“Your familiar plays computer games?”

“He has a name. You don’t have to keep saying ‘your familiar blah blah’.”

Firian grabbed my arm and shook his head like I shouldn’t bother defending him. “Just follow the rules, Charlotte. They’re already going to eat you alive as it is.”

“No one’s going to eat me alive.” But I glanced back at Alec anyway. He gave me a secretive smile past his easel, his dangerous eyes lighting up a little, like he was imagining doing something to me. I guess that was how incubi lured in their prey.

Chapter Eight

Charlotte

Before long, it was time for dinner. Alec pointed me to the dining hall. All the guys gathered from the various dorms to eat.

“This seems more like boarding school than university,” I muttered. “Could I leave through those iron gates even if I wanted to?”

“Of course, the magical world had to be secret. Obviously. You couldn’t just put a Starbucks on campus,” Firian said. He had put on a jacket for dinner, and also some glasses.

“What’s with those? Are you trying to compete with Alec?”

“No. I look more studious, don’t I?”

Maybe a little more like how I imagined my gaming partner to look on the other end of the internet in my wildest dreams, like a geek wearing glasses, but a sexy one. “Will glasses help? Everyone talks to me like you don’t exist.”

“It is poor etiquette to address a witch’s familiar directly,” Firian said. “It is exactly like I don’t exist. Familars only talk to their witch or warlock. Normally. Of course, you’re not normal…” After a minute, he sighed and snapped his fingers. The glasses disappeared.

“I didn’t say they were bad,” I said.

“It wasn’t working,” he said decisively.

We walked into the dining hall. Well, I expected a hall, with a big long table and perhaps with Ignatius Blair presiding over everything.

Instead, we walked inside of what seemed like a fine dining restaurant. “Good evening.” A young man greeted us with a simpering smile. “Do you have a table reserved this evening?”

“I didn’t know I was supposed to reserve a table.”

“It’s only if you have friends you want to dine with,” he said. “It’s not necessary. I will give you a private table.” He picked up a menu and showed me to a small table in the corner, after we had walked past larger tables of warlocks eating together, talking loudly, drinking. He was talking to me in a snobbish tone about the resident chef here at the college.

“What about Firian?”

“Your familiar is not on the dining plan.”

“I’ll taste yours,” Firian said, sitting down across from me.

“But—this seems really unfair.”

“I’ll eat in Etherium. But…can I have a glass of wine? Maybe a merlot? I have money.”

The young guy’s smile faltered for a moment. “Of course.”

The sound of soft music and louder conversation filled the room. Candlelight flickered on Firian’s face. “I’m just here until you make some friends,” he said.

“Friends?” I scoffed. “They’re not very welcoming. I’ve never seen college age boys so resistant to having a girl around…

Firian looked at me. “Were you bullied that much in middle school?”

The question caught me off guard. “Uh…let’s not talk about that.”

“That bad?”

“No, I just…”

Firian glared at the wall as he unfolded a napkin and put it on his lap. “Is that what you were crying about in the backyard that one day?”

“When?”

“It was six or seven years ago. I was tempted to talk to you, but your dad really didn’t want that to happen. Of course, he was right. I couldn’t help you hex your classmates. And it would have just added to your angst, I’m sure.”

“If only I could bring a therapy animal to school.” I laughed drily. “I probably would have been more popular if I had a pet fox.”

The waiter brought the merlot and a coke for me.

“So are we just not having a drinking age now?” I asked.

“I don’t count,” Firian said. “Familiars are much more mature at birth. Witches and warlocks tend to be more mature as a result. You didn’t have that benefit, though. But culturally, this isn’t your world.”

“That explains a lot, although not why everyone is a perfect specimen of manhood. I need to get me some of that glamour magic.” I paused. “So does that mean that if you take the magic away, everyone is dumpy and boring? Oh my god. It’s like living in a dating profile, where everyone posts the best picture ever taken of them from ten years ago. Is that it?”

“Benton wasn’t hot,” Firian said. “You need something to work with in the first place. Harris looked weird, right?”

“Um…I don’t know…he wasn’t ugly.”

“You’re hopeless,” Firian said.

“Why are we even talking about this? Everyone keeps looking at us.” Plus, the room was full of laughter and conversation. Every guy here seemed to be in a group with friends. It was somehow even worse than being the weird kid at a normal high school.

“Good merlot, at least. You should order.”

I looked at the specials of the day. The menu was very meaty. Good thing I didn’t have the eating habits of a girly girl. It was not vegetarian friendly at all and there was only one salad. “Beef and barley sausage with house pickled beet root and herb dumpling,” I said, looking at the menu. “I’m not sure I want this to be my only source of food.”

“Witch cuisine,” he said. “Upscale witch cuisine. It’s very ‘old world’. More witches live in weird places, like Eastern Europe or Finland or Mongolia. And they keep to themselves, traditionally. So you get a lot of, you know, pickled things. It’s very on trend, Charlotte.”

“Yeah, yeah, well, when you’re raised by a single dad, no one is making a crock of house pickled beet root. It was a real surprise whenever dad broke out of the pizza, hamburger, spaghetti, grilled steak loop.”

“His carbonara is good,” Firian said. “With the parmesan cheese out of the shaker and all.” Then he glanced up and gave me a look sharp sort of face.

I turned. Montague was coming my way. Harris was glaring at him from behind. Montague looked like he was going to mess with me. He also had a short cloak tossed around his shoulders. No kidding. This was happening. Men with capes was happening.

He spread one hand on the table and leaned in to me, ignoring Firian. His sleeves were rolled up now, revealing very nice forearms with an old-fashioned gold watch around one wrist. I was inexplicably kind of intrigued by this cape and watch statement. I couldn’t believe Benton ran the clothing shop. “Do you have any questions with the menu?” he asked, with a faint smile.

I bristled. “No.”

“I hear the chicken liver is delicious.”

I laughed. But no. He was right. There was chicken liver on the menu. “I’m good, thanks. I don’t think Harris likes you talking to me.”

“As if I give a damn. I just saw you sitting here alone and nothing seems more unfortunate than the sight of a young woman dining alone.”

“I’m not alone. Firian’s here.”

“Ah, yes, well, that doesn’t really count, does it?”

“Firian doesn’t count? As a person?”

“Just drop it, Charlotte,” Firian said.

“But that’s ridiculous!”

“Firian is not of this world,” Montague said. “If you have him hanging around, you seem like a child who needs to be protected every moment. And you don’t need to be protected every moment…do you?” He trailed a finger down my arm.

I yanked my arm back, incredulous. “Whoa there, buddy. You can’t just touch me like that!”

“You don’t like to be touched? I apologize. When I am out among the common folk, they seem quite pleased for me to touch them.” His voice was low, flirtatious, and as far as I could tell, genuine. I mean, I had no doubt that most of the ‘common folk’ at my high school wouldn’t mind Montague touching them. He had warm brown eyes you could melt into. But it was obvious that I needed some ground rules around here.

I heard the sound of crackling fire and glanced over to see Firian aflame. I mean, a faint purple-blue fire effect was actually wafting off of him. “I am protecting her,” he said. “I don’t care what you think about it. She’s not here to impress you.”

“I really hope you’re not jealous,” Montague said. “Jealous familiars get in trouble, from what I’ve heard. Bad enough when they fall for anyone, but your own witch?”

“I’m not falling for anyone, I’m protecting my witch from a pit of horny warlocks who are trapped behind walls,” Firian sneered back.

“I just wondered if you wanted some company,” Montague said. “But maybe your familiar does the talking for you.”

“No,” I said. “I’m fine alone. I was just wondering what kind of man can pull off a cape, and…I’m still wondering.”

Montague actually looked a little genuinely insulted. “In my hometown, we have a story about this.”

“About what?”

“Familiars who fall in love with witches. A century ago, in St. Augustine, a witch and a familiar fell in love. It tore the entire town apart and unleashed darkness on the land. Where I come from, familiars are not permitted at the table for this reason.”

“Where you come from…are you talking about the same St. Augustine that’s the tourist town in Florida where my Grandma and Grandpa went on vacation once?”

“I’m talking about a town that has seen some very dark events.”

“It has a fort, right? And a Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum.”

“Well…there is the…human side, yes.”

Harris stood up in this really self-important way. Like, all these guys had it dialed up to eleven all the time. Shoving chairs, slamming hands on tables, wearing capes… Life as a warlock was intense.

“Sit down,” Harris said. “We’re not going to acknowledge this travesty any more than we have to.”

“What? Travesty? You mean me?”

“We’re supposed to be studying magic,” Harris said. “Men’s magic. This is not a place for a witch. And lay off Montague, you don’t know what he’s been through lately.” He gave Montague a weird look.

“‘Men’s magic.’” I narrowed my eyes, standing up as self-importantly as I could manage in order to meet him. Of course, I immediately realized they had six to eight inches of height advantage. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. Maybe you should leave your cage a little more often. Unless the magic is making your dick bigger, I don’t know why men and women should have different magic.”

“You can’t handle our magic.”

“Challenge accepted!”

“It wasn’t a challenge. It’s just a fact. Women have never been able to handle the aggressive arts without messing it up. The history books are filled with those stories. You’ll see.”

“You’re seriously telling me that women can’t be aggressive? Your history books are filled with stories of ladies trying to do cool stuff and getting the vapors? How convenient.”

“Try summoning a demon by the end of the year without getting yourself in trouble,” he said. “Without losing control, or falling in love with the demon, or something like that.”

“Fine! No problem! I’m not falling in love with a demon. Jeez.”

“Harris…I just wanted to offer her some company,” Montague said. “You’ve never summoned a demon…have you?”

“We’ll both summon a demon,” Harris said. “If she’s still even here by the end of the year.”

Suddenly double doors burst open from the kitchens and the chef stormed out waving a knife around. He was an older guy with crazy hair that I feared had to be getting in the food now and then. But, this was getting exciting. “Sit down,” he said. “There is too much commotion out here. My restaurant is a place of contemplation. How are you to savor the flavor of my cured gravlax if you are here talking nonsense about summoning a demon?” He paused and looked at me. “Oh…you are…the girl.”

It was clear that he wasn’t happy with my presence.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m the girl. And I want my food to go.”

“Don’t let them bully you,” Firian said.

“I don’t care anymore. I have never seen a bunch of men who were so annoyed at having a girl around.”

“I like girls very much,” Harris said. “Just, in their proper place.”

“I like girls too,” Montague said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Please, sit down. Cyrus, make the lady something good.”

“There has never been a woman at Merlin College,” Cyrus said. “This is unacceptable. What will happen if other women want to attend? The food I cook is for men. What, am I to start making tea sandwiches and fruit salads?”

So. This was what I’d be dealing with. Sexism you couldn’t usually find nowadays without a time machine. Or maybe, to be fair, hanging out at that one hardware store in my hometown where a girl couldn’t buy a screwdriver without the old man at the counter saying something about it.

I grabbed the bread basket. “Actually, this is good. I love bread. Thank you.”

“I love bread, thank you?” Firian said as I stormed out. “That was your parting shot after all that?”

“Shut up,” I said. “I thought I did pretty well considering I am ganged up on everywhere I go.”

“But you can do better. Don’t give them an inch, Charlotte. I don’t know why you’re here, but seeing how ridiculous this place is, I commend whoever enrolled you. Merlin College could use a shake up.”

I couldn’t argue with that. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to be the one to shake it up.

“I forgot to pay for the merlot,” Firian said with a shrug.

Chapter Nine

Harris

This was no place for a witch.

That was one thing I knew. I was the one with six older sisters, after all. Men had no business with witch magic, and women had no business with warlock magic.

“Maybe I should have worded things better,” I muttered, sliding back into my chair after tearing my eyes away from Charlotte. “I should have told her that witch magic is just as powerful and respectable as warlock magic instead of challenging her to summon a demon. Now when she gets hurt, it’s on my head. But she ought to be taught a lesson.”

“She’s in school,” Alec said. “I think that’s the point.”

“You know what I mean. The professors will go soft on her.”

“Maybe she won’t get hurt,” Monty said, sipping ‘rare steak blood’. AKA, plain old cow blood, but Cyrus tried to put a good spin on it. I tried not to stare. “I didn’t need you to charge over there.”

“Nothing good will come of you flirting with her. Anyway, I know she’s not your type. You just smell blood, isn’t that how it works?”

“No. That’s not how it works.”

I wasn’t used to my best friend being a vampire. We’d managed to talk on the phone exactly twice over the summer, since it happened, but he had pretty much been at the rehabilitation center—getting all spelled up and learning techniques to help him function in our world, so he could go in the sun, and not kill us. And whatever he said, he’d changed since it happened. Genuinely changed. As in, I didn’t entirely trust him with a girl, especially a girl like Charlotte who seemed clueless.

“I can control myself,” Monty said, casual. “That’s why I take those pills. Alec’s the poor bastard you should worry about. What is Master Blair thinking?”

“He’s not thinking,” I said.

“Charlotte is my type,” Monty added. “She’s female. She seems nice. She looks quite adorable in the uniform.”

“Is that your criteria?”

“What’s yours, then?”

“A talented witch from a good family with sophisticated manners.”

Monty gave me a look of disdain. “Of course it is. But, that’s fine. You won’t be jealous at all if I make her mine.”

“I won’t. She’s just a normal human, basically. I can’t believe she even has powers worthy of attendance. It’s not appealing to me. Anyway, I can’t just date anyone I like. I have centuries of great magic users, ancestors who would curse me from beyond the grave if I stooped to a lower level.”

My mother already had a line up of girls in mind for me, and I got to see them every summer and Christmas vacation. One was the daughter of the head of the New Orleans coven, one was the daughter of the late, famous diviner of Chicago, and one was from Russia, descended from a disciple of Rasputin, although my mother was about to knock her out of the running because she liked listening to pop music. Once I got out of Merlin college, I would choose one of those three.

Charlotte? Well, she was a disgrace. Her voice was loud and she had a faint Southern accent, and not the acceptable kind. Her movements were sort of…bouncy, and she had a computer user’s slump. She still had her familiar hanging around like a little kid. And, word was she had no experience with magic. So, I didn’t care if her full lips were rather sexy spouting off insults. Unlike my two best friends, I didn’t think with my dick.

Plus, if I wanted a loud wife, I could choose Daisy.

“Listen to yourself,” Monty said.

“It’s true,” I said.

My family was the most famous of all magical lines in the western world. Yes, there were many, but my ancestors came from a marriage of a Hapsburg witch and a vampire hunter who was renowned for having twenty kills, Florin Nicolescu. The family home on the Hudson River in New York was full of old world paintings of my illustrious ancestors and treasures of the Hapsburgs, and the library was full of journals detailing their exploits. Whenever we met anyone new at a party or gathering, my mother would look them up in the records as soon as we got home to see where they fit into the tapestry of witch bloodlines. As soon as she heard that Monty had been turned, she got out the book, found his entry, and wrote, “Turned” in her fine cursive.

Then she clapped the book shut. “You won’t be hanging out with him anymore,” she said.

Yes, my parents were a lot of fun. But they had a point. I was furious at Monty for being such a dumbass.

“She’s going to be sleeping in Alec’s room,” I said. “We won’t have a chance with her anyway.”

“Maybe that was true,” Monty said. “But I’m a vampire now. I have my own seductive powers. Incubus versus vampire. We shall see.”

“I’m focused on my studies,” Alec said. “You know that. You can have her.”

“We shall see how long that lasts,” Monty said. “She’s already checking you out. You’re going to lay awake at night listening to her breathe.”

“I am not,” Alec said. “I’m not just some mindlessly sexed up demon. I’m a warlock and I’m going to make my dad proud, and when college is over, then and only then, I’ll find a wife who can keep up with me.” He lifted his coffee cup and grinned in his understated way.

“No complaints from me, my friend,” Monty said. “Then, she’s all mine.”

I was irritated at him for reasons I couldn’t quite pinpoint. “Are you sure you should kick off your first year of college with pursuing the most controversial student? Don’t you think you caused enough trouble last year?”

“I wondered when the judgments would begin,” Monty said. “I lived for the moments. I have no regrets.”

“No regrets about being turned into a vampire?” I asked, incredulous.

Whenever Monty, Alec and I got into a little trouble in high school, my family always knew Monty was the ringleader. My family had agreed that a little fun on weekends was all right—in high school. Before things get too serious.

But he’ll pay for it someday, my mother always said. That Monty. Either he will get his head on straight, or he’ll regret it forever when he falls afoul of the council.

My mother was usually, infuriatingly, right. Monty had been irresponsible and stupid, and now he was a vampire, his prospects ruined.

Except that Monty didn’t seem repentant at all.

But when she struck his name out of the book with that fateful word and told me he was no longer my friend, she also said, “Well, he probably only has a few years now, before the curse of all vampires catches up with him, so I suppose I won’t have to worry much longer.”

Chapter Ten

Charlotte

I slogged back up the stairs with my basket of bread. Alec was in the shower. The door was shut, I heard the water running, and that meant he was naked in there. Just…right on the other side of the wall from my bed. Soaping up his Greek-god-hued muscular shoulders and his…

I shoved a mini baguette in my mouth and took the opportunity to plug in my laptop, since he had implied that if I used it in his presence, it was going to be A Thing.

“Want to kill a few kobolds real quick?” Firian asked. “I’ll use his plug.”

“Okay! If the internet works.” My laptop fired up and I saw an open network for MerlinStudent. It seemed pretty fast too. “Yesss…I’m in.”

We both got in the game and went to Kir Forest to try and grab some quick Kobold Hides we needed for our current quest. Kir Forest was dangerous because the kobolds here were undead and they always came in packs. It only took a second for a band of them to pop out of the bushes. I cast a ghostfire spell and incinerated one with blue flames while Firian swung his oversized sword.

I glanced over at Firian, his face lit by the glow of his laptop. I opened the chat window. we’ve never played in the same room before.

yeah. now I can’t imagine you as a broody mage anymore.

well, you’re definitely not a scantily clad elf babe.

i wasn’t trying to make her scantily clad. they don’t have many options.

i’m not stupid! they have a full armor option.

…but it’s ugly

I shook my head at him.

you’re the one deep throating a baguette right now while casting furtive glances toward the shower, he typed.

“Oh my god.” I threw down my laptop and shoved him.

don’t get mad at the truth

“He might hear you!”

“I said that in the chat.”

“Oh. Right. I forgot.” Sheepishly, I went back to my computer and hastily tried to cast Doomshadow to make up for it.

gamer girl has forgotten the difference between chat dialogue and real speech, he said. i think it’s good you’re getting out in the world.

well, i think it’s good you’re wearing pants.

Doomshadow spells were tricky to cast because I quickly had to mix two ingredients, but I pulled it off. The kobolds went down and two of them dropped a hide.

“Nice.” Firian grabbed them.

“Two in one go! Dude! Even if that’s all we get done, that’s a successful outing.”

“How many do we need?”

“Um…six more.”

The door opened and Alec came out in black pajama pants and nothing else.

“Speaking of pants,” Firian said.

“I thought I sensed computers. Doesn’t that make you feel nauseous?” Alec asked.

“I guess I’m used to it…,” I said, as my eyes raked over his abs and chest and arms and then his abs again because why not. He was mostly dry but there was one spot in the hollow around his collarbone down to his ripped left pectoral muscle where droplets of water still clung to his skin.

I could lick those off you, I thought, and then my skin temperature rose a hundred degrees. Why was I having these thoughts? They just appeared, completely unbidden.

He’s talking to you. Brain? Brain, hello? He’s talking to you like a normal person. Pay attention.

“You should probably try to break the habit,” he was saying. “You won’t be able to perform magic up to school standards if you use computers often. Sorry, I’m going to need my outlet back.”

Firia left the game, the chat window said, as Firian’s character abruptly vanished.

This place really was no fun, shirtless gods aside. I was pumped to get six more undead kobold hides. If I was home, we would have been up until two in the morning working on it. I yanked the plug out of the wall and dumped everything on the chair, and grabbed Outlander out of my bag instead. Firian turned into a fox and curled up at the foot of my bed.

“He doesn’t need to stay,” Alec said. “I can’t hurt you.”

Firian’s ears flattened. “I don’t trust you.”

“I’m serious. Here…” He plucked up one of my hands from the paperback and kissed the back of it. Or tried to, anyway. Immediately, he got jolted back as if I’d slapped him.

“Rest assured,” Alec said. “I can’t touch her for more than a moment without that happening. Not that I want to, anyway. But if I should lose control because of my magic, well, that’s not a concern. Do you want word to get out that you still sleep with your familiar?”

“I really don’t care what everyone thinks.”

Firian slowly stood up. “I am bad for your reputation, it’s true. I belong in Etherium.”

“I don’t care about my reputation, Firian!”

“You will.”

He melted away before I could convince him otherwise. Now I was more dejected than ever. I’d been run out of the restaurant and now I wondered if I would ever spend the night questing with Firian again. Plus, I couldn’t even call my dad without finding the “house phone”, and I couldn’t drive home to see him on weekends. It felt like everything I really cared about, everything that defined me, had been taken away.

Alec walked over to the small dresser, yanked open a drawer, and pulled out a shirt. I tried very hard to stare at the pages of my book instead of him. A slow fierce blush burned its way up from the lacy jabot…

This was not a good part to be reading.

“What were you so excited about?” Alec asked.

“I’m not excited! Oh…you mean…in the game. We got two uncommon drops at once, which is…good.”

“You and Firian are close, huh?”

“We’re—we actually didn’t know each other until recently, except he’s been watching over me, I guess. Through the game, and as the backyard fox.”

“So he’s been stalking you.”

“No.” I brushed breadcrumbs off the bed onto the floor. “Do you have a familiar?”

“Yes. Everyone here has a familiar. If I had been born without one, I would be considered an incubus, not a warlock. But since I do have a familiar, I take after my dad.”

“So I guess I take after my mom… Did you know your mom?”

“No. She dropped me off and she was out. Really screwed my dad over. He wasn’t prepared to have an incubus son. That’s why…you don’t have to worry around me.” He came over to my bed and sat down next to me, sort of putting one arm behind me. “Yes…my body does want you. That’s a fact, the same way a hungry person wants a meal. But…like I said…I’m glad to be tested like this. I’m not going to be ruled by my nature.” His eyes roamed from my lips down to my legs. My eyes moved similarly, except they roamed even more places.

I think a slow fierce blush might have burned its way up from the breadcrumbs on my shirt.

‘My body wants you’? Like I was supposed to have no reaction to that?

“Well…I’m glad I was here to test you,” I said, a little sarcastically.

“Yes,” he said. “Me too. We’ll both be stronger for it, I’m sure. If my presence bothers you, remember, it’s only my inherent magic trying to lure you in. It’s not real.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” I said.

“Good. We should probably get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.” He went back to his own bed and threw back the covers.

It’s very hard to sleep when you can hear someone else breathing and you know it’s a very sexy man whose body wants you. Just so you know.

Chapter Eleven

Charlotte

In the morning, I had an orientation class. I knew this because Firian told me he had read over the packet of information I was given when I signed up, and he appeared in the morning and told me I’d better get ready for orientation class. Alec was already gone. First, I was starving for anything that wasn’t bread. I went downstairs and found a spread of fruit, cheese and pastries in the common room. A few boys were in the room, and they stared at my every move.

“Hey, guys,” I said, as I grabbed almost all the fruit.

They all glared back like they didn’t know what to make of me.

“You don’t belong here,” one of them said in a low voice. He was a tall guy with spiky dark hair and a glower, and I thought again about how everyone in this dorm was at risk of turning to dark magic.

“Yes. I know. I have cooties and get periods. It’s been made abundantly clear to me that I am in the wrong place.”

“Your familiar definitely doesn’t belong here.”

Firian looked a little twitchy, like he would love to punch the guy, but instead he just crossed his arms and looked impatient for me to fill my plate.

Montague came down the stairs. “Good morning,” he said, whisking the last clump of grapes out from under my hand. He glanced at the rest of them and then raised an eyebrow at me. “How was your night with Alec?” he asked. “Poor Alec. An incubus who hates sex is a sad life.”

“Good morning to you too,” I said. “This is an interesting choice of morning conversation.”

“Do you know where to go?” Montague asked. “I imagine you have some kind of orientation.”

“I have the map,” Firian said. “No problem.”

“Well, I am trying to make some amends for last night, if that’s not obvious,” Montague said.

“Then why did you take my grapes?”

He looked at my plate, which was already heaped with grapes, and put them down. “I heard you’re a Caruthers,” he said. “I heard you were recommended to this school by Samuel Caruthers himself.”

There was a murmuring around the room.

“Samuel Caruthers?” said the glowering guy. “Are you freaking serious? But why did he want her to go to a warlock school?”

“I don’t know, but I bet he had a reason.”

“Why does Samuel Caruthers matter?” I asked. “I’m not even sure how we’re related.”

“Wait right there,” said the nervous guy I’d seen on a laptop yesterday. He dashed up the stairs and came back with a magazine called CAST. On the cover was a guy who looked like a celebrity, around forty or so, ruggedly handsome, wearing black on black. Samuel Caruthers: Reinventing Necromancy, it said, right over How to Cast Date Night Glamours and Drinking + Magic: Hottest Speakeasies.

“I heard that he’s your mom’s cousin,” Montague said.

“Huh,” Glowering Guy said.

“Respect,” Nervous Guy said.

“Can I borrow this magazine?”

“Sure.”

“Have you ever met Samuel Caruthers?”

“I haven’t even met my own mom,” I said. “Not really. But…hopefully he’ll turn up and explain all of this to me someday.” I opened the magazine to see photos of Samuel Caruthers holding a skull like he was in Hamlet while wearing some sort of pirate-y looking outfit. A quote popped out: “I’m here to shake up the status quo.”

No kidding. He sent me to this school.

There was some relief in putting a face and—style, I guess—to the person responsible for all this. I just had to wait for Samuel Caruthers to show up and explain why I was here.

Harris came down the stairs. “Hey, why are there no grapes left?” he said.

“Let’s go,” Montague said, steering me to the door.

“You still have forty minutes until the orientation,” Firian said.

“That’s okay. We can take a little tour,” Montague said. “The school extends along the whole mountain ridge here. It was all built by wealthy warlocks in the 1890s. Blah blah.”

“Where do y’all hang out?” I asked, then paused. “So I know what area to avoid since everyone hates me.”

“Don’t say that. You have to give them a chance,” Montague said. “As word gets around that you’re related to a celebrity warlock who sort of sponsored you, and it occurs to everyone that you are a genuine woman…” He gave me a cocky grin. “Well, I hope you’ll remember that I was good to you from day one. I would never shun a woman’s company.”

“Blech,” Firian said behind us.

“You know, there is a reason familiars disappear as you hit puberty,” Montague said, giving him a glare.

I wasn’t ready for Firian to ‘disappear’. To me, it was disturbing to think that all of them had familiars who had already vanished into Etherium or whatever. But I didn’t want either of them getting in each other’s business. “So what stick is up Harris’ ass?” I asked.

“A stick full of family history,” Montague said.

“That sounds painful.”

“Very. He’s practically a prince in the warlock world, and his parents have high expectations of him. He’s the only boy after six girls.”

“And I guess they wanted a boy.”

“It’s not that boys are more valued, it’s just…well, with different types of magic being practiced by both sexes, every parent hopes for one of each, at least.”

“Is that why Harris is at risk of turning to the darkness?”

“Who said he was?”

“Alec said everyone in the dorm was.”

“Not true,” Montague said, a little defensively. “I will never practice dark magic. And I’m sure Harris won’t either. I was placed there because I became a vampire, just as a rule. But I’m not any risk to you or anyone else. We have so many ways of suppressing the vampire instinct.”

“That doesn’t explain why Harris is in the dark magic dorm.”

“Well, like I said, it’s not a big deal. It’s just that Harris is powerful.”

“My dad said my mom became a dark witch…”

Montague looked at me. “You won’t,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Whether you are an ethereal witch or a sinistral one, that is for you to decide, and not anyone else. Understand?” I must have hit a nerve. I could feel Firian tensing behind me, but he stayed out of it.

Montague’s hand was very strong. I could just tell, even though he wasn’t gripping me hard. I just sensed this potent force inside him. His skin was cold, too, and I flinched ever so slightly before something in his eyes caught me and held me.

He was a vampire.

Like, I just felt that fact sink down inside me. And even though I knew that he was a college freshman and the other guys’ friend, in the moment, I hardly believed it, because something in his eyes seemed ancient and predatory. His youthful face was both handsome and beautiful, from the black hair that brushed the back of his neck and framed his high cheekbones to his mesmerizing lips. But he seemed like something else, wearing a young man’s skin.

“I’m not a sinistral and I’ll never ever be one.” He backed off, mastering himself with a quick breath. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t.”

“Good.” He seemed light-hearted again, but I wouldn’t forget the way he looked just then. It was only a second, but it was a second of this pure vicious and dark hunger that set every one of my nerves on edge. And I knew Firian wouldn’t forget that either. I had no hope of ever being left alone with Montague. Well, maybe I didn’t want to be left alone with him, anyway. This was all getting a little too intense.

“Did you hear something?” Montague asked, looking toward the woods.

“No…”

“I was asking the fox.”

“Maybe,” Firian said. “But I have to get a little more familiar with the landscape before I judge.”

“Doesn’t matter. Anyway.” Montague waved a hand as I glanced at both of them curiously. “This building is the ‘hang out’,” Montague said, pointing across a green space to a building with two towers on the ends. It had a grand entrance with statues of two Victorian-esque nymph girls clad only in their swirls of long hair. Inside was a wide promenade-type central hall and on either side of this was a roller skating rink, a bowling alley, a dance floor, and a movie theater. The rooms were silent and empty now.

“Whoa. This is where you guys hang out? Down at the roller rink?” I giggled.

He opened the door of the roller rink and looked back at me with a raised eyebrow. “So you don’t want to skate with me?”

“Now?”

“Ever. Because you are too cool for such things, clearly.” His eyes were a warm brown and he smelled really good. I don’t know if it was cologne or like, vampire musk, but it was this sexy, vaguely exotic but distinctly male aroma that was somehow very subtle and very hard to ignore at the same time. It made me think about how his skin would feel under his shirt. How it would feel if he grabbed my hand while I tried to learn to roller skate. “It might be quaint, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be fun.”

“I’ve never been, actually. I didn’t say it was uncool… I mean, roller derby is cool. It just seems funny for an all-guys school.”

“You’re right,” he said. “It’s…strange, isn’t it? I remember…” His eyes seemed far away for a moment, and then he stopped and looked troubled. “I remember.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I just—yes. We’ll go skating sometime. You know how, right?”

I did not. I kept that to myself. I could tell something was wrong, but I couldn’t imagine what could have struck him. If he had been a normal person back home, I would have pressed him, but I realized there was this tiny part of me that was terrified of Montague. It was a pure instinct. Don’t push a vampire.

“Shouldn’t you be getting to your orientation class?” Firian drolled behind me. I’d almost forgotten he was there, which was strange, because I was pretty aware of him since he’d appeared. “I mean, as delightful as it would be to spend our afternoon in an abandoned roller rink with a vampire…”

“You’re right,” I said, the spell broken.

Chapter Twelve

Montague

There are things they always warn you about becoming a vampire. The need for blood, obviously, being the main reason you want to avoid becoming a vampire. The non-aging thing is complicated too. And the sun. We had spells to get around it, but I had to get them reinforced every year for the rest of my life, and I’d still been getting sunburned. I wasn’t supposed to sunburn like this. My Spanish ancestors had settled magical Florida; they must be laughing from beyond the grave.

The most pressing thing on my mind when I woke up covered in blood in a hotel room in Cancun was that I was going to be socially shamed, and Harris would have to pretend he didn’t know me. We were still navigating that one. He did avoid me when I came back, but he looked miserable. The guy wasn’t exactly the type for making a bunch of new friends. Plus, Alec would still hang out with me, so Harris was the odd man out. Over the summer it was easy enough to skirt the issue, though, because he went back to his parents’ summer mansion, and I went to…rehab.

If you get turned into a vampire, you gain memories from the entire vampire line. This is, apparently, how vampires have survived and formed networks and royal families of their own. As soon as I got turned, the guy who had just ruined my life tried to tell me that I was supposed to serve his ‘lord’.

Immediately, the guy’s face flashed into my mind and this sinking feeling flooded through me, which is when I whipped out more magic than I thought I was capable of and escaped.

The only thing that protected me was my status as a warlock. I rushed to the nearest magical council office in Mexico and they helped me get home to the States, where I spent six weeks at the Haven.

The Haven. Now there’s a place to drum fear into a warlock’s heart. It was supposedly a place where witches and warlocks could go for safety and rehabilitation from the darker forces of the world. A place where an unlucky guy like myself who’s been turned into a vampire can get the spells he needs to stay with his family and friends and go to a normal college.

I got all that. I also got an epic amount of lecturing and attempts to program me to be a good little warlock, and in the end I got slapped with a bargain: if I wanted to leave the Haven, I had to hand over my car.

I wasn’t even allowed to sell it to someone who would love it. I had to give it to them.

My car was my pride and joy. My parents hated it. Every old witch and warlock who saw it hated it, and the more they hated it, the more satisfaction I took in trying to make it the most obnoxiously tricked out street racer I could. It was a 1996 Mitsubishi Eclipse with a performance chip for the engine and a free-flowing exhaust that made it sound like a hive of angry bees and amped up the performance, a spoiler and an electric blue paint job that faded to a darker color in the back.

I didn’t really care about becoming a vampire half as much as I cared about losing the car. I’d been telling everyone that I just had to sell it to help pay for school. I couldn’t stand talking about it.

But I’d also been having some weird thoughts. They warned me this might happen. I was supposed to cast a ‘memory banish’ spell every time one hit me.

When I looked at Charlotte I suddenly saw Lisbeth.

I knew the girl’s name, because she was his girl. My vampire ‘lord’. The oldest vampire in my line. I saw her skating on iron skates on a frozen body of water, smothering a laugh in her glove, her fair face surrounded by a starched ruff.

Shit. This was really scaring me sometimes, and I didn’t want to admit that to anyone.

I was used to fitting in, not being different. Before this, I was as normal as a warlock can get. Just a promising, middle-class warlock, making my parents proud, except for the cell phone and the car and the fact that I snuck off to party in Cancun for spring break. I had some idea I would hook up with some human girls and get drunk, that now seemed very quaint and immature.

Young Monty, such dreams you had.

Well, a guy’s gotta let go sometimes when he studies hard the rest of the year.

I cut the tour short so I could go off by myself and banish ‘Lisbeth’ from my mind before my own class started. I didn’t even show Charlotte the gardens or the swimming pool, all of them still with gilded age beauty that I thought a girl would appreciate. Sometimes it seemed pretty wasted on this lot. Warlocks were pretty attached to views that sometimes seemed not just Victorian, but more like Medieval.

I saw Charlotte to her class, but as soon as I stepped out of the building smelled something kind of musky in the air.

I didn’t think it was the fox. He was a little too human to stink like that. This was a raw, beastly scent.

I knew I saw something earlier…

Movement flickered in the woods through the old iron fencing. It looked like a large dark animal in the brush. I might not have caught it if it wasn’t for my enhanced senses.

“Hey!” I ran toward the fence, grabbed the bar and vaulted over it.

Yeah, this was definitely the source of the musk. But by the time I got there, I didn’t see any sign of anything. I kept sniffing, even though I felt stupid, like the drug sniffing dog I saw at the airport during my fateful trip.

“Who are you?” I growled. “Were you watching me?”

My vampire senses were churning and impatient. This monster inside me wanted to find whatever it was and kill it. This feeling was the opposite of how I was taught to conduct myself as a warlock—measured, gentlemanly, remembering one’s training.

It seemed like it was gone, whatever it was, but the scent lingered.

Something had been out here. Not just an ordinary animal. Well, quite possibly not an animal at all. Something magical. A sinistral?

I wanted to ask my familiar what she thought, but she was gone.

When I died, my familiar had died with me, perhaps in an attempt to save me. When I came back from the dead…she didn’t return. My mistake had killed her. That was something I had barely even talked about with anyone. The relationship between a warlock and his familiar was supposed to be a private matter. Even in death.

Of course, Charlotte and Firian didn’t have that. I knew it would get them in trouble, and Charlotte didn’t even seem aware of what a taboo she was breaking.

I huffed, kicking the autumn leaves, shoving back the pain of losing my familiar. Rosa had been a good familiar, who took the form of a badger.

I’d lost a lot this summer, but I was determined not to show it to anyone. I wasn’t the richest or the most powerful warlock at Merlin College by a long shot. I didn’t have room to mess up twice.

“Whoever you are,” I declared, “if you’re here to mess with Charlotte, you’ll have to get through me first.”

No answer.

It was gone, whatever it was, but it would be back. I’d bet money on that. There was something strange afoot. As far as I knew, Charlotte was the only witch to ever be admitted to a warlock university, and I had a feeling there was more to that story.

Chapter Thirteen

Charlotte

I walked into the classroom for my orientation. Master Blair was waiting for me, along with a nondescript middle aged warlock in a wrinkled shirt and tie with glasses and a mustache. And by mustache, I don’t mean like a rugged mustache or a steampunk mustache or anything like that. This was like a middle management mustache circa 1985.

“Hello, Charlotte. Thank you for being a mere fifteen minutes late,” Master Blair said.

“Oh…sorry. Montague was giving me a tour.”

“We’re going to give you some tests today, ask some questions. This is Professor Jablonsky, he’ll be supervising with me today.”

“Hello, Charlotte.” Professor Jablonsky shook my head. “You can just call me Stuart. Just so you know, there are no wrong answers. Just the facts.”

He seemed nice, but…very out of place. “Oh good, I guess not all witches and warlocks are cool.”

Dean Blair looked up from a clipboard with a severely raised eyebrow. “What are you saying, Charlotte? Stu is the coolest warlock I know.”

I laughed. His face turned from incredulous to angry.

“I mean—you’re—oh—you’re serious?”

“Of course I’m serious. Nobody tears up the dance floor like Stu, I tell ya,” Master Blair muttered. He wrote something down, still frowning at me. I wasn’t off to a great start, but at least Professor Stuart Jablonsky didn’t look very offended.

“I guess I’m too old to be cool at this point,” he said with a shrug.

“But we’re the same age. Am I not cool? Stu, you are extremely cool. Don’t listen to her.”

“Well, you’re from the New York magical community,” Stuart said. “I’m from Kansas.”

Master Blair scoffed.

“Does it matter where you come from?” I asked.

“You know why the midwest has a reputation for being nice? It’s because the demons don’t hang out there,” Stuart said. “So not that many witches or warlocks either. Not much to do. Demons like the southeast. That’s why Floridians have a reputation for being crazy. Florida has a lot of hot spots. ‘Florida man’ is often a demon.”

“Ohh. That explains so much,” I said, although it also sounded optimistic. Pretty sure Florida man was just a normal weirdo, in most cases.

“Let’s see. We’re going to give you some tests to see where to place you, Charlotte. Obviously, I know you haven’t had any training, so it might take you time to get up to snuff, but our training is very specialized here. Lots of personal attention is lavished on our students.” He paused. “I hope that didn’t sound like sexual harassment. I am not used to female students.”

“Only if you meant it that way,” I said. “I mean, not that I want you to mean it that way. I don’t.”

“If you were getting a tour from Montague Xarra, you probably have been harassed enough already,” Stuart said. “Maybe I should submit a report to the council.”

Firian cleared his throat. “Let’s just get started.”

“Yes. We’re going to start with a simple elemental test,” Master Blair said. “Not insultingly simple, I hope. I’m sure you have lit plenty of candles in your day, at least.”

“I’ve never done any magic,” I said. “I didn’t know about any of this.”

“You’ve never just lit a candle with your mind by accident?” Stuart asked. “Maybe you forgot.”

“If I had accidentally lit a candle, I would have freaked out and never forgotten. I thought I was a normal human.”

“Right,” Stuart said. “You’re going to have a very exciting year. I, for one, am excited for you.”

Master Blair produced a candle and snapped his fingers. “Well, now you know, Charlotte, and I am sure you can light this candle. It is the simplest test of wills.”

“Sure thing,” I said. I was not at all sure. Lighting a candle with my mind? It seemed like if I was able to do that, I would have done it as a kid during a pretend game or something. I glanced at Firian.

“He’s right,” Firian said. “This is easy. If you have trouble, just imagine you’re in the game.”

I looked at the candle and mustered all my determination. I didn’t know what to do, really. It felt like I should say some spell words or wave my hands. But no one had given me instructions like that, so I guess it was just a brain to candle kind of thing. Just me and an unlit candle. And three guys watching me intently. No pressure or anything. Just a very human-y witch at warlock school, gritting her teeth and tensing her muscles…

“Relax,” Master Blair said. “You have to let go.”

“What am I letting go of?”

“Your fear that you won’t be able to light the candle,” Stuart said.

Yeah, okay, that was obvious.

“Your fear that you’ll disappoint us,” he continued.

Oh, we’re still going.

“Your fear that you won’t fit in here at warlock school,” he said. He paused. “But, then, sometimes you have to go deeper still. What are you the most afraid of?”

“Wasps.”

“Wrong!” Master Blair said. “No one’s worst fear is wasps. Or spiders or public speaking or anything so simple. Your worst fears are demons that lurk in your mind and whisper of the things that have haunted mortals since the dawn of time. Death, loss, sorrow, humiliation…these emotions are what leave us prey to actual demons.”

I shivered. “I mean…I—I don’t know.”

Firian looked at the ground. He was no help.

“I’m afraid of hurting my dad,” I said. “Disappointing him. Losing him. I—I guess I always knew something bad happened with him and my mom, and it wasn’t just the usual. I know—he didn’t want this for me. If anything happens to me, it’ll wreck him. I want my dad to be happy.”

“And yet…,” Master Blair said.

I swallowed. “And yet, I wanted to come here. I want to know more about magic, and my mother, and Samuel Caruthers, and witches… I want to know what it feels like to have some real power.”

“Light the candle,” Master Blair said.

I threw that feeling at the candle. That was how it felt. I pushed at it with my hands. I felt a strong force of heat leave my skin as I shut my eyes. Light, candle! Light! When I open my eyes, you will be—

I was thrown back. Firian caught me. My eyes flew open and everything was on fire. The candle had exploded into wax all over the desk. My face sort of hurt. Curtains were on fire. Papers on fire on the desk. Master Blair’s jacket. Everything that could catch fire was on fire and it was spreading fast. Flames licked up wallpaper and smoldered in the chair. “Damn!” Master Blair exclaimed. “Charlotte, get out of here!”

Firian grabbed my hand and tried to tug me toward the door. I heard Master Blair and shouting spell words behind me.

“The books, the books!” Master Blair said in a panic. “And we were almost done with the redecorating!”

Stuart started throwing antique books out the window, three stories down, cringing the whole time.

I wouldn’t let Firian drag me out. “Firian, no! This is my fault, isn’t it! I have to stop it somehow!” I tried to focus my will on the fire. I tried to draw it down, to bring it back inside me since it had come from, apparently, my repressed emotions.

It wasn’t working. The smoke was getting thicker and that terrifying smell of paper and fabric charring and turning to ash was getting worse despite Master Blair’s efforts. I heard shouts outside as other people noticed.

“Charlotte, we can’t do anything about this,” Firian said. “It’s easier to start a fire than it is to stop one. Just get to safety.”

I made one final effort, spreading my hands. I created this fire. I own this fire. I can control it. I can end it. I’m not afraid.

“Stop!” I shouted.

All the force of the magic came at me in a rush that punched me like a hurricane force wind back at Firian. I slammed into him and we both were blown halfway up the wall, and then I fell. I saw stars, my body hit the ground hard, and…

Next thing I knew, I was waking up in an infirmary with bandages on my arm and head. It was an airy room that looked like a World War 1 hospital in a movie: my bed was an iron frame with white sheets and a tall old window was behind me, while curtains gave us some privacy. Firian was sitting in a chair next to me with some scratches and bruises.

“What happened? Is everyone okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, everyone’s okay,” Firian said. “Does your arm hurt?”

“I feel pretty bruised, but…”

“Good. They don’t think you broke anything.” His brows furrowed. “Where did you get that kind of power?”

“You tell me!”

“I don’t understand it,” he said. “That wasn’t normal.”

“And you don’t know anything about it? Aren’t you supposed to be my support in all this?”

“I don’t know everything!” he said. “Not if someone made a bargain, or— Well, I don’t know.” He cut himself off quickly.

“What do you mean, a bargain? Like a deal with the devil? Does this have something to do with my mom turning bad?”

“I don’t like to say ‘bad’,” Master Blair said, walking past the privacy curtains. So much for privacy curtains. He could have knocked first. When he looked at me, I saw a little glimmer of excitement in his eyes that made me nervous.

“But it is a little bit bad,” Stuart added. “Not your mother, that is, but the situation. We’ve just gotten a message—”

Master Blair waved his pessimism off. “Charlotte,” he interrupted, sweeping over to me in his fresh, un-burnt, freshly pressed black suit. “That power you displayed was simply amazing. You are destined for great things. I know it. As long as we keep you on the right side of history, that is. I’m glad you’re here with me and not the witches. You have the sort of power that is not meant for a witch’s subtlety, but for raw force.” He spoke with such excitement that I was afraid he’d get saliva on me while I was trapped in bed.

“But also, Samuel Caruthers is dead,” Stuart said.

I sat up straight so fast that my arm throbbed with pain. “What?”

“It’s true,” Master Blair said, immediately sobering. “He died during his trip to Australia. We just heard.”

“Ohh—I—I hoped I would get to meet him and ask him why I’m here…” I turned away from Master Blair, who had a vaguely manic gleam in his eyes. “Am I in danger? How did he die?”

“We’ll let you know when we know,” Stuart said.

“I put in an immediate request to the council for his personal affects to be sent to the school when they’re returned to the country,” Master Blair said. “Charlotte, I think these two events may be connected. I think that your esteemed relative set up a channel to you. When he died, it is possible that you inherited his powers. He was powerful enough to do that. The effort to do so might have weakened him and led to his death. Maybe he wanted it that way. We need to see if he left anything behind for you.”

“I’ve never even met him!”

“It doesn’t matter. The great Caruthers family is in danger of dying out. You’re his blood. He saw something in you. That’s my theory, but we shall see. Maybe you are meant to be a sans pareil, and if so, you’re in the right place.”

I saw my dad’s worried face when I left for Merlin College instead of a normal university. My arm throbbed. But I think what scared me most was the look in Master Blair’s eyes.

“I think that Charlotte needs to be alone right now,” Firian said, in a low, serious voice. “She’s hurt. She’s inhaled a lot of smoke. And all of this is new to her. Come back later.”

Master Blair looked at him. “It isn’t your place.”

“If you rush her, what will that drive her to?” Firian said, not backing down.

“Ignatius, I’m going to start cleaning the office,” Stuart said, opening a closet and taking out a mop bucket.

A male nurse walked over and opened the curtains wide. He had a cart with some medicines and stuff. “You can check on Charlotte later,” he said. “She is still a female. She needs her rest.”

Master Blair nodded and rose, although I wasn’t sure I liked the turn this had taken. As they were leaving, Montague came striding in with some flowers in a vase. Wow, word spread fast and I couldn’t help but feel excited that a guy was bringing me flowers already. He ran into Master Blair and Stuart in the middle of the room.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Xarra,” Master Blair said. “Charlotte needs her rest, I think.”

“Good afternoon to you, sir. I hope she’ll rest well, and that’s why I brought her some flowers to soothe her sleep,” Montague said, smooth on the surface but with underlying tension.

“Oh, she won’t be staying in the infirmary,” Stuart said. “She’s fine. Nothing broken, just a little sprain.”

“Then, she can bring the flowers to her room,” Montague said. Hmm. He didn’t like Master Blair. I was starting to wonder if I could trust the head of the school.

Montague nodded at Firian in the most cursory way, probably because Firian was glaring at him, and put the flowers on my bedside table while the nurse was mixing some medicine into a cup. The nurse kept an eye on Montague the entire time. Montague looked at my forehead. The nurse immediately wiped my forehead off with a cloth. “You shouldn’t be in this place, vampire.”

Ohhh. Right. Blood. No wonder everyone seemed upset that he’d come here.

“I am a warlock, not a monster,” Montague said, but his mouth suddenly had these very glaring fangs. “Charlotte, I came as soon as I heard.”

“Thanks. It sounds like everything’s okay except the books Professor Jablonsky threw out the window.” I tried to make light of it, because as it turns out, setting things on fire in real life is not as much fun as it is in Fortune’s Favor.

The nurse gave me some nasty smelling medicine. “Drink this and you can go,” he said. He steered the cart away toward the hall, still looking back at Montague. I suddenly considered just how many beds this infirmary had. I felt like there might be more down the hall. Half the population of the school could sleep here. Hmm.

“I think someone’s watching you,” Montague whispered. “From the woods.”

“Watching me? Oh, of course…pile it on. Did you hear that Samuel Caruthers is dead?”

“No.”

“You’ve only been here for twenty-four hours. This doesn’t bode well,” Firian said. “Why do you think someone’s watching her?”

“I caught a rustle and a scent in the woods. Right after I sent you off to orientation,” Montague said. “It could be a demon. And here I thought you were here just to drive us to madness with your charm, Charlotte.” He gave me a wicked twist of a smile.

I wasn’t sure I should take Montague seriously, but he was the only person looking out for me right now, besides my familiar. It sounded like I needed all the help I could get. He was also undeniably attractive, even with fangs. Especially with fangs, even. And I didn’t think I was that kind of girl. But I guess there was something primal in the idea of a guy wanting to drink the life out of me. No one had ever looked at me the way he did, and even if I knew it wasn’t personal, it wasn’t without a certain charm either. My eyes trailed down to his sleeve, rolled up to show his forearms, his skin a light warm brown that seemed too healthy to belong to a vampire.

Still, I knew how cold his skin was.

“So who is this demon?” I asked.

“If I knew, I would tell you. But—I’ll find out. I just want you and your familiar on your guard. Don’t leave her side,” he told Firian.

“I was definitely not planning on leaving her side. I hear there are vampires at this school,” Firian shot back.

“Still…am I right to be nervous?” I looked at them both. “Master Blair looked way too excited that I set his office on fire. He said Samuel might have left his powers to me. Like maybe he planned his death? But what if…he didn’t, and whoever killed him is coming for me next?”

No one had a chance to reassure me. Harris suddenly stormed through the doorway. “Monty, what the hell?” he said, giving me a look of disgust.

“She was hurt!”

“She hurt herself. Look at her face.”

My face? I touched my cheeks. I had no idea there was anything wrong with my face. My fingers came away with green ointment on them. “Gah!”

“Oh, by the way, hot candle wax exploded on your face and there are dabs of green ointment all over it,” Firian said. “Luckily, it wasn’t too bad and it’s already healing up. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop vampires from flirting with you.” He handed me a handkerchief.

“We’re leaving,” Harris said. “I hope those flowers didn’t come from you.”

“So much for gentlemanly conduct,” Montague said. “I am the only person in this school who brought flowers or asked concern for the welfare of the only lady here.”

“You’re already enough of a pariah,” Harris said. “No one is going to associate with you this year if you support the attendance of a witch.”

“Too late.” Montague stood up. “I’m a vampire now. I’ve already ruined my reputation. And as soon as your parents find out we’re still friends, I know you’ll drop me too. I might as well cast my lot in with a fellow outcast; at least she looks good in the uniform.”

“She’s a nice piece of ass, but she’s a witch. We should be meeting her at a ball.” He looked at my appalled face. “It’s what everyone’s thinking, okay? You just proved that you can’t handle warlock magic, but you are a nice piece of ass.”

I threw off the blankets and lunged at him. Montague barely held me back.

“Master Blair doesn’t think I can’t handle warlock magic. He thinks I could be a sans pareil. I’m going to show you.”

“A sans pareil? Yeah? I’m really looking forward to our demon summoning contest now.”

I forgot about that whole thing. “Yeah, me too,” I said. “My demon is going to take a piece of your ass, carve it up, and eat it for dinner.”

“You are going to botch this and get banned from performing magic by the council,” he said smugly, which showed me that realistic threats were actually much more effective than trash talk. Aw, damnit.

“You two are not going through with this,” Montague said. “It’s too dangerous. There’s already something afoot. You’re my best friend, and Charlotte is a lady I’ve been developing a considerable affection for considering the length of our acquaintance.”

“You’ve been getting really pretentious since you became a vampire,” Harris said. “And if summoning a demon wrecks your developing affection for Charlotte, I’ll consider that a bonus. Come on, we have classes.”

“I was always pretentious.” Montague kissed my hand. “Take care of yourself.”

Once they left, Firian crossed his arms. “I’m glad you’ve learned to stand up for yourself. I was this close to scorching him with some flames of my own. You also have class, by the way, if you want to attend. Dean Blair suggested you just sit and observe the first week. Professor Jablonsky said you can just rest today if you want. We could get in some Fortune’s Favor uninterrupted…”

“I can’t look like I’m a poor weak girl who can’t handle class on my very first day,” I said. “Though I do need a change of clothes and…I definitely need to get this ointment off my face!”

“Whatever you wish,” Firian said, but I think my familiar had definitely been enjoying the life of a slacker.

I had until the end of the year to learn how to control my magic, to hopefully figure out why I was here and what happened to Samuel Caruthers, and most especially, to summon a demon. I wasn’t going to spend time doing magic in a game until I got my real life magic straightened out.

Chapter Fourteen

Firian

The thing about losing someone is that it doesn’t always come with a big tearful goodbye. Sometimes the person is right there in front of you, unaware of what’s even happened.

I was so afraid of losing Charlotte.

She didn’t even realize, of course. I’d been in the background all this time. I was the fox who sat in the bushes. When I was a kit, I watched her play in her kiddie pool. (Well, maybe that wasn’t the best memory to bring up first. We were the same age, but it still sounds creepy. She played in it a lot when she was little, that’s all.) I watched her dad grill steaks, and toss me one when she wasn’t looking. I watched her sit on the back deck reading. I watched her take walks where she admired spring flowers and walks where she moped and stared at her phone.

Usually, she had no idea I was around, but if she spotted me, I was just a regular old fox, wary of humans. Her dad kept me updated on her life.

It was a really strange way for a familiar to live, so I didn’t talk to the other familiars in Etherium much. I wasn’t ashamed of Charlotte, of course. She was a good person. Kind-hearted, with inner reserves of strength that kids who lost a parent often had, but also very fun. I knew the other familiars and their witches would judge her for various reasons. She slouched, she dressed like a slob, she used words like “fuck” and “mansplaining” that witches were too ladylike and old-fashioned to say, she sometimes crammed an entire muffin in her face. She spent way too much time on the computer, which was where I really got to know her. By the sickly blue light of a computer screen at three o’ clock in the morning when we were fighting dragons with a dwarven healer from Singapore, I thought, Doesn’t she need to go to high school tomorrow?

Familiars, they say, grow and adapt alongside their humans, the way trees grow low and bent by a steady ocean breeze or twisted around a rock face. I existed because of Charlotte, and in a large sense it was my job to be what she needed me to be. Even though we weren’t close like other witches and familiars, I still grew around her. I couldn’t fight my nature. Not that I’d really tried. I also liked shoving an entire muffin in my face.

The tragedy, in my mind, is that she didn’t fully appreciate what I meant to her. She had never needed protection before, or help casting spells. I could already tell she was used to doing things on her own and it wasn’t in her nature to seek my help, the way other witches would. A good instinct on her part, because she was too old for a familiar anyway.

But I couldn’t stand the idea of being shunted aside.

And on the flip side, she didn’t understand that I was supposed to be shunted aside. She saw me as a person, not a familiar. I could see why some familiars urged their witches to turn dark, addicted to the heady power of being human.

I would go rogue politely. I wasn’t going to let Charlotte turn into a sinistral. Job number one was keeping her safe for her dad, who was as important to me as she was, the way it had worked out.

Still, being a familiar in the real world at this age wasn’t easy. Everywhere we went, guys were staring me down. And now, Charlotte was stepping into her first class.

We had to walk a ways down the tree-lined paths of the campus. I kept track of her schedule for her. “Your first class is Necromancy and Dark Arts,” I said.

“Ooh. I should be good at that, if I really got magical powers from Samuel Caruthers, right? When is Potions class?”

“There is no potions class.”

“There isn’t? Damn.”

“You know Alan Rickman won’t be teaching the class, right?”

“May he rest in peace, Firian.” She rolled her eyes. “I just think the idea of making a potion sounds fun. What are the classes?”

“Literature.”

“Literature?”

“Well, warlocks and witches learn normal stuff as well, and they have their own canon of great works. Then you have a break in there for lunch. Then Magical History, then Enchantment and Illusion, then Theurgy. That’s it.”

“What’s theurgy?”

“Summoning and communicating with higher spirits.”

“There are a lot of types of magic left out.”

“Oh, you think? And what do you know about real magic?”

“Well, what about divination? Surely that’s a thing.”

“Mostly, the other forms are for women. Women specialize in healing, divination, and enchantment. Both sexes learn theurgy and glamours. Later, you might learn alchemy and conjuring and more elemental skills. The dark arts and enchantment classes are going to have a heavy focus on defense. They won’t teach you any dark magic, obviously, but they will teach you to speak to the dead.”

She paused. I could see her pondering the entire scope of life and death and afterlife and the mysteries of the universe in the space of a moment. Her dad wasn’t religious and she’d never lost anyone really close to her. She’d never confronted existential questions.

“Hey,” I said. “Don’t freak out. It’ll be okay. They’ll take it slow.”

“I’m not freaking out.”

“You have your freaking out face.”

“You don’t know my faces.”

I do, though, I thought. Charlotte was my witch. She didn’t know just how well I knew her. It wasn’t just from watching her. It was woven through my entire being. I knew when she was sad and when she was scared.

She took a deep breath. “I want to curl up with a blanket and watch baking shows all day.”

“Fortune favors the bold,” I said. “Not just in video games.”

Her face took on a more determined look.

We headed for the class. It was inside a stately brick building, of course, and up steep stairs. If anyone in a wheelchair had ever attended this school, I don’t know how they managed. But I thought I already knew the answer to that. Merlin College was not for anyone with any perceived weaknesses, unless that weakness was a desire to blow stuff up or summon demons. I didn’t trust any of these privileged little assholes, and even I was shocked by how stuck in the past this place was. My protective instincts were bristled at all times. I knew I should go to Etherium for Charlotte’s own good, but I wasn’t sure I could ever relax there again. She needed me.

We were slightly late. The door was shut. A gold plaque marked it as the Necromancy and Dark Arts room. I opened the door for her, and stepped back. Dread rose in me at the thought of walking in there with about twenty unknown dudes. The second Charlotte walked in, every head shifted to watch her.

Charlotte was cute. I’d noticed that, even if I shouldn’t. She was of average size, neither short nor tall, with appealing curves, a little stomach pudge, and…very flexible. Sometimes she did yoga on the back deck. She didn’t usually mess with her appearance much, which any familiar would prefer. I spent too much time in the woods living life as a fox to care about human appearances. Charlotte would have made a really cute fox. Ponytail, brown eyes, explosive little laugh, healthy appetite: that was my Charlotte.

I shouldn’t be thinking about her like that. It was only because all these other guys were around suddenly, making me possessive.

Being attracted to your witch was a huge taboo. In the magical community, it was one hundred percent normal to date your cousin but akin to a first-degree offense to notice that your witch had a really adorable smile. So I would keep that thought to myself. Maybe it was because I’d had to keep so much of a distance from her. We didn’t have that brother-sister relationship familiars and witches usually did. Instead, I’d watched over her from afar, and she seemed a little untouchable.

Yeah, and also, I probably shouldn’t have agreed to become her girlfriend/boyfriend in an online RPG.

Stupid.

The guys, despite being well-dressed warlocks, were still acting like guys everywhere. They were checking her out, giving each other looks, snickering a little in a private way. Then they noticed me behind her and the ogling turned more nasty. I heard some whispers, and a couple of not-so-much-whispers. “A familiar…” “She brought her familiar…” “Weird looking dude.”

Alec and Harris were both in the class, sitting together, and I found myself actually missing Montague. At least he treated her decently, even if a little too decently. Harris, at least, didn’t leer or whisper, but he looked disdainful. Alec, well, he was an incubus. Whatever he said, dangling a single woman in front of an incubus was a bad idea. He looked at her like he wanted to do things to her, as he always did, and she glanced back at him and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

Ugh.

There was one empty seat at the back of the room. It was obviously for her. She sat down, and I stood in the back against the wall. I fully expected what came next.

The teacher was your classic dark arts/necromancy guy. He was tall, a little skeletal, in a funereal suit complete with waistcoat and watch chain, disheveled black hair. He looked about forty, which meant he was probably sixty. He had a sort of pained look on his face. “Familiar,” he said, waving a thin, pale hand. “I think you had best go.”

“I won’t say anything,” I said. “But Charlotte is untrained, so I’m watching over her for this first week or so.” I knew setting a time limit on my presence might help calm everyone down, but I already had no intention of leaving.

A few guys laughed again. They were going to drive her to send me away in no time.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” Harris hissed at her.

“I’ll get to bed early tonight,” she said. “Where’s Montague?”

“He takes alchemy in this period,” Alec said in his low voice. “Vampires can’t take the necromancy class.”

“I am Professor McGuinness, and…I have just been informed about the death of one of our most…distinguished alumni…Samuel Caruthers.” He sounded breathless with agony. “Mr. Caruthers and I were students together. It was a brief, but treasured time in my life. He was the most talented young man at school at that time. And so charismatic, our Samuel. I remember those days like a Merchant Ivory film…like a dream. Excuse me, gentlemen.” He left the room.

There was a general grumbling. Some guys looked back at Charlotte again.

“Man, I didn’t know Samuel Caruthers was gay,” said one boy with a buzz cut—the only such severe hairstyle in the room—and the look of someone who stirred trouble just for fun.

Charlotte hesitated only a second before saying, “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Nah. Just saying.”

“‘Just saying’, why? Do you know if he was gay?”

“Well—“

“You think Professor McGuinness is gay because he’s sad his friend died? And it matters, for some reason?”

“I—I dunno—“

“Then that whole comment was pointless, wasn’t it?” She tossed her head away from the boy. “Samuel Caruthers was my family.”

I could practically smell the bristling of a room of boys who had never had their world challenged before.

“You didn’t know him, did you?” Harris said. “I thought you didn’t even know about magic.”

“No, but maybe I would have liked to have known him.”

Left unattended, the guys started leaving their chairs and getting closer to her like a circling pack. “So how did you get in here? Doesn’t make any sense.”

“They’re going to let a girl do warlock spells?”

“I heard you and Harris got into it at the restaurant.”

“We didn’t get into it,” Harris said. “We just made a little bet.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I don’t think she can handle summoning a demon.”

“Ohhh.” “Definitely not.” “She’ll probably fall in love with the demon.” Someone shoved Alec. “Here’s a demon for you right here.”

Alec ignored the shove except for his eyes, which took a hard turn toward the shover. “Too late,” he said. “I have already been summoned.”

“Don’t make this about Alec,” Harris said. “He’s one of us. But this girl, on the other hand…needs to go to Morgana like a good little witch. I don’t think we should be bending the rules for her.”

I could see Charlotte’s shoulders shiver just a little. They were making her nervous. She was bullied in middle school, so I was afraid she knew this feeling. Charlotte had an inner strength that kept her steady through a lifetime of her dad’s anxiety, and that allowed her to cast a hell of an impressive fire spell—which she’d get much better at containing with a little practice. In fact, I’d bet part of their cruelty to her stemmed from jealousy. They knew she was going to be a force to reckon with. And witches didn’t play with fire.

But right now, she was just one girl thrown into a strange world, surrounded by unfriendly faces. The one family member who might have answered her questions had just died. Hints of future danger had already surfaced.

How was I just supposed to sit back and observe?

“She’s here to stay,” I said. “Like it or not. And I’ll be watching every moment. If any of you hurt Charlotte, I won’t hesitate to involve myself. You can snicker all you like. It won’t protect you from our magic. Or my jaws.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes,” I said. “I must say, the way you’re all jeering at her is so…revealing.”

“I don’t like the way you talk, familiar,” one of them said.

Harris scoffed. “No, the fox is right. Fighting with them is stupid. I maintain that Charlotte doesn’t belong here. But I will go through the proper channels.”

It was probably a good thing that Professor McGuinness returned just then, looking more composed. If I got into a fight with warlocks on my own initiative, the council would probably be having a word with me.

Chapter Fifteen

Charlotte

“I’m sorry. I was very shocked by that news. The truth is, Samuel Caruthers was one of the greats. In the history of magic, he was the only white necromancer we’ve seen in a century. To be a white necromancer is to maintain an impossible balance. To deal with the dead, without succumbing to the temptations of darker forces…well, that is something special. But…I hear you are related, Miss Byrne?”

“I never met him,” I said. “I’ve never met any of the Caruthers. I really wish I had, but…I don’t even remember my mom. But Master Blair suggested that maybe Samuel wanted his power to go to me when he died.”

“Yes…I have reviewed your file,” Professor McGuinness said. “The strange thing is, I remember when you came here to take your test. Or—a boy who looked just like you, anyway. You were recommended by Samuel…”

“Are we so sure that Samuel Caruthers was a white necromancer?” Harris asked.

“What?” Professor McGuinness looked offended. “You, of all people, should know his reputation!”

“I know he’s a famous student of Merlin,” Harris said. “But he was considered at risk of turning dark. He was drawn to necromancy. And why is no one asking why Charlotte is a girl, recommended to this school by Samuel, who then immediately dies?”

“We are looking into it,” Professor McGuinness said. “We’re not idiots. But in the meantime, Master Blair wants to keep Charlotte under our protection. We could send her to the witches, but then her power would be in their hands.”

“That’s fine by me,” Harris said. “She’s a witch. She already proved that she can’t handle our magic. She burned down a building!”

“It was just one room,” I said.

“Enough,” Alec said, looking at me. “You’ve made your point, Harris.”

Okay, so we had thoroughly established that I didn’t belong here. Finally, we started moving on.

“In honor of Samuel, today’s lesson will be about a spell that he always found particularly fascinating,” Professor McGuinness said. “And, as it so happens, we might even have evidence of his fascination with us today in the form of Charlotte. It has to do with magical trades. When it comes to dealing with darker forces, especially demons or the undead, you will undoubtedly encounter a trade. This occurs when a demon asks you to give them something in exchange for a favor. The first rule of trades is like the first rule of drugs: Just. Say. No.” He wrote that on the board and underlined it.

One boy raised his hand in a very measured sort of way.

“Yes, Irving?”

“I don’t think that’s the rule anymore. I just read an article in Four Elements magazine about how warlocks in Europe are using ecstasy—“

“Thank you, Irving, but you know what I’m trying to get at. Please remember, your professors are old. We can’t keep up. Someday you’ll be old too and you won’t be able to keep up either. And I hope you’re not taking ecstasy. That is not allowed on campus, no matter what they’re doing in Europe. Anyway, my point: do not make a trade with a demon or a dead spirit. Not unless you are experienced enough to teach this class and even then, maybe not.”

“What if an ethereal spirit wants to make a trade?” Irving asked. I guess he was the facts and questions kid.

“They rarely do. Because trades are tricks. Remember that. Trades…are…tricks.” He waved a pencil like a baton.

I raised my hand. “Why was Samuel so interested in trades, then?”

“Well…Samuel was very skilled, of course. But he also just died, so…I would take his life course as a warning.”

“What sort of trades?” Alec asked.

“Demons and the dead aren’t just going to ask for some extra garden mulch or old children’s books,” Professor McGuinness said, indicating to me that warlocks totally had freecycle groups. “They will ask for things that are supremely precious to you, or they’ll ask for things that are crucially important to them.”

“Are all dead people dangerous?” I asked.

“All the ones that ask for things,” he said.

“What if the thing they’re offering you is worth it?” Alec asked.

“It’s not worth it,” the professor said, in a very honest voice that made Alec nod soberly.

He had us run through some potential scenarios, like a demon asking for your first child. The boy he called on suggested he just wouldn’t have any children. Professor McGuinness suggested several ways this could turn out to be a trick, from a child you didn’t know you had to an accidental pregnancy later on to a beloved pet that you refer to as “your child”.

“It sounds like something out of a fairy tale,” I said. “You have to be careful of how you use your words.”

“That’s exactly right,” he said. “Even with ethereal spirits, you need to be careful. They will have good intentions, but they don’t always take things the way you intend them. They expect you to keep bargains. Speak clearly and mindfully with all magical beings.”

I waited until after the class was over but lingered in my chair, pretending to look at my schedule and dig in my backpack until the guys all filed out—with a few more nasty or lusty looks.

“Charlotte, did you want to talk to me about something?” Prof. McGuinness asked, shutting the door behind them.

“Yes.” I shrugged. I didn’t really know who I could or should talk to in this place, but I felt like it definitely wasn’t Master Blair. “I was just curious. How does a warlock give their powers to someone else? Is that a type of trade?”

“You mean, why did Samuel give his powers to you? That’s not a trade, Charlotte. It’s a gift.”

“But why? And why would he have been killed right now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is there a way to ask him, even after he’s dead?”

“You’ll have to keep attending class,” he said. “But I’ll say this. Summoning the dead isn’t something you just do casually. Even white necromancy is very draining on the caster. It will cause you pain and weakness. It might hurt him, too.”

Firian glanced at me nervously. “You’d better get to your next class.”

“Ahem. I need to know this stuff.” Sometimes Firian was a little too bossy.

Still, I was really glad he was there.

Chapter Sixteen

Charlotte

So I ate lunch with Firian. Then Magical History, where I was completely lost, as they were talking about stuff that happened in the 1600s and I had never heard of any of these events, like the “Savannah Pirate Raid” (in 1925! I wrote down “Jazz Pirates”) or some alliance between French warlocks in Quebec and Native American warlocks and the Good Witches of the Colonies. I couldn’t even remember who was with or against who. I perked up whenever Salem was mentioned because my brain went, I know what that is!

Otherwise it was a blur.

Then we had Enchantment and Illusion, where everyone was learning the finer points of making enchanted clothes appear on their bodies, and Theurgy, which I needed to be good at so I could show up Harris and his stupid demon summoning.

Since the year was just getting started, all the classes were mostly talk and overview, but I could tell it was going to take a lot of hard work and deep concentration. By the end of the day, I was utterly spent. There was so much to absorb in a magic class.

Luckily, I was good at those things. I was awesome at yoga. I mean, not to brag, but you know how people are usually like, oh, I need to do more yoga? Well, I really do it. Every day. For an hour. All alone, no classes or anything, just me and a very old yoga VCR tape. It used to be my mom’s.

I guess that might have something to do with my yoga discipline. Dad said that Mom used to do baby yoga with me and it was possible the yoga tape became some sort of surrogate for my mom. If I put it that way, it didn’t sound worth bragging about at all…

But if yoga was sort of like magical training, maybe that was why she did it with me. She bound my powers, but I wonder if some part of her actually wanted me to be a witch someday.

Thinking about Mom hurt. I always wondered why she left, and Dad’s explanations were vague. I probably should have been more upset at him for lying to me, but instead I just felt angry at her for abandoning him.

And me.

For dark magic? What a stupid reason. The more I thought about it, the more I felt insulted that they had even put me in the dorm for potential dark warlocks. I wasn’t interested.

I actually had trouble concentrating on yoga that night, even though Alec was out. Probably because I didn’t have my VCR tape. I knew every move by heart, obviously, but it was part of my ritual to hear the voice of the instructor say, “Be where you are, because you’re already there…”

The rest of the week passed without too much incident, as these things go. I went to class. I felt constantly confused and was assigned twenty tons of books to read to help me catch up. Alec was hot enough to leave me eternally flustered but he was a quiet sleeper. And also, quiet while he was awake, which is more than I could say for a lot of the other guys. They made sexual jokes about me in the dining hall, until Firian snapped, turned into a fox, and bit one of them on the arm.

I called Dad and didn’t cry. Well, I didn’t cry much.

Okay, I didn’t ugly cry. I just cried in a normal way.

I just felt very out of place, almost like I was attending school with aliens. They weren’t just boys, they were culturally in another world. They had completely different concerns than the kids at my high school. They were rude to me, but also very formal. They knew very little about pop culture. Some were devoted to the ‘old ways’, which seemed Wiccan. They had their own little rituals and rules. Others went to the campus chapel on Sunday. Montague told me most warlocks in St. Augustine were Catholic.

“Just think about the Vatican,” he said. “Doesn’t it seem kind of warlocky with all the mysteries and gold and rituals?”

The school also had a handful of Jewish and Hindu students, plus two brothers who followed the Nordic gods. It was all kept very private. This was very different from my high school where we had a lot of devout Evangelical kids who were always battling with Kayleigh Patterson the loud atheist girl, plus a tight contingent of hippies who lived in the dome house community on one of the mountains. My high school was full of opinions, whereas Merlin College had this upper-crust boarding school feel where ‘opinions’ were not very polite, unless they were old-fashioned.

The warlocks were surprisingly multicultural, as a whole. Firian said that power had always been divided up differently in the magical world, and interracial marriage had never been taboo. But they were as classist as the cast of Downton Abbey; any naive hope in my mind that a utopian world was possible if people from all around the world joined hands was dashed by one week at Merlin College.

Over the weekend, where I was totally trapped there, the history teacher pulled me aside into his empty classroom and told me that he’d heard my familiar had bitten Guillame de Brigue, who I guess was somebody from the de Brigue witch family.

“De Brigue blah blah,” I snapped. “He told me I should wear skirts more often.”

The history teacher Professor Gruben, a white-haired man who always wore a hat outside but removed it when he entered a room, said, “Well, you are a young lady, so he’s probably right about that.”

“This is the uniform!”

“Oh.” He sniffed. “We can’t get you anything more feminine?”

“How old are you, anyway!?”

“One hundred and ten, my dear, not that it’s any of your business.”

There was no use arguing with him, that seemed obvious. One hundred and ten? I hadn’t even been able to get my Grandma to acknowledge that my short haircut in seventh grade was pretty adorable because she thought girls should have long hair.

Firian made a low growling sound. “I’m this close to taking you out of this school,” he said, in a voice that made the old man’s sagging eyes snap open.

“Young lady, you need to be careful about this familiar you have staying so close to your side. I will not have a repeat of the scandals that have plagued other communities. If familiars should have sexual relations with the witches, we have trouble,” he said, waving a bony finger at me.

My cheeks must have caught fire. Especially the way he said it, which conjured up an image of Firian…doing things to me. “We’re not.” I laughed nervously. “We play computer games together. We’re nerds. Friends. Friends without any benefits ever.”

“Friends is almost as bad!”

“Sir, she understands,” Firian said. He gave me a hard look. He wanted me to just take the advice and go, I think. I nodded nervously and left the room. We stepped outside into the sun, a brisk mountain wind making me quickly button my sweater.

“I’ve heard the story of your grandmother’s familiar,” he said. “When your grandmother was stricken from the record, her familiar married a human. She became a human, basically. Sometimes, when witches leave the community, their familiars join them, and then all the other familiars stop saying their name. But even that’s not as bad as when a familiar and a witch…”

“I get the picture, Firian. One hundred percent. And it’s fine. We’re not like that anyway. We had a little thing going on in the game, but it was really tame.”

“Definitely.” He cast me a furtive look. “I shouldn’t have even done that. Just needed to get to know you. That was my job.”

“Right. My fox stalker.”

He had a weird look on his face.

I wondered if that was really all. If he really had no feelings for me. Because, on my end…

I wasn’t sure. It was pretty strange to think he’d been watching me since I was a kid, and that he was born from my magic. I could see why the witch community frowned on that. That had to be either incestuous or maybe even narcissistic, like falling in love with a piece of your own self.

Still, Firian was definitely his own person. I was comfortable around him as if I’d known him forever, but he was also extremely mysterious to me. My stomach squirmed.

“Charlotte.” Montague came strolling by while I was standing on the path, feeling scolded and unsure what to do.

“Oh…hey.”

“You look distressed. I expect weekends can be difficult, being so far from your father…” He gave me a rather gallant expression, and I was charmed. Then I realized Alec was standing behind him on the path, keeping his distance.

He took a deep breath and Montague turned toward him. “You can’t avoid her forever. She’s your roommate.”

“I didn’t know you were actually avoiding me,” I said.

“I can’t…harm you. But I definitely want to…” He said the last bit under his breath, but I heard it. I also got the feeling that by ‘harm’, he actually meant ‘send into a stratosphere of carnal delight that we might regret later’.

I mean, every time I walked away from Alec, I forgot just how hot he was. Then when he re-entered my vision, my brain was practically locked down by the mere sight of his gorgeous mouth. He looked smart with his sophisticated glasses, but also…like some sort of beautiful demon prince with eyes like low flames and arms corded with muscle.

“Alec,” Montague said, sweeping an arm around my shoulders. “You know you want to gaze upon her beauty. You know it will be the most delicious torture you can imagine. Let’s teach her to roller skate.”

“Uggh, Monty, you’re killing me…” He rubbed his forehead just above his sexy glasses. “You’re not the one who has been cursed to need sex.”

“You’re right. I have no idea what it’s like to be cursed to need anything that I will never really have,” Montague said dryly. “If I can handle day-old blood from a pouch, you can handle getting to know your roommate. It’s what Master Blair wanted. You’re half human. Just focus on the half of you that is a nineteen-year-old human boy and therefore, entirely capable of chastity and reserve.” He smirked.

“This seems like a bad idea to me,” Firian said.

“I am not surprised you’d say that, Firian,” I said. “But…I’m up for anything that gets my mind off my troubles right now. Let’s go.”

Chapter Seventeen

Alec

Damn Monty. I knew he was into this girl. He was obvious about it, too. I was trying very hard not to be.

Two years ago, Montague was just a normal guy, with an uneventful life. Harris and Montague and I all attended the same academy, one of the top schools for students to move on to the most exclusive universities. He was the fun-loving friend who knitted me and Harris together, the guy who owned an over-the-top car and dragged us out to do something wild like going into town to go to the human mall and order fast food.

I know, the definition of “wild” among warlock high school students was a little strange. Going to the mall was about on par with summoning a low level demon.

Harris would pretend to hate it, and I would be exploding with my incubus instincts at the sight of all the human girls. I mean, I fucking loved it, deep down. I was never satisfied, but it was something, even though I had to jack off in the bathroom and take an extra “tonic”, the one that was supposed to calm all that down.

Montague was different now. I’d realized that the day we all reunited in our new dorm. He’d become more serious. We all knew what happened to vampires, in the end. They started remembering things that had happened to their sire. Eventually their memories traced back to their sire’s sire, until they found an end: the oldest living vampire in the line. That vampire is their master, their lord.

It was hard to tell, because he was acting more like a model warlock and the teachers all seemed to think he was just growing up, but Harris and I knew better. Monty was supposed to be our party friend.

Something was going on in that head of his. His eyes grew so distant at times that he hardly seemed to hear what I was saying. I was afraid to know.

I was hoping Charlotte would be good for him. He needed something else to focus on.

That’s good, I thought. I’m definitely not dating her or anyone else. I don’t have time to get distracted by that shit. And Harris already has his parents lining up prospects for him. So Monty might as well go for it.

Her familiar was giving me the side-eye and I realized that as I thought about all this, my eyes were taking in every delicious curve of Charlotte’s body, even through the men’s dress shirt that didn’t reveal too much. It was just enough. I didn’t need much. Just the sight of her ponytail flicking across her back as she turned to look at Monty was enough to get me thinking about what I could do to her.

“So you’re planning on hanging around forever?” I asked Firian.

He narrowed his eyes slightly and then faced forward, looking at her.

If I wasn’t mistaken, he was looking at her the same way I was.

Monty led the way to the skating rink. Usually we just treated it like a spot to exercise in the winter. I tried to hit the gym most mornings but sometimes it was more fun to speed around a track. It was left unattended with music playing. Since the school was behind gates and everyone knew everyone else, we could just grab skates in our size and do what we wanted. The bowling alley was the same way.

“Why are there ice skates?” Charlotte asked.

“In winter if it gets cold enough we ice the lake,” Monty said. “We just keep everything here.”

“It’s so quiet.”

“Just us,” Monty said. “But that’s better, isn’t it? I know some of these guys have been jerks to you. Charlotte, what size do you wear?”

“Eight and a half. In men’s it’s a six and a half, if that exists.”

“Will seven work?” He held up a pair and knelt to put it on her.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said, flustered.

“But I want to.” He lifted her leg with one hand, shoving the pants leg up. He made it look accidental but I doubted it was. The sight of her skin was probably making his mouth water.

Or maybe that was just me. He pulled off her shoe and slipped the skate on, tugging the laces. Firian was watching this too, and it had to be killing him. He couldn’t protest too much over male attention on his witch, but I think he wanted to tear us both to pieces.

Charlotte seemed to be enjoying the attention. “I wish I had some french fries or nachos or something, but this is cool, having the place to ourselves.”

“I always wish I had some french fries,” I said. “I get really sick of the gourmet stuff. Monty used to take us to Checkers in his car.”

“You have a car?”

“I sold it,” Monty said quickly. “To pay for expenses.”

He told me that over the phone during the summer, but I wasn’t buying it. “But there are no expenses at Merlin,” I said.

“Well, not school expenses, but life expenses. Just—stuff.” He looked at Charlotte. “Alec’s family is loaded, just like Harris—“

“Not quite like Harris,” I grumbled.

“I’ve seen your house, man,” Monty said.

“So we’re like the scholarship kids,” Charlotte said. “That explains why you’ll stoop to my level.” Her laugh was light and teasing and made my cock twitch a little. I shut my eyes and imagined the faces of the five oldest U. S. senators to dispel my unwanted thoughts. My dad came up with that trick. He had a good sense of humor about his incubus son, at least.

“No. It just so happens that I’m not afraid that a woman will corrupt me and ruin my reputation,” Monty said.

“That’s already happened,” I said. “In Cancun.”

“Well, then, it can’t happen twice,” Monty said, narrowing his eyes at me. “Come on, Charlotte. Let’s hit the rink.”

She put a skate on the surface and then the other. Monty gave one of his feet a faint push and she shrieked, “No! …I mean…um. Ignore that. I’m fine. Let’s just go slow, though.”

“I’m sorry. I like speed. But I’m here for you this afternoon.”

Keeping a firm grip on her arm, he supported her while she got a feel for the skates. Meanwhile, I skated in front of them.

While Charlotte was looking at her feet, I shot him a hard look. I know something’s up.

Monty frowned. I knew what it meant. He’d been able to hide it from us over the summer, and now that we were together, it was obvious. Whatever happened to him at the Haven, he wasn’t just a normal warlock anymore. He was having memories. I could just tell. My stomach dropped. Before long, his sire would call him close.

“You sold your car,” I repeated.

“Yes.”

“If you did have memories, would you tell me?” I barely whispered, as I remembered that vampires had fantastic hearing.

“Nothing to tell,” he murmured.

“Would you tell her?” I whispered.

He gave me the finger before skating off.

“Damnit,” I hissed, as I got up enough speed to let my skates roll down the long side of the rink. “Shit.” We were going to lose him. That was—

That was just a fact. Hardly anyone had the power to stand up to a vampire, and no one who did was going to fight for a guy like Monty.

Maybe Charlotte would keep him tethered here for just a little longer.

He seemed happy with her. For now.

But then, suppose she fell for him? What would happen to her when he was gone?

“Like that,” he said, showing her how to brake.

She messed it up and ended up almost crashing into the wall before he caught her again. “Or I could just stand here and do this, that would probably be less dangerous,” she said, doing a goofy little ass shake and chicken-wing-flap to ‘Brick House’. Rumor was that locked away somewhere in the bowels of the roller rink, its workings hidden like the Wizard of Oz, was a very old iPod that belonged to Master Blair which had been playing a playlist called “Get Down Tonight” for the past ten years, day and night.

I stared. Maybe I liked the playlist after all if it made Charlotte wiggle like that.

She was so…

Cute, I insisted to myself, as much dirtier words flitted across my mind.

I wasn’t sure if I could handle her being Monty’s girlfriend. It wasn’t fair to her. And none of this was fair to me, was it? I was under the impression that I was going to an all-male university, the safest place for an incubus to be. Master Blair put a girl in my room. Test? Test, my ass, that wasn’t what I signed up for.

We had to put a stop to this.

I skated over to Charlotte and Monty.

“You know, this place is making me crave nachos,” Charlotte said. “Which is weird, because I’ve never actually ordered nachos before.”

“Hey, Charlotte? We need to tell you something,” I said.

Monty turned on me. He used to be pretty easygoing, but now his eyes were not just pissed off. They were…a little scary. My powers weren’t that strong, due to the fact that I wasn’t sleeping with anyone. “Yes. We need to tell you that we can easily go back to Lancelot and make some nachos,” he said, in the most sinister tone anyone had ever said the word ‘nachos’. I was sure of that.

This wasn’t a great time for the lights to shut off, replaced by a giant tear of sinister bluish light that slashed across the roller rink like the fabric of hell was being ripped open.

“Yeah—let’s do that!” Charlotte tried to run for her life, clearly forgetting she was wearing roller skates, and wiped out face first.

I looked at Monty. He was looking at the light. He was ready for—something.

Chapter Eighteen

Charlotte

I picked my face up off the rink and turned in time to see a twisted dark creature lunging out of the gate and toward me.

It could best be described as Extremely Terrifying.

I didn’t register much more than that. Huge shadowy dirty fanged growling lunging thing…versus me.

Considering my feet were trapped in roller skates that I didn’t know how to use, my options were limited.

Firian turned into a fox and planted himself between me and the wolf. He bared his cute lil’ teeth. I mean, next to this creature, Firian was nothing. This went about as well as expected. The demon was about one second from slamming into Firian when Montague jumped on him and grabbed the demon’s neck. When he touched it, the demon seemed to solidify a little more. It was sort of halfway between beast, human, and liquid shadow. The air around it had a distinct chill.

“You…I smelled you…the other day…,” Montague said.

Alec lifted his hands and generated a little square of sizzling blue lightning. “Get off him, Monty, I don’t want to electrocute you.”

“No, Alec, you stay back, I’ve…got this,” Montague said, still trying to wrestle the wolf creature to the ground. “Who are you? How’d you get past the school—erggh!” The wolf suddenly reared up onto his hind legs, throwing Montague off, and then it whirled, its eyes glowing red, and ice shot out of its mouth. Montague was frozen where he fell.

“What the hell is this?” Firian sounded nervous, which I guessed was a bad sign since his reason for existing was to aid and protect me.

Alec attacked with his lightning magic. The demon shrugged that off like it was nothing and laughed at Alec. It spoke in an otherworldly voice that almost sounded like male and female voices layered, both of them low and musical. “A celibate incubus… Not likely to scratch the likes of me.”

“I think it’s a pretty strong demon,” Alec panted. “Why? What do you want with us? We’re just students.”

“Some of you are not ‘just’…students…” The demon turned toward me and lunged. It all happened so fast. Clearly I had two choices. I could shout ‘Flyiiing roller skate kick!’ or…I could burn everything down again.

Maybe once I got better on skates, I could try the first, but I ended up going with the fire option.

The demon burst into flames, head to toe. It screamed in this horrible way like an anguished creature and vanished back into the dark portal, which closed behind it. I slumped onto the hard, cold rink, breathing hard.

“I’m sorry. Did I get you guys?”

Alec checked his clothes and hair. “Just a little on the sleeve.” He offered me a hand. ”Let’s get you up, you dangerous girl.” He hauled me to my feet, but then whipped his hand back. Right. We couldn’t touch for long. Meanwhile, Montague was just shaking off the spell that froze him, slowly getting to his feet and rubbing a stiff neck.

“I should’ve just torn his throat out,” Montague said.

“No,” Alec said warningly. “You said you smelled it the other day?”

“Yeah. It was in the woods. I felt as if it was watching Charlotte. But that time, it was behind the gate.”

“There are wards on this school,” Alec said. “A demon shouldn’t be able to get in unless they were summoned.”

I was feeling kind of done with the whole thing. I carefully hobbled off the rink back to the bench to get my regular shoes on. I tore off the laces. Pretty sure I was never going skating again.

Firian sat down beside me and handed me a paper carton with nachos in it. “Here,” he said. “It’s time for Elemental Warlock Char to enjoy the Direwolf’s item drop.”

“Where did those come from?”

“Etherium. They’re not real. They won’t fill you up, I mean. They taste good, though.” He popped one in his mouth.

I ate one, and shoved on my shoes. “So they taste good and they can’t possibly give me heartburn? You could have told me that before.”

“Oh, you don’t want to eat too much Ethereal food,” he said. “Believe me. It’s not quite fae food, but it’ll still mess you up.”

Alec and Montague were speaking in low, tense voices.

“Hey.” I stood up. “You said you had something to tell me before that happened.”

“Yes.” Alec rolled toward me and lifted a foot to take off one skate while balancing on the other foot. I definitely noticed that he had excellent balance, his arm reaching back easily to take off the skate. With a moment, he had them both in his hand and walked over to me in socks. Montague was right behind him, still in skates, which made me snicker because he looked really serious. But there is only so far you can go with looking serious on an old pair of roller skates.

“Alec,” he said.

“She needs to know.”

“You are not going to mess this up for me. I’m fine.”

“What is it?”

“Monty—“

Montague grabbed Alec by his collar and lifted him up. “You’re jealous and you’re ruining this for me. I said I’m fine. I invited you today because we’re friends. But you don’t want a girlfriend, so back off. It’s my business to talk to people about what happened to me when I want to talk about it.” He threw Alec back a little.

“She’s already alone here,” Alec said. “I’m not going to let you hurt her. But you’re also one of my best friends. So if you want to talk about anything—”

“Hey, guys. Time out.” I waved my arms. “I think the demon made you a little crazy. We’re just hanging out and having fun. You don’t need to fight over me—although that is…kind of…enjoyable to watch.”

“Montague is different since he was turned,” Alec said. He took a step closer to me. I put down the nachos as he stood, his broad-shouldered frame haloed by the strings of tiny lights that were laced back and forth on the ceiling. “That’s…all.”

“I’m not different,” Montague said. He huffed and walked over to block Alec from my view a little. “Charlotte…” He knelt on one knee before me, his dark hair falling over his brow. “All it is…”

He was struggling with something. “Yes? Montague, it’s okay. You can tell me.”

“Vampires obtain the memories of other vampires,” he said. “That’s all. It’s nothing. A small moment might trigger a memory from the vampire who sired me, or the vampire who sired him…and so on, through the memories of every vampire in the line still living. Alec is concerned because it has changed me a little. There are brief moments when I forget myself.”

I thought I had seen one of those moments before. And I understood why Alec was concerned.

“I see…”

“You’ll like me better this way,” Montague said. “Becoming a vampire has tamed my immaturity and made a gentleman out of me. Stuart even commented on how adult I seemed after class the other day. You probably wouldn’t like the old me as much in the first place.”

Behind him, Alec still looked unsure. I was skeptical myself. Montague sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

Maybe Alec just missed whoever Montague used to be. Or maybe that wasn’t the end of it.

I’d better be careful around him. It’s hard when he’s the only one willing to spend time with me, but I’ve been getting myself in enough trouble already.

Chapter Nineteen

Charlotte

Since it was the weekend, the teachers were all gathered in their lounge playing what seemed like a rousing game of poker, although it seemed like they were missing their top hats.

“Stuart, you devil,” chuckled Mr. Gruben. “That’s the third of these you’ve won from me, isn’t it?” He shoved a jar of eyeballs toward Stuart, who quietly pocketed them and shrugged.

“I just don’t know where my luck comes from,” Stuart said. “When I was a kid I never won anything. I even enchanted my car in the soapbox derby, and I still lost.”

“I think I’m going to do it,” Professor Gruben said. “I’m betting my cufflinks.”

“Ho!” said Professor Das, who taught Enchantment and Illusions. “Now we’re talking.”

Alec looked incredulous and cleared his throat. They all turned around to the doorway.

“What is it, boys?” Master Blair said. “Oh—yes—and girl. My apologies. I keep messing that up.”

“They look kind of messed up,” Stuart said.

“A demon attacked us,” Alec said. “I have no idea what kind, but the feeling was much more than a normal sinistral. It felt to me like a high demon.”

Montague and Firian nodded, so I also nodded.

“That’s impossible,” Master Blair said. “We have put so many wards on this place, no high demon could break through in a thousand years, unless they were summoned.”

“We certainly didn’t summon anything,” Alec said. “We were trapped in the world of your playlist and I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to summon a demon while listening to disco.”

“If you insult the music of my glory days at Club Owl, I’ll expel you,” Master Blair said. “Well…tell me every detail of this encounter.”

We did our best, under the skeptical expressions of eight men whom I was starting to realize were all much older than they looked.

“I’ll check and double-check the wards,” Master Blair said. “This makes no sense.”

“It has something to do with Samuel’s death!” Professor McGuinness said.

“And her being here,” said Professor Das. “She is bringing trouble with her wherever she goes. She lost control of her fire magic again?” I was especially hurt by this because Professor Das seemed like the most mellow guy here and he had never brought up this stuff in enchantment class.

“Thank you,” I said, in a tight voice. “You forced me to come here, and I was just attacked by a demon when you swore I’d be safe, and now you’re blaming me for causing trouble? I could just go home to my dad. That would be fine with me.”

“She’s right. We aren’t being very nice,” said Professor Adams.

Master Blair got up, walked over to me, and gave me a gallant bow. “Charlotte, I’m so sorry. You’re very right. The last thing I want is for you to feel unsafe here. I’m going to give you an extra warding charm to wear, and we’re going to look into it. If we can get Samuel’s belongings, that might give us a better idea.”

“We should bring this up to the council,” Professor McGuinness said.

“Hsst!” Master Blair waved a hand. “Give me a chance to figure it out before the bureaucracy descends! Charlotte…try to stay in public areas and crowds as much as possible, just in case, until we figure out how this thing got in here.”

“Hmm,” Professor McGuinness said. “There is one way to get past the wards that I can think of. That would be through a blood tie. A blood tie,” he repeated, like he was angry at me, his rather grim face growing more drawn and his tone more ominous.

“You’re saying this in a tone like I should know what you’re talking about, and I don’t,” I said.

“Your grandfather was a werewolf,” he said. “Isn’t that right? You are the child of the witch who married a werewolf.”

“That thing wasn’t a werewolf,” Alec said. “Well…not exactly.”

“It is a bit wolf-like,” Monty admitted.

“‘That thing’ better not have been my grandfather,” I said.

“Let’s put a pin in that,” Master Blair said. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

Chapter Twenty

Charlotte

“You can use my outlet,” Alec said, when we got back to the room. “Just for today. Since you look like you need to relax and I know you enjoy your game.”

We’d parted ways with Montague downstairs. He seemed like he was simmering at Alec for talking about the vampire thing. I hadn’t even had a chance to think about that. Maybe I didn’t need to. It’s not like we’re dating…yet.

I wasn’t sure I actually planned on dating a vampire. Even normal human girls get a pretty thorough fictional education on how well that turns out.

(I mean, hot. It turns out hot. But someone usually dies, or kidnaps you, etcetera. I felt like I was already on track for that sort of outcome without dating a vampire.)

Still, maybe it was just some sort of vampire hunger or teenage boy lust, but I got the feeling Montague was a genuinely fun guy. Whatever happened to him this summer, it must have been pretty traumatic to be turned into a vampire. I felt like I could trust him a little more than anyone else here. Maybe it wasn’t much, but what else did I have?

I kept thinking of him lacing my skates and holding my hand, just having a good time. It felt like a date, despite Firian and Alec being there, but a relaxed kind of date. I shouldn’t have teased him about the roller rink, I thought. That was actually way more fun than just seeing a movie.

But Alec was giving me this deeply concerned look, like he couldn’t take his eyes off me. “You’ll be okay,” he said, in a voice that turned slightly husky. He had beautiful eyes. The slightly reddish color of his pupils didn’t seem strange anymore. It looked natural. And his dark eyebrows framed them so well. If he was half-demon, he looked the part, but it came across more as strength than danger. The sound of his voice and the presence of his tall, solid body in my room—our room—made me feel safe.

“Yeah. I will,” I said. “I should probably call my dad…”

“I wouldn’t,” Firian said, putting a hand on my shoulder. He raised an eyebrow at me. “Let’s forget about this for a night.”

“Firian…are we ever going to tell Dad?”

He paused, and then gave me a twisted, humorless smile. “When it’s all over, we’ll tell him.” He opened my laptop and handed it to me.

I fired up the game. Alec put a fresh canvas on his easel and I realized, despite the detrimental effect of electricity, he was sticking around. That eased my mind, even if he wasn’t as powerful as the demon.

“Okay, kobold hides,” I said.

“Yup.”

“Oh…but did you get the message from Simon about fighting the witch queen?”

He clicked a few times. “Yeah. Oh. That is tonight. We still have time to do this first.”

Pretty soon I was distracted and having a good time on the hunt. It was so nice to do magic with a few clicks of a button and have it all turn out as expected. I cast ‘Magefire’ and didn’t burn down anyone’s office or singe anyone’s uniform. My dark mage dude, with his handsome alabaster face and eyepatch, longbow and bare, muscular arms—oh yeah. He knew what he was doing. He’d never had to fight anyone while wearing roller skates.

At first, I felt a little awkward with Alec around, but pretty soon I was getting into it. “Yes! Get him, get him, get him—yes!”

“In your face, Cerberu,” Firian said.

“Cerberus?” Alec asked.

“Nah, these are like, roaming mini-Cerberuses, so they’re called Cerberu. For whatever random reason.”

“Ah.”

“We need to head over to Pyra Forest preeetty soon,” Firian said.

“Just one more hide…”

“Yeah, I’m going to use Lucian’s Bell.”

“Are you sure?”

“We don’t get to play that often anymore, so might as well go all in.”

Alec added a few dabs of something to his canvas. It was turned away from us, so I didn’t know what he was painting. After a minute, he murmured, “What’s Lucian’s Bell?”

“It’s a rare item that guarantees a rare drop,” Firian said in a monotone as he was getting into the zone.

I was having a little more trouble getting into the zone because of Alec’s presence. His sleeves were rolled up and he had put on a canvas apron to protect his uniform from paint. I was going to put ‘man painting’ right up there with ‘man baking’ as a turn on activity for me. Something about taking a big muscular guy like Alec and placing him in a context where he was slowed down, contemplating a creation…

“Charlotte!” Firian snapped. “I used the bell, so don’t blow it.”

“Yes! On it!”

Alec put down his paintbrush and walked over to watch this unfold.

“I don’t know how you do this and still manage to cast spells,” he said. “I can feel the disruptive energy of these computers filling the room.”

I had no time for that right now. I fought off distraction as I cast one of the better spells in my current arsenal. Firian finished the kobold off. It collapsed and vanished, leaving behind a little icon of a brown hide.

“Of course, Monty used to have a cell phone,” Alec said. “That was worse.”

“That’s it!” I said, grabbing the hide.

“All in a day’s work.” Firian high-fived me. “I think we have time to turn it in before we head over to the forest.”

Alec was still watching as my guy ran around and went to Madame Beale’s Apothecarium.

“So who is this guy?” he asked.

“You mean my character?”

“Is he a character in a novel that you get to enact?”

“Oh, no, you create whatever character you want,” I said. “So Firian’s is the elf girl with the side boob, and this is me. I’m very brooding.”

“I didn’t design the side boob,” Firian said. “There’s a limited number of costumes.”

“Yeah. There is a practical suit of armor, as we’ve discussed,” I said in a you’re-not-fooling-me voice. I glanced at Alec. “You want to make a character? There’s a 30 day free trial. The combinations are endless. When I started out I was a pirate, before I settled on this guy.”

“A pirate?” He paused. “No, no.”

“Are you sure? You sound a little intrigued… I bet you need a break too. It’s the weekend.”

He stood up. “I’m already weaker than the other guys on account of my…tainted blood.” He shrugged. “Not that it’s a problem. I work hard to be stronger.”

“I see that,” I said, trying not to ogle the gorgeous arm that was leaning on the bed beside me after I’d just harassed Firian about side boob.

He drew back with a faint smile. “Sorry. That’s my magic working on you again. Anyway, my dad expects a lot of me. I intend to live up to that expectation. I’m not getting distracted.” He turned his easel around. “How’d I do?”

He had painted the monster, caught in stylized motion like it was leaping at us, teeth bared. He perfectly captured the way its body seemed caught between wolf and man, and the way it seemed to be a part of the shadows, not quite a part of the real world. “Badass!” I said. “It looks like video game concept art. Although…why?”

“I wanted a scene-of-the-crime shot for the professors,” he said. “I won’t put it on the wall if it scares you.”

“A painting doesn’t scare me,” I said. “Maybe it’ll help prepare me for…life here.” I glanced at Firian. I still wasn’t sure about not telling dad, but I realized there was nothing he could do.

It’s still not a great day when you realize that monsters are real, they’re after you, and your own parent can’t do anything about it. But I guess I still slept pretty well that night…sort of…

Chapter Twenty-One

Charlotte

I stepped into the shower and turned on the hot water. Since I’d started sharing my room with Alec, I always felt a little embarrassed when I was in there, because I was surrounded by his preferred shampoo and body wash and stuff. It smelled like his clean body.

The hot water sluiced off me, and I lathered up a wash rag. I thought about Alec standing in this same shower. He was already gorgeous with clothes on. Clothes off, he had to be especially tasty. I knew he worked out. He probably had the abs of a celebrity. And I already knew he was pretty…endowed. His pants could hardly contain him.

Oof. I really shouldn’t be getting so hot for my roommate.

I’d never seen a man naked before—in real life. But man, was I ready for it, and if he was the first…it would be like cracking open a hundred dollar bottle of champagne the first time you ever had a drink.

Why couldn’t I get my head out of this dangerous vision?

I reached for the shower head. Kind of weird that this bathroom even had a shower wand, right? Hotels never did.

Oh, girl, you should not go there.

He was out there studying. Right out there, on the other side of the door. He might even hear me if I spent too much time…blasting a focused area. And if I moaned, well—I’d never be able to look him in the eye again.

I drew my hand back and grabbed the shampoo instead.

As I was lathering my hair, the door creaked open.

“Charlotte…,” a husky voice said. I saw him silhouetted against the curtain.

“Alec?”

“I can’t stand it anymore,” he said. “Just thinking about you—in here—those gorgeous curves of yours—“

“I can’t—stand it either,” I said. “I was just thinking—“

He threw open the shower curtain. I gasped, covering myself with my hands.

He was already undressed.

It was just as good as I dreamed. How did he seem even taller without clothes on? Maybe it was just the way his muscles formed lean, strong lines along his arms and legs. He looked god-like, from pectoral muscles to six pack, hairless until you got to a thin line of black hair leading to a tidy thatch that framed a thick, erect cock. Despite having no experience, I wanted to stroke it. I wanted to stroke every inch of him. And then lick every inch of him. And then feel every inch of him.

“You look like…you were…born from Zeus or something. Zeus? Is that the right god? I’m—not making sense right now.”

“I can’t help it,” he said. “Incubi are a little different from humans. That is…it’s part of our nature to be appealing. This is your lucky day.” He scoffed. “But I think I’m as lucky as you are.”

He stepped into the shower with me. My skin was tingling all over anticipating his touch.

He looked at me like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. I knew it was probably just from being deprived of girls, but I drank it up. He was definitely the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. When he was standing in the shower I felt so small next to him. I imagined he could easily lift me up. I could wrap my legs around him and he would hold me there…

“I can’t touch you,” he said.

“Wha—I mean—even if I want you to touch me? Can I touch you?”

“No. The spells works both ways. I need to learn control.”

“You said this was our lucky day.”

“Just being near you like this is pretty damn good,” he said. He reached for the shower head. “I can still satisfy you. Safely. Incubi always find a way to make their women happy…”

His woman? Is that what I was? Should I protest?

I didn’t really want to. He turned the little dial on the shower so it was a tighter stream. Then one of his arms was spread on the tile behind my head, while the other hand twisted around the wand so it was pointed between my legs.

“Spread those legs for me,” he commanded.

I was already so sensitive that the feeling seemed ten times more intense than when I went DIY at home. My legs were all shaky and I had to force them apart. “Ohh…ahh…”

“We’ve been waiting so long,” he said. “Don’t be afraid to let go.”

He shifted the blasting water a little, back and forth, so it was hitting my sweet spot. The intensity built quickly. I grabbed the shower bar. It felt like it was pretty sturdy, thank goodness. “Ahh…! Am I—making you stronger—?”

“You’re making me feel like I could slay a hundred werewolves for you.”

“Am I—getting weaker?”

“You don’t need to be the strongest, because I’ll protect you…” His breath was in my ear.

I paused. “I mean, I can protect myself though.”

“You want me to stop?”

If a friend asked me, “Should I give my magical powers to an incubus just because he can do things to me in the shower?”, I would have said, “Sounds like he’s using you and also wasting water.”

But what was I supposed to do, tell this beautiful man to stop? I was too far gone. The pussycat was hungry and the cat food can was already open.

“Damnit…,” I groaned.

“Almost there,” he purred. “I want to see your face when you come.”

“Alec, I—“

I woke up.

I woke up very, very sweaty. I could already tell my underwear was soaked.

Across the room, Alec sat up. His eyes darted to me. My eyes darted to him.

He covered his head with his hands. “Fuuuck.”

I screamed. “That wasn’t just a dream, was it!?”

“Charlotte—I am—so sorry about that. Don’t tell Master Blair, oh fuuuck.”

“So—that was—I mean—”

Firian the sleeping fox had almost instantly turned into Firian the very pissed looking human. He grabbed my hand. “Tell me what he did to you.”

“I think you can guess. You don’t need details, Firian. Come on. I’m already—dying…” I slammed the pillow over my face. Also…still so turned on.

“Did he defile you in your sleep?” Firian demanded. “I thought you were enchanted not to lay a hand on her. We need to pull you out of this room right this second. This was a terrible idea. Incubi and succubi can feed on you in your dreams just as easily as in real life.”

Alec took a deep breath. As I slowly lowered the pillow I saw him leaning forward, head in hand, a worn old t-shirt clinging to his arms. Now I knew how the rest of him looked. The entire rest of him. I wondered if he was still hard under the blankets.

Firian smacked my cheek with the back of his hand. “It’s an enchantment,” he said.

I smacked him back. “He didn’t touch me, okay? And we didn’t even—nothing really happened. I started to realize what he was doing and I woke up.”

“That’s right,” Alec said. “She did.”

Firian lifted an eyebrow at me. “You actually had that much self awareness in the middle of…”

“Yes. Is that hard to believe?”

“You’re very flushed.”

“Well, he’s hot, okay? I’m only human! Or whatever I am!”

“You’re a quarter werewolf, which isn’t good for your self-restraint,” Firian said. “But…good work on resistance, I suppose.” His voice was a snarl.

“That’s not me,” Alec said. “In the dream. It’s not me.”

I still remembered how completely excited I was when he walked into the shower. Now, in the waking world, I realized that it didn’t quite make sense. I would freak out if anyone walked in the bathroom while I was showering without even asking, not to mention no established relationship. But in the dream, it all felt normal and right. In the dream, I had no inhibitions or concerns. I just wanted what I wanted. And he wanted it too. I felt so safe. It never crossed my mind that he would assault me, not even for a second. I knew deep down that he would devote himself to me entirely; that even if he could touch me, he would go slow when I needed him to go slow, and by the time it was over he would blow my mind.

“Firian…um…would you mind going to Etherium for like two seconds?”

Firian’s eyes widened into a look of aggravation. A little spot on his forehead twitched. “If you command it.”

“I don’t command—“

He disappeared so abruptly it was like a door slamming.

“He’s like my angry genie or something,” I muttered. “But without any wish granting.”

I knew how this must look to Firian, though. What if he does have feelings for me? And he can never, ever act on them? This must seem so cruel to him.

“Alec…” I picked at a loose thread on the blanket. “Nothing happened. It’s okay, right? You were just worrying last night that your powers aren’t strong enough to fight off the demon. It probably happened because you fell asleep worrying. Right?”

He nodded slowly. “It won’t happen again.”

I bit my lip. “It wasn’t a bad dream.”

He stood up. The hard on was definitely still…with us. He glanced at it and sighed. “Sorry. My dick really…responds to you. It’s not personal or anything. It’s the incubus half. Not that you aren’t worth responding to, that is—I want to focus on my studies.”

“Yes. Me too.”

He laughed dryly. “We’ll both feel better if we— You want the shower?”

I nodded, my face heating again.

“We cleared the air,” he said. “And now we know you’re strong enough to resist me. That’s good. It won’t happen again.”

“No,” I said. “It’s cool.”

“Monty really likes you,” he added. “If you like him back, I hope I didn’t screw things up.”

No comment. Nope, nothing in my life is screwed up, LOL. I grabbed the clean clothes I’d left on the chair, and went into the shower.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Montague

“So, come to your senses, have you?” Harris sank into the booth beside me when I was eating lunch alone, out of view from Charlotte and Firian.

“It’s not that.”

“Where’s Alec?”

I didn’t want to see Alec, after he called me out in front of Charlotte. My situation was starting to become difficult to hide from my closest friends. They knew I wasn’t the same as I used to be, even if the professors didn’t notice.

The memories were starting to hit me more often, and they were getting more intense.

“Did the werewolf attack really shake you up or something?” Harris asked, with a faint scoff. “You can handle a werewolf, right? Or did she scare you off? I heard she started shooting fire everywhere again.”

Alec joined us at the table. “Hey, sorry I’m late.” He picked up the day’s menu, glanced it over, dropped it. “I think we need to have a real talk about this before we lose you, Monty.”

“Alec, don’t fucking start. I’m fine.”

“Is Monty getting worse?” Harris asked.

“I think he is. Monty, I know you’re hiding it because you don’t want to get kicked out of school or worse, to get sent to the Haven for good.”

My stomach clenched at those words coming out of my friend’s mouth. This really was serious. Ethereals who turned dangerous could spend their lives under the careful eye of the council.

“They will have to drag me out of here,” I said. “It’s not a big deal. I just have some weird memories. That happens to all vampires. I’m completely in control. The spells are working. If either of you tell Master Blair or anyone else that you’re worried about me, you will ruin my life. You know how hard I’ve worked to attend this school. I’m not a Hapsburg.”

“I’m not going to report you,” Harris said. “That wouldn’t be any fun. As long as you don’t bother with Charlotte anymore. We’re just looking out for you.”

“Oh, you forbid me from talking to Charlotte?”

Harris leaned a little closer to me. “Monty, you know my parents forbade me from talking to you once you turned. My mother wrote you out of the book. I know we’re going to have a reckoning about it at some point, and if I can demonstrate that our friendship with you is keeping you safe, well…that makes me look a lot better.”

It was no surprise that Harris thought like this. I knew he was as self-centered as it gets. The old Monty used to really get off on being best friends with the richest, most prominent warlock at boarding school, especially when I knew Harris loved all the stuff we used to do. The new Monty…well, I still realized that I needed this alliance more than ever.

Alec, of course, wanted to dig into the situation, and I knew he wasn’t going to let this go. “So you do have memories,” he said. “What kind of memories are they? How far back do they go?”

“I’m not sure. I have memories of a girl in an Elizabethan ruff. A simple one. Not a very fancy one.” I cringed as Harris was giving me a withering look and Alec looked upset.

“So…suddenly you know all about Elizabethan ruffs,” Harris said.

“It’s because I went roller skating with Charlotte,” I said. “And it made me think about him—the—older vampire—“ I wasn’t going to start saying ‘my sire’. “—ice skating with a girl he liked. But they’re just little memories like that. Meaningless.”

“Ice skating,” Alec said. “In an Elizabethan ruff? So what are we talking, 1600s? 1500s even? That means you have at least a five century old sire. You would only get his memories if he was still around.”

“I am aware.”

“Five century vampires…,” Alec repeated. “Powerful.”

Most vampires just didn’t live that long. “I know,” I said. “I am aware.”

“I didn’t know they were ice skating back then,” Alec said. “Where was that invented? Is it Dutch, maybe?”

Lisbeth…come with me to London. It’s safe for us there. There are others like me, and no one will know us. I suddenly heard the vampire in my head, and saw the girl’s face, caught in uncertainty. She was quite pretty, even in such a dowdy old-fashioned outfit with the ruff and her hair under a cap. By candlelight, her skin glowed.

Rayner…I’m scared. I’m betrothed to Mr. die Raet… I would be defying my father and my God, turning my back on everything I know…

Great, in my memories I knew Dutch now.

“He’s getting that look again,” Alec said.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Whoever he is. I have the memories, yes, but they taught me a spell to cast them out.”

I’d been slacking on that spell, though. The memories were intriguing.

“You need to be very careful,” Harris said. “A vampire’s downfall is always some girl. If Charlotte is giving you memories of your sire’s lady love, that sounds like a terrible idea.”

“He’s not my sire. I don’t have a sire. I’m a warlock. That shit is for stupid humans to deal with.”

“Anyway, we’re only a month out from the autumn ball, and we’ll see the witches then,” Harris said. “You only want Charlotte because she’s the only girl here.”

“Yeah…” He was right. Plenty of girls at the autumn ball. Witches from good families, not that any of the best ones would look twice at me now. I had already trashed my chances at a good marriage to raise my family’s standing, but that was fine. I wasn’t Harris. I could fall in love. And Charlotte wasn’t the one I would fall in love with.

Probably.

She had her overly protective familiar, for one thing. Who would want to get into a relationship with that situation?

I tried to eat my pork blood with parsley, paprika, and house wine vinegar (chef’s special). That was when I heard Charlotte scream, “Hey!”

I stood up and looked over the back of the booth.

All I could see were the Locke brothers, hovering over her table. One of them grabbed Firian by his wrinkled shirt and threw him out of his chair, claiming it for himself, while the other had his hands planted on the table, hovering over her. I heard him saying something to her in a low voice.

“Get away from me,” she said.

Harris grabbed the edge of my jacket and pulled me down. “Not your job. Her familiar will protect her until a professor breaks it up.”

“What if no professors are here?”

“Not your job,” he repeated. “She needs to learn to defend herself.”

“So she can set stuff on fire?” Alec looked restless too. “I share a room with her. How am I suppose to explain why I couldn’t even bother to stand up for her?”

He likes her too. I knew it. The thought made me feel a little competitive, but at the same time, strangely closer to him.

“Give it a minute,” Harris said.

We could hear Charlotte talking back to the Locke brothers, and then Firian growled. It sounded like a fight broke out. Alec and I could have broken that up in no time.

“I thought we were supposed to be gentlemen,” I said to Harris. “Chivalrous.”

“Well, she wants to be treated like an equal, so let’s allow her to handle it!” Harris said. “She can cut it. If the Lockes get set on fire, I don’t give a shit. Alec, you need to keep your distance from women so you can truly live up to your potential as a warlock, and not succumb to your dark side, right?”

“Yes…,” Alec said.

“Montague, you know, deep down, that you’re going to hurt her if you pursue her, don’t you?”

I growled.

“You need to swear to me that you’ll stop flirting with Charlotte. It’s not just for your own good, it’s also for hers, but mainly, it’s just the only choice you can make that isn’t stupid.”

The doors burst open and Chef Cyrus stormed out. “What is this? No fighting in my restaurant! Get out! Out, out!”

“They—“ Charlotte said something.

“Woman, you make so much trouble!” Cyrus bellowed.

A second later, Charlotte stormed past our table, her brown ponytail bouncing like it was nagging me. Firian was behind her, but he shot us a look of disgust.

A familiar was actually trying to make me feel ashamed of myself? That really was going too far. Charlotte needed to get him under control. I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Charlotte

Firian had a black eye. He’d gone straight for a punch to Ronan Locke, the bigger of the two Locke brothers.

“Touch me again, fox, and I’ll hit you so hard it’ll blow you back to Etherium and you won’t be able to return.”

“And if I see a rat there, I’ll know it’s your familiar, and I’ll tell him you said hello,” Firian said.

That was when he got the black eye.

“Firian…you should be more careful,” I said, coming upstairs with a bag of french fries I found in the dorm freezer. It was the best I could do.

“I can heal myself,” he said. “You don’t have to take care of me.”

“Oh…” I sat down next to him. “Why don’t you, then?”

He gave me a squint-eyed grin. “In a minute. I want to feel it first.”

“No need to do that!”

“I feel very…human. You know. Sometimes one needs to live in one’s skin for a second.”

I shook my head. “That sounds unpleasant.” I put the fries on his eye anyway. “It’s not peas, but they’re crinkle cut, so they do mold to your skin better than shoestring.” I groaned. “This place sucks more by the day. Even Montague and Alec didn’t defend me.”

“I’m glad he didn’t. You don’t need a vampire in your life. You don’t need any of these jerks. There’s something about you, and they’re jealous of it.”

I groaned. “Setting things on fire doesn’t make me special. It makes me hazardous.”

“Wait and see, Charlotte,” he said.

“Do you know something I don’t?”

“I’m not keeping any secrets,” he said. “But I do see that beneath the normal girl you think you are, there’s a core of strength. You stand up to your enemies. You could have begged to go home. You could have told your dad what’s going on here. But deep down, you want to see what happens…and you can fight back. I’m here to remind you of that. My job is to remind you how much power you can wield.” His voice had a rough quality, his green-gold eyes unblinking as they met mine. He was close enough that I could see just how very nice his skin was. His fae quality seemed even more intense. He looked rather foxy even as a human—his nose and chin were rather pointed, his gaze patient and slightly feral.

“Sometimes witches break the rules,” he said. “And sometimes familiars do. But do you know what all those stories have in common?”

“No.”

“No witch has ever turned bad without her familiar turning bad with her. And no familiar has ever fallen in love with a human without the blessing of his witch. I will always protect you. So you never have to be afraid. And you never have to depend on a vampire or an incubus.”

“Firian…” I swallowed. My throat was suddenly tight, a ticklish feeling crawling over my arms and legs, as I thought about the fox watching me from the forest.

He handed me the french fries and wiped his fingers over his eye, whispering a spell. The bruising faded and the swelling went down, although a little bit remained.

For some reason, he seemed proud of it.

I was living an Academy-Award nominated movie. “The First Female Something Important”. But only the first half, before the triumphant rise.

“I can’t believe I thought I would have my pick of boyfriends,” I said, slamming my backpack down. “I am never dating a warlock.”

The last week, things had gotten a lot worse. Alec seemed very embarrassed about the dream, and so was I, so we barely spoke. He told me flat out that he needed to avoid me so he wouldn’t step into my dreams again. Montague also seemed wary of me now, and I almost never saw the two of them without Harris close by. I already knew he thought I was nothing more than a “nice piece of ass”.

Spoken like a full head-to-toe ass.

Seeing how those three were always hanging out, I got this feeling that Harris had forbidden Montague and Alec from getting too friendly with me. I wasn’t stupid. By now it was obvious that Harris was the “It” student. The professors all fawned over him and his illustrious blood line.

Master Blair was looking into the demon situation, but he hadn’t made any announcements. Everyone clearly thought I was trouble. Whenever I tried to do any magic in class, guys pretended to duck or made jokes about my out of control fire spells, although it was just self defense.

Everywhere I went, I was ogled and isolated. Firian never left my side, as promised. I knew he was the only thing standing between me and spells that lifted my skirt or something.

But since Montague stopped trying to be nice to me…now I had these guys freely targeting me.

The Locke brothers.

I was the first one in theurgy class. Professor Adams, an older black guy who was quick with a chuckle but also with a punishment, was working at his desk. He glanced up. Professor Adams had one eye that was slightly off. I felt like it was maybe glass, but I wasn’t going to ask, the same way I didn’t want to know why the infirmary had so many beds. His stare was disconcerting. “Miss Byrne,” he said. “Will your familiar be here for every class? First it was a week and I said to myself, well, all right, she’s new to all this. Now it’s been thirty days.”

“It isn’t against the rules. I looked it up,” Firian said.

“It isn’t against the rules because no one’s ever tried it,” Professor Adams said. He also had a deep, distinguished voice. “Any boy of mine would be far too ashamed to bring his familiar to class. We might just have to make ourselves a rule. But—back of the room, at least.”

As the boys filed in, Professor Adams turned to the class with his most wild-eyed look still in place. “Today,” he said. “We are going to summon a demon.”

“Are you sure—“ one boy tried before getting cut off.

“Don’t worry, boys, I have all of this under control; this demon happens to be a friend of mine—a practice demon, if you will. We’ve had our differences, of course, ethereal to sinistral, in the tradition of fine debate. But this will not be a dangerous, fire and brimstone affair—“

“Damn,” muttered Royce Locke. Under his breath, he said, “I thought maybe we were going to see Roller Slut versus Werewolf with our own eyes.”

Everyone had gotten some idea of how the fight had gone because weird scuff and burn marks were left behind on the roller rink. Master Blair had hired someone to clean and polish or whatever you did with a roller rink. Plus it was now under renovation by his designer, because he was insulted that we’d made fun of his playlist. Everyone was mad that they couldn’t skate with the girls during the upcoming winter ball. And I was now referred to as Roller Slut. Because of course, I had been alone in the roller rink with a vampire and an incubus, and rumor was…ehh, you can guess.

“No. Summoning high demons is not something you should ever practice,” Professor Adams said. “Even summoning low demons is not advised. But, this is Merlin College, and you are the best of the best. There may be times in your life when you need a demon—for the greater good. To gain information. To prevent a tragedy. If you summon a demon for your own selfish purposes, you have taken a huge step toward the path of Sinistral. Remember—we are Ethereal warlocks. Honor, duty, community, benevolence, for we are the servants of the highest order. Now, I need a volunteer.”

Put up your hand, my gut said.

Everyone will make fun of me.

(I had officially reached the “my own private voiceover” stage of loneliness.)

Who cares? No professor has let you actually practice magic yet. Show them all. Especially—

I glanced at Harris. He had his hand up, just a little, because he knew every professor would look at him so he barely had to lift a finger. I quickly threw mine up too.

I heard soft laughter around me as soon as I put my arm up.

“Pick the girl!” a boy crowed from the back. “Pick—the—girl! Pick—the—girl!”

Luckily his effort to get a chant going was dead on arrival. Unfortunately, it was because Professor Adams snapped his fingers at Harris. “Nicolescu,” he said. Of course he did. Because Harris got whatever he asked for.

Harris slid out of his seat. “Can’t wait.”

“When am I going to get to practice any magic?” I asked. “Respectfully, Professor Adams, I have been taking classes for a month now and no teacher has called on me for one single thing.”

“You can learn by watching like the rest of this class. You are untrained. You are not ready to be summoning demons, even friendly ones.”

“Yes, watch and learn,” Harris said, smacking my desk.

“Clear your mind of wicked thoughts,” Professor Adams said. “Your mental state can leave you open to a demon’s influence.”

“I thought this demon was your friend.”

“She is. But you still have to take the lesson seriously. Now, this is ash you will use to form a pentagram. There are other ways to summon demons, as most of you probably know already. For instance, if you have an object that belonged to the demon, that can serve. You can draw the pentagram in the dirt, particularly in places where the energy is already strong. You can also use magical objects such as crystal balls, mirrors, or fire. Eastern traditions of magic will often use symbols instead of pentagrams. Using a pentagram or symbols to form a circle or gate will control the demon. It also usually makes the demon rather pissed off. Elise has consented to this method today just for learning purposes.”

“‘Elise’?” Ronan said. “Is she hot?”

“Well, she’s a demoness, so she’s gotta be hotter than Charlotte.” I wasn’t even sure who said that.

Bullying, I thought, was really dumb. Like, now that I was a target, they never let up. It was just a game, so why did I still get so upset? Firian was right. I could fight back…although I had no control over my magic, so I didn’t really want to fight back.

“I need silence in the room,” Professor Adams said.

Harris formed the pentagram on the old wooden floors. “Let me do that again,” he said, frowning. “It turned out smaller than I wanted.”

I rolled my eyes. “You know what they say about pentagram size…,” I hissed under my breath.

“That’s fine,” Professor Adams said. “It doesn’t actually have to be to scale. You don’t want to waste too many materials in this case. Now, part two of this is that you must have something to offer the demon for your request.” He reached under his desk and handed Harris a plate of cinnamon buns covered in plastic.

“Cinnamon buns?”

“She won’t say no to that,” Professor Adams said, with a little chuckle to himself.

I think at this point we all knew that Professor Adams was just summoning an old girlfriend. Well, whatever worked, I guess. They were probably lonely too. None of them had wives; maybe that was a rule. Sinistral wives had to be especially off-limits.

I was also getting very hungry. My grandmother made an awesome cinnamon-nut roll thing, and this smelled the same.

“I know you don’t know Elise. Normally you will either have a demon in mind, or you will simply have a favor you need, and you’ll try to summon the best demon you can for the task. In this case, invoke her name.”

“What favor am I requesting?” Harris asked.

“You’re asking her to show up in a room full of bored-ass teenage boys just for the purposes of this lesson. That’s more than enough.”

“I’m not bored,” Harris said. “All right. Here we go.” He took the plate of cinnamon buns. “Elise! I summon thee from Sinistral to appear before me. Elise…!” He said some stuff in Latin and then in French, lifting the buns above his head. Harris was doing an admirable job of making this look significant, I had to say. He had a lot of presence, and he said the words so forcefully. He wasn’t just treating this like a joke.

He might be an ass, but I think he is actually a good student, I thought begrudgingly. If I want to do a better job summoning a demon, I’ll have to really get control of myself…

A wisp of smoke rose from the center of the pentagram.

“Elise? Are you there?” Professor Adams asked, when the wisp just hung there for a long moment, putting off little tendrils of shadow. “Elise?” He sounded a little concerned.

“Elise, I command thee to appear before me!” Harris demanded.

Still just a wisp. The class started to snicker. Harris shot them a look and they shut up.

“I think something’s wrong with the demon,” Harris said. “It’s obviously not my fault. I can summon a common demon.”

“Elise is no common demon,” Professor Adams said.

Harris’ eyes crossed mine for a moment and I smirked.

He gave me his most insolent, superior, rich blonde snot look in exchange. “You want to get up here and try?”

I mean, it probably wasn’t the best idea, but no one ever called on me. At some point, it seemed I would have to insist.

“Sure!” I said, coming up to the pentagram.

“You can’t actually do this,” Harris hissed at me.

“How do I know if I don’t try?” I knew he wouldn’t give me the cinnamon buns. So I just clapped my hands together. “Elise, I summon thee! Come forth and show yourself!” Nothing was happening, so I tried to remember some high school Spanish. “Um…usted…por favor…”

Hopefully what happened next had nothing to do with my poor memory for foreign languages.

A dark face formed from the wisps and spoke in a voice that made me cold just to hear it. “Oh…little goblin…Charlotte…I know what you want…”

I screamed and backed up—into Harris’ arms. He grabbed me and kicked his foot through the ash over and over. In that brief second, where I was obviously too shaken to be sensible, I was actually glad to have his strong arm around me. It felt like everything was going to be okay.

“I expel thee, demon!” he shouted.

“You’re no Elise,” Professor Adams said, before chanting something in French. The dark face vanished back into the ether, the floor now scattered with a mess of ash.

“It’s over…it’s over,” Professor Adams said in a low, comforting voice. I jerked back from Harris and clung to his suit jacket in a moment of shock before I realized the Locke brothers and some sub-bullies were snickering again. I stepped away from him too and brushed off my jacket like evil demon smoke was clinging to me.

“All right, all right, boys—shut up,” Professor Adams shouted at them. “Charlotte, I want you to go see Master Blair and tell him what happened. I want some answers. You aren’t practicing any magic in my class until we know it’s safe. Seems like you’ve been marked by something pretty wicked.”

“Is—is Elise okay?” I asked.

“Oh, I bet Elise is fine. She can take care of herself. That thing probably just blocked her from getting through the channel because it had something to say to you.”

I nodded. I was all shaky now. “Is—is she going to eat the cinnamon buns?”

He grabbed the plate from Harris. “There you go.”

Well, the day wasn’t a total wash.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Charlotte

“Yeah…everything’s going pretty well. I mean, not perfect. Some of the guys kinda bust my balls, but they’re still not as mean as middle school girls, so…”

Dad laughed as I lied through my teeth to the person I loved more than anything. “Well, that’s good to hear. I can’t wait to see you for Christmas. I got those ribs you like for lunch today and they didn’t even taste that great without you.”

“Aww…well, the food here is super gourmet, and let me tell you, I miss your dad cooking.”

“I’m sure. Sounds terrible. Gourmet food.”

“I mean it.”

“Well, I was just blasting my Genesis records un-harassed, so it’s not all bad, being a bachelor.”

“Dad. Genesis insists upon itself.”

“You’re a bonehead.”

“What album?”

“A Trick of the Tail. You don’t actually care.”

“So it’s just a fancy way of saying you were listening to Phil Collins.”

I almost started crying really hard. You know when you love someone so much, and you’ve been around them so much, that you can speak entirely in a language of in-jokes, quotes from TV shows, and insults? It hurt. I’m glad he started talking about how he was doing some work on the house so I could get ahold of myself.

“Hey…just wondering…have you heard anything about your mom?” He said it so casually, but I could hear desperation and pain in his voice. He couldn’t hide from me. I probably wasn’t fooling him either. But I guess we both had to dance around this stuff.

“Not…really,” I said. “All I’ve heard about the family is that she had a cousin named Samuel who was a famous necromancer. Do you know anything about him?”

“Samuel—yeah. They were super close when they were younger. In your mother’s wilder days. When we got together and your mom settled permanently in with me, they didn’t talk as much. Sam and your mom used to travel together. They were like siblings. But she always seemed glad to settle down. I think it tired her out after awhile, you know… We all grow up. At least, I thought so, until…”

Until she was gone. I knew Dad had a hard time talking about Mom, so I tried to change the subject fast. “Anyway, I’ll tell you if I hear anything but mostly I’m focused on meeting…people.” I swallowed down my loneliness.

“Your grandma’s coming for Christmas, by the way, so I’ve gotta get the lights down from the attic soon… you okay, kiddo?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good—uh—“ Firian was motioning to me frantically, let me talk to him. “Firian wants to say hello.”

“Sure.”

I thrust the phone at him. “Hey. Yeah, yeah—she’s doing great…”

He took care of it for me. “Charlotte has a ton of studying, so she’s…she’d better get to it. But she’ll call again in a few days, she says. Yeah. Looking forward to Christmas too, hey…thanks.”

Tears were starting to flow. I really tried not to let that start, but I missed Dad so much. The house phone was inside a tiny, booth-size room that two people barely fit in, so I stepped outside.

Harris was in the hall.

When he saw my tears, he immediately backed up. “I’ll come back. Didn’t realize it was occupied.”

In a panic, I shot back in the booth. Firian gave me a wry look and produced a handkerchief for me. In another minute, he hung up the heavy receiver of the house phone. “I’m invited to Christmas with your grandmother this year. How’s he going to explain that one?”

“Well, she will definitely think you’re my boyfriend, no matter what we say.”

“Ah…yes. So we’ll just have to…dance around that.” He tilted his head slightly as he looked at me.

I dried my eyes. “This is so hard. I feel like I should tell him, but…he would be scared, and he doesn’t know anything about it.”

Firian nodded. “I know. But maybe we’ll have a few more answers by Christmas.”

“Hopefully we’ll get some answers now.” I put on a smidge of makeup to try and hide my sadness from Master Blair. He wanted to meet with me about the ‘incident’.

Unfortunately, I got nothing, except a ruling that I couldn’t practice any magic that touched upon other worlds until he knew more. He mentioned again how he didn’t want to stir trouble with the council. Sometimes I felt like he was more concerned with the council than my safety.

“Am I in serious danger?” I asked. “That thing seemed to expect that I would call it.”

“You are in the safest place you could be,” he said.

So I left feeling, if anything, worse than before. “None of the adults know anything!” I cried.

“You’re eighteen, Char. Welcome to it. Your guess is as good as anyone’s.”

“Oh great, so what’s even the point of going to college?”

I didn’t feel like going back to the dorm just yet, because Alec was there, and before I even got that far, I’d have to pass through the common room, where I might see Harris and Montague. So I was just wandering with my hands in my pockets when Firian suddenly said, “We should go back.”

“What? Why?”

“The Locke boys are shadowing you.”

My stomach clenched. “Oh.”

“It’s okay. I’m here. But no need to tempt fate.”

“Aren’t ‘ethereal’ witches supposed to be the good guys?” I hissed. “How are they not ‘sinistral’?”

“It’s not that simple.”

I was currently on the tree-lined path that looped around the entire campus, passing by the side of the gymnasium, which was a boring tan building with a colonnade front, and the small conservatory, which was shaped like a birdhouse made of glass. I veered back toward Lancelot dorm.

I felt like the Locke brothers could smell my fear. I heard them coming up behind me with long strides. I glanced around for potential help, and saw a few other boys wandering around campus in the distance. None of them looked familiar.

“Hey, Roller Slut,” Ronan said. “Are you gonna turn around?”

I kept ignoring them, walking faster.

“Do you want to see our familiars? Since you showed us yours…,” he leered.

“No.”

Suddenly a snake appeared out of thin air around my neck. I screamed, flinging it off me. The snake slithered back to my feet, but it looked at Firian. “Are you a familiar…or a babysitter?”

Firian stomped on the snake—well, almost. It vanished in the nick of time. But as soon as his foot hit the ground, Ronan lunged at him, knocking him to the ground.

“Thanks for giving me an excuse,” Ronan said, punching Firian.

“Nobody messes with our familiars,” Royce said. “Especially not another familiar.”

Firian vanished out of sight and Ronan’s arms hit the pavement as it knocked him off balance. He got to his feet and turned to me. “Well, while he’s busy…”

Royce grabbed my arm. “Are you gonna burn me?” he asked. “I heard it’s the only move you know.”

“We’ve considered reporting you to the council, but you’ve been a lot of fun to have around.”

“We never know what you’ll do.”

“…except that it’ll be so fucking inept that it’ll make us laugh.”

“So much for having the powers of Samuel Caruthers! I guess you take after your grandmother. Such a bad witch that they wrote her right out of the Caruthers family…”

“Let me go,” I said. “I don’t want to burn you.”

I wondered what happened to Firian.

“If you’re looking for your fox, our familiars were just waiting for him to go to Etherium so they could…hold him up.”

Ronan grabbed a fistful of my uniform shirt. “Do you get the picture? You’re going to leave this school in shame. You’re going to beg for it. But they won’t send you home to your family. You’re too dangerous now. They’ll put you away with the vampires and the other fuckups where the council can keep a close eye on you.”

I knew they might be lying just to scare me. But…what if they weren’t? Shit. They were getting in my head. I needed to fight them off but I was afraid that if I did try and summon fire, and I really hurt them, the council would do something bad to me.

Suddenly I heard a familiar voice murmuring in Latin behind me. Royce and Ronan both lifted their hands as if compelled and backed away from me. They started holding their hands like they were marionettes and doing a stupid little dance.

Harris walked up to me, laughing with satisfaction. Once he stopped chanting, the spell on them broke and they stumbled on their own feet.

“You can’t use compel,” Ronan growled. “That’s dark magic.”

“It’s not dark if I’m defending a lady,” Harris said. “You two gorilla turds should listen in class more often. Or—let me guess—your inferior high school didn’t teach you compel to begin with.”

I felt absurdly relieved. A warm, melty feeling settled in my stomach as I remembered Harris putting a protective arm around me when the demon came at me.

But I came to my senses very quickly, as Harris said, “You’re right about one thing. Charlotte doesn’t belong here. However, I made a bet with her, and we’re seeing it through. Until then, she’s under my protection…such as it is.” He shot me a sideways look with a grin that was only slightly better than the look the snake gave me.

“Stuff it. I don’t need your protection,” I said. “I was two seconds away from setting their hair on fire.”

“Ha ha ha…sure. I would save face too, if I were you.” (He really laughed in ‘ha’ sounds.)

The Locke brothers shuffled off, cursing under their breath and muttering stuff like, “You can have her.”

And Firian suddenly appeared, looking like he’d been in a bar fight, with his hair and clothes apparently tugged every which way, dirt on his face, and a fresh bruise on his other eye. When he saw Harris, his eyes glowed with rage. “What are you doing here?”

“Your job, I guess,” Harris said. “Are you a fox or a faithful dog?” He turned away. “I think you owe me one,” he said. “You should make me some pastry.”

“If you like pastry with my spit in it, sure!”

He strolled off.

Jerk, I thought. Long-legged, strolling, over-confident jerk.

Firian spun me around so I couldn’t look at him anymore. “Let’s head home.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Montague

Harris shoved open the door of our room. “Hey,” he said, in a distracted tone. He moved some books on his desk and threw one open, sitting down, yanking the cap off a fountain pen like he was going to write that paper for magical history class. But then he turned around.

“You know what the Lockes had the gall to do, Monty?”

I lowered my own book. “What is that?”

“They went after my quarry.”

“Your ‘quarry’?”

“I made a bet with Charlotte about summoning a demon, remember?”

“Charlotte,” I said. “The girl you told me to forget about.”

“Don’t get me wrong. The last girl I would ever be interested in is some commoner human who doesn’t know shit. But—I did make a bet with her, and the Lockes are trying to run her out of the school. Besides that, they’re doing it in the most hamhanded way you can think of. Anyway—I showed ‘em.”

“How?”

“Just a touch of compel magic.”

“You’re not supposed to use that.”

“I can use it for purposes of chivalry.”

“You can use it because you’re you,” I retorted.

“Well, I’d better work on this paper.”

“Me too.”

I put my book back in front of my face, but I was feeling extremely pissed that Harris was acting like Charlotte belonged to him, even in a rival sense. Harris looked at his book for a second, but I could practically feel his restless energy. He glanced up at the photographs on his wall of his three prospective fiancees.

None of them looked very Harris-y, I thought privately. There was Camille, who looked very snobby, as New Orleans witches usually were, as the first great witch to come to America happened to be French (which was why the French language had clung to magic practice in the States); she had some of the most famous voodoo practitioners in her line as well. Daisy was a party girl with a huge grin on her face in every picture. And Ekaterina looked like she would eat Harris for dinner and then go clubbing, which was how most Russian witches looked these days.

“Did I tell you Daisy is coming to the ball this year?” Harris said in a very neutral tone.

“Oh really?”

“Yes.” He reached over, took down the photo of Ekaterina, and tossed it in the trash. “I think my mother has decided against that one.”

I lifted up my book again. “Sounds like you have some issues to work out.”

“No, I don’t. Daisy’s the hottest.”

“True. Very well. Congratulations.”

“It’s hardly a done deal.”

“Mrs. Daisy Nicolescu…”

“Quit it, Monty.” He threw down his pen and gave me a furious glare.

I think in that moment I knew that he really liked Charlotte, and he knew that I knew. The temperature in the room seemed to drop to about thirty degrees.

“You don’t have the slightest idea about what you’re going to do with your life,” I said.

“Well, at least I haven’t destroyed mine yet.”

“You were always a bit of an ass, Harris, but you used to be a good friend. Ever since this happened to me—and I’m not sure you have ever appreciated that it was a traumatizing experience for me—”

“You used to be the guy who pulled me away from all this!” Harris interrupted. “You sold your car. We used to go out, talk to other girls…escape into another world for a night. Now—there’s nothing—but this.”

I couldn’t stand it anymore. “I didn’t sell it! They took it from me.”

“They took…your car?” Harris snapped out of his own head. “What did they do with it?”

“They just took it! I don’t know! They said I couldn’t leave the Haven unless I left the car. The whole thing was basically a big brainwashing camp. They said I never should have been driving around, I never should have been hanging out with human girls, never should have gone to Cancun. Now I’m a vampire and it’s permanent and I have to take all these spells just to stave off the inevitable and it’s my fault. That’s what my summer was all about.”

“Oh.” Harris frowned. “I mean, I suppose I could buy you another one on the sly. How expensive could a twenty year old car be?”

“You can’t just buy me out of this problem,” I said. “And I don’t want another car. I spent the past three years scrounging every penny to make that one what it was.”

“So now none of us get to go anywhere on the weekends.”

“So that’s why you like Charlotte. She’s an escape in her own way.”

“I don’t like Charlotte. I just don’t want anyone else to like her. There’s a big difference.”

“All right. I get it. You aren’t concerned about me being a vampire and Charlotte’s safety or happiness.” I stood and grabbed my jacket off the bed post.

“Where are you going?”

“Asking her if she wants to get dinner.”

As I stepped into the hallway, my mind started to wander to the way Charlotte’s uniform hugged her curves, and how nice it would be to see her big green eyes and sexy full lips across the dinner table, but instead…

My brain crowded with memories of other girls. Girls across the centuries, the women my sire had wooed, only to see them die or be killed. Memories flashed across my mind of a girl slipping away from a vampire bite…mauled by some unknown creature…and an old woman crossing paths on the street and halting in shock before giving him a sad smile of realization. “It’s you, Rayner… At last…,” she whispered, and I actually knocked my head into the wall to get rid of the memory.

If anything else, I needed to see her just to root me in my own life.

I knocked on Charlotte’s door. Alec answered. “Hey.”

“Hey…I just wanted to see if Charlotte wanted company for dinner. Because I’ve decided I don’t particularly care what Harris thinks.”

She peered out behind him.

“Just as friends?” she asked.

“As you wish,” I said.

“Uh…okay. I do need dinner.” She grabbed a coat. “Firian—it’s okay. Maybe it’s better if everyone sees me without you once in a while.”

Firian and Alec both looked wary and a little annoyed.

Are we really all interested in the same girl?

Even the fox?

Even Harris?

But then, it didn’t seem that strange. I had met so many witch girls, and Charlotte was a breath of fresh air. She wasn’t caught up in all of that stuff. She seemed like a perfect balance of all the things I would want a girl to be. Cute and down to earth, sweet but willing to stand up for herself. I wondered if that was why Rayner wanted to take Lisbeth with him to London, even after he became a vampire and their worlds were far apart.

Somehow I knew it was. Five hundred years might pass by, but love was the same.

Charlotte stepped out into the brisk autumn evening with me, shivering a little, breathing into her cupped hands. “Princess Bride?” she said.

“What?”

“You said ‘as you wish’. I thought it was a Princess Bride reference.”

“That’s the movie with…Andre the Giant?”

“Well…yeah. That too, I guess. Like, ‘My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.’” She waved an imaginary sword around. I didn’t really know what she was talking about, but I approved in a general sense.

“I’ve never seen it,” I said. “But maybe I should. Inigo Montoya sounds like my people.”

“Do you ever watch movies at home? I think it was on Netflix. But maybe not. It was a few years ago that I watched it.”

“We didn’t keep a television in the home,” I said. “Most magical families don’t. But I used to go to a friends house. Every magical kid has that one normal friend who hooks them up with the good stuff like a drug dealer. Mostly we just watched wrestling, though.”

“It’s no wonder no one knows what I’m talking about half the time.”

“I used to take the guys to the Regal in town. And when I was a kid, my parents took me to the movies for a special treat. That was exciting. You can imagine, when you don’t own a television at all…”

“I’ll bet! What’s the first movie you saw?”

“It was the great cinematic masterpiece, the Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause.”

“It could be worse…”

“My mother had to take me out of the theater because I was afraid of Martin Short and crying.”

She started laughing hard enough that I knew she was enjoying herself. “Oh, to be young again, when your greatest fear was a comedic actor.”

“Tell me about it.”

She looked at me with concern in her beautiful green eyes. Her face was like an open book, no deception, no pretense. And her skin smelled…quite delicious. “Is…any of what Alec said true? Do you have the memories of other vampires?”

“Sometimes.”

“Is that strange? It seems like it would be…”

I felt like she deserved an honest answer. Was I ready to give one? Man, I don’t know…

“To be honest…the worst part isn’t the memories. It’s that when I was turned, I had to go to this…therapy to learn how to keep functioning as a human. So I can go out in the sun and stuff. They gave me some helpful spells, but I had to be there for eight weeks, and most of it was just getting berated by old warlocks.”

“Sounds like my life here,” she said.

“A lot of vampires end up being forced to stay there forever,” I said. “In order to be allowed to leave, I had to give up my car. I never thought about all these rules too much before that. Like the story about the St. Augustine witch and her familiar. I was always told that like it was a horror story, but I wonder if the witches who broke the rules were the smart ones. Then again, magic is pretty dangerous. I could hurt someone. So could Alec. Because of…Sinistrals. Corrupting us and our families.” I shrugged. “I didn’t mean to say so much. It’s a lovely night. The moon is full. I said I’d take you to dinner and we just walked past the dining hall…”

She smiled. “Actually, it helps a lot to hear that. Sometimes I feel like I’m just…confused, and I don’t fit in. Maybe there’s a reason for it all. Or maybe not, and I need to just not care. I’m sorry about your car.”

“Me too. It was a pretty sweet ride. I would drive us all to Asheville or Knoxville for the weekend.”

Her mouth opened. “Really? Can you do that? I feel like we’re in another world.”

Suddenly we heard screams. A moment later, I caught this scent on the mountain breeze.

Blood.

Fresh…

My teeth immediately turned to fangs. I staggered, trying to resist the urge to bolt toward it.

“Montague? What’s happening?”

“It’s so…strong… Blood…” My vampire senses wanted the blood. My human brain knew I had to keep control. Something terrible was happening.

Charlotte started running toward the screams.

“Wait—let me go first,” I said.

“Why, to be chivalrous or something? No one has to go first. Let’s both go!”

Chivalrous? More like, to keep her from seeing me hurt someone with my blood lust. But my resistance failed me. I went running toward the scent. It was coming from behind the conservatory, in a lonely and unlit part of campus. The screams were getting louder.

I turned the corner, and that was when the alluring smell of fresh human blood hit me hard, but even then, the sight terrified me more.

That demon beast was back, and it was ripping into Royce and Ronan Locke as they screamed and tried to cast some sort of defensive spells. It was hard to concentrate when a demon was trying its best to maul you to death. It was also hard to concentrate when you wanted to taste the tantalizing smell of fresh human blood that filled the air.

They never let me have the good stuff…

My mind went blank. All I could think about was the taste of blood. It was just being wasted spilling on the ground.

Charlotte grabbed me. “What the fuck are you doing?” she snapped, and then she ran toward Royce and Ronan and did what she does.

She spread her hands and set everyone on fire.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Charlotte

The beast screamed at me and then it hissed, “They hurt you!”

“Yeah—but—don’t kill them!” I said. Was this the same demon from the roller rink?

Royce and Ronan were running around with their clothes on fire.

“Stop, drop and roll, morons!” I screamed. “Please! I don’t want anyone dead!”

“Hurt her again and I will finish the job!” the beast screeched, and then it vanished into a shadowy rift in the universe, leaving the smell of burnt fur behind.

Montague had taken off his jacket and was beating the flames off Royce.

“Get off me, vampire!” Royce shoved him. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, now you are.”

Nothing kills a date or date-type moment like a good demon attack and saving the lives of some pissy bullies.

Montague grabbed Royce with an iron grip. Royce looked awful. There was a huge scratch on his arm, and another on his face. His clothes were torn and charred. Blood was everywhere.

“What the fuck was that?” Ronan shouted at me. “Is that demon working for you? And could you not burn us to death?”

“I saved you from the demon! I’m not working with it! My magic isn’t perfect but you’re alive, aren’t you?”

“Crazy bitch.”

Montague bared his fangs and, I’m not kidding, he bit Royce’s arm and took a drink of his blood.

“Stop!” I grabbed his hair and pulled him back.

He gave Royce a shameless grin. “I’m not sorry.”

“You’re both crazy,” Ronan said, while Royce was trying to staunch the bleeding with his shirt. They both started trying to escape the scene, and Montague, moving with unnatural speed and strength, grabbed them both by their bloody shirts.

“The demon attack was random,” he said. “The demon didn’t say anything. I didn’t drink your blood. Charlotte saved your lives.”

He let them go.

“I hope that worked,” Montague said.

Chaos broke loose from there. (I hesitated to say ‘all hell’ broke loose, because by now I felt like there was still a bottom we hadn’t reached.) As the Lockes fled to the professors, we went to Lancelot dorm to hide the blood on Montague’s clothes. Since he shared a room with Harris, there was no way to hide it from him.

Harris grabbed me. “Don’t tell anyone the Lockes attacked you the other day.”

“Why?”

“Because—if they think that demon is attacking other students to protect you, you’re gone.”

“Why would a demon protect me?”

“I don’t know.”

I had to admit, the demon made it sound like it was protecting me from the Lockes. What if its appearance in the roller rink had been to protect me from Montague and Alec? I wondered if I should tell someone. The Lockes could have been killed.

Before long, every student was being questioned. No one had seen anything. Of course, they knew I had already caused a lot of weird stuff to happen, and that I had a tendency to burn things. Master Blair wasn’t stupid. I expected him to challenge me about this incident, maybe even expel me just to end all this trouble. Instead, he said,

“Charlotte. Don’t tell the council that the Locke brothers were hassling you.”

“But what if that thing kills someone else?” I was shocked that he was trying to protect me, and it only reinforced my disconcerting sense that he was using me. “Something is really wrong. I mean, Samuel got me into this school with some…male impersonation of me, then he gets killed, now I keep getting attacked by a demon, and the Lockes almost died!”

He came up close to me. “Do you really think they are fit to be ethereal warlocks?”

I had wondered that same thing, of course, but was he suggesting they deserved to be mauled by demons?

“Charlotte,” he said. “Nothing is wrong.”

“If you know some master plan, I’d appreciate you telling me.”

He gave me a smile I didn’t quite trust. “No master plan. I’m just not sorry to see certain institutions…rattled.”

“I want to know what’s going on.”

“What’s going on,” he said, “is that no one was hurt.”

I could tell I wouldn’t be getting anything more out of him.

By the next day, members of the council had arrived to investigate the incident. If Master Blair didn’t want the council in his business, this had definitely ruined things for him. The campus was suddenly crawling with ancient-looking warlocks in cloaks and a variety of hats that no one except the most pretentious hipsters—or a warlock council member, I guess—would dare to wear. All night, the lights in the main hall stayed on, and warlocks were poking around the scene of the crime.

In the morning, the entire school was gathered for an assembly inside the grandeur of the campus theater, complete with paintings of the Knights of the Round Table on the ceiling, for a talk about campus safety.

The Lockes didn’t seem to have learned anything from the incident. Seriously. They walked in, looking worse than they did yesterday. Royce had one arm in a sling. Ronan had stitches all over his face and was limping. They didn’t even look like they should be getting out of bed.

As they walked in, Ronan gave me a look of death and said, “If you somehow think that casting your little fire magic everywhere means you belong here, you’re dead wrong. You brought this on us.”

“You brought it on yourselves!” I snapped.

You know the phrase “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy?”

Obviously, I really would not wish ‘mauled by demons’ on anyone, ever. But the fact that anyone has to say that phrase to begin with does imply that you may have considered it for a second. I can’t say I had not imagined, in some dark part of my brain, something terrible happening to my tormentors, who had never seemed hard-working or sweet or funny to me. More like the kind of guys who would enjoy beating up a familiar and making a girl cry.

Despite all that, this seemed like way too close a call. Master Blair was covering something up. Maybe I should say something. But I hardly knew where to begin.

I went back to my room, clutched my stomach, and hunched over.

“Are you okay?” Firian asked. “Stomach ache? Maybe you need some peppermint tea.”

“It’s not the kind of stomach ache that tea will solve. I hate those guys…but I’m not being honest. The demon was going to kill them because they were bullying me! And they’re still bullying me! What if that thing comes back?” I started crying myself, thinking of how my dad would feel if something happened to me.

“Maybe—in the end—“ He stopped himself, and went to the window, leaning his arms on the frame, his lean and graceful form silhouetted in the bright light of the setting sun.

“What?”

“Forget I said anything.”

“Don’t do that evasive thing,” I said. “Please, Firian. I’m already feeling very scared.”

“You could have your magic taken away. Then you would be fully human, and the entire magical world would shut its doors to you. Maybe you’d be happier that way. You’d damn sure be safer.”

“You mean…you too? I’d lose you, right?”

“I…could become human too. I’d lose my magic as well. And my ability to transform, or travel to Etherium.”

“You would hate that.”

“Charlotte…I told you. I live for you.” He prowled back over to me, his face still in the shadows, but looking at me. “It’s never been and it never will be…” He swiped the back of his hand across my cheek, getting rid of my tears. “…about what I want.”

“Firian…”

All of a sudden, I was breathless with a need for him to put his arms around me. To hold me and dry all my tears. There was no human in the world like Firian—so graceful, practically glowing from the inside with some magical fire, even when his clothes were always rumpled and untucked. I knew I was in enough trouble already, but I so wished his hand would linger.

I wondered how I had spent all this time without knowing he existed. He was weaving himself into my life so quickly that I felt a little naked when he wasn’t with me.

The door burst open and Alec walked in.

“Charlotte…are you okay?” he asked.

“Don’t I look it?” I sniffed. My face just felt like a mess.

“Monty was pretty…shaken.” he said. He paused. “I’m sure it took a lot of effort for him not to eat Ronan and Royce.”

“Gah…”

“Well, let me know if you need anything, huh?” He walked over to his easel and picked up a red paint tube.

“You’re not going to paint the demon attack, are you?”

“Oh…no. Of course not.” He put the paint down and pondered the canvas.

He was totally going to paint the demon attack.

Firian was still looking at me like…well, I don’t know what. Charlotte. I live for you. I’m not sure I could handle this on top of everything else, but I still felt the brush of his thumb on my cheek.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Charlotte

I was braced for the fall out of the attack. The council spent a couple of days investigating Merlin Academy, a row of dour-looking old men making everyone uncomfortable, entering class rooms and social spaces. I could just tell they hated that I was here, but then they left and Master Blair said he had “smoothed it over”. In the end, the attitude seemed to be ‘these things happen’, which freaked me out even more. Everyone suspected the Locke brothers might have been flirting with the dark side of magic and had brought it on themselves.

Well, that was pretty believable. Maybe it wasn’t my fault after all.

However, it was clear that I was not actually going to learn any theurgy or necromancy. The professors were terrified to let me have contact with other worlds. In fact, Professor McGuinness had a whole class about ‘feminine wiles’.

“Sometimes women have an easier time contacting the ‘other world’,” he said. “The more…mysterious arts. A man’s magic is a straightforward thing, like a man’s heart. A great male necromancer can take a fresh corpse and bring it back with the force of his will connecting with the flesh and bone and crying as if to the heavens, ‘arise!’, but a woman, well, she is more likely to pause to hear his whisper from beyond the grave. What else might she hear? A woman does not control the elements. A woman lets the spirits control her.”

I raised my hand. Repeatedly. He just kept giving me this little nod like, ‘Yes, I see you.’

“Man, I thought he had at least a little respect for me on account of being related to Samuel Caruthers,” I groused to Firian as we walked to the next class. “If I can’t learn theurgy, and I can’t learn necromancy, what am I here for?”

“Start with enchantment and illusion,” Firian said.

“Yawn. The class about how to look fake?” So far that class was about two things: seeing through other people’s illusions, and creating them.

“Illusion can be a close cousin to conjuring,” Firian said. “You liked these, right?” He reached a hand behind his back and pulled out another paper container of nachos.

“Yeah! Only the best nachos I’ve ever tasted…” I reached for them.

He held them over his head out of my reach. “Like I told you, they’re dangerous to eat.”

“Because there’s nothing there?”

“Or is there?” He snapped his fingers and he was holding a plate of cockroaches.

“Firian! I hate cockroaches.”

“They’re just an illusion.”

“You could have proved your point with a plate of something slightly less offensive.”

“So try to change my illusion into something you prefer. Before they start crawling off the plate and down my arms.”

“Nachos!” I commanded the plate. It was easy to put some magic into it, because the sight was so disturbing. The crawling pile of cockroaches turned back into a harmless plate of corn chips and melted cheese. He handed the plate to me.

“Great job. Here you go.”

I gave him a look and made the plate disappear with a snap of my fingers, which was improvisational on my part but made me feel super cool when it worked.

“Attitude,” Firian said. “Yes. You should definitely keep with that.”

“That was a better magic lesson than my classes. Illusions class has been working on stubble and beards for the past two weeks. I’m starting to think Professor Das has a beard fetish.”

“Well, I’m a good teacher,” he said. “I know what motivates you. I know what stirs your subconscious. When your emotions are provoked, your powers are very strong. It’s true…learning how to hide five o’ clock shadow probably isn’t going to get your magic flowing.” He swung ahead of me on the path, walking backwards as easily as forwards. “If you prove that you have concentration and control in your least harmless class, maybe they’ll give you more respect. You don’t lack the sheer power. So find the things that drive your power. Emotions.”

“That makes a lot of sense. You are a good teacher.”

“When you’re too young to go to school, a familiar is your first teacher,” he said. “I have some lost time to make up for.”

“You wished you’d been able to get closer, didn’t you?” I asked, feeling weird and shy all of a sudden.

“Of course. It’s in my nature.”

Yeah, I was starting to feel so strange around him. The more bizarre and terrifying Merlin College seemed, the more I wanted to cling to him, and it was abundantly clear that I wasn’t supposed to. I was supposed to be learning to survive without him.

Sometimes I wondered what went on inside his mind. He sounded like any other guy, until he said something that reminded me that he was bound to me. Utterly devoted to me. He couldn’t have lived apart from me if he tried.

Isn’t that a little creepy?

So why do I feel so…tingly?

Why does it make me so happy when he tells me he was always watching over me?

I wondered what it would feel like to be kissed by someone who was born to protect you.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Charlotte

The autumn ball was coming up fast now. The guys seemed very excited. Girls were coming from witch universities. It would be my first sight of witches. Many of the guys had girlfriends or fiancees attending different schools that they kept up correspondence with.

I’ll admit, it wasn’t a terrible thing to work on my illusion skills at a time like this. I didn’t know how to give myself gorgeous hair in real life, but I realized I could make my hair look gorgeous with illusions.

Illusions weren’t a total lie. You couldn’t suddenly give yourself a different face—at least, not for more than a few minutes. I learned that quickly. But you could take your true appearance and give it a little bit of a glow. I practiced this in the mirror until I was ready to debut my new ‘glow’ at the Christmas ball.

But there was the dilemma of the dress.

When I went to high school prom Dad drove me to every thrift store and consignment shop in the Georgia mountains. For the gas he spent, I probably could have gotten something from Target, at least.

Still, Dad wanted me to have something ‘special’. At the same time, I knew we were more poor than he let on. He was really good at making me feel like we weren’t poor. He handmade a lot of stuff, and did a lot of work on the house, so it had this modernist cabin charm. He liked garage sales and junk shops, and we were both good at sniffing out good stuff for cheap. And we always had plenty of groceries.

But when you needed a dress for a warlock ball, suddenly none of that was enough.

“Dad, can you send up my prom dress?” I asked on the phone.

“Will that still fit?”

“Of course,” I said, although it was a good point. “If anything else, it’ll be too big. Like I said, the food here is a little weird.”

“But you don’t want something new?”

“No one’s seen me in that dress. It’s fine.”

Mainly I just didn’t want to cause Dad undue stress. I knew everyone else would probably have fancier dresses, but the one I had was a classic little black dress, kinda Audrey Hepburn. It would work well with the plain black dress flats I had brought here with me.

Five days later the package arrived. I opened it to find my black prom dress—and an explosion of pink lace under it.

Have kept this all this time. It was your mom’s. Seemed too much for prom, and…well, I wasn’t ready to share it with you then, but I feel differently now. Maybe you’ll like it, maybe not, but good to have options. Take pictures either way. Can’t wait to see you for Christmas. Love, Dad.

This dress was the opposite of the basic dress I had chosen for prom. That dress was cheap and didn’t look too dated and I could wear it again later.

The pink dress was a “look at me” dress. It was a 1980s punk pink, bright and sassy, sleeveless, fitted bodice, full skirt. All made of this crazy pink lace. There was a Betsey Johnson label on it.

Whaaat?

My mom was a pink Betsey Johnson dress type person?

I didn’t show anyone, but just tried it on when Alec was out and it fit me perfectly. It was a little wild, but it was adorable. I couldn’t believe it. I must be exactly the same size as my mom.

Mom…this is the first time I feel close to you.

I shoved it under my bed. I didn’t even show it to Firian. I was super excited. Between my illusion-enhanced hair, and my glow, and a real dress, I knew I was going to turn some heads.

Whose head did I actually want to turn…? Well. That was a much more confusing question.

When the morning of the ball actually arrived, I woke up with a fluttering in my stomach like a kid on Christmas morning. First, I’d get to be at a real ball, with a string quartet and dancing and such. I didn’t know how to dance, but that was fine. Should the moment arise, my partner could guide me through the steps until I gained confidence and he twirled me into his arms and said, “Hey, you’re getting it!”

That was just Romance Movie 101.

And shortly after the ball, it would be time for winter break and I could go home and see my dad. Things were looking up.

I heard an engine outside. A car? I hadn’t heard many cars since I got here. The professors had like, one car between them, and the staff had a couple, and I knew the sound of all of them by now, plus the mailman, who never came through the gates.

Alec threw off his covers and looked out the window. “Cars,” he said. “I think that’s Anastacia and Demetria Lemaire. I’m gonna go check in on Monty. He knows who drives what.”

I peered out behind him and saw a silver Jaguar pulling up to the main building. The door opened and a chauffeur got out of the front and opened the back doors for two red-headed girls who were dressed like they were going to a royal wedding.

This was my first inkling that maybe I wasn’t hot shit after all. I could already hear them. “Betsey Johnson? Who? Oh…that’s cute.”

Oh, but it was gonna get worse by like, a factor of two thousand.

Downstairs, I heard the house phone ring. A moment later, a quiet guy named Ellis who was sort of the unofficial rule-keeper of Lancelot House, mainly known for leaving passive aggressive notes about keeping the kitchen and dining areas clean, knocked on the door. “Master Blair wants to see you in his office.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t say.”

Now I felt embarrassed just putting on my uniform. I really wished I had a fascinator and a tasteful day dress, and also a small dog, a silver Jaguar, and a chauffeur. And a name like ‘Demetria Lemaire’.

“Good morning, Charlotte. Are you looking forward to the ball this evening?” Master Blair wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“Yes…”

“Well, as you know, the council has been monitoring the ongoing situation with the demon.”

“I actually didn’t know.”

“Oh. Well. You know I didn’t want to get them involved, but they just love to monitor. Anyway—they are worried about your safety.”

“I—I can’t go to the ball?” From his body language, I could just feel the build up to disappointment. Maybe the council didn’t want the witches to see me.

He looked up sharply and then sighed. “God, I wish. No, it’s—uh—you can’t go home for Christmas.”

“What!?”

“To be out there…in your home, without protection…you are left completely open to whatever that thing is. Here we have guards and some of the professors and students will still be staying over winter break.”

“No way. No. I have to see my dad and my grandma. If I don’t come home, they will know something is horribly wrong. And I need to see them. It’s Christmas! I can’t just be stuck here with a handful of students and professors moping around on a mountain top. This isn’t what I signed up for! I mean—could they come here or something? Anything?”

He looked pretty sad himself. “Humans are not allowed through the gates. We need to keep you safe. We can put an enchantment on your father. He won’t worry.”

“I want to give up my magic. I’m done.”

He just kept looking at his desk sadly.

“I mean it! I’m done! At least just don’t sit there looking sad. Master Blair, please…it’s my dad. He’s already so worried!”

“Take a deep breath,” he said. “Don’t lose control.”

“I’m not losing control! I do yoga! I’m the calm one!” I cried, as angry tears blurred my vision.

It was possible this was what losing control looked like.

“This was an order from the council,” he said. “If you were killed, your father would be even more upset, I’m sure. We will get this straightened out, and as soon as we do, I promise you can take a weekend home.”

“But…when?”

“I just don’t know yet. I’m sorry. Please try to enjoy the ball tonight.”

I stepped outside his office. Firian was waiting for me in the hall. I could tell he’d been listening. His hearing was probably good. He took one look at my face, which was contorted in one of those silent crying messes where you look like an infant about to let loose, and he threw his arms around me. His shoulder was just the right height to smother my tears.

“Firian…!”

“I know.” He just held me.

The way he said ‘I know’ was so understanding, yet laced with strength and assurance that I would never be alone. Never. Everyone is afraid of being alone. In high school I was always worrying over the fact that I didn’t have a super close best friend, or a boyfriend, or a mom, or siblings or cousins. The only person in my life I could always depend on was Dad. And he could depend on me. Now I was letting him down in the worst way.

I let myself sink into Firian’s embrace. He supported me as I slumped, a pillar of strength.

But now I have you, Firian.

I calmed down. Enough to compose my face anyway.

No sooner had I stepped out of the main hall than I heard a bubbly female voice call behind me, “Are you the girl?”

“What girl?” I took a deep breath and saw the first fellow female I had witnessed in months. Months? It was true. I had never even seen Master Blair’s mythical decorator. I was almost relieved, except that she was the most gorgeous person I had ever seen in my life. She had a brilliant smile and huge eyes and a truly impressive set of boobs peeking out from a slightly—but not too—flirtatious neckline. Her black hair was perfect, lightly curled under a little red hat, and she wore a cherry red coat over a cream colored dress and leather boots. While her skin and hair indicated some sort of diversity, she didn’t actually look like any particular ethnic background except globally acknowledged perfection. Like, imagine Vanessa Hudgens, and then imagine that next to this girl, Vanessa Hudgens might as well mutilate her face while sobbing.

“The girl at Merlin College!” she said. “Harris told me!”

“Harris?”

“Mmhm! Harris is my fiancee! Well—“ She touched my arm and gave me a mischievous look. “Nearly so.”

I felt something in the pit of my stomach let out a cry of unbidden rage. For some reason. “Oh…I didn’t know he was engaged.”

“I’ll bet he doesn’t talk about me. Hmm hmm! Well, he can’t avoid me now, no sir!”

I think that was her laugh. Mr. Ha Ha Ha, will you take Miss Hmm Hmm! to be your lawfully wedded wife?

“Anyway,” she said. “I’m so excited to meet you! You’re the only witch who has ever been allowed here and no one knows why! You must have some crazy powers, girl! We’ll have to talk. You have to tell me all the secrets. Is that your familiar?”

“Yes. I’ll bet Harris told you about him too.”

“A little bit! What! You are tasty! You’re a fox, right? Heyyy, Disney Robin Hood, am I right?” She elbowed me.

The something inside my stomach—maybe I was possessed by some sort of gut demon?—let out a cry of unholy fury.

Firian accepted the handshake she offered. Noooo!

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Daisy.”

“Ah. The girl Gatsby couldn’t have,” Firian said.

“Oh, you!” She laughed.

“Charlotte needs a nap before the ball,” said Firian, to his credit. “She was up very early studying.”

“Of course. I bet you’re a really wonderful student. I’ll see you tonight, Charlotte!”

As we walked away, Firian gave me an amused look.

“What are you smirking at, Robin Hood? You didn’t have to be so nice to her! When did you read the Great Gatsby?”

“I don’t have a TV.” His expression changed to incredulous. “You’re not feeling…jealous, are you?”

“I feel deeply inadequate and self-conscious and plain. If you must know. I didn’t know it was possible to be that gorgeous. I feel like I’m going blind. I can’t even be jealous. It’s like asking a normal girl schlepping around a community college campus with acne and a ponytail if she’s jealous of like, Megan Markle for marrying a prince. They don’t even connect.”

“Come on. She wasn’t that amazing. She’s not a princess.”

“You come on.”

“She had weird hands.”

“You didn’t even look at her hands.”

“Of course I did,” he said. “Her fingers were too feeble looking.”

“You’re saying her hands are delicate.”

“No. They were like baby hands. Like how babies have weird tiny fingers. Now look at your hands.” He lifted one of my hands and traced one of his fingers between two of my fingers. “Your fingers are tapered and graceful. She has a little glamour on. Makes her hair look good, her eyes look bigger, all of that stuff—but no one ever glamours their hands.”

I shivered at the touch. I started to feel a little better. I would look better too when I gave myself a little glamour. But what seemed to matter in that moment wasn’t how Daisy looked, but the fact that Firian moved right on from thinking about her.

“This sounds like a nice line of bullshit, Firian,” I said, but I was smiling now.

“I’ll do it for you anytime.”

But as I got back to my room, I remembered the real problem: I couldn’t go home for Christmas. I couldn’t see Dad. The ball hardly seemed to matter when put up against a whole break where I wouldn’t see the person I loved the most.

“Take a deep breath,” Firian said. “Do you want to be a powerful witch? Who can truly cast impressive magic and control it and doesn’t have to be intimidated by anyone, whether it’s Daisy or a demon?”

“Yes.”

“Then, take your sadness and channel it into energy. This feeling is temporary. The love you share with your father is permanent. It can’t be shaken by distance, or time, or even death. You believe that, right?”

“Yeah…”

“Deep breaths. Feel it.”

I knew Firian was right. I shut my eyes and took several long, deep inhalations and exhalations. I knew the sadness would hit me again later, just as hard as before. I just need to make it through the ball. Let me just live in this moment.

When I opened my eyes, Firian was giving me a private smile that helped me stay in the moment. “You’re going to the ball with me, right?” I asked.

“I—“ He started, a little furrow between his brows. “If you’re asking, I will. Fuck everything else.”

I bit my lip. “It’s going to be an interesting night, huh?”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Charlotte

“Just to warn you, in a few minutes I’m going in that bathroom and I’m not coming out for a while. I’m about to get super girly tonight.”

Alec looked up from his studying—yeah, he was actually studying—and gave me a silent acknowledgement. As usual, he wasn’t a big talker, but his eyes had some—ahem—interesting things to say.

“Any girls coming tonight that you like?” I asked, plucking my dress out of the old wardrobe.

“No,” he said. “You know…it’s a slippery slope for me. Degree first.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure. I met Harris’ lady earlier.”

“Which one?”

“How many does he have?”

“Three.” He put his book down and fell back on the bed, looking toward the window.

“It was Daisy.”

“Daisy. Right, right.” He shut his eyes. “I shouldn’t even go to this thing.”

“Is it that…difficult for you?”

He shot me a piercing look that instantly brought back memories of that…dream. Since it was a dream, I had managed to partition it off as not being real, but when Alec looked at me a certain way, I was reminded just how real it seemed. He was so real in the dream, and he was even more real now. Firian had gone to Etherium while I got ready, so my eyes couldn’t help but indulge in a brief graze of Alec’s long legs, one arm slung over his slightly rumpled uniform shirt, the tattoos on his arms.

“His parents chose them,” he said. “Those girls.”

“Oh.”

I felt a pang of relief. I had been excited to be surrounded by attractive boys before I attended school, but now I wondered what was wrong with me. I was pretty sure Firian was my date to the dance, but he was also my familiar and I knew I had to be discreet.

It wasn’t just that, though. I didn’t like the thought of Harris with Daisy. I also liked the idea of seeing Alec all dressed up tonight way too much. And then there was Montague, who seemed to be trying his best not to hurt me, but clearly liked me.

“Charlotte, no one’s been bullying you again, have they?” Alec asked, sliding out of bed.

“No.”

“My incubus side…it picks up on some emotional things. I can’t help it. But it seems like you were crying. I understand that you probably have private feelings you don’t want to share with me, but I do want you to know that nobody harms my roommate. We might have our…internal conflicts. But we protect each other in this dorm.”

“Master Blair just said I can’t go home for Christmas because of the safety issues…”

“I see. I was wondering about that myself. You don’t have a magical community to keep you safe from Sinistrals.”

“Yeah. I understand. I’m fine.”

“I understand too,” he said. “My dad tried to break away from his family. That was how a succubus got a hold of him. The magical world can be stifling. Lots of teens and twenty-somethings get into trouble before they accept it. There’s a reason for the rules, but it doesn’t make it easy sometimes.”

I bit my lip. My loins stirred as he walked closer to me and I was trying very hard not to stare at his tattooed forearms. I’d never been so close to a guy who worked out. I thought that wasn’t my thing; I wasn’t into jocks. But when you paired his muscles with studying and painting—? Plus he had a vaguely smoky smell I hadn’t noticed before. Like autumn woods with a tinge of some mysterious scent. If I tried to look down, I saw the suggestion of a bulge in his pants again and I started thinking about him climbing into the shower with me.

Alec was like Man Concentrate. He needed some diluting because clearly I couldn’t handle him straight.

“Don’t let them intimidate you,” he said.

“Who?”

“Anyone.” He raised his eyebrows at me, grazing over my rumpled shirt. Right now, we were basically dressed the same. He had never seen me in a dress before. “I’m looking forward to it.”

By the time I walked out of the bathroom, I felt amazing.

I mean, not to get too full of myself, but whenever I put on makeup or tried to do my hair in the past, it always looked a little off. The mountains of Georgia aren’t a hotbed of style anyway, but I never had a mom or anyone to show me the ways of girliness.

Mom clearly had some idea, I thought, as I put on the dress. You didn’t buy a dress like this if you didn’t know how to rock a look. I felt like I knew more about her from the dress than all the little vague things Dad ever told me.

I’d been working on my magic, and now I could give everything a little tweak so it looked like I wanted it to look in my head.

My skin looked so clear! My hair looked so shiny! My dress was so gorgeous!

Poor, naive little Charlotte.

Firian was waiting for me in the hall. He looked really sharp with a forest green jacket that brought out the warm red and gold colors in his hair and eyes. A black bow tie, black pants and brown designer-looking shoes finished the ensemble. I wasn’t sure it matched, but he looked handsome, who cared.

Most of all, I noticed his eyes. His beautiful golden eyes, with a hint of mystery—and a hint of something else that smacked of desire. I tried to look away only to meet his hands, reaching for me. He brushed my hair off my shoulders. I don’t know why he did that, and I didn’t ask. The brief touch of his deft fingers sent a ripple of yearning through me.

What is this?

I was probably staring too much. “Firian—uh—wow.”

“Is it okay?” he asked. “Sometimes my clothes turn out strange. I just think of something and then I’m wearing it, and I’m not always sure my ideas—“

“You look…good.” I was getting flushed.

“You look amazing,” he said.

“The dress isn’t too much?”

“I love that it is verging on too much.”

I twitched, wanting with all of my being to take his hand. Or better yet, for him to take mine.

But I knew that was forbidden.

“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of attention tonight,” he said, in a low voice that was slightly possessive. “And any man that asks you to dance, I’ll be keeping a close eye on.”

“The night air is really…potent, huh?” I said, trying to ruin the mood. I mean, someone needed to ruin the mood.

“It’s just my job,” he said, a little more lightly.

The energy between me and Firian had been building quietly for these past few months. We never admitted it, but we both felt it. It was getting harder to ignore. I started walking a step ahead, trying not to succumb.

As soon as I stepped out the door, I hesitated.

The parking lots of Merlin College were usually so empty that come to think of it, I hadn’t even realized we had any parking lots. Now I noticed, because cars were driving by Guinevere Hall and chauffeurs were stepping out to open doors for beautiful girls that even from afar, seemed to practically sparkle with a combination of charm and—I had to assume—capital G-Glamour. Magic. They could not be that perfect, right?

Once the girls started walking up the steps, picking up their skirts, the chauffeurs drove on and parked in the lot. Some of them were milling around talking to each other and others were asleep in their cars.

“Maybe I should hang out with those guys,” I said.

“The chauffeurs?”

“They look more like my kind than the students. Holy shit. These cars. That looks like a Transformer…that one looks like it belongs to Scrooge McDuck…and BMW. I recognize BMW. Why do I get the feeling that’s the junk car?” A few were modern luxury cars, but most of the cars looked very old but impeccably maintained, and I just somehow knew they had been in these families for years, and had never been considered cheap.

“Don’t think about the cars,” Firian said. “These are rich warlocks. We know this.”

“But…I never realized they were that rich.”

“Money doesn’t mean anything,” Firian said. “I live in a cabin and run around in the woods. I’m happy.”

“Oh god. You know who never says that? Rich people.”

“I bet they say it all the time.” He extended a hand. “Let’s go tackle this.”

“You know who doesn’t say we should ‘tackle’ something? A confident person.” I looked at the hand. I probably shouldn’t take the hand. But I wanted to touch him so badly. He must have felt the same.

So we walked into the ballroom together, hand in hand, holding our breath.

Yes, Merlin College had a ballroom, Guinevere Hall. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that a place built in the 1890s had a ballroom, but I was charmed that it was still being used just as it had been back then. Even the lighting looked like it hadn’t changed in a century. Early electric fixtures hung from the ceiling on chains, and the wall was lined in shaded lights, all of them low so it gave the room a candlelight effect. Floor to ceiling windows were hung with heavy ivory curtains in multiple layers of draping. Above my head was a very tall ceiling that arched up with paintings of knights and ladies and horses forming a border and then above that was fancy molding in big circular shapes around the chandeliers.

It was a lot to take in.

And then there were the witches and warlocks. The girls were even more sparkly up close. Everywhere I looked I saw what I would have assumed were the crown jewels of different nations if they were in glass cases, sweeping gowns with lace and beadwork or simple but elegant lines, perfectly styled waves of hair or buns with feathers in them.

I expected that attending the dance with my familiar would raise some eyebrows, but when I walked in, I swear I heard all the string instruments of the quartet in the corner screech like a record player stopping before they got back to the music.

A couple hundred gorgeous faces turned to look at me, and then they looked away and tried to pretend they hadn’t seen anything.

My teeth actually started chattering with nerves.

“Are we doing this or not?” Firian asked me through his teeth. His cheeks had acquired a faint rose hue. I couldn’t even call it a blush, it was too subtle, but it was there. His eyes urged me to hold fast.

“We’re doing this.”

Master Blair spotted us across the room. “That—dress.” His eyes widened.

“Um…”

He looked like the sight of me had rendered him speechless.

“It’s—I mean, it’s a very striking garment,” he said. “One would not forget it.”

I tried to not die before I’d even danced to one song. “Th—thank you. Do I need to know anything that would be different from all the other balls I’ve attended?”

He smiled. “Not really. Since magical schools are segregated by gender all through university, witches and warlocks must do all their courting at these balls and during summer vacations. So for most of the students, this is a thrilling opportunity to mingle. But they have also been unchanged since the dawn of time. The balls—ah, Harris, you know all about it, don’t you?” Master Blair waved at Harris as he walked by with Daisy.

“Balls?” Harris asked.

“Yes. They originated with the Hapsburgs in Austria.”

“Yes, they did,” Harris said, clearly uninterested.

Daisy waved at me. “Hey girl! You are so adorable!”

“Daisy,” Harris said warningly.

Daisy weirded me out a little. She was like…friendly? Why?

“Yeah, adorable. I try,” I said. “I saw that everyone else was going for empress of the universe so I went for ‘crazy lady’.”

Daisy laughed. “I wish I could pull off something like this. You are too cute for words, you and Mr. Fox over here. How scandalous. Stuart!” she bellowed across the room. “Stuuu. Get over here. Professor Jablonsky in the house!”

“Oh, hello,” Stuart said, wandering over. “I was—making sure the punch was—I think someone really got in there and spiked it. How are you, Daisy?“

“Forget about the punch! You want to dance?”

“Well, sure. Why not? Ignatius, you might want to look at that punch, though.”

My brow furrowed. “Wait—why is this happening?” I asked no one in particular as gorgeous eighteen-ish year old Daisy wanted to dance with a middle aged man wearing a rust-colored 1970s suit with huge lapels with the widest, polyesteriest tie that had ever been created. He clearly knew how to waltz on a technical level but it was also clear he had no sense of rhythm at all. I dimly remembered Master Blair telling me he was a great dancer.

“You even brought your familiar to the ball?” Harris asked, interrupting my confusion. “Then again, why am I even asking?” He waved a dismissive hand at me. “We all know the drill with you by now.”

“And I know the drill with you, too. So we’re all on the same page.”

The Locke brothers, at least, had the good sense to leave me alone after the demon attack, but I was getting a lot of stares and hearing whispers behind me.

“Harris—why don’t you enjoy the festivities instead of getting hung up on a girl you don’t actually like? Drusilla West looks like she could use a dance partner,” Master Blair said.

“All right. I see. If you want to protect her from the truth, Blair.” Harris gave me an icy look and strode off. He did ask Drusilla West to dance, immediately, and a hot spike of annoyance went through me.

I should have felt reassured that Master Blair was defending me, but I didn’t.

“No boy invited you to the ball, m’dear?” Master Blair asked.

“Look—I just want to relax and mind my own business. I’m going to go have some of the spiked punch.”

Master Blair grimaced. “Soon, I really will need you to start demonstrating your best side. I know you hold Samuel Caruthers’ power and a repeat of the St. Augustine incident isn’t what he had in mind.”

“Oh, you need me? Well, maybe you should clue in the other professors to actually teach me something and then I wouldn’t need Firian all the time. But Firian also happens to be my best and only friend here. Whatever—I don’t know what to tell any of you. And I’m not your ‘dear’.”

I went to the refreshments table and poured myself a glass of the punch, from the cut glass punch bowl into a perfect matching glass. As soon as I picked up the glass, my name appeared in gold on the side. No big red cups and Sharpies at a witch ball. Another girl was standing there spreading caviar on a cracker. She gave me a weird look and quickly moved away.

“I guess the caviar is all ours,” Firian said, as the partygoers formed a wide berth around the refreshments table.

“Yay,” I said feebly.

I watched the other girls in the arms of handsome men, swirling around the floor. They knew their place in the world. They were welcome. They weren’t wearing their lost, now Sinistral, mother’s pink party dress and standing out like a quirky Molly Ringwald character wandered into a serious period film. And they got to go home for Christmas too, I’m sure.

“Clearly, this isn’t getting better,” Firian said. “So you might as well stop caring.”

“I’m not sure how long I can be tough. Doesn’t it bother you how people treat you? Or does that not affect familiars the same way?”

“I suppose it does affect me differently,” he said. “All I care about is you. I don’t give a crap about the rest of these people.”

“Oh.”

He gave me a crooked smile. “Too weird?” He paused. “If I thought me leaving would make everything fall into place for you, I would leave. Familiars also know when their witch is ready to live without them.”

“Does that mean you’ll leave me someday?”

“Only if you’re ever ready,” he said. “If—we’re ever…” He trailed off and it was obvious that he wasn’t hoping for me to be ready.

I wonder where Alec and Montague are. Not that it matters. But it is odd that I haven’t even seen them…

Daisy twirled away from Stuart and came over my way. She helped herself to the food. “Man. Crazy, right?”

I wasn’t sure what part of this was crazy, but it seemed a fair assessment. “So you know Stuart?”

“Yeah, yeah, we see him at the Midwestern Magical Conference every year. He knows my parents. He’s pretty cool for a seventy-year-old man, right?”

“Well, if you put it like that, I guess he’s…okay.”

She grinned. “So…tell me all about it.”

“School?”

“Learning warlock magic.”

Another girl walked up to us, although she still kept a little distance. “Daisy? Are you friends with her?”

“Yeah we’re friends! C’mere, c’mere. I’m asking her about going to Merlin College.”

“Uh…I don’t think so… Shouldn’t you be with Harris?”

“He was dancing with Dru and now I don’t know where he went. Plenty of time for us to get busy later.”

“Well, we’re all hanging out over there,” the other witch said.

“Okay, whatever, Kathleen. Blah,” Daisy said, making a shoo-shoo gesture at her.

“Why are you being nice to me?” I asked, increasingly baffled. “I can’t imagine Harris said anything good about me, and if you haven’t noticed, everyone hates me.”

“That’s impossible because I don’t hate anyone,” Daisy said. “I can be a catty-ass bitch but only if you deserve it. I don’t hate anyone. Anyway, I’m richer than her.”

“Fair reasoning,” Firian said.

“I’m selfish,” Daisy said. “I want to be the most powerful witch. But no one’s letting me learn warlock magic. So here you are, learning fire magic and necromancy, while I’m stuck with the usual girly woo-woo. You’re a threat to me. So naturally I want to be your friend.”

I finally relaxed. “I’m going to disappoint you, then. I haven’t been learning much of anything.”

“You haven’t been learning anything? At Merlin College?”

“I don’t know how much Harris told you…”

“He doesn’t tell me nearly enough. Real quiet, that one. I heard you set the main hall on fire or something.”

“Yeah, I tend to start fires and attract demons. I scare people. I’m not so much a student as a prisoner.”

“How disappointing,” she said. “I thought you were going to be the girl to break the fourth wall.”

“The fourth—do you mean the glass ceiling?”

“Oh. Yeah, maybe that one.” Daisy checked her face in a compact and snapped it shut just as quickly. Maybe she was just admiring herself. “All us girls are super jealous—I mean, not the ones here, obviously, but my cooler friends back in Chicago. I guess I can go back home and tell them not to be.”

“Wait…” I didn’t like the idea of Daisy telling her cool Chicago friends that I was a huge disappointment. “I’m trying to keep it on the down low, but I might take matters into my own hands.”

“That’s true,” Firian said, jumping right in. “I’m going to teach her magic personally. If the professors won’t teach her, we’ll do it after hours. We have the resources of Merlin College and she has inherited the powers of Samuel Caruthers.”

“Ohhh, I gotcha, girl. I gotcha.” She winked. “I won’t tell. Samuel Caruthers? You know him? He’s hot as fire.” She started making a sort of triple decker sandwich of caviar and crackers.

“He’s my uncle.”

“Damn. So it’s creepy if you fantasize about him.”

“He’s also dead.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. I guess you can fantasize about him if you want to.”

“I didn’t mean that!”

“Hmm! That’s so true. I don’t want to piss off a dead guy. By the way, I am so sorry about him dying.”

“Thank you for working your way to that. I never actually met him, though, so it’s all right.”

She saw Harris walk back in across the room, with Alec and Montague behind him, and she nodded at me. “Later,” she whispered.

I saw Harris looking at me. The other guys were heading my way. Daisy came up to Harris from behind and punched his arm.

“So Harris is planning on spending the rest of his life with her,” I said. “That’s fascinating.”

“He can hardly contain his enthusiasm,” Firian said, as Daisy dragged him back onto the dance floor.

Chapter Thirty

Harris

“Hey, before we go in, I want to talk to you guys about something,” Alec said, as we were walking toward Guinevere Hall.

“Of course,” Monty said.

“Charlotte just told me that she isn’t allowed to go home to her dad for Christmas,” Alec said. “Master Blair told her just now.”

Shit. That news hit me, because I knew Charlotte was homesick. I knew what it was like to be homesick, only for me, it went in the other direction. I couldn’t wait to go back to school at the end of summer. My family didn’t get me, but Alec and Monty did. We didn’t get all sentimental about it, not even close, but I think it was universally understood.

Still, sympathy was not the Harrison Nicolescu brand. “Forbidden from going home for Christmas?” I said. “Hell, that doesn’t sound bad to me.”

“Charlotte misses her dad a lot,” Alec said. “She doesn’t talk about it much, but I can tell.”

“It’s true,” Monty said. “She’s not accustomed to this world and she’s had so many terrifying encounters with magic since she arrived. I’m sure she’s been looking forward to an escape all semester.”

“She seems pretty tough to me,” I said. “I’m sure she can handle it.”

“I’m sure she can handle it, yes,” Monty said. “But it must be a grave disappointment.”

“Why are you such a dick when it comes to her?” Alec asked me. “All I’m saying is that she’s hurting right now, and we should go easy on her tonight. It wouldn’t kill us to ask her for a dance, so she feels included.”

I had an unpleasant heavy feeling in my stomach at the thought of this dance. Dancing with Charlotte? No way. Talk about damaging the brand.

“Daisy will be dancing with other people too,” Monty said. “She always does.”

Daisy. I’d seen her earlier. She was, as usual, enthusiastic, sort of flaky on the surface, and extremely beautiful. She was a little much to handle. But she was no fool either. She had graduated at the top of her class, just as I graduated at the top of mine, before going on to university. I always felt like, under the surface, she was as conniving and tough as the greatest of witches.

I really thought I’d settled on her. So why this dread about walking through the doors? The thought of seeing my girl again, especially now that I was starting to feel more decided that she was my girl, should have me excited.

“You guys are so hung up on this very human girl. Staying away from her has worked out just fine, hasn’t it?”

“I might be changing,” Monty said. “But it isn’t all for the worse. Harris, I used to think you were one of my best friends, but now I’m starting to see that you’re actually just immature.”

I went still, trying to keep cool and not show any genuine concern that I might be losing this friendship. “Are you sure you want to stand by a statement like that, Montague?”

“Hey, hey.” Alex nudged us each back a step. “Let’s not tear ourselves apart over this. I’m just saying, maybe this is one night where we could show Charlotte some sympathy. Ask her for one dance.”

“Fine. Whatever you guys want to do.”

I walked ahead of them, feeling pretty annoyed about the whole thing, but I got annoyed easily, so this wasn’t exactly an unfamiliar feeling. Charlotte annoyed me particularly, I thought—she didn’t belong here. She was messing up the brotherhood.

Then I saw her across the room.

Fuck.

Why did it seem like, out of all the beautiful witches in the room in their diamonds and stilettos, Chanel and Dior, or the famous magical couture houses like Rue or Magie Noire to match my Armani, did my eyes go to the girl wearing an absolutely absurd, tasteless pink dress? The girl who, instead of precious gems, was wearing a necklace with little beads that looked handmade by a fellow high school student, and ballet flats?

Alec asked Charlotte to dance. I saw Monty behind him, claiming her next. The relief in her eyes. The unselfconscious grin that broke out on her face.

“Hey, champ.” Daisy surprised me, cuffing my arm. “Are you judging that poor girl? I don’t think she can afford Prada. But I like her. I hope they give her a chance to actually kick ass.”

“At some point, I think she might stop waiting for a chance,” I said, giving Daisy a small smile, more smug than friendly, but she liked that, as most girls did. “But I don’t really care about her. How are you?”

“Exhausted. It’s a long drive. And you know the new car has too many gadgets in it. Grandma likes her climate controls and music. My magic feels sapped.”

“You don’t need magic at a ball.”

“How do you think I look so pretty all the time?” She smiled at me coyly. But I could see the insecurity in her, when her magic was even slightly diminished. Daisy was five when her parents were killed in one of the most violent Sinistral attacks of the modern era. She didn’t like even the slightest bit of vulnerability.

“But, this is a ball,” she said, grabbing my arm. “So y’all get ready because I’m about to get this party popping!” she said loudly.

If Charlotte had said a thing like that, it would only have added to her outcast status, but since Daisy said it, some girls went “woo!” and one of the senior guys said, “I spiked the punch!”

My mother’s words immediately came to mind: Daisy has the best credentials, the best inheritance. If you marry her, don’t worry—I will teach her the east coast ways in no time.

When she said ‘teach’ she meant ‘control’ and when she said ‘east coast ways’ she meant ‘how we do things in this house’.

I knew that once I married Daisy, her own wild streak would be tamed, and no parties would ever become ‘popping’ under the disapproving eyes of the Nicolescu family. She would be tolerated for her family name, her skill, and the whopping inheritance she was about to get when her grandmother died.

“So,” Daisy said, eyes flicking up to me as she leaned against my shoulder. “Does this mean I won?”

“Won what? Me?”

“Of course. I know your mother was weighing options. But I’m better than them. New York warlocks and Chicago witches. Classic.”

“Yeah, I guess you won,” I said, with a shrug.

“Oh, okay, Mr. Whatever.”

The thing that really got under my skin was knowing that Daisy would conform.

Sure, a spark would remain. She might let loose in the bedroom for me. But in the end, Daisy wanted that power. She had ambitions. She wanted revenge for the Sinistrals who killed her parents, and as she saw it, a lax council who allowed it to happen. She would use my wealth and name to get her own seat on the witches’ council someday.

So what? Ambition is an admirable quality, isn’t it?

Do you think you would be happy with someone like Charlotte, then? I had to laugh at myself. I certainly was too smart to throw away my future for a girl.

Let Monty and Alec have her.

I put my arms around Daisy and held her close. She gave me a smile that seemed sort of…knowing. I was well aware that she was beautiful and I was handsome, but something…

Something was missing.

Chapter Thirty-One

Charlotte

“Charlotte. You look really beautiful tonight,” Alec said.

“And you also do, too. Handsome,” I said, in something resembling English, because I was so relieved. So so relieved.

“I’m sorry we’re late,” Montague said.

Of course, there was expectation that these two guys should save me from the ball, but the way they looked at me, I knew they understood. I needed them. And I was really, really happy to see them. I didn’t realize how much until just now.

“Can I have this dance?” Alec asked.

“I’ll take the next one,” Montague said.

But there was also Firian, the most faithful and protective of all. “Firian—“ I said, not knowing what to say to him.

“That’s what you’re here for,” he said. “To dance with warlocks.”

But the look in his eyes—well. It wasn’t quite as happy. What could I say? “I’ll—be back,” I said. “Enjoy the food.”

“I can’t actually touch your skin,” Alec said. “So we’ll have to be a bit careful.” He put a hand on my waist and just two fingers on my shoulder, over the thinner strap of my dress. I followed suit.

“Do you know how to waltz?” he asked.

“Do I know how to waltz? That’s like asking if I know how to roller skate.” I grinned at him. “But I can’t be much worse than Professor Jablonsky and he’s getting a truly weird amount of attention.”

“Yeah…he’s like…the cult classic of Merlin College. Well…I don’t actually know how to waltz either. I’ve always avoided girls so I never learned.”

“We can just stumble around.”

“I’m fine with that.”

Even without the lesson, it was every bit as good as every ballroom dance fantasy I’d ever had. He was tall and gorgeous. His eyes, mysterious with their slight reddish hue, were regarding me with unmistakable interest. All the other girls were staring like, How did she end up getting him to dance with her first? I heard someone say, ”Oh, they’re roommates.”

I started thinking about the dream again. I couldn’t help it. Plus the contents of his pants. I felt a compulsion to name it. The Big Rig. Nah, I can get more personalized than that. The Semen Demon. A little too eww. The Incubuster. Incubuster 2000. Maybe 3000? 5000?

He was looking at me more seriously, with what could best be described as the concern of a normal person, while I was trying to name his penis. “I’m just glad you’re holding up. I keep thinking about you saying you can’t go home for Christmas. That’s such shit. I would invite you home with me if there was any hope of that being a good idea.”

Warmth swept through me. “Thanks…just…that you would think of it. That’s nice.”

“It doesn’t help. But at least you guys can play your game all you want without me around. You have more kobold hides to get, right?”

“We’re done with that now. But we have a goblin village to destroy.”

“Mm,” he said.

I’m sure he just meant like, mm, that’s interesting. But it came across like the thought of me killing goblins turned him on and that once I was done, he would destroy me in a different way. Oh, yeah. The incubus magic goes both ways, I thought. I wonder if he’s given names to my boobs.

That dance was over all too fast. When the music stopped my instincts wanted to cling to him, but since we couldn’t even touch, we lowered our hands right away. Alec might have been putting out the vibes of a sex god, but his human side also seemed like a genuinely decent person who was worried about me and wanted to protect me from loneliness and danger.

I’m not sure which part of him was getting me more hot and bothered, but by now I was definitely sweatier than I should be.

“Monty’s turn,” he said. “I hope your evening is looking up.”

“Yeah…it is,” I said, as Montague’s hand met mine.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Charlotte

“Can I start calling you Monty?” I asked. “Everyone else seems to.”

He paused. “I think I like you calling me Montague. Because no one else seems to.”

“Okay.” I smiled. “I like that, then. Montague is definitely more…” Don’t say romantic. Don’t say romantic.

“Princess Bride?”

“Yeah!”

Unlike Alec, who couldn’t touch me, Montague was free to put his arms in all the spots arms should comfortably go, and the music had slowed down a little to something more delicate but slightly jazzy. After a moment I recognized it as a variation of ‘Fly Me to the Moon’.

It felt like the low lights and the spiked punch and the dress and the music were all trying to push me into a moment. Which, I guess, is exactly what balls had been doing since they were invented.

“What do you prefer? Roller skating, or this?” he asked me.

“That’s a hard one. They’re both different. And I’m bad at them both, as I told Alec.”

“Not bad. Unpracticed.” He said softly, “I like this more than I should.”

“M—me too.” Girls were still giving me their bitch faces as we slipped by them, and I saw Ronan Locke talking to someone and then jabbing a finger in my direction. But as long as I was in the guys’ arms, I felt insulated. “I feel safe with you and Alec…”

“Good.” His grip tightened at my waist a little. “I want to apologize for avoiding you lately. I don’t want to hurt you, but…” He frowned. “This vampire thing is very new to me. Would it hurt a witch to be with me? I don’t actually know. I have it mostly under control, but I’m also glad you’re quick to burn things. That is to say…”

“We can…take it slow,” I said. “Not be too quick to rush anything. But I’ve enjoyed our semi-dates. A lot. And it…has kinda hurt me more to be alone here.”

“I wish I could bring you to St. Augustine for Christmas… My family is, as old magical families go, fairly good company.”

I smiled. “That’s the same thing Alec said. I mean, to bring me home with him.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You had better not have agreed to that.”

“Of course not! I can’t go home with a boy. I mean…boys are everywhere. I share a room with him already…” I mean, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why I couldn’t go home with him.

“What if I stayed here for Christmas break?” Montague asked. “Maybe we both could.”

“Well…I want to use Alec’s outlet.”

“He could sleep in my room,” Montague said. “Harris will be gone. But then we could do something for Christmas. You do celebrate Christmas, right?”

“I do,” I said, a lump in my throat as I thought about Dad and Grandma just eating alone. What would they even do with the food? I knew they’d make all that food anyway. Maybe Dad would invite some guys from work or something. Grandma was already missing my grandpa who died three years ago. Dad and I always went and cut a tree at Hooper Farm a couple weeks before, and on Christmas Day we had the official Dad Christmas movie lineup of Die Hard, The Ref, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. I always did an entire 1000 piece puzzle while we watched them together and he made gently spiked nog shakes since the year I turned sixteen.

Montague saw my face in Stage 1 Collapse and said, “That’s it. We’re staying. I’ll talk to Alec about it later.”

“That’s so nice of you…”

It still wasn’t seeing Dad.

But maybe I could at least survive this.

What will Firian say about this, though?

“It’s my pleasure,” Montague said, and he held me a little closer still, so that for the first time in my whole life I felt what it was like to really be held by a guy, like—I felt his cock twitch as I brushed him. I didn’t pull back. I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. Was I leading Montague on? Alec? Firian?

I don’t know how to juggle this. I don’t really want to lose any of them.

Montague’s hand caressed gently through the loose curls of my hair. I shivered at the sensation. I craved still more. When his hand went all the way down my back, I pressed closer to him. Just a little, but it made his cock throb again. My breath hitched as if in response. I knew the dance would soon be over and I probably shouldn’t leave him with a boner, but…I looked up at him and he was already looking at me like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen…and he wanted to eat me.

I probably should have run straight for Firian, because he looked at me similarly without the hunger, but…

“Lisbeth,” he whispered.

“Who is Lisbeth?”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Montague

It had happened again. I just…lost myself for a second.

I was seeing the memories. Lisbeth’s face, worried about her fate, but wanting so much to trust the man she loved. Even if he had turned into something else.

I took a step back. “I’m—sorry. Crap. I know who you are.”

“Is that a memory?” Charlotte asked in a whisper.

I collected myself quickly, before Alec or Harris noticed. “I’m fine.”

“A vampire memory?” she pressed. “Like what Alec was talking about?”

“Yeah,” I said tightly. “I know who you are. I like you. I don’t know who Lisbeth is, except that he loved her in the 1600s or something. It’s just that sometimes I get—like—his memories. He loved Lisbeth a lot, so if I call you that it’s—it’s a compliment.” I winced. “That was a half-assed excuse.”

“I’m not jealous of a girl from the 1600s,” she said. “I’m worried about you.”

I tried to take a few deep breaths. Breathing was weird nowadays. My body sort of functioned like itself, like I had to breathe to talk, but it could stop dead. Sometimes when I was shocked I just…didn’t breathe. “The ball is kind of…triggering some stuff. This was a bad idea.”

“You want to step out for a sec?”

“Yeah.”

She took my hand and led me out the door. I felt a lot of eyes on us, including Firian, Alec, and Harris. But no one got in our way. Good thing. I wasn’t trying to get Charlotte alone by some master plan, but if that was a side effect of all this…

But then, you just confused her for Lisbeth, dumbass.

“Tell me what’s going on in your head,” she said, as we stepped into the night air. The chill of the winter mountain air seeped into me immediately, but it no longer bothered me like it would have when I was alive. Charlotte must have been hot enough from the dance that she wasn’t feeling it yet. She was glowing in her pink dress.

“Sometimes I have memories of this girl, Lisbeth. She was the girl that he loved. The first vampire in my line.”

“The first vampire in your line?”

“In the vampire world, he would be considered my…lord. All the vampires in his ‘line’ would be drawn to him and follow him. But since I’m a warlock, I can use spells to suppress it. It’s when I’m looking at you that…I think of her. The emotions must be the same.”

I saw Lisbeth’s smile finally emerge as she said, London…it seems a very exciting city.

“She went with him…,” I said. “To London. She was just a normal human girl who was supposed to marry someone else, and she left her life behind and followed this vampire she loved to London in the 1600s.”

Charlotte’s expression was interested. “You can see all that?”

“Yeah.”

“Were they happy?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see the whole thing. It’s just bits and pieces.”

“Did she become a vampire?”

Something about the look on Charlotte’s face seemed innocent and curious, and it made me feel protective of her. I never wanted to cause her any pain, but I also didn’t want to let her go. And if those things were impossible to juggle, then I had to keep her like Rayner kept the woman he loved.

I knew Rayner felt the same about Lisbeth.

I wanted to kiss her so fucking much. I’d never felt this way before. I mean, not that I’d never wanted to kiss a girl before, but…

It was different this time. Serious.

I leaned a little closer to her. Her eyes followed my every move. Her body language was definitely…receptive. Her scent didn’t betray any fear.

“I don’t remember,” I said. “But he always loved her. I—I feel like I know that for sure.”

“It’s…romantic,” she said. “To think of her following him.”

“Maybe he’s not so bad,” I said. “We might have something in common.”

I felt her pulse quicken. That was a nice side effect of my hyper-awareness of the blood pumping through her veins. I leaned down and kissed her.

She let out a little sigh like she’d been wanting me to kiss her forever. That sigh turned me on as much as anything ever had. I kissed her softly but firmly, and didn’t linger, in case she tried to stop me. But she didn’t. She slipped a hand around me, under my jacket.

“Montague…”

I held her closer with one arm while I tangled my hand in her hair. Man, had I been wanting to feel her like this. Taste her like this. I’d never kissed anyone as a vampire before, and it was better. Heightened. I could smell her skin. I could smell her blood. I could smell her musk. It was the best kind of torture and my body responded hard. I had enough human sense to stick to the proper pace of a relationship. I knew how to be a gentleman. But—it took more restraint than before, that was for sure.

I didn’t really mind.

As long as I get there…I can wait.

“This…wasn’t my first kiss,” she said. “But it sure feels like the first one that ever counted.”

“Good. That’s all that matters.”

Behind us, one of the tall wooden doors of Guinevere Hall creaked open.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Charlotte

I snapped back from Montague the second I heard the latch of the door clicking and then the Victorian-era hinges creaking. Thank goodness for ye olden doors. I could still feel the imprint of Montague’s lips on mine, could still taste him. He had an odd but delicious sort of smell and taste. He didn’t seem human. He was kind of cold but somehow it wasn’t gross. There was almost a hint of licorice or something. Or some strange incense or exotic garden.

I knew without asking that this was the vampire allure, reeling me in.

But I also felt sure that the vampire allure was irrelevant. I liked Montague the human, and there was plenty of him left.

“Is everything all right?” Firian asked, with a hint of challenge.

Actually, more than a hint.

“Yes. It got stuffy in there for a minute,” Montague said.

“Charlotte is shivering,” Firian said.

“I’m fine.”

“Let’s go back inside,” Firian said.

“Actually, we could just…call it a night and play some Fortune’s Favor while Alec is busy,” I said. “I think I’ve completed my ball checklist. Montague, you can go back in.”

He looked a little displeased to leave me. “I could walk you back.”

“Nah. Firian’s here.”

He went back in, and I watched every inch of him all sexy in his suit before I realized I was chewing my lip and probably looked guilty. I needed to smooth things over with Firian and brush this night off. “I’m getting tired of maintaining my sparkle, anyway. And—like—I wanted to see a witch ball, but things are never as good as you expect. I’d rather just veg with you tonight.”

He thrust his hands in his pockets and started walking with me down the path. We both started walking at the same moment. I was very aware of the difference between Alec, Montague and Firian. Alec, quiet and steady, his presence very reassuring even as he was simmering with suppressed lust. Montague burned hotter, and seemed like he really wanted to make me happy. Firian was in tune with me; he always knew what I needed even more than trying to figure out what I wanted.

I also felt like he knew what had happened.

We walked until we were in the lonely part of the path between Guinevere Hall and Lancelot House, under the skeletal trees that had just lost their leaves. I got a little nervous. It was so quiet. So dark. And when the wind blew, the trees made this dry rattly sound.

So I was just talking and talking. “I guess it could have been worse. I’m not sure about Daisy. I think she liked me. Maybe? It’s hard to read girls like that. I don’t know about her and Harris though, huh? I can’t tell if she drove him nuts or if it was an opposite attract, sparks flying kind of thing.” I didn’t like thinking of Harris dancing with Daisy either, which was just adding to the confusion in my head. “Dancing to that kind of music is pretty boring anyway, so…well, I realized I’m more of a hermit anyway.”

I glanced at Firian, trying to gauge if he wasn’t talking because he liked listening to my ramblings, or if he was angry at me.

Even in the shadows I could see the tension in his mouth.

“Firian…you know if things weren’t so…weird with familiars, I would have—“

“Enough,” he said. He took my hand and then his other hand went around my waist and he pulled me to him and kissed me.

My eyes widened.

Montague was gentle yet sensual when he kissed me.

Firian kissed me like he was furious and he would never let me go. Lips parting, plucking at mine, hot breath, pressed foreheads, grip tight.

At first I was startled but I quickly melted.

It felt so right.

“Oh…” I shivered, emotions rocking me where I stood. “But…”

“I can’t pretend anymore,” he said. “I might be the first familiar to defy his witch. Because I want you. And I can’t just keep standing by to watch while other men are allowed to dance with you and not me.”

“Firian…”

“Please.” He shut his eyes. “You feel the same. I know you do. I couldn’t feel this way about you if you didn’t feel it too.”

“I do. I mean, I might. I don’t know! I feel something. For you. Definitely. But I also feel things for…Alec and Montague and…well—I don’t know what’s happening to me!” My fingernails dug into my palms as I realized my hands had formed fists of tension. “I’m scared. Everyone is reminding us constantly that this is taboo. Friendship, even. I’m all for like, damn the man. But in this world I don’t even know what ‘the man’ means. Like, I don’t care if Grandma is upset because she still thinks all anime is porn. But I don’t like, shoplift. Or date my brother. I’m not sure where you and I fall on the rebellion scale.”

“I am not your brother,” he said.

“I—I don’t know what you are!”

“I’m not sure I know either.” His hands dropped to his sides. “I just know how I feel. I want to protect you…with my body and my soul.”

A shiver went through me, not an entirely unpleasant one. Although it was cold out.

“What do we do?” I whispered.

“I don’t know.”

We started walking again. Firian had this resolved look on his face. I wondered what that meant. Did he expect something bad would happen and he didn’t care?

I didn’t want to lose him.

“Look,” I said. “Um…I want to learn magic from you. The good stuff that no one wants to teach me. I need some answers about what’s going on. Why and how did Samuel die, and what is Master Blair hiding, and who is the demon who seems to be defending me?”

“Yes,” Firian said. “I can help with that.”

“I’m sure we can find a lonely place somewhere on campus to study and practice after classes are done,” I said. “But maybe…in public…you should stay away more often. I don’t need you when I sleep, or in class, or at lunch. I can protect myself.”

“Can you?”

“Teach me some defensive spells,” I said. “First. And if I get into too much trouble, I can call you, right?”

“Yeah…” He frowned, his fox side somehow apparent in his annoyed squint.

“When class is over, we’ll get together.” We reached the outside of Lancelot House and paused on the steps. It was very quiet. Everyone seemed to be at the ball except us; I could still hear the laughter and music on the air in the distance, while the dorm was dark. “I’m sorry. Is…Etherium a nice place to go? Or do you get hassled there too?”

“No. Etherium is fine. I live alone in the forest,” he said. “It’s just like being back in Georgia, except there are more interesting things to hunt.”

I smiled, stood on my tiptoes, and kissed him back. He put an arm against the wall behind me; Lancelot House had a deep entrance way. I dropped my heels down, stumbling slightly, but he caught me. Held between his warm body and the carved ridges of decorative wood framing, I relished the sense of being alone in the world with the one person I could always, always trust. I put my arms around his neck. He had the softest hair, like it was almost fur.

He felt so good. But I already sensed that things were about to get really complicated.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Harris

My eyes followed Montague and Charlotte out the door, and I didn’t quite relax, even after Monty came back alone.

Daisy squeezed my ass. “Earth to Harris,” she said.

“I’m here.”

“Uh-huh. You got a thing for Charlotte?”

“No. I’m worried about her and Monty being alone together,” I said, in a quick save. “He’s…different now.”

“Does your father know you two still hang out? Your parents must be so pissed. What would Florin Nicolescu say?”

“They don’t know. And I don’t care. I’m a little old to be hanging out with whoever my mother likes.”

“True. But this is your family we’re talking about. I just wondered.” She smiled. “I like this rebel side of you. Wouldn’t mind seeing a little more of him…” The smile turned suggestive.

I don’t know why I couldn’t seem to calm the raging aggression inside me at the thought of Alec and Monty always horning in on Charlotte, despite that I had directed them not to.

“I won’t waste your virginity outside of marriage,” I said.

“Oh, lord,” she muttered. “We need to talk.”

“You’re not a virgin?”

“You are?”

“There is power to be harnessed on the wedding night; I wouldn’t squander that. Daisy—if this is true—”

She snorted. “Of course I’m a virgin, snack cakes. Your face, though. Were you just going to break up with me?”

“Well, I can’t trust a woman who would throw away her magic for a moment of pleasure.”

“Hmm, okay.” She side-eyed me.

“It’s fine,” I said. “Let’s just dance. I hope you aren’t going to make a habit of lying to me.”

“Lying and kidding are not the same thing.”

“Yes, they are.”

“I have to get a rise out of you now and then just to figure out who the hell you really are,” she said, with a wink.

I was relieved when the night was over. There was only so much Daisy I could handle. Are we a bad match?

In some ways I thought we might be too alike at our core.

Alec and Montague both seemed in unusually good moods as we walked back, and finally I couldn’t stand it.

“You know you two are both hitting on the same woman,” I said.

“I guess we are,” Alec said. “May the best man win.”

“You’re not wondering what Monty did with her alone outside?”

“What did you do?” Alec asked.

Monty chuckled in this private way. “Uh…”

“The thing is,” Alec said, “I just…can’t get too far with her. That spell Master Blair cast on me means I really, really can’t. And I don’t want to.” He was definitely starting to sound like he doth protest too much.

“Hey, Alec,” Monty said. “I sort of told her that we would stay with her during winter break. She’s all alone here. I’ll miss my family but, they’re fine without me. They might be relieved not to have to answer too many questions right now. Charlotte, on the other hand, needs a distraction. I know your dad might be relieved to go see the rest of his folks without you…”

When Alec’s dad hooked up with a succubus, it tore up the family, because they were all worried Alec might work his incubus powers on his cousins or something. It was a real fear. Teenage incubi didn’t always have control.

“That’s not the worst idea,” Alec said. “Yeah. I’m in. Now, if only you still had the car…”

“I fucking wish.”

“You’re both going to stay here all through Christmas?” I raised an eyebrow. “Cyrus won’t even be here. The food will be crappy. No decorations, no tree.”

“We’re a solstice family anyway,” Alec said. “The trees outside are enough for me.”

“Are you jealous, Harris?” Monty asked.

“No, I think you’re going to regret it. I think you’re going to end up fighting with each other and by the time I come back I’ll have to knock some sense into both of you.”

“I should feel jealous,” Alec said. “But…I mostly feel like Charlotte just needs…us.”

Monty looked at Alec and they seemed to understand each other.

“Easy to say now before things get too serious. Enjoy Christmas with one girl, her overprotective familiar, and a stack of frozen pizzas.”

Charlotte just needs…us.

I had trouble sleeping that night.

I knew Charlotte couldn’t go home and be entirely unprotected. But I wondered if the school’s wards and a skeleton staff would be enough, when some sort of demon was after her.

When I thought about something happening to Charlotte, it felt like a hand was reaching inside me and squeezing all my guts. It isn’t that I love her or anything. I’m not jealous of those guys. They can have her.

I just need her around to keep me on my toes. She might not know it yet, but we’re pretty well matched.

That one day outside the house phone…she was crying.

Damn it, I thought, as a plan started to form.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Charlotte

We had two more weeks of school between the ball and winter break. I was still completely crushed that I couldn’t see Dad, but Firian kept me busy. We spent the whole time focusing on defensive spells.

Okay, we spent most of the time focusing on defensive spells and sometimes we made out a little.

What was I doing!? I knew whatever it was, it probably wasn’t extremely smart, but… He was a good kisser and he was all protective and sweet and he looked like a fae prince in a wrinkled dress shirt. Try not kissing a hot guy who wants to kiss you, day after day. Just try.

Every day when classes ended, Firian and I either went to the library, or we found a spot in the garden to practice. It was cold outside and for some reason all the warlock dude-bros weren’t into garden strolling, and there wasn’t even a gardener to maintain the place over the winter, so I got bundled up and we went to work.

“First thing we should do is just get control of your fire magic,” Firian said. “Fire is the most common first spell for a warlock, because it’s a human instinct to make fire, and you draw the energy to produce the magic from the sun. So it’s innate. But since you’re unusually strong, we need to be very careful not to burn the place down. I’d rather start with wind. There’s a lot of wind up on this mountain. Try to just move it around.”

There really was a lot of wind on the mountain. It was getting brutal as we moved closer to real winter. But I flung my arms out and tried to feel it and embrace it. It was kind of like an uncomfortable yoga pose. I forced my breathing to slow down.

When I just surrendered to the wind, a funny thing happened. I felt myself warming up inside, even as the wind whipped around me. A sense of control and power built up inside me, buoying me against the cold.

Not yet…, I thought.

I let that feeling build for another moment. More deep breaths.

Something clicked and it was like I could touch the wind. I waved my arms and blew the wind at Firian. It almost carried him off his feet for a second as he was thrown back into a hedge.

“Oops!” I dashed toward him. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

A huge, almost smug smile broke onto his face. “You,” he said, picking me up and spinning me around. “That was fantastic.”

“Was it!?” I clutched his arms.

“I mean, your control is terrible,” he said. “But your raw power continues to be a thing of beauty. Yes. Most witches need to practice until they find power like that. You need to practice to manage it so you don’t kill someone when you just want to get ‘em off your back.”

“Eek.” It made me excited but nervous. “With great power comes great responsibility.”

“With great power comes great ability to kick ass,” Firian said. “Let’s just worry about that for now.”

“Good point.”

Then we made out.

I started paying more attention in class, too, even though the professors didn’t let me participate much. I realized some of the lessons had more useful information than I’d realized. Like the lessons in illusions class about changing the look of your facial hair were actually a vehicle for learning about very subtle shifts in illusion, and how to change your appearance in such a way that you could hide something without breaking the illusion over a longer period of time. I realized Professor Das had been pointing that out all along but I’d just been too stressed about everything else to notice. In necromancy class we were learning about how different funeral and burial rituals affect how you communicate with the dead later. I found myself taking a lot of notes on that too, because I started to realize I wanted to talk to Samuel Caruthers myself. I didn’t know how he had died, but now I knew some things to expect. Like, if he had been murdered he might show up in a violent rage, so I had to be prepared for that.

I liked it more than I expected. It was like playing a fantasy game in real life and leveling up day by day as I worked at it.

But then, Christmas break started, and all the guys were packing up and leaving the campus empty except for a tiny few who couldn’t go home and a skeleton staff to watch us. Even Cyrus left. There was one line cook in the kitchen and he would make us bacon and eggs and burgers and whatever basic stuff he could throw together to please about thirty people.

I couldn’t even talk to Dad during this time. They put some spell on him and Grandma so they would understand why I was gone, and if I cried I might break the enchantment.

So, no Dad jokes, no Dad pep talks, no Dad voice.

Even with Montague and Alec there, this felt like the worst Christmas ever.

Still, they were trying. Alec decorated the stairs with pine boughs. Monty put on Christmas music. Professor Adams came by with another tray of cinnamon buns since he knew I liked them.

“I heard you can’t go home for Christmas, young lady,” he said. “If you need anything all all, Professor McGuinness and I are on call day and night and we are keeping special watch for demons around Lancelot House.”

“Thanks.”

That was sweet of him, I thought, but maybe I didn’t need the reminder that I could get a visit from a Christmas demon.

On Christmas Eve, everyone left in the school gathered at the restaurant for a Feast of the Seven Fishes type spread (this was one of the Catholic things) and “yule cakes” (this was one of the Solstice witchy things) and a big pot of this ginger chicken curry (this was something Professor Das always left behind as a gift before he went home, said to ward off all winter colds).

I was feeling pretty cheerful in that moment. Professor Adams and Professor McGuinness were there being sort of fatherly, walking around and checking on us, and everyone left behind was lonely anyway, so no one was being a jerk. A lot of the kids left behind were from outside the country, so they were telling the rest of us about different customs and witch dramas back home.

“In the village where I’m from, we summon the dead on the longest night of the year,” said a senior boy named Brodie with a semi-impenetrable Scottish accent.

“I thought that was best to do All Hallow’s Eve,” Irving said.

“Not where I’m from. Where I’m from, they say the veil between worlds is weakest on the darkest day and it’s a custom for us all to call up the spirits of our blood. Y’only need a wee spell to do it because instead of calling someone in particular, you just light a candle and see who comes when you call. Charlotte, you should try and see if Samuel has—“

Professor McGuinness came hustling over while I was still mentally translating his accent. “No, no,” he said. “No dead summoning outside of class! Especially not right now. Don’t give anyone ideas.”

“It’s all right, Professor,” Brodie said. “We’re past the longest night so it might be that nothing happens anyway.”

Only a wee spell? He made summoning spirits sound easy. I mean, how much trouble could a wee anything cause? And if a skinny Scottish kid and his whole family summoned the dead every Christmas, I mean…

The door to the restaurant opened. As far as anyone knew, the only person who wasn’t inside already was the gate guard, so everyone turned as two tough looking guys walked in the door.

“Who are you?” Professor McGuinness asked. “State your business!”

The guy in front spread his hands. “Don’t worry, don’t worry. It’s cool. We work for the Nicolescu family. I already spoke to Mr. Akin at the gates. We’re bodyguards, and Master Harris told us that you have a Miss Byrne here who was forbidden to go home to her family for Christmas because she didn’t have sufficient protection. Well, the two of us are here to make sure she gets it.”

I looked wildly at Professor McGuinness and Professor Adams to see if this was legit.

“No fucking way,” Monty said.

“Harris must have it bad for you! Private bodyguards?” said Irving with his annoying persnickety voice.

“He does not!” I cried. “He’s not even here! This—makes no sense.”

“Miss Byrne.” Bodyguard A, who was tree-sized and grim-faced but with like, flowing 90s Michael Bolton hair because apparently warlocks were incapable of being normal, came over to me. “Family is important to Master Harris, that’s all. He wanted me to tell you that he didn’t think it was right on principle for you to be forbidden by the council from seeing your father. He said he wants you in good health. We’ll drive you down tonight and drive you back to the college the next day”

“I’m looking into this,” Professor Adams said, heading out the door.

Harris…? He sent them?

I get to see Dad?

I would never have guessed in a million years that my best Christmas present ever would have come from…Harris. Was it true? Did he ‘have it bad’ for me? Like I needed that. I already had three guys and Harris was a rich ass. I mean, even the fact that he sent some hired bodyguards over just showed that we weren’t in the same world.

So this is the deal. Now I’m going to owe him one.

“I’m going with you,” Montague said, after taking one look at the bodyguards.

“I am too,” Alec said. “We planned to spend Christmas with you, and I’m still not convinced it’s safe.”

“I don’t know how I can explain this to Dad. And especially Grandma!” One look at Alec and Grandma was going to faint. Throw Monty and Firian in and this was really too much dude.

“What if Harris didn’t even send those guys?”

“You don’t remember me, Monty?” Bodyguard A said, tossing his hair like he knew this was the thing that would jog everyone’s memory. “You came to Harris’ fourteenth birthday party and I was there.”

“Okay. I remember you. But I don’t actually know you.”

“My name is Ron. That’s Dwayne.” He offered a hand. “We talked for a little while about the soccer game.”

“Ron, you are undermining my point,” Montague said, shaking his hand. “I cannot send Charlotte off with two men that she doesn’t know.”

“Your hand— Ah. You’re the vampire.” Ron nodded at Dwayne, who shook his head at Montague.

“Well, I think, despite that I have no idea how I will explain this, I would feel better if you two were with me,” I said. “You can’t glamour yourself to look and sound like my female friends, can you?”

“I think,” Alec said, leaning a little closer and oozing palpable manliness at me, “you already know the answer to that.”

I took a deep breath at the very thought of my loud, warm-hearted but also scarily blunt and fairly old-fashioned southern grandmother encountering all three of these guys, but I would just have to roll with it. I had a long car ride to think up stories, at least.

“Harris had bodyguards at his fourteenth birthday?” I muttered.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Harris

My family usually spent Christmas at their winter home in Palm Beach, but this year, by some stretch of luck for my plan, the winter house was being renovated so we were having Christmas in New York for the first time in some years. This allowed me to peel off some of the permanent staff of the Villa Reale, paying them to drive Charlotte home and keep their mouths shut.

Going home for Christmas nowadays was enough chaos that I doubted anyone was paying attention to anything going on outside of the house.

My parents had popped out seven kids in nine years, truly living up to the royal legacy of my mother’s line, so I had two sisters in college, one apprenticing to be an enchantress, one getting married, and one pregnant with her first child. Then there was my sister Annabelle who was the family ‘black sheep’, a college dropout who had a half-demon boyfriend. I knew her and my mother would be engaged in a passive aggressive battle for the whole vacation.

Yeah, so…I hope Charlotte gets to see her dad. And I hope she appreciates it.

Because one thing my parents would notice was if I didn’t come home. There was no way I could enjoy any of the fruits of my sacrifice.

Flying didn’t agree with warlocks, so a car had been sent for me days ago, driving through the mountains and bringing me back to my childhood home, a Gilded Age mansion with three floors of furniture and paintings from the old world. It was one of those houses you could lose yourself in, full of things that had terrified and fascinated me and my sisters as kids: the 16th century painting of some ancestor who died at age 12 in the parlor, actual Renaissance furniture in the dining room, repaired whenever a piece broke by one of the only artisan furniture warlocks in the world, and in the family chapel, a box containing the bones of a witch who was either hung at a witch trial in Austria or killed in the Spanish Inquisition depending on which family member you asked.

The house was given the rather harmless name of “Ladyswald”. It was built in the woods for the wife of my mother’s ancestor Thomas von Hapsburg. As a kid I just assumed everyone lived in huge houses full of creepy shit until I was sent off to boarding school and met other kids.

It wasn’t long before I met Alec and Monty. We became fast friends, and I dreaded vacations. When I was at school I could be myself, but when I was home, my parents kept royal airs as if they still ruled something or other, even though the authority of magical royal families had started dissolving about the time of the Industrial Revolution. That was when magic really started losing some of its teeth.

Still, we had money and we had power, and as long as my parents could hold onto it, inside of Ladyswald they could act however they wanted. My house had more of a dress code than school did. My parents had all the warmth of parents in an old British children’s book.

It wasn’t so bad. At least they didn’t pry into my feelings about anything.

“So, you have decided on Daisy,” my mother said, at dinner.

“Oh good! I like Daisy,” said Helena, my favorite sister (fifth girl out of six, three years older than me).

“I think I have, yes,” I said. “She just seems like the logical choice. When she steps into her grandmother’s shoes, she will be one of the most powerful witches in the world.”

I could see Helena looking disappointed at me for not sounding more genuinely enthusiastic. She wanted Daisy and me to be happy.

“Let’s hope she does,” my father said in a low voice.

“She will,” my mother said. “She is an ambitious girl, despite her…unruly side. Well, it is hard when one’s parents are out of the picture.”

“Daisy is very young to take on…such a role,” my father said. “How much longer is her grandmother going to live? She should have had a mother.”

“Well, naturally, she should have had a mother,” my mother said. “That goes without saying. It’s very sad. Nevertheless, she will do it. Harris, has she ever given any indication that she would not?”

“No,” I said. Which was true. But Daisy just never talked about the fact that when her grandmother died, her powers would be passed on. Daisy would become the great diviner of the North American continent. She would take on one of the most important jobs in the magical world: sensing out spots where the passage between worlds was still intact, and advising the councils as to where to send their witches and warlocks to protect them and keep them in the hands of the Ethereals.

It was such a lonely, isolating job that it was hard to imagine Daisy doing it. I would likely work my way up the council ranks, but she would be spending most of her time in solitude and silence, peering into mirrors and pools, under heavy guard.

I had this sense of dread when I thought about it, but she must have it even worse. Anyway, what mattered was that she would keep the power in her family, and be handsomely rewarded for it, while my family continued the tradition of marrying only the most powerful.

“Now, is it true that you’ve still been hanging out with Monty Xarra?”

“Well, it’s a small school and I can hardly tell Alec not to hang out with him,” I said.

“He should never have been released,” my father said. “Vampires. When I was a kid, they wouldn’t have let any vampire attend Merlin.”

“Treatments have improved a lot since you were a kid, Dad,” said Lucia, my oldest sister.

“But he is immortal,” Mother said. “And touched by the Sinistral realm. His familiar is dead. He is not one of us.”

“Here we go,” Annabelle said, stabbing her cauliflower.

“What is that?” My mother looked at her sharply.

“I said, here we go. You won’t even give Rex a chance. And you’ve known Monty since he was a little kid and now he’s shunned just because something bad happened to him.”

“No one told him to go to Mexico,” Mother said.

“It’s not like there are more vampires in Mexico than other places!” Annabelle yelled. “It could happen to anybody, anywhere! Listen to yourself.”

“I’m sure he was drinking,” my father said. “In an unfamiliar place. Surrounded by regular mortals. It’s just not smart. He was weakened by all the tech and the plane ride and that’s why it was dangerous.”

He’s still one of my best friends, I thought. I wanted to say so, but there wasn’t any point.

I wondered what they were up to now. Monty, Alec, Charlotte…

They were probably eating junk food and goofing off. I didn’t need that. Especially with all the flirting that was undoubtedly going on. Charlotte couldn’t even do my best friends the favor of picking one of them. They were both into her and she was stringing those poor bastards along.

So why do I feel so damned jealous?

“What’s really dangerous is the oppression we all live under,” Annabelle said.

Yes. Thankfully, every large magical family seemed to have a rebellious child. Since Annabelle took that role in our family, she conveniently kept the heat off of the rest of us. Monty being my friend wasn’t nearly as bad as dating a demon. I ate my meal in some peace.

The family butler, Emerson, walked into the room. “Pardon me,” he said, and then he whispered something in my father’s ear.

My father’s eyes turned to me. Emerson whispered to my mother next.

It wasn’t very often I got to see them drop the act. Almost made it worth it.

“Ron and Dwayne!?” my mother cried.

“You thought we wouldn’t find out?”

“For that girl? The girl at Merlin? Harris, don’t you tell me that you—you—”

My sisters all looked very curious, even sweet Helena. Having six older sisters was terrifying in moments like these. They could argue with each other like stray cats, but if I was on the chopping block, they formed a perfect union of, “Ooh.” “What?” “Girl?” “I think her name is Charlotte.” “She’s in his dorm.” “Really?” “What happened?”

“Emerson, remove Harris’ presents from underneath the tree,” my mother said.

Yep. I should have stayed at Merlin.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Charlotte

We reached my house pretty late in the evening. Luckily my family never went to bed early on Christmas Eve. I saw lights on inside, and outside, Dad had done up the works. As if to compensate for my absence, the yard was loaded with an inflatable dragon, an inflatable snowman, lights all over the trees, candy canes lining the walk, one of those things that makes colored lights spin over the entire house, plus a roof Santa.

“This is fucking awesome,” Montague said.

“It’s going to make us sick,” Alec said.

“Live a little,” Montague said, elbowing him.

A second later, Dad threw open the door, holding a hunting rifle since I’m sure he didn’t recognize the car and it was this big, black, nondescript thing.

“Oh, crap,” I said. “Heyyy, welcome to Georgia. I guess I should have warned him I was coming.” I threw open the door the second the car stopped moving.

“Dad! It’s me!”

“Charlotte? What? I thought you had to stay at your school!”

“Well, things changed.” I sprang out of the car and we hugged each other tight. It felt so good to hug my dad. Even though he seemed smaller than I remembered, as if the world had gotten bigger while I was gone. “Um…but I had to bring two boys from school with me. They’re going to hang out here to make sure no weird magical stuff happens.” I didn’t even mention the bodyguards, who had agreed to go park themselves in Firian’s cabin.

Firian was just behind me, I realized. He had been dutifully staying out of the way lately, but now he materialized out of the shadows. He had some wrapped presents in his hands.

“Aw, man,” I said, in a small voice. I didn’t have presents for anyone.

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

“Two…other boys?” Dad said.

“Yes. Just classmates. They’re nice.”

Alec and Montague were already getting out of the car, which drove away.

Dad looked like he was trying to wrap his head around his precious little baby girl hanging out with…that. “Boys?” he repeated. “Those don’t look like boys to me,” he said under his breath.

“They’re freshmen,” I said. “Like me. I mean, you know the deal. It’s a boys’ school.”

“I told your grandmother you were at the University of Georgia.”

“So…I can make male friends there.”

“Look at them!” he said, his voice getting the raccoons-in-the-trash pitch again while he gestured with his rifle.

I put my hand on his arm. “Dad! You are the one who lectured me about gun safety and I never even wanted to touch your guns! It’s cool.”

I mean, I hoped it was cool. But I wasn’t really sure if I was more worried what my grandmother would think of the guys, or how much she would embarrass me around three guys I liked. Did I mention Grandma was loud? She had the enthusiasm of a reality show competition judge, the adherence to rules of a drill sergeant, and all of her cooking was either delicious and very bad for you, or out of some horrifying 50s cookbook nightmare (and still very bad for you).

At this moment she came bursting out of the screen door. “Oh my word! Charlotte! Charlotte! How did you get here?” She hugged me tight. Her body was comfortingly Pillsbury Doughboy-like. It only took her about two seconds to change gears. “Now what is all this? Who are these boys?”

“See, I told you they were boys,” I told Dad.

“Mrs. Byrne. It’s a pleasure. I’ve heard a lot about you,” Firian said, glancing at my dad.

“These are my friends from college, Grandma,” I said. “Firian, Alec, and Montague.”

“Oh my god, you’re all so handsome! Look at you boys, I tell you, if I had had boys like that in high school—! Well, your grandpa would’ve really had to hustle.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Montague said, taking her hand. “Thank you for having us for Christmas, and so late.”

“Your…skin is…cold.” Grandma looked at Montague and for a moment she looked dazed. “You’re such a gentleman.” I was afraid my Grandma was about to have a Bella Swan moment with Montague, and he looked a little…hungry. Maybe the car ride was too long. Alec pinched him and he blinked, and then she slapped his hand a few times. “We’ve gotta warm you boys up! Come on in. I’ll reheat the dinner.”

I gave them a little grin of relief. “We’re in.”

Grandma shoved some dishes in the oven, other things in the microwave, and put out a few scary bowls of Jello and mayonnaise based things while Dad turned on the radio so it was playing Christmas music and hustled up air mattresses. Montague went to use the bathroom; I’m pretty sure he was just drinking blood in there. Alec edged away from the microwave. Thank goodness my grandmother had never been very astute.

“This is like the good old days,” Montague said, returning. “Remember when we used to go to the mall?”

“Yeah,” Alec said. “I couldn’t believe it the first time you took me there.”

“Y’all don’t have a mall?” Grandma said.

“We just study so hard,” I said. “And Alec comes from…uh…nowheresville.” I suddenly noticed Firian was eating the terrifying gelatin encased salad thing. This thing wasn’t kidding around. I shot him an incredulous look. He pointed at it like, Not bad.

“Is this what foxes eat? You should be ashamed of yourself,” I whispered to him while Grandma was making a clatter getting out silverware and plates.

“Hey, Mom,” Dad said, putting a hand on Grandma’s back. “Why don’t I take care of this? You should get some sleep.”

“Are you saying I’m old?”

“You were just saying your ankles were swollen. What do I take from that? Tomorrow’s Christmas. Gotta wake up early now that Charlotte’s here.”

“Oh, all right.” She gave me an embarrassingly loud smack on the cheek. “And you boys be good.”

Dad escorted her to her bedroom like he was making sure she was locked away, and then he came back with this tense look on his face. He gave me a weary smile. “You’re all…warlocks?”

“Yes, sir,” Montague said. “We share a dorm with your daughter and have been watching over her. Some are not as gallant as those of us in Lancelot House, but rest assured—she will come to no harm with us.”

“Do you have an accent suddenly?” I asked him.

“Well, I trust Firian,” Dad said.

“As you should,” Firian said, as if he hadn’t grabbed my wrists and told me I was his and damn the consequences.

Dad took a pan of Grandma’s delicious, warm macaroni and cheese bake out of the oven, the crumb topping browned, the thick layer of cheddar peering out just beneath, promising that while I might have to take a laxative later, it would be so worth it. There were also some leftovers of Dad’s famous homemade barbecue ribs. Oh Sweet Baby Ray Jesus, this was all the Christmas present I needed.

“Before you eat a bite,” Dad said, “I want the truth out of you.”

“Whut,” I said, horrified. “Um…what truth do you mean?” Can I lie to my Dad’s face? I made a quick calculation and realized the answer was probably no.

“I need to know what is going on with your mom,” he said. He had this look like he’d been holding in anguish for the last seventeen years. “You—someone—must know something. Why would a witch turn to…darkness? Leave her family? Everything was fine. The week before she left, we took you to the zoo.”

“Dad—“ I swallowed a sudden lump of anguish and then sniffed. “Damnit, this is a high price to pay even for ribs and macaroni and cheese… I don’t really know anything, except that Mom was close to her cousin Samuel, and he wanted me to go to Merlin College, and he was killed. Dean Blair promised me more answers at first, but…then he kinda dropped it. I think they’re hiding something from me. I just don’t know. Let’s sit down…”

He plunked down the food.

“Mr. Byrne,” Alec said.

“You can just call me Evan.”

“Sinistrals and Ethereals have been locked into a struggle since the beginning of time,” Alec said. “One group is always trying to get power from the other. It’s gotten much worse as the world gets more industrialized, because magic has been weakened. There is less to go around. I was born because my father was attacked by a Sinistral. She drew magic from him by seducing him. I was an accident and she didn’t want to take care of me. She gave me back to my dad and we never saw her again.” I had never heard calm Alec have such an edge to his voice. “What she did to him was just…total shit. Some Sinistral might have taken advantage of your wife. I’m sure it wasn’t her fault. It is easier if there’s something she really wanted. Something she might have done anything to get. Did she ever mention anything like that?”

“She…always regretted the rift in her family,” Dad said. “Emily’s mother was a witch who fell in love with a—a pack of werewolves.” He looked at me. “I still don’t know how to talk about this.”

“A pack of werewolves?”

“Werewolves often mate in packs,” Montague said. “It’s actually not uncommon among a lot of the magical non-humans because they look for humans whose magic they can use to help keep the gates between worlds open.”

“Wait—like—my grandmother had more than one lover at the same time?” My cheeks flamed as I looked away from the guys.

“So I’m told,” Dad said, coughing. He suddenly started spooning out the food. “Everyone, take some. Go on. While it’s hot.”

Despite the crazy stuff going on in my head, the food was still delicious and I ate a couple big bites. I’d read some stuff about the gates between worlds in my studies of magical history and literature. While witches aligned themselves with either Etherium or Sinistral, the worlds had many native denizens, like Firian and other familiars. They were a little like demons and angels, or any other good or wicked spirit. Ethereals and Sinistrals from the other worlds gained power from the human world, specifically from humans believing in them or worshipping them. But the gates had been slowly closing off as humans became less likely to blindly believe in fairies, spirits and gods.

“So if demons mate with a human as a group, the human helps keep the gate open?”

“Yeah,” Alec said. “But witches and warlocks don’t count. We’re already between worlds. So that pack of werewolves must’ve just been into your grandmother.”

“I—think so,” Dad said. “Your grandmother was hot stuff from what I’m told. The werewolves had a rock band together, you know, back in the 60s.”

“Wait—my grandparents had a rock band? Were they famous?”

“A little…at the time. The Wild Eyed Boys. You heard of them?”

“No,” I said, disappointed. “Still, they were a real band?”

“Lots of Sinistrals and Ethereals are artists,” Alec said. “That’s one way they gain power to counteract the sickness of modern life. Otherworlders are more susceptible to those sicknesses than warlocks…” He looked pale and I knew this was hitting him right in the moment. My house was loaded with electricity.

“She handled all their costumes and image. They lived a jet set human life. They didn’t want Emily to become a witch,” Dad said.

“What happened to them?”

“I’m—not sure. They were always difficult to contact. They ended up retiring to some remote place in Australia where I guess her—husbands? Whatever you call them…could run around if they wanted. Whatever werewolves like doing when they’re in the human world, how should I know?”

“That’s where Samuel Caruthers was killed. Oh my gosh. We should have been more honest with each other before…”

“What does all of this really tell us?” Dad put his head in his hands. “We can’t go to Australia. I don’t even know where they live. I don’t know where your mom is. I don’t know anything, so I really hoped you’d figure it all out. I don’t like the sound of this. How do I know the same thing isn’t going to happen to you that happened to your mom? If the dean isn’t giving you answers, you can find them.”

Dad was right. He still knew me better than anyone. I looked at Firian and I felt like he read my mind, which was pretty cool in this case. “We’re going to figure it out,” he said. “We’re going to summon the spirit of Samuel Caruthers and ask him.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Is that safe?” Dad asked.

“It’s safer than being lied to,” I said. At least…I think.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Charlotte

When I shut the door to my bedroom, Firian was already in there, lounging on my pillows. “Hey, you just—you were out there! Stop doing that!”

He stood up, giving me a wicked smile. “Your dad thinks I’m at the cabin. But he doesn’t know it’s already rented out tonight. Anyway, I belong here.”

“Are you seducing me in my nerdy bedroom?” I said, glancing over the array of posters.

“Maybe.” He kissed my forehead. “Merry Christmas, Charlotte. Do you know how many years I’ve spent looking in at the lights of your tree? When everyone else went to sleep, your dad would put out the leftovers for me.”

“Oh, Firian…that’s a sad story.”

“I was happy because you were happy,” he said. “But it’s nice to be on the inside.”

“Were you really happy?”

His brows furrowed. “Well, maybe not. Still, it doesn’t sound right to say I was unhappy either. And it was three years ago today that your dad bought you a year’s subscription to Fortune’s Favor for Christmas.”

“Oh, yeah! That is when we met…”

“That was fun. But this…this is everything,” he said, putting his hands around my waist.

“You’re a frisky fox,” I said, tensing as I thought about making out with Firian while sharing a house with Dad, Grandma, Montague and Alec.

“What’s wrong?”

“We’re just not as…alone as usual.”

He took a deep breath.

“You know I would date you like a normal person if I could.”

“Of course I know. I just want…so much…to be human with you.” He kept his arms wrapped around me but gave me a very soft kiss on the temple and then released his grip. I realized how cold the room was when he moved away. He turned into a fox and curled up at the foot of my bed.

I sighed. He walked to the covers, bit them, and pulled them back for me. “You’re right,” he said. “Santa comes tonight, right? And he knows if you’ve been evil.”

“That’s an aggressive interpretation. Look at the wall. I’m going to change into pajamas.”

“I don’t think your nude body will be a surprise to me,” he said.

“Just look at the wall! And I’m wearing underwear, so I won’t be nude.”

“Even more reason not to be shy.”

“Just look at the wall!” I yanked off my jeans and pulled on my pajama pants, then climbed in bed. He put the covers over me. I smoothed his soft fur. “You’re like a pet/boyfriend combo. I don’t know how witches don’t get tempted by their familiars more often.”

“Some familiars turn into snakes and spiders,” he said. “But maybe I’m just unusually charming.”

I snorted. “Hey…Santa’s not real though, right?”

He paused. “That’s a complicated question.”

I sighed and slipped easily into my dreams.

In the middle of the night, I woke up to feel a hand brush my breast. “Hey…” Alec’s low voice was in my ear.

I glanced at the foot of the bed. No Firian.

“This is a dream, isn’t it?” I whispered.

I was aware, this time. I was calm. The world was vivid but not quite there. The physical feelings were extremely potent, like they were all that mattered.

“Charlotte…”

I looked back at him and he was shirtless and drenched in sweat. He didn’t look very well, but he still managed to be so sexy that I wanted to lick the sweat off him. And ‘licking sweat’ had never been on my list of attractive activities, but Alec was eternally lickable. “Alec, you look…sickly,” I said. “Is it all the Christmas lights?”

“There is a lot going on out there,” he said.

“You’re groping my boob,” I said, but it didn’t come out very upset.

He still drew back the hand. “This is what happens to me,” he said. “When I’m vulnerable, my body screams for something to satisfy me. But it’s never been this bad before. Resisting you is a sport with its own league…”

“You can’t touch me, anyway,” I said, but we already knew there was a lot of ground left to cover. His hand was proving that right now as he began a more focused teasing of my nipple, plucking the nub between his fingers through the sheet as a pang of pure desire shot through me.

This was probably a bad time to recall that my grandmother was, even to this day apparently, living with an entire rock band of men. Holy crap.

“How many wolves are in a pack of wolves?” I said, arching back into him until, through the covers, my ass found the hard length of the Incubuster.

Alec chuckled close to my ear. “Depends whether they’re a straight up rock pack of wolves with your classic guitar, drum, bass, or a prog rock pack of wolves with two synth players and a flautist.”

“Ohhh, I need to tell you to go,” I said.

He groaned with plain anguish and rolled away from me. “Yes.”

“Wait,” I said. “I mean—is there something I can do to heal you?” When he didn’t answer right away, I turned to him. He was laying back on my bed, one hand kneading his forehead, the other limp at his side, and between those tattooed arms was just a gorgeous shelf of man muscle. My eyes trailed to his navel, then the line of dark fine hair that led to his black sweatpants and…his very obvious arousal.

“That is one hell of a tent. I could camp in there,” I said.

“I wish you could…,” he groaned. “You need to send me away.” His eyes almost had a low glow in the shadows as they lifted to me. “Teenage girls are usually more intimidated by me than this.”

“Don’t say ‘teen’,” I said. “It makes it sound like you’re not a teen. And almost nineteen is like, hardly teen anymore. I bet most of the teenage girls you’ve known in the past didn’t spend as much time on Deviant Art as I have either. Looking for…stuff. Stuff like you.” I smirked. “The only thing is…I just…I haven’t been very open with the three of you.” That slipped out on accident.

“You like Harris?” Alec asked. “Wait—you mean—you mean Firian.“

“I—“

“It’s okay,” he said. “You know, it’s more common than people think.”

“You mean familiars…?”

He nodded. “My familiar has…helped me control myself, on rare occasions,” he said. “Don’t ever tell anyone that. But it could be a lot worse if they hadn’t. It feels so good here with you, but this is really a curse.”

“Oh, Alec…I understand,” I said. “I’m…glad you told me that, actually. Everyone has been acting like it’s so wrong. But Firian doesn’t seem that different from you and Montague to me…” I bit my lip. “Alec, I really do like you too. I like all of you. That’s why I’m so confused. Maybe a Roller Slut was born that day after all.”

He grinned. “For the record…I’d be a member of your wolf pack.” He started to shift like he was going to get out of bed, and instead I grabbed him and kissed him. I just barely had time to taste his lips before the magic shoved us apart.

“Is there something I can do?” I asked again.

“My magic is fed by you coming,” he said. “For me.”

Heat flooded me. Every inch of my skin screamed for him to touch me.

“I…don’t want Firian to hear me.”

“You probably won’t make any noise in real life if you don’t make noise in the dream,” he said. “So…how quiet can you be for me?”

“For you? I’m not so sure…”

“I hope you’re not entirely quiet.”

I see such a different side of Alec in these dreams, I thought. But it feels just as much like the real Alec as the quieter artist side of him…

He pulled my sheet up to my neck, but threw the quilt off my body, and reached between my legs.

“I know you try to hide this part of you when you’re awake, Alec…”

“Hush,” he commanded, his warm breath brushing my ear.

His fingers slowly worked their way over my thigh, and then down the midpoint of my body—from navel to my hot center. Only a flannel sheet stood between his hand and my skin. I could feel his heat through the cotton fibers. I spread my legs a little, encouraging him to take what he needed.

To give me what I needed.

I could feel his strong body just behind me, his cock throbbing against my tailbone as his fingers felt around my folds.

Admittedly, this would have been better if the sheet wasn’t in the way. Especially since the sheets had bunnies on them.

“Close your eyes,” he said. “I can see you thinking too hard. Just feel this and only this. Just me…and only me.”

“Mm…” I only let out a tiny sound as he got fully acquainted with the makeup of my lady bits through the sheet, and then went in for the kill. His fingers found my clit with such perfect precision. Even I wasn’t this good at finding it, I thought. “Nnn…how do you…oh…”

“God, this feels so fucking good,” he said, my little sounds seeming to encourage him to stroke harder. “Incubi must have a lot more fun than warlocks. Your power, Charlotte…you’re so beautiful and whenever I see you I just want to fuck you dry. It’s torture…but incubi have a pretty high tolerance for torture like that. As long as we get what we want eventually…”

In the last dream, I freaked out when I realized he was drawing power from me, but this time I wasn’t surprised. I wanted Alec to enjoy the holiday here with the Christmas lights and microwaves. And it didn’t hurt that this was like every adolescent girl’s best sex dream. I had a hot, shirtless demon with a ripped bod in my bed telling me I was gorgeous while he pleasured me and only me. I could feel his cock throbbing and grinding more urgently against me but I couldn’t touch him so I didn’t have to do anything except enjoy myself.

I felt myself coming way too fast. I was falling into his hand, the way he stroked me with insane precision. Like when I tried to pleasure myself, my sweet spot always seemed to be moving around like, “Ha, ha, you thought I was here? No, I’m over here!” Alec’s fingers had a homing device built in. Up, down, sideways, swirl, flick, hard rub—whatever my body wanted, he did. Instantly.

“Oh nooo…”

I actually lunged forward a little, as if in panic, as the feeling swamped me. I was afraid I would scream and everyone would hear me. I was also afraid I might have a heart attack because my chest was pounding. But mostly, I was afraid because I knew the dream would end and Alec would disappear and I would go back to the real non-dream world where guys couldn’t just crawl into bed and pleasure me.

“That was…everything, Charlotte. Just sleep peacefully,” he said.

I woke up.

The room was dark. No Alec. Just Firian. Still asleep. Oh, thank god for that.

But…

I felt like a pool of melted goo. Deliciously tired. But not…exactly satisfied. I mean…that was way too tame.

But you just let Alec give you your first boy-to-girl orgasm, I thought. In your dreams. While your fox familiar who loves you sleeps at the foot of the bed and Alec’s air mattress is right next to his vampire best friend that you kissed at the ball.

That was a little weird, right?

I had been trying my best to be up front with these guys, but this dream space was where it got really tricky. I don’t know how much the dream was considered reality. It was a shared dream, so it wasn’t just a dream. But in the dream, I didn’t quite act like myself, and he didn’t either. The guards of the real world were gone. We acted on instinct more than sense. How much was I capable of resisting him? And how much was he capable of avoiding me when my house made him sick?

Well, I thought. No one has to know.

But I sure wish I could ask my other grandmother a few questions about her love life…

Chapter Forty

Charlotte

On Christmas morning, Alec looked very healthy and I was groggy, but not really in a bad way. Still, it was awkward when our eyes met over my grandmother’s cinnamon buns at the kitchen island. Some Christmas parade was blasting over the TV and Grandma was loudly apologizing for not having presents for the boys.

“I got my present,” Alec said in a low voice to me. “Thanks for last night. I hope you don’t have regrets.”

“I—um—no.”

“I’m in the race,” he said. “I want more.”

“The race?”

“For you,” he said. “Firian, Montague…and, like it or not…I think Harris too. We all want you.”

My eyes widened. “I must be better at glamour spells than I thought.”

“Or maybe you’re just that fun and sexy.”

I coped the only way I knew how at that point, by shoving a cinnamon bun in my face and scurrying to the table.

“These’r th’ bes’ yet,” I said around their doughiness as Firian lounged into a chair beside me, with his unearthly grace.

“They taste like the faeries made them,” he agreed, delicately licking a little frosting off his knuckles.

“Oh, well, thank you! Faeries! You’re funny.” Grandma smacked his shoulder. “Where did you find this one? It sounds like something your mother would have said.”

“Do you remember my mother very well?” I asked, very surprised to hear Grandma mention her. She glanced at my dad.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s gotten a little easier to talk about Emily.”

“She loved fairy tales and things like that,” Grandma said. “She had funny little superstitions about the faeries! She used to make little offerings for them when we had extra food. When you were born you already had teeth. She used to call you her little goblin. She said goblins are born—“

“Little goblin!?” I cried.

“Not as an insult or anything! It was cute!”

“Oh—uh—right…that is cute, actually.” Little goblin? Was it a coincidence? The demon who attacked Royce and Ronan…

Firian raised his brows at me. I knew he was thinking the same thing.

But I couldn’t even find the time to talk about it. We had breakfast to eat, and presents to open. “Good thing I forgot to mail these on time because I’m a terrible father,” Dad said, bringing out a bunch for me. “Merry Christmas.” We had Christmas movies to watch, while Grandma started frying up some chicken.

After dinner, Dad and Grandma both fell asleep in their chairs so we packed up the leftovers to sneak them to Ron and Dwayne. While we were huffing up the mountain—okay, while I was huffing up the mountain—I said, “Is my mom…a demon? Like…not just a sinistral…but a scary wolf-demon thing?”

“That would explain how she got past the school wards,” Montague said. “Your blood tie called the demon in.”

My hands clutched tight around the Pyrex casserole dish. “But—I mean—she’s not, right? She’s not a monster. She just…left us to—become a badass dark witch.”

Firian stopped and retraced a few steps down the steep path to stand in front of me. “It is possible…that wasn’t quite it.”

“You know something.”

He had this expression like he was far away. Like something had broken him inside.

“You’ve known something all along, Firian…haven’t you?” I cried.

“I don’t know much,” he said. “I really don’t know much. Just…familiars know each other. And familiars are born with more knowing than humans. I was only a year old when your mom turned to the sinistral realm, but I could already talk. So I remember a little bit. Your mom’s familiar told me that your mother made a deal with the Withered Lord. He is a powerful high demon who used to have control of your grandfathers. The werewolves. They got free of him, but he was furious. He doesn’t like when his wards get free of his clutches. He knows how to prey on people and the things they want. Your mother was raised as a human, but she was half witch and half werewolf. She didn’t really belong in the human world, and she had some resentment of being ‘held back’ from her power. He probably tempted her with power. I don’t know anything more than that.”

“My mom…” I swallowed.

“It’s really not that different from what you already know.”

“I didn’t know she was a monster. I didn’t know she would show up at my school and try to kill people!”

Alec took my Pyrex dish. I guess I looked like I was going to drop it.

“I’m fine!” I declared, not that anyone had asked.

“I wouldn’t expect you to be entirely fine,” Montague said.

“Sinistrals aren’t nice,” Alec said. “That’s why they’re Sinistrals. The truth is, Monty and I are both somewhat Sinistral ourselves. So we understand the potential. The…temptations.”

“To take from someone else,” Montague said. “To become stronger. Some Sinistrals aren’t evil, but all of them are a little ruthless. Alec is right. But…maybe your mom could be saved.”

Firian shot Montague a look. “Don’t give her false hope,” he snapped. “You know how rare it is for a Sinistral to return to Etherium. Once that gate is shut, that’s it.”

“Usually,” Montague said.

“But there’s a chance?” I asked.

“No,” Firian said. “It’s not worth thinking about.”

“It isn’t? But it’s my mom!”

“You’ll drive yourself to Sinistral if you start trying to pursue a quest like that,” Firian said. “Trust me, Charlotte. Please.”

“I want to summon her,” I said.

“I’m not sure you should do that either,” Alec said. “I wouldn’t summon my mother.”

“But my mom still loves me!” She must, I thought. She was trying to protect me from Royce and Ronan. It made sense now. “She’s watching over me. And I owe it to her to try. Harris wants me to summon a demon? Well, I’m summoning one that I know will come.”

Chapter Forty-One

Charlotte

Returning to school, I had some quiet time to get centered. I felt so much better having seen my family. I had some time for extra magical study with Firian and daily yoga.

Then Harris came back.

I saw him appear in Lancelot House’s common room in the morning. I had already eaten the grapes that he preferred. But I knew I needed to thank him. It was all thanks to him that I got to see my dad and grandma for Christmas. Is it true? Does he like me?

It made me a little nervous, but I didn’t want to show that. I was going to treat this like ripping off a bandaid. I stalked over to him. “Harris, I just want to—“

He cut me off. “Those guys had nothing else to do, that’s all. They work at our winter home, but we weren’t there because it’s being renovated. I just didn’t want our employees to get stir-crazy, so don’t get your knickers in a twist or anything.”

“You did not just accuse me of getting my knickers in a twist when I’m trying to thank you.”

He looked down at me with his chilly blue eyes. “I’m just letting you know that thanks are unnecessary. I guess if you want to owe me one, that’s all right, but I think you already do owe me one.”

“You are—the most—jerk—arrogant— I don’t owe you anything. You’re the one who keeps deciding to help me. I never asked for it.”

He shrugged. “Well, there isn’t much you can do for me anyway.”

Montague dropped his hands on my shoulder. “You probably shouldn’t goad her, Harris. She is as much werewolf as she is witch. We learned a lot about our Charlotte while you were gone. Her dad and grandma were a picture of hospitality.”

I saw Harris’ nostrils flare ever so slightly before he calmly stirred his coffee. “You went with her?”

“The more protection, the better, right?”

“I guess.” Harris put down his coffee half-finished. “I’d better go. I have a lot to do this morning.”

Montague turned me around to face him. The guys had developed an increased level of physical contact with me over the holiday break, I’d noticed. Montague, Alec, and Firian when he was around—all three of them were more likely to tuck my hair behind my ears, adjust my collar, put a hand on my shoulder, and little things like that. Somehow we had gotten comfortable. Well, they had gotten comfortable, I guess, and I hadn’t stopped them.

“I never knew what he looked like when he actually cares,” Montague said. “Now we know. He’s even more incorrigible.”

“He doesn’t really care about me. He just likes getting a rise out of me,” I said.

“That might be the same thing,” Montague said. “But I don’t need any more competition. I’m glad that one can’t touch you.” He nodded at Alec who had just wandered downstairs and poured himself a cup. “What class did you have first? I’ll walk you.”

Hmm. Montague was getting a little more possessive now that Harris was back.

I wasn’t sure where all of us stood. The guys had been avoiding the subject too. I wondered if Alec had told Montague about any of the dreams. I was pretty sure he hadn’t told him my confession about Firian. And Firian was staying away during class hours nowadays, but when we were alone he definitely treated me like I was his. We already had such a bond that it happened naturally. I wondered what Montague would say if I told him about Firian.

Alec was looking at me as I talked to Montague. He was, specifically, looking at Montague’s hand, which had moved casually to my waist.

I’m in the race. I want you.

My body tingled all over, remembering.

At the same time, this was moving too fast. I couldn’t lead them all on, letting them kiss and flirt without agreeing to be their girlfriend because I liked them all equally. Plus I had a demon mom to summon. A “Demomma”, if you will, which was a monster in Lorna Caves in Fortune’s Favor that looks like a bat-winged woman with tiny bats around her that attack you.

“If you want to wait for Alec, fine,” Montague said in my ear. “But I’m not going to be very easy to get rid of.”

“I think we all need to talk,” I said. “At least, I need to talk to you and Alec.”

Montague gave me a long-suffering sigh and smoothed back his thick dark hair, which was clearly just washed and a little wet at the tips. “Fine. Talk. But—you are a quarter wolf. We’ll see how long talk can last.”

I dragged Alec out the door. “We’re going to take the long way around campus to class,” I said, turning left. “Because—well—since the ball and especially since Christmas—“ I twisted my shirt buttons. This wasn’t as easy to say as I thought. “What I mean to say is, I need to focus on my studies. I have some very big questions to grapple with, and no one’s telling me the answers, so I’m going to have to tackle that on my own, and I can’t get distracted.”

“You can’t break up with us,” Montague said. “We’re not actually dating, are we?”

“That’s right. We’re not dating and I’m not breaking up with you. I just need to focus. I want to be a powerful witch so I can’t dick around.”

“Pun intended?” he asked.

“Pun intended!”

“I don’t like puns.”

“Then you won’t miss me.” I crossed my arms. I felt like we were still flirting. Everything felt like flirting now. Damnit, how did you turn off the ‘flirt’ button?

“Charlotte,” Alec said. “Whatever you plan to do to find these answers, you might need our help, and we’d be glad to offer it. Something strange is definitely going on.”

“Yes. I’m starting to wonder how much I can trust Master Blair,” Montague said. “He’s been acting strange. Plus, what’s up with Stuart? Why does everyone think he’s so amazing? He danced with more of the young witches than we did, and they all asked him.”

“Man, I’ve always wondered what is with that dude,” Alec said. “There are thousands of books in the library. Spells we could teach you. We could figure out this mystery with you. We can try to contact your grandparents…maybe some light spying in the professor’s offices…”

Montague was nodding. “Harris might even get in on that.”

I felt all fuzzy inside at the idea that they wanted to help me. But…I could also see how quickly this would turn into a mess.

“The thing is, I—I think you know—I really like both of you.”

“That’s all right,” Alec said.

“No way. You’re saying this now, but I’m going to ruin your friendship. That’s how it always goes.”

“Or…we could see how it goes.” Alec coughed. “Monty and I were talking, and…well. Vampires usually share their prey, because one human has more blood than one vampire needs, and since they all are drawn to their sire…”

“What does vampire prey have to do with it?” I screeched.

“Because vampires have sex with their food,” Monty said. “They don’t always kill the food either. And I’ve been—ah—having a few memories. Dim. Very dim. But I know that I probably won’t have a normal marriage with a normal witch like I expected. I might be a danger to her in the heat of the moment. But just to make it clear, I don’t plan on eating you.”

“Meanwhile, incubi actually get more power from sharing,” Alec said. “The more the better, really. We’re not saying we’re at that point yet. We both want to court you like proper warlocks.”

My cheeks must have been on fire while he was talking. “Uhuh,” I said.

“But…if we entered into a relationship—“

“We’ve been best friends since we were eight,” Montague said. “We’re already pretty comfortable with each other.”

“We both want you,” Alec said. “I can protect you from Monty, and feed off his lust, so it’s a win-win for me, and then we don’t have to compete.”

“So…you guys just figured…that would be…cool with me?”

“It is nice to have options,” Montague said.

“You said Harris likes me.”

“Yes. He definitely does,” Alec said.

“Well, what about him? Isn’t he your friend, too?”

“He’ll be forced to grapple with it,” Montague said. “I am aware we might lose his friendship. Harris will never break away from the family expectations. He’s going to marry Daisy, no matter what he feels inside. But we can’t make our decisions based on Harris. His mother already told him to shun me since I became a vampire.”

“No wonder he’s so much fun,” I said. “Well…the thing is…it’s—it’s not just the two of you.”

I didn’t really want to talk to anyone else about Firian, because I didn’t know who I could trust. But when I told Alec, he didn’t even seem surprised. They already know, don’t they? “Montague, it’s also…Firian.”

“Firian,” he repeated.

“I know how forbidden it is…”

“She already told me,” Alec said.

“You told him,” Montague said.

“Not that I was trying to keep things from anyone!” I said hastily. “It just spilled out. You didn’t already suspect?”

“I did,” Montague said. “Of course. It’s just that hearing you say it…a familiar…”

“The thing is, I would never have known it was taboo if everyone didn’t keep reminding me. I’ve been told the rules of the magical world but to me they seem arbitrary. Like if I was in love with a girl on another planet and then I came to Earth and found out there are places where it’s not okay to be gay. It doesn’t feel any different to be with Firian than it does—“

“I understand,” Montague said. “Witches and familiars can be very close.”

“To me, it’s not a big deal,” Alec said. “How many of these rules are ceremonial, or just there so the council can maintain power?”

“It’s just that—I’m from St. Augustine. The site of the scandal. My parents would rather I become a vampire than if I had fallen in love with Rosa.” A dark look crossed his face.

“Is Rosa your familiar?”

“She was.”

“Was? Oh—she’s—“

“Monty,” Alec said. “You’ve never talked about her.”

“And I don’t want to.”

“But…maybe you should,” Alec said.

“There’s nothing to say. She died when I was bitten. But she was a familiar, so she just vanished. Her body went to Etherium. Of course there was no goodbye. I’m sure someone probably buried her, but that world isn’t my business.”

“Oh…no.”

Montague’s mouth was set, betraying no sadness. His eyes had turned dark and distant, even a little cold. I was reminded again of what he was now. Not human. Something I didn’t entirely understand. I knew all the myths about vampires but I still didn’t really know how it changed a real person. How the bloodlust and immortality and memories of Lisbeth would affect him over time.

Alec put a hand on Montague’s shoulder. “I loved Rosa when we were kids,” he said. “If you ever need to talk about her, just so you know…I understand. I’m glad you said something about her. It’s not your fault. You know that, right?”

“Don’t be so nice, Alec. It was my fucking fault.” Montague took a deep breath. “Charlotte, if Firian makes you happy and you need him in your life, I’ll try to…accept that.”

“Okay. Um. I have to admit that I hardly know what to do now because I didn’t expect you guys to be so cool about this. I thought you would fight over me.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Montague said dryly. “I can’t promise we won’t ever fight over you in…smaller ways.”

“If I wasn’t enchanted not to touch you I would definitely…want more of you. Sooner,” Alec said. “So if we do this thing long term, I hope there’s a lot of you to go around.”

“Let me talk to Firian in private,” I said, flushing deeper.

Montague lifted a hand. “Maybe we should all talk to him. He is your familiar, your first protector. Being protective of you is in the core of his being. If we are to court you, then we will also swear to your safety and happiness. I might not be entirely comfortable with the situation, but he’ll probably be even less so, if we can’t look him in the eye.”

“Gah,” I said. I couldn’t imagine Firian was going to be thrilled with this. I felt like I had completely lost control of the situation, but at the same time, I was getting something better than I could have ever dreamed of.

Firian’s going to mess this up, I thought. Alec and Montague are into me, but…Firian is…more than that.

Chapter Forty-Two

Firian

The magical realms are the world of fairy tales and fae, of enchantments and delusions. Occasionally, humans have fallen into it and come back with stories. That used to be more common, back before the blight of technology fell on the world. At least, that is how all magical beings know it, although I couldn’t complain considering how many hours I had spent with Charlotte having fun on a blighted machine.

Still, I understood. The humans took the terrifying beauties of Etherium and safely replicated and contained them in games. It was pretty damn clever, actually.

Etherium wasn’t quite the same for me, ever since, and I knew why. I’d spent too much time in the human world by now. It had tainted me. Now when I came home, I felt as out of place there as I did in the mundane world.

Yep. That was my fate now. Caught between worlds, never belonging anywhere.

In Etherium, geography worked differently. I lived in a cottage in the woods. When I was born and first went to Etherium, the cottage was there waiting for me. It already had curtains on the windows, an inkwell and paper at the desk, a quilt on the bed, and some root vegetables and apples in the cellar. It was like someone else lived there, but somehow I knew it was for me.

There was a path outside of my cottage. The path led to different places at different times. If I wanted to buy new things for my house, it led to the village of Bluehill. If I wanted to visit another familiar, it led to other houses. Sometimes it led to a lake where I went fishing.

The woods were also interesting. In my fox form, I could hunt and easily find game. There were rabbits to hunt, but there were also intelligent rabbits who talked. I had always known the difference and the talking rabbits didn’t even blink if they caught me with a game rabbit in my mouth. There were also sprites and other fair folk. Sometimes at night they would lure me into the darkness and want to play chase. The brownies would fix things in my house or make me presents. Etherium was a world of benevolent spirits, and the ones in my forest were mostly playful, although there were also very wise beings in Etherium that were as intimidating and even frightening as a demon. They wouldn’t hurt a fellow Ethereal, but they had intense power. But I hardly ever saw a High Ethereal, which one might call faeries, elves, or angels.

As enchanting and pleasant as Etherium was, I was spending a lot of time there now, because I didn’t want Charlotte to get a bad reputation because of me.

And I missed her.

All the time.

I yearned for her humor, her laugh, the light in her eyes, the way she hummed to herself when she was distracted. I missed playing games with her, teasing her, talking to her like I was a human too. I ached for the taste of her lips and the feel of her skin against mine. I wanted more and more. I waited for our magic lessons all day and avoided the other Ethereals—especially familiars.

I knew what they’d see.

A corrupted familiar. I had succumbed to the forbidden. They would blame her, of course, because familiars couldn’t even act without their witch. It was impossible for a familiar to want something their witch didn’t want. At least, that was what they said.

Whenever I thought of kissing Charlotte, I felt starved for more. I kissed her first. Which meant that either I had my own independent desires, or she had wanted me to kiss her so badly that I had to do it.

She didn’t even appreciate how impossible this was.

It was better this way. I didn’t want to change our relationship. I wanted her to see me as human. As a man. Not a mysterious being from another world.

But whenever I had to return to Etherium, it was a reminder that I wasn’t human. Etherium had never felt like home. Before Charlotte knew I existed, I spent most of my time in her woods. In the cabin. Watching over her. Catching her scent on the trails. Smelling her dad’s barbecue and waiting for him to put food out for me.

God, I really am half-boyfriend, half-pet…

“Firian!”

Whenever I heard her call, I was there immediately. As happy as I was to see her, a part of me remained detached, even more so when I saw Montague and Alec there. The look in their eyes made me narrow mine. They smelled like they were eager for my girl, and I didn’t trust them.

“Firian,” Charlotte said. “I want to talk to you.”

“We want—“ Montague began, with his smooth voice, a hint of accent suggesting some old world charm. Warlocks who had grown up in smaller, older witch cities had a certain air.

“Me first,” Charlotte said to him, with a slight edge to her voice. “Firian—I was just talking to the guys. Uh, how do I say this? It’s like I have one life with you that’s secret, and one life with them where I’m torn between guys, and…no, no.” She started again, her voice forceful. “So I just found out my grandmother had multiple guys—husbands—wolves…”

My eyes flicked—very briefly—to the other two. “What have you been talking about?”

“I’m trying to tell you!”

“Firian, Alec and I are both enthralled by Charlotte and for various logistic reasons, rather than compete over her, we would rather share.”

“And you’re also invited,” Alec said, in his low, calm voice.

“I’m invited? Oh, thank you,” I said, a little sarcastic.

“We’re cover for you,” Alec said. “It won’t seem as scandalous for you to be around Charlotte if she’s with us too.”

“Not that you have to hang out with us,” Montague said. I sensed he was a little less on board than Alec. “It’s fine with me if you want to maintain a separate but equal relationship with Charlotte.”

I was bristled. I didn’t believe that two warlocks were really accepting a familiar as a witch’s lover. Or if they were accepting me, it was because they didn’t see me as a man, but more of a devoted pet who wouldn’t threaten them.

I looked at Charlotte and it was clear that she wanted this. It was a perfect solution for her, I guess. No decisions. Three men who would protect her and help her navigate the magical world, and stave off the loneliness she had endured at Merlin College. My girl had tried so hard to be tough, but I knew that I couldn’t be everything to her. I wanted her to be happy.

What are you if not a devoted pet? I couldn’t deny her anything.

“I suppose we can try this arrangement,” I said. “Because you’re going to need allies if something goes down.”

“Really?” Charlotte said, whirling toward me for a hug. “You’re not upset? Oh—you are definitely a little upset.” She patted my rigid back muscles. “Are you doing this because you really want to?”

“I’m doing it because you really want to,” I said. “Why else?”

“I don’t want you to be miserable, Firian. If we’re going to have a relationship, I want…”

“Charlotte,” I said. “It’s okay. I’m happy to be with you, and not outside looking in.”

I could see that she didn’t really like this. She believed in independence and equality. She wanted me to be human, and have a human’s sense of agency, but when I looked at her I realized that every time I kissed her, of course she must want it. I could never do anything Charlotte didn’t want.

Because I definitely did not want to share her.

But I also couldn’t, and didn’t want to, say no.

Chapter Forty-Three

Charlotte

Oh. I understand now. This is why witches and familiars aren’t supposed to be together.

Firian wanted to make me his and his alone, but he couldn’t. I had some sort of…hold over him, and he could never go against my wishes. Despite all his talk of devotion, he was fully capable of annoying me, so I never realized just how deep it went until I asked him to do something he definitely didn’t want to do.

This is not an equal relationship.

Nothing in my human life had prepared me for the look on his face, as if he loved me no matter what I did or said, and my presence was all he needed for fulfillment, but at the same time, he wasn’t without his own mind. He didn’t like this. He wanted me to change my mind but understood that if this was what my heart wanted, he was helpless to do anything but go along with it.

What could I do? I instantly understood that to try and push him away would only make him more miserable.

We needed each other. So I guess this was how it was going to be.

“Okay, well…,” I said. “I’m glad you’re all in, tentatively or otherwise, because this is going to be a crazy semester, right? Firian’s been helping me get control of my elemental powers, but I want to move on. I want to figure out how to summon my mom and talk to her. So…what do I do, considering the professors aren’t helping?”

I already knew Alec was wary of this plan, but Firian and Montague seemed more interested.

“We can try and summon a lesser sinistral for practice,” Montague said, rubbing his chin. “But there is always an element of danger. Especially considering this demon mom of yours might be the same demon that shoved Elise out of the way. She gets past the school wards. So even when we practice, you might get her instead.”

“No,” Alec said. “I say, no demon summoning for practice. You need to practice defense and control first. Honestly, getting her to appear doesn’t seem like the problem here. It’s controlling her when she does so she doesn’t hurt us.”

I got that little tingle all over that said, Hey, maybe not such a great idea, summoning your crazy wolf-demon mom.

But I ignored it because, well, it was my mom, and we all do stupid things for the people we love the most.

“Hey,” I said. “Is it possible to get my mom to—like—not be a berserk demon, but show up as herself? Can I jog her memory with an object or something?”

“That might help,” Firian said.

“The dress I wore to the ball was my mom’s,” I said. “Dad sent it. I can’t imagine she didn’t buy that dress for some special day, right? So if I wear the dress, would that help?”

“That’s a great idea,” Montague said. “But still—defensive spell practice first.”

“It might help if we knew a little more,” Alec said. “Did she wear the dress on a date with your dad?”

“He said she bought it before they met.”

“I might be reaching,” Firian said, “but do you remember how Master Blair had a very strong reaction to that dress?”

“Yes…a lot of people did…”

“Yeah, but he seemed really shocked by it, and he’s old, and doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to be rendered speechless by a dress.”

“He did brag about going to clubs in the disco era,” Montague said.

“Like he’s seen the dress before?” My eyes widened. “It’s a good point. I mean, I’m sure he’s in on something.”

“We could break into his quarters during the…hmm. We just need an event that he’d definitely attend but might not notice if we weren’t there,” Alec said.

“You really want to break into his rooms, Alec?” Montague said. “Surely he has some wards up.”

“That’s why we need Harris,” Alec said. “He’s good at all the sneaky spells.”

“Are you sure we need Harris?” I asked. “If you’re so sure he likes me, do you really want to involve him in this?”

“He’s going to pretend he doesn’t care, and marry Daisy,” Alec said. “This is Harris we’re talking about. There’s no way he would ever date you, especially if we’ve already staked our claim. Still, it’s a good idea to make him feel needed.”

I snorted. “This sounds like a terrible idea.”

“Worst case scenario,” Montague said. “Master Blair catches us. If that happens, you need to cry. Tell him you just want answers about your mom, you know, lay it on thick.”

“Cry? Just because I’m a girl I have to bail all of us out with my sheer weepiness?”

“It would work,” Montague said. “Why ignore a potent weapon in your arsenal?”

“I am not doing that,” I said. “I don’t cry that much. It sounds degrading. You cry!”

“I never cry, and he wouldn’t care if I did.”

“You sound super sexist right now. If we’re caught—but we better not be, if Harris is so good at these sneaking spells—I will explain calmly,” I said.

“So when are we doing this?” Firian asked, crossing his arms as he leaned against a nearby tree, having left us to our arguing.

“I don’t know,” Alec said.

“Great plan, bro.”

As it turned out, that very week Master Blair announced that the roller rink would have a grand re-opening at the beginning of February, with various contests and prizes and, he added with a sneer, “some of that shitty modern music you all wanted.” Some guys in the corner yelled insults back. Master Blair gave them the finger, and Stuart took the mic and said, “All right, we’re going to have fun and I want to remind everyone of the rules of conduct at the roller rink, since it’s been a little while. We are gentlemen, aren’t we, Ignatius?”

Still, it was obvious that Master Blair would be overseeing the contests, and a lot of the guys seemed excited to attend, probably because it was just brutally cold on this mountain in winter due to the elevation, way worse than I was used to, and everyone was stir-crazy.

I was happy to spend the time spying instead. I was terrible at roller skating, but I also thought it was weird to have a bunch of guys roller skating without any girls around.

“Guys don’t just go roller skating by themselves!” I explained, when Montague seemed like he wanted us to make it a date instead.

“Do girls go roller skating by themselves?”

“Well, people don’t really roller skate that much anymore, but yeah, that’s a little less weird. Roller skating is girly.”

“You sound super sexist right now,” he said.

“It is the perfect night to spy,” Alec said. “It’s even a new moon. We’ll have the cover of shadow.”

He gave me this look like he wanted to break into Master Blair’s house and have sex on his couch or something.

“Good thing about those no-touching spells,” I said.

“Do you really believe that?” he said in my ear, tracing one finger lightly along my neck, making me shiver, before his hand was forced back.

Now the guys just had to convince Harris, who had been pretty buried in his studies and antisocial lately, not that he was ever Mr. Popularity. I let them handle it. It was their crazy idea anyway. Would uptight Harris really want to break in to the dean’s house? Nah. And did we really need him? We’d all been working really hard on our magic together when class was over. The guys were teaching me wards and repelling spells, so if Master Blair caught us, we could just repel him out the door and Montague could use his vampire mind magic to make him forget it ever happened.

I was settling into my seat at theurgy class when Montague walked by me and said, “He’s in.”

“Really?”

“I never doubted it,” Montague said. “There is a reason he’s in Lancelot House.”

Chapter Forty-Four

Charlotte

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” were Harris’ first words to me when we all gathered in the patch of trees behind Dean Blair’s house.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Your spells have a way of getting out of control.”

“I’ve been improving rapidly,” I said. “Practicing every day. Montague and Alec have been helping me out.”

“Is that so? So that’s where you guys have been lately. Well, that’s all for the best. I’ll be on the council someday. Professor Adams is giving me private lessons in demon summoning.”

“La-di-da,” I said, annoyed that he brought this up seemingly for no reason, especially when Professor Adams wouldn’t let me do anything.

Harris shrugged, dropping a leather satchel on the grass. “Well, let’s work quickly. Who knows how long it might take to find photographic evidence. I’m going to cast a spell that should let us slip through the wards. It feels to me like he just has a basic shield of light spell on the house, but there might be smaller wards inside.”

Once again, there was no doubt, Harris knew what he was doing when it came to magic. He had a focus and authority when he cast spells that Montague and Alec didn’t quite match.

We were all dressed in mostly black, which was fine since a lot of the uniforms were black anyway, and it was also about twenty degrees outside, so our coats and hats weren’t suspicious. Our flashlights might have been the biggest tipoff that we were up to something, especially since we stole them from a supply closet. Firian had appeared in a black uniform as well. A black cap with flaps covered Harris’ fair hair. With his ice blue eyes and arrogant expression, he would breeze through a casting call for Young German Officer Who Kicks Down a Door, Yells Stuff, Finds Anne Frank’s Hideout.

Damnit, I already have three guys, why do I keep feeling so magnetically drawn to the one that seems like he’s studying to be some evil council member and of course has everyone helping him along the way with private lessons and crap?

“It is the new moon,” Harris said. “Perfect timing. You planned that, didn’t you, Alec?”

“I didn’t plan the roller skate rink thing, but I did notice,” Alec said.

Harris traced a pentagram shape in the snow at our feet with a stick and directed us to stand at each point.

“This spell will help to shield us as we cut through the ward,” Harris said. “We’re going to draw energy from the moon’s shadow. Take off your gloves.” He took a silver-edged mirror from his bag. Then he took out a bundle of white sage, lit it, and waved it over the mirror.

The smell of the sage mingled with the fireplaces burning logs all over the school, the mysterious scent of winter on the air.

My hair stood on end. This really felt like magic. Which was odd to say when I’d already been manipulating elements, but I understood that we were getting into more subtle territory here.

Having cleansed the mirror with the smoke, Harris shifted it until he found the moon in its reflection. Well, I assumed that was what he did. I couldn’t see it, but I trusted the magical vibe we had going. “Hecate, I call upon thee, bind the shadows of the moon to our forms, and let us break through the barriers of light, so that we may find the truth in darkness.”

His eyes flicked to me ever so briefly before he set the mirror down in the center of the pentagram between us. Then he held out his hand over it. “Take my hand, and walk the circle with me.”

We all held out a hand, one upon the other. Alec, Montague, me, and Firian last. Montague’s hand was freezing, of course, so I would have planned my position better if I’d realized what we were doing.

We walked, counter-clockwise, point to point, until we ended where we began. I felt a shadow pass over all of us. We all glanced around as we felt it.

Now Harris looked up with a faint gleam in his eyes. “Okay. We’re ready.”

We stepped out of the trees. Dance music was pounding in the distance, but Master Blair’s residence was in the loneliest corner of the campus, separated from the student quarters and classrooms. The staff all had Victorian homes like our dorms, but they were a little smaller. Master Blair’s was a white gothic mansion that reminded me of a wedding cake, symmetrical with arches of gingerbread over the windows.

“We stand out in the snow,” Firian said. “Maybe we should have worn white…”

“Shh!” I was nervous, wondering if maybe I should have just like, asked Master Blair if he knew my mom.

But you already know what he’s going to say.

Alec opened the door without any trouble but Harris stopped him from going in. He waved a hand over the door. “Okay. It’s safe,” he said. “Just wanted to make sure. You might feel a slight resistance as you pass through.”

We all crossed the doorway, floors creaking under our feet. Victorian houses were creepy in the dark. The air had this mysterious, musty scent that made it seem like no one lived here. Master Blair’s house had very simple furniture, kind of modern but still fitting the old house, with framed posters and art on the walls. I immediately started looking for shelves or anything that might hold photos. Hopefully they weren’t in his work office.

“Someone has to invite me in!” Montague hissed behind us.

Okay, I guess we all didn’t pass through the doorway.

“Come inside, creature of the night,” I said.

He glowered at me. “Don’t. Do you know how aggravating that is?”

“You really can’t enter without permission? That’s for real?”

“Yes. Only houses. Not public spaces. It’s usually not a problem unless I wanted a career in home invasion.” He sniffed the air. “Do you smell that, Alec?”

Alec sniffed the air now, clearly trying to pick out something, as we moved through the sparse, artsy living room down a narrow hall.

“I do,” Firian said.

“Good lord, it’s like hanging out with a pack of dogs,” Harris said.

“Speaking of that, Charlotte, your sense of smell should also be better than normal,” Firian said. “Since your grandfather is a werewolf. Are you picking up on that?”

“You mean that smell like a sad ghost in a library?”

He snapped his fingers. “Good girl. Have a treat.” He held some nachos over my head.

“Oh, stuff it.”

“Quit goofing off,” Harris said, because of course. “Be careful in here. There might be traps.”

Firian looked very unamused all of a sudden. “You don’t smell anything, do you, Harris? You’re just a human, no frills.”

“‘No frills’? That’s the only time I would ever be described as such. But no, I don’t sniff the air like a wild animal.”

“I think the smell is Harris’ knickers in a twist,” I said.

“Does anyone know what that smell is, though?” Montague said. “Because to me it smells like…death. I don’t mean a corpse. I mean…spirits. I think.”

“Have you ever smelled a spirit?” Harris asked.

“Not specifically. That’s why I’m unsure. But St. Augustine is very haunted and this smell is familiar. I wondered what it would smell like if Master Blair was talking to Samuel, because I feel like, if I had to guess…”

“Hey, I think I found it!” Alec had suddenly shot ahead.

We all edged ahead into a study. It was full of magical looking books on shelves that were very sturdy but still sagged a little, as if the sheer power of the books had overwhelmed the wood. As soon as I crossed into this room, I felt a little queasy.

“Alec, shit!” Harris hissed. “These are the wards I was talking about for the interior rooms.”

But now I could see why Alec had suddenly barged into Master Blair’s study. He had his flashlight pointed at a photo on his desk.

“Oh my god,” I said. “The dress. That’s…Mom.”

Master Blair was with three other people in the photo. My mom. Samuel. And another girl that Master Blair had his arm around. It was hard to tell ages with witches and warlocks because they often lived longer, but they all looked young and happy. The other girl bore a distinct resemblance to my mom and Samuel. It looked like they were going out on the town. My mom had on the pink dress, the other girl was in polka dots with a little fur cape, and the guys were wearing black suits, a little oversized. Everyone had sort of teased hair, the girls had makeup that was all red lips and intense eyes, and Samuel was rocking some eyeliner. It was definitely the 80s.

“Well, that is clear evidence,” Montague said.

“Guys, we have to go,” Harris said. “If we leave this instant I might have time to—“

“She looks like you,” Alec said. “And this other girl…she has to be another relative. The same nose and smile.”

“What do I do?” I didn’t want to let the picture go, seeing my mom in the dress, my mom young and smiling and adorable. “Do I confront him about this?”

“Put it down,” Harris said. “I said I’d help you break in. I’m not getting expelled over—“

“What are you kids doing?”

Suddenly Stuart was behind us in the doorway, and even though his tone was like, Threat Level: Mr. Rogers, it was Creepy As Fuck.

I screamed. We all screamed, actually.

Stuart held out a hand to take the picture. “Can I see this?” he asked, in the calmest tone but oh my god why was he so creepy all of a sudden? Why was he the creepiest man alive? What the fuck was Stuart? I felt like I was about to bolt in abject terror and I could not understand why my gut was reacting so violently.

Alec clutched my hand and got shoved back against the desk from the touch. “Sorry, Charlotte,” he said. “I thought that was Montague’s hand.”

Alec was so terrified he was going to hold hands with Montague? Well, it wasn’t just me then.

“Stuart. You scared the shit out of us.” Harris laughed with faint relief. “We’re just trying to understand what’s going on with Charlotte and her mother and Samuel Caruthers.”

Stuart put on his reading glasses. “Can I borrow one of your flashlights? Thank you. Oh…yes. That’s right. Ignatius does have a picture of Emily in that same dress you wore to the ball. I forgot.” He gave me the briefest glance with these eyes that were like, I am the lord of all eternity and before me you are a mere particle of dust, mortal.

“Ohmigod. Ohmigod. Please don’t hurt me,” I said. “I—I just needed to know. I’m sorry.”

Harris sighed impatiently. “Charlotte, it’s just Stu for gods’ sake, I think we’re cool. This all happened because the dean has just been acting strange this year, but he reacted strongly to Charlotte’s dress, like he’d seen it before. Right? We are cool, aren’t we?”

“We are cool,” Stuart said, with a mild smile. “Why don’t you take the photo, Charlotte? I’ll tell Master Blair that I gave it to you to cheer you up. I’m sure he probably has the negatives to make another copy.”

That must be some confusing old photo thing. I nodded dimly. All the terror I felt was tamped down, and I almost thought I must have imagined it, except that Professor Jablonsky had been perplexing me since the beginning.

“Your spells to get past the wards were very impressive,” Stuart said. “Who cast those?”

“I did, sir,” Harris said.

“Ah. Well, enjoy that in good health, but don’t do it again.”

“Who is the other woman in the picture?” I asked.

“That is Samuel’s little sister Ina,” Stuart said.

“Ina?” Another cousin. I was desperate to know more, my eyes practically willing the face of the grinning, dark-haired girl in polka dots to speak. “Is she still alive? Could I talk to her?”

“She is at the Haven,” Stuart said, and I picked up on some faint hint of warning.

“Thank you for understanding, Professor. Let’s go,” Montague said, his cold fingers startling me as they gripped my arm.

Chapter Forty-Five

Charlotte

“Maybe it’s better if we drop all of this,” Montague said, when we got back to the dorm.

“Drop…looking for answers?” I looked at the picture. It had only whetted my appetite for more. My mom seemed so happy. She hadn’t even met my dad at this point. What happened to her?

“You’ve been to the Haven, Monty,” Alec said. His strong jaw worked back and forth before his face took on a determined set.

“Charlotte…” Montague walked up to me and cupped my face in his hands. “I can’t let anything happen to you, that’s all.”

“What is the Haven?”

“It’s a huge place where witches and warlocks go for all sorts of reasons. But…none of them all that good.”

“It’s a sanitarium,” Harris said. “A mental ward. And rehab. It’s where Monty had to go to un-vampire himself as best as anyone can.”

“So…something bad happened to Ina, too. Samuel’s dead. And my mom is in Sinistral.”

“Yeah,” Montague said. “Not a good record.”

We stood in the common room, which was empty. I guess anyone who wasn’t roller skating was enjoying some quiet studying time.

“So how deep of shit am I in, then?” I asked.

“Charlotte, you’re going to be all right,” Firian said. He reluctantly admitted, “Maybe it’s a good thing that you’ve gotten so popular. I guess we might need a crew.”

Harris moved toward the stairs. “I’m going to go study,” he said. “It sounds like my work is done.”

“Harris!” I walked up to him but hesitated at the studied indifference in his eyes. “I mean…thanks for helping us. I mean that. I know your reputation means an awful lot to you, and you didn’t have to help us.”

“Just doing my old friends a favor,” he said. “University is the last hurrah, and…I know none of you are capable of getting past those wards.” He glanced at them and then tromped up the stairs.

I rolled my eyes a little, but if I was being honest with myself, that was just a cover for the uncertainty inside me. I mean, is he really going to just leave and marry Daisy and stop being friends with Alec and Montague?

“Well, I have what I wanted,” I said. “The dress and the picture should be enough to summon my mom.”

“Did you just hear me?” Montague said. “Drop it. This is dangerous. To answer your question, the shit is deep.”

“You think that if I summon my mom, she would actually hurt me? So far the demon has only hurt other people.”

“Are you ready for it?” Alec said. “Knowing that your mother is…a demon?”

“If that thing is my mother, we’ve already met.” I bit my lip. “Anyway, who can I trust? I don’t know whose side anyone is on. Out of all the people in that picture, who is still just fine? Master Blair. And I ask again, what the hell is Stuart?”

“I’ll support you entirely,” Firian said.

“Firian…you don’t think this is too risky?” Montague asked. He ruffled his hair with an agitated hand. “I get nervous when I hear the Haven is involved.”

“All the more reason we need some real answers. Is there a day that’s particularly good for summoning demons, the way the new moon was good for this?”

“Yes,” Alec said. “For that, we should look at the stars. Scorpio’s influence is good for demon summoning, and we definitely want to make sure you don’t have any negative aspects with the current moon and your own natal chart. Do you know your birth time?”

The next day Alec was buried in books of star charts in the library figuring out my birth chart. Then I realized—duh—I could just generate my astrological chart off a website. I slapped a print out in front of him and he gave all of his books a heartbroken look and said, “That’s…cheating.”

“Well, you can keep figuring it out this way if you want.”

He slammed the book shut and snatched the paper out of my hand.

He figured out that the best time for demon summoning was March 25th. So I had about six weeks to prepare before, hopefully, I would trap my own mother in a summons and could finally ask her…what had happened to my family?

Chapter Forty-Six

Montague

None of us knew how this dating thing was supposed to work. Alec and I were fine seeing Charlotte together, but it ended up feeling more like friends going out. Alec couldn’t touch Charlotte, so it didn’t seem fair if I touched her. At the same time, if we could both touch her, I wasn’t sure what would happen. Maybe it would be weird and we’d both get nervous. Or maybe our desire would feed off each other and we’d lose control. I could easily see that happening, because I knew it was in Alec’s nature to want sex all the time. And it was in a vampire’s nature to have sex with his prey.

They didn’t always—the vampire who turned me hadn’t. Thank God, because he was a guy. But I remembered how good he smelled. I was afraid if he had forced himself on me I might have enjoyed it.

When I got home from a night with Charlotte, I’d been having some pretty intense memories.

Lisbeth and Rayner got to London and rented a small flat. Rayner was working some sort of manual labor job, taking advantage of his vampire strength. Lisbeth offered to get a job as a maid but he insisted that he could provide for her, sparing her those long hours of hard work. I saw all this in snippets, and much of them involved him having sex with her. She had this plain but very pure sort of beauty, but also seemed very determined for a girl of the 1600s, and he clearly loved her so much that the memories always turned me on. Then I felt awkward, like I was cheating on Charlotte by remembering Lisbeth.

Firian had Charlotte alone during their magic practice, and Alec shared a room with her. They both had private time with Charlotte automatically, so I asked her to study with me. We had some long papers to write for history and literature.

We would read and take notes in front of the fireplace in the library for a while, and then find some privacy in the stacks. She would slide her hands up my back under my jacket. I could feel her excitement in the way her fingers dug into me, feeling out my shoulders, working down my back muscles, giving my ass a squeeze.

By this time I was getting hard.

I kissed her face and neck. I squeezed her ass in return. If it was really quiet in the library I would let slide a hand up her front. Her breasts were just the right size for my hands. I could tell she liked it when my fingers brushed her nipples and I got even more excited thinking about the day when I could strip off her clothes and take those hard nubs between my teeth.

But when I tried to slip my tongue in her mouth, she would lock her lips down.

Finally she said, “Your mouth is cold.”

“It’ll warm up from contact.”

“Yeah, but…”

“So how do all these vampires in books get so much action?” I demanded.

“I’m sorry. I want to kiss you very badly, but when we actually do…”

“I don’t know how Alec can stand not touching you,” I said, nibbling her ear.

“Ohhh…!” she said, almost in protest but not really in protest at all. “Do I need to get Alec in here to protect me from you?”

I stopped and ran my tongue over my teeth. Sure enough, I was all fangs now. “I can’t help it. You smell so good.”

“You smell so good…”

“Is it so bad to kiss me, then? I can’t stand this, Charlotte. I never get to kiss the girl I’m so into…?”

“I want to kiss you. Believe me, I do. It’s just that you’re…dead.”

“I’m not dead. I’m undead. Which is just…a technicality.”

“I want to kiss you. I sooo want to kiss you, you tasty man. It’s just…your tongue is lukewarm. At best. Lukewarm tongue.”

I didn’t really even notice much that my body was cold. In some ways, I felt warmer than when I was alive, because cold weather didn’t affect me as much. “I do see your point.”

“Did Rayner kiss Lisbeth?” she asked.

“I actually don’t have any memories of that.” This was a crushing realization. My sire’s life seemed to be unfolding in front of me, in flashes that told me his story. But if I hadn’t remembered any kisses yet, maybe I wouldn’t. Surely a kiss would come before sex. So I just had to wait. Maybe I wouldn’t mind not kissing her as much if we were having sex.

But they’re two different things. I want both. I want all of her.

Charlotte’s fingers brushed my chin. “Let’s try it. You’re right. I’ll warm you up.”

“No,” I said. “If it doesn’t bring you pleasure, I’m not going to do it. You’ll like it better when I can do other things to you.” I nibbled her ear again, and she let out a soft whimper. “And someday I will.”

“Mm…” She pressed her face against me so I felt her eyelash brush my cheek. I trailed my tongue down her neck and forced myself back before I was tempted to open a vein. “Wasn’t Alec supposed to protect me from you?” she murmured. “Do I need to call him?”

“With what? The Alec signal?”

We stood together, forehead to forehead, fingers entwined. The mixture of hunger and lust was heady. The smell of her skin gave me this possessive urge.

Rayner…if you promise not to kill me, I want you to taste me. When I shut my eyes, I saw a slender wrist offered up. Lisbeth’s trusting eyes. Swear to me, you’ll never taste another girl but me.

“Charlotte…” I lifted her wrist to my lips, kissed it. Licked it. She laughed but I saw a little worry there.

“The way you look at me sometimes,” she said.

I remembered Rayner’s first taste of her blood. My God… Her eyelids fluttered in ecstasy. There was no pain, only pleasure, from a vampire. He wanted nothing more, in that moment, than to drink and drink until she succumbed to him, but he loved her enough that for her, he was always more human than monster. He shoved her wrist away and wrapped her skin in linen.

“Don’t be scared. I would never kill you…”

“Good to know.” She lifted her hand and flame leapt from her fingers.

“Whoa.” I jerked back before my clothes caught fire, but it worked. I was completely snapped out of the memory. “Damn, did I just tell you I wouldn’t kill you…?”

“Yeah. Very reassuring. You’re like a restaurant with a sign that says ‘Rat-Free!’ Good thing I have skills. I thought it might be a good time to show you how I’ve been learning control,” she said, with a wicked little smile. “Maybe there’s a spell I can learn to warm you up.”

I shook my head. This girl…

No matter how intense the memories got, I knew I would never want to find Rayner and serve him like other vampires. We all had our masters. Maybe I would have been susceptible, before. Not now.

A few days later, she came up to me in the library with a thermos. “What about that?”

“What?”

“It’s hot tea. When you sit by the fire your body gets all nice and warm, so I thought, maybe there’s a life hack. I asked Mr. Tranh in the conservatory if there was any tea that was good for vampires and he said chamomile is good for everyone. I put a lot of honey in it. He said that was okay too because honey is magical or something.”

“That seems almost too obvious.” I took a swig. It was hot, but not too hot. Or maybe I was tougher now. I held it in my mouth a second before taking another. It was also delicious. Very different from blood, but I hadn’t tasted anything else in months now and I didn’t realize I missed sweets. Vampires can still eat honey? Someone could have told me that.

“Okay?” she asked, perching on the table.

“Let’s see.” I gently pressed my lips to hers. They parted slowly, letting me in. She didn’t stop me, but instead put a hand to my neck and held me closer.

“Mmhm…”

My tongue inside her delicious mouth. It was a hundred times better than it had ever been before. Was it her? Was it my heightened sense? It seemed like both. Every kiss I’d ever had before was at some ball or impromptu outing. It was never with someone I knew like this. She was weaving her way into my life, and Alec’s life too. We could have been pulled farther apart and instead I felt like I was finding my own family.

But they will still age and die. Not you. You will come to me.

I stiffened a little, coughing. I’d breathed wrong or something.

“You okay?” Charlotte asked.

“Yes.” I shook it off. I wasn’t going to let this shit ruin my happiness. “It seemed like that was better.”

“Much better. I didn’t even need a spell. Sometimes an ordinary human is all you need.”

Lisbeth… I saw Rayner at her bedside, her face covered in pustules. I don’t think he even cared.

Lisbeth…I won’t let you go…

Lisbeth…!

“Yes,” I said, holding her so tight that she looked at me funny.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Charlotte

This demon summoning thing? I was doing it for me.

Still, because I had a stubborn streak, I sent Harris an invitation to my demon summoning party.

You dared me. Well, you’re on. Come to my demon summoning party, at Excalibur Theater, midnight. Be there, or shut up. Next it’s your turn.

I passed it to him as a note in class. Really fast, because my palms were sweatier than they should be.

Yep, at this point I’d been courted by three guys for the last three months but I still got stupid around Harris. He hadn’t said one word about our dare since the break-in. He didn’t say one word about the note either. But then, like the contrary person he was, come midnight and the door creaked open.

We were using the theater because the doors were unlocked, but it was never used. Merlin College used to have a drama department, but at some point someone must have decided that was a waste of time. Now the theater was only used for assemblies and the grand interior looked a little shabby. It had no windows, but a number of escape doors off the stage, which was another perk. I was nervous and I wanted a lot of doors.

“So. You’re going through with it,” Harris said. “I’m just here to make sure you don’t open the gates of hell or something.”

“Yeah, yeah, sit down and shut up,” I said, already on edge.

I was in the process of drawing the pentagram that would contain the demon.

“Take deep breaths,” Firian said. “It’ll be fine as long as you’re calm and in control, mentally.”

Calm and in control?

I was really trying. Deep down, I thought my mom must be scared. I knew she hadn’t left on purpose. Under the surface of the demon attacks had to be a cry for help. I knew I was doing the right thing. If I could just talk to her, maybe it would lead me to a way to save her. Montague said it was possible, and if there was even one tiny chance I could bring her back to the Ethereal world—and the human world—and us—well, I would take it.

I was already wearing the pink dress. Once I had drawn the pentagram, I lit some candles and placed the photo in the center.

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Turn off the lights,” I told Alec, who was posted by the row of switches.

“Remember, just talk to her from your heart,” Firian said. “This isn’t just a demon you’re summoning. It’s a loved one. Love is powerful enough to reach.” He squeezed my hand before taking a step back.

Firian stood behind me. Montague and Alec were standing together at the edge of the stage, ready to back me up if something happened. Harris had taken the seat front and center, an audience of one. I had a slight regret about inviting him now.

“Mom…I want to summon you. I want to talk to you. I…I know you’re watching over me. I know you’ve tried to attack the boys you thought might be a threat to me. Thank you, for that, even if it was a little much. Please come.”

Nothing. Not even a candle flicker.

“More commanding,” Firian said.

“If she won’t appear, if something is holding her back, then…tap into a little anger,” Firian said. “She abandoned you. She owes you an explanation!”

Firian must miss her too, I thought. He remembered her more than I did. In a way my mom and her familiar must seem like his parents too, right? Even though we are not siblings whatsoever.

“Mom!” I tried again. “I command you to appear and tell me what the hell is going on! Why did you leave me? Why did you break my dad’s heart? Mom—if you have to be a demon now, then—fine! If you don’t want to be my mom, you can at least leave the school alone! But we have a blood tie and you have an obligation to honor that, at least. Who are you?”

In some desperation, I added, “It’s your little goblin. Remember?”

The candles all went out.

I heard all of us catching our breath, afraid to make a sound, as a glow tore its way onto the stage in the center of my pentagram. The wolf demon jumped into the center of the pentagram. Its fur bristled. It hunched, defensive.

“Mom?”

“Don’t—do this,” the wolf said.

“Are you my mom?” I couldn’t help but think that if this was my mom, my mom sounded like a British man.

“Don’t call her. I’ve tried, Charlotte. I’ve tried. But the Withered Lord has her now and if you go down this path, he’ll destroy everything you love. Close the gate and never speak to Sinistrals again. She didn’t want you to be a witch.”

I took a step closer. “But I have so many questions! Who are you?”

“I can’t keep this passage safe long enough!” the wolf growled. “You need to close it!”

“You know, I’m at Merlin College because I was forced to be here by Ignatius Blair. And he won’t tell me anything. You can’t answer three questions?” I cried.

Why three? I remembered that Etherium and Sinistral had been described as the realms of fairy tales and magic. And everyone knew that sort of thing came in threes.

The wolf cursed. Right before my eyes, he transformed into a handsome older man wearing a stylish suit. But he still looked like kind of a wreck. He struggled to his feet. “I’m your grandfather,” he said. “I’m Emily’s father, Rhys. I have to be quick. When I was a boy, I was taken in by the Withered Lord. He’s a high demon, and my mates and I didn’t have an easy time of it, but your grandmother saved us from him. She gave up her powers to do it. And so, we kept your mother from the magical world. At least, we tried. But then Samuel came along, wanting to meet his aunt who had defied the rules of the witching world. Before long he brought his little sister Ina. Your mother adored her cousins, and she wanted to be a witch like them. We told her no, no…” He grimaced. “I suppose it is no use telling you no either.”

“I can understand where this is going….,” I said.

“Ina fell in love with a promising young warlock and that was Ignatius. But your great-aunt Catherine was not happy at all that her children were hanging around with the likes of Emily, half-werewolf, and half-fallen witch. The Withered Lord preyed on that. He let us go, fair and square, but he was our enemy now. He still enjoyed toying with us. He killed Ina, Ignatius was heartbroken, and Emily was so angry that she…she bargained. Power for her, and Ina’s life back. She didn’t realize how dear the price was. All of this unfolded just after you were born. Ignatius sealed your magic and shielded you, and we left the country. All to protect you. To keep the magical world and the Withered Lord out of your life until we could take him down. But…as you may guess…we haven’t succeeded. We lost Samuel, and…now, I really don’t know if there is any hope.”

“Oh…no.” I reached for him. “No…but…you shouldn’t have left! Dad and I have been so alone and confused.”

“Alone and confused is not the worst fate you could face,” he said.

“So you’re one of the wolves…with my grandmother in Australia?”

He nodded, and briefly his face succumbed to emotion. “Yes. Emily was our only child. It was by no means easy to leave you behind. We hoped, one day, to tell you she was saved. For this nightmare to end.”

“Grandfather Rhys…” I sniffed back my pain, my terror, my grief. “I think Samuel passed his powers to me. So all hope is not lost.”

“No—Charlotte—I don’t want—“

Suddenly, my grandfather was ripped from my grasp. His body vanished in a scrape of color that vanished into the pentagram. My screams died in my throat as something else came through.

Something else.

“There you are, my little goblin.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

Charlotte

My mother appeared before me, in no form I would ever have recognized, except as a demon. A creature of shadows. Her form was sort of female, but I couldn’t really see her face. A shadow was on it so I could barely see a gleam of eyes and teeth. Her hair and dress were like black smoke. The temperature of the room seemed to drop when she appeared.

“You understand now,” she said. Her voice was calmer than before, taking on more of a human sound, but there was still a dark and hollow quality to it. “You’re frightened, I know. Your mother is a demon. That isn’t what any child wants to hear, but you are beginning to shed your child self. So…Ignatius finally unlocked your powers.”

“Apparently…,” I said, trembling.

“And Samuel passed his power onto you. Is that the plan, then? They want to ‘save’ me, but there is nothing to save. I have more power than any of them. I am immortal. My home is not here in this cruel, simple, mortal world. My home is in the land of magic. A land of smoke and stars, of the greatest pleasures of wine and song. You could join me there. And…these males you have surrounded yourself with?” She looked around at all of them. Alec and Montague clutched hands. Firian had turned into a fox, his teeth bared.

Harris alone looked…as arrogant and composed as always? I mean, his eyebrow might have twitched a little. Damn.

“You could bring all of them with you, and there would be no more worry for any of you. This incubus could bring you pleasure and stop pretending he’s a nice little college boy. This vampire would never lose you to death. Firian would be ever by your side. And you—“ She looked at Harris. “Ah, you would have all the power you want. I see it in your eyes. The mark of the shadow is upon all of you, and you shouldn’t be afraid. Sinistral is not evil. Sinistral is simply the land of power and decadence and more honesty than you will ever find with hypocritical Ethereals sitting in their towers laying down rules.”

She had a point. About a few things. Maybe.

I could see that some part of this resonated with every one of them.

Except maybe one.

Firian took my hand and squeezed mine so tight it almost hurt.

“What about Dad?” I asked her. “He loves you.”

“He’s just a human,” she said.

“No! I don’t believe that! Mom, please—this isn’t you. I don’t care what you gave up for power. I know you loved him once. You loved our family. This human world is my home, and we all want you back. No power could be worth what you gave up!”

“You just don’t know, Charlotte, but you will. You’re coming with me, and I’ll show you.” She reached for me, a cold hand grabbing mine. It wasn’t cold like Montague was cold, a “vampires have bad circulation” cold. This was a penetrating, horrible cold that seeped down to my bones and made me feel like I would never be warm again.

I screamed, trying to pull back from her grip. “I won’t go. I won’t! Mom—go away. I want to shut the gates! I expel thee, demon!”

Even now, I felt bad ‘expelling’ my mom, but I was not going to go to Sinistral and meet ‘the Withered Lord’. That was not a name that instilled confidence.

The only problem was, she had a hold on me that wouldn’t break. Or maybe I was the one who refused to let go.

Her smoky form seemed to turn into actual smoke that surrounded me. I couldn’t see. Shadow blocked my vision. My whole body was shivering. “Charlotte, you’re my daughter. Your place is with me.”

Wards. I need wards.

I struggled to remember the magic I had been studying.

It’s a video game, I thought. Focus. Choose the right components. Defeat the Demomma.

I felt my power, drawing around me, but then I felt as if I was being dragged down, like the floor was opening beneath me, and I realized she was pulling me into my own pentagram. I was losing. This was not a video game and I was going to die.

I felt fingers brush mine. Firian. He tried to catch me, and he slipped away.

My mother let out a terrible scream and I felt something like claws raking down my body as I flailed a hand out.

Firian caught me. Then I felt a colder hand. Montague. A very strong hand around my wrist. Alec. They were all trying to pull me out of this strange, dark vortex.

Then a fourth hand seemed to reach deeper and grabbed my hair and I heard Harris say, “You let her go. The darkness shall not touch her. She is under my protection and either you will come to her, or we will destroy you, this I swear.”

“I love this world!” I cried. “The human world! I don’t care about power but I need the people I love!”

The word ‘love’, the feeling of it, felt so powerful that even in that moment I felt sure that I could save my mother. That she would feel it and I could reach her.

Instead, I was finally pulled free of her. The shadows moved from my eyes and I felt myself yanked upward, back in the normal world. The candles were now lit again, and the guys were all looking down on me, worried.

“She’s bleeding!”

“Get help!”

“Charlotte, look at me,” Firian said. “Stay with me.”

I was still so cold. So cold…

“Mom…,” I said, a feeble cry of defeat and despair. “Dad…I’m so sorry…I couldn’t…”

My head was spinning, my eyes filling with shadow and little sparkles.

I really hope I’m not dying. That would be so stupid of me.

Don’t die, Charlotte. Dad needs you.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Charlotte

I woke up. It felt like a new world. Sunshine everywhere. A hand holding mine.

“Charlotte?”

“Dad!?”

I looked around, trying to make sense of it all. I was in the school infirmary. Dad was there. An electric blanket covered me and I was still shivering. There was an IV in my arm. “Augh!” I screamed. I’d never had an IV before. “What’s going on?”

“You’ve been out for three days,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Oh, thank god. But the dean said you were touched by an enchantment and you’re going to feel very cold.”

“Ohh…” That was definitely true. I felt like I had the chills that come with fevers. “Dad…did they tell you…?”

“I know you talked to your mom. Man, that was my fault. I told you to find the answers. I was hoping you would find a way to talk to her. I never imagined she would hurt you.”

“I wanted to save her. I wish I had something good to tell you. I tried, Dad, I really tried—“ I started crying. He put his arms around me. “I just wasn’t strong enough to stand against a high demon,” I said.

“I have to just accept…” He stopped, pulling back, and looked at the high ceilings in one of those I’m-not-crying faces.

“I don’t accept it,” I said. “I don’t. There are more things to try. I was just too impatient, that’s all. I have to study harder and learn more about what I’m getting into.”

His eyes cut to me and I saw something in them I didn’t really like. “I’m going to get the dean. He told me to tell him when you were awake.”

“Wait—“

The curtains fluttered behind him as he left.

Firian stepped inside a moment later. He didn’t say anything, but just put his arms around me. “You’re okay,” he said.

“I guess.” I was shivering more now, and he pulled the blankets up to my chin. “Is Master Blair mad at me? Am I expelled?”

“You’re not expelled…,” Firian said. “Well…I don’t know.” He sighed. “He sealed your magic back up. You’re going home.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “No way.” I tried to get out from under the covers. Firian put a hand on my chest, holding me down. “Can I get this IV off me? Firian…where are Montague and Alec?”

“I’ll tell them you’re awake,” he said, as Master Blair pushed open the curtain, rather dramatically. He looked like he hadn’t slept well, and his suit was nearly as disheveled as Firian’s uniforms. “Charlotte,” he said. “I’m glad you’re awake. I’m very sorry. This is all my fault. Hubris.”

“It wasn’t your fault. I wanted to see my mom. You tried to keep me from using magic to protect me, and I—“

He waved a hand. “I knew what you were up to. And I was fully on board. In fact, I wanted to see how determined you were. I relished your rebellion. She is the one, I thought.”

“Oh, so it was all just one of those stupid tests.”

“Stupid is definitely the right word for it,” he said. “Well, I was trying to lead you into summoning Samuel by implying he would have all the answers. I even told Brodie to tell you how easy it was to summon the dead. Samuel’s dead. Your mom is a Sinistral. I didn’t think you would go straight for your mom first.”

“So you’re telling me I’m stupid for summoning my mom!?”

“No, I’m stupid!” he said. “I should have realized when you took my photograph. Well, anyway, I made a huge mistake by bringing you here. I’ve been planning this since you were born, but I was so selfish. I never thought about your father. How he could lose you. You were this abstract thing, ‘Emily’s child’. I’ve just been moving you around a game board. I didn’t know your mother would try to suck you into the Sinistral world, or that Samuel would be killed. As it turns out, I’m really bad at this. Anyway, I’ve blocked your magic once again and I want you to go home and go to the University of Georgia.”

“Are you serious? I can’t just do that! Isn’t it dangerous? I want to be here!”

“Why? Because of magic or because of HAM?”

“Ham?”

“Harris Alec Montague. Sorry. They have a faculty nickname. I didn’t start it. Their teachers from their high school warned us they were…well, anyway. They actually haven’t been bad at all. It sounds like becoming a vampire was good for Monty.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” I said, because I knew it wasn’t easy on him at all. “Master Blair…you used to be friends with my mom. She’s not…evil, right? I mean, there’s good in her. There must be. My dad always believed there was.”

“Of course there was good in her. Let’s put it this way: in all the infinite possibilities, are there outcomes where we might save her? Yes. I think so. Those are the outcomes I’ve always focused on. The outcomes I never considered were the ones where you are lost or killed. I can’t risk those now, and you shouldn’t either.”

“But we could be careful this time! Maybe if you had actually just said all this stuff from the beginning! I want to talk to Samuel, like you said. I don’t want to go home.”

“It was never just about saving your mom,” Master Blair said. “For all of us, this goes back to plans we made. I know to you, I seem pretty old. But to the council, I’m still considered a young upstart. The council is very very old, and if they do let someone young onto it, it’s someone like Harris. An old, old family. This goes back to the reason your grandmother left the witching world: witches and warlocks are segregated by gender, and rebellion is suppressed. Yes, Samuel and I pulled a magic trick to get you into this school because we wanted a girl at Merlin College. We were going to use you to prove that women can handle warlock magic. The council is, even now, furious that I admitted you.”

“All the more reason I should stay! That’s…pretty cool of you, actually. Who knew you were a feminist.”

“Times are changing,” Master Blair said. “But the council isn’t.”

I heard footsteps and voices. Firian, Montague and Alec were coming to visit. Master Blair stood up.

“I was wrong to expect that generations of change should be undone by you, and stupid to expect that the Withered Lord would leave you alone. That’s all. Please…go home and get well.”

“Master Blair—no—wait! You can’t just leave me hanging—“

The curtains shook behind him as he slipped out.

“What was that about?” Alec asked.

“What a jerk,” I hissed. “He wants me to go home and go to the University of Georgia.”

“No way we’re letting you go,” Alec said. “He can’t just throw you into this world and kick you out again.”

“Although maybe we shouldn’t summon any demons ever again,” Montague said.

“He sealed my magic!”

Harris walked in after them. He looked at all of us and the flowers I realized were by my bed. Six bouquets. Monty, Alec, Firian, Dad, probably the faculty…and…Harris?

“I think I won the bet,” I said. “I summoned a demon. I haven’t seen you do that yet.”

“And I saved you from the demon.”

“The demon was my mom!”

“This entire incident only proved how much trouble you all get into without me,” Harris said. “Montague gets turned into a vampire. And Charlotte was this close to getting pulled into the abyss.”

“You saved her because you had a shard of Hapsburg unicorn horn,” Firian said. “That is just privilege.”

“Of course it is,” Harris said, clearly clueless of the fact that privilege wasn’t supposed to be a good thing. “The privilege of my name; that’s why you need me, but it’s ridiculous for Charlotte not to attend Merlin College now.”

“Still…” Alec put a hand on my forehead, for the second he was able to. “You’re in rough shape. For a couple hours we thought you might die.”

“A couple hours?”

“You got very cold,” Montague said. “They were casting all these spells on you to save you. We waited on the bench in the hall until they said you were probably going to make it.”

That sobered me. The truth was, I didn’t feel up to much of anything right now. I was just shivering in the cocoon of a warm blanket. “Does Dad know it got that bad?”

“I don’t think so,” Alec said.

“How long will it take to heal?”

“They said a few months.”

“Oh no…so I’m going to miss the rest of the year anyway. This is going to be horrible!” Was I really going to be feverish and shivering for the next three months? I wouldn’t even be able to have normal human friends over. How could I explain anything?

“We could keep you warm in bed here,” Alec said, with an expression that told me where his thoughts were already going.

“I can,” Firian said. “You two are out of luck. But I’ll be going home with you anyway.” Now he stroked my forehead. His warm skin felt so good.

“She only lives four hours away,” Harris said. “If you study on weekdays…”

“Sure, Harris, if I had a car,” Montague said.

“Happy birthday,” Harris said, tossing Montague a key.

“A Kia?” Montague held up the keys. “That was the best you could do, rich boy?”

“I had to be very secretive,” Harris said. “My parents are suspicious.”

“This key is scratched to hell. What does the car look like?”

“My parents drained my bank account! I paid for it with the cash I had on hand, so shut up or buy your own damn car.”

I couldn’t help it. I beamed at Harris before realizing I was doing it. Then I looked away when he noticed and gave me this faint, superior smile.

“Okay, I can work with this,” Montague said. “We’re not giving up on you, Charlotte.”

“I welcome and expect regular intrusions,” I said.

And Mom…I’m not giving up on you either.

Boys Over Powers

Chapter One

Charlotte

Want to ruin your spring? Oh, good. I’ll tell you how.

First, attempt to summon your mom, who abandoned you as a kid in order to gain great power from a high demon from the Sinistral world.

Second, succeed! And get hit with a magical attack that makes you feel freezing cold all the time and can take months to fully recover from.

Third, have the dean of your magical college seal your magic and tell you not to come back, for your own safety.

And fourth…have three boyfriends, plus a weird semi-fourth who acts like he doesn’t care when you know he actually does. While you’re stuck at home with your dad trying to hide your complicated romantic life from him.

I was missing the end of my freshman year at Merlin College and I didn’t know if I’d ever be allowed to return. Master Blair told me to go to the University of Georgia. But once you’ve summoned a demon, you don’t just go schlep around a normal campus studying Shakespeare or women’s studies or whatever it was I had planned to learn. That was a different Charlotte.

Of course, I always had Firian at my side now. My familiar, once kept secret from me, was now welcome any time and spent days in human form playing video games or watching movies with me, and spent the night in his fox form curled up next to me in bed. Dad had no idea we were also…involved with each other. Familiars and witches weren’t supposed to hook up. But his loyalty, his teases, his mysterious golden eyes and soft tawny hair, his long-legged grace…well, he was good eye candy when I was stuck in bed a lot of the time, and he was also my best friend.

On weekends, Montague and Alec drove down from school to visit me, and that was when things got really tricky.

I couldn’t help but get excited when I saw them. For one thing, I was stir crazy anyway. I mean, even I had my Netflix limit. But the warlocks were even more intriguing when removed from their natural habitat.

Merlin College was the most elite warlock university in the US of A, so if you liked boys who already seemed like men, who acted like gentlemen, and never dressed down, you were in the right place. And I did. They were still pretty normal guys when you got down to it, but the trappings were delicious.

Okay, maybe they weren’t even that normal.

Montague Xarra had been turned into a vampire the summer before. Now he was immortal and extra enticing thanks to that vampire allure. His family didn’t have that much money, but they were an old Spanish magical family from St. Augustine, Florida, which I had always thought of as a place for grandparents to take cheesy historical trolley tours, but apparently had a secret side. He was the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome, and was even sexier when he was anywhere on the five o’clock shadow to beard spectrum. He could have eaten the boys I liked in high school for breakfast.

Literally. That part was, admittedly, a little awkward. My dad was starting to wonder why he never ate any of our food.

But Montague’s sexiness was superseded by Alec Lyrman, whose mother was a succubus. Which made him an incubus. Half-demon. Maybe even more tall, dark, and handsome. His eyes were tinged with red, his skin was golden brown with tattoos I was still discovering, and he was so—ahem—potent, that he had been enchanted so he could only make skin-to-skin contact with me for about three seconds, which hadn’t stopped him from occasionally invading my dreams and finding creative ways to entice me.

Incubi were, apparently, all “the more the merrier” with their partners, and I think Montague liked having Alec around to keep him in line so I didn’t become the wrong kind of prey. They had been friends since they were kids, and both tolerated Firian, who was my familiar and so wasn’t going anywhere.

So yeah. Three boyfriends. And I was wildly attracted to all of them, but I had to keep Dad from figuring that out. This was not a thing you tell your dad. Especially your human dad.

But probably, any dad.

As if that wasn’t enough, there was Harrison von Hapsburg Nicolescu.

I mean, I just called him Harris, but when he sent me a “get well” card that was actually the name on the return address. Harris was a total A-lister among young warlocks. He had royal lineage, riches, had apparently saved my life with a pinch of dust from a unicorn horn from the Hapsburg family treasure, had bought Montague a car just so the guys could still visit me, and…he never showed up himself.

He had never acted like anything less than an entitled asshole, so I don’t know why, every single time the car appeared on the weekend, I went to the window to see if Harris would appear, and when he never did, I felt like Christmas had come and I got everything on my list except one crucial thing.

But…it probably had something to do with Daisy.

I never checked Facebook. Most of my friends from school didn’t use it much. Dad, on the other hand, used it a lot. When I tried, I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the political beliefs of our next-door neighbor, my 8th grade English teacher, and Jan down at the market. When I saw Ms. Simon tell Jan she was “drinking the Koolaid” and the whole town tossing gun statistics at each other under a post that started with, “Got my flu shot!” I decided this was not a thing I wanted in on.

But now I was stuck wrapped up in an electric blanket in bed or on my couch for months on end, and I couldn’t even visit my old friends, so at some point I started clicking around on old social media accounts.

Which was when I found a friend request and messages from Daisy sent around the time of my departure from Merlin College.

Hey giiiirl. I just got on Facebook and I was like, who else would be on Facebook when witches hate computers? You, right? If this is THE Charlotte Byrne, you should hit me up sometime. Harris told me what happened. I hope you feel better. But I know you’ll figure out a way to get your mom back, cause summoning demons when you’re still in college IS BOSS AF.

Hey girl you know how to buy stuff on Ebay?

I hope you’re okay. I guess you’re not on Facebook much. Maybe I’ll write you a letter. I enjoyed hanging out at the ball. If you ever come to Chicago let me know and I will show you what a good witch party is like. Going to the Cardamom Club tonight. Me & my fam Cash pre-partying~ <3

She finished all of this off with a picture of her wearing a tiara holding a big black and white cat who was also wearing a tiara.

“Firian? How should I answer this?”

He glanced. “‘Hey girl. Of course I know how to buy stuff on Ebay. I just bought my ‘fam’ a body pillow of a naked elf girl.’”

“Is that what you want for your birthday, Firian?”

“It gets lonely down there at the foot of your bed.”

I shoved his face away from my laptop and tried to say something. I felt awkward. She was Harris’ fiancee. She was a gorgeous witch who lived in a big city with lots of friends, and clubs, and parties. “Why is she bragging to me about going to parties?”

“Maybe she’s lonely.”

“No way. Look at her.”

“She isn’t my type,” he said, slinking back onto the bed, and staring at my right side with a fixed golden gaze. Sometimes he seemed particularly foxy. “I think she is enthralled by you.”

“Me?” I scoffed. “No one has ever been enthralled with me.”

“Challenge accepted,” he said, giving me a soft kiss on the shoulder. He continued, “Look at these messages. First, a very admiring greeting. Last, concern for your welfare and inviting you to her house. But it’s the middle one that seals it. She’s intrigued by your human lifestyle. Witches are exotic to you, but to witches, Ebay is exotic. Anyway, you underestimate how intriguing you can be. You showed up at that party making a hell of a statement in a punk pink dress holding your familiar’s hand. You must seem like the ultimate rebel.”

“I sound pretty cool when you put it that way. But still, Harris…and Daisy…”

“Harris has been avoiding you,” Firian said. “As he should. You’re busy enough. So I don’t see any conflict of interest.”

I wouldn’t mind having a female friend in the magical world, that was for sure. Especially since I was feeling so lonely myself, just stuck under my blanket waiting for weekends. I started writing back, betraying a shiver while my arms were out from under the blanket.

Firian was way too alert. “Charlotte, you’re getting cold. I thought you were starting to pull out of this.”

“I am! I’m fine!”

“But the healer said if you shivered you need to get under the blanket.”

I yanked the blanket over my head and finished typing in a blanket fort, although that made it worse because less of my skin was in contact with the blanket.

I never got sick. I was usually fairly active, too. This whole situation was the worst. I tried not to think about the fact that my mom had caused it. Then I would start fretting over every word she said, and how scary she looked, and whether there was any hope of saving her. I had a running list of ideas, things I could have done differently, that went something like this:

Need to summon spirit of cousin Samuel.

Need to find grandparents in Australia. They must have gone so far away to protect us, but now we need to talk. Good thing it’s so easy for me to get to Australia, ha ha ha.

Need to find cousin Ina. The one Mom saved from death by joining up with the Withered Lord. Ina better be friggin’ awesome.

Mom used to do yoga with me when I was little. Show her yoga tape? BOND OVER MAGICAL VHS TAPE AND RETURN HER TO NORMAL.

Study more demon stuff. Win her back in battle. Defeat the Withered Lord? Is that possible?

I mean, mostly it was just a list of leads and stupid ideas and impossibilities. I was pretty sure there was no way any ordinary witch could defeat a high demon. I was definitely sure I couldn’t save anyone with a 90s yoga video. But I had to at least think about these things.

It was hard to know what to say to Daisy, though.

Hi! Sorry this reply is late. I was avoiding Facebook. I can help you with Ebay any time. I’m doing pretty good, considering my mom is apparently a servant of a high demon and wanted to bring me along for the ride. Just another day in the witching world huh!? Harris probably told you I got this chill sickness thing but I’m improving.

“You are indeed. But you still need a little help,” Firian said, reading over my shoulder.

“Rude!” I said.

“Am I?” I hastily sent the message as Firian climbed under the blanket with me and put his arms around me. “Is this rude?” He licked my cheek with a surprisingly seductive, velvet tongue.

I giggled, our faces lit by the glow of the monitor. I shut the computer and rediscovered his face in the shadows, with my fingertips. He kissed them, then he kissed me, and then I let him tumble on top of me. His warm skin heated mine, and I almost felt back to normal when we were close like this, his legs straddling mine, his hands finding my arms and sliding his thumbs down them, a massage that ended in him pinning me to my pillows.

“Mm…” I kept thinking I should stop him. Our relationship was already taboo.

But being close to Firian, I felt happy. Safe. Excited and eager for more. What could be so bad about that? Dad always told me to follow my gut. The witching world had so many rules, but Master Blair told me he brought me to Merlin College to break a few rules.

Firian unbuttoned my pajama top and ran a hand over my breast, and then the curve of my hip. “You must be ready for more,” he said. “Because I am.”

“My door isn’t locked,” I said. “And, on a larger level, I don’t have any condoms.”

“I‘m not sure I can actually get you pregnant,” he said. “Just in case, I could go to the drug store.”

“What if the drug store girl says something to Dad!?”

“If you’re not ready…,” he said. “You just…feel ready to me. You smell ready.”

“I…don’t know.” But Firian usually knew me better than I knew myself. That was kind of his deal. So I sensed he was right, but at the same time, I wondered how to handle that with Montague and Alec.

“You’re not thinking of them, are you?” he asked.

Firian was more possessive than Montague and Alec. He was my familiar, so protecting me was his sole mission in life. It was no wonder that if you got romantically involved with your familiar, they got intense.

My cell phone rang. I threw my head out of the covers and grabbed it off the nightstand.

“Pendleton, Ermengarde?” I read off the caller ID in confusion, but I already had a feeling.

I didn’t know Daisy’s last name but that sure sounded like a witch.

Chapter Two

Charlotte

“Hey. It’s Daisy! We should talk.”

“Okay. Uh, sure, let’s talk,” I said, buttoning my top back up.

“You finally wrote back,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you forever. So…your mom is under the thrall of a demon. When Harris told me that I was like, what.”

I was briefly silent. I forgot that Daisy was not always that sensitive. I was not usually that sensitive either, but this was the topic where I froze. “Yes. She left when I was a baby.”

“What demon?” Daisy asked.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because!” Daisy sounded a little frantic.

“Well, how do I know if I can trust you? I’m still figuring out what’s going on. I was also removed from Merlin College, as I’m sure you know, so what does it matter?”

Daisy whistled. “Damn, girl’s questioning whether she can trust me.”

“Are you talking to someone?”

“Nah, not really.” She paused. “Cash is here, I guess. He doesn’t count.”

“Cash is a boy,” Firian said with a chuckle. “And he doesn’t count. See what most of us have to deal with?”

“Me and Cash are nothing like you and Robin Hood over there,” Daisy said. I’m not sure what she meant by that, but it was probably true. “Look, you can trust me. My parents were killed by a demon.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Harris never told me anything about you.”

She sighed. “Well, good, actually, because that’s not his business to tell. Plus, Harris doesn’t know anything about me.”

Yeah, they were a great couple.

“Do you know what demon killed your parents?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“You could tell me first,” I said, rolling my eyes at Firian, since he could obviously hear her. Daisy was not any easier to deal with than Harris. She was friendlier but I got this feeling like she could turn on you fast, so I wasn’t going to let her dominate the conversation. I’ve been to a public junior high. I know bitches.

“The With—” She stopped the second I breathed a little bit. “It’s the same demon, isn’t it?”

“The Withered Lord?”

She was quiet for a minute. “Yeah. So like maybe we should team up or whatever. He’s a really bad demon.”

“Clearly…”

Firian shook his head. I’m sure he could sense the same thing I sensed. Daisy was going to be a handful on multiple levels, from my romantic tension with Harris to her own personality.

“Daisy, you know they sealed my magic. There’s nothing I can even do unless I convince Master Blair to let me back in. And he’s definitely not going to let me deal with the Withered Lord. Even if we team up…we’re just kids.”

“Charlotte,” Daisy said, in a soft but deadly serious voice. “Do you think I mean tomorrow? This is a lifelong quest. I already know that my purpose in life is to defeat this demon and avenge my parents. If you feel the same, then we might as well join forces. And yes, of course the elders are going to try and stop us—if they know about it.”

“I am determined to save my mom,” I said. “If you mean to be patient too, then sure. We can join forces. I’m just warning you that right now I don’t have any force to give.”

“That’s fine,” Daisy said. “Cool. Okay. So you know how to buy things on Ebay? I’m looking at this Versace jumpsuit and it’s a steal. It’s from two years ago but you know what, I still like it, so who gives a fuck, right?”

“Yeah, you be you,” I said dryly.

“You tell me how to buy it, kay? Um…let’s see…like if I add it to my cart…I think I put the link in the chat. Cute, right?”

It was not something I could ever aspire to, a black belted garment modeled by someone on a runway, but I could see a sexy witch rocking it. “That is cute!”

“How do I send it to you?”

“I have it here in the Facebook chat.”

“No, I mean, I’ll send you one too for helping me.”

“Oh.” I laughed. “No. I’m not…Versace jumpsuit material. Plus there’s only one for sale.”

“Nah, you would be so cute in this. I’m sending it to you just because you need to know that you are Versace jumpsuit material.”

“I’m practically bedridden! And really. How do you pee in this?”

She laughed her weird rich girl ‘hm hm hm!” laugh. “I’m serious. You wear it and if you hate it, send it to me. If you don’t know how to take off a jumpsuit ask Robin Hood to do it for you.”

Eventually I got her off the phone and looked at Firian with some embarrassment.

“Sounds like someone has a new friend and demon fighting partner,” he said, with arched brows. “And a jumpsuit with a plunging neckline, so…we all win.”

“Shut up,” I said. “But…you know…I have this feeling she might actually be pretty good at battling demons.”

Chapter Three

Charlotte

By the time summer rolled around, I was starting to feel a little better. I was still wearing sweaters in June, but at least my own body heat was working. The school year was over, and I had to face the crushing realization that Montague and Alec were heading back home for the summer so they wouldn’t be driving down to see me.

At least I made it through the spring without Dad realizing that they were more than friends.

But my fate at Merlin College was still in total limbo. I kept trying to get ahold of Master Blair and plead my case to return, but he held firm.

“Charlotte, I have to do what’s best for you and your father,” he said.

“Can I at least come to the library or something? Can you help me find where my grandparents live now?”

“They’ve been out of your life for a reason. It’s to protect you,” he said. “I’m going to try and figure this out, but I want you to stay safe.”

“You can’t just kick me out of the magical world! Can I attend Morgaine College, then?”

“No,” he said. “You hardly know any magic. This was a mistake on my part to throw you into this world unprepared. You came to Merlin because of my nefarious plan and now I need to think of a new and less nefarious plan.”

“But I’ve been studying all spring even when I wasn’t in school!”

“Did your friends bring you books from the library?” he said. “They shouldn’t have done that.”

“Master Blair, come on.”

“You’ve taught me an important lesson,” Master Blair said. “Young people really are too impulsive. I should have listened to my mother more often. Have a good afternoon.”

“Oh, come on!” I cried as he hung up.

“I think you need to work on your argumentative skills,” Firian said. “Besides saying ‘come on’.”

“I need to bargain with him,” I said. “I need some leverage. You know how Mr. McGuinness said all that stuff about bargaining with spirits? Well, it’s true for everyone, right? Maybe I could approach some witch colleges on my own and get a competing offer.”

“That isn’t a bad idea. You don’t really want to go to a witch college, do you? You want to be with your warlock sidepieces,” he said, with a faint, teasing smile.

I snorted. “Yes, Firian, that’s why the idea is to get a witch college to want me so that Ignatius Blair will consider that he was grooming me to be the voice of his rebellion and maybe he doesn’t want me to go to another school. So where are the witch colleges?”

“We probably should have done this earlier,” Firian said unhelpfully.

“I have just the idea,” Montague told me later.

We were sitting on the back deck of my house, one of the last times I would see Montague and Alec before they went home for the summer. I was already going insane with wanting to kiss them, touch them, sit on their laps or basically do anything except sit here in my two layers of sweaters at a chaste distance. Dad was at the grill just below the deck, just Daddin’ it up, flipping chicken quarters over and occasionally waving to us and saying, “Okay, I’m getting it going!” “Fifteen minutes! Firian, can you put out the sides?” “Almost done!” “It’s done!” “Wait, never mind, guys. Back to your seats. It’s still pink in the middle.”

It was hard to have a serious conversation, but we had managed it somehow.

“You have an idea? Oh, thank god.”

“You could come with me to St. Augustine,” he said. “It’s the home of the Southern Ladies’ Finishing College of Magic. Mrs. Tyler is the headmistress and she lives there even during the summer.”

“Well, I do declare,” I said, with a hint of sarcasm. “What the hell is a ‘finishing’ college?”

“Probably exactly what you think it is,” he said.

“Isn’t that school for bad girls?” Alec asked.

“Who is a bad girl, if not our Charlotte?” Montague replied. “But the idea is just to get a competing offer, right? That will drive Master Blair nuts, to think of her going there.”

“How do I convince Dad? And what about your family, Montague?”

“You are always welcome at the Xarra house,” he said. “You don’t think he would let you go? He lets you sleep with Firian.”

“He doesn’t realize Firian counts. And Firian stays in fox form at night. As you know.” I squirmed as we edged closer to the question of who got to be my first, and when? I needed to figure it out. I would be turning twenty this year and I wanted all of them. Staying a virgin was starting to seem…overdue. It couldn’t be Alec because he still couldn’t touch me. Montague had implied he could lose control. But then if I only had sex with Firian, I feared it would ruin our careful balance.

I’m sure Firian would disagree…

“He wants you to be happy as much as anyone,” Montague said. “Why don’t you just tell him honestly that you want to attend a witch college? That Firian can come with you and my family will welcome you, and you’ll be as safe as you would be anywhere?”

“Okay,” Alec said. “I’m in.”

Montague glanced at him. “Did I invite you?”

“I have to be in. Otherwise this summer is torture. You three are going to be boating, at the beach, grilling. Dad will probably enlist me to make lust potions all summer.”

“Is your dad a potion maker, Alec?” Alec was fairly quiet, so there was a lot I didn’t know about him, but it seemed like he had a very low-key life. The only secret those sexy red-tinged eyes and perfect forearms were hiding was just what naughty things was he thinking about doing to me? I knew that incubi were thinking about sex all the time. He must be so tortured. Poor guy, I thought, without much sympathy at all. I had a lot of fantasies about Alec being tortured.

“Yes,” he said.

“You must be really good at lust potions,” I said.

He nodded, glancing me over like I was wearing a bikini, despite how bundled up I was. My eyes roamed shamelessly over the way his shirt was strained by his powerful shoulders to his equally toned legs, clad in shorts.

“So it’s decided,” Montague said, and I had to break the news to Dad, because lets face it, he couldn’t really stop me.

Chapter Four

Charlotte

She had no idea what she was getting into.

That would be written on my tombstone, at this point.

My sweet summer break in Florida kicked off after the 4th of July so the guys had a little time with their families first and I reached the point where I only had to wear one sweater. Montague and Alec picked me up in Montague’s bargain basement green Kia SUV. Harris had bought him this car with cash after the warlock council confiscated his old car as punishment for becoming a vampire. Montague’s utter disdain for the car was so obvious that I was sure Harris did this on purpose. He surely could have found something his friend hated slightly less.

Still, Montague looked good behind the wheel of anything. Or not behind the wheel. Anywhere, really. He was wearing a Panama hat—vampires needed sun protection—a navy jacket, a cotton shirt with thin blue stripes, and red pants with short black boots. I felt like he had a sort of “Hamptons chic” look that only a vampire could pull off in the summer. Because we were in the south, not the Hamptons. Alec was sweating in a black tee and flip-flops. Even in the mountains it was a solid ninety degrees. As we were talking in the front yard, he lifted the corner of his shirt to wipe off his face and Dad looked like it had just hit him that he was sending his daughter off to a summer of beaches, boats, and warlocks with washboard abs.

“Be good, sweetie. Be careful,” he said. “And responsible. I know you are…an adult. Remember all the things I’ve ever told you, and all the things…any authority figure has ever told you.”

“Oh, Dad.”

I knew he was resisting the urge to freak out when he called me ‘sweetie’. And he still had no idea Montague was a vampire and Alec was an incubus.

Should I feel guilty for withholding information?

Nah.

I had never been so excited for summer.

“You can ride shotgun,” Alec said, opening the door for me.

“Sweet. Bye, Dad! I’ll call as often as I can!”

“Take good care of her,” Dad said, giving Montague his best attempt at a stare down.

“I assure you we will, Mr. Byrne,” Montague said. He rolled up the window and gave me a hooded look. “Oh, we will.”

“I damn sure will,” Alec said. “I still can’t touch her, so don’t get too excited. I’m going to keep you in line, Monty.”

“We’ll see.”

“Ahem,” Firian said.

I looked at them all with some alarm. Alec was lounging in the back seat trying to fan the air conditioning to his face. Firian was trying to figure out where to put his long legs without knee bumping Alec. A manspreading battle seemed imminent. My brain glazed, overwhelmed with the thought of being alone with the three of them so much.

“So…let me just clear the air,” I said. “You have all made no secret of the fact that you want to do more than kiss me. It’s very flattering. And I, too, would like to do more than kiss you,” I said, trying to awkwardly set some boundaries.

“Damnit, why do the people who don’t need to be cold get the best vents?” Alec said.

“You have some back there, don’t you?” Montague asked. “I don’t even know. Piece of shit.”

“Don’t anger the machine spirit,” Firian said.

“I mean Harris! What a troll. He knows I like to go fast.”

“Guys, I’m trying to have an important conversation!”

“It sounded to me like we’re all on the same page,” Montague said, shooting me a quick grin before he wrestled the steering wheel down the twisting mountain road I lived on. Not that this was hard for him, what with vampire strength and all, but it still took some concentration.

“I just don’t want to do anything that will make you get mad at each other.”

“Montague and I agreed,” Alec said. “He’ll do things to you, and I get to watch—”

Firian growled like he’d forgotten he was human.

“Hey,” Alec said, lifting a hand. “So, we talked about all this on the way. St. Augustine is an especially tough city for a familiar, and we know Firian is your best and most loyal companion who knows you better than anyone, so we both agree that whenever you’re ready, he should be your first.”

“It’s Charlotte’s decision,” Firian said, but he was suddenly giving me this look like he wanted to pull over.

He already knew what I wanted.

“St. Augustine is very romantic,” Montague said. “It’s a good place to make a night special.”

“I…want to,” I said. “I just don’t know how to decide when.”

“I could surprise you,” Firian said. “If you trust me.”

My skin flamed. “I do.”

“There. All settled,” Alec said.

“You guys are okay with this too?” I asked.

“Not really but I’ll deal with it.” Montague said.

“I’ve been working on him since he picked me up from the airport,” Alec said.

Montague brushed my knee on the way to grab a map. “Now that that’s out of the way…you want to navigate? I can’t remember how we got here.”

“No GPS?”

“We’re trying to keep it as low-tech as we can.”

“Uhhh…maps. Okay. Wow.” I unfolded the paper. “Where are we?”

“Don’t you live here?” Montague asked.

“Um…yes. But we have a GPS.”

“Kids these days,” Alec said.

“We’re in Georgia,” Montague said unhelpfully, brushing my knee again before he went back to the steering wheel. I shivered from head to toe. Of course, part of that was probably the air conditioning.

I had never been to St. Augustine, but I knew the town on the northeastern Florida coast touted itself as “The Oldest City in America”, and it had a 17th century fort and some old houses, and a lot of tourist trap stuff. When my grandpa was still alive, my grandparents loved going there when they weren’t going to Savannah. A bridge crossed the intracoastal waterway to Anastasia Island where Montague said there were some nice beaches.

“We might not be rich,” he said, “but we do have a house right in the old city, and I can take us out on my uncle’s boat.”

I was already full of dreams of sea-scented air, grilled seafood and doing absolutely nothing except frolicking, reading, and basking in the attention of three hot guys.

As we drove into the city, tourist buses made up to look like old timey trolleys came by, the parking was packed, people clogged the sidewalks, and there were shops selling t-shirts and taffy and junk. The streets were lined with old houses with overhanging balconies, and one of the main roads faced the water and the island, where a black-and-white striped lighthouse stood sentry in the distance. The architecture had this distinctly old Spanish feel, which had some romantic potential, but it was super busy and fairly tacky.

Montague parked at the visitor center.

“We’ll leave this here,” he said. “Xavier will park it at the outpost later.” He left the keys on the seat and waved his hand over the handle, whispering a spell.

“What is the outpost?”

“Where all the magical folk keep their cars,” he said. “No cars allowed in my town.”

I could see that the main street of the town was blocked off, through the old stone gates. They were big square pillars made of a grayish, porous stone, with little old guard stations, their barred doors obviously made for smaller humans.

“You live on this main street?” I asked. “Over a t-shirt shop? Or a shop that sells hot sauce?”

“Ha ha. Wait and see.” He took my hand as he led the way to the gates.

Firian looked at his arms, which had broken into goosebumps. “The magic here is so strong.”

“Oh my god. Is this a King’s Cross situation?” I asked. “Are we going to Platform 9 3/4?”

“Damnit, I wanted to surprise you. Books ruin everything,” Montague said. “Yes. Shut your eyes. Firian, you feel the rift?”

“I see it,” Firian said. “The gates.”

“Do I have to shut my eyes?”

“It’s a good idea until you get your magic back,” Montague said. “There’s a trick to it. Wait until those people go through.” He looked around, apparently waiting for the right moment when all the humans had shifted their attention away from us.

Firian took my other hand, and I shut my eyes, walking along between them toward the old gates. On the fifth step I felt something shift and all the sounds of people and cars seemed to fade away behind me and the sound of them warped before disappearing. The air got a little cooler and scented more strongly of flowers.

“You can look,” Montague said, with pride.

It was like I had traveled in time. The cars were gone, every single one. I even spun around behind me and saw nothing but some Victorian houses. Instead of engines and the speakers of the tourist buses, all the people on the streets were dressed in a timeless way. A girl with her hair in a long black braid, wearing a linen dress and shoes fastened with buckles walked by with a basket of small glass bottles. She looked at us a little nervously.

A horse-drawn carriage was coming up the path with cages of chickens in the back. The old man in the back tipped a battered hat to Montague. “Afternoon, Monty. The sun treating you all right?”

“Fine,” Montague said.

“What is happening?” I screeched. “What is this place?”

“It’s a parallel,” he said. “One of the very few in America. We’re in the fabric between the mortal world and Etherium. Most witches and warlocks used to live in towns like these, but fewer exist now. Electricity barely works here. But stay in the gates. The city is shrinking and it’s getting easier to fall back into the mortal world all the time. If you go out the gates you’ll make it about as far as Castle Warden before you fall out.” He pointed at a big gray castle-styled building that I’m pretty sure was the Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum in the real world, but here looked like a private residence.

“A parallel…” I was in total awe. “How does it work? Some of the houses look different.” I saw that the city gates did now attach to actual walls that framed the city and reached to the fort that overlooked the water.

“Witches and warlocks used to be able to find rifts that connect to Etherium everywhere,” Firian said. “But when humans stopped believing in magic, the connections started sealing up. The worlds drifted apart. It happened gradually, from the eighteenth century onward.”

“Yes. We still maintain a parallel here because this town is so unusually old and strange compared to its surroundings, and tourists come expecting to see ghosts and weird things,” Montague said. “There is enough belief that magic is still real here to keep it going. We have four Ethereals guarding the town who take a human bride. Her love of the Ethereals helps keep the gates open and Sinistrals out. It’s all somewhat precarious. Sometimes it’s like the air warps and you see some humans and they think you’re a ghost because we’re occupying the same space.”

“That’s creepy!” I paused. “Um. So let me throw this scenario at you. Some old lady books a ‘haunted’ bed and breakfast. In this world, it’s Montague’s house. She’s coming out of the shower naked. I’m in the throes of passion—or awkward first-time sex… The veil between worlds parts…”

“We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen,” Alec said.

“My house does have ‘ghosts’ occasionally,” Montague said. “But they will never know who you are.”

As we walked down the street, we passed a number of magical shops for potions and wands and stuff. I was trying not to geek out. It was beyond aggravating that my magic was blocked. I could sense intense magical energy but I wouldn’t be able to use it.

I also noticed that some people looked…hostile. A very old, stooped woman wearing a black cape and a wide sun hat ambled into the street ahead of us and Montague stiffened. She looked like she could have been a ghost herself.

“Who is this girl, Young Xarra?” she asked.

“Good afternoon, Madame Solano. This is Charlotte Byrne of the Caruthers witches,” he said. “She’s staying with my family for the rest of the summer.”

“You are too old for a familiar,” she said to me. “Send him away.”

This again? Already?

“Don’t worry. He’ll depart soon. Neither of them have seen a parallel town before so I wanted to show them,” Montague said. Besides that slight tension in his posture, he seemed relaxed.

“Be careful. If you were not a Xarra, the gates would have shut to you already, when you died.”

He nodded to her, tipping his hat respectfully. “I understand.”

“Just be mindful.”

She moved on and Montague and Alec exchanged a look.

“She seems fun,” I said, when I was sure she was well out of earshot.

“She is very old,” Montague said. “She’s a council member, too. I have to be careful around the town elders. They don’t trust vampires and would like to have a reason to get rid of me.”

As we passed women in aprons brushing off their stoops and shaking rugs off balconies, carrying baskets of greens and bread, men walking with glowing staffs in their hands and securing horses to hitching posts, I realized that Montague’s memories of his vampire sire weren’t the only reason he sometimes talked like he came from another time.

He basically did.

He turned down a narrow side street, just before we reached what looked like a market square. “Here we are. Casa de Xarra.” The house was the first one facing the side street. A dark balcony with flowers hanging from it in clay planters shaded the street. The house itself was white with green shutters. He opened the door and it faced stairs that led upward before the ground floor split into a living room with furniture gathered around a wood stove with some bookshelves lining the walls, and a room that looked like an office/workroom for one of his parents on the other side with a desk and some cabinets full of bottles, herbs hanging from the rafters. In back was a dining room and a kitchen with an older gas range and an icebox.

It was very weird, because the rooms only had one or two electric lights but the furnishings were a comfortable mix of old and modern, some flashy modern art was on the dining room walls, and someone was in the middle of reading ‘Crazy Rich Asians’. So I didn’t feel like I was in Amish country or anything.

“What do your parents do, anyway?”

“They’re healers,” Montague said, picking a note up off the table. “And I guess they’re delivering a baby out in the country so we have the place to ourselves this first weekend.”

“Sweet,” Alec said.

Montague showed us upstairs. I glimpsed posters with soccer players and wrestlers and some models of tuner cars.

“That’s my room,” he said.

“Duh,” I said. “You look so refined and then I see your room and you’re such a boy. I really question your taste.”

“This room is pre-vampire,” he said. “I am refined.”

“You’re too nice,” Firian said. “You’ve seen her room. I would have harassed her about her ten zillion stuffed animals.”

I rolled my eyes as Montague showed me to my own room. I opened my bag to hang up the Versace jumpsuit and my party dresses before they got wrinkled. My room was small but very cozy. It had a blue quilt on the bed and a tiled fireplace with some little figurines of Spanish dancers. The back balcony overlooked a courtyard garden shared between a few houses. A young blonde guy was sitting down there reading a magazine by the fountain.

He snapped it shut and looked at me.

Ohmigod.

“Harris!?”

Chapter Five

Charlotte

“So you finally got in,” he said, standing up, hand sliding into one pocket as he tossed the magazine on the bench.

“Montague and Alec didn’t mention you would be here!”

“I decided to surprise you.”

“Why?”

“I told Master Blair I’d keep an eye on you,” he said.

“You’re a spy?”

“I didn’t feel like going home this summer,” he said. “My family and I aren’t really getting along, since they’re a tiny bit upset I helped you summon a demon. So, yes, I am a spy. I’m renting this house next door. Anyway, don’t even think about trying to get your magic back or summon anyone else.”

“Well—it’s not your business,” I growled, turning from the window.

This was mucking up all my plans. Now I never knew when Harris was going to be around. He might sabotage my attempt to talk to the finishing school lady, and…and.

He followed me here because he likes me and he can’t stand that Alec and Montague might get to have me to themselves.

Well, too bad.

Not like I’m attracted to him back or anything.

I kept thinking of how Harris put his arm around me when the demon appeared in Theurgy class. And then how he chased off my bullies. He helped us time and time again when I was trying to figure out what was going on with my mom. But then he always pulled back and acted in infuriating ways.

One thing I had certainly realized: Harris was a very skilled warlock. Better than any of the rest of us. He didn’t just coast on his family name or money. His spells were genuinely badass.

“Phew…” I wiped my brow. “No air conditioning in here. This is going to be rough.”

“Oh good. You’re cured,” Firian said, eyes narrowing. “The sight of Harris cured you.”

“It did not.” I peeled off my sweater so I was down to a t-shirt over a long-sleeved shirt. “I just forgot I was wearing so many clothes.”

Firian looked vaguely irritated before sinking his fingers into my hair. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. I guess I’ll have to leave you now so I don’t harm your mission. But call me when the coast is clear.”

“I hate that you can’t do everything with us this summer.”

He pulled me a little closer and nudged me to the bed. My ass bounced on the thick mattress and I almost slid off again. Firian picked up my knees and scooted me onto the bed. He was tall enough to fold himself over me so I was laying back, kissing him as his arms closed around me. His lips caressed mine like he was saving up the memory of me to carry him through.

Then he stepped back. “Have fun.”

He vanished.

“Firian…” I frowned. I knew he had to go. The whole town would talk if I had my familiar following me around. But I hated it. It just seemed so unfair and pointless. Who cares if I love him? It’s not hurting anyone.

I came back downstairs. “Did you know that Harris is renting the place next door?”

“What?” Montague turned sharply from the oven where he was making tea. “The Marcottes’ house? Did you see him?”

There was a knock on the door.

Alec strolled over and answered it. “Hey, Harris. What are you doing here?”

Montague looked like he was considering how much this disrupted his plans. “Is your whole family here?”

“Just me,” Harris said. “I needed to get away. We’re quarreling.”

“Is that so…”

“It’ll be like old times,” Harris said. “Only better. Or…what? Do you guys think I’m going to horn in on your threesome or something?”

“No.” Montague flung open the heavy door. “Come in. We’re here for business, you know.”

“What business?”

“He’s a spy for Master Blair,” I said.

“Not really a spy,” Harris said. “I’m protecting Charlotte from danger at Blair’s request.”

“Do you think I shouldn’t return to Merlin College?” I demanded. “Because that’s what he wants. To banish me back to the real world.”

“I don’t really care,” Harris said. “I just don’t feel like going home and this is a nice side job.”

“Then, it isn’t like old times,” Montague said, opening the icebox and covering the kitchen table with cheese and sausage and other things that I hope had been kept cold enough not to give us all food poisoning. He sliced some bread. “You are welcome to the hospitality of my snacks, Harris. Then you might as well leave because we are not going to accept Charlotte slogging through a mortal life.”

Harris folded a slice of Serrano ham onto a piece of bread. Despite the tension in the air, the kitchen was a very welcoming room, the floors covered in tiles painted with brown and blue designs, natural light falling on the long wooden table from two tall open windows that faced the garden. I heard the trill of frogs or insects and the smell of flowers was even stronger. I felt like I was in some quaint European town somewhere far, far away from my troubles.

“What are your plans?” Harris asked.

“We’re not going to tell you our plans!” I said.

“I’ll just have to follow you.”

Montague took a pouch of blood from the icebox and shook it at him. “If you mess this up, I’ll kill you.” He left the room so we didn’t have to watch him drinking blood, which was good because I didn’t want to see that either.

Harris lifted his fair brows. “He’s touchy when he’s horny. You have fun. I’ll see you around, everywhere, as I prepare my report.”

“Harris,” Alec said. “You’re not fooling anyone.”

Harris looked incensed that Alec actually went there. “Some of us are capable of acting based on our heads,” he said, and slammed the door on his way out.

“Harris has finally encountered something he can’t have,” Alec said.

“If he wasn’t such a jerk, he could have had a shot,” I said, like I was such hot stuff. “You guys wouldn’t all be so interested if there were other girls in school, I’m sure.”

“What?” Alec scoffed. “You think I haven’t met other girls? You think I just fall for anyone?”

“Isn’t that what incubi do?”

“If I didn’t like you I would avoid you,” he said. “Because I’m an incubus, and it’s in my nature just to have sex whenever possible, with whoever. I like you enough to think I could save everything for you. And when I finally am able to touch you…get ready.”

A pang of intense longing went through me at the wicked intent in his eyes. “When will that be?” I asked, my voice getting that tone where I was drunk on his gorgeousness, enchanted by his demon side.

“Let’s see if you can handle Monty first,” he said, one broad hand spread on the table as he leaned over me, his voice low, right in my ear. His breath was hot on my skin and I wanted more. “And Firian, before that. Are you ready for this summer?”

“I’m ready,” I breathed.

Chapter Six

Montague

I drained the pouch of blood and threw it in the trash, suppressing a sense of shame and anger that my parents had to worry about stocking the house with blood whenever I came home. Then I looked at myself in the mirror a moment to try and stay focused.

“Montague Xarra,” I whispered. “That’s your name. You are in your house. Safe. Charlotte and Alec are here. This is your life.”

Lately, my memories of my sire Rayner were coming hard and fast. Vampires were supposed to follow the oldest living vampire in their bloodline. My memories of Rayner were trying to draw me to him, to make me serve him.

He’s out there somewhere. This man is still alive. Rayner. My lord.

I knew Rayner had lived in the Netherlands sometime around the 1600s, and been in love with a girl named Lisbeth. Her parents wanted her to marry someone else, and I’m sure they didn’t even know she was in love with a vampire, but she chose to follow Rayner to London instead. He had loved her desperately and I had many memories of her, of the way he looked at her, of him making love to her. If I hadn’t had Charlotte to take my mind off of it, I might have lost myself in memories of this long-dead girl.

But then I had a memory of Lisbeth dying of the plague. Judging by history this might have been 1665 or 1666. Ever since then, my memories had turned darker. Rayner was miserable without Lisbeth and I had to deal with the heaviness of his grief.

Now I was remembering something else.

A tall, lean man in black, with heavy eyelids, deep-set eyes, no periwig or fancy clothes, just his own dark hair falling on his shoulders, the only nod to fashion some lace-trimmed neckwear. The 1660s were, generally, a pretty ridiculous time for men and Rayner’s memories of London were full of crazy wigs and bows and some really rough-looking peasants. This guy didn’t seem like a peasant.

If her soul has chosen to walk this earth again, I can find you your Lisbeth, he said softly. But she won’t be Lisbeth anymore.

Find her.

She might be a man. She might be on the other side of the globe. She might be deformed or crippled. She will, most certainly, be a mere child and you would be cruel to tamper with her new life.

I don’t care. Find her.

The man sighed. Come back in ten years.

Ten years, Rayner growled. No.

What price will you pay?

I have money. A pouch of coins was dumped onto the table.

That…isn’t enough.

I felt Rayner’s anger and desperation building.

Was this what I thought it was? He thought Lisbeth was reincarnated and he could actually find her again? That was some bad magic, there. You were never supposed to interfere with the sacred passage between death and life.

Of course, once you were already a vampire, I guess he figured, what the hell.

I shut my eyes, clutching my head. The man in black looked a little sinister but he seemed to have some sympathy for Lisbeth’s soul, and I had a feeling of dread when I saw the memory.

And then—

Rayner turned into a monster. Grabbing the man, pinning him down, fangs in his neck. The other man didn’t expect this. Panic, dread, attempts to scream for help that went unanswered as Rayner bit him.

Now you belong to me, Mr. Fletcher, and you will find her.

My breathing was choked. I had mostly forgotten my own turning. I was pretty drunk. Or maybe I just blocked it out. As my memories flashed back to Rayner attacking the other man, I remembered that terror and helplessness as I realized what was happening to me. I had also screamed for help, but I was very far from home.

There was a knock on the door. “Montague?” Charlotte asked. “Alec wants to know where the corkscrew is.”

I could tell by the way she said it that what she really meant was, Hey, are you okay?

I forced myself back together and opened the door. “I’m fine.”

Her nose wrinkled as if I didn’t look that convincing. “You sure? You look extra pale right now. Was the blood not kept at an FDA approved temperature? Should I be worried about the salami?”

“Just the memories again.” I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

“You should talk about it,” she said. “That always helps. You don’t have to deal with secret tormented vampire stuff.”

I know why vampires are always tormented, I thought. Memories. Loneliness. I knew that Charlotte and Alec would die and leave me just like Lisbeth. How many years before that really sunk in? “When Lisbeth died, Rayner lost it. He went to some guy—a warlock, maybe—trying to find out if she’d been reincarnated. And when the guy wouldn’t cooperate he turned him into a vampire. Really…vivid, violent shit.” I shrugged it off. “But it’s fine. I’ll feel better once we’re out on the water.”

Her eyes lingered on me, concerned. She adjusted my collar. “That’s probably true. Water is a healing element, right?”

“Yes.”

As we left the house, it was late afternoon. Soon the sun would go down and I could take off my hat. I had never been a hat man so I was counting the minutes. I took Charlotte past the night market. The focal point of St. Augustine was the tree-lined plaza, a long rectangle of criss-crossed paths and monuments. In the human world, it was no longer a market, but in the magical world, its purpose remained. During the day people sold produce in the market building, but at night true Ethereals—seelie faeries and angels and shapeshifting beings—came to sell magical wares: tinctures and potions and strange ingredients from far corners of the magical world. Overlooking the plaza was the Hotel Scheherazade and Cathedral Basilica on one side and Trinity Church and the Hotel Cordova on the other side, along with smaller shops and buildings. On the human side, the site of the Scheherazade Hotel was a six-story bank building.

Charlotte’s eyes were wide as she took in the sights. From this vantage point, we could also see the bridge guarded by two of the Ethereal guardians who took the form of lions.

“Why are there—lions?” she asked. “In the human world aren’t they statues?”

“Yes, the humans paid homage to our lions. I guess the builder was a warlock. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence. They say Ponce de Leon was a warlock with a lion familiar. He came here trying to find the Fountain of Youth.”

“Where is the Ladies’ College?” Charlotte asked.

“It’s just down there,” I said. “The warlock college is in the old Ponce de Leon Hotel and the witches’ college is in the old Alcazar.”

“Ooh, so the students get to knock boots around here,” she said.

“Every person on the street is a gossip, so they still have to be discreet, but it is better than our situation,” I said. “Well, not ours. Our situation is just fine. But every other poor sucker at our school.”

Home wasn’t quite what it used to be, though. Since I was turned I didn’t spend much time here. I spent my summer at the Haven in vampire therapy, then it was off to university, and I spent winter break with Charlotte.

I was a vampire now. Not exactly welcome. I was one wrong move away from being banished to Sinistral. I saw some people crossing themselves after I walked by, whispering prayers. How welcoming.

But I couldn’t blame them. I knew what had happened to Rayner. He was all right as long as his tie to his old life remained: the woman he loved. Once she was gone…the monster emerged as Rayner attacked an innocent man.

I just needed to get all that off my mind. I led the way to my uncle’s boat. He said I could make use of it all summer, and I was definitely going to take him up on it. The only other way to get to the beaches was to walk or take a carriage, but the sailboat was more fun.

Plus, it was the perfect spot for privacy with Charlotte. There was a cozy bedroom below decks. I had already stocked the place up with fresh flowers, wine, clean sheets and fluffy pillows. Of course, that was before Alec talked me into letting the fox have her first.

As I lifted the sails, I had a flash of seeing Rayner, hungry and desperate and full of passion.

Good things come to those who wait, Silvus. When we find her, I will allow you to claim her as your own, as you are mine.

And then—

The dark-haired girl caught between them. Lisbeth, Rayner said. You are my Lisbeth. The girl, pleading in French as the two vampires stripped off her clothes and sank their fangs into her wrists.

First he was murdering Silvus and now they were both taking some French girl. Was this French girl Lisbeth’s reincarnation? Was it any better if she was? And damnit, why was I getting hard over the memory? I wasn’t some monster. I would never turn anyone else. I wouldn’t follow Charlotte into her next life and drink her blood.

“Have you got this?” Alec asked me. “Do we need any wind?”

“I think we’re good. The sea witches have a permanent current going to steer you in the right direction.”

“Why are you fanged out? Didn’t you eat at the house?”

“I was thinking about the…very private bedroom on this boat.”

“Mm.” Alec looked back at Charlotte, who had just called Firian onto the boat. They were cracking up over something. She had put on a swimsuit but was still wearing a huge sweater over it. I’d never seen so much of her legs. Her legs were pale from being bedridden all spring, but they were still the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. It just showed off her veins more. Which were the strange sort of things you started thinking when you were a vampire.

“Harris was right. She does have a nice ass,” Alec said, flapping the front of his shirt. “Damn, I made it through freshman year. I can make it through three more.”

“That’s your plan? No sex through all of school?”

“I have to, Monty. I want to be taken seriously. Once I lose myself in her, that’s it for me.”

The sun was setting. I lit the old lanterns that hung on the ship, providing a soft light to the deck and cabin. When you were in the parallel world, beyond the town there was no development, nothing but palm trees and marshes cast in an eternal fog, turning dark against the brilliant red and gold sunset. If you went too far, god knows where you’d end up. Our boat hugged the coast, heading out for the sea witch settlements on the island. Quite a few other boats were following the same general path; it was like a water highway.

“Guys—guys. You know how Firian manifests his own clothes?” Charlotte sputtered. “And he doesn’t always know how they’ll turn out?”

“I thought I would show up in tacky tourist wear and this is what my brain made,” Firian said, throwing up his arms.

“That is…impressive,” Alec said. “I see how you were aiming for several different statements.”

Firian’s shirt was neon tie-dye with a picture of a very weird looking Garfield the cat wearing a backwards baseball cap and riding a shark like a surfboard. It said “TOO COOL FOR BEACH”. Firian put his hand behind the mouth of the Garfield and said, “Kill…me…”

I made this stupid familiar a love nest for Charlotte, and he shows up in that.

“Firian, can we talk?” I said.

“I guess I’m not too cool to talk,” he said, shrugging and ducking into the cabin like he already knew I meant in private. Firian had this graceful, languid way of moving that seemed as arrogant as Harris in its own way. Familiars were not usually that invested in the world of witches and warlocks. They were devoted to their own witch, but besides that, they could leave any time and were fiercely independent creatures.

That was how I saw him. A…creature. I didn’t hate him. But he wasn’t human at all, and it was strange to me that he wanted to be here.

Still, I had to admit, a familiar would take very good care of Charlotte for her first time. I trusted him with her more than anyone. More than Alec. More than myself. “Firian,” I said. “There’s a very nice bedroom on the boat below decks. I’ve prepared it for you and I urge you to take advantage of it.”

Firian looked like he was expecting something else. Then he got prickly again. “So you can get on with it, I suppose. Appease me.”

“Alec and I don’t just want to have sex with her. We really—” I frowned. “You’re entwined with her, so I’m trying to make this work with you too.”

“You really like her,” Firian finished the words that I struggled to say under his unblinking, golden stare. “What are you planning? Is only one of you going to have a public relationship? Or are you going to come out with this eventually and tell everyone you’re mating her like bond brothers even though you have no magical reason to do so?”

“I could ask you the same thing about whatever you’re doing,” I said.

“I’m aware,” he said, tapping the captain’s chair. “None of this will ever be accepted by anyone.”

“Yeah, well…”

“I don’t need my relationship with her to ever be public,” Firian said. “I have no family or friends or job. I’m just hers. Presumably, you and Alec have something to lose.”

Who is Lisbeth!? the French girl cried.

You. You’re my Lisbeth. I’ll make you remember, if it takes a hundred years…

I want to go home…

You won’t, once you remember me, my love. Rayner had her alone now, peeling down her dress to suckle her plump breasts. Her cheeks turned bright pink and she didn’t stop him but maybe she was too scared.

“Feelings don’t follow those rules,” I said. “It’s overwhelming. It hits you and you’d kill to keep it. Well—not literally.” I was getting lost again, and Firian was arching a brow at me.

As I looked out, I saw someone looking out at me from one of the smaller boats, caught in the light of a lantern. A tall man with dark blonde hair and high cheekbones, cold eyes, a demon’s smile.

Rayner?

I started, moving to the window to get a closer look, but the boat seemed to have vanished.

I was seeing things. The memories, haunting me.

At least, I hoped I was.

“I thought I saw Harris,” I said, explaining away my reaction.

“I’m not surprised,” Firian said. “So…to get to the point, you’re saying there’s a love nest below decks and we can have it?”

“Yes.”

“Is there a lock on the door?”

I nodded. “I’ll take the long way around. Go for it.”

“Give me five minutes,” he said.

Chapter Seven

Charlotte

“I could get used to boat life,” I told Alec, as we watched the sunset over the palms, even as I wondered what Firian and Montague could possibly be talking about alone.

“It is beautiful. I should have brought my sketchbook. Pastels, maybe.”

“I didn’t know you do landscapes. I thought you just painted magical stuff.”

“This would just be for fun. The other stuff could be a career if I can perfect artistic spells. So far I’m not that great at the magic part. Better at the actual painting.”

“You couldn’t just be a normal artist?”

“That…wouldn’t be as likely to pay good money,” he said. “My family is well-off but I don’t want to be seen as the artist bum of the Lyrman clan.”

“Well, won’t your magic improve once we’re…involved?”

“Yeah,” he said, glancing over my legs.

“You seem pretty sweaty in that t-shirt,” I said. “You might feel better without it.”

“Aren’t you trouble,” he said with a sly grin. “I’m not going to tempt you. Not yet.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You look like you’re already about to crack.”

“I doubt Master Blair would remove the spell on me anyway. Anyway, why do you ask? Who’s cracking?”

“We don’t have to have sex,” I said. “But if I can’t even feel your touch for the next three years…”

He put his hands on the railing behind the bench where I was sitting. “Once you feel my touch, you’re going to want more. And so am I. If I really care about you, I can resist. You need to focus on getting your powers back and helping your mom, right?”

“Oh, nice try, but I can multitask like nobody’s business.”

Montague wandered over and looked at the water. He definitely seemed troubled by something lately. I wondered what, exactly, was going on in his head and how intense the memories were. Enough that he seemed to be in another world, at least. Coming home had to be bittersweet for him.

“So, Harris is following us,” Alec said.

“You’ve seen him?”

“He’s on that yacht.”

“That’s just a sailboat.”

“I thought any boat becomes a yacht when someone like Harris is on it,” Alec said. “I don’t know. I’m a mountain man. What is a yacht, then?”

“Maybe you’re right.” Montague studiously ignored the sailboat/yacht. “Hey, Charlotte, you look cold. There’s a heater down in the cabin. You might want to warm up before we get to the beach.”

“I’m okay.” I stood up and stretched, trying to show off how normal I felt. “I like the view.”

“You’ll see the view many more times.” He put his hands on my shoulders and spun me toward the cabin door.

“Hey…” But when I looked back to protest, I realized what was going on. “What’s happening?”

“I think you know,” he said, his voice soft as a caress.

“Is Firian down there? Is Firian going to try to get busy with me while wearing a knockoff Garfield t-shirt?”

“Just go.” He gave my ass a little nudge-smack.

I yanked my sweater down over my bikini bottom, glaring at him before I went down a few steep steps. I was skeptical about losing my virginity on the first night on a sailboat. To Firian. While Montague and Alec were up there talking or brooding or fantasizing or whatever. They’re just rushing me into it. How about a night in one of those fancy hotels or something? Jeez.

The interior of the sailboat reminded me of a camper; cramped with a tiny kitchen and bench, but it was very swank with lustrous dark wood and brass in art deco curves. Tiny lights were strung all around and on the table was a spread of fancy decorated truffles and a bottle of wine. Music fit for a dreamy 1980s music video was playing softly in the background, although I had no idea where it came from.

And Firian was sitting at the table, wearing a suit and tie, his long legs poked out into the walkway.

“Oh…it’s nice down here,” I said.

“It is,” Firian said, standing up, his head slightly bent when it brushed the ceiling.

“You look very nice,” I said. “I would have dressed up if…” I trailed off. “I mean, are we actually doing this?”

“It’s been one year since I finally got to introduce myself to you properly,” he said. “But it’s been longer than that since you became my MMORPG partner. And it’s been…a very long time that I’ve been living near you. Watching and waiting and hoping that some day…” He paused. “I don’t know if kids can fall in love. Is it creepy if they do?”

“You’ve already been stalking me since I was a baby, so I think we’re well past creepy.”

“I was protecting you and doing my job,” he said. “But this part…isn’t my job.” He put one arm at the small of my back and drew us closer, then lifted my chin with a tender hand, meeting my lips for a kiss that quickly deepened. “This part…is in defiance of my job.”

Firian made me feel as if this random moment had, in fact, been something we’d been building up to all our lives. Maybe I liked it better than a fancy hotel after all. We’d always remember this.

“Are those magical truffles?” I asked.

“Yep. And faery wine.”

“I’m not really a wine drinker.”

“You’ll like this,” he said.

He handed me a glass. I took a sip. Okay. Of course it was delicious. It tasted like a whole garden of flowers was condensed into one taste. “Oh…wow.”

He still had his arm around me, his skin warm, reminding me that he was real, no matter how strange and inhuman he seemed when he started conjuring things out of the air. He fed me a truffle. If the wine was good, the chocolate was mind-blowing, but I knew it had no substance, and as soon as I tasted it I wanted more and more.

“Some things can’t be satisfied,” he said. “But there are other ways in which everything I give you is very real. I wanted to remind you of the difference.”

“Sometimes I think I control you,” I said. “And sometimes I feel as if I should be a little afraid of you.”

“Sounds about right,” he said. “Despite that, I am…yours. All yours.”

We kissed again, one of his hands taking mine while the other slipped under my sweater, skin to skin, although still chastely—for now. The boat rode over a swell and I bumped into him. Not entirely on accident. His arms twined and tightened around me, steadying me. In the dim light, the reddish hints in his hair were muted to a tawny color but his eyes still caught strange golden colors in the lantern light.

“Master Blair is wrong to take your magic away,” he said. “You are just the right person to continue his rebellion. My brave, beautiful Charlotte.”

The compliments made me shake my head, but I liked them too. I was glad that even after the attack and my sickness through the spring, he still wanted me to keep fighting. “With you by my side,” I said.

He swept me into his arms—and promptly banged his head on the ceiling of the boat. He growled at the ceiling.

I suppressed a laugh. “Sorry. Maybe this isn’t the place for—ooh—” He carried me into the bedroom, which was just a room full of bed, basically. There was no floor space. The door slid open to revel a somewhat circular bedroom and he dropped me on the mattress and pounced atop me.

I drank in the taste of his eager kisses for a minute and then said, “This is—Montague’s uncle’s bed?”

“Montague changed all the linens.”

“But does his uncle know?”

Firian shrugged. “If you loan your boat out to your college-aged nephew and his friends I have to assume you’re aware of what could happen.”

“You’re right.”

Then we were kissing in earnest. Not that we weren’t kissing in earnest before. I guess there were ever-increasing levels of earnestness. Firian’s hands cupped my face, his necktie falling on my chest, and I reached up and loosened it. This seemed to encourage him to tangle his legs up with mine. I was down with that. He was leaner than Montague and Alec, but tall, and he had the legs of an anime character. Plus, he could turn into a fox.

“Can you like, do just fox ears?” I murmured. “I wonder if that would be hot.”

He stopped kissing me and shook his head. “It would look dumb.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Or like, a tail?”

“Are you a furry?” he asked, in a tone that suggested I would never hear the end of it.

“I just think that might be kinda sexy.”

“Sounds like a furry to me. Maybe later if I can think of something equally ridiculous for you to do for me.” His hands were crawling up my back, which arched obligingly.

“Like dressing up as an elf in a bikini? I know you. You’re one of those guys who makes his RPG character based on what he’s into.”

“Don’t tempt me, woman.”

We laughed softly as he pulled off my sweater.

“But I already have the bikini,” he said, hooking his finger around the skinniest part at my hip. “Damn.”

“That’s right. You probably haven’t seen me in a bikini since I was about six or seven,” I said, when I used to play in my kiddie pool in the backyard.

“Stop with that. I was also seven!”

“I know.”

He started to inch down my bikini bottom and I drew in a nervous breath. Technically, I guess, Alec had already seen me naked, but that was a dream. Sort of. I wondered if I should have done something to my hair down there. I’d trimmed and shaved the bikini line but maybe I should have done more. Or less. I don’t know, there was only so much you could do with that part of the body, in the end it was more about what it could do than how it looked. I guess the aim of any girl should just be to look better than a penis and balls. Okay, breathe, Charlotte. You’re freaking out.

“Shouldn’t we do boob stuff first? There’s an order to the bases, right?”

Firian looked at me like he was having romantic thoughts and not worrying over anything stupid like I was. “Are you nervous about me looking at you naked?”

“No.”

“If anyone should be nervous, it’s me, because I know you’ve already seen Alec naked. We’ve all seen…the outline, so. This is the part where I get to worship the body of my witch. Trust me…there is no chance of disappointment.”

“I don’t know if I’m nervous, Firian… I’ve just never done this. And we’re friends. I don’t want to mess anything up.”

“That is impossible.” He untied the back of my bikini top. “But I can also do boob stuff.” He pulled off the bikini top and stroked my breast while hooking his hand inside the bottom and running a finger between my folds.

That wasn’t what I meant. But then again, who cared? It felt so good. I immediately realized I should just stop talking and let him do things to me. While his hands were on me, I pulled his tie off his neck and started unbuttoning his shirt. Then I unfastened the button and zipper of his pants.

Soon he was helping me wrestle off his clothes and then we kissed yet more earnestly, I swear.

“I’m not sure you’re sufficiently turned on yet,” he said.

“I’m pretty turned on,” I gasped.

He slid down my body, his soft hair brushing my skin until he reached my nipples and circled them with his tongue. He coaxed moans out of me as he alternated with sucking, licking, and nipping at the pebbled nubs.

I guess he was right. I had not been as turned on as I could be. And I wanted to be more than ready for him. Having worked my nipples over until they were hard and tingling, he slid his tongue all the way down, and then he pulled my bikini bottoms off and slid his tongue between my legs.

“Auggh…” I moaned, grabbing at the covers. He licked up and down three times until I shoved him back. “Stop, I…I’m close.”

“You’re ready?”

“Yeah. Very ready.”

He produced a condom and assured me it was real. Then some lube. He kept teasing me with little touches to keep me interested, but I didn’t need it.

I mean, Firian was beautiful. He was all mine, and he was from a world I would never know, all at once. He spread himself over me, one more kiss before he found my entrance with what I would call skill if I wasn’t sure he’d never done this before. It just felt like he knew me. My mind, my body. All of me. I could feel his thickness pushing me open and he went slowly, responding to my signals but there was still some force to his movement. It felt amazing. He seemed to fit me perfectly.

“Charlotte…” He looked at me, propping himself up on arms that were so long and lean that at first you didn’t realize how strong he was at the same time.

Firian was inside me. This was happening. I knew that almost everyone had sex at some point, so it was just a normal thing to do, and not really that monumental, but in this moment I felt more overwhelmed than I expected.

Maybe because it was him.

I never thought this would happen with someone who wasn’t even human.

He lowered his arms so he was closer to me, and tested a move, his cock throbbing inside me.

“Ooh…” I trembled at how intimate this felt.

“Does it feel good?” He traced the lines of my ear with his finger. “Or does it ache?”

“Both…”

“They say it’s better to give than to receive,” he said. “And if that’s true, I sure don’t envy you. You seem like you’ll be taking on a lot. I’m glad I got to be first.”

“Are you jealous?”

“If you’re happy, in the end, I’ll be happy too. Maybe…it’ll be a little bit hot.”

Sometimes he was hard to read, but right now he sounded genuine. “It’ll be a lot hot, mister, because I’m hot stuff,” I said, smirking at my own hubris.

“That’s true.” He grinned, and then we just launched at each other’s mouths. We were making out hardcore and it felt like our lower bits were also making out. There was a lot of thrusting, basically. And it was amazing. I was still aching but I craved more of him so the aching didn’t seem to matter in the moment as adrenaline and desire coursed through me.

Plus, I trusted Firian so deeply. He could be aggressive and surprise me, and I liked that, but deep down it never really felt like a surprise. He always acted like he could read my subconscious and knew just what to do for me.

Since he’d already gotten me so close, pretty soon we hit a groove and I reached that point where I just knew that if we kept doing it, I was going to get there. I gripped his shoulders. “That…yes…that.”

“Music to my ears.”

So that was what was going on with us. Really sexy and great, right?

But I was dimly aware that above me were voices, and the voices were getting loud enough that I started to notice them. Were Montague and Alec having a dumb argument about something when they knew I was trying to have sex down here? At this point I realized that there were three voices.

Then I started coming, because my body clearly took the express toll road while my brain was stuck pondering traffic.

“Mm…mmm…ahh…what is going on…up there…”

Firian covered my mouth. “Shh. Don’t worry about it. They know we’re busy. Maybe they’re battling a gator, I don’t fucking care…” He groaned like he was going to follow me over the edge.

“Okay…,” I breathed, and we got back in the groove, but slower, making excited noises. Firian had this little growl that I’m not sure he even realized he was doing, and it was very cute and sexy and made me really want him to try sporting some fox attributes next time.

And then, about two seconds after Firian finished, Harris burst in the door.

“No,” he bellowed. “No!”

We barely processed this before Montague came in behind him and tackled him. “I told him not to come down here but I didn’t want to tell him—!” he said to us, before he realized that I was super naked right now. I mean, there’s naked when you don’t have clothes on, and there’s naked when you just lost your damn virginity, and that is about the most naked you can be.

I scrambled to pull the bed clothes over myself. Firian, meanwhile, had snapped right to his feet and was instantly in shirtsleeves and black jeans, looking put together in a way that still said “yeah, I just banged her, you want to make something of it?” But not in such a way that made me feel used.

He was hot and I was trying to yank out very tucked sheets from under a mattress.

He grabbed Harris by the front of his shirt. “What?” he hissed.

“You’re a familiar,” he said. “You will both get into so much trouble if you do this. Charlotte, do you think you’re some kind of super special Chosen One just because you’re the only girl at Merlin College?”

“I’m not trying to be a Chosen One! I’m trying to have privacy!” I screeched at him.

“And besides that, it appears that none of you informed Charlotte that there is power to be harnessed in losing one’s virginity. It should be done carefully within the bonds of marriage so that the power can be used. Otherwise, it’s just a waste.”

“A waste?” Firian slammed Harris against the wall. “Get out of here.”

Harris whispered a few spell words and Firian was thrown back into the kitchenette. Montague grabbed Harris.

“Stop it,” he snapped, as Alec came in behind him. By this time I had managed to get under the covers, at least, but I still saw him look at me before he did anything else.

“I am really sorry about this idiot,” he said. “We tried to stop him.”

“This is completely and utterly irresponsible!” Harris said. “If anyone finds out that Charlotte copulated with a familiar she’ll be banished to Sinistral!”

“Is that true?” I asked.

“You know it’s forbidden,” Firian said. “But no one’s going to find out. Are they?” He grabbed Harris again, and Montague was still holding him. Harris stopped trying to fight.

“Come on, man,” Montague said. “We all know what this is about.”

“It’s about my duty as a future council member!” Harris’s pale skin was really showing off his blush.

“Why do you care what Charlotte does? What do you care if she breaks an antiquated rule that tells her who she can and can’t have sex with? You know what?” Alec threw up a hand. “I’ve had sex with my familiar!”

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, as Alec took the heat off me.

“You have?” Harris’ brows furrowed disapprovingly. “Your familiar? The shy one?”

“Yeah, I’m so damned sexed up all the time and she’s basically…stopped me from assaulting people. Losing control. That’s all. We’re not really into each other, but it’s a friends with benefits sort of situation now and then.”

“You all deserve each other,” Harris muttered. “This is dangerous and you’re all enabling it. Are the two of you…really…? I know you, Monty. Alec. You have something to lose.”

“You need to get out,” Montague said, giving Harris one of the dark looks that would come on so suddenly.

“Agreed,” Alec said.

Harris looked at me, and I felt very awkward, and then he abruptly turned and stormed out above decks. I wondered how he had gotten on the boat to begin with, and how he would get off of it. Suddenly I just felt annoyed. I grabbed my clothes. “Wait a minute!” I shouted after him. I nudged past the guys, who were trying to stop me, and followed him. “You just ruined one of the most special moments of my life, which I can never replicate. Do you realize that? I don’t need you to police my behavior, Harris von Fancypants.”

“What a vicious burn,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me. “I was, in fact, sent here to police your behavior. You’re lucky I don’t put this on the report. Be very, very careful.” He looked down—I guess he had an escape canoe down there?—and then at me again. I sensed some vague reluctance to leave.

But then, he leapt down and I saw that he did, indeed, have a little motorboat that was floating alongside ours, and he broke out of the current that flowed around the island clockwise and moved into a different current that went back the way we came.

“What is his problem?” Firian asked, coming up behind me. “Dude needs to get a life.”

I frowned. “I think he had a life,” I said softly, remembering how Professor Blair said the teachers called them ‘HAM’ behind their backs. You had to be pretty close to get your own acronym. “It was Montague and Alec.”

And he wants to be here with us. With me. Could that really be true? He’s such a jerk all the time, but…maybe I’m starting to get it.

Harris seemed to have everything together. Wealth. The council. Daisy.

Yeah…it was no wonder he wanted to be here with me and my bunch of trouble-makers.

Chapter Eight

Harris

“Irresponsible,” I muttered, tugging on the oars. Charlotte doesn’t know what she’s doing half the time, but Alec and Monty do. And her familiar—oh, he damn sure should have an inkling.

They were going to get her in deep trouble, and they were going to get themselves in deep trouble, and it was my duty to stop them before then, because I was their friend. And if I couldn’t get them out of it, I would never see them again.

Well, if they’re that stupid, they can dig their own graves.

I ground my palm into my forehead. The image of Charlotte naked flashed through my mind and it was satisfying.

But it wasn’t like I wasn’t trying to see her naked. Master Blair asked me to keep watch over them. So…

She was so adorable. And so…sexy. Daisy was gorgeous. Everyone reminded me of that all the time. So I really needed to stop thinking about Charlotte, but seeing Daisy was like going to a flower shop and buying a stunning orchid.

But Charlotte was a patch of wildflowers encountered in the forest, ones you’ve never seen before, something you never would have thought to look for, just an unexpected surprise. And if I tried to transplant them to my own garden, would they die?

Nah, more likely I’d be the one to get poisoned. So maybe she’s actually a mushroom.

It was possible that I was spending too much time brooding over the complete aggravation of being attracted to someone who was bad for me than paying attention to my surroundings, but all of a sudden, another boat was bearing down on mine.

I sped up, ignoring the posted speed limit on the water highway, and then deciding to just break out of the lane altogether. The water witches had established these currents to make it easy to travel between St. Augustine and the island, especially since most of the boats didn’t have motors at all but relied only on currents and winds. Electricity disrupted magic more than a basic gas-powered engine, but neither was perfect. Whoever this aggressive driver was, he had a sailboat, so I would rather just take my own way.

They followed me. They had their sails out and seemed to have caught a good wind. Or maybe they were just really good at wind magic. Either way, pretty soon they were driving me out into lonelier waters and I wondered if I had made the best decision. At this point, I should probably just try to slip back into the mundane world.

As I was trying to maneuver, a man suddenly tossed a rope toward me.

No, not a rope—a lasso.

Which fell around my arms and tightened. As I struggled to hold onto the wheel, another man leapt off the sailboat and swam toward my boat with Olympic swim team speed. He grabbed me, looked me over, and said, “Are you Harris Nicolescu?” His eyes bored into me so that I couldn’t think straight and told the truth. I had not had any time to prepare wards.

“Yes.”

The man nodded. “Got him.”

I snapped out of it enough to put up some fight. I hissed a few spell words to break the lasso and then dove into the water to try and escape. The man dove in after me and I heard another man speaking spell words above me. I felt dark magic pressing in on me, making my limbs feel heavy.

If you’ve practiced magic for any length of time, and seen some shit even a few times, you can just tell when you’re up against some dark, old, sinister force. I had that feeling now. I was in over my head with these guys, whoever they were.

“We need to get him out of here,” the warlock said. “I can’t hide us from the locals much longer.”

“I’m steering us out of here,” another voice said.

I felt the guy who was in the water put his arm around me as the magic pressed hard on my head, and I must have passed out for a second. I woke up on the deck of their boat with four men looking at me. I scrambled to my feet even though it made my head spin. I sensed that we were back in the mundane world. These demons didn’t want to get caught by a town full of warlocks.

But what did they want with me?

“Am I being kidnapped for ransom?” I asked.

“You really think highly of yourself. Just because you’re descended from kings and vampire hunters…” This man—the swimmer—definitely seemed like the leader. He had blond hair and green eyes, kind of nordic looking. When he spoke I could see his fangs. Other than that, they looked pretty human, although attractive.

“You’re vampires, aren’t you?” Were these vampires who had been threatened by my mother’s ancestors? Her family was full of successful vampire hunters, so there was always the possibility one of them might have a bone to pick. They lived so damn long. You could usually tell vampire clans at ten clicks by the fact that all vampires tended to be attractive and in the prime of their lives. It was smart for vampires to build their clans with people who could lure in prey with youth and charm.

“That’s right,” one of the other guys said. “Vampires.” He was more rugged and tanned with some kind of slow-talking accent. Texan maybe? I don’t know, I was about as east coast as you can get.

“Wait, are you the lasso guy?” I narrowed my eyes. A cowboy vampire? Great. I’d been kidnapped by a vampire superhero team.

“I’m glad you are amused,” the first guy said, with a voice so cold and vicious that it actually made me a smidge nervous. “Maybe you can get us what we want quickly and we’ll be done with you.”

“What do you want?”

“Your friend Montague. He’s one of us now.”

Montague’s sire. Of course.

I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this. It hadn’t really sunk in yet that Monty was an honest-to-god vampire. I’d been worrying that we were probably going to lose him to the ancient traditions and enchantments of vampires. But it didn’t seem real. Monty was still Monty.

“He’s not one of you,” I said. “He’s a warlock first.”

“I was also a warlock when Rayner turned me,” said the man who had been speaking spells. He had a faint British accent and dark hair. “That doesn’t matter.”

“I chose him because he is a warlock,” said the first guy, who I knew had to be Rayner. He had a soft, careful way of speaking that made you pay attention. “Every century or so, I choose a new member of our brotherhood. I always choose someone with talents. Charm. In this case, I also liked that he was comfortable with technology. At this point, we are all well past our first century, so we need…young blood. Montague is a part of our brotherhood now. He knows it. He feels the call, but he resists. I don’t have time to fuck around with him. So…maybe we’ll fuck around with one of his friends until he succumbs to the inevitable.”

I would certainly be lying if I said a part of me wasn’t terrified. I had spent my life training for moments like this, and hearing my parents and their friends tell stories about terrifying encounters with sinistrals. But I was all too aware that my life had also been protected thus far. I never had to come face to face with century-old beings with well-honed powers of speed, strength, persuasion and god knows what else.

“You think you can just kidnap one of Montague’s friends and he’ll give up his whole life to join your ‘brotherhood’? He already has a brotherhood. Do you want someone to join you under duress?”

“I gave him the gift of immortality,” Rayner said. “Right now, I can just imagine that he’s reluctant. He’s afraid of giving up the life he’s known. But…I am very persuasive.”

“This is a hell of a life,” said the third guy, who mostly seemed preoccupied sailing the boat and looking out at the water. He was an Asian guy, as tanned and rugged as the cowboy vampire. “But, you know, the more time that goes by, the more he will be drawn to join us.”

“When I turned Silvus, here, he was a very reluctant warlock. But when he realized what a life was in his grasp…not the tedious, rigid life of an Ethereal warlock, but a life of travel…excitement…freedom… Has Montague told you about his memories?”

“A little,” I said. But that was mostly a lie, because Monty didn’t talk to me much these days. I’d been pulling back, too.

“Every century or so, it’s time to find my lady Lisbeth, once again. She dies, and Silvus finds her with his magic, and we love her until she dies again. We will travel the world to find her, and when we do, I get to take her virginity and taste her blood for the first time, all over again. We will love her until she’s spent, and when she dies, it begins all over again. It’s a very good life. Montague will be seduced by it, and you will envy him, but maybe he’ll write you letters.” Rayner laughed in an arrogant way.

My blood ran cold. “You’ve been finding the girl you love through reincarnations? That is…very much against the rules,” I said. “For good reason.”

“What good reason?” Rayner picked a speck of dirt out of his fingernails and flicked it away, making it clear that he didn’t expect me to say anything of worth. “I love her.”

“She might not love you. It isn’t right to find someone and force them to go back to being someone they used to be. Monty will never help you with that.”

“What you think is right and wrong, young Nicolescu, is of absolutely no interest to me,” Rayner said. “I am five hundred years old. To me, you’re a baby trying to grasp a toy out of my hand. I swat you away and I laugh. You don’t know anything of love and devotion. What you will soon know is how much you care about protecting your friend from what you think is right and wrong. Silvus, put him in ‘the brig’.”

Chapter Nine

Charlotte

I managed to shake off the awkwardness of the interruption from Harris as we got to the beach on Anastasia Island, and proceeded to have a completely awesome evening.

We’re talking beach, bonfire, hot dogs and ‘Smores, the moon and stars, Firian’s arms around me, and Alec wearing tight swim trunks.

“Why?” I asked him, pointing at his bulging groin. “Why are you showing that off when we can’t touch?”

“Who do you mean we?” Montague asked dryly.

“I don’t mind you thinking about it, that’s for sure,” Alec said, with a little grin.

“Whyyy though.”

Behind me, Firian growled. “Was I not good enough? You’re not even ready for that thing.”

“Alec’s such a fucking showoff,” Montague said, poking him with a hot dog on a stick.

“I can’t help it,” Alec said. “It’s just there and I like to keep it secure.”

“My boys need a house!” I said, in my best Kramer impression, which was a terrible Kramer impression, and they all looked at me like, Charlotte is doing that weird quoting thing again. None of them had a dad who defaulted to Seinfeld reruns as background noise? Okay, fine.

It was a magical night, either way. Having stuffed ourselves with food that tasted like a campfire, with the sea air blowing through our hair, we were there pretty late. Firian, enabler that he was, found some beer in a cooler on the boat, and we sat around getting buzzed.

“I wish we could just stay here forever,” I said. “This is what college should be like.”

“Very educational,” Firian said.

“Confession time,” I said. “What’s your biggest fear about sophomore year?”

“Fear isn’t my style,” Alec said.

Montague scoffed. “Yeah, right. I know what your biggest fear is and you must really be feeling it now. You’re afraid you’re going to take after your mom and lose control when you finally have sex with someone.”

“I’ve had sex with my familiar, like I just confessed.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“You want to say that again?” Firian said coolly.

“Uh, I mean…it doesn’t count for Alec because he grew up with his familiar. You two are a special exception.”

“What do you mean, lose control?” I asked.

“It’s just that…you know…incubi and succubi…once they have sex they’re already thinking about the next time they can get some. It’s their whole reason for existing. I just want to be more than that. My dad blames himself for the fact I exist. Why are we even talking about this?”

“The spell that keeps you from touching me…it’s not just something they forced on you, is it?” I asked.

“Yeah, I need to stay controlled. I didn’t want to be near…any women.” He leveled his smoldering reddish eyes at me and he looked like he wanted to tear my bikini to shreds right then and there. “This is my decision.”

“Fine by me,” Firian said, giving me a naughty glance. “I’m still wondering how this one girl is going to keep all of us busy.”

I wasn’t wondering. My body was already ready to experiment further and maybe without interruptions this time. “Is that your biggest fear?” I asked him.

“My biggest fear is that something will take me away from you,” he said.

“Why did you bring up such a depressing topic?” Montague asked. He looked toward the ocean. “I think mine goes without saying.”

“I didn’t mean to be depressing. It actually makes me feel better to be reminded that you’re all afraid of things,” I said. “I’m extremely excited to go back to Merlin College except…sometimes…I’m not. Like, my favorite part is just being with you three. If we could just hang out on the beach instead, I’d be okay with that. I just don’t want to admit that I’m scared. I want to be a badass witch and save my mom, but then it’s like…can I just hide under a blanket? I feel bad to admit it. I owe it to my dad to help her, and I also owe it to him not to die.”

“Damn, Char. You have too much on your shoulders,” Alec said. “You had a hell of a year. Badass witches still get scared.”

“Master Blair is scared,” Montague said. “He got you into this mess and then he freaked out and tried to ban you from it. But you’re still going for it. Being scared is just smart. Self-preservation.”

“Yeah…” I sniffed. “You guys are so sweet. I don’t know why I’m getting so sentimental. I guess it’s the beer talking.”

“I guess it’s a good time to mention that I conjured the beer and it’s non-alcoholic,” Firian said.

“What?” I stared at my empty bottle. “But I feel so…”

“I’m kidding,” he said. “You think of all the things I could conjure I would give you Corona?”

“Right,” I said. “You hang out with my dad.”

“Craft beer or bust.”

In the morning, I woke up vowing to tackle the witch college. I pondered my wardrobe a second but my hand kept moving back to the Versace jumpsuit.

Dare I? This is so not me.

But witches are always so much more polished than I am. Maybe Daisy was right that I need to know I can pull this off.

I pulled the legs on and slipped the straps over my shoulders, then cinched the belt tight enough to contain my bit of stomach flab. Ooh. The cut was actually surprisingly flattering. Like, if glamoured up my hair a bit I looked like someone else. Someone who could confidently stroll the sidewalks of a big city and go from an office meeting to a cocktail party with ease, a mythical concern I had heard tell of in Project Runway episodes.

Daisy! Girl, you are so right. That finishing school can’t finish me because I am already DONE.

I sauntered out onto the balcony and spread my arms across it, trying to look awesome, with the private hope that Harris would be out there spying and look up and see me and like, lower his sunglasses.

The courtyard between houses was completely empty.

Hmph. Damn.

I was surprised, actually. I mean, last night the guy was so nosy that he had to bust in on the tail end of my first boy induced orgasm, and this morning he couldn’t even be arsed to be present to see me looking composed and awesome?

Where was he, anyway?

Oh, well. I wasn’t going to keep thinking about it. I had places to be.

Chapter Ten

Harris

The vampires tied me to a chair and then they all went above deck to discuss what to do with me, or so I assumed. I wasn’t too worried. They wouldn’t hurt me, obviously. I was just a bargaining chip, so this was more humiliating than dangerous.

Or so I assumed.

I suppose I didn’t hang out with enough real vampires, and so I had failed to realize the extent to which they were hungry assholes.

At some point, just as I was getting very tired of captivity and pondering what spell would be best to get out of it, all four of them came downstairs into the gloomy cabin where they had put me.

“I will untie your hands now,” Rayner said, with one arched brow. “But if you try to fight us, please note the ratio you are dealing with. One of you, four of us. You’re a mere boy and we are men.”

I wondered how to argue with that. I could have spouted some threats about the wrath of my family, but I wanted to stand on my own two feet. There was no denying that I wasn’t a hundred plus years old.

“Here is what I want you to do,” Rayner continued, handing me a piece of paper as I rubbed the numbness out of my hands. “I have written a letter outlining what I want from him. Copy the letter into your own hand and style. Bear in mind, Montague will join us either way, but I just need to expedite the process.”

Dear Montague,

While staying here in St. Augustine, I encountered your sire and his brotherhood. They are desperately seeking you to join them. You were chosen. Rather than trying to run, as your friend, I encourage you to embrace your destiny. While the world of warlocks is deeply oppressive, the life of a vampire is quite pleasurable. Your talents with using a cell phone and wi-fi and driving an automobile would be appreciated instead of frowned upon, and your natural charm will lead you to a welcome place in this brotherhood.

Indeed, you should use these skills to help your sire, Rayner, to locate his beloved maiden Lisbeth. In exchange for doing so, you will be rewarded with a place in this brotherhood alongside the loyal Jie, Thom and Silvus. These four men will protect you no matter what trials you may face, and stand by you as your new brothers, and you will share in the love of our most precious thrall, Lisbeth, protecting her and tasting her across all her many lives as you travel the world.

You might be tempted to resist such a dramatic change to your course, but I urge you to embrace it. There is nothing in the warlock world that can offer such a life.

I looked up incredulously. “I can’t write him a letter that says anything like this. Monty is not going to join your brotherhood.”

“There’s no use in clinging to him,” Rayner said. “Once Thom bit him, he became one of us. You’re postponing the inevitable. Before long, you will be getting older, and he’ll still be young—and increasingly hungry for a different life.”

“I’m not selling out my friend to vampires.” I met his eyes—but only briefly, since I knew he could try to compel me. The room grew tense and I knew I might have to fight.

Still, I didn’t think they would hurt me.

Rayner grabbed my arm. “I’ll bet your young blood is quite tasty.”

“If you hurt me—”

“What will happen?” Rayner asked. “Are you going to tell your mama and papa? The big bad council?” His eyes hooded. “Let me tell you something…I’ve had many dealings with the council. They know who I am and what I want, and all I want is Lisbeth—something they are more than willing to look the other way on, because I help them with some other problems now and then and they don’t give two shits if I want to find some random human girl. Your council doesn’t want Montague around anyway. They don’t want vampires in warlock society. If he joins us, it will come as a relief.”

This hit me hard. Damn it. That’s probably true.

“You can’t just threaten me for my loyalty,” I said. “Some of my ancestors have died rather than giving in to a Sinistral’s demands.”

“If you’re prepared to do the same, I’ll be impressed,” Rayner said.

“Montague is my best friend,” I said, my voice tight, even as something inside me knew that I had turned my back on my friends. Montague wasn’t really my best friend anymore. I really had nothing to gain from protecting him. In fact, I had this bad feeling that if my parents could see me now, they would tell me to just give him up.

But I still felt like I could never write that letter.

“Let’s see how you feel after you’ve been awakened to the real danger you’re in.” Rayner shot a look at the other three and they all moved closer.

I had one shot to cast a spell. It would have to be something fast acting. Fire would be the most potent but it could also burn the ship with me trapped inside it if it went wrong, so I went for one of the family spells: holy light.

The dim cabin suddenly filled with a soft, gentle glow, with vague human forms floating around the room. It looked like women kissing the vampires’ brows but they were actually a type of Ethereal. To the vampires it was like a blast of pure sunshine that whatever protective spells they had couldn’t repel. Rayner was forced back, squinting and trying to wave the holy beings away from his face, and the rest of them cursed at their similar state. I bolted for the door, shooting off another wave of holy light to keep them off my back before I grabbed the handle.

I tore up the narrow, steep stairs to the deck of the boat. Anastasia Island was off in the distance now. What realm am I in? I wasn’t even sure if I was in the parallel, or regular old America.

Deep down, I knew I was pretty screwed. Now I had four angry vampires and no easy way to escape.

Still, I had to try. I dove into the water and started swimming for the island. The result was predictable. The vampires, who were all faster and stronger than me by nature, dove in after me.

Breathing hard, I stroked toward the island, attempting some water spells to turn the currents against them.

Jie managed to get his arms around me. Rayner helped him wrestle me back onto the boat. I struggled all the way until I accidentally inhaled sea water and came up choking.

Jie patted my back. “You’re all right.”

“I’m all right?” I caught my breath. “Do what you’re gonna do, then. I’m not throwing Monty under the bus.”

“Your loyalty to your friend is very charming,” Rayner said. “I’ll give you that. I always think the blood of charming people tastes better.” He grabbed my wrist.

“Hell no…” I tried to struggle, only to find all the vampires swarming me and pinning me down while Rayner sniffed my skin.

This was going to a…place I really didn’t want to go.

“Last chance,” Rayner said.

“You won’t kill me.”

“Of course not,” he said. “Just a taste to frighten and allure you and make you more cooperative.”

He was certainly honest. I struggled. Maybe I should just write the letter. Maybe they were determined to get their hands on Monty anyway and there was nothing I could do to stop them, so I might as well save myself.

But that sounded shamefully disloyal. I could never look Alec or Monty’s parents in the eye again if it went down like that.

So I let the damned vampires bite me. Rayner’s fangs sank into my skin. I had always heard vampire bites didn’t hurt because of their magic, but…that was clearly bullshit. It burned. Maybe he wasn’t using the full force of his magic on me.

“Silvus, have a taste.” Rayner offered my arm to the dark, quiet vampire standing behind him.

Silvus wet his lips and then sucked on my wrist where Rayner broke the skin.

“I think we might as well bite his other wrist and give him a matching pair of nice little tooth marks,” Thom said.

“Symmetry. I like it,” Rayner said. “Go ahead. You and Jie take the left wrist while we enjoy the right.” He gave me a smirking smile. “You do have very fine blood. Young blood of the most prestigious sources always tastes best. It’s too bad we are so committed to Lisbeth or we might enjoy you in other ways.”

“I can’t believe Lisbeth loves you that much if this is how you act.” I gritted my teeth. “I feel bad for her if she can’t shake you even in death.”

“She might take some convincing, but the core of her being belongs to us,” Rayner said, in a tone that chilled me.

“So where is she now?” I asked. “Why do you need Monty?”

I could tell this tactic might at least delay my suffering. Silvus stopped drinking my blood with a heavy sigh, like he hadn’t eaten in years. He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. “Lisbeth is just an ordinary human,” he said. “Usually I find her with my magic, but this time someone is blocking me. I can sense her general location. I need someone who understand the internet to help me narrow down prospects. She would be around eighteen years old, so perhaps we need to look up the students at the high schools and colleges there.”

“Wait,” I said. “You think Monty can just…look up all the students at high schools because he can use the internet? For one thing, you—seriously—can’t just kidnap a high school student when you’re all hundreds of years old.”

“We don’t look hundreds of years old,” Silvus said. “Isn’t eighteen considered the proper age nowadays?”

“Well…” I cringed. “It’s not Medieval times.”

“We drink blood to survive,” Thom said. “We left the traditional moral code somewhere on the road behind us a long, long time ago…but we changed it out for a new one, and that code is, we protect Lisbeth from anyone who would hurt her. And life is hard. Someone’s always hurting her.”

“Well, either way, Monty isn’t a hacker.”

“You can find anyone on the internet,” Rayner said. “That’s what Jie told us.”

“They say that on TV all the time,” Jie said with a shrug.

None of them were drinking my blood now, so this was progress. “Immortals,” I muttered. “You guys think you’re so hot but you’re really just old men who don’t understand what’s going on. TV is its own reality. You can’t do half the things on computers that they do on TV.”

“Do you have a TV and computer to truly know what you’re talking about?” Rayner asked, as Silvus wrapped some bandages around my wrists. “We saw your friend Monty glued to his mobile phone all weekend but you are clearly a traditionalist.”

“I know enough,” I said. “Trust me. Doesn’t work like that. Monty’s great if you want to look up stupid videos and porn and get some bonus warlock magic in the bargain. He isn’t gonna find you Lisbeth. Maybe you should just let her go be a normal human for once.”

“Someone is blocking us from her,” Jie said. “What if she’s in the hands of a demon this time?”

“Is there a demon who knows you’re looking for her?” I asked, arching a brow.

“Mm…you’re a fast talker, aren’t you?” Rayner asked. “I’m starting to wish we could just kill you before you make any trouble.”

“I was just curious because we happen to be dealing with one of the most meddlesome high demons ourselves.”

“Who is that?” Thom asked, in a tone that seemed to usurp Rayner all of a sudden. I got the sense that Rayner was usually the leader.

“The Withered Lord,” I said, as all their faces turned even more pale than normal.

I was both surprised and not surprised that this gambit worked. High demons were sort of like volcanos. Usually they seemed dormant, but once in a while one would become active, and start making trouble for everyone. It was like they just got a taste for torment.

“Ah…so we have a common enemy,” I said. “Maybe fate has brought us together for a different reason.”

Rayner looked briefly annoyed and confused that I had somehow turned his kidnapping around. “Fate didn’t bring us together! I kidnapped you.”

“There is a girl at Merlin College whose mother has been tempted into the service of the Withered Lord,” I continued, ignoring him while I had their attention. “Could Lisbeth have suffered a similar fate? Meanwhile, the parents of my fiancee—the heir to the great diviner—were killed by the Withered Lord as well. So we all have some reason to go after him. And we all have some considerable talents.”

“Are you suggesting an alliance? I don’t want an alliance with some spawn of vampire hunters and a prominent witch who will draw too much attention to our methods.”

“Keep your enemies close. You know I have plenty to bring to the table. I have access to the great Hapsburg treasures and Daisy can see all.”

“What about the girl at Merlin College? Is she useful?”

I thought about Charlotte and her damn adorable smile and ponytail and untrained magic. Useful? I had a deep down resistance to saying Charlotte wasn’t useful. I had seen the innate power and strength inside her, but at the same time…she could be a bumbling idiot, and she needed protection.

“No,” I said. “Release Monty from his bond to you, and Daisy and I will help you deal with the Withered Lord.”

“Can you speak for the diviner?”

“Believe me,” I said. “If there’s one thing Daisy wants, it’s help taking on the Withered Lord. Forget the other one.”

Chapter Eleven

Charlotte

The Southern Ladies’ Finishing College of Magic was inside of an imposing and grand building with two towers. It looked like if a hotel was trying to become a fortified palace. I think this building also existed in the real world, and was a museum or something, but in this reality it was surrounded by these huge iron gates.

They were open, so that was something.

I came alone, because this was my task, and plus Montague warned me that I would never get in if I came accompanied by a boy.

“Usually parents send their reluctant daughters there to shape up,” he told me. “So act like you really crave the disciplined study offered by the college. Mrs. Tyler will eat that shit up.”

All righty then. I took a deep breath. I am ready to dish out some shit.

As I walked through the gates, I crossed a huge empty lawn with some palm trees, and then entered into a courtyard garden. The garden was quite beautiful, with lush palms and flowers and a waterway threading around the courtyard, with butterflies dancing around. A maid was sweeping some leaves off the path. I knew she was a maid because she was wearing a black dress with a ruffled apron. I have to admit, a part of me kind of wanted that outfit. Not to clean, just for—uh—role playing. She looked up.

I tipped my sunglasses down. “It’s pretty here,” I said. “Hi. Is Mrs. Tyler here?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Charlotte Byrne. I’m here to inquire about attending this establishment. I’m really yearning for some structure.”

The girl gave me a look that was basically the look you would get if you searched for “GIF save yourself”. She slowly put down the broom and straightened her apron. “This…way.”

She led me to an elevator, which she operated herself, as it was a very old elevator. “So are you also a student here, or just on the staff?” I asked.

“I am a student,” she said.

“I hear it’s a tough school,” I said.

She nodded and I found myself looking at her arms to see if they were bruised because by now I was getting a ‘tell someone you trust’ vibe. The door opened into a room that was just as grand, tall ceilings, white marble, and this huge, intense clock with a beautiful lady running from the Grim Reaper molded in gold on the case.

“Wait here,” she said.

I was starting to breathe fast and I had to remind myself that I wasn’t actually going here. It was just a ploy to get Master Blair back on board.

It was extremely quiet. I fidgeted. Then after a bit, I heard footsteps marching toward me from the distance. The rooms were all vast with huge entrances between them. It seemed to take forever, and then a beautiful blonde woman in an elegant gray dress entered and gave me an icy smile.

Not gonna lie, I expected a wizened old witch, and I didn’t like what I got instead, because it deflated my excitement over my new outfit. I could tell there was nothing I could wear, say, or do that would impress her.

“Good morning.” She extended a hand to me. “I’m Mrs. Tyler. Miss Byrne. I have heard of you.”

“Splendid,” I said, for some reason. I had never said the word ‘splendid’ in my life, but I was trying very hard not to just babble out something nervous and that came out instead. “So…I guess you know I was attending Merlin College.”

“Yes,” she said, with vague judgment. “I do know, although I don’t understand how that could have happened. You are clearly a young lady.”

Ick. The witches weren’t one bit better than the warlocks. But I nodded. “I don’t know either. I don’t belong. I have grown up without knowing the magical world and I crave the sort of discipline that will mold me into a proper witch.”

She smiled, if tightly, a bit less judgmental now. “Well, let’s see what you have to offer. Please, show me the best spell you feel comfortable with casting.”

“My magic was blocked by Master Blair,” I said. “That’s another reason I’m here.”

She sniffed. “Give me your hand.”

I offered her my arm and she whisked a small, delicate wand out from between her boobs—her dress was tight and pocketless so I guess that was the best place—and traced a pattern on my wrist, murmuring a spell. My arm briefly glowed as she released it, and warmth spread all over me as I felt my magic flowing again.

I hadn’t realized how much I missed it.

“Try it now,” she said.

Hmm. My best spells were elemental, but I knew those were forbidden for witches, which was part of the reason Master Blair wanted a woman to study warlock magic. I stuck with the safe route. I opened my bag and took out a candle. I had to use a little fire to light the candle, but that was probably acceptable, right? As long as I could control myself.

“I call upon the ethereal spirits,” I said. “Protect me from evil and the influences of darkness…”

“You don’t know French or Latin?” Mrs. Tyler interrupted.

“No.”

She sighed. “Do you know any other language?”

“It’s a spell,” I said. “It’s about intent, right?”

She did a tiny eye roll. “Oh, I suppose. Go on. But we will certainly work on your French first.”

She had broken my vibe. “Why French, anyway?” I asked. “I mean, they told me it was because the first witches in America were French, but it’s still a little weird. There has to be a better use of my time than learning French now.”

“French is a more elegant language,” Mrs. Tyler said. “And it is better to cast spells in a language that isn’t your own.”

“Why?”

“It just is and everyone knows that,” she said. “Go on. I want to see if you can regain your concentration.”

Maybe she was just getting under my skin as a test. I gnawed on my lip, glaring at the candle, and took a deep breath. Firian had worked with me a lot on focus and finding inner calm to control my fire magic. “Etherium, bless me, and shield me…let no demon lay a hand upon me…” I waved my hand and a small fireball exploded around the candle wick.

Mrs. Tyler took a step back, obviously horrified. “Oh no,” she said. “No, no, no. Never do that again.”

“I’ve gotten a lot better at controlling it!” I said, feeling defensive. “I know women don’t usually cast fire spells, but just to light a candle…”

“A woman’s talents are best used elsewhere,” she said. “A nice healing spell or even a little enchantment, those are the subtle arts that you should be studying. We have no wish to come blazing in shooting fireballs everywhere.”

“I have that wish!” I said.

“You certainly are in need of this school,” Mrs. Tyler said. “We must tame these brash impulses. But…I have heard things about you, Miss Byrne. Oh yes. I have heard that you have been sighted strolling about this town with your familiar. I unblocked your magic, but I can’t have you being a bad influence on the other girls. I will admit you to this school if you agree to have your familiar blocked.”

I broke into a cold sweat. I realized now that I should never have let Firian walk into St. Augustine. “You mean…he couldn’t come to this world? Ever? I thought familiars were important for casting spells.”

“An instructor will unblock you when necessary,” she said, waving her wand along my shoulder down my arm and then tapping my breastbone with the tip. “But you are at the age where you must learn to survive without him.”

“I never learned to survive with him!” I protested. “We just met last summer!”

“That doesn’t matter. It’s unacceptable. We will not have any rumors flying around about students and familiars. You asked for discipline, Miss Byrne. You will get it here.”

“Okay…um…I do want discipline. I want to learn to be a witch. So…when does the year start?”

I heard some slower footsteps behind Mrs. Tyler, and old Madame Solano appeared in the wide doorway.

“We begin now,” she said.

I threw up my hands and took a big step back. “Wait, wait. What’s going on? I’m not ready yet.”

“I’m so glad you came to us so things didn’t have to become unpleasant,” Madame Solano said. “You must be separated from your familiar. We have already spoken to the witches’ council. You will be blocked from the familiar for a trial period and if you cannot behave you will be severed. I am not sure what was going on over there with you at Merlin College, but it was clearly inappropriate. Perhaps they are too lenient there, but here in St. Augustine, we know all too well the danger to the stability of society when familiars masquerade as humans!” She started getting very huffy at the end. This seemed personal. Then she walked up to me. “Hold out your hand.”

I shook my head and edged back a few more steps. “No. You have it wrong! He’s—he’s not masquerading, he’s just—” A lump rose in my throat as I wondered how to defend Firian. This felt so wrong. He wasn’t ‘masquerading’. He was being himself.

Madame Solano grabbed me. Her skin was burning hot. “La terre, l’air, le feu, l’eau…”

As she spoke, I felt this compulsion rising in me to blurt out, I had sex with him. I lost my virginity to my familiar! She was using magic on me to make me confess the truth.

That would be bad.

Really bad.

“No…,” I gasped. I wanted to call Firian to help me, but I had to handle this on my own.

I knew I had to stay calm and tap into my inner power. I took a deep breath, hardly knowing what spell I could cast. I need help, I thought. Samuel Caruthers…are you out there? Do I have your magic? Can you help me? When am I going to start figuring all of this out? “I invoke you, Samuel Caruthers!”

I thought you’d never ask, said a voice in my head.

“Oh, is that all I had to do? You know, Obi-Wan showed up on his own!” I was getting a little snippy with the voice in my head because I was panicked.

“Who is she garbling about?” Madame Solano said.

“She’s talking to someone,” Mrs. Tyler said.

That isn’t how it works here. Spirits require an invocation. Keep calling, Char. Call help to your side. Call the spirits. Use the magic I have given to you.

I tried to push through my focus a little more. Come to me, I thought. Come to me, helpful spirits…

I had this funny feeling like the world had shifted slightly. Sort of like I was in a dream. I got the sense that I was tapping into some space between worlds. Behind the veil, I sensed all sorts of energy and I almost thought I heard whispering.

Call the good. Only the good.

I wasn’t really sure if Samuel was still talking, or if I was pleading to myself not to accidentally summon any more demons. I understood that I had to get this right. The world of the dead was full of malevolent things. I had to keep a razor focus on good energy and bring out spirits that would help me.

A swirl of sparkly shadow came out of my arm and spiraled toward Madame Solano, pushing her back toward Mrs. Tyler. The shadows seemed to take shape as they moved, forming into three shadowy women who surrounded Madame Solano and Mrs. Tyler, creating a barrier of smoky hair and clothes, translucent arms and legs of purplish magic that waved around and seemed to terrify the two other witches.

I was definitely curious to know what I had just done and what else I could do, but I also decided it was best to just get the heck out of here. I bolted for the staircase and ran. I expected someone to chase me, but I made it all the way back to Montague’s house safely, except for the fact that my heart was pounding so hard I couldn’t even talk.

All the guys were sitting around the dining room table. Even Harris. Firian and Montague immediately sprung to their feet and came to support me.

“Char, are you okay?” Firian asked. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“You’re in danger,” I said.

“She couldn’t call you to the school,” Montague said. “I’m sure they already inquired about her walking around with you.”

“Yeah…,” I panted. “Yeah.” I grabbed Firian’s arm, feeling much better just feeling his sturdiness, how real he was and how precious to me.

“Do you need a drink?” Alec carefully offered me a cup of water.

“I think we need to go,” I said. “I think…that was really bad and I should explain in the car.”

“Uh…” Montague glanced at Harris, then met my eyes, and nodded. “Okay,” he said.

“We’re not outrunning these problems,” Harris said.

“Where were…you this morning?” I asked him, and then I noticed bandages wrapped around both his wrists. It looked like he’d been cutting himself. Oh no. Was his prickly vibe just to cover up a deep inner pain? Was this a cry for help? “Harris—you didn’t—hurt yourself, did you?”

“Hurt myself?” He looked at his wrists. “Oh, no. No. This wasn’t a suicide attempt. I’m too busy to die, that’s for sure. I will also explain in the car,” he said. “I’m coming with you.”

Chapter Twelve

Charlotte

“Madame Solano was there too.” I hugged myself, glad to be back in the human world. From here, it felt like the witches couldn’t possibly reach me. There was no way they could co-exist with the highway exit Dairy Queen Blizzard Montague just bought me to calm me down.

“Damn,” he said. “This is my fault. I brought you two there. I knew the familiar thing was taboo, but I figured you’d get a pass for growing up human, as long as you didn’t hold hands or something.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said. “I had an awesome time.”

“We were only there for one night! I meant for us to do so many more things.”

“I was the one with the bright idea to approach the other school.”

“But I should have—”

“It’s both your faults,” Harris said. “Let’s establish that and move on.”

I looked back and stuck my tongue at him. He was jammed into the middle seat between Alec and Firian, who both looked pointedly irritated at him. None of us seemed to know why he had insisted on coming with us. I gathered that he had shown up just moments before I did.

“Well, anyway, she said it was very inappropriate that I was so close to Firian, and that he would have to be blocked from me, and cast a spell on me. She started doing this magic on me to make me confess. At that point, I tried to call on Samuel Caruthers because I’m supposed to have inherited his powers but so far he hasn’t done squat for me. And then I heard his voice.”

“Really?” Alec asked.

“He told me to call spirits to help me, so these spirits showed up and battled the witches. I think Samuel helped me summon them. The more I think about it, like—” I tried to shove some ice cream in my mouth before it melted completely, as I remembered the feeling. “It was the first time I felt like a spell I cast went perfectly right. I didn’t burn anything down. I didn’t summon anything bad. These beautiful women appeared and I just knew they were there to help me.”

“Were they ghosts?” Firian asked.

“Ghosts seems like a crude word for them. They were spirits. I like the sound of that, anyway.”

“And you’re sure you heard Samuel’s voice?”

“I heard a voice in my head that was too chill to be me in that moment,” I said. “And it was a male voice.”

“So you really did inherit Samuel’s powers.” Firian scratched his chin.

“See? You are the fucking Chosen One,” Harris groused.

“So maybe I am,” I said airily.

“Necromancy can go very wrong. Just as wrong as summoning demons.”

“These were nice spirits,” I said. “Badass, that is, but helpful.”

“Still, you might want to table that for the moment,” Harris said. “If you start casting necromancy spells you’ll open yourself up to even more trouble.”

“Harris, go ahead and tell us why you’re here crowding my car so Char can drink her Blizzard,” Montague said.

“I was kidnapped by your sire,” Harris said. “Right after I left your boat.”

“My—” Montague got a tight frown. “You mean—you met Rayner?”

I almost spit out my Heath Bar slop. “The five hundred year old vampire?”

“Yes. Rayner and his band of immoral kidnappers decided that they’d take a break from kidnapping this Lisbeth girl and kidnap me instead. They wanted you, of course. I was a trade. When I refused to cooperate, they just started drinking my blood. So thank you for that.”

“Shit,” Montague said. “Are you serious? They drank your blood?”

“They are vampires,” Alec said.

“How did you escape?” I asked.

“I got them talking,” Harris said. “It didn’t take me long to find out that we all share a common enemy. The Withered Lord.”

“No way…”

“It’s not that strange.” Harris shrugged. “He’s the demon flavor of the month. So I said we should team up and take him on. Me, Daisy, the vampires… They said they would rejoin us during winter break, when Daisy comes back to Merlin.”

The other three guys were very quiet but had expressions of complete horror.

“Harris…,” Alec said. “Man, you’re acting like this is no big deal, and I know you know it’s a big deal. Those vampires scared the shit out of you. You can just say so. You can just admit you didn’t know what to do.”

Harris looked down, his jaw working back and forth. I really needed to stop twisting in my seat to look at him.

I’m not sure why such a prickly guy like Harris, who would never admit what he really thought or felt, was someone I wanted to have around. But things felt right when he was with us. Maybe HAM just belongs together. Even though they hassle each other, I can tell these guys are close.

“I don’t know why I need to admit that when clearly, you already know,” Harris finally said.

“We’ll help you deal with it,” Alec said.

“I had to find some way out without giving up Monty,” Harris said.

“We can’t defeat a high demon,” Montague said.

“This demon has wrecked Charlotte’s family. Daisy’s too,” Harris said. “What if we can defeat him and we need those vampires to do it?”

“A high demon is going to ruin all of us,” Firian said.

“Wait,” I said. “I…I mean…is it possible to defeat him, though? Like…I know it’ll be hard, but should we just dismiss it like that? We have some pretty powerful people on our side, potentially.”

“Exactly,” Harris said. “Although you’re staying out of it. You can’t operate on that level.”

“Oh, you did not just say that after I defended your plan. I’m going to pretend I just heard static back there. I do have Samuel Caruthers’ powers and I’m going to become a white necromancer once I figure out what that actually is, and then I am getting my mom back.”

“I hope Master Blair will let you back in,” Firian said. “I have to admit, it makes me nervous that these witches suspect I might have gone rogue…”

“Either way, we’re probably safer there than anywhere else,” I said. “I’m showing up. He’ll have to kick me out.”

Chapter Thirteen

Charlotte

The rest of my vacation got a little weird, seeing as I didn’t want to tell Dad what happened or leave the guys, but we had lost our place to stay. Montague contacted his parents and they suggested we stay with his cousin in Tampa. So we did. His cousin had a bigger house but it wasn’t on the beach or anything. And he didn’t have a boat. And I was sort of nervous about getting close to Firian again, especially since now Harris was there and so was Montague’s cousin Diego and he was too friendly.

We ate a lot of Cuban food. Like, a lot. I think my sweat smelled like garlic and onions by the end of the trip.

More reasons I didn’t get any action in Tampa.

I did do a lot of studying. Montague’s cousin had a decent magic library. All the books were dusty and ancient; I got the feeling they were inherited.

“So white necromancers talk to the dead and summon the dead, but they’re good,” I said, scribbling notes in an armchair across from Firian. “Professor McGuinness said it was rare for necromancers to be good, but why would it be?”

“Obviously it’s because people usually become necromancers to bring back the dead or talk to their loved ones,” Firian said. “And that’s never a good idea.”

“Oh. That’s it? That’s the whole reason?”

He nodded. “Pretty much. Think about it. If your dad died, and you were already dabbling in necromancy, and you knew you could bring him back, where does your brain go?”

“Yeah…” I chewed the clicky thing on my pen before remembering it was Diego’s pen. “My mom bargained with the Withered Lord to bring Ina back, and that was what doomed her…is that it?”

“Just…don’t bring anyone back from the dead,” Firian said. “That’s the only rule you need to know. No matter who it is. And if someone you love dies, you have to let them go. You can talk to other dead people and summon badass spirits to help you fight and that sort of thing. Just not the ones you loved when they were alive.”

I swallowed. Just thinking about all the people I wouldn’t want to lose, and I understood why it was so hard to stay a white necromancer.

“Charlotte?”

As soon as I walked into the assembly that kicked off the school year, Master Blair’s gaze shot to me and he came hurrying over.

“Charlotte, you’re not supposed to be here. How did you even get past the gate?”

I shrugged. “I just hid under a blanket in Montague’s back seat.”

“I really need to speak to security,” he said. “They can’t just assume the students aren’t smuggling in other students.”

“To be fair, that is a first,” Stuart said behind him.

“I have heard things about your summer exploits,” Master Blair said. “I got an interesting letter from Mrs. Tyler at the Southern Finishing Magic…whatever that horrible place is called.”

“Are you impressed?” I asked. “Did she tell you I summoned spirit ladies to fight for me?”

Master Blair stopped whatever he was about to say. “No. No, she said you cast fireballs. I had blocked your magic for a reason, you know. You definitely don’t have the experience to summon the dead.”

“I think Samuel talked to me,” I said. “He helped me cast the spell and escape. I have to know more and I really really want to be here.”

I could see that Master Blair wanted to know more, but was reluctant to admit it.

“We can’t kick her out now, can we?” Stuart said. “You sent her away for her own good, but she’s gone to so much trouble to attend anyway…besides, we don’t want those old guard witches to get a hold of her.”

“All right, all right. You’re admitted on a probationary basis,” Master Blair said.

“Thank you! You won’t regret it!” I shook his hand, then I went and gave Montague and Firian high fives.

“I’m in!” I said. “I’m in! This year is going to be much better than last year. I can feel it.”

Last year I was an unwanted novelty, but this time I was kicking off the year with allies—super hot allies—and I wasn’t getting hassled nearly as much. We all packed into the restaurant for dinner, and Harris stuck with us, despite his best attempts to act aloof. Even Firian didn’t seem to be getting as much hate as before. Maybe everyone had just given up on bothering us, which was a big reason for my optimism. We ordered a bottle of wine, ate our fancy dinners, and made a toast to sophomore year.

I had missed this place.

Chapter Fourteen

Charlotte

The year was starting off pretty much the same as last year. I still had my dorm room with Alec. A few senior students in Lancelot House were gone, replaced with incoming freshmen. The older guys bullied me and leered at me, but the younger guys seemed more intimidated. They had clearly been warned by their parents to be careful of the witch at Merlin College.

My class schedule this year was pretty similar to last, but magical history was swapped out for a class with Stuart called Magical Theory and Principles.

“This is the class we’ve all been waiting for,” Alec said, as I was pinning the schedule next to my Fortune’s Favor calendar.

“Why? What do we learn in it?”

“Wand making.”

“Wand making!?” I pretty much exploded into glitter as I jumped around on the bed to face him. “We get to make our own wands?”

“God, you’re cute,” he said, lifting his hand like he wanted to pat my head. Then he pretended he always meant to wipe off the lenses of his glasses. I knew his deal. Sometimes Alec still forgot he couldn’t touch me. “Yes. Of course we do.”

“I wasn’t sure when or if wands happened,” I said. “This is so exciting.”

Alec went back to changing out the artwork on his walls. The wolf creature painting he did last year, that turned out to be my mom’s werewolf demon form, was thankfully swapped out for a greenish female form with a puckish face and a body that seemed blurred by motion.

“I like that one,” I said. “I’m getting a bit of Brian Froud vibe.”

“Oh, really? Good,” he said, stepping back to consider the arrangement of the pieces while I considered the arrangement of his toned backside. “Dad and I visited some old growth forest earlier this summer and I painted that forest nymph.” Then he looked slightly bemused. “The painting helps.”

I didn’t need to ask what he needed help with. “You didn’t have sex with that nymph, did you?”

He grabbed a pillow off his bed and swatted me with it. “No. But I’m going to remember every time you asked me a question like that and when I finally get my hands on you…” My whole body burned as he moved closer to me, so the only thing between us was the pillow. “Every frustration I feel I’m going to unleash on you all…at…once.” His eyes hooded and I was feeling so frustrated personally that I wondered how he could possibly stand it.

“Maybe I could paint you sometime,” he said.

“Like one of your French girls?”

“Who?”

I sighed. “You know who Brian Froud is and you’ve never seen Titanic? I can’t keep up. I mean…paint me with my new wand. With nothing but my new wand.”

“That would kill me.”

“I’m teaching you control. Maybe I’ll work a little magic with it. Just the tip!”

“That is a very inappropriate use of a wand.” He snorted while he was practically twitching with wanting to grab me and do things to me. “I’m trying to find other ways to define myself and you’re not helping at all.”

“You are a wonderful artist,” I said. “But maybe…you don’t need to try so hard to find other ways to define yourself. You are an incubus. And…I like you…just like that. Do you think I mind that you’re attracted to me?”

“Think of this way. I know you’re attracted to me, but that’s my nature—to attract women. And it’s also my nature to be attracted to women in return. So how do I know what’s special?” His hand, both graceful and masculine, lifted as if he was going to brush my arm, but stopped short. “If I can resist you, it must be special. I’ll know it’s about more.”

“That makes sense. I never thought of it that way before.”

“Enjoy Firian and Montague. I’ll wait,” he said.

I laughed, a little embarrassed. “I will enjoy them, thank you.”

His hand dared to move to my hair, stroking the ends a little. This was one way he could touch me without touching me. There were a lot more ways. I already knew that from the dreams. “I really hope, at some point, I get to watch.”

I nearly micro-orgasmed just from the way he was looking at me with those mesmerizing eyes and touching my hair in this faint, teasing way. “Does that really count as waiting, Alec?”

“Oh, yeah. Definitely. It lets me draw magic from sex without…going too far. It’s still torture for me.”

I felt hot and needy. Exposed.

“You like that, don’t you?” He smirked. “Well, don’t get too distracted, Charlotte. And be sure to practice safe wand usage.”

“Uh-huh…”

Chapter Fifteen

Montague

Rayner had to climb onto the roof of the house to get a look at the courtyard and see where this life had taken his Lisbeth.

He and Silvus were in China. The journey had been very long. He was exhausted and angry at fate for putting her so far away from him.

Jie, the guide he’d hired to help him move through this land where hardly anyone spoke any of the languages he knew, told him that if Lisbeth was a well-off young woman, she would rarely leave the family house and if she was married, she would be under the thumb of her husband and mother-in-law.

There was another thing, that boiled inside Rayner.

Women here had their feet broken and bound. They were in pain with every step. Rayner almost found himself praying that when he found Lisbeth, she would be reincarnated as a man. What would he do if that was the case?

But the moment he saw her, he knew her. She might have been a different race than in her previous two lives, wearing different clothes, in a different culture. It didn’t matter. She was still Lisbeth.

“That’s—” Silvus started to point.

“I know,” Rayner said. “We’re not moving yet. I’m going to watch, and everyone who hurts her—we kill.”

Rayner was hungry and not inclined to be merciful.

I woke shouting, “No. No!” I sat up in a rush.

I was breathing hard, but I calmed down when I heard the calm ticking of a clock on the mantel of our room’s old fireplace, and saw moonlight falling on my bed and Harris’ across from me.

He opened his eyes and slowly sat up. “Monty…you okay?”

“Man, I don’t know,” I said, irritated.

“Are you dreaming about them?”

“Yeah…” My hands were shaking a little, but I took a deep breath and steadied them. Harris and I had been best friends for so long, but we never had to face anything like this. We had fun. We didn’t talk about things like this very often.

Harris looked like he was thinking about this too. Life had gotten a lot more serious. I knew he was entangled in an engagement and a set path he didn’t want, and meanwhile I had…vampires. I used to talk to my familiar when something worried me, but now she was gone. I had to find someone else. I didn’t want to freak out Charlotte.

“They were in China looking for Lisbeth,” I said. “In one of her incarnations. She had bound feet and I think she had just been married. Rayner was furious and he—well, I didn’t get to see the whole scenario, but I think he killed her husband and her new family. I imagine he probably took her away. He didn’t even speak any Chinese.”

“So he was upset because they hurt her,” Harris said.

“I’m sure he was, but that was just what they did back then,” I said. “I mean, you can’t just murder people over a custom.”

“I suppose,” Harris said. “The vampires don’t follow our morals, but I have to admire the commitment. To love someone that much. If you live forever, you need something to live for, don’t you?”

“I don’t want to live forever…”

Harris paused. “There’s no such thing as living forever, really.” He sat up. “Do you trust me, Monty?”

I wanted to say no, but on a gut level I realized I still did trust Harris. Deep down, I knew where his loyalties were. Alec and I would always mean something to him. “Yes,” I said.

He looked surprised. “Well, I think if your sire gives you his blessing, we might be able to use your immortality as a bargaining chip somehow. You could give it up. You know what Professor Adams said about bargaining.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“I know,” he said, with a certain level of confidence that reminded me why we all wanted Harris around from the day we met him.

“They kidnapped you,” I said. “This wasn’t some master plan on your part.”

“Yeah, well, I work with what I’m given.”

There was something about him that was more magically sophisticated. He was willing to take on spells that skirted into dangerous territory. Our teachers would always warn us against that, but a great sans-pareil was willing to take risks and follow instincts.

“I trust you,” I said. “But I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I’m trying to stop you from becoming part of that,” Harris said. “I know what I’m doing.”

Chapter Sixteen

Charlotte

I walked into class all excited for wand-making day. We were told to wear ‘outdoors-appropriate’ clothes so I dug up some shorts and a t-shirt with a turtle on it. I sat between Montague and Alec. Alec was wearing a tight t-shirt and jeans that was already wrecking my concentration. Montague was still wearing a suit jacket plus his hat, but I guess he needed sun protection. My old nemeses the Locke brothers were there, but they didn’t do more than grumble in my direction, while a couple of the guys from other dorms actually said hi.

Stuart watched us all file in. He was wearing a polo shirt, a tan jacket, and loafers, with his bad mustache, looking as un-warlock-like as usual, but in the back of my mind I still remembered how terrifying he was when he caught us at Professor Blair’s house. The weird thing about that evening was that Harris didn’t seem to notice, and usually Harris noticed everything.

Oh well. Wand-making. Wand-making!

“Good morning,” Stuart said. “I know it’s early. I hope you all had plenty of coffee, unless of course you have a caffeine sensitivity. This is a very important turning point in a warlock’s life. Today we’re going to begin making our wands. This wand must be made entirely by you and once you’ve made it, you’ll keep it close for the rest of your life. To make the wand, the first step is to go into the forest and find a branch.”

“The wand chooses the wizard…,” I said. I was excited that something fun and magical was finally happening without any drama. I mean, sure, wizards in books always did have plenty of drama, but you know what Harry Potter also got? Lots of shopping. Where was my shopping?

“Mr. Jablonsky, she said one of the forbidden phrases!” Some weaselly looking guy pointed at me. I think his name was Broderick or something.

“The forbidden phrases?” I asked.

“Right.” Professor Jablonsky pointed at an old, curling piece of poster on the wall marked ‘Forbidden Phrases’. “I would rather make an exception for Charlotte because she comes from the mundane world, but…we do have a list of forbidden phrases at Merlin College that I’m actually sort of surprised you haven’t violated yet…”

I looked at the poster and yes, one of the forbidden phrases was ‘The wand chooses the wizard.’ Others included ‘You shall not pass’, ‘Use the force’, ‘Only a flesh wound’ and ‘You killed Kenny! You bastards!’

“How old is this list?” I asked.

“We add to it whenever we have a bit of a problem with uhh…memes,” Stuart said. It took him a minute to find that word, and I was impressed he knew what a meme was at all. “Charlotte.” He took a step closer to my seat behind Cal, a guy who was always reading sci-fi novels and gave me a sympathetic glance. “TV and movies might be an enjoyable escape, but this is not an escape. This is a powerful moment in your life. That’s why the list is there, not to censor you, but to center you in your own life.” His tone was gentle and everyone listened to him.

He didn’t embarrass me in front of anyone. He made me feel like this really was important and that my life could really mean something.

“I understand,” I said. Okay, maybe you’re a good teacher, but you still confuse and frighten me.

“I know you do. All right, students. I encourage you to summon your familiars for this task. We will be leaving the bounds of the school wards for this.”

Familiars were appearing all around me, which was wild to see. It was easy to forget that anyone had a familiar besides me. Firian popped into existence next to me, and a cat familiar tentatively sniffed his tail. Alec had a fuzzy little spider on his hand while Harris—oh, of course—had a hawk.

“I hope you’re not afraid of her,” Alec said. “She really is shy.”

“I’m only afraid of spiders if they bother me,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“She won’t talk to you,” Alec said. “Most familiars aren’t as chatty as yours.”

It was true, the familiars mostly kept to themselves, but there were a few that seemed happy to be in the real world. I saw a hedgehog and a beaver talking to each other.

“So…cuuuute…,” I said.

“I packed up some food and thermoses for everyone,” Stuart said. “Some of you may be gone all day, so please collect a pack before you leave. Follow your instincts and be careful. You will sense the path of your wand, follow it, and ask the tree for permission to take it. If you have done everything right, the branch will break for you. Bring it back here and tomorrow we’ll begin work on carving. You can travel together, but this is something you need to do on your own.”

The guys were excited to break out of the gates and go wandering the woods. As we picked up our supply packs—there was a special blood one for Montague—Stuart shoved a third food pack into my arms. “Just in case it takes a while.”

We were on top of a mountain, mind you. So when we walked out the gates, it was slightly uphill in one direction—following a bit of a ridge—gently downhill going down the road out, and sharply downhill in most other directions.

“I’m sensing something up the ridge,” Alec said. “How about you three?”

“Same,” Harris said.

The ridge led west.

“I’m getting northeast,” Montague said.

When I shut my eyes and concentrated, I felt a distinct prickle in the same direction. Northeast was definitely the direction with the most forbidding terrain. “Me too…”

“Are you guys going to be okay if we go that way?” Alec asked.

“I’ll watch over her,” Montague said, taking my hand in his.

The other guys in our class were also breaking off into small groups based on directions. For a little while, we had some other people around as we made our way down the mountain, half-walking and half-climbing. When we hit large shelves of rock, between Montague’s strength and Firian’s agility, they were able to help me. But I was aware that every time we climbed down something, eventually we would have to climb back up.

A truly terrifying prospect.

But somewhere out there was my wand tree.

“A nice, civilized wand shop sounds so nice right about now,” I said.

“Aw, that’s for those prissy Brits,” Firian said. “We Yanks just get out there in the woods, run some indigenous peoples out of town and kill all the beavers while we’re at it.”

“Sometimes I enjoy your sarcasm but today is not that day,” I said, while carefully stepping down a slope of slippery leaves.

“Be careful,” Montague said, putting a hand around my waist when I slipped a little. “Do I need to carry you down?”

“No…” My cheeks flamed as his hand slid a little lower, up the leg of my short shorts. I glanced back at Firian, expecting him to protest, but he just arched a brow.

“Do I need to leave?” he asked.

“No—we’re—not doing anything.” I jerked back from Montague.

“When are you two going to do the deed?” Firian asked, his tone deceptively light.

“How do you know we haven’t?” I retorted. “I don’t tell you everything.”

“I think I’d know,” he said. “And being secretive is not one of your strong suits.”

I was still blushing, stumbling on the leaves and had to brake by grabbing onto two spindly trees. “I—I never know how to talk about this when both of you are around.”

“It’s your body,” Firian said. “Your heart. Your life. If you want it, say so. I already told you, I’m happy when you’re happy.”

“I think I do need to carry you down,” Montague said, sweeping me into his arms and jumping off the next set of rocks.

“Yikes.” I grabbed his shirt, and then lingered on the feel of the strong body under his shirt as I looked at the way most of his hair was tucked behind his ear but a few dark strands grazed his stubbled cheek.

There was a part of me that wanted to succumb to marveling over all of these guys. The fact that they all wanted to be mine, and the fact that none of them were human. The cold of Montague’s skin and the fangs that sharpened when he was hungry; maybe they should have been unappealing, but instead I wanted to feel them. Every inch of them. Just like I wanted to know what Alec would do to me when the spell that kept us apart was broken. And I wanted to know where Firian went when he disappeared, and I liked to sink my fingers into his fur in fox form and then let him unleash his affections on me in human form.

I wanted more from them. I wanted to feel more, and show more.

Maybe I was scared of how much I wanted.

I think Firian knew that. He was pushing me not to be scared because that was his job.

Montague held me a little longer than he needed to before he set me on my feet, and I felt the air turning electric for a moment, as if a promise was made. “Are we getting closer, Charlotte?” he asked.

“Closer…” It still felt far away. “Where is your wand?”

“Right around here,” he said. “That’s why I was getting over-eager.” He smirked and before he let me go, he tugged on my arm so I couldn’t escape and brushed my lips with a kiss. “Come on.”

Montague led the way through brush to an old tree with a thick trunk. Other than the age, I couldn’t see anything special about the tree, but I did sense magic. Everything around us felt like magic. Of course, even before I knew I was a witch, forests like this seemed magic. My dad always said so, too. Ordinary humans knew what was there even if they didn’t know how to tap into the power. We couldn’t see any of the school buildings anymore, and I didn’t hear anything out here except wind and birds and the rustle of leaves in the mountain winds that rarely stopped.

Montague approached it slowly and put a hand on its trunk.

“This is the one,” he said. “Sacred tree…I request permission to take a branch from you to make into my wand. I apologize for coming to you as a vampire and not a straightforward ethereal warlock, for losing my familiar…but I assure you that my intentions are clear. I want to redeem myself for my mistakes.”

He put both his palms flat on the tree’s bark, then looked up. I didn’t say anything because he looked deep in concentration.

The entire tree rustled. One of the branches bowed to the ground from a height over Montague’s head, so he was able to put his hands on a smaller branch and snap it off cleanly.

“Magnificent,” he said. The branch was just the right size to carve into a wand, once the leaves and bark were stripped away.

“That seemed easy,” I said.

“I am a very talented warlock,” Montague said. “People forget that.”

“Do they?” I asked.

“How often do you sit around thinking about what a talented warlock I am?”

“I feel like my tree is still pretty far away…,” I said, looking at the woods beyond. They seemed to get thicker and darker the farther we traveled. “I don’t want to be here after dark.”

“Do you want your wand?”

“Of course.”

“Then, we have to find it. If we’re out past dark, we’ll cast light spells. It’s still summer. We won’t freeze.”

Yeah, my wand was out there. My wand was not a trip to the grocery store. My wand was like, at a place your dad only is willing to drive you on your birthday. My wand was up rocks and slopes and across a creek and then wandering through a meadow of flowers at the top of a ridge. By this time I was so exhausted that Firian and Montague kept offering to carry me but I felt like I had to make it to my wand on my own two feet.

The odd thing about the meadow was that it was so clear. All the trees grew up to the edge and just stopped. The meadow wound through the forest like a wide path. It was full of wild flowers that came up just past my knees, in yellow and white. The air was sweet with the honey scent of them. I started to feel like maybe we were not quite in the same world we started in.

At the end of the path was a blue tree. When I first saw it from a distance, I thought the afternoon light was just hitting it oddly, but no—the bark was smooth and a natural, mottled blue color sort of like lichens. The leaves were a bright light green, the way trees usually only look at the beginning of spring.

As I approached the tree, I suddenly slammed into an invisible wall. Hard. I staggered back, seeing stars. “What was that?”

“A protective field,” Firian said. “You probably have to fight your way through it.”

“What the hey? Montague’s tree didn’t have a protective field!”

“My tree also wasn’t blue,” Montague said. “Do you want help?”

“No, I’d better do it on my own. Once my face recovers…” I lifted my hands and tried to concentrate as I considered what spell might break an invisible barrier. Probably not wind. Fire seemed too dangerous when we were alone in the woods, and it might not work anyway. The only option seemed to be a straight-out energy force.

I focused my breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale, exhale, until I felt connected to my own center. I thrust out my arms—

The force of the spell lashed back at me and knocked me on my ass.

I was feeling more than a little irritated at my wand tree now, as Firian and helped me up. “Maybe you should—”

“Hsst,” I cut Firian off. “Let me try it first.” Maybe the lesson I’m supposed to learn is to use peace and not force. I slowed down my breathing again and tried to connect with the tree, but I was struggling a little. I liked trees. I was happy in the presence of trees. But it seemed like if I had a natural knack for bonding with tree spirits, I would have already found it back home. I was all too aware that I was still new at this and I didn’t always know what I was doing.

“What do you want from me?” I said, frustrated. “Montague’s tree was like, hey, here’s a wand, bro!”

Firian sniffed the air. “This is a weird place…”

“The energy isn’t bad,” I said.

“It’s not quite good either… I feel like someone’s been here recently. This is a strange smell. A…fae smell.”

“Fae?” We were so far from the school at this point, I knew we were on our own if something bad happened.

I whirled around, suddenly feeling like there were eyes on me. I caught a glimpse of a raven watching me from the trees. I immediately shot off a little wind spell toward the raven, shoving it out of its perch. “Maybe the tree isn’t the one testing me…”

The raven opened its mouth to caw, and instead a purple light emerged from its mouth and floated toward me.

“Ooh…” The light was mesmerizing and beautiful. I held out my hands to reach for it.

“Don’t touch it, Charlotte,” Montague said.

“But I want to…”

“It’s a faery light. It will lure you into the forest and you’ll never come home,” he said. “Look at me.”

With some effort, I tore my eyes away from the light, snapped out of it, and shot a fireball at the raven.

At which point I guess the raven got upset and turned into a beautiful man with a grim but lofty expression etched into his ageless face. He was holding a staff, wearing what my mind couldn’t help but think was some serious Lord of the Rings cosplay, like the kind that you have to get someone to make for you custom for hundreds of bucks. Man, why couldn’t our school uniforms be that awesome? He lifted a hand, the long sleeve of his white robe whipping around as he generated some sort of crazy wind vortex that he shot at us, blowing Firian and Montague away from me.

“Wait!” I lifted my hands. “I just want a wand! I came all this way! I ate all the rations! I don’t want to battle anybody!”

“You should learn to pace your rations,” he said. “And you should learn to defend yourself at the first sign of an attack—!” He whipped his staff around and now vines and roots slid toward me from every direction, trapping my feet in place.

“Oh, that’s never good,” Firian said, in a voice that nevertheless sounded like he thought he was getting a hentai show.

“Help me or be quiet!” I screamed at him.

“Do you want your journey to be in vain?” the faery man asked. “You must fight me alone. Prove yourself, or turn back. The fox knows this. And deep down, you know it too.”

I did know this. Of course, if my wand was special, there was a trial I had to pass to get it. Harris thinks I’m some kind of Chosen One? Okay, I’d better get this wand so I have a story to tell him.

The vines, meanwhile, were circling my legs and trapping me, threatening to topple me over, as I struggled against them. I tried another fire spell and it dissipated like nothing. A wind spell wouldn’t work on vines. “Ungh…!” They were starting to trap my arms and drag me down. I waved my arms around frantically and tried to kick. The vines seemed to fight me harder.

There is a monster like this in Fortune’s Favor, I remembered. In the game, it was a boss in the form of a spider. The more you struggled, the more her webs would entangle you. The way to get out of it was to stay still and cast slow spells until she backed off and went into her cave.

I stopped fighting and went still, which wasn’t easy because it went against every instinct. I took a deep breath.

“I’m going in,” Montague said, and Firian said,

“Wait.”

The vines stopped encroaching so much.

“I request you, vines, to slow down…,” I said. I tried to focus on my intent and not how nervous I was. “Slower…slower.” I was encouraged as the vines began to listen to me. “Stop.”

The vines froze.

“Let me go.”

The vines dropped away, but if I thought I was off the hook—oh, no. This was apparently just the equivalent of the spider retreating so the real battle could begin, and unfortunately I couldn’t just click or type to get out of it.

The faery lifted his hands and shadows gently swirled around me, surrounding me in a distortion field that made Montague and Firian appear as if through a screen door, and the blue tree as well. And when I tried to get out of it, I hit a wave of something so cold it burned my skin.

The distortion thickened and I started seeing faces appear out of the corners of my eyes. My grandpa. The school lunch lady who died when I was in 3rd grade. The dog we had when I was really little. I was pretty sure I even saw Heath Ledger and Alan Rickman blow by.

I’m in a vortex of the dead?

This was definitely freaking me out. I wanted to shut my eyes, but I tried to follow my grandpa’s face around. I could never quite lock onto him. With mom gone, my grandparents meant a lot to me even though they were kind of wacky old people who didn’t understand half the stuff I was into. Grandpa was perpetually taking off his shirt in the Georgia heat, drinking a beer, and asking me if I was still into Pokey-man. But he was always good for taking me to Target on my birthday and buying me practically anything I wanted, teaching me magic tricks, and telling me interesting stories about being stationed in Japan. He called me “Freckles”. Even after my freckles kind of faded. I liked that, though.

Just seeing his face again, even in some strange magical context, and I was anguished. “Grandpa…! Is that really you? Grandpa!”

You know this is all part of the test, my brain reminded me. You can’t lose focus now.

I shut my eyes, blocking out the visions. Now, I was aware of my own self again and I realized the cold was seeping slowly into me. My hands and feet were numb. I tried to summon fire again, but it didn’t work at all. Clearly, I had to get out of the box with my magic usage to pass the tests. But I hardly know any magic yet!

Of course, I had summoned spirits in St. Augustine, thanks to Samuel.

“Samuel…,” I said. “Can you help me again?”

Charlotte. I’m here with you. Just don’t open your eyes.

I was about to. I was hoping I would see Samuel’s face in the vortex.

No, he said. You can’t see me. We can’t get too close. That is part of the pact between a white necromancer and her spirits. You must not cling to the dead.

“Okay. I understand,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I did. “Just…tell me how I summoned the spirits before so I can do it again.”

You drew upon some of the spirits that guard St. Augustine. Those were the ghosts of witches who had no love lost for the council themselves. There are spirits everywhere who can help you if you ask them. Some of them protect the land you stand on now.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” I said.

Depends on your perspective. Tribes lived here for thousands of years.

“Oh. Am I allowed to summon the ghosts of indigenous people?” I whispered. “That’s awkward. We parked a warlock school on their old land.”

Well, they don’t have to show up. That’s true of all spirits. You’ll meet different spirits all around the world, some of them from ancient times and some who died weeks ago. They will not always be the people you expect, but you must learn to be bold yet respectful. Give it a try. Tell them your intent. Most spirits will help you, if your intention is good.

“I wish to take a branch from this tree,” I said. “To make a wand to cast magic. I honor this land. The trees and soil, and the spirits that walk upon it.” I felt awkward. ‘I honor this land’? I sounded like I was working on some bad poetry. Nah, Samuel probably meant I had to be myself. “I’m just a witch from a small town and I have so much to learn, but I really do love this forest and I really, really want to make a wand and learn magic. It’s my life’s dream. Or it would have been if I knew about it earlier. I have a lot of catching up to do, I know…but I want to be strong enough to protect the people and the places I love. I humbly ask for your help.”

My eyes were still shut, but I felt it. Spirits swirled around me, surrounding me with warmth. I opened my eyes. Just as with the women before, their forms were vague and ghostly, but these spirits were male. The vortex dissipated and I could see Montague, Firian, and the tree again.

I started shivering all over. The magic left me weak.

“Good work,” the faery said. “You have passed the test by demonstrating a wide variety of intuitive magic.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“A lord of the fae,” he said. Now I could tell it was a guy, but he was so beautiful it was hard to tell. “I was watching over this tree. I was curious to see if you would make your way here. This tree has been here for centuries, but only one student ever made his way to this tree for his wand.”

“Samuel Caruthers…,” I said.

“That is correct.”

“So it’s a pretty special tree.”

“It’s a very special tree. Sacred to the faeries.”

The faery was, as established, super gorgeous, and I don’t think it was a glamour. He had this ethereal quality that even the glamoured up witches didn’t have. It was like staring at the sun, or a rock star. His hair was long and managed to look like he had it professionally done, even though I’m sure he just rolled out of bed like that. He was perfectly androgynous, in such a way that I think Montague was checking him out, and so was I. He was wearing a very simple cape and boots, shirt and pants, all earth tones, but they clung to his slender and graceful body perfectly.

“You found the tree,” the faery lord said. “Ignatius will now know that this destiny was not foisted on you. You are the right person to accept it. You’ve proven that today. You can joke around all day, Miss Byrne…but I know what it’s like to pretend to fit into the world you’ve been given. Deep down…you will never be happy unless you can access the magical world and reach your potential. Samuel Caruthers gave you his magic, but now—it’s yours.”

A chill went through me. “What is my potential? Master Blair said I might be a sans-pareil, but…”

“Your destiny might be more specific than that,” the faery lord said. “To be a sans-pareil is to be a great wizard. It is an honor bestowed by the council. In the end, the greatest honor is to go beyond that. Not to do what’s expected, but what’s unexpected.”

“Oh, like when Harry Potter—” I cut myself off. I could tell the faery lord didn’t want to hear about Harry Potter.

He frowned. “Charlotte, you did go to St. Augustine, and you left in a hurry. Why was that?”

“You know about that?”

“I am told of your activities.”

“It was because those witches—like—freaked out that I cast fire magic. And they wanted to block me from ever seeing Firian again. I had to protect him.”

“Exactly,” he said. “I want you to know that Ignatius is doing that same thing you are doing. Breaking the rules in the hopes of a better outcome for future generations.”

Was that what I was doing? Cool.

“But in order to protect you, we are doing work that you won’t be informed about. Try not to rush things. Don’t summon any demons. Just go and get your wand.”

Firian hooked a finger on the waistband of my shorts while I lifted my hands. “Okay, okay,” I said. “I know. No more questions. Don’t piss off the faery lord tree guardian.”

“Wise.” He turned, cloak fluttering, and walked into the woods.

“Char…” Montague looked at me. “I’m starting to realize you’re kind of…special. You’re one of those reluctant hero types.”

“I’m not reluctant,” I said. I didn’t want to be reluctant, anyway. I had a mission to save my mom, and I needed to be brave and tough. “Well—I am, but, that’s because I don’t want to die.”

“Heroes don’t die,” Firian said. “Sidekicks do…”

“Not comic relief sidekicks. You already told me that’s your job.”

“I’m just…” Montague shook his head. “We have a lot to consider. Master Blair already tricked the council by bringing you here. This school is supposed to be run by prominent, normal warlocks who teach prominent, powerful younger warlocks. It’s almost like…they performed a coup so they could get you in here.”

I turned back to the tree. Whatever was going on, I knew what had led me here in the first place. Now I had a little more understanding of why.

I put my hand on its strangely smooth bark and felt the slow, soft energy moving through it like the waters of a mountain stream.

Although it was gentle, I could also feel how powerful it was. This wasn’t like my go-to fire spells, which were quick and impulsive. This was magic that said, Girl, slow down. Remember, this isn’t a race. You need to get in touch with something deeper before you can become great.

So this is the same tree my uncle got his wand from?

I had never known my famous uncle Samuel, or my aunt Ina who was killed by the Withered Lord and saved by my mother. I had never known my mom, either, but I wished I could have gotten my wand from the same tree as her.

Except, my grandparents had tried to keep her from her magical birthright, the same as my dad tried to keep me from mine. Maybe she never had a wand at all.

My entire family usually felt elusive to me. Who were they? What made them tick? I had no answers. I never understood why my mom turned ‘bad’.

Putting my hands on this tree and feeling this energy, I understood that she must have felt left out. When she met Samuel, she probably thought he was cool because he’d grown up a warlock and went to Merlin College. She must have been jealous. Her parents probably urged her not to get too deep or get herself in danger. I knew that feeling all too well.

So when she tried to save Ina for Samuel, the Withered Lord probably whispered something to her. A promise. You could have what he has. You could have power too.

The tree thrummed under me.

You have made it this far, the tree said in my head. You have proved yourself worthy thus far, but there is much still to be done. Climb my branches and find your wand.

“Oh…okay.” I glanced at Montague. He didn’t have to climb his tree. Damnit. “The tree said I need to climb it.”

“Can you manage it?” Montague asked. “You’re not much of a rock climber.”

“Nine-year-old Charlotte wouldn’t have even blinked,” I said. “So I think nineteen-year-old Charlotte can handle it.” I reached for a low branch and tugged myself up, throwing a foot up to get a hold on a spot where the trunk bulged a little. If I could get a grip there, I could make it to the branches. “Don’t help me!” I told Firian. “This is my wand. I need to do this—urrrgh.” I got myself up.

It got better from ‘urrrgh’ onward. The branches were closer together, and as long as I did not look down, I could keep going up. I reached the branch at the very top and wrapped my hand around it.

It was a large branch. It wasn’t as cute and wand-shaped as Montague’s. It would make a great stick for entertaining a large labrador. Nevertheless, I sensed this was the branch the tree wanted me to take. When I put my hand around it, the entire tree trembled and the branch snapped off.

“Ahh!” I didn’t expect that, and it threw off my weight. I almost fell.

“I’m coming up there,” Montague said.

“No! Stay down! I don’t need you Edwarding me around with your vampire strength anymore.” I clung to the trunk, carefully finding the next foothold as I gripped the stick between the tree and my armpit. Getting down was definitely a little harder. I could see why cats just cried until someone rescued them. Finally, I reached the lowest branch and now I could jump down.

“That’s your wand branch?” Firian raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have to overcompensate just because you’re the only girl at school.”

I gave him a little shove. “We’re going to whittle them down or something, right?”

“That’s a lot of whittling.”

Montague gave me a small, admiring smirk. I think he was almost a little jealous that I got a wand from a faery tree. “Well, we know you’re always checking out the biggest rods,” he said. “But I hope that even though I only have a normal wand, maybe when we get back, I can take you out to celebrate?”

I rolled my eyes. “Did you guys coordinate your bad jokes? Do you mean a drink at the dining hall?”

“Just say yes and I’ll make something happen.”

I suppressed a big smile but I was also aware of Firian standing behind me, and I felt awkward again.

“Just get it over with already,” he said. This whole time, I realized, I couldn’t quite tell if he meant it or if he was jealous. I wasn’t sure what I wanted him to be.

But I did know I wanted to spend more time with Montague. Alone.

“Yes,” I said.

Chapter Seventeen

Charlotte

Unfortunately, the date had to take a rain check. We had greatly underestimated how quickly the adrenaline of finding the wands would wear off. By the time we huffed our way home, it was dark. Long dark. I would have panicked if we didn’t see the lights of the school in the distance as the sun was setting. We were the last ones back. Master Blair was waiting for us, holding a lantern. He hurried our way.

“So it’s true,” he said, looking at my wand. “You found the tree.” He gave me a furtive look. “I was wrong to send you away…after all. Things are moving…”

“Yes,” Stuart said. “It seems that they are.”

The way Master Blair was looking at the branch made me nervous.

He didn’t say any more. Harris and Alec were waiting for us too. And quite a few fellow students. The Locke brothers were murmuring and one of them said, “What tree are you talking about, Master Blair?”

“This branch comes from the same tree as Samuel Caruthers’ wand,” Master Blair said. “It proves to me that Charlotte has the same potential as her uncle.”

“So what?” Royce Locke said, sneering at me.

“I’m starting to think he’s playing favorites,” Ronan agreed, speaking to Royce but in a voice for all to hear.

“I will not shy back from acknowledging Miss Blair’s worth,” Master Blair said. “She could be a sans-pareil. And if she can handle warlock magic, surely other women can as well.”

There was an audible gasp from multiple angles and even I started to get the sense that Master Blair should tone it down. Witches and warlocks just couldn’t handle this kind of excitement, the poor fragile creatures. This is what happens when you don’t use the internet, I thought.

“I’m tired of ancient, arbitrary rules,” he muttered. “Shouldn’t the best university in the country be on the forefront of new magic? New and better ways of doing things? Well, it’s all right—everyone, go back your dorms and get some sleep, for crying out loud.”

“That’s a big wand,” Alec said, as he and Harris walked over to us.

I immediately held up a hand. “Don’t say anything.”

“Where the hell were you?” Harris asked. “We got back hours ago. What was this tree?” I could tell he’d been worrying about me, even though he was trying to sound more irritated than concerned.

“It was a…faery tree,” I said.

“A faery tree?”

“Like, it had a faery guardian.”

“Chosen One,” Harris said. “You can’t deny that anymore.” He sounded more sarcastic than complimentary and I felt triumphant. He was playing right into my hands, I thought, before noting that I didn’t actually know what the game was.

I waved my magical tree stick (I couldn’t really call it a wand yet) at him. “Jealous much?”

Master Blair walked over to us with a fierce glint in his eyes, like we shouldn’t be talking about this. “Go get some sleep, Miss Byrne.”

The next day in Stuart’s class, which luckily was the last of the day this time, we started working on honing our wands.

“It looks like a branch,” he said. “Right now. However, I want you to consider what a wand symbolizes. It has grown from a tree that came up from a seedling, a tree that has surely been standing in the same spot since before you were born. In some cases, before anyone living was born. What would it be like to live your entire life in one spot while everything moves around you?”

“Sounds good to me,” muttered Benton, who seemed eternally unmotivated.

Stuart ignored him, like every long-suffering old teacher at Merlin College did about everything.

“What attributes would you achieve if you were a tree?” Stuart pressed.

Harris lifted a hand. “You would be intimately in tune with that place,” he said.

“Focus,” said Irving. “No distractions.”

“Good, good,” Stuart said. “You’re right, boys. Your wand is like a beacon of focus. The more attention you give it, the more it rewards you with power. So when you’re whittling your wands, clear your mind. Consider the years of the tree’s life. The seasons changing around it. The connection of all living things to one another. If your brain gets distracted, find a phrase or a poem that you would like to symbolize your magic, and repeat it to yourself as you work.”

I know what you’re thinking. This sounded like a pretty boring class.

Yes. That was absolutely true. We couldn’t talk. We were allowed to go wherever we liked on campus and spent two hours carving the bark off our branches with knives.

On the other hand, it was kind of badass that they just handed us knives. But my hands got tired very quickly and I might have taken a nap. Also, my stick was ten times bigger than anyone else’s. Harris’ already was starting to look like a wand and mine looked like a mangled branch. I was there hugging it between my thighs, hacking at the blue bark, when Montague came up to me.

“Is that a wand you’re carving, or are you just happy to see me?”

I brandished my knife at him. “No. No more of that!”

“Don’t worry. We’re going to run out of innuendos soon.” He came over and brushed his fingers across my shoulder. “Work day’s over. Time to get ready for our date.”

“Oh, man. My arms are like jelly.”

“You don’t have to do anything tonight,” he said, his low voice leaning closer to my ear. “Let me take care of everything. I don’t mind if you’re completely helpless to resist. Do you?”

I pursed my lips. An unconvincing protest hovered there before I sheathed the knife and stood up. “I need a long bath first.”

“Meet me in two hours outside Camelot Hall, then,” he said, naming the elegant old building that held all the campus hangouts under one roof. He kissed my forehead. “I’ll make plenty of hot tea.”

I knew what that meant. Kissing. Lots of kissing.

And maybe more than kissing. I mean, why put it off? I didn’t want to put it off.

I just never imagined myself having more than one boyfriend at a time. I still wished I knew more about how my grandmother handled such a thing. I had so many questions. Did she alternate between days? Did they all like, do it at once?

The very thought gave me an image that inflamed every nerve in my body, especially when my brain inserted Harris into the picture. What would he even do? You’re not a porn star.

“Charlotte?” Harris’ voice suddenly came through the open door of my room.

I jumped. The room I shared with Alec was the attic, and we had it to ourselves. I thought I was alone. “Oh my god.”

“Daisy is on the phone. She asked if she could talk to you. She wanted to know if the Versace fit,” he said in this vaguely snotty tone. I don’t think that was on purpose, however. It was impossible to say something like ‘she wanted to know how the Versace fit’ with an upper-crust accent without sounding snotty.

I was actually holding the Versace jumpsuit in one hand and my mom’s Betsey Johnson dress in the other, trying to decide which was better. Montague had seen them both before. My options were way too limited.

“Are you busy?” he asked. “Hot date tonight? I wouldn’t ignore Daisy for too long. She’s still on the line.”

He didn’t sound like a guy who had just been talking to his beloved fiancee. But then, no one could sound indifferent and bored like Harris. I had no idea what actually moved him, which was probably why I couldn’t stop thinking about finding out.

“Sure, I’ll talk to her for a sec,” I said.

Confession: My motives might not have been entirely pure. Deep down, I thought, These two cannot get married just because their families say so. I’ll get to know Daisy and get real with her about him.

“Hey, Daisy.”

“Hey, lady, what are you up to tonight? Harris said you’re going on a date with el vampiro. You know he’s gonna drink your blood, right?”

No, I’m supposed to get real with you! I thought. “Montague is a gentleman,” I said. “It’s not like I haven’t been alone with him before.”

“I would not be your friend if I didn’t warn you,” she said. “But maybe you’re into that. I don’t judge. How great did that Versace look on you?”

“Pretty great,” I admitted. Damnit. A part of me felt like I should hate Daisy because things could get tricky with Harris later, but she made me feel like I had a cool friend. No one at my high school had this air Daisy had, like she could own her own reality show and lifestyle brand.

“Yes! I knew it would. I told you. Did you take pictures?”

“I can take one tonight.”

“On your vampire date,” Daisy said approvingly. “I don’t want to make you feel like a charity case or anything, but if I see something else that will look good on you, I’m buying it.”

“You don’t have to.”

“But I’m bored,” she said.

Must be nice, I thought, as she sighed a little. “You don’t have poor friends in Chicago?” I asked.

“You aren’t my poor friend, you’re my normal human type friend,” she said. “I mean, I know you’re probably getting witchier or warlockier by the moment, but to me you’re glamorous.” Which was exactly what Firian said, so point for him I guess. “Anyway—you know—I’ve been thinking about our connection to him.”

“The Withered Lord?”

“Yeah.” Suddenly her words were like a bitter wind. “You seem tough, though.”

“I do? I mean—well, I’m not. But I never did know my mom, that’s all. Doesn’t mean I don’t miss her, or the idea of her.”

“I was five and it’s like my first memory,” she said, and then she took a quick breath. “Whatever, girl, I just want to buy you some clothes.”

“Hey, if you don’t have many people to talk to, it’s okay,” I said. “I don’t either, so I just never talk about it. My dad told me my mom just left. He never told me she was a witch. I thought she was a free spirit type or maybe a drug addict.”

“What about about your familiar?”

“I didn’t know him. Like, he hid from me.”

Daisy was quiet for a moment. “That’s like…criminal.”

I bristled. “My dad was trying to protect me.”

“Sorry. I just don’t know what I would have done without a familiar. Plus, now he is so hot. Are you getting in trouble with him or what? The council freaks out about that. But you have Monty to distract you, huh?”

“Yes,” I said, blushing again. “Speaking of which, I better go. I still need to get ready.”

“Okay, you get smoking hot ‘cause that vampire dick is cold.”

“I’ll warm that shit up,” I said, laughing.

“You should call me and tell me how it went.”

When I hung up I thought, we might really be becoming friends? I hope she thinks I’m cool. I was not great at ‘friends’ in high school but then, she had a point when she said we shared a connection. Maybe my mom’s absence made me put up some walls. I didn’t like people to get close enough to ask questions I struggled to answer.

I didn’t say anything about Harris, though…

Oh well. I had a date to think about.

I took a bath, dried my hair, put on a dab of makeup and a dab of glamour, and slipped into the jumpsuit, then went down to Camelot Hall. Some guys were walking in with their roller skates and others were probably going to bowl. With no girls and limited technology, and the extreme isolation of the campus, there just wasn’t much to do. I hurried along, feeling a little naked all dressed up. I didn’t feel like such a girl when I was wearing the uniform.

A guy whistled behind me. “Left your fox at home?”

“The witches in Florida scared him off,” said the other guy he was with. I think they were freshmen.

“What do you know, newbs? No one scared him off. I just don’t need him as much.” It was true, though. I had gotten a little shaken by those witches, and Firian rarely came to class anymore. I missed him but we both had an unspoken understanding that we needed to be careful.

“Excuse me.” Montague suddenly came out of the doors of Camelot Hall. He must have been waiting just inside and keeping an eye out for me. “Are you hassling my Charlotte?” He put an arm around me.

It was almost worth it to get hassled, just for the sexiness of being rescued. “It’s okay, Montague,” I said. “We’ve got places to be, right?”

“Yes. We do.”

His grip firmed up around my waist and he started leading me back to the grand entrance of Camelot Hall, with all of its Gilded Age pomp, surrounded as it was by gardens and statues. I heard the guys murmuring and chuckling to each other in a way I found vaguely ominous, but I ignored them with a mere sigh. I thought we were past this, but I guess it was wishful thinking that everyone would be cool with a girl at Merlin College after one year. I didn’t want to know what parents were telling their precious privileged sons about me as they sent them off to school.

“You are one saucy señorita,” Montague said, giving me this little private smile that slayed me right off the bat.

“I hope we’re not bowling in the next lane from them,” I said.

“Oh, we are not bowling or skating. I told you I have a very good evening planned. I made arrangements.”

“Ooh.”

Inside Camelot Hall was shaped like a shopping mall in that it had a promenade in the middle and all the entertainment through sets of double doors to the sides. Montague walked me right past all the noise and chaos of guys hanging out in the doorways, the crash of bowling balls and the pounding dance music in the skating rink. He opened the door of the movie theater.

I hadn’t been in the theater. Sometimes there was an official showing of a film, usually something black and white selected by the old professors. I actually might not mind seeing those but no one else did, so I hadn’t either. Then there were showings by the film club once a month, but the film club guys seemed super pretentious; they wore fedoras and they were always talking about Donnie Darko and Inception.

Today, the heavy velvet curtains were pulled back and the red seats were all empty while ornate gold lights glowed along the walls and paintings of astrological figures covered the ceiling. Montague showed me to some prime seats in the middle and there waiting for me was a bag of popcorn, some peanut butter M&Ms, a foil wrapped thing that looked like a sub, and my favorite soda—the oh-so-southern Cheerwine, all of which definitely showed me that he listened to my idle conversation.

“The food isn’t that fancy,” he said.

“I miss food that isn’t fancy.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“I feel bad to eat all of this stuff when you can’t eat anymore.”

“That’s why I didn’t take you to dinner,” he said.

“So we’re all alone in here?”

He waved a hand toward the doors. “Shut the doors and lock them tight, let no one open them all of the night.” The door faintly glowed blue. Then he slid into the chair next to me. “How’s that?”

“What about the emergency exits?”

“We can’t seal those shut. It’s against code,” he said, with a wry grin. “No one comes in here anyway.” His arm was behind me on the seat, and I leaned closer to him almost unconsciously. His forehead nudged mine and then he tipped my mouth up and plucked my lip with his teeth. Like he wanted to bite me. But I trusted him. When I responded with a small kiss in return, he slid down the straps of my outfit and started exploring the line of my spine and shoulder blades.

“You wore this thing,” he said. “You know I’ll have to take it all off before I can do anything. It would have been a lot easier if you’d worn a skirt…”

“I like to make things difficult,” I said, although when I realized he intended to strip me naked in the movie theater I started feeling very flustered. “What are we watching?”

He held up a DVD case. “The Princess Bride.”

“Oh, yay! I was so afraid you were going to make me watch something bad. I’m very particular.”

“I’m going to make you watch something good…and do something bad.” He kissed me again and I dragged my hands across his short beard. I loved how damn manly that felt and I’m sure he put off shaving just for me. “Wait here. I have to get the DVD going back there manually…”

I watched him stride up the aisle, still somewhat in disbelief that I was actually going to do this again with a second guy. I wondered where the deed was going to happen. There was no bed in here, obviously, and the theater chairs were jammed tight together with arms that would poke my back. Not the floor, hopefully.

Wall? Oh, yeah, he’s strong enough to hold me against the wall.

I chewed on my lip, the straps of my outfit still dangling over my shoulders, threatening to expose a boob, while a wave of wet heat bloomed out of me at the very thought of being banged against a wall. It was a fantasy I didn’t know I had until I considered it.

A DVD menu appeared on the screen suddenly, and the movie started up as he dashed back down to me.

Montague definitely looked like more of a man than a boy, and I got the idea that becoming a vampire had changed him. However suave he could be at times, he retained some boyishness too. He couldn’t hide his own excitement about the date. If I was on a date with Harris I just know he would have strolled back to his seat like he was bored, not leapt to my side like Montague did. I also guessed that Harris’ room never had posters or car models.

I liked that. Deep down we were both just a couple of overenthusiastic dorks. It was just that my overenthusiastic dork was also a very, very sexy and very strong vampire.

“I know you were thinking about something naughty while I was gone,” he purred into my ear as the MGM lion roared.

“Maybe,” I whispered, both embarrassed and aroused as I wondered if he could smell me. He probably could. There was no hiding anything from these guys.

His hand went around my shoulder and started slipping down as he nipped my earlobe, and I said, “I hope you actually watch this movie because it’s good.”

“I will.”

“How about we play a game?” I said. “Sort of like a drinking game, to reward you for paying attention.”

“I’m listening.”

“Whenever you hear ‘As you wish’, you can kiss me. And whenever you hear ‘Inconceivable’, you can touch a boob. And ‘My name is Inigo Montoya’, you can touch me wherever you want…”

“I like this game.” He paused. “But how many times are they going to repeat the same lines?”

“Oh, Princess Bride has all the catch phrases we could ever want.”

I had never actually tracked how many times those phrases were said in the movie. I can now say it is pretty often, but not often enough.

We got some good making out there in the beginning because ‘as you wish’ got said a lot all at once.

But I quickly realized I had made somewhat of a mistake in that I was full of pulsing, quivering sexual excitement waiting for Wallace Shawn to appear and say ‘Inconceivable’ so Montague would touch my boob, and that was not the best thing to do to your brain, trust me.

I have ruined this movie forever, I thought, as Montague peeled my straps down until I was topless, arms pinned at my sides, and wrapped his hand around my breast while kissing my throat.

“I didn’t say you could kiss me while you…mm…touched me…”

“You aren’t going to stop me… I know that much.”

And every time Inigo Montoya announced himself, I was getting slowly worked into jelly. Montague pressed me into the next arm rest as he slid a hand down the front of my jumpsuit and his middle finger slipped between my folds and stroked up and down as he helped me free my arms from the straps just so he could lift them over my head and kiss me again.

Then he snapped back to his own seat and started watching again, leaving me half-naked, disheveled, and feeling used. And oh-so-hungry for more.

But then we went through some long stretches without any catch phrases and for once I was having some trouble concentrating, sucking down soda fervently while Montague laughed at some of the jokes. I could tell he was torturing me on purpose.

Damnit, I loved it. Why? And how did he learn such sophisticated seduction techniques?

I wondered, sometimes, whether I was dealing with the nineteen-year-old warlock…or a vampire with memories that stretched back five hundred years.

I should probably feel sorry that he was a vampire in the first place, but a part of me didn’t. I wasn’t so sure he was sorry either, despite the problematic elements.

By the time we got to some Inigo Montoya’s final declaration, he turned to me with a triumphant smile. “It’s almost over, isn’t it?”

“Watch and find out.”

He pulled me onto his lap. I dropped the rest of the peanut butter M&Ms on the floor—there were only a few left. He finished the job of tugging off my clothes, my slip on shoes torn off in the process, and I felt completely scandalous wearing nothing but panties in a public theater, doors locked or not.

“Char…you are so hot.” He trailed his fingers through my hair. “You’re always hot, but I like how during the day you almost blend in. And then it’s like magic when you turn into a woman.”

I bit back a smile. I liked being called a woman. I liked the idea that it was something magical I could transform into, too.

I twisted around on his lap until I could get ahold of his collar, and I gave him a slow, sensual kiss. Then I started working off his necktie, and the buttons of his shirt, and he spread his hands around my ass and tugged me closer until my legs were spread around him. I could feel his shaft throb as I kissed him and it drove me nuts. It was so sexy to me the way guys could act all tough like they didn’t care but when it came to the man bits, every little thing made them tremble and throb.

“When I think about you with Firian, I feel so competitive,” he said, digging his hands in my hair. “I want to ask you everything he did. I want to be better than him.”

“Don’t make me,” I said, my breath more urgent. “Can I tell you all that you’re the best?”

“You know what? I think you’re a pretty lucky witch,” he said. “But I’m not sure I could handle being in your shoes. Because I know how much Alec wants you. I know how much I want you. And I can even guess how much Firian wants you. And then…you have to try your best…to keep it secret. Or even worse…explain.”

“You’re right. It’s awful,” I panted, but the heat rising to the surface of my skin and the crazed yearning inside me suggested otherwise. I slid my hands down to his button and zipper. “Do you have protection?”

“Vampires can’t have children,” he said. “Or carry diseases.”

“Oh.” I didn’t question it. I knew he wasn’t lying. For one thing, he wasn’t like that. But if anything else, I knew because he didn’t sound one hundred percent happy. “Well…it’ll feel good tonight.”

“Yeah.” His voice turned husky and he stood up and helped me free his erection. My bare feet hit the movie theater floor.

“I hope this place is clean,” I said.

“You don’t have to touch the floor anymore.” He scooped me up as I wrapped my arms around his neck and then he shoved me against the wall.

“Oh yeah…” My voice came out breathy. “Wall sex.”

“Do you like that?

“It looks sexy on TV.”

“We’ll find out, won’t we?”

He lifted my knees a little higher and found my entrance so easily I gasped. He pushed right inside me. It certainly wasn’t hard, because I was so ready. His confidence got me even more excited. And yeah, he was kind of cold, but he warmed up really fast inside me because I felt like you could bake a pizza inside my lady cave.

My hands clutched the contours of his back while I met his gorgeous brown eyes. He looked at me like he adored me and liked me and also, a little bit, like he could kill and eat me.

Hot.

As long as, you know, he didn’t.

His teeth were getting sharper and he was really getting into it like the only way he could control himself was to satisfy himself in other ways. He broke eye contact and thunked his head against the wall, still holding me close, breathing in my ear. “Charlotte…oh man…”

“Is it good?”

“It’s amazing…” He held my knees against the wall and it was a good thing I was pretty flexible. “Is it good for you?”

“You’re being pretty rough…”

“Sorry.” He forced himself to slow down.

“No. I like it,” I said. “I like the way you just…lose yourself. I want you to.”

“Oh, fuck. That’s good.” He thrust deeper into me with a groan and I groaned too. Thank goodness no one could hear us over the din of bowling balls and pounding music out there.

I didn’t think I was going to come, since he was being sort of rough and not focusing on my sweet spots, but I actually started getting really close and then he started coming and that turned me on more than I expected. He let out sort of an agonized scream, and even that was sort of sexy, like this brooding vampire cry that he was cursed to walk this earth with the desire to kill the woman he loves.

Maybe I was more twisted than I ever realized.

“Montague…don’t stop yet, don’t stop!” My core was aflame with him, throbbing as he slammed into me and I practically convulsed with a quick, hard orgasm.

That was when his fangs nipped at my skin.

“Ow…,” I moaned. Although it didn’t really hurt. At least, not in a bad way. Actually it felt…um…hot. “Ohh…no, no, you have to stop.”

His fangs sunk a little deeper and I knew I had to stop him. I was having trouble summoning as much panic as I should because it felt so good and right.

His vampire magic must be doing things to me.

Making me think, oh yeah…this would be a good way to go.

“No. No…no! I call upon the winds!” I gasped out.

He was thrown back by my magic and wiped my blood off his mouth. “Shit,” he said. “Shit! Charlotte, I’m sorry!”

“It’s…it’s okay…” I felt kinda messy with blood and our mingled juices but really good. Euphoric. His bite was giving me almost a drug reaction.

He was breathing hard, trying to control himself. I knew it must be bad when I heard him breathing so much.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He wrapped a hand around my throat, gently. “Yeah.”

“Did you see memories of Lisbeth and Rayner? Is that why…?”

“Can I not answer that? I don’t want to think about them. I want to think about you.” He ran his thumb over the pulsing vein in my neck and whispered spell words to seal the wound. Then he wiped off this blood with his own shirt. “I want to taste you so badly. I never knew how…intense that need would feel. Maybe I do know why he would kill people to find her. Maybe I do…”

“He never killed her, did he?”

“No, he didn’t, but it must make him a little crazy. Like…to keep from killing her… I don’t know.” He dropped his hand. “I’d never kill you, Char. I do know that much.”

“That’s really comforting,” I said wryly. “I hope you’re right.”

Now his thumb traced my lips again. “Of course I wouldn’t. Then you would be gone. And that would be a nightmare.”

“Mm…” I wrapped my arms around his neck.

“Don’t tell anyone this happened,” he said sharply. “I would be in trouble.”

“I won’t. I don’t want you to be gone either.”

“I think we’d better not do this alone anymore.”

“Alec wants to watch…”

A slow, naughty smile spread across his full lips, and I had to give him another little kiss. He murmured, “I didn’t think about it before, but I have another reason to be glad you’re with Alec, too. If we ever got that far, I mean, we’re young so who knows, but Alec’s like a brother to me. If you ever got married, you could still have kids with him.”

I smiled at him gently. “Yeah,” I said. “If we get that far, definitely.”

As we were talking, I heard this little scritching and shrill sounds above us that quickly got too hard to ignore. “What is that?” I asked. “Bats?”

“I’ve never heard of any problems with bats here—shit!”

A flock of bats—or whatever you call groups of bats—suddenly swept down from the rafters. I screamed and tried to hide between the seats, because my first impulse was just not to get rabies.

“These aren’t normal bats!” Montague said, grabbing my hand. “We need to get out of here!”

“I’m naked!”

“Glamour up some clothes!” He yanked me toward the emergency exit like he was getting me out of here whether I had clothes on or not. I quickly summoned up the illusion of a sundress, but I felt naked.

The bats were flying toward us and they were the size of rats. I thought I liked bats. I did not like these bats, however. They looked like bats you’d fight in a video game with huge ears, ugly wrinkled faces and glowing red eyes.

I shot fire toward them, which they immediately dispelled.

“Now they’re just mad.” Montague yanked open the door and shoved me out as a bat clamped onto his shoulder and bit his ear. He slammed it shut behind him while the bat was attacking him. I was completely freaking out, looking for a stick or something to hit it with.

Montague tore the bat off of him and broke its neck.

“That is so gross!” I reeled back and bumped into another person, which sent me whirling in renewed panic.

“It’s just me,” Firian said.

“Oh—thank god!”

“You’re naked.”

“Gah! I lost the illusion spell…”

Firian waved a hand and put me back in a properly magical version of the school uniform. “That will do for the moment,” he said. Firian had a vaguely judgmental look and I wondered if he knew Montague had bit me. I had a feeling he didn’t. He would freak out if he knew. Ha ha, I could keep secrets after all.

“Montague, are you okay?” I asked.

“I guess I’d better go to the infirmary and see if that thing was poisoned…”

The bat let out one last screech and Firian stomped on it. We all stared at the dead bat in shocked silence.

“So…demon bats? I guess your mom is still going to be protecting you this year,” Firian said.

Chapter Eighteen

Firian

Naturally, Master Blair wanted to see all of us after this incident, the latest craziness in the world of my witch. I could tell that, yet again, a good moment had been interrupted for her.

“When the bats attacked you, you assume they were sent by your mother because you were in danger?” Master Blair asked. “Weren’t you watching a film with Monty?”

“Yeah,” Charlotte said. “We were watching a film. We just thought, you know, maybe she doesn’t want me alone with a vampire.”

Master Blair nodded like he was enjoying this. “Are you two seeing each other?”

Charlotte looked at Monty. He lounged in his chair in a way I found sort of overconfident. Then she carefully nodded.

“Well. Color me surprised. I really thought you would end up with Alec.” He didn’t seem to notice Charlotte’s slight squirm. “All right, well, I have recorded the incident. Maybe you should be more careful about going on dates for now, but…keep working on the wand of yours and studying hard, and…well, just don’t summon any demons this year. I can’t say that enough.”

“Thank you.” I saw Charlotte let out a visible breath of relief as she stood up. She probably thought she was at risk at having her magic blocked again but Master Blair seemed impressed with her this year.

“Firian, actually, while I have you here, can you stay there? I’m working on a class on the Ethereal Realm and maybe you can answer a few additional questions for me. Miss Byrne, Mister Xarra, you can see yourselves out. Get some sleep.”

I stayed put, but I was instantly suspicious.

There was no reason for a grown warlock to ever speak in private to another warlock or witch’s familiar. Familiars had such a strange status in the magical world. I’m sure I would never have thought so if I had grown up among these rules, but since I was instead hiding out in a cabin, playing computer games and sometimes hanging out with Charlotte’s very normal dad when she was at school, I was aware I had turned out very strange myself. Familiars were supposed to be private and sacred to their witch but I just felt more like a second-class citizen. At least Master Blair talked to me.

Still, I doubted he just wanted to shoot the breeze.

Maybe I was a little starved for company because a part of me hoped he did. Would we have anything in common to talk about? Maybe I could ask him how magical New York City was back in the 70s and just let him entertain me for a little while.

“Firian,” he said, shutting the door behind us. “I think the council is spying on Charlotte and this entire school. I would bet you they sent those bats.”

“The Ethereal warlock council sent bats?”

“Not real bats, or real demons. But they already know Charlotte’s mother was sending demons, so…if they wanted to make Charlotte nervous and even drive her out of school, they could cover their ass that way. You assumed it was more of the same. A reasonable assumption.”

“Yeah, I did.” I shrugged. “How do you know otherwise? I’m sure her mom hasn’t given up on wanting to protect her daughter.”

“For one thing, we gave the wards some tweaks that should have helped keep her out. But Ethereal witches and warlocks, meanwhile, can come in anytime. And then, one of the bats bit Montague without leaving any trace of demon venom. Besides that, there is the fact that I know the St. Augustine coven is buzzing about her behavior and the warlock council is furious at me for letting her in, so I expect consequences at some point. It adds up to a gut suspicion on my end…”

“Fair enough. That all sounds bad,” I said. “You think they’ll make her leave?”

“A part of me wishes they would so she would be safe. But now that she found the tree, I can’t deny it… I think we might have foisted her destiny upon her, but it’s too late to take it back.”

“Cool,” I said dryly. I was never sure what to make of this guy. We knew now that Ignatius and his best buds had been planning a witch and warlock revolution and they chose my Charlotte to be the guinea pig because she was their cohort Emily’s daughter.

Charlotte never asked for any of this. And as her familiar, I had to protect her from all the danger they were putting her in. And yet, the irony was, if not for Ignatius and Samuel, she would have blissfully gone to the University of Georgia and never known me as anything but her internet friend.

Unless…I had decided to live as a human. Unless I asked to meet outside the game. The council would have taken my magic away and I could have asked her to be my wife someday.

Lived a normal life.

While her dad and I kept that secret from her forever?

Damn it.

“Firian, you share my interest in keeping her safe.”

“Of course.”

“You can go places I can’t go.”

“Oh, I see,” I said. “You want some dirt on Etherium but you don’t want to go yourself.” Witches and warlocks could go to Etherium, but it wasn’t really human turf, just like this world, which Ethereals called ‘the Fixed Plane’, was not a place they enjoyed going either. Their magic didn’t even work in the human world, outside of in-between places like the Merlin College campus. “What about your familiar?”

“I need to keep my familiar out of council business,” he said.

“Why?”

He slapped the desk and gave me a penetrating look. “You can say yes or no.”

“Ignatius, since we’re chatting like this, I must tell you, you seem kinda shady. I believe that your intentions were good, but…Charlotte can handle the truth.”

“I’m not ready to tell her. I have my own stuff to deal with.” He lifted a finger. “Madame Solano, you met her, right? She’s on the council. All I want to know is where her familiar is and if they seem up to anything suspicious. Don’t put yourself in danger. Just poke around.”

“If that’s it.” I shrugged. “Sure. I’m there often enough anyway these days.” I was a tiny bit bitter I had to banish myself to Etherium so often.

“That’s it. Just let me know what you see.”

“Will you reward me with some kibble at the end or something?” I said sarcastically.

He paused and opened a drawer. “I have an unopened bag of assorted Lindt truffles.”

I had to admit, I liked a guy who actually knew when there was a little truth beneath my jokes.

All I really wanted, I think, was to be acknowledged.

Chapter Nineteen

Charlotte

I was almost done stripping all the bark off my wand and smoothing it out. It was taking so much longer than everyone else’s smaller wands that I kept having to work on it after classes. We had a big Samhain/Halloween party and everyone was showing off their wands to each other with their costumes, and I was still working on mine. I was missing yoga and playing Fortune’s Favor, and I was starting to get a really strong whittling arm. I usually sat under a nice shade tree so I could freely scatter tree bits everywhere.

All the guys carried their wands around in little pockets or loops built into their jacket, pants, cloaks or whatever. (Everyone had their own style.)

I had no idea what I was going to do with this monster. It was more of a magical walking stick.

But I was proud of it. I’d never done anything like this before, working with my hands to create something from raw materials. I bragged about it to Dad on the phone a lot, because I knew he would appreciate wand crafting. I sent him pictures. He said school seemed to be good for me.

“You’ve been working on that thing for weeks.” Harris walked by and I immediately bristled.

“Okay. Yes. It’s been fourteen days now, so I guess you’re right. Were you counting the days until you could say, ‘It’s been weeks’?”

“It truly felt like longer.” He took a sip of the energy drink in his hand and walked closer. “Do you need help, O Chosen One?”

“Help!? No, I don’t, Prince Asshole. I’m almost done. And this is my wand. My fancy tree wand.”

“I’m not jealous of your clunky wand.”

“Sure you’re not.”

“Your wand is Duplo while my wand is Technics,” he said, taking another insolent sip. And yes I swear you can sip insolently.

“My wand is Excalibur and your wand is a wooden practice sword.”

“My wand is a violin and your wand is that big drum people pull out in a musical jam that everyone thinks they know how to play when they actually don’t,” he said.

Damnit. I totally knew the drum he was talking about. My dad had that drum in the corner of the den. “My wand is Big Bird and your wand is Elmo,” I snapped.

“I was just making sure you had it all under control.”

“Well, I do. But…” I shrugged. “It’s just tedious and I’m supposed to do it alone.”

“You’re almost done.” He came over to the tree and leaned against it to finish his drink. “Do you have a phrase or poem you’ve been infusing it with?”

“Well…I couldn’t think of much of anything, actually. So my dad told me that my mom used to wear a ring engraved with a line from Beowulf. ‘Fares Wyrd as she must’. It’s like, ‘fate does what it does’. I don’t know what it meant to her. I guess I’m trying to figure that out by saying it…”

“I think it sounds like a way of accepting things that happen to you, good or bad,” Harris said.

“Going with the flow, old English style? What was yours? Did you have one?”

“‘When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’”

“Ew. Did you ever think as a child anyway?”

“It doesn’t mean putting away fun,” he said. “But, it’s true, my parents used to quote it to me like that.”

“Your parents quoted Shakespeare to you?”

“The Bible. The whole passage is about understanding and love beyond self,” he said. “My parents aren’t very religious like their ancestors. They just picked out the bossy parts.” He pitched his can into a far-off recycling bin. “Look at you squirm. Mundanes don’t sit around talking about Beowulf and the Bible in school?”

“I mean…not like that. I don’t think about these things.”

“When you practice magic, if you want to be good, you have to find that thing,” he said. “There are a thousand places to find it: religions, books, trees. But you have to find it somewhere, or your magic won’t have grounding. For your mother, it was ‘fares Wyrd as she must’.”

“It ‘fared’ her right into joining up with a demon.”

“So maybe it’s a clue as to why?”

“Harris—have you been thinking about how I can help my mom?” I asked with a sly grin.

“I don’t know. And anyway, I have my own work to do tonight, so…have fun with that.” Harris’ ears and cheeks were both a little red. As usual, his fair skin couldn’t hide his feelings, which I enjoyed.

“Bible study? Or just your usual studies in being a royal without a kingdom?”

He gave me a faint look of disdain. “Goodnight.”

I was a little disappointed as he walked away, like he wanted to actually study instead of trade insults. That’s no fun.

I had to pack it in for the night, anyway. It was getting dark.

“Alec, do you mind if I play my game?” I asked, walking back up into our room. “It’s the weekend so you have time to recover from the tech sickness, and I’ve been working so hard. I’ll stop after one quest. I swear.”

Alec was working on a painting of a tree. “I wondered if you’d given up on that.”

“No. I miss it a lot, actually. I just want to decompress tonight.”

“Go ahead. I’ll go hang out with Monty if the computers are too much.”

“You’re an angel,” I said, blowing him a kiss.

I called up Firian and we immediately dove into our laptops. Fortune’s Favor had added a new quest called the Quest of the Dragon’s Gate with some new vaguely Asian-themed fantasy warriors.

“Ooh, we could make new ninja characters,” I said.

“We don’t have time for that. But what’s this thing with the old man?”

I switched to typing so we didn’t bother Alec. elemental swords! cool!!

Should we try the volcano and get the fire sword?

i want to try the snow forest

You always go for the snow boards first

we don’t get enough snow in Georgia!!!! oh, it says we have to buy clothes for it or we’ll get Exposure.

We went to the town shop to upgrade our outfits. I wanted to dress Larius in a sexy black outfit with fur trim that offered extra stealth stats. I moaned and typed, i’m frickin TEN GOLD SHORT to get shadowfur!!!

“How much do you need?” Firian asked aloud as he purchased his elven warrior a pink cape with a big fur collar that still left her body half-naked but technically provided protection from the snow. “Ten gold? We could just kill some of those bandits and see if we can get more.”

Alec had wandered over to watch. I looked up at him, and he quickly said, “Just curious what you’re always talking about.”

“We could really use a ninja…,” I said.

“I wasn’t…”

“We’re only going to play one quick quest,” I said. “But it says, ‘The new Quest of the Dragon’s Gate theme can be played by any class of character, but the ninja, samurai and miko characters gain extra powers that will unlock bonuses.’”

“It’s just a game,” Alec said. “I’m working on a painting.” He still didn’t budge. His eyes followed my character as he ran around the village.

“Then why are you watching me?”

“You know what? What the hell.” He lifted a pile of books off his laptop.

“Really!? You’re going to play?”

“Yeah. The last thing I need is some computer draining my magic, but…it looks fun.”

“It is fun,” I said. “You won’t regret it. We can control ourselves.”

“I just read an article in ‘Cast’ magazine titled, ‘Tech Peer Pressure: How to Deal’,” Alec said. “Some of the things it said your friends will say include ‘It’s harmless fun’, ‘Everyone does it’ and ‘You can just turn it off if it’s too much’.”

“Oh, so we’re the bad kids,” I said.

“You are.”

“We’re computer pushers. First it’s Fortune’s Favor and before you know it—”

“Minecraft. Fortnite. Words With Friends,” Firian said. “Soon you’re just prowling the streets looking for the next hit. Hey, man. Hey, you got any pixels, man? I’ll take Animal Crossing. Tetris. Whatever you got.”

“I’ll trade you my body for a rare Pokemon,” I moaned.

Alec was ignoring us by now as he turned on his computer. “Just show me how to do it.”

We got the game downloading and I got Alec to the screen for choosing a character. He immediately went for a busty female ninja wearing a bikini and stockings.

“Not you too,” I said.

“You made yourself a hot guy,” he said.

“He’s appropriately dressed.”

“Does he have to be?” Alec asked in a low voice as he leaned so close to me we were almost touching. I shivered back because I didn’t want to get jolted.

Pretty soon we were off and running. Alec had no idea what he was doing and needed to level up. At first he kept walking off cliffs and dying. So we spent some time on tutorial and I fully expected Alec to say that too much time had passed and we needed to stop, but since he didn’t, I wasn’t going to be the one to remind him.

A lot of time passed.

Like…a lot.

You’ve impressed me with your training, Yumi, Firian said to Alec. I think you can handle the snow forest if Larius watches over you. You need his protection and strength.

But I thought you and Larius were…involved.

Where I come from, we elves live a long time. Relationships are long and monogamous. But when I left my people behind, I said goodbye to that life. I might be willing to share Larius with you so that our bond might be stronger.

I snorted. we don’t have to work all this out in the game.

Firia pulled her sword on Larius. What do you mean? Do you think our affections are a game?

Alec’s avatar sent affection points to Larius in a big stream of pink hearts. i’m so happy. larius, how i yearn to caress your eyepatch.

I started laughing. Be serious, I typed. Yumi, I have never let anyone touch my eyepatch. I lost that eye in a battle against the forces of darkness.

all the more reason…

Before we fight the snow demons, I think we should find ourselves an inn. Firia jumped up and down.

Do you think, of all the wenches I have taken my pleasure with, I would give myself to a mere ninja and a haughty elven warrior? I typed back, trying to stay in character. Larius in my mind, had been hurt badly in the past so he was hard to get. He was cold and brooding.

You’re a virgin, aren’t you, Larry? Firia jumped up and down again, elf boobs a’bouncin’. I gave Firian the finger.

i know nothing of men, said our ninja friend. i grew up in an all female ninja colony. please show me…

“An all female ninja colony?”

“I don’t know.” Alec shrugged. “That could be a thing.”

Did I tell you I’m a high elf in the streets and a dark elf between the sheets? Firia said.

Basically the whole time we were trying to solve the quest for the snow sword, ‘Firia’ and ‘Yumi’ were shamelessly flirting with ‘Larius’ and it got increasingly ridiculous but we were having so much fun. I didn’t have flat out goofy fun that often anymore.

When we acquired the sword it was three in the morning.

On Sunday night.

Somehow we had spent the entire weekend playing the game.

i must confess something, Yumi said. i made a vow of chastity in the ninja colony and i can’t actually touch your alabaster muscles, larius, but i think you and firia should succumb to your desires. He looked at me over the screen and shut the computer. “Char…seriously. Firian—you too. This weekend was…good. I can’t do something like that again, but for once I wasn’t trying to live up to anything. I just saw you having a good time.”

I realized, coming out of my own game binge haze, that Alec looked like he had influenza. He was pale and had dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, but that didn’t change the fact that he was still a big, strong guy. As he took off his glasses, rubbed his face with the edge of his shirt, groaned, and finished off his cup of coffee, I was absurdly turned on. He’d actually made himself sick just so he could blow a weekend having fun with me.

“Alec…can I do something to help you?”

“I’m not kidding,” he said. “Even if I can’t touch you, I still feed off your desire. So if you and Firian wanted to—” He cut himself. “Scratch that. I know you want to.”

“Oh, you mean…here? Right now?”

“I know it’s late,” Alec said.

“It sounds like I have a job to do…” Firian walked up behind me and wrapped his arms around me.

“Oh…” I couldn’t help it. I melted into them with a sigh. As much fun as I’d had, the real-life touch seemed to rejuvenate me too.

Especially when Firian slipped his hand down my pajama pants. “I’ll try to make it quick so you can get some sleep,” he whispered in my ear.

“And I’m happy to help however I can,” Alec said, tearing off his t-shirt. “Please make it good.”

Oh holy smokes. I could not handle this much stimulation. Alec’s intense reddish eyes looking at me hungrily, the tattoos on his arms, the veins and corded muscles. And while I was looking at him Firian started taking my clothes off. I could feel his hands brushing and teasing me, slowly building in urgency.

I whimpered. I couldn’t believe how fast I went from being totally absorbed in the computer world to being so turned on I was biting my knuckles to keep from running my hands up and down Alec’s bare chest. Firian was putting on a condom.

“Can you fuck her so I can see her?” Alec said, in this voice that was tender and almost trembling with desire, but also verged close to a command.

Alec always seemed like a different person when he let his incubus side out, and that was not a bad thing.

“I live to serve,” Firian said. “Spread your legs for me, Char. If you make an incubus play computer games, you have to pay him back.”

“I just wish the incubus could collect the payment himself,” I said.

“I’m going to collect,” he said, stroking his own cock while he drank me in with his eyes.

These guys were intense enough on their own, but two at once and I was dead. Even if Alec and I couldn’t actually touch, I still felt like in some ways we had the most sexual relationship of all. Just the looks and the teases and the dreams and now this…

Firian pulled me back onto his lap on the bed, adjusting my position until he could slip inside me. He did it like he belonged there.

And he was right. I didn’t care what people thought about familiars—Firian’s touch, Firian inside me…it felt so right.

“Montague is going to feel left out,” I breathed.

“Well, next time,” Alec said. “I just—need this right now. Fuck her good and hard.”

Firian took the challenge. From the edge of the bed, he rocked in and out of me while I dug my toes into the cold floor of the old room, my legs spread around his, and Alec’s eyes roaming over my legs, my pussy, my breasts, and my face. Firian kissed my neck and then nudged my face sideways so our mouths could meet. As I kissed him, he slipped both his hands between my legs and stroked my clit and brushed his fingers over my nether lips as he worked his pelvis, his length flexing inside me.

“That’s very good,” Alec said. “I like to see her.”

“Feeling’s mutual,” I murmured, watching him run his hand faster up and down his thick length, and those were the last coherent words I managed before Firian sent me to the stars.

Chapter Twenty

Alec

My alarm buzzed after what felt like two minutes of sleep.

“Shit…” I turned it off, feeling like I was made of lead. Plus, of course, my dick was hard again.

What little sleep I’d gotten had been filled with more dreams of Charlotte.

She stirred in the other bed. Firian was curled up at her feet in fox form. “Coffee…,” she murmured. “Firian…can you give me magical coffee?”

“It won’t actually wake you up,” he said.

“Yeah it will. It’s called osmosis.”

“Placebo,” Firian said. “It’s called placebo.” He walked up to her and licked her face. She started giggling.

“You’re tickling me! Okay, okay.” She threw off the covers, all rumpled hair and tank top. Panties. No pajama pants, but ankle socks. Panties and ankle socks and the way her shirt clung to her breasts and the soft curves of her stomach and hips. She wasn’t self-conscious around me anymore. She flung herself out of bed to pee, leaving rumpled covers and the scent of her behind.

This was not doing anything for my arousal.

I picked up my newly made wand and traced it carefully along the tattoos on my arms. A focus spell, written on my skin, to help me fight off my demon side. It had been a couple of years since I screwed up this badly. A whole weekend of weakening myself with tech and then the rush of Charlotte’s desire flooding me. Rejuvenating me.

It wouldn’t be enough, though. I needed more to restore my powers. My skin was on fire with the need to satisfy my incubus side.

I took a cold shower, grabbed a quick breakfast, and let Montague walk Charlotte to our next class while I buzzed ahead.

We had necromancy first. I could tell as soon as Professor McGuinness saw me that I visibly looked like shit. He gave me that little disappointed smile I was subjected to in high school if I went out with Monty and Harris too much. They didn’t suffer as many ill effects from electronics as I did because they weren’t half-demons who fed on sex and weren’t getting fed.

Still, I’m not going to feel sorry for myself. Best weekend of my life.

“Good morning. Miss Byrne, it looks like you’re almost done with the wand.”

“Yes,” Charlotte said, biting her lip and looking unconsciously guilty. She hadn’t touched the wand since Friday evening.

I was struggling to focus. I just wanted to watch her every move. My incubus side didn’t give a crap about class. I was getting hard just watching her mouth.

“Well, I usually wait until everyone has their wands until I begin this portion of the year, but we are close enough. This year, we are going to connect with the spirit world.”

“Finally,” someone said.

“Do you know why we don’t like to do this until you have wands?”

“Wands are grounding,” said Henry Wells, who was a rich warlock from the Wells family of Savannah. He had an accent worthy of Scarlett O’Hara, and whenever he answered a question he sounded like he had better things to do.

“Precisely. And also, wands can store your magic like a battery, although as I’m sure Professor Jablonsky told you, this doesn’t happen automatically. You have to care for your wand and charge it with power. Look at the person to your left. Then look at the person to your right.” No one did this, and Professor McGuinness was just being sarcastic anyway, as he said, “Both of those people will not take the proper time to charge their wands.”

“I will,” Irving said.

“I hope so, Mr. Llewellyn. But I’ve been doing this a long time. As I said, summoning the dead will take a lot out of you. You will have to connect to the spirit world, which is not the same as the Ethereal world. It is a world somewhat distant, and not easy to reach.”

“Who do we get to summon?” Charlotte asked, with a faint tinge of hope in her voice.

“That’s what I’m going to talk about today: the first rule of necromancy and why it is so rare to become a white necromancer. We all yearn to defy death. Of course, when someone we love dies, our impulse is to bring them back, if we are able to. But even communication runs a terrible risk. If you could just talk to dead loved ones like your magic is a telephone line, the circle of life would be disrupted. Your loved ones might cling to this world longer than they should. They could become ghosts. You, meanwhile, could become more tangled in the past than the present. So you can’t summon anyone you actually knew.”

“Can I summon Samuel Caruthers? I didn’t know him.”

Professor McGuinness looked depressed by the mention of him. “You should not. He gave you his powers and you have an emotional investment in him. In fact, let me rephrase that. None of you may summon blood relations.”

Jack Harvey, who usually sat in the back doodling guitars, said, “Can I summon Prince?” I guess as a result of so many of the guys at Merlin College coming from money, every class seemed to get dumb interruptions.

“Prince, as in Purple Rain?” Professor McGuinness waved a dismissive hand. “We’ll get to the celebrity question later.”

“If we can’t summon our own family or a rock star, then why would we summon anyone?”

“To learn stuff, dipshit,” Harris mumbled, sort of to me but mostly just to himself.

Professor McGuinness shot a sharp look our way now, cleared his throat, and continued, “The people you try to summon may or may not actually answer. The spirit world is a mysterious realm where we can’t go. Spirits move on at some point, and we want them to move on. We must never summon anyone we cared about when they were alive.”

“Why is that?” one guy asked. I didn’t know the guy but I think his brother had died. “Why can’t our family talk to us?”

Professor McGuinness answered him more gently. “The bridge between life and death, when breached, sometimes causes nothing but pain for everyone concerned. It seems to disturb a spirit’s ability to move on when they are summoned by loved ones.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” the guy said, trying to brush off some obvious pain.

“I’ll be passing out the annual memoriam book from the magical councils, and I would suggest you pick someone from the book that you don’t know and summon them,” Professor McGuinness said.

There was some general disappointment as everyone flipped through the memoriam book. The councils issued the books every year for the benefit of necromancers, so they knew who could be contacted. Warlocks who actually went into necromancy as a career often ended up doing work for the council solving crimes or working with historians and researchers, so the memoriam book had a lot of dry information. If a warlock died who had devoted his life to working with runes, for example, his credentials would be listed on his page and you could use his name to try and summon him and ask about it. People included the submission in their wills, so they were only in the book if they didn’t mind being summoned.

The Sinistral warlocks and witches could also submit their profiles to the book. They were stuck in the back and everyone flipped there first, but of course Professor McGuinness said, “Lads, you can look but you can’t summon. Front of the book, please.”

There was some grumbling from various corners about ‘my dad didn’t pay tuition fees just so I could skip the real magic’ and so on that McGuinness ignored.

“Of course, there is no guarantee that any given person will show up, even if they are in the book,” Professor McGuinness said. “Many people cannot be summoned after death, for reasons best left to the mysteries of the heavens, but we shall all try. Class is dismissed for the day. Your assignment is to find someone to summon.”

I was in the middle of a quick flip through the book when everyone started filing out.

I stopped on a page in the back.

Lily Maxwell. A dark-skinned, beautiful woman who had died at age fifty-seven. Just six months ago.

A succubus.

A name I knew. A face I sort of knew. My dad had a handful of photographs of my mom.

My chest felt tight as I slammed the book shut and stood up. Professor McGuinness was talking to Charlotte beside me. “I am sorry we can’t summon Samuel. As you know, I knew him…”

“I know,” Charlotte said. She had defended her uncle and Professor McGuinness after some boys started implying they might have been lovers. “It makes sense. Like…if you could just call up dead people…that could be bad.”

Professor McGuinness nodded, and then he looked at me. “As for you, young man, whatever you spent your weekend doing, you’d better not do it again. Your father would be so disappointed.”

“Yeah. It won’t happen again,” I said quickly.

“Lay off him,” Harris said. “Alec’s uptight enough as it is. Pretty rare for him to go on a tech binge. He’ll recover.”

McGuinness shrugged. “Well, let it remain rare, Mister Lyrman.”

Right now, I was just glad I had an excuse for looking like shit.

My mom is dead. I never knew her in the first place, and now I never will, unless…

This was the last thing I wanted to explain.

Chapter Twenty-One

Charlotte

Alec and Harris started walking out with me, Monty trailing behind us as he looked through the book, Alec looking sickly and distracted.

“Thanks for trying to defend me,” Alec told Harris. He was clearly failing at distancing himself from us, although he didn’t walk too close to Charlotte.

“Everyone has a moment of weakness now and then,” Harris said. He looked at me. “Still, I’ve seen worse with you, Alec. It’s almost as if…someone perked you up last night.”

I shot Alec a furtive look. I wasn’t sure where this was going.

“Harris, drop it,” Alec said. “I can’t touch her.”

“I’ve heard she’s dating Montague,” Harris said. “But I know what I saw on the boat. I thought you were covering for her relationship with her familiar, but…”

“Hello, I’m right here,” I said.

We all stopped walking. Montague and Alec both got closer to Harris, blocking him from me. They looked ready to throw a punch.

(Not gonna lie. I loved it when they defended my honor.)

“What do you care, Harris?” Alec asked. “Keep your eyes in your own lane. You’re two and half years out from being Mr. Daisy Pendleton, aren’t you?”

“We know each other too well to keep pretending. Just tell me—are you all actually…establishing a bond brotherhood?”

“It isn’t any of your business, actually,” I said.

“Interesting. No denial. Just a good old-fashioned ‘none of your business’.” He stroked his chin. “You need three boys and a fancy wand to keep you busy, Chosen One?”

“Stop calling me that. You’re starting to really piss me off.”

“There is a difference between me and all of you. In the end, I won’t make any stupid decisions that damn me to spending my life in the Haven or a council prison or maybe even dead. I haven’t worked hard just to throw my life away on a girl.”

He looked at me. I looked at him, clutching my books and glowering at him.

“Charlotte is hot and even reasonably talented,” he added. “In a dream world, I’d do her. But I wouldn’t share her.”

I flung out my wand and struck Harris back into the wall of the dining hall.

It was an extremely sloppy spell, but if Harris broke a bone, my current mood was ‘sorry not sorry’.

“I’ve had enough,” I said, pointing my wand at Harris’ throat. “You are never going to ‘do’ me and who I want to do is my business. Oh, and the way you keep objectifying me is real charming. I hope Daisy eats you for breakfast.”

“That isn’t a gun,” Harris said, lowering my wand with his hand. “It wasn’t an insult. I’m impressed you managed to loop my two best friends into whatever this is. You guys can rage at me all you want, but you know your real problem is what the council will say when they inevitably find out. You’re all going to be shunned.”

Montague punched him. “You really are a grade A dick. Come on, Char.” He put an arm around me.

“Monty—Alec. Charlotte. I’m—I’m serious. I’m trying to save you from yourselves,” Harris ground out behind us. “No college flirtation is worth the trouble you’ll be in if you keep going down this path.”

“You just don’t know what feelings are,” Montague said, “if you think this is a mere ‘flirtation’.” He swept me along.

Alec followed us more reluctantly.

Harris wasn’t wrong, and Alec knew it. Montague had less to lose because he was already teetering on the brink of trouble by becoming a vampire. Maybe he didn’t care if he wasn’t saved from disaster.

I could tell all this just by the looks on their faces.

I also knew Alec had a blast this weekend. Could I like, actually ruin his life and all his future prospects? Am I underestimating how much trouble I am? Maybe Firian and I really are the bad kids.

Poor Alec. He looked kinda wrecked.

“He is really growing tiresome,” Montague said, taking my hand. “Let’s figure out who to summon.”

We parked ourselves at a table. It was earlier than most of the school had lunch, but everyone from our class was there looking over their books. I glanced at the menu and ordered the house-smoked pastrami sandwich and some chicken and dill pickle soup. Alec got a bowl of pork belly ramen, and of course, Montague had blood and paprika soup. I mean, it was basically just gently warmed blood but it seemed a lot less gross if you threw spices in it. I immediately dribbled soup on my jacket but somehow Montague never got blood on his clothes. Becoming a vampire also seemed to make you perfect.

“Hmm. Which geriatric ghost do we want to summon?” Montague thumbed through the pages.

I plucked through the pages without enthusiasm. One lady was born in 1879—and died this past year. “What would I say to ‘Martha Ann Chadwick, hedge witch from Pinville, Nebraska’?”

“We’re not supposed to summon our own family, but I wonder if we can…summon each other’s family,” Alec said.

“That’s okay,” I said. “Samuel already talks to me when I need him. And I don’t know many dead people. I miss my grandpa but I got to say goodbye.”

Alec’s expression got very stiff. He didn’t seem like himself.

“Alec? Oh—is there someone you want me to summon?”

He exhaled sharply and twirled his book around to face me. “Yeah. This lady.”

“A Sinistral?”

“Oh, crap. That’s right. It’s forbidden.” He smacked the table and then dropped his head into his fisted hands. “My mom.”

“Are you serious?” Montague said. “Your mom died and you found out from the memoriam book?”

“Yeah. My dad probably has no idea, is my guess. They have no contact.”

“Have you ever talked to your mom?” I asked.

“Nah.” Alec sat back and crossed his arms. His arms were just so sexy. I wanted to cheer up any man with such sexy arms. “Dad has never really…encouraged it. He told me she wasn’t a great person, and that sleeping with her was the best thing that ever happened to him just because it gave him me, which I can tell means he still thinks it really was a huge mistake. I mean, my dad and I get along great but I can’t have been easy for him to raise.”

“Would it really be dangerous to summon your mom? I know I don’t have a great track record with mom summoning, but…”

“There’s nothing special about summoning my mom,” Alec said. “She’s not working for a powerful demon. She was just a normal succubus. It says she died of lung cancer.”

“Demons can die of lung cancer?” I asked.

“She was just a low demon,” he said. “Not immortal. Dad said she chain smoked. A lot of succubi and incubi seem to die younger.”

“Oh?”

“It’s a hard and fast way of living. For some.”

“Well, we don’t need a special reason to summon her,” I said. “She’s your mom and you need closure or something.” I wished I could touch Alec right now. We both knew what it was like, not to have half our family in our lives. “I think it would be good for me to use my magic for something like that. Wouldn’t it? I mean, it’s not just about blasting people who annoy me, is it?”

That got him to crack a smile. “No, although I do enjoy that.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Charlotte

It was a pretty intense fall semester at Merlin College. If I wasn’t working on learning to store power in my wand I was getting big reading and writing assignments, and in necromancy class, before we got to learn individual summons we were building up our skills with some ghost hunting. We picked up weird sounds, including a singing woman and a man who told us to get off his land. In theurgy class we were working on some really hardcore demon wards, and Professor Adams said at the end of the year he was going to summon a class 4 demon we would have to ward off, “so you’d better listen or one of you might not make it to junior year, all right, boys?”

I was working hard, and sleeping very soundly.

Firian was gone more often, although he usually came ‘home’ in the evening to help me study and then keep me warm at night. I wanted to decompress after a long hard day, and I started dreaming of Firian’s hands on me, but usually I was too tired to do much of anything.

But I knew Alec felt like he’d made a mistake during our Fortune’s Favor weekend. Finding out his mom had died must be hard on him, although he kept working out every morning, studying hard all week, and painting in his free time, same as always. Alec thrived on a schedule. I guess it helped control his raging incubus libido. He still flirted with me, too, but he kept up that wall.

I started hoping he’d enter my dreams again. I was starting to feel like I was the one with a raging libido, and there was no outlet because we all had insane workloads and when Montague and I had tried to get some privacy he bit me. Maybe if Alec was there, he could protect me from Montague, and maybe Firian could protect us from any magical bats that might show up?

But how would all that work?

Damnit, could someone just stick a hand down my pants and relieve some tension already? I thought, as I was opening a birthday card from my grandmother, which I mention only to illustrate that I was in a weird place when I wasn’t too busy talking to ghosts and skimming through huge books trying to write papers about events I still didn’t understand that well.

It was getting close to the winter ball again when a small caravan of old cars drove through the gates unexpectedly one morning just as we were about to head to class.

“That’s the council,” Alec said, peering out the attic window. “I think it might be the witch and warlock councils.” His eyes shot to me.

“Cool cool cool,” I said. “I’m sure that has nothing to do with me getting on the witch shit list or anything. Right?”

“We’ve got your back, Char,” he said, picking up his bag.

Everyone was milling around outside instead of going to class. It was obvious that something was up. I hid behind Montague as the witches and warlocks got out of the cars and walked into Arthur Hall to the main offices. I noticed the Locke brothers’ mom was here. “All packed up?” she was asking them.

“Are they leaving?” Alec asked.

“Yeah,” a tall, catalog model looking guy from their dorm said. “They’re transferring to a school in the UK.”

“Good riddance,” I muttered.

“I wouldn’t be too happy about it,” the guy said. “It’s your fault.”

“It’s Charlotte’s fault?” Montague said, in a tone both dismissive and threatening.

“And yours,” the guy said. “Vampire.”

“Who are you?” Harris asked. “I have no idea who you are.” When Harris said this, it came off as socially damning.

“Lucas Adam.”

Harris made the smallest lip curl at the name. “Oh. Sorry. That means nothing to me.”

“The Lockes were attacked last year by these two,” Lucas said. “They don’t feel safe here anymore. Master Blair is protecting her and she shouldn’t be here at all.”

“They don’t feel ‘safe’?” Montague scoffed. “Aww.”

“You drank their blood,” Lucas said.

“I saved them from the demons, and those were not Charlotte’s fault,” Montague said, although he looked a little uncomfortable. The Lockes weren’t supposed to remember the part where he drank their blood.

“Well, we’ll see how it all shakes out,” Lucas said. “I heard a few incoming freshmen pulled out this year too. If Merlin College loses many more people just because of Charlotte, they might change the rules.”

“What cowards,” Montague said. “They’re too scared to bully Charlotte anymore so they go running off to England while trying to get her kicked out in the process.”

“I am glad they stopped bullying me though,” I said.

“Did you drink their blood?” Harris asked. “I thought you had all that under control.”

“No. I do have it under control.”

“Is that why you haven’t spent much time with Charlotte?”

“We’ve been too busy.”

“Did you drink her blood, Monty?” Alec asked in a very calm voice. “I thought we had a plan to protect her from you.”

“Hey, guys, guys—please. It’s fine. Montague didn’t hurt me. I can protect myself.”

“If you must know,” Montague said. “I can’t always completely control myself. It’s true. But Charlotte is definitely more than capable of handling her own business, and even if she wasn’t, I just… I wouldn’t kill her. I’m sure of that.”

“Oh, good lord,” Harris said. “You can’t be sure of that. You’re a vampire. And you did bite the Lockes, didn’t you? Whatever clumsy vampire spell you attempted probably wore off.”

The doors to the main hall opened and Madame Solano herself called out, in this strict-old-lady voice that carried better than you would expect, “Charlotte Byrne. Montague Xarra. Please come forward.”

Uh-oh.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Charlotte

Montague gripped my hand and said, “We face this with dignity, whatever it is.”

“Okay…I’ll try.” Everyone was looking at us. The Lockes’ mom was giving us this bitchy mama bear face like she was finally getting some long plotted revenge. I had no idea. I was relieved when we crossed the threshold from the bright outdoors with the entire school staring at us into the darker, plush interior of the main hall, but my relief was short-lived.

About a dozen wizened witches and warlocks were seated in the velvet upholstered chairs just under the grand wooden staircase, all looking about as fun as late portraits of Queen Victoria. Master Blair was standing there with his arms crossed, tapping his fingers against the sleeve his stylish black suit a little nervously. He told me before that while he probably seemed old to me, he was young in the eyes of the council. I totally got that now.

Stuart was putting out some chips and dip and offered to put people’s capes in the coat closet, but everyone refused.

As we were led in there was a lot of glasses adjusting and throat clearing.

“Here they are,” Madame Solano said. “I would propose that both of them return to St. Augustine. Mr. Xarra, I would argue, is no longer safe to have as a student. He would best be tutored in the family magic by his parents, who can watch over his behavior. Miss Byrne would get a more appropriate education if she attends Mrs. Tyler’s fine establishment. The two of them fled St. Augustine in quite a rush in an attempt to escape my oversight which I would argue, proves their guilt.”

“All that proves is that they are college students who didn’t want to be controlled by you,” Master Blair said.

“But…Master Blair…,” said the most decrepit man present, his gnarled and spotted hands wrapped around a walking stick. His accent sounded kinda like an old radio or movie star, like back when upper-crust Americans sounded weirdly British. “You cannot change the most basic fact, that Miss Byrne is a young lady, and this is a school for men.”

“What if I gave her a penis?” Master Blair said.

“Oh…my…stars,” the old warlock said.

I decided I would let this play out despite it turning into the most awkward moment of my life and I hoped it wouldn’t end with me getting a penis.

“She will still have the mind of a young lady,” one of the old witches said.

“But she is using warlock magic just as well as any warlock,” Master Blair said. “So what does that even mean? Why are we stuck in the Victorian era?”

“If only we were still stuck in the Victorian era!” he said, to some nods around the room. “It was a wonderful time! It wasn’t all stodgy, you know. It was good fun. Lots of good fun. We just knew our betters back then, that was all.”

I don’t think any conversation could be good when someone used the phrase ‘we knew our betters’. I had never seen anyone talk like this out of an old children’s book. The council was really very entertaining to watch, if I wasn’t terrified of them.

“Betters? Your rigid grip on who can handle what sort of magic is driving young witches and warlocks out of the magical world. It’s getting them into trouble. It’s undoubtedly why Mr. Xarra got himself in trouble. Why Charlotte’s grandmother lost her magic. Why her mother—”

“Ignatius Blair.” One of the not-entirely-ancient witches on the council cut him off, standing up from her seat. She was a statuesque blonde in a full-skirted black and white dress and gloves. “You have always been a talented warlock and it got you this position, but you are not so important that the council can’t remove you. In the end, we barely know where you and Professor Jablonsky came from.”

Master Blair swallowed. “You know where I came from. I’ve been attending warlock schools since I was a child.”

“I mean, you aren’t from one of the old families.”

“Jablonsky didn’t attend warlock schools,” the old warlock said.

Stuart patted Master Blair’s shoulder. “Why don’t you have a drink, old friend? Steady those nerves, eh?”

Master Blair knocked back the drink in one swig and handed the glass back to Stuart. He locked eyes with the old warlock. “Councilman de Brigue, I want you to get a good look at Charlotte’s wand.”

I had my wand in a sort of holster at my hip since it was too big to slip into a jacket pocket or tuck between my breasts or anything convenient. I took it out and held it up as Master Blair beckoned his hand.

Councilman de Brigue waved a hand over the wand and then drew back. “This is from that same tree as Samuel’s…”

“Samuel’s…” The blonde witch sounded breathless and a little angry.

“Exactly,” Master Blair said. “It isn’t just that he gave her his magic. She was the one who found the tree. She is worthy of that magic.”

“Samuel might be alive today if he had not dabbled in…such strange things,” the woman said. “If he had not been friends with you.”

Master Blair arched a brow at her and said nothing.

The witches and warlocks whispered amongst themselves. The blonde witch sat down, her face turning expressionless and icy.

Madame Solano shook her head, her eyes shut like she didn’t want to believe it.

“See for yourself,” de Brigue said.

“Oh, I believe you,” she said. “It’s just that…I know what I saw. She was strolling around St. Augustine with her familiar.”

“She was not raised magical,” Master Blair said. “She still needs her familiar to stay close at this stage. She has the intellect of a grown woman, of course, but when it comes to magic, she’s playing catch up. I’m glad her familiar is so loyal and protective.”

My stomach wrung up like a wash rag, hearing Master Blair talk like Firian would go away.

“I tell you, it is that same magic as Samuel had,” de Brigue said. “So maybe…we should let her be. Mrs. Tyler won’t know how to teach that magic.”

“It’s best if she never learns it,” the blonde witch said.

“Samuel’s abilities were very unique. This was his school. She should stay here.”

The witches looked upset. The warlocks, meanwhile, seemed to have changed their tune. Like maybe I wasn’t a useless ‘young lady’ after all, but an asset for them.

Master Blair said, “You may go.” They didn’t argue, except that Madame Solano was giving me such a face that I half-expected her to do the ‘I’m watching you’ fingers.

I knew better than to trust any of them. But it seemed like I was safely able to remain at school, which meant the Locke brothers lost again and they were leaving instead. Works for me.

Once we were safely away, Montague turned to me and cupped my cheeks with his cool hands. He looked at me protectively, with a flicker of relief like a small flame in his eyes.

“What?” I said.

“I thought for a moment they might send us to the Haven. For good.”

“They said they would send you back to your parents.”

He swallowed. “I don’t think that’s what they really meant. It was just…a nicety. Truthfully, my town doesn’t want a vampire in it. My family can’t protect me from what I’ve become.”

I threw my arms around him. “It’s okay, Montague. You’re not going back to the Haven. I’ll protect you. Apparently I have the fanciest wand in all the land.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Montague

I scoffed, and kissed the top of her head. I wondered when it would ever really hit Charlotte that she was in deep.

Maybe it never would, and that was what made her so charming. She had this ability to stay light-hearted no matter what.

“Since I became a vampire, you know I’ve been hit by these memories of Rayner and Lisbeth,” I said. “I’ve seen him kill people just because they hurt her.”

“Yes.” She looked up at me, her arms now clasped around my waist, occasionally parting to run up and down my back.

“I’m starting to understand.”

“Don’t kill anyone for me,” she said, but she suppressed a grin. “I shouldn’t think that’s romantic. But then, that is why girls date vampires, isn’t it?”

“Good point…” Her touch was starting to make me hard. She nested her head under my chin. Her height was just right. It felt familiar because of my memories, even though I’d never had a girl the way I had Charlotte.

Mine. She’s mine.

Yes, I was starting to understand Rayner.

He was willing to share her with Silvus, Jie and Thom. But whenever Rayner found her in some new and alien life…

I thought about finding Charlotte’s spirit living in some new body somewhere.

I had Rayner’s life loosely pieced together by now from my snippets of memories.

The first time he found her again—a French peasant. Calloused hands. She worked hard all day. When the harvests were good, she ate, and when famines came, she starved. She would have married a village boy and never seen a life outside her little world, but then he found her. He wanted to give her more than that. He couldn’t control himself, that time. He was so hungry for her; so relieved to have found her again.

He took her out of France before the Revolution, and brought her back to England, to her old home. She lived a good long life. I knew he adored her even as she aged.

But on her death bed, she told him, Please look for me again, but be gentler this time…

That was when his quest sent him all the way to China and his promises to be gentle went out the window when he saw her hobbled steps, and his uncontrolled vampire temper ran amok. He killed her in-laws, set fire to their house, and dragged her back to London again, where she would never belong. It didn’t seem like she ever fully forgave him, and that was the memory that been disturbing me the most.

But I knew where Rayner was coming from.

I was trying to cling to my humanity. But he was a true vampire. The only rule he followed anymore was his twisted loyalty to the woman he first loved. There was no one who could control him. His needs were primal. When he saw her, he took her. To protect her, he would burn the whole world down and not let anyone stand in his way.

When I held her…

Fuck me, but I understood the appeal.

“Oof, you’re holding me a little tight,” she said, drawing back, and I let go as Alec and Harris came over to us.

“What happened?” Alec asked.

“We’re fine,” Charlotte said.

“For now,” I said. “I don’t like that we’re on the council’s radar. I shouldn’t have brought Charlotte to St. Augustine.”

“Let’s call Firian and go back to my room for a group meeting,” Alec said. We all looked at Harris.

“I’m attending your meeting,” he said. “We have a number of common interests. The vampires claimed they are returning during this year’s winter ball to discuss our mutual interest in the Withered Lord, and we’re almost at that time.”

“Have you told Daisy about that?” I asked.

“Yes. I mentioned it in a letter. Her feeling is that any enemy of the Withered Lord is an ally.”

Soon we were all gathered in the attic room, discussing the fact that we had no idea what we were doing.

“Master Blair told me a little while ago that he thought the council was spying on Charlotte,” Firian said. “He’s been asking me to poke around Etherium and see what I can find out.”

“Like talking to other familiars?” Charlotte asked. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“I don’t know that anything will come of it,” Firian said. “I’ve been poking around the local spots but I haven’t heard anything. I’ll probably have to go to Etheria.”

“What is Etheria?” she asked.

“It’s the center of Etherium,” I said. “The capital. Where the Ethereal Symposium convenes and all the parts of the ethereal world converge to trade. It’s kind of a big deal place for a familiar to be poking around, from what I understand. Rosa went there once just to see it. She was very nosy.”

“Yep, that about sums it up,” Firian said. “I’ve always stayed away. I prefer being a hermit.”

“So, Firian…you can travel anywhere in the world from Etherium?” Charlotte asked. “I don’t understand. It sounds so strange. You have this…whole other place you go…”

“Because those worlds work completely differently from this one,” Firian said. “It’s hard to explain. If I want to go somewhere in Etherium, I just set off down the path. The path goes different places every time. It’s many days’ journey to get to a place like that, but you can’t measure it in miles. Everything works on fluid rules of intention.”

“So why isn’t Blair’s familiar spying on the council?” I asked. “Why isn’t his familiar going to Etheria?”

“He said he wants to keep his familiar out of council business. I guess he or she would be suspicious.”

“But Firian, you’re already on their radar!” Charlotte said. “You need to be careful too.”

“I don’t mind looking around,” Firian said. “It gives me something to do, since I can’t be here.”

“Maybe you should also look for Master Blair’s familiar,” I said. “Just for something else to do. He always seems like he’s hiding something.”

“Uh, yeah, he pretty much admitted he’s hiding something,” Charlotte said.

“I’ll see what I can manage,” Firian said. “But so far, none of these people seem like they want to be found. I’ll find something in Etheria.” He sighed. “It’s a huge city and everyone there is important. I’ve heard the traffic is terrible.”

“They have cars?” Charlotte’s eyes widened.

“No. Even worse. Foot traffic. If I’m in fox form I get stepped on, but if I’m in guy form, I have to make sure I don’t step on magical frogs and stuff.”

“Ohh…okay.”

“You’re not going to do it because of traffic?” Harris asked.

“I’m going to do it. I will always protect Charlotte. I just want to complain first.”

“Does that mean I can’t call you?” Charlotte asked.

“You can always call me, and I’ll come immediately,” Firian said. “I conduct my other business around you. Think of Etherium like my game life. I can shut it off, go have dinner with you, and jump right back in where I left off. I mean, time will have passed, like an MMORPG, but I’ll be in the same place.”

That seemed like about all we could do right now, so talk turned back to classes and school drama.

Firian didn’t see what was going on at school as much this year. He conjured himself a drink and looked out the window. Firian was a little more introspective and solitary than Alec, Harris and me, and besides that, he was a familiar, not a real human. So I shouldn’t even talk to him. I was raised with the idea that you never, ever said a word to another kid’s familiar, even when we were young and they all hung around.

I was jealous, because he had a bond with Charlotte that Alec and I could never match. But I actually felt bad for the guy too. He had obviously been raised too human or something. And I was weirdly glad that he kept showing up whenever shit was going down, because I didn’t have Rosa anymore. So when Firian appeared, I felt like, as long as I was with Charlotte, someone still had our backs.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Firian

It was strange, but for the first time I had a purpose outside of Charlotte. Whenever she called me, I appeared, of course. I was thrilled whenever I sensed that she needed me or wanted me.

But in Etherium, I set off on the path to the capital. If anything was going on with the Council of Ethereal Witches and Charlotte, I’d probably hear about it there.

I had never made this trip. I was a nobody among familiars, and I liked it that way. Like any journey in Etherium, you got there by picking a path and just starting to walk, and focusing in on where you wanted to go. So I kept thinking about Etheria as I trudged along. Even though I had never been there, I knew about it, of course. The center-point of the city was an elegant palace built in ancient times, like if a palace from ancient Greece or Babylon had been kept up all this time. It bordered a sea, with columned promenades and towers, and gardens that grew all throughout. The Ethereal Symposium met there, which was the governing body of Etherium.

Not that you could really control a place like Etherium. The most important job of the Ethereal Symposium was to judge and banish Ethereals who broke the rules and were deemed too criminal to live in Etherium anymore. They became Sinistrals and could never return to Etherium again. Ethereals could fall. Sinistrals could almost never rise back up.

You would think this magical world would be more evolved than Earth. But it wasn’t, really. If true gods existed, they didn’t live in Etherium and Sinistral. The older I got the more I realized that the magical realms were just trying to figure their shit out like humans, only they had a lot of power to handle at the same time.

It was a good thing that true Ethereals and Sinistrals couldn’t use any magic when they came to Earth. I could imagine them trying to conquer the place. But instead they became weak and even here, they relied on human belief to fuel their power. That’s why some of them went to Earth to become artists or religious leaders, or why many of the most powerful Ethereals and Sinistrals posed as gods or prophets. If humans stopped believing in magic, these worlds would be in crisis.

Only witches and warlocks could use magic on Earth. So no matter how intimidating high Ethereal spirits seemed, if you dropped them in a rough neighborhood in the real world they could get mugged as easily as anyone.

This was vaguely comforting to me as, after an eternity of walking, I came upon a village I had never seen before. It definitely was not Etheria. It was too small, for one thing, just a cluster of exposed beam, thatched roof houses with an inn and a tavern. Towns in the magical world tended to look exactly like humans would imagine them—not unlike towns in Fortune’s Favor, in fact. I wasn’t sure who was influencing who, but that was just how it was.

The seelie fae seemed to run this town, with a few angels thrown in for good measure, but there were travelers from all over. I saw other familiars, some in animal form. I went inside the tavern, hoping Charlotte didn’t call me just as I was getting somewhere.

“Good day,” said the fae girl at the bar counter. “Have a seat. I’m sure you’re tired. You must be trying to get to Etheria. What can I get for you?”

“Your meatiest sandwich,” I said. “Do you have anything in the way of a good dark beer?”

“Ah, yes.” She poured me a mug of beer as dark as chocolate. “You’re a familiar,” she said. “Where is your witch or warlock trying to send you? If you have come here, it seems you are having trouble reaching Etheria.”

“Do you mean someone is trying to keep me out?”

“It could be thus.” She sliced some hearty pieces of bread. “I can guess that you are interfering in higher powers and they have many layers of protection to shield themselves from lesser beings. They might not even know you exist, but your intentions are running into their protections.”

“So I’m hitting a magical security system.”

“Yes.” She gave me a grin with a twinkle in her green eyes. “This town exists to give you a place to land so you don’t wander the forest in circles. You might be stuck here for a while, if you don’t give up and go home.”

“Is there a way to get past the security?” I sensed that I was walking into one of those tricky dealings that always happened when you started talking to the fae.

“I can get you past but I need a little magic to use,” she said.

“What do you need?” I said, already suspicious.

“I just want a human witch’s kiss,” she said. “I know you have one. The magic from your witch will give me the power I need to get you through the barrier.”

I hardened, no longer friendly. I hardly even wanted the sandwich. “No. Not that. Something else.”

She sighed, sliding the plate in front of me. “I know you probably don’t trust the fae, but I must get power from somewhere if I’m going to push you past the Symposium’s barriers… You can’t just get more kisses?”

“I don’t want to forget…any of them,” I said.

“Is she that precious to you?” When I didn’t answer, she laughed. “Poor familiar!”

“You’re a faery,” I said. “You don’t know anything about the sort of love humans have.” I took a big bite of the sandwich and shook my head to show that this conversation was done. I shouldn’t be talking about Charlotte to a faery girl. I definitely wasn’t giving up a kiss. There weren’t enough of them yet. Every memory with Charlotte…

Should I give up a kiss?

I didn’t trust faeries. And I wasn’t giving a kiss to some stranger. End of story.

“If you change your mind, you know where to find me,” she said, with a tinge of regret.

Damn hungry faeries. Trying to leech the power of Charlotte’s love. I didn’t actually hang out with faeries, but it was always said the faeries didn’t feel ‘low’ emotions naturally, the way humans did. They were too controlled for that awkward mixture of love and lust that came so readily to humans. It was entertainment for them to steal a kiss from me.

I wouldn’t give up Charlotte’s kiss for a faery to be amused by it.

What sort of trick is this?

How can I get there? I’ve been walking for days, or maybe even weeks…

Time didn’t flow the same way in Etherium, so when I tried to use Earth measurements for it, my head spun. What I really needed was a more experienced familiar who knew how to navigate this world.

Would Blair’s familiar talk to me?

Before I could find out, I heard Charlotte’s call, and I couldn’t help the way her summons in my head brought me to life. Firian! Firian, the vampires are here!

As I slipped back into the Fixed Plane, I saw the faery girl at the bar shake her head, like she was thinking about what a poor sucker I was, but I just didn’t care.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Charlotte

It was soon the time of the winter ball. I didn’t have any time to shop for dresses, but I guess I didn’t need to worry because whether I liked it or not, I had been adopted by Daisy. She called me ten days before the ball and when I picked up the phone she said, “Don’t hate me but I picked you a dress for the ball. You don’t have to wear it. But like, you do have to wear it. You don’t have a dress this good.”

“Are you sure I’m not your poor friend?”

“Do you have a dress already?”

“I don’t have time to shop for dresses. I’m in school on an isolated mountain.”

“So you’re not my poor friend, you’re my isolated friend. Anyway, you should never have showed me Ebay. My grandma is like, Daisy, is this another one of those Ebay things? So I need to buy more things and ship them to other people as gifts because she doesn’t pay attention to my credit card bills.”

“I can’t say I really mind,” I said.

“Okay, so you got all these sexy guys around, right? You want to look sexy. But you don’t want to like, lay it all out. I found just the right dress.”

“That’s definitely true,” I said. “I do not want to lay it all out. There are a lot of not-sexy guys around too and they don’t deserve that much of me.”

She laughed. “Well, you’ll get it soon. It’s a surprise. And I’ll see you in it and we’re going to knock the boys dead.”

I had to admit, I was waiting anxiously for the mail. It was like I signed up for the Bored Rich Girl Subscription Box.

As it turned out, Daisy arrived before the dress did. As soon as she got out of the car, I came out to say hello, and she gave me a big hug. I was still intimidated by her, but I was a hugger too, and it was always a relief to see another girl. “Hey girl, how’s the dress look?” she asked.

“I don’t have it yet.”

“Oh…”

“Did they ship it priority mail?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She paused. “I think it was coming from Italy.”

“Italy! It’s probably not going to get here on time!”

“Oh my god, I did not even think of that.” She snapped her fingers. “Well, you know, that’s fine. I brought a lot of clothes and we’ll just find you something.” Her driver was opening the large trunk of the car and bringing out an old luggage set in powder blue, the kind where none of it had wheels so the poor guy had to haul everything and it looked heavy.

It was a busy day around campus, because just like last year, other witches were arriving in their own fancy cars. I recognized most of them now, and their little dogs. Daisy scoffed when she saw me looking at them. “Witches should not have dogs,” she said.

“Why not?”

“It’s rude to your familiar.” She took the smaller round bag from her driver and draped it on her shoulder, then took my arm and started strolling to the visitor housing. Her long, even, blue-tipped fingernails were impressive. I felt like a hick again. Gol darn, is that what a manny-cure looks like? “Cash would kill me if I had a dog. Where is your fox?”

“Well, um—you know. I’m better with magic this year so he doesn’t need to be around as much.”

“Ohh. Too bad. That little red fox didn’t need a fire spell to light the place up.” She nudged me.

I so wanted to tell her how much I agreed with this.

But I had this feeling that she was saying this stuff, but if I told her I had actually slept with him, the conversation would come to a screeching halt. I think she expected me to be like, He’s my familiar! Daisy! You’re so audacious!

Instead I awkwardly went quiet for a second.

Luckily, I guess, at that moment Harris came over and said, “What did you do to your nails?”

“My friend did it,” Daisy said.

“Isn’t that a bit bourgeois?”

“Are you telling me what to do now?” Daisy’s expression turned to steel. “If we’re getting married, you are getting my magic in your family, and I will paste fucking diamonds on my nails if I want.”

Harris shrugged one shoulder slightly. “Fine. Go ahead.”

“I will.”

Now a big silver Cadillac was coming through the gates just behind one of the witches and there was an immediate commotion among the security guards. “Stop! You are not authorized!”

The car stopped. The door opened. A tall, fair-haired, Nordic god of a man stepped out of the passenger side. “I am here to see Montague Xarra and Harrison Nicolescu.”

The security guys had pulled out guns. I guess that made sense; we were still sort of in the real world, so they would use guns before wands. That way if regular humans tried to intrude they wouldn’t see anything too strange.

“State your names! You’re Sinistrals! You are not permitted on school grounds!”

Professor Adams came hurrying over. By this time Daisy and I were joining the rest of the students in walking toward the commotion because clearly curiosity was much more important to the entire student body than danger.

“My name is Rayner. I don’t want any trouble.”

The other doors were opening.

“It’s the vampires,” I breathed.

“The vampires?” Daisy asked. “The ones who are going to help us with him?” She and Harris started walking toward the vampires.

No thank you. I did not trust this at all. I started running for Lancelot House to warn Montague, as I called Firian back to my side.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Montague

I looked out the window, but too many people had gathered around the car, plus a tree was in the way.

They’re here.

I shouldn’t feel at all ready to confront the men who had been in my visions, and I was pissed at Harris for agreeing to this. But I already knew him, and a part of me wanted to meet the man in person. I grabbed my favorite jacket and whipped my arms through the sleeves as I stormed toward the stairs.

“You’re going to talk to them?” Charlotte sounded a little frantic. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? What if you look into their eyes and suddenly—like—you—”

“It’s too late to worry over it,” I said, snapping the jacket straight. “I’m not leaving you, Char. But…he is my sire and…” I shook my head.

Outside, everyone looked at me suspiciously and I felt a very clear sense of not belonging here anymore. Professor Adams was trying to calm everyone down while Professor McGuinness was yelling at Harris. “You invited these vampires to Merlin College!? You, of all people, are the last student who should do such a thing.”

“I’ll explain,” Harris said. “In private.”

Daisy was standing next to Harris but checking out the vampires over her shoulder.

Rayner. I knew his face, I knew his name, and most of all, I knew his obsession.

Still, in person, he was…intimidating.

In appearance, all four vampires in Rayner’s clan looked young. I would guess Rayner had been about twenty-two when he died. Dark-haired warlock Silvus was the oldest, I was pretty sure, although Jie had been out in the sun more and he had some squint lines around his eyes. The fourth man, Thom, hadn’t really appeared in my memories yet, but Harris told me his name. I’m not sure Thom was any older than I was. There was still a hint of boyishness in him. What is it going to be like to look nineteen forever? I wondered. A thought I usually tried to avoid.

But they were vampires. Their youthful faces couldn’t hide the years. No vampire lived to be five hundred without being clever and ruthless, and by now, looking at Rayner was like meeting eyes with a demon. He gave me the smallest of knowing smiles when I noticed him, and I was nearly frozen in my tracks.

You could leave all this behind. The smile spoke to me. You could stop going to college, playing by their rules. You could see the world with us. We chose you.

Master Blair and Stuart arrived on the scene now. “All right!” Master Blair waved a decorative walking stick around, forcing people out of the way. “Party’s over, back to your dorms or whatever. Go have fun with the witches. I’m taking care of this, gentlemen.”

“So you’re the headmaster of this establishment?” Rayner said, as the other professors were now forcing the other students back.

“Yes,” Master Blair said. “Ignatius Blair.”

Jie chuckled. “That is such a warlock name.”

“What do you want?” Master Blair asked. “Montague Xarra is one of us. He is under our protection.”

“I’m looking for my girl,” Rayner said. “That’s all I really want. I might even be persuaded to let Montague stay here, if I can find her. Although it is a shame. I think Lisbeth would have liked you.” He looked at me.

“I already have a girl,” I said.

“You didn’t have a girl when you were turned,” Silvus said.

Rayner waved his hand like it didn’t matter. “I think this demon called the Withered Lord might be hiding Lisbeth from me, just to toy with me. Harris, here, said he and his fiancee also have business with the same demon. He said he would help us with the demon if we left Montague alone. I’m pretty amenable as long as I get what I want.”

“You made a deal with vampires?” Master Blair asked Harris. “That seems…unwise.”

“It wasn’t ‘unwise’,” Daisy said. “He did it for me.”

I was pretty sure he actually did it for Charlotte, but…

“I would team up with anyone to defeat the demon who murdered my parents for fun,” Daisy said. She looked over the vampires again with a little nod and twirled her hair around her finger. “I would definitely team up with this lot.”

“How do you plan to team up to defeat a high demon?” Master Blair asked.

“Well, we would need to discuss it, now, wouldn’t we?” Silvus said. “But Rayner is one of the oldest vampires around. That should be proof enough that we won’t do anything stupid. Our weakness, if we have one, is that we can’t perform holy spells, and this boy here is perfect. And Miss Pendleton, being a diviner… Well, they already made the offer. What is Harris to you? A student at your…establishment?” He glanced around.

“We don’t really want to hurt any of you,” Jie said. “We just want to kill our enemies and find our woman. If we have to let Montague go to get there, it’s fine with me.” I got the feeling Jie didn’t care if I joined Team Rayner.

Well, then. I didn’t like him either.

“Your parents don’t know about this,” Master Blair said to Harris.

“No, and I’d rather they didn’t. I’m an adult.”

“They’re paying your tuition.”

“You can’t tell them,” Daisy said. “They’ll stop him. But the council let my parents down when they decided not to avenge their deaths, Master Blair, and Harris is trying to help me while saving his friend’s ass. You can teach him to do magic here, but this shit right here is building his character.”

“Smart witch,” Rayner said.

Charlotte said in a softer voice, “I want to take out the Withered Lord too. I know I’m not ready, but…my mom.”

“I understand that, Charlotte, but this is serious. Very serious. You are just young witches and warlocks. You can’t kill a demon. These vampires are exploiting you.”

“All right, then,” Rayner said. “In that case, we are taking Montague. Because if I don’t release him from my control, you know it won’t matter anyway.” His eyes moved to mine again. Blue and so compelling. They said vampires could seduce the pants off anyone, and right now I believed it. I wanted to do whatever he said. “You are drawn to me. You’ve been seeing my memories. You’ve been seeing Lisbeth. And if I don’t release you…your future is quite pleasurable. It has nothing to do with this place or these children. It is with us.”

Charlotte gripped my hand and gave it a little shake. I tore my eyes from Rayner.

“The Withered Lord does have Emily,” Stuart said.

“Stuart! We’re supposed to be taking care of our students!” Master Blair frowned. “Talk,” he said. “I won’t stop you.”

Rayner glanced over my friends like they were amusing pets he was briefly brushing by during his long existence. Then he looked at me again, his eyes luring me just like before. Every fiber of my being seemed to sense that this man was my lord.

I didn’t like it. I didn’t have a fucking lord. But no matter how I tried to shake it off, the feeling persisted. It felt sort of like falling in love, but with someone you know is absolutely terrible for you.

“Let’s talk,” Rayner said.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Charlotte

No one had prepared me for how scary really old vampires could be.

Well, okay, maybe like, TV had tried. There’s always a part where first you meet the hottie vampires, and they seem dangerous, but they’re really just hot, and then the older vampires show up and then it’s like, oh damn, here are the really dangerous vampires.

But in the end usually they’re also just hot.

Maybe this was why Daisy didn’t seem intimidated by them. If I passed Rayner on the street, I would still notice him. I would wonder if he was a model and then I would wonder if he was a serial killer. He just had that look. Intense pale eyes. A smile that sucked you in and made you wary at the same time.

“So you’re Monty’s sire?” Daisy asked.

“Yes.”

“So that means you’re the oldest vampire in the line?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to the vampire who turned you?”

“I killed him,” Rayner said. “I didn’t like being under someone else’s control. That’s why I am a good master. I’m not giving these fine gentlemen any reason to want to kill me. I don’t want to give Montague any reason either.”

“Hm. I have considered killing him more times than I can count,” Silvus said.

“But you haven’t done it yet,” Rayner said.

“Let’s talk at the Excalibur Theater,” Harris said. “We’ll have privacy. Unfortunately, we don’t have a proper meeting room for student usage, as the classrooms are all occupied.”

We went to the theater and Alec and Harris started taking out folding chairs in a circle on the stage. The vampires watched them in scrutinizing silence and I had the feeling that fifty years from now, Harris would be thinking back sourly on the day he unfolded a bunch of battered brown metal chairs while ancient vampires just stood there and didn’t help.

“If you want to look even cooler you can sit in them backwards,” he said snarkily, and Jie actually did, crossing his arms over the back. Rayner slid into his chair with a freakish level of grace, emanating power. It was hard for anyone to take their eyes off him, it seemed, even when he wasn’t saying or doing anything much. I guess vampire charisma was cumulative over the centuries.

“So.” Daisy crossed her arms. “Just so we’re all on the same page, it is my life’s goal to take this bastard out.”

“Your grandmother is the great diviner,” Rayner said.

“Yes.”

“And when she dies, you become the great diviner.”

“Um…yes.”

“Well,” Rayner said. “It seems to me we should wait until your grandmother is out of the picture, to begin with.”

The former unflappable Daisy, uh, flapped a little. “Dead? But—wait—she might—she’s only ninety.”

“That’s quite a good old age,” Rayner said.

“If you kill my grandmother—”

He stopped and laughed. “Oh, no. No. I wasn’t thinking that. Can’t she be persuaded to retire? Murder, that’s very violent. I’m not as violent as I used to be, you can ask these gentlemen. But persuasion is very gentle.”

“Uhh…” Daisy started breathing very fast. Harris urged her to a chair and gave her a concerned glance.

“Daisy is already very competent with her visions,” Harris said. “I don’t think removing her grandmother is a good idea, because once that happens, Daisy will lose her freedom to travel.”

I looked at Daisy and I could see her trying to tamp down panic. She’ll lose her freedom? No wonder she didn’t want to be the diviner. It sounded like an intense job.

“How do we kill a demon?” I asked. “Does anyone actually know? Is there special stuff you have to do? A weak spot? Silver bullets or beheadings or something?”

“All high demons start as low demons,” Silvus said. “So yes, they technically have a weak spot. It’s the pain and suffering that drove them to become a high demon. Anger and greed lead to a thirst for power. Some dictators are actually high demons who came to this world to draw power.”

“Oh. Okay. That does make sense. But like how—”

“If we were able to peel off his servants, like your mother—”

“Well, that’s the tedious way of handling it, I suppose,” Rayner said. “The other way is just to go in there and take him out with a good spell.”

“Can I just hear more about the other way first?” I asked.

“Love weakens the demon,” Silvus said. “Every time someone sacrifices themselves to save a loved one from his clutches, the Withered Lord has to assimilate their energy into his own magic and corrupt them. It weakens him temporarily. Your mother didn’t become evil the first day she joined him. It took him time to do that. So we could weaken him sufficiently if we had a number of people willing to sacrifice something in order to save the people he has corrupted. Then, we kill him like any other demon. To simplify, love weakens demons. We need a powerful spell of love.”

“This sounds very time-consuming and, as I said, tedious,” Rayner said. “And also, painfully sentimental.”

Silvus lifted his hands. “But that is how you defeat a high demon. Definitively, at least. Feel free to ask any of the other warlocks around for a different opinion. You are very sentimental yourself, Rayner. I could call it something else besides love, but you know what it really is.”

“What…do we sacrifice?” I asked.

“It has to be something of great value,” Rayner said. “Your magic. Your first-born child. One of your senses or emotions. Your life. You know. Something like that.”

“Oh…”

“No one wants to give any of that up.” He looked at Silvus. “Find a better way.”

“This demon has been killing and enslaving people for centuries,” Silvus said. “For every evil thing he has done, we have to match that power with the opposite.”

“We’re bloody demons ourselves,” Rayner said. “What are we doing messing around with all this love magic? Let’s just gather our strength, go in there, and fight him like men. He’s called the ‘Withered’ Lord. How tough could he be?”

“It seems like you have some issues to work out amongst yourselves,” Harris said.

“Wait…I…I mean, this sacrifice could actually save my mom?” I asked. “Giving up my magic? Would it bring her back to my dad?”

Daisy looked at me. “I would give up my magic to defeat him as well.”

Harris’ eyes widened. “No. No. That is not happening. You are both far too talented to just throw it away for this.”

“I agree,” Rayner said. “This is a pointless discussion.” He stood up and pointed at all of us. “Children, what I ask of you now is just that you strengthen your magic as much as you can and prepare for battle. If we fight, we could lose, but if we sacrifice, we are losing before we begin.”

That was actually not a bad point.

“Charlotte isn’t involved in this,” Harris said. “Just to make that clear. Alec isn’t either.”

“Yes, I am!” I said. “It’s my mom!”

“I’m in too,” Alec said.

“No,” Rayner said, glancing at Alec. “I don’t know what you have to do with anything. A virginal incubus is about the most useless demon I can think of.”

Alec, usually one of the most chill guys I knew, shoved himself out of his chair. “I’m not ‘virginal’. I’m just focusing on school right now.”

Rayner snorted, unconvinced.

“Damnit,” Alec muttered under his breath.

“Alec, no. No way,” Montague said. “You have nothing to do with this demon. Think about your family. Your dad. It’s bad enough for Charlotte to be involved.”

“So I’m just supposed to chill back here while the rest of you go fight a demon?”

“Unless you want to start taking your identity seriously, yes,” Rayner said. “As for the rest of you, finish your training. We will return after your graduation. And if we succeed, I will release you, Montague…if you still want to be released.” Rayner’s hand waved in a subtle way and the rest of his clan left with him.

“At least we have some time.” Montague looked frustrated. “This seems like, truly, the worst idea.”

“I am glad to have some allies, personally,” Daisy said. “I’ve felt alone in this for a long time, when the council said they would drop the investigation.”

“Yes,” Harris said. “It’s the right thing to do, for your life and for Daisy’s family’s peace of mind.” But Harris kept looking at me, clearly troubled that I was involved.

I was feeling jittery. The vampires filled the room with this dark, heavy presence that reminded me of when I summoned my mom, and how serious the whole thing was.

More than that, I felt guilty. Because when Rayner said we didn’t have to sacrifice our magic, my first thought was relief.

If I really loved my mom, I should be happy to give up my magic to save her, right?

Does that mean I’m power hungry too?

“Miss Byrne.” Mr. Flores came walking up to me with a package. He was the head of admissions but seemed to do a lot administrative tasks all year. “This package just came for you. I thought you might be expecting it.”

“Oh! From Italy!”

I had almost forgotten, but we still had a ball to attend.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Charlotte

“You look gorgeous,” Daisy said.

“It’s…sort of see-through, isn’t it?” I turned around in front of the mirror. The dress was cute, very boho-chic, black and demure at first glance, with a high neck, bell sleeves and a skirt that hit just over the knee. It had stripes of colored embroidery in warm colors.

But when I put it on, I realized that the back was sheer, and the sleeves were sheer, and strips of the bodice were also sheer.

“Yeah.” She rubbed her chin, looking me over. “I have a stick-on bra. We are about the same size.” She whipped a brand new packaged bra out of her suitcase.

“Don’t you need it?”

“I’ll just wear a different dress. Let me do your makeup.”

As soon as the dress arrived, Daisy whisked me off into her room and the situation got hardcore girly. She was packing in all the girly energy I missed the rest of the year and then some, considering I was the product of a single dad, and that didn’t usually lend itself to producing girls like Daisy.

She opened this gigantic makeup case with colors to look good on anyone, and also colors that would look good on no one, and started applying some of both of those to my face.

I hid my terror well, I think.

She had a little frown developing as she went.

“Does it look okay?” I asked. “You look…unsure.”

She immediately whipped her hair back off her shoulders and the frown vanished. “No way. Girl, I know what I’m doing.”

“Cool. Just checking.”

She brushed my cheeks with something, with a soft sigh. That was when I noticed her hand shaking just a little.

“Are you all right?” I asked. “The vampires shook me up too.”

“Nah. Vampires. I’m not afraid of them. They’re useful. Hopefully. Good eye candy either way.”

I could tell she was faking it by now. “Well,” I said, “I was intimidated. But what do I know, I’m not used to vampires.”

“It’s not that I’ve met a lot of vampires,” she said. “Actually you should be more used to them than I am, with your vampire boyfriend and all.”

“Montague hardly counts.”

“Ohh, Monty. Yeah. He’s still decent, for now. More decent than Harris anyway!” She chuckled. “I’ll tell you, I’m doing what I have to do to get some more power, but if I don’t need to marry Harris to get it…” Now she dropped her makeup brush back in the case and put her hands on her hips. “Ugh. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Talk. Talk! What does that do? Rayner is right. My grandmother is ninety years old. She wants to retire and I haven’t been able to convince her that I’m not up to the job. And that’s it for me. That’s my life. Huge responsibility. No freedom and lots of solitary confinement. There’s nothing I hate more than being alone.” She looked away from me, her beautiful face wrestling with terror.

“So…you have to be the diviner? You can’t just admit that you can’t handle it or don’t want it?”

“Magic flows through generations,” she said. “I’ll be better at it than anyone else. The council won’t let me walk away.”

“I mean…is there a way to do the job differently?”

“I don’t know.” She heaved a breath. “Harris is such a stickler for the rules. I feel like—I mean, don’t get me wrong. I admire Harris for being a skilled warlock. Like, honest to god, he works hard. Ambition turns me on.” She pinched her nails together. “But then he reminds me that he is so controlling. And if I marry him, I’m going to have to put up with that overbearing shit every day for the next hundred years or something, but he’s planning to be on the council, and at that point it’ll get so much worse. Even if he wanted to back off, he really can’t, you know? I wonder if he’s going to be there for me when I come out of an intense session… And then—I mean, do you think he’s good in bed? I don’t.”

I coughed and then laughed. “I—I don’t know. He could be good in bed.”

“Naw.”

“How do you know?”

She looked sideways, scrunched her mouth to the other side, and then shook her head. “Uh-uh. Just—I know. Too stiff. Like marrying a European prince. Not the hot kind. The real kind, with like…mommy issues and a weird genetic disease.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“I am right,” she said.

Should I tell her not to marry him? But I was relieved at the idea. I wasn’t impartial enough.

You are so lying to yourself, I thought.

But maybe I don’t really care about Harris that much. I definitely don’t need him in bed. I have enough going on. I just…want to keep HAM together.

Still lying!

Truth was, whenever Harris hurled an insult at me, I thought about it with just as much excitement as when the other guys said sweet things to me.

“So are witch and warlock marriages just more of a business arrangement?” I asked.

“We are, at least, supposed to like each other,” Daisy said. She sounded a little sharper now. “Do you think Harris likes me?”

“Do you like him?” I retorted. “You just said he was controlling and stiff.”

She groaned, and then she started taking off her casual dress, showing off a body that was definitely more toned than mine, and with a better ass, although other than that I guess we were about the same size. She grabbed a dress out of the closet. She had at least three gowns in there even though there was only one ball. “The big thing is…” She shimmied into a gold halter dress with a low back and fastened the buttons at the back of her neck. “For a minute…”

I helped her with the short zipper. The dress, although fairly simple, was silky and the fabric felt lustrous and expensive. I had forgotten for a second that Daisy was ridiculously gorgeous, and when she whirled around in the dress, I remembered all over again.

But her face was pained. “For a minute I thought, it would be great if I had a reason to sacrifice my magic, and I never had to become the diviner at all. But to turn it down would be, you know. I would be an epic disappointment to everyone. Grandma. The council. And Harris. I mean, who wouldn’t I disappoint? Even my friends back home are like, so jealous, because my grandmother is the most powerful witch in Chicago, and she’s got like more money than Oprah. I mean, not really. But a lot. And I do like money.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess…people with money seem to like it.”

“Be honest, Char. Do you think I am just the biggest douche?”

“No! That’s Harris. Obviously.”

She snickered. “So how can I be into Harris when I’m not into what I’m becoming? He’s not marrying Daisy, he’s marrying the great diviner of Chicago. Fuck. I just want to run away. I wish I could just go buy a cheap apartment in one of those parts of Chicago that’s just shitty enough and like, open a Puerto Rican restaurant. I mean, I’m not saying I know how to make Puerto Rican food, but I don’t know how to be a diviner either, so—we’re even.” Now she was moving sharply, noisily rummaging and tossing around the makeup as she spoke, and I could tell she was really upset about this.

“Money isn’t that important,” I said. “I don’t have any.”

She gave me the tiniest eye roll. “Not yet.”

“Maybe you should try being broke sometime. It’s not so bad. You still have libraries…TV…clearance racks at Target. Then you don’t have to take on a job you hate.”

“You know, if I could just watch TV all day, I think I would be in heaven,” she said. “After my parents died, my grandma bought me a TV and if you know my grandmother you would drop dead from shock. She just thought I needed to get out of my head and I exhausted her. Cash and I just watched Bravo like, all day, while she was working. It was so great and when I was ten she just got rid of it. Like, bam, gone, focus on your studies, Daisy. Right in the middle of a season of America’s Top Model. Anyway, it’s just not that simple. My grandma would boot me right out of the house, and then what? I’m on the street?”

“You binge-watched Bravo when you weren’t even ten years old? I feel like I suddenly understand everything about you.”

She patted my hand. “I know, right?”

“I do understand. Your whole life is tied up in that stuff. And it’s hard to take on a whole new life, in a new culture basically, with new people. Believe me, I know. I miss my dad every day, and the scary part is wondering if I’ll ever really fit in at home again.”

“Yeah. That’s it.” She gave me a tight smile. “You like him, don’t you?”

“Who?” Like I didn’t know what we were talking about…

“Harris.”

“I mean…I’m already with Monty. We’re all just in such close proximity. I think that’s what it is. Teen hormones raging. Though I’m almost in my twenties now, so I guess I’d better become composed.”

“He likes you,” she said.

“What makes you think so?”

“Girl, he is ready to make me work for a clan of vampires, but to you, he’s like—‘be careful, Charlotte, this isn’t your fight’. And if you might think it’s because he respects my magical abilities more than yours, I know that’s not true. He told me you have a ton of raw talent and he knows you have business with that demon. Normally he understands that. But he just doesn’t like the idea of you getting hurt.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I…suspected maybe that was true. I wanted to say something sooner but it’s not like he’s going to hook up with me instead of you.”

“You’re fine,” Daisy said. “It’s not working out. None of my plans are working out. I think I know what I need to do…” She had a faraway look that worried me a little.

“Nothing rash,” I said. “Or dangerous. I’m here for you if you want to talk about anything.”

“No, no!” She uncapped lipstick and gave the mirror a look of death. “I’m going to break up with him tonight. He’s allowed to not like me, but I’m allowed to make him squirm.”

Chapter Thirty

Harris

“So.” Daisy looked up at me as I led her in a fox trot, while Charlotte and Montague were dancing in each others’ arms and looked even more disgustingly into each other than last year. “If you became a vampire, Mr. Nicolescu, and I died…would you find me?”

Really? I didn’t know why we were going there. “Those vampires are in strict violation of everything that is decent,” I said.

“Oh, they are, huh? You don’t think it’s romantic that they will do anything to find their love?” She licked her lips. “Lucky lady.”

“Maybe you should find yourself a vampire clan, then.”

“Sometimes I think I already have one because you are cold as a corpse. Why do you keep looking over at Charlotte?” She snapped her fingers.

“I’m looking at my friends,” I said.

“Oh? You’re looking at your friends? Especially the one in a sexy dress I bought for her?”

“Don’t raise your voice.” I could feel my cheeks heating.

“All you want to do is tell me how to behave so that I can be your perfect wife.” She sighed. “You’re the one who entered into an agreement. To marry me. To honor and cherish me ’til death do we part.”

“We’re not married yet. I haven’t made any vows.” I winced as I said it. This was not something you said to anyone you intended to marry.

“If this is the trial period, it’s not going that well, is it?”

“Don’t do this,” I growled at her. “It’s too late to back out now. We get along fine.”

She waved her fingers and they sparkled. “Tell me the truth, Harris.” She was trying to cast a compel spell on me.

“I will not be compelled.” I snapped my fingers back at her. “Soit silencieux!”

She countered my silencing spell with an amplified scream.

“Jesus, Daisy.” I grabbed her arm. “Everyone’s looking at us.”

“Just admit it,” she whispered.

“It is irrelevant,” I said. “She isn’t one of my choices. You are.”

“What if we had other choices, Harris? What if we didn’t have to make shitty choices that we were forced into?”

I was starting to get the sense this was more serious than I first anticipated. “What did Charlotte say to you?”

She snorted. “It’s no wonder you like her. You think I couldn’t have gotten that idea on my own? It’s not anything she said, although maybe it’s just the kind of person she is. She thinks for herself. No one tells her what to do. Why are we letting someone tell us what to do?” She leaned a little closer to me. Her perfume smelled like cardamom and vanilla. “I don’t want to be the diviner. If I have to spend my life alone, seeking out some other person’s answers for them, having a few perfect little witch and warlock babies on the side, I will go insane.”

Truly, if I was ever going to fall in love with Daisy, it would be this moment.

Remember the first time you saw this girl?

The first time I saw Daisy it was at a ‘magical mixer for teens’ at the annual National Conference of Magic. I saw her standing under the vine-covered arbor of the Edwardian mansion in Massachusetts where the conference was held that year. She was thirteen, wearing gold hot pants and cat ears, and carrying her cat familiar on her arm. Her laugh was as loud as a shriek and she used a ton of slang. That year, she was very much into calling anything she hated ‘sample size’. It drove my mother nuts.

My mother said that night, “Daisy Pendleton is certainly uncouth. I pity poor Ermengarde. I suppose she’s just too old to manage a child like that.”

She seemed to have friends, but I also sensed that she bullied them into being her friends by sheer force of personality and clout. Deep down, she seemed sad, but she barreled ahead anyway, not caring who she offended.

This encounter, and subsequent similar encounters, were the reason I preferred Daisy to my other potential matches. But Daisy confused me. I knew she couldn’t keep acting like that and she would drive me crazy if she did, but as I watched her tone it down bit by bit over the years, I also felt disappointed.

When Daisy agreed to the engagement, I knew she was giving in.

Now she wasn’t. But Charlotte was the root. And Daisy seemed as intrigued with her as I was.

“What the hell are you going to do?” I asked. “The council isn’t just going to let you go.”

“They’re not ‘just’ going to let me go. That’s true,” she said. “But they’ll have to, if I become a vampire.”

“A vampire?” My voice dropped to a hiss. “You have gone insane, Daisy.”

“Listen,” she said. “It all makes sense. I offer myself to help those guys, in exchange for them releasing Monty. We all take out the Withered Lord. I avenge my parents. Now you’re all off the hook and I get to do whatever I want. Travel the world. I have freedom.”

“That is the stupidest idea I have ever heard,” I said.

“Why is it stupid?” She was raising her voice now, and people were starting to stare. “You don’t get to decide what is stupid for my life. I have nothing going on at home. My grandmother is ancient and tries to keep me from everything I enjoy. My parents are dead. I have a bunch of kiss-up bitches for friends. My future is a nightmare and I was only going along with it because I wanted power to go after that demon. You don’t love me and I don’t love you.”

“Cash would die,” I said. “Vampires don’t have familiars.”

Until I said this, I thought Daisy was just being her audacious self, throwing out some crazy idea to get a reaction out of me.

But the way her face fell…

Shit. She must have come up with this plan in a hurry, because she had failed to do any research and missed something crucial.

But that expression was real.

“You were seriously thinking about becoming a vampire?”

Her warm brown eyes blazed at me, as if I had just created that rule to ruin her life.

“Why?” I asked.

“I literally—just—told you why.”

If Daisy went through with this, I would never hear the end of it. My parents and her grandmother would want to know why I didn’t stop her. Other potential suitors would see me as tainted.

She would be destroying her own life.

“There’s a way around that,” she said.

“Is there? Ask Monty where Rosa went. Ask yourself if you want to take a risk like that. It is a stupid idea, Daisy. Maybe I’d be a crappy husband but I’m not going to lie to you. You’re not meant to be one of those bloodsucking corpses.”

Her breath hitched like she was going to cry. She yanked her arm out of my grasp.

“Take a deep breath and calm down. You’re embarrassing us both,” I growled.

She slapped me. “Speak for yourself.”

Then she whirled toward the door in a blur of gold silk.

“Daisy!” I ran toward the door.

“Is everything all right?” Charlotte called after me.

“Fine,” I said. “Leave me the hell alone.” Fear made me more testy than usual. Well, my friends would probably say I was like that all of the time lately

“Are you sure?” Montague asked, his arm around her waist. “Harris, maybe you should just chill with us tonight. It seems like the two of you might need to blow off steam.”

“Yeah, it’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Maybe I should take him out of here. We’ll hang out,” Alec said. “Bachelor’s night.” He sounded somewhat testy himself, which was unusual for Alec, but I didn’t have time for any of this.

Plus, people were staring. Damnit. I was not someone who got involved in drama.

“Harris—”

“This is your fault,” I growled at Monty. “And yours.” To Charlotte. “Fucking putting ideas in Daisy’s head, bringing dangerous Sinistral influences to this school. Daisy’s kinda messed up. She’s too easily influenced. Just get out of my way.”

Alec was barring my way and I shoved past him. I punched the door open with my fist.

If Daisy was serious, I had to stop her.

“Daisy?”

I saw her driver pulling out.

“Daisy!”

She was sitting in the backseat staring straight ahead, ignoring me. Then suddenly I saw her tell the guy to stop and he hit the brakes. I ran toward the window as she unrolled it a crack.

“Harris,” she said. “Don’t worry about it, okay? I’m just upset. I’m not really upset at you. You’re like a brother to me or something, like, if I had a brother I barely knew but still had a lot in common with. You’re cool. I have a lot going on in my head right now.”

“Are you going home?”

“I’m not doing anything stupid tonight. So relax.” But something in her voice sounded off.

She rolled up the window and the car pulled away.

Man, I was not reassured about this.

She won’t become a vampire because of Cash. Unless she finds a way to make him a vampire familiar. I’ve never heard of that. But she could become the vampires’ thrall like the girl they keep looking for. Maybe they’ll turn her down because they want their girl, but then, damnit, there are four of them. They certainly could have two girls.

Harris. Come on. She’s going to sleep on it and come to her senses and go back to Chicago. The engagement’s off. Not your problem.

I didn’t really believe that I could just wash my hands of Daisy, though. So I didn’t have romantic feelings for her, but I still couldn’t let her hurt herself.

What would I do if I woke up tomorrow to the phone ringing, and it was someone telling me she had gone missing?

Monty had a car. But I didn’t want to involve the rest of them. I didn’t know how to drive myself. I’d never needed to. Now it felt like a serious weakness I should remedy as soon as possible.

It seemed like I only had one alternative that would guarantee Daisy wouldn’t do something she regretted.

She’s going to hate me for this for the rest of her life.

But it doesn’t matter, because the marriage is off. All that matters is that I don’t let her make some choice that will wreck her life forever. She’ll get over it. She has a pretty bright future, once she gets used to it. She’ll be one of the most powerful witches in the world and she’ll thank me for this someday.

I went to the house phone in the dorm, which was eerily quiet with everyone at the ball, and I dialed the telephone.

Chapter Thirty-One

Charlotte

Last year, I attended the winter ball with Firian, to some scandal, although we tried to excuse it as a just-friends thing. This year, I walked in on Montague’s arm and everything felt very different. Alec was with us too, but as far as anyone knew, Montague was my one and only boyfriend.

Firian didn’t attend, even though I asked him to.

“No,” he said. “I think we’re under too much scrutiny as it is. I need to protect you.” He gave me a tender kiss and I could feel that he was resolved in this decision. “I’ll never be far away. But as far as us goes…I guess it’s better we learn to keep it private, so we don’t lose it.”

I really felt his absence. Of course, he was right. It was better to be safe. But I had never imagined how much it hurt to keep love secret. I wanted to talk to everyone around me about how Firian made me laugh, and he was always there for me, and was my best friend. I wanted the girls to admire him and then for him to put his hand on my shoulder, slightly possessive and proud, showing them all where his affections lay, the way Montague was now.

Then there was Alec, and he was just playing the part of the single guy who was Montague’s best friend.

I really was scared sometimes of how I would handle this in the future. Like, my dad knew I was dating Montague, but I made it sound super casual. The other day I was talking to my dad on the phone and I said I had a gaming date with Firian, and Dad said, “I hope Montague doesn’t get jealous. Not that you can’t do whatever you want, but I have to admit, I would. Just hearing that your mother used to run around with all those warlocks gets my hackles up!”

“Oh, Dad,” I said. “It’s just Firian. You know it doesn’t work like that.”

Why did I say that? I thought when I hung up the phone. Dad doesn’t really know how it works. Maybe…I should be honest with him? But Dad…no. Dad won’t get it for different reasons.

We barely started to dance when Harris and Daisy got into a fight. They both looked pretty upset. Daisy and the other witches wouldn’t be leaving until Monday, so I made a mental note to be a good friend to Daisy tomorrow. Like, we’d do whatever you did when you broke up with a boyfriend. We didn’t have TV, but I could pull up some old Bravo shows for her on my laptop. We’d scrounge up junk food. It actually sounded like a good day.

“Hey.” Fingers snapped next to me. “Is your skirt the proper length for a ball?”

Firian was coming up to us, wearing a badge that said ‘Chaperone’.

I started laughing. “You’re a chaperone? What about protecting me and keeping it private?”

“I asked Master Blair if I could just watch over the punch bowl,” he said. “Make sure it doesn’t get spiked this year. And this is totally different. I have nothing to do with you.”

“Is this any less weird than coming with me?”

“Slightly.” He leaned closer to me. “I really just want to watch over you.”

“Oh. Well, you might not like what you see since Montague is my date tonight.”

“I’ll have one dance with you before the night is over,” Firian said.

“One,” Montague said.

The talk of the ball was, of course, the vampires, plus the fight with Harris and Daisy. So at least it wasn’t me this year.

“I think she must be mad that Harris invited vampires to the school.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet. I thought Mr. Vampire Hunter was too good for that kind of thing.”

“Nah, I heard they drank his blood.”

“Ha ha. Man, that’s pretty gay.”

I started simmering up to a boil. Montague gripped my shoulder hard. “Don’t get into it.”

“Ohmigod,” I said. “If I really am the Chosen One Harris thinks I am, my first act of world domination is going to be flipping out on these morons. I didn’t tolerate it from Mr. Holier-Than-Thou Michael Smith-Braddock in high school either,” I said, thinking of a guy at my high school who seemed super nice until you mentioned anything that tipped off his religious radar, which was a lot because Kayleigh Patterson loved to egg him on.

Montague put a hand around my waist and urged me away from everyone else. “Let’s just treat this like a normal dance. We deserve a little fun tonight, right? And you look beautiful.”

“Is the makeup too much?”

“No. You’re shimmery.”

“Damn. I was hoping it was too much, because I’m not doing it when Daisy’s not here.”

He laughed in a low tone, pulling me a little closer, one hand spread across the back of my dress in a way that made me happy for its semi-sheerness. I wanted to feel as much as him as I could. “Personally, I feel like celebrating tonight,” he said. “I finally met Rayner and he’s just a man.”

“Oh, you think he’s just a man? He’s the most intimidating man I’ve ever seen.”

“But—he didn’t take me with him. That’s what matters. He can’t just snap his fingers and make me forget you and the rest of my life. He said himself that he killed his own sire. So if he forced me to go with him, he would worry that I might kill him. I’m not powerless in this situation after all. It’s comforting…Charlotte.” He said my name like I was the one who was powerless, and maybe that was true.

“When he said, ‘if’ you still want to be released…can he make you not be a vampire anymore?”

“No…but I can…be released from his memories. And of course, I want to be released.”

I pressed closer to him, one of my hands caught in his as we danced so slowly it was barely dancing. We’ve come a long way since last year’s dance, I thought, as the instrumental quartet filled the room with airy music. Where will we be next year?

Five years?

That was the part I couldn’t envision. In school, we could be together and hide our feelings. Once we left school, we would have to face difficult decisions.

Would we all live together? Montague hinted that he wanted a family someday. So did I. But it would have to be with Alec. And Montague won’t age.

Fifty years?

In fifty years, I couldn’t even imagine.

I bet that’s what Rayner is thinking. Even in two more years, Montague will see us growing older. Rayner thinks, in the end, he’ll choose the company of other vampires over us.

Or would Montague become like Rayner? Would he stay with me, but hunt me down in my next life? Turn Alec into a vampire too?

Montague and I had not been alone together since the night he bit me.

As we made our way around the ballroom, in a swirl of other couples, I saw Firian watching us. He gave me a small smile, both supportive and jealous.

I gave him a small smile back.

Then I closed my eyes, savoring the moment instead of worrying over the past. It creeped me out, that Rayner was always looking for Lisbeth, again and again, never letting her go, never letting her define herself without him. Professor McGuinness said that white necromancy was about letting people go. Maybe the first step to that, however, was the same thing my mom’s yoga video taught me. Live in the moment. Breathe.

If you live in the moment, you can let the past and the future go and surrender to wherever life takes you. I wanted to think I was piecing together the sort of person my mom would have been. The advice she would have given me as I grew up. Even if I saved her now, she would never be my parent the way Dad was. That stung. But, not to take away from my awesome dad, but I couldn’t help wanting to be closer to the mom I was slowly forming in my mind.

Fares Wyrd as she must…

Montague’s arms loosened a little as the music came to a pause before picking up the pace into more of a ragtime number.

“Music that’s only ninety-nine years old,” Montague said. “Damn, that string quartet is really busting loose for this early in the evening.”

“Should I twerk?”

“Then Firian might have to chaperone you.” He gave my ass a little slap, bringing me closer.

“Ooh. Tempting.”

“Is it killing you to pretend that I’m your only boyfriend?”

“Yes. But…” As we had continued moving around the room, my eyes crossed Alec instead, and Alec looked…broody.

Usually Alec was calm, quiet, and disciplined. Sure, he liked to tease me about how tortured he was, but he seemed more like he was enjoying the delicious anticipation. And then he would get back to his studies, workouts, and canvas.

Tonight, he looked actually tortured in a way that wasn’t fun. A girl walked by and asked him to dance and he just waved her off without even making conversation.

“Is Alec okay?”

“I don’t know. Alec is always okay,” Montague said.

“But then, if he wasn’t, would you notice?”

Montague stopped and glanced at his friend. Alec now waved us both on like, have fun.

“Alec’s usually quiet, but tonight, he’s off,” I said.

“I suppose he’s angry because the vampires told him they don’t want his help. He should be glad he’s not involved with vampires, but it was somewhat insulting.”

“Yeah…” My hands tightened their grip on Montague. “If Alec did lose the spell that holds him back, what would happen?”

“I think you know what would happen,” Montague said wryly.

“I mean…” I blushed. “Would he hurt me?”

“He wouldn’t suck your blood.” He wet his lips like he couldn’t help having a good memory of how I tasted. “Alec would fight against his instincts, and no, I don’t think he would ever hurt you. But—it would just be cruel to let him touch you if you couldn’t keep up with him.”

“I need more experience.” I slipped my hands around his lapels. “I think it’s time we let him watch. We haven’t done anything since…the bat incident.”

Montague swallowed. “Tonight?”

“Yeah. Why not? Are you shy?”

“I’m not…shy.” He fingered a lock of my hair. “I want you. I want you every time I see you or smell you or hear your laughter across the whole grounds.”

“Is my laugh that loud?”

“But if I bite you in front of Alec, he’ll fucking kill me.”

“You’ll both be learning discipline while you’re in college,” I said, and then I whirled away from him and went up to Alec before Montague could stop me.

“Alec,” I said. “Go ahead and dance with other girls.”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“I know you’re upset that Rayner insulted your incubus-ness.”

He groaned. “Please don’t try and cheer me up, Char. It’s fine. I know what I need to do and I don’t care what some vampire thinks.”

Oh, whatever. It was so obvious that he did care what some vampire thought. I walked up to him and traced a finger down his shirt until I felt a little tingle from getting too close to his skin and he sucked in a sharp breath.

“Alec,” I said. “Please, dance with other girls tonight. I know you can’t help getting turned on when you hold them close. Just let it happen, as long as you think of me. And then tonight, when all this is over?” I whispered in his ear what my intentions were tonight.

“Shit…” He groaned.

“Does that make you feel a little better?”

“It makes me absolutely crazy for you.”

“Good,” I said. “Because that’s right where I like you to be.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Charlotte

I just wish I could touch him, and he could touch me.

Why did I tell him he could dance with other girls?

The spell on Alec didn’t prevent him from touching other girls. Just me, because I shared a room with him. No matter how exciting tonight would be, it didn’t change the fact that Alec could only watch and jerk off.

And that spell is supposed to protect me?

I think I can handle him.

Alec wouldn’t hurt me. Maybe he would overwhelm me. But that a very different feeling that didn’t sound bad at all.

Nah, the spell protects him.

I guess I had to respect his choice to focus on school, though. He wanted become a better warlock and not disappoint his family. I knew how important family was in the magical world.

“What about Firian?” Montague asked me, as he gave me a twirl. He was a graceful dancer. Probably the best dancer out of all of them, even when I included Harris, who I imagined had more formal dance lessons, but was pretty stiff—of course. Firian had the long legs but he didn’t know how to dance any more than I did.

“I guess I’ll send him away. I mean—I’m not going to…like…both of you…at the same time. You already looked freaked out over Alec watching.”

“I’m not ‘freaked out’. I’m trying to determine what the rules are.”

“Me too…but, we’ll leave Firian out this time. Alec already watched us.”

“You had sex with Firian in front of Alec?”

“During our gaming weekend…” I cringed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know how! I don’t know what I’m doing!”

“Why didn’t he tell me?”

“Probably for the same reason!”

“You can tell me,” Montague said. “I want you to tell me.”

“I didn’t tell them what we did in the theater either. I don’t know. It feels like I’m cheating on all of you.”

“You’re not cheating if we’re all in agreement. But I think we do need to be very honest with each other.”

“I need to tell all of you when I’ve had sex with any other one of you?”

“Rayner made this thing work with Lisbeth,” Montague said. “But he was obviously the one ultimately in charge of her and the rest of the clan. They all understood the rules. In this case, you’re in charge if anyone is, but we’re not vampires beholden to a sire. Until we figure out our groove, I think we do need to tell each other these things. This only works if you’re not mine, but ours.”

“Mm…okay. That makes sense. So what, do we have a weekly meeting where I’m like, just so you all know, on Monday…”

“I’d rather mark my prey,” he murmured in a way that made me shiver. “How about this?” He lifted his hand, so much larger than mine, strong and male, and pointed at a silver ring on his little finger. “That’s a protection charm,” he said. “After I fuck you tonight, I’ll slide it on your finger. I’ll tell them what it means. And we’ll buy a few more. At the end of the week, give them back to us. So whenever we look at you, we’ll know how many times we’ve marked you as our own. Just to warn you, we might get a little competitive.”

I must have turned so red and wetness gushed out of me so that I tightened my thighs together. I imagined someone asking me why I was wearing so many rings on my fingers and blushing, making up excuses. I’d never had a secret like that before. A hot secret.

“You like that idea?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Good.” His lips brushed my cheek. “Are you ready to get out of here yet?”

“Hell yeah.”

Montague gathered up Alec and Firian and told them the plan. I was getting too turned on to think straight. This was the first time they had all gotten together to discuss the relationship like this, and they all seemed to be on the same page.

I can’t even believe this is my life.

“Can we use different ones for different…actions?” Alec said.

“Maybe it would be easier if we each had our own color and gave her a ring every time we do anything,” Firian said. “Montague can have silver. Alec can have gold. and I’ll do bronze to match my fur.”

“Am I the Olympics?”

“In a sense. We’re going to compete for medals and get a lot of exercise in the process.”

I bit my lip not to laugh.

After Firian left for Etherium with the promise to earn his ring later, the three of us went back to the dorm. Harris was on the phone speaking in a low voice; we crept down the hall unnoticed.

As soon as I walked into my room and shut the door, Montague grabbed my hands and pinned me against the doorframe. “We’ve talked enough tonight, haven’t we?”

“Yes,” I breathed.

“Your scent…so eager.” His grin was wicked. I could hardly stand it.

Alec took a step closer so he was right beside us. “Step back,” he said. “I’m going to take her clothes off.” He met my eyes. “Will this be more of a tease for me or you?”

“And whose fault is that?” I replied tartly as he slid his wand up my skirt and lifted it up until he had a good look at my thighs and then my underwear. I was wearing my sexiest pair tonight. Ross Dress for Less clearance rack, baby.

He let out a groan like someone just trying out the Keto diet walking into a bakery. “Shit. I don’t know if I can do this. You look so fertile.”

“‘Fertile’?” I was trying to decide if this was a way of pointing out that I had the body of a typical nerd, pale and moderately flabby despite the yoga and tromping around campus, but then I looked at him again and realized there was no way he meant that as anything less than a compliment. He looked so turned on. I could see his cock, rock hard in his pants. One muscular arm reaching just above my head. Trapping me there, by his mere presence.

“Is there…anything I can do to make it better for you?” I asked.

“I want to make every bit of you mine and fuck you until you can’t even speak,” Alec said. “I want to bring you so much pleasure that you’re as distracted thinking about me tomorrow as I am thinking about you every day. And I want to cover your fingers in rings. But—just do as I say tonight. Surrender to Montague, and I’ll dream.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, my back melting against the door as he took the hem of my dress in his hand and kept lifting it up until he could stick his wand down the waistband of my panties.

When I had those sex dreams about Alec, the ones that were actually kind of real, he always knew exactly where to touch me to get me off fast, and this was no different. He slid that wand right over my clit and twitched it back and forth so fast that I thunked my head back and moaned.

“I never noticed how phallic your wand looks,” Montague said.

“I guess I can’t escape my destiny,” Alec said, using the wand to push my underwear down my legs now. His wand was thicker than Montague’s, with a rounded knot at the top instead of the slender tip of most of the guys’ wands. The effect wasn’t super blatant, but once it was pointed out…

“What you need to do is cast a ‘transfer feeling’ spell on the wand,” Montague said.

“Do you know how to do that?” Alec asked.

“No, but it sounds like something to learn…”

“Is that any better than me just having sex with her?”

“Maybe. It gives her a lot more ability to control what she does with it,” Montague said, raising his eyebrows.

“Do what now?” I asked.

“An experiment for later,” Alec said. “For now…this.” He pulled my dress off my arms and then grazed his wand down my breasts, the curve of my waist and hip.

Then he whipped his own shirt off. “To be fair.”

“Oh yes,” I said, suppressing the urge to lick my lips at the sight of Alec by the glow of just one little desk lamp. The light brushed every muscle of his chiseled body, from the strong column of his neck to the hard stomach. You’d think, after a while, he would stop having such an effect on me. But no. In my head one of Dad’s records cranked up to eleven. Feels like the first time…! “Please do be fair.”

Montague shrugged off his jacket and hung it up, a little more of a clothes horse than Alec. He never let his uniform get wrinkled. His dress shirt and pants were just the right amount of tight, his body trim and definitely fit, if not to as crazy a degree as Alec’s. He started to unbutton his shirt and I whispered, “Not yet. Let me do that.” I reached for his hair and sunk my fingers into it, then brushed his scruff against the back of my hand, before starting to work the buttons.

While I unbuttoned his shirt, Alec slipped his wand down the back of my panties and angled it between my legs, forcing the underwear down and brushing my sweet spot again from the other direction.

“Ooh…!” He surprised me a little. “I feel so…naughty.”

“That is exactly the idea,” Alec said. “You don’t want to feel anything but naughty when you’re being seduced by a vampire and an incubus, do you?”

“Mm…”

Montague’s hands reached for my bottom and pulled me closer to him as I was unbuttoning his pants. He looked at my stick-on bra. “Does this just peel off?”

“Yeah, I hope so.”

He pulled it away from my skin and threw it on Alec’s bed. “You’re so gorgeous,” he said. “You have the sexiest breasts I’ve ever seen.”

“I think you talk the sexiest bullshit I’ve ever heard, but I’ll take it.”

“No, it’s true. The sexiest breasts are the ones you can do this to…while you look into a face like this…” His hand cupped my breast firmly, kneading it a little while he kissed my lips. His other hand was still holding my ass. I pressed my pelvis even closer to him, wanting more of him.

I heard Alec’s pants unzip.

It was hard not to tear myself away from Montague just so I could watch Alec strip. I guess my eyes slid sideways unconsciously.

“Oh, sure, go ahead and watch,” Montague said a little sarcastically.

“I’m sorry!” I shut my eyes. “Is that breaking the rules? I can’t get excited about two dicks at a time?”

“A feeble attempt at a save,” Montague said. “You don’t look at me that way.”

“Alec just has a paranormal romance dick. You and Firian both have normal ones. I mean, it’s not small.”

“It’s fine,” Montague said. “You haven’t gotten plowed by that thing yet. You’ll appreciate us more later.”

“I appreciate you. Very much.”

Alec clapped his hands. “I am putting my pants back on if the two of you don’t resume being romantic instead of arguing about cock sizes.”

“We’re not actually arguing, we’re in perfect agreement that you are a fucking incubus,” Montague said.

“And I haven’t even evolved to my final form yet,” Alec said.

“Ohh…?” I breathed.

He shut my mouth with his wand. “I’m kidding. I’m also getting pretty impatient. I mean, as much as I hold myself back on a daily basis, now that I get to feast my eyes on your gorgeous body, I’m going to come just looking at you. I’d like it better if you felt it too, and if I got to see your face and feel your energy as you surrender…the way I told you to do.”

“She likes it against the wall,” Montague said, with a little smirk. “I think we could do that again. That way you can look at Alec, and I can not look at Alec.”

“And I can look at Monty’s ass,” Alec said, with a low, slightly cruel laugh.

“I’ll kill you,” Monty said. “Eyes up, incubus.”

“You said you weren’t freaked out.” I winked at Montague. “I think it’s sweet.”

His lip curled.

I cupped his cheeks with my hands. “Just look at me.”

His eyes sparked with fiery desire, as he seemed to remember what he was really here for. Oh yeah. It was me. I felt like the luckiest, naughtiest girl in the world as he pushed me against the wall, gripping one of my breasts roughly, caressing its plumpness down to the pert nipple, as if he was hardly thinking about what he was doing anymore. Then he hoisted up my thighs and lifted me to his level, pushing his cock into me. My mouth fell open as I gripped his shoulders, and Alec was watching us both.

Alec ran a hand over his forehead. His expression almost seemed to reflect my own; that intense pleasure that was so good it was almost bad.

“Ahhh…ahh…” I was getting louder than I wanted to as Montague battered me, filling me up, giving me abandon.

Alec walked closer, like he couldn’t help himself. Montague stiffened, but he didn’t hold back on me. He couldn’t seem to help himself either. His teeth were sharpening, his tongue wetting his lips as hunger drove him onward.

“I’m just watching out for Charlotte,” Alec said. “Don’t stop, Monty. Don’t stop. This is…this is better than I thought.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Montague

I had never really seen this side of Alec before.

He had always been a little restrained. Like he was trying very hard to fit in a role he could never fully inhabit. No wonder. The sex drive of an incubus wasn’t supposed to have an off switch, while the sex drive of a teenage warlock was barely acknowledged to have an on switch. Now he was more confident, and more relaxed. He was savoring every moment of Charlotte’s face.

But I hadn’t signed up for one of my best friends to watch me. Especially since he seemed to enjoy it so much. Could he at least do me the courtesy of acting like he wished he didn’t have to see my naked ass in the process, instead of getting so close to me that I got this feeling he wanted to touch it?

But, this is how Alec really was. He thrived on this. It didn’t matter how much the council and our warlock boarding schools tried to impose some Victorian morality on him; he would be at his happiest if we had a daily orgy.

So I relaxed. Because being inside of Charlotte felt so damn good, and she smelled so delicious, and I wouldn’t let anything ruin that.

And Alec—well, I wanted him to be happy. I didn’t want him to spend his whole life living a lie.

“That’s her,” Silvus said.

Rayner, his vampire eyes keen enough to pick up details even from a distance, took one look at the strapping young man grooming the horse down in the valley. “That looks like a man to me.”

“Yes, I believe it is a man, but it’s also Lisbeth. Lisbeth’s spirit. It was inevitable that she would be born a man sooner or later.” Silvus added, “I thought that’s what you wanted, last time.”

“I wanted her to be a man so she wouldn’t have been mutilated,” Rayner said. “I don’t want it here.” Still, he twitched the reins of his horse and started to take the narrow path down.

As they got closer, Thom said, “Well, she’s pretty for a boy, ain’t she? Coulda been worse.”

“Did I ask your opinion, cowboy?” Rayner asked coolly. “I thought you frowned on that out here.”

Thom shrugged. “Not a lot of women out here. Even the nearest whorehouse was a long way away. Sure, I prefer a pretty girl, but from what I hear, it ain’t so bad, if that’s all you got to work with.” Since being turned into a vampire, Thom seemed to have lost all pretense of proper behavior, but Rayner wasn’t sure he had much to begin with.

Up until that moment, Rayner might have shared blood with Silvus and Jie, but he very rarely shared sex itself and only in a teasing way before he took her off alone. If Lisbeth was a man this time…

For the first time in his life, Rayner had a face a slightly different dynamic with his beloved, and he wasn’t sure what to do or how to convince Lisbeth that she/he still belonged to them.

…but within the first few weeks, Thom had found it. He was no stiff Englishman like Silvus or a philosophical sort like Jie. The American cowboy was a kinky bastard who knew all sorts of interesting ways to tie a knot and didn’t mind sharing, and in his own crude parlance, could charm the hide off an armadillo. Where Rayner might have been nervous seducing a young man in seclusion, he realized it was much easier when his girl-turned-boy, whom he nicknamed Bertie, was already on his knees for Thom.

How much had he missed out on, by not being willing to share?

I shut my eyes as the memory rippled through me. A familiar feeling by now. Charlotte often provoked those memories.

“Charlotte…” She felt so good. So warm. As flush with life as a garden. Her cheeks almost looked feverish, her nipples peaked. I needed more hands so I could twist and tug them but in this pose I needed to support her legs.

“Mm…” Her fingers dug deep into the muscles behind my shoulder blades. “Yes…yes!”

I guess I didn’t need to worry that I was being too rough with her.

Alec started to back off, to retreat to the other side of the room.

“Alec,” I said. “It’s—you—you can stay close.”

“You sure? I don’t want to weird you out. I need to jack off.”

“Yeah. Just don’t jizz on me.”

“Shh,” Charlotte said, covering my mouth. “I am so close. Be romantic. No more talk of jacking and jizzing.”

“We’ll talk how we want and you’ll come anyway,” Alec said in a husky tone.

“Oh, that is so true,” she whimpered.

This was all turning me on more than I expected, too. When Alec got commanding with her, I got to reap the benefits by going deeper into her with every stroke while she shuddered and clutched at me.

Becoming a vampire had put all my senses in overdrive—sight, smell, hearing. I could hardly stand the rich, sexy scent of her, her panting mixed with little moans, her thighs hugging my waist. I was sensitive to her getting more and more amped up. Her heat, her core clenching around my shaft as I made my girl happy.

I felt up her lovely, soft legs as I held her close. I could feel myself losing it. I just hoped I didn’t bite her this time.

She threw back her head and let out what was almost laughter, but edged with what could have also been a cry for mercy.

The one good thing about being a vampire was that I could release inside her, and it made me feel primal satisfaction even if I would never have kids now. I wanted to fill her so full of me. My teeth sharpened.

I wanted to drain her dry, too.

A vein pulsed in her neck as she went limp in my arms.

Alec’s hands wrapped around my hair. “No,” he said, gentle but firm.

I had to drop her onto the bed so I wouldn’t hurt her and withdraw from her with some force, turning to the other side of the room.

“You almost bit her,” Alec said.

“I need to drink,” I said, grabbing my pants, trying to calm myself down.

“It’s okay, Montague,” she said dreamily. “You didn’t hurt me.”

“You don’t look surprised, Char,” Alec said. “How far did you go last time, Monty? You said you bit her but did you…drink?”

Now I snatched up my shirt. My teeth were still so sharp it affected my speech a little. “She was fine.”

“You really could have killed her.”

I wished I was one hundred percent sure that was wrong.

“No,” Charlotte said, lifting a hand to him. “No. He wouldn’t do that. I know it. But I also attacked him and stopped him. It was sort of hot, actually, but I won’t let him do it anymore.”

“Well…maybe with some supervision…” Alec put a hand over her as she lay on the bed.

She looked up at him. “I think we all know what it’s like to struggle to control yourself…”

“Mm…” Alec stroked his cock.

Charlotte rolled onto her back. She was almost under him now. His hand was pressed into the bed behind her. She watched him with wonderment. I probably shouldn’t be watching them anymore, but I did.

I could feel how things had changed for us tonight. It was almost exactly a year ago that Alec and I agreed to share her, but it wasn’t always easy to figure out how to do that. I knew Rayner didn’t jump right into it either.

It was good, I realized now. I felt safer going forward because Alec had stopped me from hurting her.

And then, I got to feel her so close to me, but I also got to watch her with him. She was quiet. She almost seemed scared, but her eyes told the truth. There was nothing Alec could do to her that she wasn’t willing to try. She adored my best friend, but was I jealous?

Alec was too different from me for that.

It feels pretty damn right, actually.

He came on the smooth plane of her stomach and she stayed firmly put beneath him, barely moving an inch, trying not to touch him.

When he was done, I put my silver ring on her finger. Alec rummaged in a drawer and found a protection charm ring of his own. They were a pretty common gift for witch and warlocks to get, and the rings that fit on our pinkies went on her thumbs.

“We’ll get better ones next time,” I said.

“I like it,” she said. “I still feel naughty, but like, not in a stupid way.”

That was such a Charlotte thing to say.

I took her hand and kissed her fingers. “Always naughty. Never stupid.”

“Now I’m going to take a shower,” she said.

“Goodnight.”

Alec looked at me as I walked to the door. An understanding passed between us. That actually worked, I thought, as I shut the door. Damn. I’m already ready for more.

I walked down the creaking, narrow stairs that led to their attic bedroom back to the third floor of Lancelot House where I shared my room with Harris. I had just started taking off my dress shirt for the second time when he banged the door open.

“Well, you look like you’ve been having fun,” he growled.

“Hey, don’t blame me for whatever your problems are. Where’s Daisy?”

“Gone. Hopefully not dead. Or undead.” He added, “We broke up.”

“Undead?”

“She threatened to become a vampire just to escape becoming the diviner,” Harris said.

“Holy shit.” My stomach twisted at the thought of Daisy joining up with that crew. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. Hopefully they would refuse to turn her. “You didn’t go after her?”

“No. I did something even more drastic. I called her grandmother.”

“Oh…” The Chicago witches and the Florida warlocks didn’t cross paths often, but everyone knew of Ermengarde Pendleton. She was one of the most famous witches in the world. She didn’t mess around. I didn’t even need to know Daisy’s grandmother to know that getting in trouble with her might make you wish you were teamed up with demons instead.

Harris frowned. “It might have been a bad idea, but—I didn’t realize how desperate Daisy was to get out of her position. I thought she wanted the power. But in her mind, she’d rather get that power somewhere else.”

“You don’t think she just said it in the heat of an argument?”

“No,” Harris said. “No. I don’t. Her grandmother was notifying the council. Fuck. It’s going to be bad for her. But I couldn’t let her become a vampire. It only takes one night to seal your fate forever.”

Harris had probably just sealed away Daisy’s freedom. To keep her from becoming a vampire.

When I thought about it that way, I felt more pissed off than I expected. Was it that bad? Maybe she should be allowed to become a vampire if she wanted to. Not that I had wanted to. But it wasn’t that bad. Did I just not want to face the reality of how much immortality was going to fuck me up with time?

“They’ll send her to the Haven,” I said. “Until she’s subdued into compliance, and when you next see her she’ll probably be the diviner.”

“At least she’ll be safe and live a normal fucking life!” Harris climbed into bed without even taking his clothes off and turned off his light, which was the only light in the room at the moment. “Goodnight, Monty.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Charlotte

“Hey, kiddo. So good to see you.” Dad gave me a huge hug and I gripped him a little tighter than I should.

He felt farther away from me every time I saw him.

At least after this year’s winter ball, I got to have a normal holiday break and come home.

“So…no boys this year, huh?”

“Just me,” Firian said, taking his hand from his hoodie pocket to shake Dad’s.

“Well, you’re like her brother or something. I meant those…school boys.” Dad laughed like he knew Firian well.

And I laughed like, too loudly.

“Nah, we left the ab slabs home,” Firian said, making me even more embarrassed than before. “We’re looking forward to a quiet holiday this year. Gaming, cookies, movie night.”

“I’m really glad,” Dad said. “I’ve missed you guys.”

Twenty-four hours later, it had become dangerously clear to me that when you have a dad who is a single parent and very involved with your life, you can’t hide important stuff from him. Like…my chemistry with Firian. I mean…I really really tried not to act girlfriendy. But it just slipped out. Like when we were making cookies in the kitchen together, even my giggle was damning.

“Can I talk to you for a sec before your Grandma gets here?” Dad said, after he asked Firian to go hang up the rest of the Christmas lights because he’d ‘hurt his shoulder’. Supposedly. But Dad was the type who would just hang up the lights anyway and make his shoulder worse.

In other words, uh-oh.

“Sure thing,” I said, with false brightness.

I had no clue what to say to him. None. This was right up there with your dad finding out you’d built a secret BDSM room in the basement when he comes over to fix your hot water heater.

“You and Firian seem…uh…you know. Close,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Your mom said witches and familiars are always close. But I rarely saw hers.”

“Yeah…we’re…unique.”

“Are you still dating Montague?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I am.”

Great, maybe he would just ask some questions and I could keep saying ‘yeah’.

“Witches and familiars don’t—hook up, right? Firian is like your brother.”

“Yeeeah, um…”

Just lie to him! my brain screamed. How hard is it!?

My dad was everything to me. He taught me to read. He taught me to ride a bike. He taught me how to deal with bullies. When I got my first period he took me out for sundaes even though his attempt to say some ‘girl power’ things to me was deeply uncomfortable for both of us. He came home from a long, hard day of handyman work and still managed to make dinner and help me with homework. He tried really, really hard to make up for my mom being gone and he was awesome.

Lying to him was the hardest thing in the world. Because I knew when I lied to him, it pushed him farther away from me.

Was there a point of no return?

I broke into a sweat. “Dad…I need to tell you something. I—I don’t know how you’ll react. I know you might be upset.”

“Charlotte…shit. You look faint. Whatever it is, I will only be upset if you’re in danger or someone’s abusing you or something.”

I swallowed. “I think I’m in love with Firian. And I might be in danger because of that.”

“Because of the witch council or…?”

I nodded. I couldn’t meet his eyes. “But—I’m also dating Montague. And I…I might love him too. In the magical world, it’s—uh—it’s not unheard of.”

I still wasn’t looking at him but he did get speechless for a second. “Do they both know?”

“Yes.”

“So the magical world is…polygamous? I mean, I knew your other grandmother is, of course, involved with those…wolves.”

I covered my face. “Don’t say that.”

“Your generation didn’t invent freaky shit, you know. Neither did witches. When your mom and I got together, I was a roadie for a couple of bands, and I saw everything. The drummer in Angry Shirt—”

“Yeah, but I’m not ‘the drummer in Angry Shirt’.”

“Thank god for that.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “I mean, it is a lot for your poor dad to process, but on the other hand, I kinda knew. And if you’re not lying to either of them, and if they’re both treating you well…all that I care about is that you’re happy and safe.”

“Really?”

“I mean…it’s not—all I care about. Would I rather you dated one single, nice skinny kid with acne from your high school? Sure. I can dream. But you seem happier at Merlin College than you were in high school.”

“I am.” I threw my arms around him. “Dad…you’re the best.”

“I’m just relieved it’s only Firian and Montague. I thought you were going to tell me you were involved with that tattooed guy with the Robert Plant pants who looks like he could seduce the stripes off a zebra.”

I almost choked on my own saliva. “Um…it’s complicated.”

He looked at me. “Shit.”

“Alec can’t touch me,” I said. “There’s a spell on him.”

From the hallway where we were talking, we both heard the front door creak open, the sound of bags being dumped on the counter, and then my grandma sang out, “Joy to the world, the lord has come! And so has Graaandma! Where is everyone?”

Dad looked at me.

We were not ready for this.

“If he can’t touch you, let’s table that for a while,” Dad said.

I gave him a fist bump. “Yeah.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Charlotte

“Welcome back. Hope you had a good yule,” Stuart said.

I definitely had, while Montague had a super Catholic Christmas in warm St. Augustine and I knew what Alec was up to because when we logged onto Fortune’s Favor at night, damned if our ninja girl wasn’t already running around and suspiciously leveled up. Harris, on the other hand, looked like if a growling sound was turned into a man. And I was a little worried I hadn’t heard from Daisy at all.

“I’m glad you all got those wands done before winter grows too cold,” Stuart said. “I know it’s hard to whittle a wand when your hands are numb in these old Victorian buildings…”

True enough. Merlin College had a lot of cozy fireplaces but the rooms were super drafty as soon as you stepped out of their radius.

“We’re going to focus on the realms,” Stuart said. “There are four you probably know about. The ‘human’ world, or, the Fixed Plane. This is your own world and you belong to it. Unlike most other magical beings, all of you can use magic in the Fixed Plane, although there are still rules against using it around ordinary humans. Then we have the spirit world. When you die, you will go there and all we know of it comes from ghosts and spirits. Therefore, it is an incomplete picture and attempts to truly understand it have always failed. It is possible we just are not evolved enough to comprehend what is there.”

A lot of the guys scoffed or seemed checked out as Stuart was talking, like the last thing they wanted to hear was that there was something they would never know, or worse, that they weren’t awesome enough to know it.

“A little humility in the face of the universe is a good thing,” Stuart said. “Then we have Etherium and Sinistral. These realms are the focus of most of your magic. They are where power comes from. What separates you from a normal human is that you have the ability to connect to Etherium. Your familiar is your connection.”

Montague said, with a scowl, like he hated to bring it up. “That isn’t quite true,” he said. “If we lose our familiar, we don’t lose our magic.”

“All right. Yes. That is true. But you had one once. That’s all that matters to establish the initial connection.”

“Where do familiars come from?” I asked. “I mean, from Etherium, I know, but why do we have them?”

“Who can explain the theory to Charlotte?” Stuart asked.

“We know all this already,” Henry said. “Professor Jablonsky, I just have to say, I don’t think my parents are paying a lot of money to send me here just so I can tell Charlotte what a familiar is.”

Oh, yay. The Lockes left, and now I had a new nemesis I guess. Henry from Savannah seemed like he was auditioning for the role now.

“Henry,” Stuart said, in a voice so calm it almost turned chilling. “If you are finding this all too boring, I guess you’re free to leave. This is college. We don’t have any truant officers we’ll be sending after you, you know.”

“I’m just pointing out that this seems like stuff we already know.”

Stuart walked up to Henry’s desk. “We’ll be talking about this all week. I’m going to assign you a new class, Mr. Lapierre. You’re heading to conjuring. Is that better?”

“Yeah. That’s fine,” Henry said, grabbing his bag. He gave one of his friends a look like, what the hell?

“Can I go with him?” his friend said, clearly taking sides. “I’m not here to pander to Charlotte either.”

“By all means,” Stuart said. “Anyone else?”

Like half a dozen more guys left the class. I started slinking down my chair.

“We can move—” I started, but Stuart gave me a little head shake, and I shut up.

The door shut behind them.

“Stuart,” Harris said. “I don’t mind the refresher course, but don’t you think you sort of made an example of Charlotte?”

“I would rather have a smaller class of people who want to be here,” Stuart said. “I’m sure Charlotte, having summoned demons and met with vampires, can handle losing Henry.”

I wouldn’t miss Henry, that was true.

Still.

Awkward.

Stuart said, “Harris, tell Charlotte where familiars are believed to have come from.”

“The theory is that in ancient times, some humans figured out ways to summon magical animals who could shape-shift. They sort of…tamed them, and the familiars learned how to take human forms.”

“There used to be legends of familiars who took the form of people so they could be with their witch or warlock as husband or wife,” Stuart said. “Maybe this was the first motivation.”

My heart started pounding. He seemed like he was telling me this personally. He knows…and why is he telling me that?

“Why is it forbidden now?” Alec asked.

“The official reason is because it could turn ugly. The real reason is likely because it meant that witches and warlocks didn’t marry and have children,” Stuart said. “Familiars and witches are able to have children. But it’s not easy. And then, they are not human children. Humans seem perpetually driven to make more humans.”

He started writing on the board as he spoke. “We are told rules as if they are set in stone, but they all began somewhere, and you may find that some of them aren’t as true as you thought. I would like you each to write a paper on Etherium and Sinistral. What do these worlds have in common, and what makes them different from each other? If you were going to define them to someone who has never heard of them before and who has no loyalty to their rules, how would you describe them? And—I want you to question one essential rule.”

“Great,” I sighed as we left class. “Before I came here, I had never heard of them either and I still don’t know what they are except that Firian keeps having to go to Etherium, and it’s a weird place, and Sinistrals are bad, and…”

“You know more than that,” Alec said. “Didn’t you read ‘The Tainted Brow’ in magical history last year?”

“Um. Yes. Yes, I totally read it. Cover to cover. And I wasn’t at all confused.”

He ruffled my hair. “I guess we need to take Charlotte back to kindergarten.”

“Do we get to put her in pigtails first?” Montague asked.

I elbowed him. “Perv.”

Harris looked at us all with a faint sniff and changed the subject. “I wonder why Stuart is making us go back to basics?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think the guys who left are very smart,” Alec said. “Stuart is a scary dude.”

“I don’t know how you could think that,” Harris said. “I have never met anyone less scary in my life. I’m not sure he’s even qualified to teach in a place like this. Much less such a fundamental class.”

“Harris, there is something weird about him,” I said. “I’ve seen it too. When he caught us breaking into Blair’s house…”

“Scary? He was downright permissive,” Harris said.

“Yeah, but the look in his eyes,” Alec said.

“Do you…see something I don’t?” Harris looked like he found this impossible and unacceptable. “Well, I’ll write the paper later tonight. I don’t need to go to the library because I can write something like that in my sleep.”

“La di-frickin’-da,” I grumbled.

Oh well. I had sexy company at the library. I called Firian in to fact check. Montague and Alec offered to find books for me. They came back with a bunch of dusty old kids books for witches and warlocks. The ABCs of Etherium. Meet My Familiar: An I-Can-Cast-It Book. Ethereals are Eager, Sinistrals are Selfish: A Wizard’s First Book of Magic.

“I think I could have handled something more advanced than this,” I said, cracking open the last one to a picture of a smiling witch with braids and a rabbit familiar, and a sullen little blonde boy with his arms crossed and a snake familiar.

I guffawed. “It’s Harris!”

My name is Elsie. I’m an Ethereal witch. My magic comes from the land of Etherium. Etherium is a special place where everyone is always helpful to each other.

My name is Sylvester. I’m a Sinistral warlock. My magic comes from the land of Sinistral. Sinistral is a dark place where everyone is selfish.

“Okay,” I said. “I am sensing a certain level of…bias. Was Stuart trying to tell us that Sinistrals aren’t actually bad?”

“I’m not sure,” Alec said. “Sinistrals often are bad. I mean…they kill people. They’re the sorts of beings that drink blood or have sex with people to become more powerful. That’s why Montague and I have to worry about the council kicking us out.”

The book was really short. Elsie’s story was on the left and Elsie was annoying if you asked me.

This is my familiar. My familiar is a spirit from Etherium who helps wizard kids learn to cast spells. When I grow up, I won’t need her as much as I do now, but she makes sure my magic never causes an accident. I always listen to her.

I listen to my parents and teachers too. I love to listen! When I’m good, my magic becomes stronger! Maybe someday I’ll be as good at magic as my mommy!

“I can’t help it. Sylvester is so much more fun,” I said. “Did this actually convince any kid to be good?”

My magic comes from Sinistral, because there is nothing I love more than causing mayhem. Once I left my snake familiar in my sister’s bed. My magic gets stronger when I misbehave.

When I’m bad, I attract demons to hang around near me. When I get older, they might try to tempt me into doing their work for them.

“Damn, this turned dark,” Firian said.

The book ended with the kids declaring,

I need to be good so Etherium will be stronger.

And I need to bad so Sinistral will be stronger.

“Okay, I get that Sinistrals are selfish,” I said. “And sometimes evil. Ethereals are supposedly good, but I already know they aren’t necessarily good, because some of the people here are not very nice at all. How can the Lockes possibly be ‘ethereal’?”

“They haven’t murdered anyone yet,” Alec said. “And they probably think bullying you is for the good of order.”

“They’re chaotic neutral,” Firian said.

“Oh, I think that is being generous to them, but whatever,” I said. “So you’re born into one or the other, but you can get kicked out of Etherium if you murder someone or have sex with your familiar or something like that.”

“Hush,” Firian said.

“But Sinistral takes everybody. All the rejects. The vampires and demons.”

“Yes,” Montague said. “All witches are born Ethereal unless both their parents are Sinistrals. Ethereal is the default. The council decides who gets banished, and then they go to Sinistral.”

“Is this one of those things where the bad guys turn out to be like, free spirits, and actually just misunderstood?”

“Ethereals really are…mostly good,” Firian said. “And a lot of Sinistrals really are murderers and con artists. But Etherium operates on old world principles. They haven’t really adapted to 21st century morality. And magic works on belief. So it doesn’t always move quickly. When you think of magic in a fantasy novel, you probably think of an older kind of law. Where everything is black and white, and bad guys deserve to die.”

“So it’s like…what we think in stories becomes real?”

“Essentially. What humans believe magic is, is what magic is. All of us in the magic world rely on humans. We are what you want us to be.”

I understood the basic idea. It was like what Monty said in St. Augustine. The town maintained a magical realm because humans who came to St. Augustine believed in spirits, which fell within the world of magic. Although it seemed like a very bizarre way for a world to exist, it also made some weird sense. Like in Peter Pan when you have to clap to make Tinkerbell live.

In the human world, we lived by one set of rules, and in a lot of ways they were just as confusing. Like, you needed money to get power, and if you didn’t have money or power already, you had to find some way to fake it or charm people into getting it. And in the magical world, they had tricks and deals.

In the real world, when I was a kid, I thought everyone wanted to be good. Of course, as a kid I could be a jerk, like any other kid, but I was always trying to be good. As I got older, I realized that some people didn’t try to be good. Sometimes they just had a weird idea of what good was, but other times they actually got off on having power and being sexist trolls on Fortune’s Favor. Just one example.

Ethereal and Sinistral were just ways of dividing all those people into two worlds, literally. But it did seem pretty brutal. Like you could never redeem yourself.

“So does the witch and warlock council decide who is good enough to be an Ethereal?”

“Yes. Or the Ethereal and Demon symposiums, which are basically the councils, but for magical beings who aren’t human. They impose order on the chaos.”

“My family fought against those rules,” I said. “They must have thought they weren’t worth preserving.” I stood up and headed for the stacks. “Okay. I need some time alone. I know what I want to write about for my paper.”

Alec and Montague looked a little surprised.

I guess I didn’t have the most studious reputation.

“I mean it,” I said.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Charlotte

Next Monday, when I walked into Stuart’s class, maybe I imagined it, but I thought he smiled at me and a glow went down my entire body.

Then I remembered it was Stuart. Dorky Stuart with some sort of terrifying magic underneath the surface. I wasn’t going to let him dupe me. Gah. One minute he was the most boring man alive, then he was scary, then I actually felt like I wanted to impress him.

“I have reviewed your papers over the weekend,” he said. “I am returning them to you. I marked them ‘Pass’ or ‘Fail’. If you failed the paper, I want you to follow your pals on over to conjuring.”

He distributed the papers to us, and there was immediate loud protest. “What the hell?” “I failed?” “Professor, I spent all week on this paper and I have never failed a written assignment. I demand to know why immediately.”

“I told you to write about Etherium and Sinistral from the perspective of someone who doesn’t understand them. And I told you to question one essential rule. Most of you didn’t take this assignment seriously.”

“I questioned your rule to write this paper,” Jeremy said, and then low-fived his best friend Charles in the next seat. They were, like…those kids.

“When are we going to get to battle dragons or something?”

“You’ll enjoy conjuring,” Stuart said. “Do you really want to keep attending my boring class? I assign a lot of papers. Look, I just don’t want to keep anyone here if they don’t want to be here. If you like, think of it as an upgrade.” He shrugged.

The guys who failed grabbed their papers and left amidst muttering.

When all was said and done, the only students left were me and Team HAM, studious Irving, who did tend to question everything, and guitar-loving Jack.

Just six of us?

“One more thing,” Stuart said. “I am going to cast a silence spell on this room. Whatever I tell you, from here on out, you will not share with anyone. If you do, you will be cursed and your tongue will turn purple so everyone knows you’re a liar.”

“This just got pretty hardcore,” Alec whispered.

“Does anyone want to leave?” Stuart pointed at the doors. “Don’t feel bad about it.”

Irving raised his hand. “Are you going to tell us anything that will put us in danger?”

“Maybe.”

Irving glanced at the rest of us. Jack was still just doodling.

Harris said, his voice lofty, “We won’t shame you for leaving, Irving.”

“I’ll stay,” Irving said, even though he already looked like he was trying not to crap his pants.

Stuart waved his wand at the doors and locked them. He spoke spell words in some language I had never heard before, and the lights flickered as green smoke wafted from his wand and swirled around us, marking our lips.

In a sudden panic, I raised my hand. “Pro— Professor?”

“Charlotte?”

“Can Firian attend the class? I—I can’t—keep a secret from him. If he can’t come, I want to leave. If I still can.”

“Oh, go ahead and call him,” Stuart said. He didn’t seem mad.

I summoned Firian, although I was feeling very nervous about whatever was happening. He looked around at the mostly empty classroom, shrugged, and slid into a seat.

“Merlin College was founded with the intention of teaching the very best young warlocks about how to face the magical world with all of its great dangers,” Stuart said. “It was supposed to be a cutting edge school. They used to say if you wanted to be a truly great wizard, you came over here. Boys came not just from America but from Europe and Asia, African villages and tiny magical tribes in the Amazon. Although…mostly just America and England. Still—it was very much ahead of its time. But nowadays, if you want to learn how to defeat a demon, you sure don’t come here, do you? You go learn on the road from any old masters you can find.”

“That’s what my paper was about,” Harris said. “My dad was lamenting that kids used to die here, and now they never do.”

“Wait, what?” I said.

“Charlotte, I found your paper particularly interesting,” Stuart said. “Charlotte put herself in the heads of her grandmother Sally, who left the magical world entirely, and her mother Emily, who became a Sinistral. These women abandoned their family, but instead of judging them, you tried to understand them.”

I didn’t say anything. I had written the paper in a rush of emotion. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I didn’t judge my mom and grandmother for not being around. If anything else, for my dad’s sake. I’d watched Mom’s absence tear into him my whole life. I’d watched him try to hide it and be strong for me. I’d watched him fail, now and then. He was just a normal guy who loved a witch, which ended up being sort of like a punishment he didn’t deserve. Mom had given us up to save her cousin, which—I had to admit—really pissed me off when I thought about it. Cousins were probably cool and all, but they weren’t your husband or daughter.

So, I thought it was probably about a lot more than saving Ina. I thought it must be about her anger at being kept from the magical world. Which led me back to my grandmother and why she left the magical world in the first place.

That was what my paper was about. Trying to understand why.

The why led me back to the rules. The sexism. The way familiars were treated. Everything that drove me nuts.

“Etherium and Sinistral. The Fixed Plane and the Spirit World.” Stuart said. “All witches know these four places. But how many of you have heard of the fifth realm?”

“The fifth realm?” Harris looked like he really, really wanted to say that he did, but that he in fact did not.

“Wyrd,” Stuart said.

I spazzed a little. “The realm is called Wyrd?”

“Yes,” he said. “Wyrd is a realm like Etherium and Sinistral. It’s a world of neutral magic. Wyrd is founded on a belief not in good or evil but in the space between. Is nature good or is it evil? Wyrd comes from the belief that both are needed, or that neither exist, and that we are governed not by good or evil but by fate, which keeps balance. If you look at religions and spiritual beliefs around the world, you will find some of them based around a battle between good and evil, while others see harmony. Wyrd is that world. It’s a world where Ethereals and Sinistrals could, in theory, meet.”

“If there is a whole other world, how could we possibly not know?” Harris asked. “I have a hard time believing this isn’t just a conspiracy theory or a myth.”

“It isn’t,” Stuart said. “I know this because Charlotte is carrying a Wyrd wand.”

“Oh my god. What does that mean?” I asked, picking my wand up from where it was sitting next to my chair.

“Sweet,” Jack said, giving me an approving nod.

“This school is in a spot where the veil is thin,” Stuart said. “When Samuel found his wand, it came from a strange tree and resonated with a strange kind of magic. That magic is Wyrd.”

“How come none of our familiars come from Wyrd? There are no Wyrd witches that I’ve ever heard of,” Irving said.

“Good question, Irving. The fae have controlled Wyrd for milennia.”

“The fae?” Montague looked at me sideways.

“They won’t let humans in except as servants. Charlotte’s wand is special because she was able to reach Wyrd, as was Samuel. They aren’t the only ones, of course. There are a handful of witches and warlock around the world who have Wyrd wands. But that’s been as far as it’s gone for thousands of years.”

“We knew Char was special,” Montague said.

“So the faery at the tree let me have the wand,” I said. “But why me?”

“You must have that balance inside you,” Stuart said. “The faeries are trying to send you a message. Just like Samuel…you’re not meant to follow the rules of the council, Miss Byrne.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Charlotte

Let it be known: Professor Jablonsky told me to break the rules.

So maybe he wasn’t actually mad when he found us breaking into Master Blair’s house last year after all. It seemed like they were cool with me being the heroine of the story.

You know, in the sense that heroines are usually fun little scamps who ignore rules and do dangerous things all the time without managing to be dead yet. So far, that was me.

I really should stop.

But, not yet.

It was a very cold night with a light dusting of snow, and we had a moonlight class with Professor McGuinness. We were standing out under a brilliant sky full of stars, no light pollution in sight, breathing in cold puffs wearing heavy wool coats and school crest scarves. The clothing shop didn’t offer any nice, lightweight down, only this thick stiff wool. Even the smallest coat in the shop looked big on me. We looked like we were ready to die for the glory of the Tsar.

“You have all given me the names of the people you intend to summon,” Professor McGuinness said. “Please do not summon anyone else. If the person doesn’t come, do not try again. You’ll get another chance later with one of the spirits who was successfully summoned tonight. You must do this alone, but all of the professors and staff are posted around the campus for safety. Please, find an unlit fire and begin.”

Alec looked at me. “Good luck, Charlotte.”

“You too.” I blew him a kiss.

Bonfires had been set up in advance around the grounds, in the more tucked away places. The air already smelled of woodsmoke. I started hurrying down the path to the farthest end of campus.

I told Professor McGuinness I was summoning some old witch, but I had every intention of summoning Lily Maxwell. A Sinistral, but also…Alec’s mom. I just wanted to try to get Alec some closure.

Once we were away from the group, Firian appeared next to me. He was dressed the same as everyone else, so he blended in. He also looked very BBC hot in his coat and scarf.

“Oh hey,” I said. “Did I call you?”

“You seem nervous,” he said. “I figured I’d just watch over you tonight.”

I smiled. “Good. Maybe you can help me talk to her. I don’t know how I can cover all the things Alec would want to say to her.”

“But you know how it feels.” Firian’s hand brushed mine. “You’re the perfect person.”

“I didn’t handle my mom that well, but…thanks.”

“Yes, you did,” he said. “I’m proud of you, Charlotte. Whenever I see you, I think, that is my witch.”

I grabbed him by the scarf and kissed him. The kiss deepened quickly. His breath and his body were so warm in the cold. “Shh,” I said. “I get so turned on when you call me your witch, but I have demons to summon.”

I found a relatively isolated bonfire spot out by the visitor housing. The fence that surrounded the school was just behind me. It looked like a decorative fence, mostly, but I also knew that beyond the fence was the forest with thick woods unprotected by the wards. On a night like this, the school seemed like an outpost in the middle of some strange land, and I could hardly believe we were in North Carolina.

I lit the fire with my magic. By now, this was easy stuff. I shot a neat little fireball into the kindling and it immediately caught and glowed. I watched as the twigs and brush spread to the larger sticks.

“You can do this,” Firian said.

“Oh, I know.”

But Firian knew I was nervous. The last time I tried to summon a dark mom spirit, it went badly.

I lifted my wand. The wand was sort of like a radio antenna. I could feel the magic all around me, and as I shifted my focus, I picked up different signals, some stronger than others. The full moon had a serene power that could also turn dark, but it was a strong force for speaking to the dead.

Earlier in the week, Professor McGuinness had us gather some materials to cast in the fire to help our summons. I opened the small bag and poured them into the flames.

“Lily Maxwell,” I whispered. “My name is Charlotte Byrne. I call upon you to speak to me. The moon is full. I wish to reach into the veil that separates us.”

The flames immediately began to leap and send out waves of sparks. I took a step back. The fire looked like a churning volcano. I grabbed Firian’s arm as the form of a woman seemed to come crawling out of the flames, rising up in front of us.

It happened faster than I expected. She looked at me, and she was gorgeous. I don’t know why I expected otherwise. She was Alec’s mom, after all. I guess I envisioned someone older and more of a chain-smoking tough. She had thick, wild hair and reddish eyes that reminded me of a cat, full lips, and crazy curves, and she barely looked forty. She had a scarf tied around her thick black hair like a headband, reddish eyes that glowed against her dark bronze skin, hoop earrings and a black leather jacket.

“You’re Alec’s mom…,” I said.

“Alec.” Her hands clutched together. “He is my only son. And you are…?” Her eyes narrowed with scrutiny. “I sense he is not mating with you.”

So, if I didn’t know how to talk to my dad about this, I definitely didn’t have a guide for Talking to My Celibate Incubus Boyfriend’s Dead Mom. “Not yet, no. He is…saving himself, I guess?”

Flames leapt from her skin. “My son is saving himself!? For what!?”

“Whoa! It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said. “You should be proud of him. He’s trying to study.”

“For how long?”

“Until college is over!”

“Did you ask him to do this, girl?”

“Oh, no. Definitely not,” I said.

“He needs to fuck,” she said. “I am not proud of him at all. He should get it everywhere he can find it.”

“Well, I don’t know about that.” I didn’t expect her to start arguing with me about not having sex with her son within the first five minutes. “You’re not proud of him for being a talented warlock at a great university? For being disciplined? For liking one girl?”

“You can’t satisfy him all by yourself.”

I glanced at Firian like, what do I say!?

“Charlotte’s pretty horny,” he said.

Not quite what I wanted, but okay.

I tried to get this back on track. “I summoned you because I wondered if you had any words of closure for Alec,” I said. “I don’t know your situation, but I do know you weren’t around to guide him as he was growing up, and I also know how that feels.”

“Guide him?” She rubbed her forehead. “Succubi and incubi don’t guide their children. We aren’t meant to be parents. That’s my opinion, anyway. A succubus has a baby, the human father raises him, and in the end, he comes back to his roots.”

“Alec is both,” I said. “He’s a human and an incubus. He’s not just one or the other.”

“He is denying what he is.” She added, “Every succubus has at least one baby. To keep the race going. But otherwise we just don’t make for good little wives. So don’t ask me for ‘closure’.”

“So your words for Alec are ‘you were born because I had to have one kid’?”

She flamed up and waved a smoky spirit hand at me. “I gave him up. I couldn’t have been his mother, and I wouldn’t have been, and it’s best I didn’t, especially since I died young like a fucking moron. But you’re pissing me off with this.”

A lump rose in my throat and it was possible I was taking the mom abandonment situation personally. “So that’s it? Nothing you want to say to him? Not even like, an ‘I love you’?”

“Did his dad take good care of him?”

“I—I think so.”

“Well, maybe he should stop looking for love in places he ain’t getting it.”

“Go away! I banish you!” I shouted, waving my arms.

“If you love Alec, tell him this. Leave school. Let him knock you up if you care about him that much, so he can get it out of his system—”

“I fucking banish you!” I screamed at her.

Wow. Alec’s mom was the worst.

I didn’t expect that at all. I thought I was doing him a favor and now I was battling with his mom, who was actually fighting my attempts to banish her. As I shouted at her, trying to put my will into it, she started chanting and my bonfire burst into a pillar of flames that engulfed her entire body. “Promise me you will leave my son alone and not try to entangle him into a human life,” she said in this scary voice that seemed to echo.

“No way! You don’t know anything about him!”

She lifted her arms and started chanting something at me.

“Try a defense spell,” Firian hissed. “She’s not leaving. You have more practice with those.”

“Right.” Firian took my hand, lending me focus. I could feel the path opening to tap into my magic as I waved my wand. “I surround myself with light and you cannot touch me!”

A circle of light blazed up around me, just as Harris swooped in, chanting his own spell. He pointed his wand at the succubus and with a hiss, she was forced back down, the flames dying. In French, he invoked the name of some Hapsburg and the succubus now vanished decisively. The bonfire went completely dead, like it had been doused with a hose.

“What was that?” I yelled at him. “I didn’t ask for your fancy ancestor powers.”

“I saved your ass. Again. What were you—”

I cut him off. “Oh no, you did not save my ass. I was casting a defensive spell and it was working. I would have figured out something, or one of the professors would have come over. Were you watching me?”

“Well, where were the professors?” he asked. “Probably busy dealing with other mistakes. Necromancy is always a mess. People always break the rules and summon their family. I already finished my contact so I took it upon myself to watch you because I just knew you would do something.” He leaned closer. “Thank you for not disappointing me.”

When he said that, he sounded more impressed than critical.

“Um…”

Firian put a hand around me and drew me a step away from Harris. “Charlotte, don’t listen to him. You were handling that well. No one expected her to attack you.”

“Who was that?” Harris asked. “Why did you summon a sinistral? You should know by now how dangerous it is to summon dark spirits and how hard they are to control.”

I glared at him. “It was Alec’s mom.”

“Alec’s mom?”

“He saw her in the back of the memoriam book and I offered to summon her. I didn’t think she would be crazy like my mom. To be fair, she was crazy in a different way. I think she was just angry that Alec is living a human warlock life instead of an incubus life and she blamed me. It seems that succubi have a really different view of what a parent should do.” I looked at the bonfire, feeling suddenly like I was a failure even if it wasn’t my fault.

I should have known better than to agree to do it. I should have known it doesn’t always work out like you expect. Now I had to subject Alec to the same pain I felt when I summoned my mom and found out she wanted me to join her in the darkness instead of coming back to me and Dad.

“I’ve saved you twice now,” Harris said.

I whirled on him and shot him with a blast of magic that was much stronger than the other day. He slammed against the brick wall and immediately retaliated with a spell that froze me in place.

“Stop—saving—me,” I ground out. The spell actually made it hard to move my mouth. “I didn’t—ask.”

“But you need it,” he said. “Not for summoning Alec’s mom—though it was stupid. Not even for summoning a demon. I know I goaded you into that one.” The quickest wry smile flashed across his irresistible, smug lips. “But because of Firian. And Wyrd wands. And the council. The council doesn’t like Chosen Ones, Charlotte. They don’t like anyone who might change the world. You need me to keep an eye on you because my name…is your cover…and I want to cover you.”

What was he saying?

The last bit was almost a whisper from his full, gorgeous mouth.

He wanted to kiss me.

He was so close.

I want him to…

God, Firian was right there. What was I thinking? I tried to twist away from him. “What happened to Daisy?”

His face immediately shut down and he drew back with a quick wave of his hand that released me from the spell. “With her grandmother.” Then he said, in a reserved voice that was hard to read, “She’s safe.”

With a faint shrug of his broad shoulders, he started walking away, dead leaves crunching under his feet.

“I don’t understand him,” I said, when he was just out of earshot, or maybe not even quite out of earshot.

But that wasn’t actually true. Harris knew how severe the consequences could be for breaking the rules even as his friends were breaking them around him. He had watched Alec and Montague getting closer to me for over a year, and maybe he was jealous of them.

Is the reason he’ll never admit to liking me because if he pisses off his parents and the council, he wouldn’t be able to protect us?

That’s giving him too much credit!

“What do we tell Alec?” I said, turning my eyes back to the ash of the dead bonfire.

“It wasn’t your fault Alec’s mom is trash.”

“Don’t say that. Maybe she just—”

He shook his head. “No. She was terrible. It’s okay to admit it. Though we won’t say that to him directly. We’ll just tell him in a calm way that…he does his father proud.”

I laughed, if a little sadly. I was glad Firian was so honest. I could never like Harris back, anyway. He was too secretive.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Firian

A certain class of witches and warlocks were careful with their hair. The ones who had enemies. So I knew Ignatius Blair was definitely aware of some serious ongoing danger in his life when I got into his office and found a perfectly clean comb in his desk without a single stray hair. And when I searched the rug under his desk, it had been vacuumed into oblivion.

I even tried to brush a hand on his jacket and saying, “You have something on your shoulder” but he dodged me and brushed his shoulder himself.

Yep. Blair seemed relaxed. But deep down, I knew he had to be on edge. He was way too aware of me.

In the end, it was dumb luck that brought me to this point. The school held a weekend bake sale to raise money to repair the tower on the main hall, and when I heard someone say that Master Blair made the loaf of banana bread, I took a chance. I bought it, ate the entire loaf very carefully, and was rewarded with a prize: one single brown hair.

“And Firian is rewarded with the rarest of item drops,” I said.

“Ew!” Charlotte looked over the edge of her book to watch me hold it up triumphantly. “You ate that entire loaf already? And there was a hair in it?”

“Yes. I surmised that Master Blair does not bake often and didn’t think to tie back his nearly shoulder-length locks while baking. I am a genius.”

She finally put down the novel, a rare moment of relaxation for her these days, with the air of annoyance universal to all interrupted readers. “You wanted his hair?”

“I’ve been trying to get his hair for months.”

“I’m glad that’s all it is. I have to say I was a bit insulted when you bought his banana bread instead of those cookies I slaved over last night.”

“Alec and Montague fought over the cookies as it is.”

“Yeah, but I wanted you to fight with them,” she said, raising her brows and then laughing. “Okay, so what nefarious thing are you doing with that hair?”

“I’m going to find his familiar.”

“Ohh…”

“So don’t call unless you need me. But maybe before I go…I’ll put a ring or two on your fingers.”

I opened up a jewelry box, took out a ring, and placed the hair in its spot for safekeeping. Then I slid into bed beside her. “Alec is down at the gym. So we probably have fifteen minutes alone.”

“Firian.” She dug her fingers into my hair and pulled me into a kiss.

The ring idea was genius. Whenever I saw a new gold or silver ring on her fingers I immediately wanted to pull her into some private place and put my own mark on her. I lifted her hand now and tugged on her fingers. “Two silver and one gold since last night…must have been a hot date.”

“It was…”

I pushed her down on the bed and tore off her panties under her skirt. “I like weekends.” She wore pants during class.

“Me too.”

“But I bet you didn’t get any of this.” I slid my nose down her body and slipped my tongue between her legs. The canine in me was more than happy to start here, and the girl in her seemed pretty happy with it too.

“Oh god…no,” she moaned.

For now, this was my domain, because although I hadn’t asked, I had a feeling Montague’s tendency to want to bite her was a bad match for going down on her, and obviously Alec was out. Only I could please my girl like this, and no one was going to do it better than me anyway, I’d bet on that.

“Firian…ohhh…” I worked my tongue over her clit, pushing her knees open, and she writhed in a very satisfying way, grabbing the pillows.

I paused. “I’m sorry. You were trying to read.”

She smacked me with one of the pillows. “You’re not getting out of this now.”

“Oh, I know.” I slipped my tongue inside her, curling and thrusting it, just the way she liked it. I love the taste of her, sweet and musky and dangerous as sin. I loved how her breath came quicker and raspier until I knew she was too consumed by sensation to speak anymore, and that was when I knew it was time to give her more, to give her all of myself. Our limbs tangled together, her eyes meeting mine with a little wondering smile on her face. I don’t even know if she knew that she made that smile for me.

Her sheath was tight but slick, and as soon as I was inside her it was more perfect than I could have imagined. Every time.

She matched my rhythm right away. We didn’t fumble much with each other, because we were a pair. Witch and familiar. We were meant to work together.

Whoever decided this was forbidden must have been a very unhappy wizard…

When I felt her clench around me and she lifted her hips and dug her fingers into the bed, making little anguished sounds, I knew she was close.

“Wait,” I told her. “Wait for me.”

“How long?”

“Not long.”

She bit her lip. The sight of her anguish, her attempt to hold back, was all I needed. I crashed into satisfaction, into her arms. Her hands dug into my hair again, her smile soft and private in the afterglow.

“What a nice surprise,” she said. “I’m glad Master Blair’s hair made you so hot.” She snickered.

“It just felt like the right thing to do before embarking on a quest.”

“I’ll try not to call you away from it too much, but you make it hard.”

I slipped a ring on her finger and gave her another kiss. As I heard Alec’s footsteps approaching, I said, “I’ll report back.”

Then I left her to be found naked by Alec and slipped into Etherium.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Firian

I lit a candle and burned the hair.

“Lead me to my kin, the familiar of the one called Ignatius Blair…”

A strong wind suddenly knocked against the window panes of my cottage and I heard one of the shutters break loose and bang repeatedly against the wall.

Someone doesn’t want me to find this person…

I wouldn’t be distracted by the wind. I shut my eyes. “Lead me to them!”

Papers blew off my desk and scattered around the floor. I heard it but I didn’t open my eyes. “Nice try,” I said. “But I won’t give up. For the third time, I ask you—lead me to them.”

The candle was snuffed out and I heard the wind move away like a passing storm, into the forest.

I walked outside and the path had changed again. I changed into a fox and started down it, not knowing where it would lead me. I was tense, my ears perked to every sound, my nose to every smell. But the forest seemed to be normal here, although thick with brush.

The forest grew thicker and thicker as I traveled for three days without meeting anyone else on the road. Charlotte didn’t call me for the entire time.

Finally, I reached a clearing with a little cottage. A woman was outside picking tomatoes in a garden, but as soon as she saw me, she grabbed her basket and ran toward the door.

“Wait!” I said. “I don’t mean any harm.”

The door slammed. “Go away!” she yelled. “I don’t help travelers!”

“Are you Ignatius Blair’s familiar?”

“No!”

“Then where is Ignatius Blair’s familiar?”

“Ignatius Blair has no familiar!”

Why would the spell lead me here? I didn’t smell anyone else around. Nah, I thought. This is a riddle.

“Ignatius Blair isn’t his real name, is it?” I called back, with a hint of triumph.

“Go away! Please go away.”

“I really don’t want to hurt you. Ignatius Blair is my witch’s friend. I just don’t understand why he asked me to spy on other familiars in Etherium instead of asking his own familiar to do it. Surely he trusts you more than me, and you’re older than me, so you’re certainly more powerful. However—if Ignatius Blair isn’t his real identity…I understand. You’re in the book under his real name, right? You’re a clue for anyone who starts poking into his business.”

“If you care about Ignatius and the work he is doing,” she said from the other side of the door, “just leave it alone.”

“I need to protect my witch,” I said. “She deserves to know—”

As I had my hand smacked on the old wooden door of the cottage, all my attention focused on the woman on the other side, I heard the tiniest ‘snik’ and felt something sting my neck.

A dart.

Shit.

I pulled it out, but it was too late. My vision fuzzed, and then my brain followed. I felt myself hit the ground but the pain barely registered as I was starting to fade away.

I tried to fling myself back into the real world before I lost consciousness, but I couldn’t seem to do it.

I heard footsteps approaching now. “I banish this poison,” I whispered, trying to fight off the spell.

“Ooh, he’s a tough one. Look at him fight,” a woman said, her voice sharp and confident. “Charlotte Byrne’s familiar. Thank you for leading us here. We’ve been looking for this place for a long, long time.”

That was the last thing I registered before darkness took over.

Chapter Forty

Charlotte

The council was back.

We saw their cars pull through the gates in the morning. I’d left Firian alone for three days straight, which seemed like an eternity not to see him. I felt a prickle of foreboding.

Three days is definitely long enough.

“Firian!” I called him. “The council…”

He didn’t appear.

“Firian!” I called again, louder this time. “Firian!”

Could he like…be on the toilet? I struggled to think of any reason he wouldn’t appear instantly. He said he would always be there whenever I needed him, and he always was.

Alec stepped out of the shower in nothing but low-cut black briefs, toweling off his hair. “You okay, Char?”

“The council just drove up! I’m calling Firian! He’s not coming! Oh my god. Something’s wrong.”

“It’s probably nothing,” he said, but his mouth tightened and he went to the window. “Huh…I think that’s…Piers Nicolescu.”

“He’s related to Harris?”

“He’s a cousin and he’s on the council. Are they all here? That’s…a lot of cars.” He turned to me and said in an unnaturally calm voice, “I’m going to get dressed. Keep trying to call him.”

“What’s going on?”

“I have no idea, but we’ll find Harris and Monty.”

He threw on his uniform, knotting his tie as he walked down the stairs. He clearly wanted to look sharp. I had gotten dressed for class but I felt disheveled and threw up a quick glamour to make myself look more polished if I had to see the council again. I knew I was a mess when I wasn’t even turning on looking at Alec.

Everyone in the dorm was talking about what it could mean, but no one had any idea. I saw a few guys looking at me, clearly jumping to blame.

But, I had a feeling they were somehow going to be right.

“Let’s stay put,” Montague said. “If we’re in trouble again, let them drag us out.”

“Piers is out there?” Harris crossed his arms. “He’s been doing some work in Alaska.”

“So…he came all the way from Alaska?”

“As far as I know.”

I was shaking a little. Montague put an arm around me, but he was pretty grim himself. “Where’s Firian?” I kept asking it like someone would actually know.

“It’s the entire witch and warlock council,” Alec said.

We were all huddling in Montague and Harris’ room. I stared at Harris’ neatly kept side of the room, with a pile of books on his perfectly made bed, while I sat on Montague’s rumpled plaid blanket. Every moment that passed where I hadn’t heard from Firian, I felt more hopeless. I couldn’t contact him any other way. If I called and he never came…

Alec’s spider familiar suddenly appeared on his arm. She crawled up his arm—my skin crawled thinking about it and I had to look away—and whispered in his ear. Then she disappeared.

“She says…the council captured Firian,” he said.

I got to my feet. “They’re going to take him away from me!”

I didn’t know what to do, but I ran down the stairs and out the doors. I ran sort of blindly, tears in my eyes, clutching my wand. I was vaguely aware of HAM chasing me, but somehow I managed to stay one step ahead.

Most of the guys had gathered around outside already. They were all murmuring nervously and looking ahead. I saw two warlocks leading Master Blair down the stairs, wands out, like he was under arrest. I shoved past the guys all the way to the front of the crowd.

I was breathing hard, looking around.

Then I saw Firian. As a fox.

In a cage.

I screamed. I tried to run to him, but Madame Solano switched her wand out at me. Its tip burned my skin and I had to step back.

I noticed another cage too, this one holding a bearded dragon. Was this Master Blair’s familiar?

Master Blair looked at me, his face stubborn, one hand clenching and unclenching into a fist repeatedly.

“Where is Jablonsky?” one of the younger warlocks asked him. I guess they had really brought the A-team. This guy, wearing a black coat with a built-in shoulder cape and honest-to-god spats, looked like he was barely thirty, smooth-skinned and handsome in a jerky sort of way. It seemed like a preview of Harris’ future.

Piers Nicolescu. Right…

“I told you. I don’t know,” Master Blair said. “You dragged me out of my office and I don’t know where any of the other professors happened to be in that moment, if they weren’t in their classrooms.”

“Here’s Professor McGuinness.” The blonde witch came walking just behind the necromancy professor. “Were you aware of what was going on here?” she prodded him.

“How can I answer if you won’t tell me what was going on?” McGuinness looked at her like she was more of a nuisance to his day than anything else.

“What is going on?” Professor Das asked. A lot of the students were demanding the same thing.

“A lot is going on,” Madame Solano said. “And we have the proof we need to make an arrest. Ignatius Blair, you have risen up from a childhood of obscurity and poverty through scholarships to our schools for warlocks since you entered the Adirondack Academy for Magical Arts at age six, correct?”

“Yes,” he said, giving her a cutting glance. “Is this a trial? I believe I have a right to legal representation.”

“You will have a trial,” she said. “This is not it. This is informing your students of the false pretenses under which you have participated in our community. Is this your familiar?”

His jaw clenched.

Piers shot the bearded dragon with a bolt of blue magic that made it let out a very human, female scream.

Master Blair was breathing hard. “You bastard.” Another warlock caught his arm, holding him back from launching at Piers.

“This familiar,” Piers said, “is registered in the book. This familiar belongs to Amelia Halt, also registered in the book, daughter of the late John and Dahlia Halt from New Hampshire. They had no other children. Would you care to explain, ‘Ignatius Blair’?”

“When I was born, I wanted to be a boy. I wanted to practice warlock magic. So my dear mother said, why not be a boy.” He threw up a hand. “And why not? You just said yourself, I rose up through warlock schools thanks to scholarships, until I was appointed the dean of the best school for warlocks in the entire country. My mother died. My identity was unquestioned. I fit in. I did well. So tell me—why—not?”

Holy crap.

The other kids were going nuts behind me, some whispering, some jeering a little.

The man who ruled over the school was born a woman. That was the secret he hid from me so he could advance me through warlock schools.

I didn’t think there was any secret I would understand him hiding from me, as if I couldn’t be trusted.

But this one, I did. I had dealt with a lot of crap here. I couldn’t imagine what it was like back when they were young. Hiding that all your life, knowing your familiar could give you away. I couldn’t blame Ignatius for not trusting anyone too easily.

“Because you are not fit for this job,” Piers said. “You have proven everyone’s worst fears about the mingling of witches and warlocks, and allowing a generally permissive atmosphere. You have allowed one of your students—and not just any student, but your single female student—to consort with her familiar.”

Oh, fuck.

I mean, I knew it was coming, but it was still just as horrifying as it would be if I didn’t expect it.

“Haha!” “I knew it!” “You fucked that fox, Roller Slut?”

“Shut up!” I bit back furious tears. I was not going to let anyone see me cry, but it was very difficult when I saw Firian there, his black paws splayed in the cage because it was a little too short for him to stand upright.

“Wait a minute,” Professor Adams said. “I think folks need to calm down and sit around a table, talk this out—”

Another warlock lifted a hand to Professor Adams, cutting him off. “Did you know about all of this, Professor?”

“No, I didn’t. But I trust Master Blair. Man or woman, he’s been running this school just fine for over ten years now.”

“Everyone working at this school will be questioned by the council,” said old Councilman de Brigue. “We are installing temporary professors in your place until we have sufficiently determined that you were not complicit in this breach of conduct. And we are appointing Councilman Nicolescu as dean of Merlin College in Master Blair’s place. This school has been the training ground for future council members for over a century. Its reputation has been sullied greatly by you.” He paused to cough phlegm into a handkerchief, because apparently his anger had stirred up old man gunk. “Well, we remedy this now. As for you, young lady—”

They all shifted their focus to me.

I was frozen. I felt the presence of Alec and Montague beside me, but I felt like we were too outnumbered to draw much comfort from it.

“You’re wrong about her,” Harris said, stepping in front. “Cousin.” He gave a slight nod to Piers. “She’s not ‘consorting’ with her familiar.”

“We have proof of it,” Madame Solano said. “Her familiar encountered a faery in the woods, who asked for one of his witch’s kisses in exchange for a favor. Did he deny it? No, he refused to give one up.”

“Oh, that. A kiss,” Harris said, his voice dismissive. “Really? You’re going to punish her over a kiss? How many young people experiment a little with their familiar? You know it’s quite a few. But we are really overreacting if a kiss is the same as sex or marriage. This is ridiculous.”

Oh nooo. He was saving me again. For real. This was getting so irritating.

“Whatever the case, she should be in a witch school,” Madame Solano said.

“Hrm, but…the wand,” Piers said. “Maybe my little cousin is right. I will be here to supervise, after all, and I would like to know more about this wand of hers. You know I’ll keep her on a short leash.”

“You just want to keep her powers for yourself!”

“They’re warlock powers,” Councilman de Brigue said. “You won’t know what to do with them, dear woman.”

“Then she shouldn’t have them! She is a witch!”

“So we just suppress a perfectly good potential?”

This wasn’t sounding good at all.

Except that maybe I would get to stay with HAM. Only, with Piers Nicolescu breathing down our necks and perhaps making some unknown use of me, how miserable would we be?

And what about Master Blair?

He (I was just going to keep thinking of him as ‘he’ unless otherwise corrected, since that was clearly how he had chosen to live) stood straight, looking off into the unknown, as if resigned and detached. I hoped he hadn’t given up.

He had made this plan with my mom and Samuel to put me here so I could end the council’s rigid grip. It had something to do with Wyrd and my wand. I was going to keep fighting, either way.

“She is of my bloodline,” the less-ancient blonde councilwoman suddenly said. “We let the warlocks have her, but I will check in.”

“You are?” I asked. “You’re of my bloodline?”

She gave me a look that showed me that she found me completely shameful. “I was Samuel’s mother,” she said, before looking away from me again like she hadn’t just dropped a total bomb on me. “We must be sure she doesn’t mess around with this familiar of hers. We must bind him to this form. The witches’ council I must insist on this, at least. You aren’t going to kiss a fox, are you, Miss Byrne? It is shameful—the corruption that your mother brought upon this family.”

“Am I ‘the corruption’ now? I must not be that bad if you’re fighting over who gets to use me and my wand,” I said.

“What a mouth on her, too,” one of the other witches noted.

“What’s going to happen to Master Blair?”

“Miss Halt will be brought before the full council,” another man on the warlock council said. When he said ‘Miss Halt’ it was the first time I saw Master Blair flinch a little. I cringed a little in response, just seeing how much he didn’t want to be called by that name. “Her fate and her familiar’s fate will be decided there. Your professors will be reviewed here on site and will resume classes if they have not violated regulations; otherwise they will be replaced by qualified educators as quickly as possible. I apologize for the disruption. Master Nicolescu is your new dean. He will be making sure the transition goes smoothly and classes resume as soon as possible to wrap up this school year, and as your next year begins, we will have it all settled. Please make him welcome.”

There were a few enthusiastic greetings. Henry went right up to Master Nicolescu and shook his hand. “It’s about time, sir. I always knew there was something off about the dean.”

Still, a lot of other students liked Master Blair. He was friendly to everyone and he had renovated the roller rink.

“This blows,” Jack said. “Where’s Stu at?”

It was true that Professor Jablonsky remained glaringly absent while all the other professors had gathered outside immediately. I think a couple of warlocks had gone off to look for him.

A few of the council members started leading Master Blair away to the row of old black cars while one carried his familiar in her cage. He looked back at me. It was the first time we’d met eyes since I first saw him there.

He gave me a look of resolve and a faint nod. Hang in there.

I nodded back.

Then I heard the other cage creak open and I turned around so fast I almost tripped on my own feet. “Firian…!”

He was able to step out of the cage but was still on a leash.

The blonde witch who was apparently my great-aunt had opened the cage. She gave me a stern look and flicked her wand at Firian. “Rester un renard pour toujours!” Bands of glittery golden magic wrapped around Firian’s ankles. He tried to escape and she yanked on the leash, holding him there.

He made a strained sound of anguish as the magic locked around him. I could see he was trying to fight, but he was helpless against the witch, who kept repeating the spell, sounding more angry with every word. I twisted the ring he had placed on my finger three days ago. The spell exploded into sparks around his feet and he slumped to his belly, looking lethargic.

She thrust his leash at me. “He fought me,” she said. “But now he is a fox forever, as he should be. He will help you control your magic. Nothing more.”

“I—I never asked him for more.” I took it. I was shaking all over. I knew I couldn’t reveal how much Firian meant to me.

As soon as she turned away, I dropped to Firian’s side and tore the collar off his neck. I ruffled my hands through the fur there, erasing the indent the collar left behind. “Firian…did they hurt you? Can you speak?”

“I can,” he said. “But maybe I shouldn’t.” His soft head backed up out of my hands. He shook himself off a little and then vanished into Etherium before I could say another word.

“Firian…” A lump rose into my throat. I gripped my wand in my hand and Montague was there to offer a hand, but he was very quiet, his expression not just dark but bordering on murderous.

“Miss Byrne.” Master Nicolescu came up to me. “Well, it’s been quite a day but I’m glad you’ll be remaining here at my school. I’m glad to meet you. I apologize for all of this. I certainly think there is still a chance for you to live up to the Caruthers name.”

“I’ll be happy if I can live up to Master Blair’s hopes for me,” I said, unable to hide my contempt as I briefly glanced at him.

Harris was standing with us too, and his cousin’s attention shifted his way next. “Harris, I heard you broke up with Daisy. She went a little nuts, didn’t she? Hope the poor girl’s okay. Probably a good decision on your end.”

“I hope she’s all right,” Harris said.

“Have any of you seen Professor Jablonsky?”

“No,” Harris said.

“That is certainly strange,” Professor Nicolescu said, narrowing his eyes. “Well, we’ll all talk later.”

The crowds were breaking up. I saw Master Blair sitting in the back of an idling car as the warlocks huddled together in discussion before leaving. The witches were already departing, somewhat huffily. The kids who always kissed up were trying to catch Master Nicolescu and kiss up to him, while our professors were trying to calm other students down.

I couldn’t take this anymore. I ran for Lancelot House and the tears wouldn’t stop.

Chapter Forty-One

Charlotte

I burst into the bedroom and mashed my face straight into a pillow. I didn’t breathe for a minute. Then I lifted up my face and dragged in a long sob.

They took Firian from me. They used his love for me to trick him, and then they humiliated him…

I was torn between despair and rage. I had been focusing on the Withered Lord and my mom, but now I thought I hated the council even more.

‘Ethereal’ my ass!

Montague and Alec ran in after me. “Charlotte!”

I was still just…sobbing. “I’m sorry,” I choked out before getting back to it.

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Montague said, and I noticed his teeth had gone full fang. “I could kill those—”

Alec gripped his hand. “We have to keep our tempers if we want to get through this new…situation.”

“Will Firian ever be able to…be a person again?”

“Yes,” Alec said. “Every spell can be undone. We’re in this together, okay?” He wrapped his hand around mine.

We were jolted apart.

When I saw him reach for me, for a moment I forgot he couldn’t touch me, and obviously he forgot too. He wanted to protect me from this pain so badly. Montague ran a hand over my head and pulled me against his chest. He wiped some tears off my face with the back of his hand.

“Alec’s right,” he said. “Unfortunately, because I do want to kill them right now. But we are in it together.”

Alec rubbed his hand. He must have gotten a pretty bad jolt from how firmly he tried to grip me. His nostrils flared. “I can’t do it anymore.”

“Alec—”

“I need to hold you,” Alec said. “I need to touch you. How can I comfort and protect my woman if I can’t even take her hand when she’s crying? And how can I fight for her without my full strength?” He took out his wand and started tracing the tattoos on his arms.

“Freyja, my lady of desire, this is not my curse to break but all curses of passion are yours to unweave, and I beg for you to do so.” He reached for a drawer of his nightstand, rummaged somewhat impatiently, and took out a feather, which he set on fire. “Let me touch her in all ways!”

My eyes widened. Should I stop him?

I didn’t want to stop him.

Alec turned to us. Fire raced along his tattoos and lit up his eyes briefly as his entire body briefly seemed to glow.

Wow. This was Alec 2.0. He was hot before but now he seemed like he was brighter, stronger, unfettered by the spell that held his incubus powers back.

The fire and glow faded away, but the sense of greater power remained. He reached for my hands and took them in his own.

His hands were so big and warm. I felt instantly soothed.

“Charlotte,” he said. “I swear to you that we will keep you safe and we’ll save Firian, too.” He ran his thumbs over the tops of my hands. “The dreams were good. This is a hundred times better. I feel like I could do anything for you just from the touch of your skin. I’ve touched other women, and it was nothing like this. My mom was wrong. It isn’t better to mate with hundreds of different people. It’s better to know you.”

“Alec…!” I flung myself into his arms, the rock-hard solidity of his chest. It soothed me and it also turned me on even though I was worried about Firian, so I felt bad about how frisky I was feeling.

Of course, I was also getting pummeled by raw incubus magic. I popped the buttons of his shirt. “Oh my god, what am I doing and why can’t I stop doing it,” I murmured as I moved to his pants.

“Don’t stop,” Alec said. He looked at Montague. “Monty…”

“Go for it,” Montague said. “You’ve been patient.”

“I’ve been patient too,” I said, as I tore off Alec’s pants and underwear almost at the same time.

“You have hardly been patient,” Alec said, holding up my hand. “You’ve been busy.” He unbuttoned my pants, hooked two fingers around them and my panties and yanked them both down in one move while shoving me down onto the bed. “And now it’s my turn and I have a lot to claim. You are already so wet for me. What a good…little…witch…” He marked every word with a kiss to my wrist…my arm…the crook of my elbow. He had shoved my sleeve up my arm as he went.

He climbed on top of me and I had a moment of anxiety when I realized he was going for it, and it was one thing dreaming about a well hung man when he couldn’t touch you but I had never had anything like that inside me.

He wasn’t going to be gentle. I knew that. Unless I screamed or something.

I bit down on my lip and decided I was going to take it.

He thrust into me in one stroke and reader, I took it.

“Oh, fuck, you are thick…go slow,” I said. “Mmm…”

“Worth the wait? You’re doing great, Charlotte. Look at me inside of you.” He sat up enough that I could see my pussy spread around his big cock. Damn, that was hot.

Montague dragged a hand down his cheek. “This is…getting me so hard. Leave something for me, Alec.”

“You are so beautiful,” Alec said. “I want to devote every moment to your happiness, Charlotte.”

“Easy to say when you’re pounding me,” I gasped, although he really was just slowly rocking me a little at this point, getting me used to his size and making his way a little deeper in.

“No, I mean it. I really did want to wait for you this whole time. I wanted to make sure I really loved you. That it wasn’t just about this. But we both need this now.”

“We do. Yeah. We do. Four years…is too long.”

“I want you to do something else for me,” he said.

“What?”

“I want you to suck Monty’s cock while I pleasure you,” he said. “So everyone’s enjoying themselves.”

I had never really gone there before, but right now, if Alec asked me to do anything I felt like I’d be happy to do it.

Well, maybe not anything. Who knows how crazy the imagination of an incubus could get. But that? Okay. I could do that. Firian certainly gave me the pleasure often enough.

“Monty,” Alec said. “Maybe you should lay down next to her and she can turn her head sideways. That way I can still touch her breasts.”

“And…you’re going to watch us?” Montague said.

“Yes. I am,” Alec said firmly. “But I’ll be looking at Charlotte more than you.”

“Okay,” Montague said.

And that was that, I guess. I was glad that whatever awkwardness they felt, they decided this was not the time to hash it out, because I was starting to adjust to Alec’s size and I needed to feel more of him. Even when he was barely moving, he seemed to hit every spot that existed even as he was almost painfully big. Pain and pleasure mingled, my center growing hot and wet even as the two of them spoke. And he was going to touch my breasts too? I was going to lose it.

“Go slow,” I breathed again, as Montague climbed into bed beside me. I reached for his cock eagerly. I was already getting so overstimulated that I wanted something to do, and the groan of satisfaction that he made when I wrapped my lips around the head only spurred me on.

Alec pulled out of me slowly, almost to the head. He wasn’t just thick but also long. The friction of the long shaft withdrawing from the tight space—oh shit. More pain and pleasure. I licked and sucked on Montague and his cock trembled in my mouth.

Just as Alec was almost out, he thrust back in, rocking my whole body. “Mmnn,” I moaned.

Montague stroked my head. “So good, Char. So hot.”

Alec stroked in and out again and now he wrapped both of his strong hands around my breasts and kneaded them gently, treasuring the shape and weight of them. In and out, grazing every nerve in my core. I shut my eyes now and then only to open them because both of these men were so gorgeous and feeling such desire for me.

Alec slowly went faster, reading my own cues and I tightened my sheath against him and twitched my hips encouragingly, and as he sped up, he went from kneading my breasts to pinching my nipples. I started just exploding with a climax. It hit me like nothing I’d ever experienced. I had to stop pleasuring Monty because I was screaming as I rode it out.

Alec was fucking me hard now, wringing everything out of me, and he slammed his mouth into mine at the final moment, as I was seeing stars like my body was breaking into a thousand pieces for him.

“Shit…here I go…Char…you’re blowing my mind…”

I was so happily exhausted I almost passed out. Like, I felt like I was fainting in slow motion. Everything just got soft and relaxed.

“You didn’t use a condom,” Montague said. “So you’d better cast a spell for that.”

“I will. I’ve got magic to spare after that.”

I forced myself to stay awake and I put my mouth on Montague again. I was determined not to leave him hanging.

He let out a little grunt of deep satisfaction and settled back into it. He was already close. I got him there and then he seemed to sense that I was a little freaked out once he started ejaculating in my mouth so he finished on my breasts.

I let out a sigh. “Thank you,” I said. “That helped. With Firian…like he is…and all the stuff with Blair…I just want to be in oblivion.”

“Only now and then,” Montague said. “We have to fight this. But not today.”

They both slipped rings on my fingers.

“I have to buy more rings,” Alec said. “A lot more.”

“No more than seven,” Montague said. “She takes them off at the end of the week and you still have to be a warlock.” When Alec paused, he said, “That was the original plan, right? You police my fangs and I police your dick?”

“It’s called the Incubuster,” I said. “I dub thee the Incubuster 5000.” I might have been a little drunk on Alec vibes.

“Right. Yes. It’s a…plan,” Alec said. He looked at me like he was already ready for seconds. “I’ll make the spell for the…birth control. Sorry, Char.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Is there a magical birth control pill I can take? Because…I’d better look into it. Montague and Firian weren’t much risk.”

“Yes, there is. We’ll figure that out.”

I kind of collapsed into a warm bath and changed into my fox pajamas, which I now regretted buying. When I came out, Alec and Montague were fully clothed and having a heavy discussion over coffee. I marveled briefly over how quickly they could transform back and forth from naked sex gods to serious-looking dudes in suits. Both equally alluring to me, I might add.

Although now the fox pajamas seemed even more inappropriate.

They looked up. “We got a message,” Alec said, holding out a paper to me.

When you get an opportunity to slip away, you’ll find me at the Wyrd tree. —Stu

Chapter Forty-Two

Charlotte

Stuart was living out in the woods waiting for us? I hoped he was patient. Slipping away without notice wasn’t easy.

It was immediately clear that life would be different at Merlin College under Master Nicolescu. He gathered us all for an assembly to introduce himself.

“My name is Piers Nicolescu. You already know my promising young cousin Harrison. He might take my place on the council someday, ha ha ha.” He waved a thin, pale hand at Harris, who looked like he might be hating this more than anyone. “I’m kidding, of course. I am the youngest warlock on the council, as you all know.

“Now, our first order of business, we have a new professor of necromancy. This is Professor Pacetti.”

“Professor McGuinness is gone?” I whispered.

“Good afternoon, everyone, I am Professor Pacetti, you might have heard of me. If you haven’t, let me tell you, I don’t tolerate any funny business. Okay?”

“Have y’all heard of him?” I whispered.

“Um…no,” Montague said. “I don’t think anyone has.”

The rest of the professors seemed to be remaining in their positions, but Professor Adams looked like he’d sucked on a lemon watching Master Nicolescu.

“We also have a new chef,” Master Nicolescu said. “Chef Morris specializes in wholesome food and optimal magical diets. The current selections will be replaced with a prix fixe menu.”

“What if we have allergies?” someone called.

“We have a treatment for allergies, thank you,” Master Nicolescu said. “Our vampire student will pick up his blood in the infirmary going forward.”

Montague’s expression turned from exasperated to furious. At least the old chef made the blood into something that almost looked appetizing to everyone so he could eat with the rest of us.

There was also a curfew now, an increased staff of school guards so they could not just watch over the gates but also the campus itself, and we were promised in the new year we could look forward to a “fresh curriculum” and a “new system of punishment and reward” which could not sound more ominous.

And then, he said, “There will also be a new rule for all faculty. Since it seems that there is a woman here and the place hasn’t fallen apart…the council has agreed that wives are now allowed on campus. So if you see my bride-to-be here next year, be good, boys. She’s mine.” He laugh-sneered.

I saw all the old professors looking confused.

“Oh my god,” Harris said, clutching his head.

“What?”

He shook his head and started walking over to catch Master Nicolescu. The rest of us followed because we were nosy, obviously. “I didn’t know you were married, Piers.”

“Oh, not yet.” Piers gave him a look of cruel satisfaction. “It’s in the planning stages. I’m sure you will hear about it soon.”

“Who is it?” Harris’ teeth were gritted.

“Daisy. Her grandmother wanted to send her to the Haven for rehabilitation after you broke up with her and she—had a breakdown, I heard. But we worked things out. Perhaps she needs a man to handle her, not a youth.”

“You’re twice her age.” Harris was trying to stay composed.

“I’m sorry. What did you say? I am a member of the council and the dean of Merlin College and unlike you, I know a good catch when I see one? Oh, no. That’s what Ermengarde Pendleton said. You said something irrelevant. Good day, cousin.”

As his cousin strolled off (both Nicolescus had the same arrogant stroll), Harris said to the rest of us, “Can we talk?”

“Of course,” I said. “We all need dinner.”

“I don’t know Piers that well,” Harris said, once we all had drinks. “At big family gatherings he was an off age for me to talk to him. But he’s one of the family golden boys, as you might expect. And I do have one clear memory of him. It’s…uh…it was also the first time I saw Daisy. It was the National Magical Conference. I’d met her the day before and she was very memorable, in a Daisy sort of way. You know what I mean. He was engaged to a relative of Daisy’s. A second cousin or something. Close to his age and less important because she wasn’t in line for the big Pendleton family prize. Daisy was thirteen.”

I knew my face was already prepping a reaction.

“I was passing by Piers and his friend Ram, and Piers said something like, ‘I don’t really want her but I’d tame that little bitch.’”

And…my facial expression was unleashed. “Ugh.”

“I remember Ram said, ‘Jeez, man’ or something, and he amended it like, I want her power. I knew just who he was talking about. They ended up breaking off that engagement, and he broke off another one later. I don’t know if he’s power hungry or just a creep. Probably both.”

“What about your illustrious bloodline?” I asked, just being a pest, as I slowly ate the new wholesome cuisine. So many stewed bitter greens and boiled things. I had never seen the new chef but I was betting he was a century old and maybe British, except I wasn’t sure the Edwardians ate this many vegetables.

“There are great heroes in my bloodline,” Harris said. “The Nicolescus have slain vampires, no offense to Monty, but those vampires had killed hundreds of people.”

“None taken,” Montague said glumly as he was pouring a medical pouch of blood into a wine glass. “I’m definitely not killing hundreds of people.”

“I intend to live up to that,” Harris said. “If Piers is the sort of person who would hurt a woman, then I would rather take him out as well.”

“Piers Nicolescu is a cool name,” I said. “What a waste.”

“So when I kill him, I’ll take his name too, and wipe it from the record,” Harris said with a cold look.

I suppressed a smile because something about this was weirdly attractive to me. “We can’t let Daisy marry that guy, then. It’s as simple as that. She’s my friend too. We need to talk to Stu.”

We couldn’t safely leave school grounds. Piers always seemed to be everywhere. That was the worst part. I swear, if we started whispering about him, he was suddenly behind us, saying, “Good afternoon, gentlemen, and lady.”

It made my skin crawl.

And I have to come back to spend a whole year here with the new rules in full steam…

However, we were almost at the end of the school year, so he couldn’t keep us there much longer, and on the last day of school while guys were lugging their bags of clothes down the stairs, slapping each other on the back, and getting in their chauffeured cars, we stuffed food in our backpacks, walked right out the gates and made our way around the mountaintop.

That was when I called Firian’s name.

He had stayed away since he was trapped as a fox. Alec’s familiar went to check on him just to make sure he was okay.

My poor Firian. I knew he must feel helpless, because I felt helpless. Sure, he used to turn into a fox just to curl up on my twin bed at night, but mostly I knew him as a man. Tall. Handsome. Funny. Golden eyes. Hands that were strong with long nimble fingers. Wrinkled clothes and often rumpled hair too. Confident in the way he touched and held me. My gaming partner and best friend.

He wants me to remember him that way and not start to think of him as a pet, I thought, a sick feeling descending on me when I considered it. But I would never forget that he wasn’t my pet.

“Firian—I just…miss your voice…please!”

He shimmered into existence on the path ahead.

“Firian!”

I started running toward him, and he ran too. He led me down the path and didn’t stop. Like he was a mirage. I don’t think he wanted to talk. But at least he was letting me see him.

Soon I was panting and struggling over the rocks while he leapt down them with unnatural strength. I half-climbed down, half-fell, and scraped my knee. Crap. It was actually bleeding.

Firian finally looked back at me and said, “For crying out loud, Char.”

I started sniffling.

“I just miss you, Firian. I miss you so much.”

“But I’m just a stupid fox now. A really stupid fox. I led the council to Master Blair’s familiar and I told that faery girl I’d kissed you. My own tricksy world tricked me instead.”

I flung my arms around his fur. “No way. None of this was your fault. It seems like the council was already looking for confirmation.”

“And I gave them proof.”

“Anyone could have made that mistake,” Harris said, climbing down the rocks behind us.

“Are you dating him now?” Firian asked.

“Uh…no. No. Stop it. He’s just here.” My cheeks flamed as Firian looked at my hands to count the rings. The creepy new dean still had failed to dampen my enthusiasm entirely.

“I’m glad you’re okay, man,” Alec said.

“We’ve missed you,” Montague said.

“Thank you,” Firian said, actually sounding slightly touched by the acknowledgment. I remembered how no one even talked to him in the beginning.

“We’re going back to the Wyrd tree, so…lead the way,” I said. “Stuart escaped out here when the council came, apparently.”

“I sure hope this isn’t a trick,” Harris said.

I blanched. “I didn’t even think of that.”

“You aren’t naturally suspicious, Char. That’s not a bad thing. Means you’ve never been ambushed by a vampire or anything,” Montague said.

“What a diplomatic way of saying she’s still a babe in the woods,” Harris said.

“Hey—” I pointed my wand at him. “Who has the special wand? Not you.”

“We don’t have much choice but to try,” Montague said. “Stuart told us about Wyrd in the first place, and Charlotte had a real connection to the tree.”

Once again, it took all day to reach the tree. My wand started to glow when we got close to it. The eerie meadow and the blue tree were still there just as before, and I was extremely relieved. A part of me expected all of this to be gone.

The only thing that was different this time was that Stuart was standing by the tree waiting for us, wearing one of his sport coats with the patches on the elbows. Kewl. This guy was the designated survivor?

“Hey, kids,” he said. “Glad you made it. That bad, was it? Couldn’t get here until the year was over?”

“Stuart, have you just been out here for weeks?” I asked. “In that sport coat?” I looked around. “Do you have a cabin up here?”

“Is this better?” He waved a hand across his body and transformed into a beautiful faery lord.

“Ohhhhhhh,” I said. “You’re the faery lord. Ohhhhmigod, that’s why everyone thought you were so cool.”

Montague snapped his fingers. “Damn. That was good.”

The faery lord Stuart nodded a little like, yes, I am good.

“But Stuart Jablonsky?” I asked. “That was the alter ego you went with? How does a faery lord even come up with that?”

“You didn’t suspect,” he said. “You could tell something was up with me but the disconnect between Stuart and a faery lord was just too far, wasn’t it? Well, it’s too far for the council too. At least, so far.”

“Man. You and Ignatius are the masters of disguise,” Alec said.

Stuart smiled enigmatically. “But sometimes even a master’s luck runs out. Hopefully…it holds on long enough. I want you all to go have a nice normal summer, but come back a little early and see me. I’ll give you a map to take a different route so you’re less likely to be seen. We have one last hope to fix this mess, and Charlotte, that hope is you.”

No pressure or anything. A nice normal summer?

But when I looked at Firian trapped in his fox form, and when I thought of Daisy being forced into marriage with that jerk, and Master Blair being led off in disgrace, and the essay I wrote for Stuart about why my grandmother and mom rebelled against the magical world and suffered for it…

“I’ll be there,” I said, as my stomach growled, throwing off the vibes of this reunion entirely.

“In the meantime,” Stuart said. “Let me feed you dinner. I see you forgot to take enough rations once again.”

A Fine Necromance

Chapter One

Charlotte

“Dad? Can I ask you something?”

“You have some follow up questions about the birds and the bees? And the…foxes and the demons?”

“Thanks for not making it weird.” I kicked him under the table.

“Oh, I made it weird?” He finished off his beer, kicking me back.

This was the proper ritual for making each other relax before we had some kind of Deep Talk. And I knew we needed to have one. We were finishing up one of the mediocre meat lovers pizza from the best pizza place in town, which wasn’t saying much, as we settled back into life together for the summer. It was hard for me, and he could tell. I just wasn’t the same person anymore, even though nothing at home had changed.

Which was partly why I was pondering this question.

I realized how much a person could change, how badly an old life could fit, no matter how much you loved it.

“If I saved Mom from the demons, like…I mean…what would happen? Would you guys just get back to normal?”

He smoothed his hand over his face. “I don’t know. How can I know? She’s the one who would have to…adjust.”

“Yeah, I just wondered if you think she would.”

He sighed. “I don’t know who she is anymore.”

“Okay,” I said, a little tense.

“I wonder sometimes if I ever knew,” he continued. “I’m a pretty simple guy. I knew there was a lot going on in her head. She was angry at her parents for denying her her magical background, and she was also scared of it. She knew there was a lot of danger in being a witch. So she was always—you know—running back and forth. Switching on and off. But when we got together, I didn’t know about all that yet. And she seemed happy. I thought she’d made up her mind. I thought she chose.”

“You’re angry at her, aren’t you?” I asked.

He never said so. Dad always gave Mom a pass. I knew he loved her and missed her. He made it sound like she was gone, but I always imagined that if she ever came back, he would welcome her. As a kid I used to envision her just showing up one day, and they would kiss and she would just move back in. But I was a kid, and kids have no sense of what is actually possible. I used to imagine I would be a movie star veterinarian Olympic skater.

Of course, I turned out to be a witch, and maybe that was no less probable. But I also got a big wakeup call about how complicated life could be.

“You don’t want to hear that stuff,” he said.

“What? Dad, I’m old enough to understand that you’d be mad.”

“I forgive her,” he said. “A part of me could never believe that she was mine in the first place.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like I said, I’m a normal guy. And nothing that special. Your mom was special.”

I bristled. “You are too special!”

“I don’t need to be.”

“Are you glamorizing her?”

“She was glamorous!” he said. “You’ve worn her dress. What kind of woman wears a dress like that? She fucking blew my mind, Charlotte. She was gorgeous and well-traveled. She’d hung out with famous rock bands. She was utterly fearless. I’d never met a woman who would walk alone downtown in cities I wouldn’t even dare be caught dead in after dark. When I found out she was a witch it made more sense, but that didn’t change what I thought about her. You know that your grandpa told me she was too good for me?”

“No!” I smacked my hand on the table. “I never knew any of this, but it’s stupid. You’re a cool guy! You were a roadie for Angry Shirt!” I laughed a little, teasing him.

He laughed at that. “I’ve never really talked about her much, I know. I was protecting you from the truth, and now it’s just habit, but…I glamorized her a little, yeah. I loved her more. It was love at first sight, if something like that exists.”

“Aw. You met her at a Nine Inch Nails concert, right?”

“Yeah, but she was there for the Jesus and Mary Chain. They were the opening act, I guess. I drove down for the concert and I don’t remember any of it because I got to talking to her out front beforehand, and I was just—stupid over her. She had a faint English accent, and she had this sort of French beatnik style going on. She always looked good, your mom. She was the kid of rock stars, so…” He shrugged. “I could just tell she was somebody. But it was also February and she was shivering.”

“Did you offer her a coat?”

“Oh yeah. Oldest trick in the book.” He raised his brows. “She had to stick close to me so she could give it back later.”

“It’s weird,” I said. “I have such a hard time imagining her as glamorous. I’m not glamorous.”

“You could be,” he said. “If she’d been around to show you that stuff.” He waved a hand. “That’s my fault. Sometimes I’d think about buying you a makeup kit or her favorite perfume for Christmas, but then I thought, am I sending you a bad message? You’re not her. I just got you video games instead.”

Poor Dad. He was so cute. I could just imagine him wandering into the wilds of the makeup and perfume at the mall, picking up stuff and putting it down. I liked that, in the end, he didn’t try to fill her shoes.

“When did she tell you she was a witch? And how?”

“She was really into this hippie stuff,” he said. “That’s what I thought at first. Yoga and crystals, stuff no one I knew was into back then, not in the south anyway. She was superstitious. She talked to birds and plants when we were out. I could tell she was feeling me out to see if I thought anything she said was strange. Actually, I sensed right away that there was something that really bothered her. She was in some kind of pain. For one thing, she was just traveling around—not in school. She seemed lost. She told me her family had just moved to Australia and she wouldn’t say much more about them. It felt to me like she was looking for this place that didn’t exist.” He frowned. “But she didn’t tell me about magic until I said I wanted to have a kid.”

“When was that?”

“Just before we got married.”

“Oh.” I didn’t expect that. They dated for six years before they got married. They were young when they met, and Dad was broke, and I knew my grandparents were a little weird about it. “So long?”

“Well, I know how it is now. It’s not that hard a secret to keep. She rarely used magic. She let the whole magical world slip away from her. But when she got pregnant, she knew her child would have a familiar. She had to tell me. I still remember her hands shaking, and her voice shaking…it came pouring out of her. The magic, the family feuding, how she had four ‘dads’ and they were all werewolves…I thought she took some bad drugs at first.”

I was quiet. I could imagine how hard it was. Mom must have felt so alone, I thought. I couldn’t blame Dad for thinking she was on something, but for her to bury all that for six years knowing she would alter his entire perspective of the world when she told him… And where were her parents during all this? I wondered. One of her werewolf dads appeared to me when I tried to summon her, and blurted out the truth about my family, but then she appeared instead, and he vanished.

Even in that brief moment, I could tell he loved his daughter.

If Master Blair was right, what destroyed her was the rules of the magical world, that banished my grandmother when she fell in love with the werewolves and led to a chain reaction that affected my mother and then me.

Can I blame it all on that? But despite everything, I don’t want to team up with a demon…

“It was so complicated,” Dad said, seeing the expression on my face. “I never wanted to tell you how difficult and confusing she could be, because I loved her anyway. I wanted you to love her like I did, more than I wanted you to be angry at her.”

“Maybe I wanted to be angry at her.”

“Yeah…” He shook his head. “Parenting is hard.”

“I know.”

“Really hard,” he added. “Don’t get pregnant.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not ready to be pregnant yet, don’t worry.”

“Yet? Don’t scare me like that…”

“You don’t want incubus grandbabies?” Now I squeezed his hand. “Don’t worry,” I repeated. “Anyway…I’ve just been thinking about it. Like, if I was able to save her, would you be overjoyed, or would it mess up your life?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But when you love someone, you don’t really care. I just want to know my Emily is safe even if it messes up my life. But—at the same time—you’re even more important to me. There is nothing more important to me than you, kid. You know that, right?”

“We’ve always been there for each other,” I said. “I’ve made it halfway through school, at least.”

But man, had I left a lot out. Like…I was honest with Dad about the fact that I was dating two guys at once, and I even didn’t deny that I was dating a third. But that seemed like more than enough to dump on him, so I hadn’t mentioned that we also agreed to defeat the Withered Lord with the help of a crew of vampires, nor had I even told him that the warlock and witches’ councils stormed the school and trapped Firian in fox form. Or that Master Blair had been born a woman and was removed from the school for covering that up, which didn’t seem to bode well for my future prospects there.

Dad suddenly got up from his chair. “I’ll be right back. Feel free to start in on the ice cream.”

I opened the freezer. Ooh, sweet. He didn’t just go store brand. He bought us pints with a fudge core.

“You know, I lost seven pounds at school this year,” I yelled. “And now it’s going out the window!” I grabbed a spoon.

He walked back in holding something small between his fingers. He held it out to me, but I already knew what it was.

Mom’s silver ring, engraved with ‘Fares Wyrd as she must’ in teeny-tiny script.

“I noticed you’ve been wearing rings,” he said. “Maybe you should have this one.”

I flushed. Yeah, I definitely wasn’t going to mention those rings were how my guys communicated with each other about how often they’d had sex with me. When we said goodbye for the summer, I kept all that week’s ‘activity’ on my fingers, along with the ring Firian gave me the last time I saw him in his human form.

I slid it on my finger. It fit better on my pointing finger than the ring finger.

“I think her hands were a little bigger than yours,” he said. “She was taller.” He wrapped his hand around mine. “I know she would want you to have it. But I also know that my Emily wanted her daughter to be safe. She wouldn’t ask you to join up with a demon. So just…enjoy school and learn…whatever stuff peaceful witches learn.”

“I’ll try.” I gave him a hug and we ate our ice cream while watching a standup special on Netflix, then I walked upstairs to my room, still staring at the ring. It was way too late to be safe, but I couldn’t tell Dad that. This was going to be a difficult summer. I wanted to be honest with him but I knew I couldn’t. He’d be so nervous for me. It was much better for him to think school was getting easier.

“Firian,” I whispered.

Firian materialized on my bed, looking downright cross as usual these days, golden eyes slitted as he rested his head down on his paws and glared at me. Who knew a fox could have so many facial expressions?

“Can I cuddle you?”

“No.”

I did it anyway. I wrapped my hands around his neck and buried my face in his fur. He smelled like woodsmoke and forest. “Dad gave me Mom’s ring.” I showed him. “He talked about her more than he ever has before…”

“Are you okay?” Firian asked.

“No. Not really. Even if I save her from the Withered Lord, it’ll never be like it should be. I can’t even imagine what it would be like. Is she just going to…like…find a normal job and vacuum? Sleep in Dad’s bed? Talk to Grandma during holidays? How can things ever work out? And I might put myself in terrible danger working with these vampires and trying to take down a demon. But I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Firian looked up at me and gave my cheek a small, comforting lick. I grinned at him, even as my heart shattered to look at him. I wanted his arms around me instead of my arms around him. I wanted more than that, too. But definitely not as a fox.

“Well, first things first,” I said.

“You need to train,” Firian said. “Didn’t Stuart give you a list?”

“Yeah…” I was supposed to meditate outside for an hour every day, gather and analyze forest specimens, and Firian was going to help me work my way through a book he’d given me called “Training Wards for Defense” so we could practice tapping into Wyrd magic later. Both of us were born into using Ethereal magic, so it wouldn’t be easy. We would have to sneak by the wards put up by the faery kingdom who controlled Wyrd. This was getting into some deep stuff.

Also, I was not supposed to turn on my computer or use any more electricity than necessary. And with Firian trapped as a fox, I wasn’t getting any action either.

I sighed. “This is going to suck,” I said.

“Don’t tell me how much your summer is going to suck,” Firian said. “I don’t even have thumbs.”

Chapter Two

Alec

I couldn’t have been more different than my father, and I’d spent my whole life being ashamed of it.

My dad was known world-wide as a maker of potions and tinctures. He was the last guy you would ever imagine to be seduced by a succubus, but those were exactly the sort of people who always did get seduced: the kind of person who buried themselves in their work and bottled up their sex drive, leaving them vulnerable to a weak moment when a gorgeous woman suddenly paid attention to them and offered to give them the night of their lives.

My poor dad was one of the unlucky ones, in that my mom decided he would be a good father for a child. While most wizards could keep their indiscretions private, my dad got a knock on his door in the middle of the night and opened it to find a bassinet with me in it and a note. I’m sure his reaction must have been something like, Oh shit.

I’d always known that, too. I didn’t doubt that he loved me, but he was proud of me when I was a good student, and he was extremely embarrassed when I was sent home from school for ‘inappropriate behavior’. It was an all-boys school, of course, and that probably tempered the worst of it, but I was already putting out incubus charm and some of the boys were vulnerable to it.

As I got old enough to understand, well, I was embarrassed too. The kids in my school were way too young for an incubus classmate. I didn’t understand my sex drive and neither did they. It was even worse if he tried to bring me to family gatherings or social events where girls were present.

My familiar was the only thing that saved me at first. She was so shy she never appeared in human form or talked to anyone but me, but if I lost control, she would give me a spider bite. She wasn’t venomous to me, but it still hurt. At the same time, I kind of liked it. It turned me on that a girl was biting me. Yes. That is true. Even though she rarely even let me see her girl form. That’s how bad it was to be a damn incubus. I would have a sexual fantasy about anything.

So my dad did some research into pattern magic and that was when I got my first tattoo. If I started feeling aroused I just had to trace my finger along the pattern inked on my arm and it calmed everything down. That got me through school without too much incident. I wanted so much for my dad not to regret that I’d been born, and for him to be proud of me. Over the years, I managed to get much better about repressing and hiding my incubus side.

Until I met Charlotte.

At first I thought it was just because she was a girl thrown into my all-guy environment. Her pure female scent was too much to resist. Master Blair locked down my magic so I couldn’t touch her, but I still invaded her dreams at night—against my will. I wanted to be angry at the teachers for giving me, of all people, a female roommate, but she was so delicious I couldn’t bring myself to ask for her removal.

Over the last two years, she had become so much more.

Sure, my body wanted her from day one, but that made me want to shy back from her as much as anything. I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want to wreck her life like my mom seducing my dad.

Two years of living with her, and everything had changed. I was comfortable with her. I’d never been comfortable with a girl before. Sometimes, for a second, I even forgot how much I wanted her.

For a second.

She was so damned cute. I wasn’t the only one who thought so. For an incubus, this was a dream scenario. I wanted to resist her for four years, but that was before I realized how the council would hurt her. How they’d take Firian away from her.

I didn’t break the spell so I could fuck her. I broke the spell so I could hold her.

But yeah, of course I fucked her too. It was mind blowing, to have sex with someone you loved.

Now, she was hundreds of miles away.

“Alec?” Dad called from the attic as I walked in the door of our old farmhouse.

“Hey, I’ll come up,” I called back. I walked up the steep, very-well worn stairs that twisted upward into a semi-finished attic. This was one of Dad’s work rooms. Most of the house was a work room. Potion making was a messy business. There was a lot of collecting, drying, extracting, distilling, pounding and grinding. There was almost nothing that couldn’t be a potion ingredient, and hardly anyone in the world with Dad’s depth of knowledge.

I respect the hell out of my dad, but we did not exactly understand each other. I’m a Pisces. He’s a Virgo. In our pagan coven, that was enough to get an understanding nod from anyone. He hardly saw me, but when I came upstairs he was buried in some work with a raven’s body.

“Let me wash my hands,” he said, finally standing up and turning the knob of a rickety sink. Water spurted out reluctantly. He washed up to his forearms. He was dirty and even a little bloody. We looked more alike than people realized because my incubus magic made them think I was a lot more attractive than him, plus my mom had darker skin and this was generally solid English and German wizard territory. I also worked out while he hunched over tables all day. We had the same shape of nose and mouth, the same nearsighted eyes, the same hands.

“Dad,” I said. “I’m just gonna spit this out. Mom is dead.”

“Oh—er—how did you know that?”

“Have you looked at the memoriam book this year?”

“No, I really never have time for that and I’m just not inclined to be nosy. Dead? Really? She was young, wasn’t she? What was the cause?”

“Lung cancer.”

“Ahh. Yes, well, that isn’t really a surprise.” He dried off his hands and looked at me. “Are you—upset?”

To say emotions weren’t Dad’s forte was an understatement. He tried. He just didn’t get the whole range of them. He had some emotions, but he was sort of like a robot that had been programmed for a sensible, practical range. I felt like he would have made a good loyal butler in another life. He was great at making dinner and pressing my clothes and I knew he cared about me because that was how you knew when he cared about anything: when he devoted time to it.

“A little,” I said.

“Oh. Well…was there anything you needed to say? I have dinner on the stove waiting for us already.”

I sighed. “I don’t know if there’s anything to say. I’m just upset. Charlotte actually summoned her when we had our necromancy class.”

“Did she now?”

“Yeah. And she showed up but she got angry at Charlotte. She said I needed to stop pretending to be a warlock and be an incubus. She felt that Charlotte was in the way.”

“And Charlotte? Is she in the way?” Dad asked. “Of your studies, I mean?”

“No. I think Charlotte might actually improve my studies,” I said, knowing this might get contentious.

I could see him tense a little. “What do you mean?” He lifted the lid on a pot of chili downstairs. Our kitchen was like every other magical household in the region: an old gas stove, a small fridge, battered wooden cabinets, a farmhouse table with a thousand nicks in the old wood, the smell of herbs in the air. Light fell on the floor in predictable patterns on floors that were always clean and polished but were very, very old. This house was built by my ancestors who came to America in the 1700s, a common story among magic families, and I had grown up with the sense that old Lyrman ghosts were watching me.

“I mean…I’m in love with her.”

“You’re so young,” Dad said. “And with your magic, how can you—”

I cut him off. “I know because of my magic. I gave it two years. I got to know her. The whole time, believe me, I wanted her—but I got to know her first.”

“Did you touch her? Did you—”

“I broke the spell that kept me from touching her,” I said. “And yeah, we did things.”

“Alec.” His voice was soft, simmering with the slow build of his anger. It would never go above a simmer, really, but that was just as bad. “I don’t think I really need to tell you how unwise this is. Your skill in artistic magic was coming along so well. You know what will happen now. You’ll be thinking of her all the time.”

“That’s true, but maybe I need to think of her. Maybe I need a muse,” I said. “I need someone I can focus on because all these feelings aren’t going away. They’re part of me. We can use magic to hold them back, but Char told me she likes me as I am. She told me I should just—be an incubus.”

“I’ve been hearing a lot of things about Charlotte,” Dad said. “The stories don’t reassure me about your closeness to her. I know that trying to keep you from school or forbidding you from seeing her would be pointless…”

“I knew you’d say this shit.” I crossed my arms. “You asked me if I was upset about Mom dying? Yeah. I am. I’m upset because she was half of what I am, and you just want that half to go away.”

“I’m not trying to be cruel, Alec. I’m just pragmatic. I had to repress your impulses or you might have—forced yourself on others.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that. I’m not some mindless demon. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But Charlotte wants me as much as I want her.”

“I doubt that.”

I slapped the table. “You ‘doubt’ it?”

“I mean, she is under the influence of magic. You can never know what she wants. And we know so little about where her fate is going. You are not the sort of person who should be with a controversial girl. When you finish school and come of age and have proven yourself as a warlock, your prospects will be really very good. At that point, the elders will be less concerned with your mother’s blood because you will have shown that level of discipline. And as I’ve said, we’ll find you a good match through the council.”

“I’m with Charlotte now. I don’t want anyone else.”

His chili was really good. What a waste of flavor. We ate in annoyed silence.

Dad didn’t fight me. He believed—rightly—that telling a child no only led to rebellion. But he radiated disappointment. I could just feel him thinking that I was his only child and that he had failed. He didn’t know what to do with me.

And I had to come to the hard realization that I couldn’t please him anymore. He was never going to approve of me being an incubus.

So it was time to stop even trying.

“I’m still going to be a great warlock,” I said, as I was finally finishing up my bowl. I mean, Dad could cook. The chili had perfect heat and multiple levels of flavor. Even when I was pissed off I couldn’t help enjoying it. “But I’m going to be a great incubus too.”

“I don’t know if there is such a thing as a great incubus.”

“Fuck. Of course you’d say something like that.” His eyes tracked me as I stood up, cool and judgmental. He didn’t apologize or try to stop me from leaving the room or react much at all. “Well, I’m proving you wrong.”

I washed out my bowl and then tromped upstairs. I tried not to let my dad get to me, but I had always tried to be what he wanted. When it came to Charlotte, I couldn’t do it anymore. I had gotten a taste of what it was like when someone accepted me for who I really was, and I couldn’t stop now.

I wanted to talk to her so badly, but the only telephone in our house was downstairs off the kitchen. We didn’t have internet in the house either. One witch in our little hamlet ran an internet ‘cafe’ on her enclosed porch so the rest of us could keep the corrupting devices out of our houses.

Damnit. I was aching for Charlotte so badly. Just to hear her voice or see her face—anything. Summer was going to kill me. I traced my tattoos to calm down my urges, but you know what? Tattoos that control sex drive don’t help when you just miss someone’s presence.

I threw open a sketch pad instead. I didn’t usually draw people. My subjects were all from the magical world. Magical artists used the power of capturing an image to control the world around them. This was why a lot of religions cautioned against making images of people or gods. Even humans knew that if you painted someone, you could gain influence over them. Lately I’d been trying to paint the Withered Lord. I’d never seen him, but I could still piece together his essence from accounts. When school was over, the rest of my friends planned to battle this demon, and my best shot at helping them out was to weaken him with my artwork.

But I didn’t feel like drawing a demon today.

It was her essence I wanted to capture.

It was Charlotte I wanted under my sway. It was Charlotte I wanted to do things to, but I didn’t want to hurt her. Quite the opposite. The magic for seduction wasn’t really that different from the magic of controlling a demon…but it was a lot more pleasurable.

I broke out the ink pens and the watercolors. First, a sketch. Loose, feeling like her more than it looked like her exactly. I would draw her from the back. Her hair was often in a ponytail, dancing with her movements. There were always wispy hairs coming out of the ponytail, softening her face. The curve of a shoulder, waist, hip, beneath the small men’s uniform. She was always animated, her hands busy. I drew one of them trailing down as if to brush flowers or Firian’s fur. I paused before realizing I did sort of miss Firian too. He’d become a part of the landscape, and I took great pleasure in watching her enjoy him. I filled him in, a thick fox coat and pointed ears at her side. While I gave her the uniform suit jacket and the white cuffs of a dress shirt peeking out of her sleeves, I decided to give her a mini skirt and knee socks because this was my art so why not draw her sexy legs?

Having put down the lines in black ink, I let colors seep into the paper. I tinted her with red and golden shades, warm colors like fire. She was like fire. Like warmth, like home. Her desire fed me and I felt like I couldn’t live without it now.

When I was done, the picture was suitable for all ages. I could have painted her otherwise, but that didn’t feel right. Not yet. It still captured her sensuality, her beauty. This was just the beginning.

My dad was never going to understand this feeling. He was wrong. She was under the influence of my magic, sure. But it wasn’t true that I could never know what she wanted.

I knew what she wanted. I knew I would make her happy every day of her life.

Now that I had made love to Charlotte, I wasn’t going to go back to the way I was. I couldn’t hold back anymore.

Chapter Three

Charlotte

It had been a while since I dreamed of Alec.

Do you ever have dreams that are so real that in the dream you’re like, I think this is a dream but maybe there’s a way to hold onto it forever? And the whole dream you’re trying to find a way?

That was how Alec dreams were. They were super clear. I remembered every second of them.

In the dream, I woke up in bed and at first I thought I was waking up for real, but then I realized that Alec was sitting in my computer chair, and oh damn, all he was wearing was some low-cut black briefs. And he was sketching me.

He looked up and smiled. His red-gold eyes had a very faint glow like light through a stained glass window. “You’re here,” he said.

“You’re here,” I replied. “Alec, I miss you so much.”

“Throw off the blankets,” he said.

I shoved the blanket off and the tank top and underwear I’d been wearing were gone.

“I never got around to drawing you last year,” he said.

“We were busy.”

“Do I have your permission now?” The look he gave me, it was like he’d already answered his own question. He knew I wasn’t going to say no. I didn’t even bother to answer.

“I’ve been painting ethereals and demons,” he said. “Learning to control and summon creatures. But there is another way to use artistic magic. Painting someone deepens a bond. Every time you give me your image, Charlotte, a part of you is mine forever.”

“There’s no place I’d rather have my parts be,” I said.

He walked over to me, holding his wand in one hand, and slid the wand down one of my arms, urging me to put it back over my head. Then, he trailed the tip down the curve of my body. I shivered. He could touch me now, but he was acting like he still couldn’t. He drew the wand down the line of my leg, encouraging me to extend it, and then, for the other leg, he hooked the back of my knee and made me prop it up, spreading me out a little.

“So, do you remember what Monty suggested I do, back when I couldn’t touch you?”

“The transfer feeling spell?”

“You pay attention,” he said, with a grin.

“When it sounds hot, you bet I do.”

“I figured it out.” He handed his wand to me, pressing the handle against the palm of my right hand. “I’m going to draw you, and you’re going to tease me.”

The transfer feeling spell Montague mentioned? It would let Alec feel sensation through his wand. So basically…it turned his wand into a hard, detached cock.

I mean, these are the spells they don’t teach you in class. Which was good, by the way, considering our youngest professors were pushing seventy and I would die if I had to learn magical sex ed from any of them.

When I was having incubus dreams, my inhibitions seemed even lower than they were in real life, because it was still a dream. It wasn’t quite real. Whatever part of my real life brain that might have been embarrassed or worried that someone would hear me moaning, well, it was gone.

He sat back down, and I started rubbing the wand against my clit to get me going a little.

Oh yeah, he could feel it. As soon as I started rubbing the wand against me, his cock was throbbing in response. I went really slow so he could concentrate. He started sketching, moving his pencil in long, confident strokes across the page. He was getting down the lines of my body; I could tell.

He was breathing slowly, trying to control his desire and focus on the page, and I realized this was some serious incubus warlock training going on. Both sides of his nature were working together and warring with each other at once. I could tell when I rubbed a little harder and faster, it made him crazy. He couldn’t help but fidget and it made his thick length strain and throb.

I got to study his face while he studied my body. His features were handsome, his cheekbones chiseled, and if he was a bit of a pretty boy now, there was also a ruggedness to him and I could just tell he was only going to get better with age. It took everything I had not to spring off the bed and tear his underwear off, climb on that lap of his and stick my tongue down his throat.

I could tell when he was done with all the basic lines and narrowing in on more details, and that seemed like a good time for the wand and me to take things to the next level. I slid it between my slick folds. Alec’s wand was still a little too thin to be a really satisfying dildo, but it did have a nice little curve to it. I felt tender inside, the hard wand like a firm touch.

“Mm…” I wanted to close my eyes and pretend he was the one touching me, but I also wanted to look at him.

“Char…damn…” He ruffled his hair, agonized.

“Can you feel me?”

“Every inch. Take it easy so I can get this sketch done first.” He reached down to run a hand over his erection and I snapped my fingers.

“No,” I said. “No. Finish your picture. Isn’t that the point?”

He growled at the wall. “I’m going to explode.”

“You do look like you might,” I said. “But I’m trying to help you learn magic here.”

“Since when did you become a teacher?”

“Since Firian has been bossing me around, making me do all the boring stuff Stuart asked me to do. I spent three hours today analyzing forest plants.”

“I entered your dream so I can do whatever I want to you,” he said, but he got back to drawing. “Hold still. I’m trying to draw your face.”

I was enjoying the dance. So was he.

No one better wake me up, that’s all.

He sketched. I stroked the wand against my G-spot very slowly. I was definitely enjoying that I had control of both of us right now. I knew how to build myself up, with focused little strokes. But he got off more when I gave the wand a longer thrust, so now and then I gave him a little treat.

Before long I had to slow down.

“Keep going,” he said. “I’m almost done.”

“But I’m going to lose it.”

“Go ahead,” he said. “I’d like to watch.”

I flushed deeply. “And then what?”

“Then I’ll make you come a second time.”

“I usually need a little break.”

“Do you?” He arched a brow. “I don’t think I can go easy on you. You were warned about me.”

“Oh god,” I breathed. When he said that I just started losing it. He was right. I got this feeling that if I just surrendered to him, he could give me so many orgasms I wouldn’t even be able to count them anymore. “Ohh. Ohh!”

He was sketching like the wind now, I heard the pencil scraping a bunch of frantic lines. He rubbed himself with his left hand. “Yes,” he said. “Faster. Faster.”

“Alec! Al—rmph mmf…”

Suddenly I couldn’t scream anymore.

And then I was spitting out fur. And the room was dark, and Alec was gone, and a fox was sitting on my chest giving me a look of utter disdain.

“Well, that was loud,” he said.

“Peh!” I wiped my tongue off.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have hands.” Firian sounded extremely pissed. “So the incubus can do distance dreams too, huh?”

I slowed my breathing. “I’m so sorry, Firian. I wish you could touch me. Did Dad hear?”

“Probably not, thanks to the fact that I threw myself down on top of your mouth as you started yelling, ‘Ohhh! Alec!’”

I covered my face with my hands. “This is the worrrst.”

“I agree,” Firian said. “I would have been happy to pick up where he left off and smother your screams.” He looked depressed, and he was adorable when he was depressed, but I had to remind myself again not to think of him as a fox. I couldn’t get used to it. I had to fix him.

What if I can’t? What if he’s stuck like this forever?

“Did you finish?” he said.

“No, obviously not!” I snapped. “But it’s okay. I know it’s worse for you.” I put my arms around his soft fur. “What are fox penises like?”

“Interesting, but small.”

“Can I turn into a fox?”

“Not unless you have even more hidden talents than I’m aware of.”

We both snorted with laughter. Then we sighed. Then we fell asleep together again, and I dreamed about getting lost on campus, with no sexy Alec in sight.

It was a very, very, very long summer.

Chapter Four

Firian

So, this was my life now.

Being able to turn into an animal is very useful, and I had spent a good half my life as a fox. But getting stuck in fox form? The worst.

That spell stripped my humanity away. I wasn’t Charlotte’s boyfriend anymore. I could practically see her trying to look at me the way she used to, conjuring up something in her imagination, because the real me was now nonexistent. She could snuggle my fur. We could watch TV together. I was a useful ear when she was sad, I guess.

But, basically, I was a pet now, and life was full of indignities. This was not my world now. This was the human world and it was made for bipedal creatures with opposable thumbs.

However, there was another realm that was mine, and it was where familiars my age supposedly belonged most of the time. I was spending more time in Etherium now. Even there, I was locked into my fox form, but it was easier to maneuver around that with magic. In Etherium, the line between humanoid and animal was much thinner.

“Charlotte, I think it’s time I took you to Etherium,” I said.

“What? I can go to Etherium? You never said so before.”

“Well, it’s a strange place and witches don’t belong there,” I said. “Even though Etherium is safer than Sinistra, you need to stick close to me.”

“You can just take me there?”

“Yes,” I said. “A familiar is supposed to take his witch to Etherium at least once, and your dad said he’d work late today—” Besides I am going insane looking at you— “—so it seems like a good idea before summer ends.”

“Okay!” She bounced onto her feet. “Do I need anything? Maybe I should change.”

“No,” I said. Summer lazy Charlotte in a tank top and short shorts was a Charlotte I wanted to see as much of as possible.

“Are you sure? Will there be mystical beings in beautiful clothes there?”

“We’re not going to any of those sorts of places,” I assured her. “I’m taking you to my neck of the woods. Put a hand on me and I’ll transport you there.”

“Wait, let me leave a note for Dad just in case he gets home early.” She wriggled her feet into flats as she walked to the fridge to jot a note on the Byrne family bulletin. Under her dad’s unsubtle scrawl of ‘MILK BEER DONUTS’ she added ‘Went to Etherium with Firian, be back v. soon <3 <3”.

I really loved both of them. Although I could have done without the image of milk, beer and donuts together.

Then she crouched next to me and dug her fingers into my fur. Her touch felt wonderful, but I had to resist getting too affectionate. We both had our limits of weirdness.

“Hang on,” I said. “It’s weird at first.”

Traveling to Etherium was like blinking to me, but I knew for humans it was more jarring. Charlotte stumbled through the space between realms, and turned to me clutching her head.

Then a huge grin broke out on her face.

I had brought her to my cottage here, in my forest. It was very much like my cabin near her house, except everything in Etherium felt more like a fairy tale. The forests had profusions of wildflowers and songbirds, chipmunks and rabbits. The cottage was plastered on the exterior with green shutters and window boxes, where flowers grew without needing to be weeded and watered, as long as I remembered to appreciate them.

I walked to the door and it creaked open as if nudged by the gentle breeze. “Come in,” I said. “Have some ethereal food.”

“Yes please,” she said, following me in and drawing in a slow breath as she saw the spread of tea cups and matching pot, scones and jam and cream. “It’s like a tea room! Did you make this?”

“It’s the sort of thing that just appears when I have a guest.”

“It just appears?”

“It’s magic.”

“Okay…but…like…”

“Don’t think too hard,” I said. “I mean it. You might knock yourself back home if you start questioning things. This is a realm where magic is the law of the land. There are things I can do here I could never do in the Fixed Plane or even a Parallel. Like this—” I indulged in an illusion that made me look human again.

The look in her eyes killed me. “Firian!” Her hands flew toward me and I had to step back.

“Don’t touch me, Charlotte.”

“I can’t touch you?”

“It won’t go that far. Even here. But I can hold the illusion easily and even have tea with you.”

“Well, that’s no fun. You can hold a teacup, but not me?”

“The curse is meant to keep me from you. Not tea. So I can fight against the curse to drink tea, but not…”

“Oh…”

“I just…wanted to be human with you for a moment,” I said.

“I’d rather see your face,” she said. “Even if it’s all I get.”

“Just think of it as a step in our courtship,” I said. “Back in the old days, but not nearly as old as you might think…witches usually didn’t get to touch the object of their affection for years. Chaperones and all of that. At least we’ve had more than that…” My eyes drifted to the ring on her finger, which she twisted.

“Yes,” she said. “The memory is burned in my mind.” She picked up a scone, her face just short of sad. “I really liked when…I was with two of my guys at once. I was looking forward to—you know—all three of you.” She flushed. “Well, that came out racier than I meant.”

I was trying to drink my tea. The illusion went so far that I felt human, but I had to keep calm if I wanted to stay that way. This wasn’t helping.

I adored this girl with every fiber of my being. In human form, I wanted to stay at her side forever. In fox form, I would have wrapped myself around her like a stole if I didn’t have inconvenient bones. I felt like she was a part of me. That feeling, I realized now, had been creeping up on me all of my life. Could I ever have resisted it? I think we were always doomed, and I wondered how many familiars lived with a secret love for their witch.

“What…what would happen…I mean…if the curse is never broken?” She shifted her tea cup in her hands bit by bit so that the handle rotated 180 degrees. “If I could never touch you again, Firian, I—”

“We’re a long way from never,” I said.

“I don’t know how I could be with Montague and Alec but leave you out.”

“I would be more miserable if you weren’t happy.”

“Well, I’ll be miserable if you’re not happy.”

“That’s not how it works.”

She looked a little indignant. “Yes, it is! You’re my partner, Firian. That is how it works. I don’t want you to be more devoted to me than I am to you.”

She made me feel warmer, just by her presence. “You’re indignant that your familiar is doing his job.”

“I don’t like that—you’re—you have to be devoted to me.”

“I don’t know that I have to,” I said. “It doesn’t feel unwilling.”

“But familiars have to be devoted.”

“Familiars are just right for their witch,” I said. “That’s all. I don’t want you to feel guilty about it. I can’t stand not being able to touch you, but I will stand it, because I love you.”

She nibbled on the scone. “We’re still partners,” she said. “No matter how long this lasts. I don’t want a slave.”

“I know. I’ve seen the stuff you read.”

“Okay, I was reading ‘The Demon’s Slave’ for…”

“Research?”

“No.”

“You were going to say research.”

“Shut up.” She snickered. “I’m still waiting to get ravished by a fox-eared boy.”

“Never. I’m not fan art.”

She sighed. “That’s true. You’re not very cool.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t go that far. I’m plenty cool.”

She leaned over and pecked my nose before I realized what she was doing, which broke my illusion and turned me back into a fox.

“Sorry,” she said. “I just couldn’t resist.”

“I have more to show you,” I said, restoring the illusion with slightly more effort. “So behave yourself.”

I wanted to show her how beautiful Etherium could be, so when we walked outside, I tried to think about something romantic. The path opened up, and she stayed close to my side, but kept thrusting her hand in her pocket to keep herself from reaching for mine. My skin itched to touch her, to grab her and kiss her, taste her skin and mouth and the sweetness between her legs. When I felt human, it was almost unbearable, but I knew I was tricking myself as much as her.

The trees grew taller as the path went on, and more flowers grew in the forest, until we walked in a field of blue flowers under a canopy of pale green stirred by soft wind. The birds were just as colorful and one of them fluttered toward her. She held out her hand and the bird landed there and sang “wheet-wheet!”

“Whaaat! This just went full Disney movie,” she said. “It’s not leaving!”

“Nah, they won’t,” I said.

“Will it poop on me?”

“It’s possible, but unlikely.”

We stopped to let a family of ducks cross the path now, and a little farther along there was a tiny hedgehog passing us by.

“Oh, hello!” the tiny hedgehog said. “What brings you here?”

She stopped in her tracks and her mouth fell open.

“You met this hedgehog on wand-making day,” I said. “Remember? You’re Irving’s familiar, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” the hedgehog said.

“I didn’t really meet anyone else’s familiar. They were all so shy.”

“It’s not really appropriate to speak to other witches,” the hedgehog said. “But you’re here now, so it’s not that strange.”

“Riiight…”

“She’s never been here before,” I said.

“The high ethereals are dancing in the willows,” the hedgehog said. “So you should take her down to see it.” She tipped her head and waved a paw at us and ambled along.

“High ethereals?” You couldn’t seek out high ethereals. You had to just stumble on them.

“Sooo cuuute,” Charlotte whispered. “The high ethereals…are they like angels?”

“The closest thing you’ll ever see.”

“Are they scary?”

“Of course they’re not scary. They’re sort of…above our concerns. They’re beautiful, actually. It’s special to see them.”

She still looked slightly nervous.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “This is what Etherium will show you today. It’s better not to resist.”

The path came to an abrupt stop at a bluff overlooking a winding river. I could feel the high ethereals even before I saw them; they had that effect. My skin prickled with goosebumps as I caught their scent on the wind. Seeing high ethereals was like coming to a meadow of flowers you have never seen before, but also feeling that they must be natives, that you have come to some secret place where old things, and old magic, still exist.

Charlotte’s eyes widened, and she started creeping closer to them. She wasn’t scared anymore. Of course not. Ethereals were beautiful, and as expected, they didn’t even look up, even when Charlotte snapped a twig.

They were all tall and graceful, with skin and hair of every natural color, and a few that weren’t natural—lilac hair, faintly greenish skin. They all seemed to be women. Although humans sometimes mistook them for the fae, they weren’t icy like the faeries. They were playful and laughing, and just watching them made the world seem brighter. They were skipping barefoot in the grass. It sounds silly, but that was what made it so enjoyable to watch—the utter lack of self-consciousness, or any worry or anger, the complete opposite of a high demon.

“So these are…ethereals,” Charlotte whispered. “Why are the witches and warlocks so uptight, then?”

“High ethereals are the purest expression of Etherium,” I said. “But humans and other low spirits have free will and they tend to mess things up. On the other hand, that’s the same reason most sinistrals spirits aren’t completely evil. It’s just impossible for creatures like us to commit.”

“True. I feel like I have a reset button where if I get too happy, I’ll freak out about something stupid, but if I get too sad, I’ll laugh at something simple. But…they’re mesmerizing. Why don’t you like being here? It seems like a really gorgeous place. Not so different from your cabin in Georgia, but way better.”

“No,” I said. “Georgia was better.”

She snorted. “You’re nuts.”

“Etherium doesn’t have you.”

“That’s cheesy.” But she looked pleased.

“It’s so cheesy, but it’s also true. This doesn’t feel like my home.”

She bit her lip. “I want to kiss you so badly right now. I’ll lose my mind if—”

“No, you won’t,” I said. “You’ll find a way to hit that reset button.”

“No…no, I won’t.” The ethereals finally glanced up at us as she started crying.

“Time to go,” I said, pulling her back to her familiar living room.

“Oh—huh? We had to leave?” She unfurled her limbs with a wince, as her crouched position in Etherium had translated badly to the couch. I was back in my fox form again, the illusion of anything else too exhausting to create in the Fixed Plane.

“You can’t crash an angel dance and start crying. Really bad form. But I’d rather watch you cry over me than ethereals any day.”

Chapter Five

Charlotte

When it was time to return to Merlin College, Montague picked me up on his way, driving up from Florida. I was overjoyed to see him. Montague and Alec were both cut off from me during the summer. Letters flew back and forth between us. Letters. On paper. Ohmigod. It sounded so romantic, to write letters, but it was actually just slow and tedious. I missed them so much but actually sitting down to write a letter was unsatisfying and weird, so I only wrote them two each.

“Let’s not do that again,” I said. “It was hell.”

“Summer with our family?”

“Yes. I missed you so much.”

“Fine by me,” he said. “It was hell. My friends won’t even talk to me since they heard that not only am I a vampire, but I made contact with my sire. They’ve already written me off as lost.”

“Yeah. That sounds awful. I mean, I just missed you, and other than that it was like, barbecue and movies. But still.”

“Oh, the inhumanity,” he said.

“Oh, the inhumanity, indeed,” Firian said from the back seat.

“I don’t see any rings on your fingers,” Montague said. “Didn’t Alec visit you in your dreams?”

“Heh,” Firian said.

“He tried,” I said. “It didn’t really work out. I’m not a quiet sleeper, I guess, at least not when an incubus is paying me a visit.”

“Ah…so our Charlotte is extremely frustrated.” Montague shot me an aggressive sideways expression. He reached for my hand and trailed his fingers from my wrist to my fingertips. “I’m looking forward to taking care of that for you.”

“Get a fucking room,” Firian said.

Montague grimaced. “This is no fun. Maybe Stuart will have some ideas to fix you.”

“Don’t drive off a mountain,” I said, brushing the steering wheel as we were driving on a twisty, one-and-a-half lane road with no guard rail.

We were taking a back way up the mountain range, arriving in North Carolina early to meet up with Stuart, aka, our former teacher and lord of the faeries. I had started calling him Sturond in my head, because when I last saw him in his true form he had flowing hair and robes and great eyebrows. It was very jarring after a year of thinking Stuart was just a dorky old warlock who grew up in the 50s in Kansas.

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 bloody 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 near 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 Emily 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?”

“I didn’t dare get them in trouble. I took Amtrak and then used a compel spell on a local man with a truck, if you must know the details. I’m not sure why you care how I got around.”

“I don’t know why I just enjoy the thought of you enduring a long train ride. Coach?”

“Unfortunately, they didn’t have a royal car,” he said.

“Well…I’m glad Stuart let you crash here,” I said, taking the lantern from him.

“You do realize you just agreed to behead a demon, Chosen One?”

“Do you realize you did, Exiled One?” I ducked into the bathroom, feeling nervous about being alone with Harris. And, admittedly, also a little nervous about beheading a demon. I mean, really? Maybe we could just deliver the faeries a hand or something.

The bathroom was rustic but very clean with flowers in a vase, blooming in the dark. The toilet was a bench with a hole in it, but I could hear some sort of underground river flowing under it and there was no smell although I hoped the stream flowed to the magical world and not our mountain. When I came out, Harris was gone and a petite red-haired woman was standing outside the door, waiting, with some flowers in one hand and a cloth in the other.

“Oh! You startled me.”

“I’m sorry, miss. I’m Penny, the house silkie. I’ll just clean up after you…” She looked anxious to get in behind me and replace the flowers with fresher flowers and wipe everything off.

“I didn’t really do anything,” I said.

She looked up at me twitchily, then went back to work wiping off every surface like a little magical embodiment of OCD.

I returned to the main room. Harris had returned to the group and Auntie Adia and Firian were by the door, waiting for me.

“I’m ready.”

Auntie Adia smiled apologetically at me as we walked back into daylight. “I am so sorry we were never there for you, Charlotte.”

You know that feeling when you’re being all tough, and you don’t even realize how much you’re denying your real emotions until someone gives you the okay to express them? And then suddenly you’re a mess?

I mean, maybe that’s just me. But I wanted to say, oh, it’s totally cool, I know you were trying to protect me and I had my dad!

Instead, I suddenly felt like I was about to sob. “I’ve really…been wondering…why my grandparents haven’t…contacted me.”

Her brows furrowed. “They want to. They truly do. They were…trying to protect you. I know it’s an awful excuse. I told your grandmother that protecting people never does any good, and she said, I know. And then…we looked at each other and agreed we had to do it anyway, because we know what our enemies of capable of.” She looked really distressed, but I saw her shake it off. “And I know how happy a normal life can be. I married Richard and never looked back, to be honest. Well…I do miss being a bird, that’s all.”

“I miss being a human,” Firian said. “I don’t suppose you have any idea how to fix that problem.”

“Catherine is the one who fixed you in this form, isn’t that so?” Auntie Adia asked. “Your great-aunt?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“It will be hard to break one of her spells.”

“We already know it will be hard,” I said. “That isn’t what Firian needs to hear right now. He’s already depressed.”

“I’m not depressed. I’m extremely…vexed,” he said. I think he was actually thinking of a string of four letter words, but was being polite to Auntie Adia.

“She was always a better witch than your grandmother,” Adia said. “She earned her place on the council. And losing both her children to forbidden magic has done nothing for her mood from what I hear. Still, I think the easiest way to break the spell would be to find a way to bargain with her, because it will be some time before you’re a match for her.”

“Bargain…” I groaned. “So many bargains in the magical world, gawwwd. What am I supposed to offer?”

“You give nice shoulder rubs,” Firian said dryly.

“She’s not going to want anything I have.”

“That may be true. But…if you see her…I would consider that she is a woman who lost her only daughter and has no grandchildren. Deep down, I know she doesn’t want to hate you.”

“But she still hates my grandmother. You said that’s why my grandparents won’t come here.”

“I didn’t say I had any easy answers,” Auntie Adia said, looking at the ground nervously. “I do have something for you, however. It will help you understand the situation.” She was carrying a big ol’ dowdy pink leather purse, that I instinctively felt was probably expensive despite its ugliness, although it wasn’t a label I knew. She drew out a stuffed envelope with what looked like twenty pages of photocopied pages of an old letter inside.

“This is the letter your grandmother wrote to the council when they tried to get your mother to attend a witch academy,” she said. “Sally had been written out of the books and was being whispered about in the cruelest terms. They said she was a whore, corrupted and sinful. No one in her family or the entire magical world would even speak to her, but they still had the nerve to try and pluck Emily away to boarding school, where Sally knew full well they would have turned her against her own parents.”

I clutched the papers in my hand and saw my grandmother’s cursive for the first time. Luckily she wasn’t old enough that it was really fancy and hard to read. Unluckily, I was absolutely terrible at reading any cursive. My throat still welled up, just seeing this new piece of my family history.

“Thanks, I…I’m really…really glad you came,” I said. “I always thought my dad was enough. And he—he is, mostly. But he’s not magical. And—”

She put her arms around me. “You were never abandoned, Charlotte. Now that we can’t protect you anymore…the good thing is that we can finally know you. All in good time. You’ll meet your grandmother…and all of your grandfathers.” She gave me a mischievous little smile. “I hear it runs in the family.”

“Erm.”

“It’s all right, I know you don’t want to talk about it to an old lady, but I was a little bit wild once, you know. Richard and I once made love backstage at a concert.”

“Depends what the concert was,” Firian said.

She frowned. “Well, I must say I prefer my music to be sweet like the birds singing out my window. Sally liked it darker.”

“It must have been bad,” Firian said.

“It was ABBA.”

“What? Holy crap, you ignored an ABBA concert? You are very cool, Auntie Adia,” I said. “Although I would have waited until the concert was over.”

“Well, we knew when they were going to do Thank You for the Music. Richard had the set list and I’m afraid we just don’t care for that one,” she said. “Terribly sorry if that was anyone else’s favorite.”

“I’ll try to tamp down my indignation,” Firian said.

“Anyway, I wish you all happiness with your own four boys.”

“Three,” I said, blushing.

“Oh,” she said. “Just three?”

“Just three.”

“Well, then,” she said.

Yeah, she knew what was up.

Chapter Seven

Charlotte

“My grandma was awesome.” I was reading the papers by candlelight. “She wrote this letter to the council and she’s like, fuck you, you forced me out and I had sex with hot wolves and it was awesome, so I’m not giving you my daughter. We are in the middle of a full on rebellion, you know?”

“I bet if things continue like this, I wouldn’t be the only familiar who wants more freedom,” Firian said.

“It’s a nice thought, but it won’t be easy—at all—to bring the faeries a demon’s head,” Montague said. “And they are faeries, so if they don’t see an advantage in the long run, they can still say no and they won’t care how crestfallen you look.”

“It will work out, or it won’t,” Alec said. “I think that’s the lesson. All we have is right now.” He walked over to me. “And right now…” He took the paper from my hand and put it down, and then he kissed me, his hot breath brushing my cheek before his lips claimed mine, his tongue slipping in for a deep thrust.

“No patience anymore,” I gasped.

“I sat through a lot of talk to get to this moment. I was very patient. But I’ve been craving you all summer and you’re right, I can’t wait another moment. I warned you about me, Charlotte.”

His words drove me nuts. I twisted out of my chair and kissed him again. “You did.”

I still didn’t expect what happened next, which was that he spun me around so I was facing away from him and unbuttoned my shorts, yanking them off me. My skin temperature must have risen about a hundred degrees.

“I warned you that I would need you…a lot,” he breathed in my ear. “But I was apart from you all summer. Even the dreams couldn’t be fulfilled. So now I have countless warm, lazy summer days of dreaming of you. Of those dreams, all pent up inside me, just waiting to come out.”

“I’m up to date with the birth control spell,” I said. “So let them come.”

“Even better,” he groaned, grinding against my underwear.

“But—um—Firian,” I said reluctantly. “I don’t want to leave you out.”

“You know I won’t make you put your life on hold for me,” he said. “But I am going to watch like an awkwardly staring pet.”

“Oh—um—okay—”

“I’m kidding,” he said. “It would be torture. I’ll go on a frustrated hunt. The small animals of Etherium better stay out of my way tonight.” He vanished.

“I feel bad for that dude,” Montague said.

“Maybe it’s…for the best right now,” I said. “I’ve never been with all three of you.”

“Don’t tell me two is your limit,” Alec said. “I know when to move fast and when to take my sweet time building you up again. It’s written in my very bones to know what you want. And I definitely know right now…”

Montague peeled himself off the bed where he’d been looking through a book, and came up to me from the front as Alec slid my panties down enough to slip his hard cock in between my folds from behind. He was so big he had no trouble reaching. Just thinking about that length of his, and how much I ached after taking it…in the best kind of way…

Alec pulled up my shirt. Montague admired me with a small, knowing smile. “Thankfully, I am a little more patient than Alec.”

“Because you have plenty of porn on your phone,” Alec said.

Montague shot him a dirty look. They always hassled each other a little. I think this was what helped them get comfortable about being with me together. “It’s…not the same anymore,” Montague said.

“But you still looked at it,” I said, with a little smirk.

“It was a long summer,” he said.

“It was,” I said. “So get your clothes off and show me how much you missed me, already.”

Alec was already naked, at this point, having almost magically divested of his clothing. He took my ponytail in his hand and walked me backwards to the bed, where he flung me down and grinned. “Be careful what you ask for.”

He thrust into me as far as one stroke would take him, which definitely wasn’t all the way. I had to work my way up to Alec. There was a little more sheer pleasure with Montague or Firian because they weren’t quite so big, but there was also an intense pride and satisfaction in knowing I could handle an incubus.

“Oh…”

“My girl,” Alec said. “You give me everything I want and more.”

“Ahh…” Those were the words I had to choose from right now, oh or ahh. I was really turned on by the way he had just gone for it, even though… “Um…so you know what I want?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Because I like…a little more…finger picking and not so bass heavy.”

“I’ll get to that,” he said. “But I’ll take my pleasure from you first.”

The answer satisfied me. My inner walls burned hot as he fucked me hard, sliding in and out easily with my increasing wetness. I knew he wouldn’t leave me unsatisfied. With every stroke, I could feel how much he needed me, wanted me, demanded me.

Montague leaned over me, studying my face for just a second—I must have looked plastered already. Then he leaned over my chest, licking his lips as his teeth sharpened. He took one nipple in his mouth and sucked on it.

“Don’t bite me,” I pleaded, terrified at the sight of my tender nipple inside that fanged mouth, but it also made me even hotter. That little edge of fear stoked me to even greater heights.

Alec came hard inside me, pumping me full of his essence, while Montague was still teasing at my tender nipples, and I felt like a woman.

“Done already?” Montague said, his voice a tiger’s purr in my ear.

“Not me,” I gasped. “Just Alec.”

“Good. So there’s room for me.”

“I’m not done,” Alec said. “I’m just getting started. I wonder if it’s time to start expanding your horizons.” He reached a hand down, gently cupping my mound, feeling my heat. “What do you think about trying us both at once?”

“Nervous,” I breathed. “Excited…”

“Have you ever played back here?” His hand reached back to my ass, a slick finger gently circling the hole.

“I can’t say I’ve never experimented,” I said. “But just a little. With toys. Not boys.” I laughed nervously.

“You’re definitely too big,” Montague said to Alec. “It’s my turn to explore new territory…”

“Like, is it messy?” I asked.

Alec chuckled. “You’re too cute. I’m a demon. I don’t even care if it’s messy. I’ll just clean you up.”

“Well, there’s no shower here!”

“People had sex before showers were invented. But I can haul in a bucket of water for you.”

“Shirtless,” I said.

“Well, it’s Alec, so I think that goes without saying,” Montague said dryly. “The trick will be getting him to put his pants back on.”

Alec stepped out and came back a minute later, posing in the doorway with a bucket of water in one hand. He flexed one muscular arm and slowly lowered the pail to the ground. The light of the cave was dim, but just enough to highlight ever contour of his abs.

“Bow-chicka-wow-wow,” I said. “I feel like I ordered a really weird stripper.”

He grinned and slid into the bed beside me, while both of them started kissing and caressing my naked body. I was quickly rendered breathless and almost useless by the melting quality of their hands and mouths on me, this overdose of masculinity after a lot of warm, hungry summer nights where I could only dream.

“Mm…you guys smell so good…and you feel even better.”

“Are you ready to be filled completely?” Alec asked, circling my nipples with his fingers.

“Yeah…I think so…”

“You’re definitely hot enough to catch fire down here…” He moved to my nub of desire, slowly teasing a sensation out of me that almost felt like an orgasm, but in super slow motion, and it never quite fully hit. All I knew was that it was driving me out of my mind.

Before I knew it, Montague was stroking lube onto his cock. He kissed me gently while sliding a fingertip up my nether hole. “Getting you good and ready…”

Alec lay on the bed and pulled me toward him, his tongue sinking into my mouth, his hands running along my back, gently urging me to lift my ass. I felt Montague enter me, just the tip of his shaft, his cool skin quickly warming against my heat.

I gripped Alec’s upper arms, groaning.

“Slowly,” Montague said. “Ungh…you feel so good, Charlotte.”

“Look at your face,” Alec said, grinning.

I chewed my lip as Montague carefully slid into me. I was so turned on, it didn’t hurt as much as I feared, but it was unfamiliar and I felt really full, and a little scared because I knew Alec wanted more of me too. Oh yeah, I knew what I was in for when I agreed to this.

“I’m in,” Montague said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah…yeah, I’m good…” I could barely speak. Alec’s cock was between my pussy lips, slowly sliding along the tingling nerves there, driving me insane. “Let’s do this.”

“That’s our girl…we’ll take good care of you.” Alec nudged inside me, Montague shifting position until I was as close between them as I could be, my toes already curling as Alec’s thick length hit so many spots I was seeing fireworks.

The only thing missing? Firian.

When I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine that some of the hands touching me were not Montague’s cool fingers or Alec’s strong hands, but Firian’s graceful ones. It destroyed me that he had to miss out on these moments, that we were unable to share our bodies anymore.

Despite that tinge of sadness, I couldn’t hold onto it for long before Montague started to gently flex inside me, the motion also making Alec throb, my body clenching around them almost against my will. I was filled, spread, pinned. No matter how careful they tried to be, I was steadily driven toward a cliff of pleasure.

“Ohh…” My fingernails carved half-moons in Alec’s skin. “Ohhh… you’re killing me…”

“If only I could,” Montague said wickedly. “But only if I could bring you back again, and again…”

I needed it to end. But I didn’t want it to ever end. It didn’t matter, I was reaching a climax anyway, and it wasn’t even until later that I considered everyone in the cave could probably hear me. Ohmigod.

Well, in the moment I was just crying out incoherently as my body twitched and bucked, rocked by a full body orgasm that started in my core and rippled out to my fingers and toes.

I think I only lasted about two minutes after that before falling asleep in their arms, dimly aware of Alec wiping me off with a cool washcloth and kissing my face. “Our beautiful witch…no more summers apart, okay?”

Chapter Eight

Charlotte

In the morning, Stuart asked me to meet him by the Wyrd tree. First he—or rather, Orson and Penny—offered us a hearty breakfast of biscuits with the most delicious honey, lightly sugared berries and cream.

“If this is a faery breakfast, I’m so down for it.”

“The honey comes from our own bees,” Stuart said. “They feed only on the most pure mountain flowers.”

“Who is ‘our’?” Alec asked.

“Penny and Orson and myself,” Stuart said. “I am the son of a faery lord, but I don’t have a lord’s domain so much as I have a homestead. My father sent these two to maintain my household. I don’t ask them to do much, but they do keep the bees.”

“This cream is delicious, too,” I said. “Do y’all keep cows?”

“No, Orson went to Publix this morning. He’s a gruagach, resilient enough to handle the human world, and he needs his cream.”

“I don’t need my cream as much as you need your coffee, Stuart,” Orson said, giving him a rather peeved expression.

“Oh.” Right. Publix probably had a buy one get one on berries, and now I didn’t want to ask where the biscuits came from. If he told me they were Pillsbury I was going to lose the fantasy entirely. Note to self: read up more about faeries. If I was supposed to know what a gruagach was, I certainly didn’t.

“If you’re done, let’s begin. We have a lot of work to do before school starts, and Ignatius is counting on me. Come alone.”

“Have you heard from him at all?” I asked, as I finished off my last biscuit.

“No. I am sure they haven’t allowed him any contact with his allies.”

“He’s a she, right?” Harris said.

“Harris, jeez,” I said. “It seems like he identifies with male pronouns, doesn’t he, Stuart?”

“Er, yes, I think I know what you mean,” Stuart said. “Ignatius was born a woman but has lived his life as a man and I can’t really think of him any other way.”

“And he was in love with Ina, right?”

“Oh, yes. They were…both very much in love,” Professor McGuinness said hesitantly. “And she knew his secret, but if it troubled her, she never said so.”

“I ship that,” I whispered. Ina was still alive, she was just in the Haven, and insane. Were they still in love? That would be the cutest thing ever.

Professor McGuinness looked at me thoughtfully.

“I envy you young American humans,” he said. “In the magical world, LGBT is not a community. One is tolerated quietly, but not accepted—celebrated, even—in the way I see in the human world these days.”

“It depends where you live,” I said. “But you’re right. I mean, what kind of monster do you have to be to not enjoy Queer Eye. When they filmed it in Georgia we all wished they would come for our science teacher. You…I mean…is it true about you and Samuel?”

He looked a little embarrassed. “I don’t know if I can say that.”

“But you had feelings for him?”

He was a fairly old dude, but he looked as nervous as a teenager when I asked him that. “Oh—well—”

“It’s okay to say so,” I said. “Whether he liked you or not. Like…maybe you need closure?”

“Closure…” He gave me one of my favorite looks of all time. It’s the look an old person gives you when they notice your generation is not all just morons hunched over phones. “It’s…true that I had feelings for Samuel. I would like to think maybe he felt the same. He was much more exciting than I was. I never dared to say a word. He was ambitious and I’m sure I would have hampered that.” He shook his head. “No need to dwell on the past.”

“It’s not really the past,” I said. “You’re still here. I mean, it seems like maybe you guys could have been together and you didn’t take a shot.”

“No,” he said, regretfully. “I didn’t. My parents told me if I didn’t want to get married I should become a professor or a scholar in a place like Merlin where women weren’t allowed. Happiness was not much of a consideration. I would hurt Samuel’s career. At this time, even humans were not tolerant of such things.”

“How can it be good magic if no one is happy?” I asked.

“It isn’t good so much as orderly,” he said. “But Sinistral is still worse.”

“Which is why we must find a way to Wyrd. We have work to do,” Stuart repeated.

“Right.” I tried to give Professor McGuinness a smile. Like, nothing was more sad than an older person with unrequited, forbidden love hanging over their head. He looked abruptly stoic, like his students smiling at him was a bridge too far. Okay, maybe that was fair.

“Let me get my hiking shoes on. I really wish I had a more mystical outfit to get into the mood.”

“If you are devoted to learning this magic, clothes are irrelevant,” Stuart said.

“I am! But what happened to your 1970s jackets, Stuart? You sure changed your own wardrobe fast.” I laced up my boots and finished the hike up the mountain to the meadow of the Wyrd tree. Stuart didn’t walk with me, but he was waiting there.

“How have you been doing with the exercises I gave you?”

“Pretty good,” I said. “Firian was a strict teacher.”

Stuart brushed a hand just over several points on my body that were probably chakras. “Not perfect, but better than I expected,” he said. “It was probably a good thing he was trapped in fox form, for the purpose of the moment.”

“But he’s so miserable…”

Stuart gave me a deadly serious look. “Charlotte, up until now, I have treated you as any other student at Merlin College. That’s what we all wanted for you. A normal life, and a trial period to see if you were up for the challenge presented. But that time is over now. When your junior year begins, you are walking back into the hands of the council. I can tell that you did take your studies seriously, and I’m glad of it, but this is where it gets serious.”

I did appreciate Stuart’s tact. He didn’t say outright that I needed to think about my magic and the seriousness of this mission more than I needed to think about making out with guys.

But, message received. I tried to look resolved, like I was thinking about the gravity of my position and not how good it felt to be the center of an Alec and Montague sandwich. “I understand, Lord Stuart. Can I call you Lord Stuart? That sounds a little more faery appropriate.”

He almost, but not quite, rolled his eyes. “If it helps, go right ahead.” He brushed a finger along the top of my wand, like he was testing it somehow. “You have proved yourself a talented magical user in a number of disciplines, but the one that intrigues me most is the same power Samuel had. He could summon the dead at will without succumbing to its darker side. You had never summoned the dead before, but when you were in St. Augustine you summoned powerful spirits to your aid. You are going to work on this all year, and you’re not going to tell the council or any of the teachers about it.”

“Okay. What do I do?”

“First, this is the reason I’ve been having you do deep focus exercises. You need to work on connecting to the place where you are and the spirits that dwell there, and you need to be good at wards so you can control the spirits if needed, but—you will be a Wyrd witch, so your focus is going to be on maintaining calm and accepting the flow of events. You are not a good witch or a bad witch. You’re a neutral witch. So you will summon all sorts of spirits, without judgment. But, you are still within your rights to defend yourself when a spirit turns violent.”

“I understand…”

“Most importantly, remember the definition of a white necromancer.”

“Don’t get emotionally attached to the dead,” I said. “I have to let loved ones go.” I knocked on the tree trunk. “Hopefully, I won’t have to face that.”

“You will,” he said. “Sooner or later.”

“I mean, I know people I love will die,” I said. “I already saw my grandfather’s spirit…”

“You are a witch,” Stuart said. “One day, you will lose someone who didn’t seem ready to go. It happens to all of us. You must let it happen. You must learn to believe it was their time. That’s how you will become great.”

Montague. Alec. Firian. Harris. Daisy. Stuart. Ignatius. My dad.

My brain was racing over all the people I knew, considering what I would do if they died. Whether I could handle it and let them go.

I wasn’t so sure.

Never mind! I want to go home! My brain screamed in panic.

Stuart kept giving me that calm expression. “Clear your mind, Charlotte. Take a deep breath.”

There is no way but forward.

I’m not sure who was talking in my head now. My own voice, Samuel…?

Oh, right, that was a line from Mom’s yoga video. It sounded pretty wise, so I repeated it aloud.

“Very good,” Stuart said. “You are already connecting with the spirit of Wyrd. There was never any way but forward. There was never any path for you but this one. Of all the infinite paths, once you take one, all others become irrelevant, and so there is no mistake.”

I twisted the ring that would never leave my finger. Fares Wyrd as she must.

“Try to connect with the spirits,” Stuart said.

“Right now?”

“Yes. Right now.”

“But…what do I tell them? I’m not in danger so I don’t know what I’m calling them for, or who I’m trying to summon.”

“It is harder without a reason or person in mind. That’s why you need to practice.”

I wrapped both hands around my wand and tried to focus on opening my mind to the spirit world, without knowing what I wanted to happen. I just needed to be able to reach into that channel any time, the way I was able to summon the lady spirits to help me before. I felt like Samuel’s spirit helped me out that time. I wanted to be able to do it on my own. His spirit wouldn’t always be there for me, would it?

I knew Samuel didn’t mean to die. But…sometimes it felt like none of my magical family was there for me. All the adults ended up dying or going crazy or turning bad, so would that happen to me too?

Would I lose the boys I loved so much?

“Charlotte,” Stuart said. “Stop. Breathe again. What did we just discuss?”

“There is no way but forward.”

“Do you know why people die?”

“Well, I’ve seen the sexist old council and I’m glad people do die eventually…”

“Death makes the living stronger,” he said. “Death makes us live harder and love harder. Faeries don’t love or grieve the same way. We can live for hundreds of years. We envy you.”

“Oh, right… I’m so sure.”

“It’s true. Faeries still die, of course. But it’s not the same. Now—go ahead and see what you can manage. Take your time.”

I breathed. I tried to empty my mind. At first I didn’t try to do anything else.

All summer, Firian had nagged me to improve my concentration and meditate. It was a real drag. I still didn’t like it very much. My mind was restless, thinking about how much I missed my guys, and all the things I wanted to do, and my worries. But when I got frustrated, Dad reminded me that it was like playing an instrument. “You know how long I had to keep practicing the same stuff over and over before I could finger pick a tune? And then I never really stuck with it. Even so-called prodigies have to put in the hours. I’ll always wonder if I would have made it in a band, you know? Keep with it.”

Even though I was resistant, I was getting better at it little by little too, and some days I could feel it. Some days I saw a twinkle in Firian’s fox eyes that showed he was proud of me.

I felt the world shift slightly. Sometimes magic wasn’t shooting fireballs and burning down Master Blair’s office. The real power seemed to be in the subtle stuff.

Harris is better at that than I am, I thought, and that got me bristling.

I felt the air spark around me, the mood changing, and a few ghostly figures swirled around me.

“Excellent work!”

“What do I do now?”

“Ask them to lend you power.”

“Okay—um—hello, spirits…” The spirits were whooshing around in these undefinable ghostly forms. I wasn’t getting awesome witches or a Native American hunting party this time. These ghosts were actually making a little “whooo” sound as they darted around like big fluttery hornets, and to be honest I felt silly talking to them.

“More authoritative,” Stuart said.

I threw out my arms. “O spirits, lend me your strength! —hey!” The spirits whirled away and vanished. “What the hell?”

“They determined you weren’t a good host,” he said. “You don’t have enough command.”

“Well, I don’t want to boss them around. I’m trying to be respectful. Plus, they weren’t the best ghosts I’ve ever seen.”

“You have to be very decisive,” he said. “Spirits respect strength. When you’re afraid, you will be more decisive. You need to learn to call them any time, for any reason. But it’s fine. Just summoning them at all is a fine start. Whatever the council assigns you to do, just keep up the bare minimum. Work on this. If you can summon and command the dead, you’ll have an army at your disposal any time. Also,” he added, “don’t insult the ghosts. You know that.”

“Yeah. You’re right. I am very sorry, ghosts.”

He waved his hand. “Too late. They won’t come back. But it’s all right. They were not the best ghosts.”

Chapter Nine

Charlotte

As long as I was training with Stuart and hanging out with HAM, that last week of summer felt pretty normal. But the moment I stepped out of car on the other side of the mountain, on campus, I knew this year would be very different.

The presence of guards had increased. The air just felt heavy. As soon as we emerged, the new headmaster saw us from across the open lawn in the front of the campus and made a beeline for us.

“Cousin,” he said, nodding at Harris. “Miss Byrne.” He arched an eyebrow at Montague and Alec and didn’t greet them at all. Firian, of course, had vanished off to Etherium. He was safer there. “I’m looking forward to seeing your talents, which I have heard so much about from the professors here…”

“I’m glad they’re saying nice things about me,” I said. “I always got the impression most of them weren’t thrilled about having a girl here.”

“They certainly weren’t,” he said. “No warlock would accept a woman learning the masculine magical arts without a certain sense of threat, eh?” He laughed dryly, patting Harris’ shoulder. Harris was standing very stiffly.

“Well, if they’re confident in their own skill, I don’t see why not,” Harris shot back.

“It remains taboo, but Miss Byrne really is special…isn’t she?” He looked over the wand I carried, made from the pale, blue-tinged wood of the Wyrd tree.

I was on my guard. I remembered well what Harris said about his cousin and Daisy. Piers seemed to want Daisy’s power. He was at least ten years older than her, although that wouldn’t bother me too much if he was an awesome guy and she loved him, especially knowing that witches and warlocks live to be over a hundred.

But, needless to say, he wasn’t. He said he would ‘tame the bitch’. And right now, his fair face, with skin so perfect it had to be glamoured, cold eyes and a smile that seemed to curl up his face like he didn’t know what a real smile was, he looked like he was already thinking about taming me. Although not in a husband-and-wife kind of way, thank goodness.

“Is Daisy here?” I asked.

“Not…yet,” he said.

“But she is coming?”

“They’re not married yet,” Harris said. “I would have heard.”

“Would you?” Piers said. “I heard that you ran away from home. Poor cousin. It seems like you’re going through some things. Taking the break up hard? I swear, I didn’t ask for her hand to rub it in your face. I’ve loved that girl forever.”

“Well, I hope it’s mutual,” Harris said. “You’re not Daisy’s type. I know that much.”

“We might look alike, but I am a very different sort of man,” Piers said. “I already know my place in the world. My reputation is settled. But I will do everything I can to help you get to where I am, I promise you that. It must be a trial having so many older sisters. You can think of me like an older brother.”

“I hardly know you,” Harris said.

Montague interjected, holding out a hand to Piers. “Good morning, Piers. I’m Montague Xarra and this is Alec, if you’ve forgotten our names.”

“I didn’t forget your names.” Piers very quickly shook his hand.

“I suppose you forgot to greet us, then,” Montague said. “I’m sure that must be it, since you seem like a gentleman.”

Piers looked irritated. “Yes, vampire, that must be it.” He turned, his cape swirling.

“You know, I think I want to add a cape to my ensemble this year,” I said. “I’ve been playing it safe. Y’all wanna go cape shopping with me?”

Montague, Alec and Harris were all just staring at Piers’ back as he stalked off, pausing finally to speak to Professor Pacetti.

“Sure,” Montague said, though gritted teeth. He shook it off and took my arm.

“Whatever,” Alec said. “I’m glad if he doesn’t want to pay attention to us.”

“I respect your desire to be low key, but I’ve been shunned all summer back home,” Montague said. “They all think it’s only a matter of time before I join the vampires, so I’m practically written out of the books already. Piers would like to just ignore us because we have Sinistral blood.”

We breezed into the uniform shop on campus, which was where I first met Montague and Harris, incidentally. Benton was still working there. He always gave me comic book nerd vibes and seemed like he was resigned to never being cool, which actually made me like him a little but we never talked. I actually thought he graduated, but I guess not. He waved and shrugged at us. “Better get it before the new management decides the uniform options are too radical.”

“The first year, I was so confused. I just wanted to make it through the year without dying. Second year, I was hoping to fit in. This year, I’m not dead yet, and I’ll never fit in. So maybe it’s time for a little flair. Master Blair always looked so stylish.”

“Piers looks stylish. That’s the only compliment I’ll give him,” Montague said.

“Maybe he won’t be as bad as we think,” Alec said.

“I appreciate your optimism,” Harris said. “But it’s going to be bad. I know my own family. Ruthless social climbers, all of them, except a decent enough black sheep here and there.”

“Decent enough black sheep? Is that your vibe for this year?” I teased him as I pondered two capes. Short cape? Or long cape? Oh, there was also a mid-length cape. I’d never actually seen any guy wear that. Hmm. I slipped it on. It had slits where I could poke my hands out.

“Besides that, he’s engaged to Daisy,” Montague said. “That’s not good. She’s supposed to help us with the Withered Lord.”

“It’s also not good because Daisy’s my friend and Piers is a creep.” I grabbed some very tight pants off the rack and ducked into the dressing room. As I was yanking them up over my ass, I suddenly saw Firian sitting on the bench behind me and screamed.

“Char, you okay?” Alec demanded on the other side of the door.

“Yeah! There was a pin in the pants and I poked myself!” I tried to grab Firian’s muzzle and he bit my hand. You dirty fox, I mouthed to him. Ask permission first.

“Catherine’s here,” he whispered. “I’m here on business. Your ass was just a nice bonus. Or a cruel bonus, considering my circumstances.”

“Catherine, my aunt?”

He nodded. “Just warning you…”

Then he vanished again. I heard the front door of the shop open.

“Is Charlotte here?” she asked. “Is she in the dressing room?”

I’m not sure why I was so nervous. Catherine didn’t know me. And she was a witch. She didn’t want me to use Wyrd magic, but the warlocks kept me here anyway, so she had no say in my life, right?

“Charlotte!” she said.

I didn’t even have time to put my shoes back on. I walked out in the tight pants. They were very tight.

“Yes? I was in the middle of something,” I said.

“I see that,” she said. “But I want to talk to you. You are the only witch in my family, after all. Let’s talk away from all these boys, hm?”

“You turned Firian into a fox,” I said.

“I did what I needed to do to allow you to be the witch you need to be,” she said. “You’ll thank me someday.”

Harris gave me a steely look that seemed to suggest I should just get it over with and play nice. “Let me change.”

“That won’t be necessary.” She waved a slender wand at me and my cape and tight pants transformed into a dress suitable for a 1950s funeral with a long, full skirt in all black. The sleeves were long and the neck was high. She smiled. “That is so much better for a young woman. You really should have been a witch.”

“Better? This is what you wear when you decide the capes from the Handmaid’s Tale are too racy!”

She glanced at a watch. “I came all the way down here and I need to be back in New York by tomorrow for a council meeting.”

I followed her, but I felt very violated by the dress. Sure, it was plain and demure but I felt as bad as I did when Derek Chambers quietly stuck a hand up my shirt in seventh grade and touched my bra. I would never wear this. I felt like she had turned me into a different person just for our meeting and that was more upsetting than I expected.

The uniform shop was in a small, more recently built structure near the main hall. There were a few stores inside, one for books and supplies, another for campus merchandise that never seemed to be open. She glanced around and led me into a stock room for the books, but she waved her wand again and the room transformed. Plush chairs and a desk appeared, and the small bland windows turned into tall, grand windows with long gold curtains.

“That’s better,” she said, sitting behind the desk. She gave me a small smile. “Impressed? This is proper witch magic. Making things beautiful.”

“I have better things to do,” I said.

“Oh, yes. You have my son’s magic,” she said. “So I hear.”

“You think I should be spending my time learning how to make dresses and curtains out of magic instead of learning to—”

“Speak to the dead?” she interrupted. “Summon the dead? Revive the dead?” She rapped her fingers on the desk. “Samuel was my only son and Ina was my only daughter. My children. I pray you never know how it feels to have your children fall under the influence of some dangerous and persuasive person who turns them against you. Thanks to your mother, my children dabbled with demons and dark magic. Of course, I used to warn them, and they thought I was being too strict and traditional. Now, one is crazy and one is dead.”

“Is Ina really ‘crazy’?”

“Yes,” Catherine said. “Crazy as Rochester’s wife and just as likely to start a fire. That is why she is at the Haven for the rest of her life.”

Okay. I’m gonna guess she was never a women’s studies major. I spread my hands. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m halfway through to…getting my…degree?” (Did they give out degrees? What did I get at the end of this, anyway? Well, I knew there was a graduation ceremony, so close enough.) “I’m happy here. And I’m good at it.”

“I want to protect you from the fate of your mother and grandmother.”

“I don’t want to be protected.”

“Why not? Do you think you’ll all make it out of this alive?” Her voice raised. “You are twenty years old. You could have your whole life ahead of you.”

This wasn’t the first time I’d been warned that some of us could die. Not gonna lie, it made me nervous every time, but at the same time, one of my high school friends warned me we might all die in a climate change apocalypse. Did I believe her? Kinda. Did I like…do anything about it? Not really.

One thing I felt right now was that she expected me to back down.

Don’t back down.

Before I came here, I would have. But I’d gotten more confident in the last couple of years, and most of all, I had to stick with the people who cared about me. If I let my great-aunt control me, I would be failing Monty and Alec, and most of all, Firian.

“I don’t think I should make choices based on my fear of death,” I said. “I think Samuel lived the life he wanted to live.”

“You didn’t know my son.”

“No. I wish I had. But his spirit has spoken to me a couple times. I don’t think he regretted any of it.”

Now she pounded the desk and it vanished. She looked pissed.

“Where is Stuart?” Her eyes shifted to my wand and I took a step back. “What have they told you?”

“I don’t know. Nothing.”

“Have you had any contact with members of your family? Your grandmother? Her…werewolves? Adia?”

“You never wanted to protect me, did you?” I said. “You want to scare me into a witch school where you can control me. If you think you can bully me into leaving this school with stories to scare me and by turning Firian into a fox, guess what? I’m in this for the long haul. I’m right where I want to be.”

“Are you saying you would die for your beliefs?”

“Are you saying you’re planning to kill me, Aunt Catherine?”

She jerked back and now the entire room’s glamour melted away, and so did the dress.

I had rattled her.

“No, I would certainly never do that,” she said, a faint frown tugging at her mouth. “I’m not out to get you, Charlotte. I want what’s best for you.”

“Okay, then. Well, what’s best for me is staying here where I have true friends and I’m getting more confident every day.”

“I do believe that,” she said, halfway under her breath. “You can go.”

I walked out of the building, feeling more shaken than triumphant. Maybe the fact that we shared family ties meant a little something, but I still knew she was digging for information while I needed her to break the curse on Firian. I wasn’t so sure I’d done the right thing if I wanted her to have sympathy for me.

This wasn’t over.

Chapter Ten

Charlotte

“So far, this isn’t too bad,” Alec said, a week later while we were eating our porridge. No kidding. Chef Morris, who was supposed to be giving us wholesome, magic-building food, actually made us eat porridge for breakfast.

“There is nothing more magical than porridge,” he declared to all of us as we grumbled. “Wizards eat porridge. That is a fact. Read a book.”

I mean…I guess. But it was already getting old. At least we were allowed all the butter and cream and honey we wanted, because these were also magical foods. One thing sure hadn’t changed: no vegans allowed at Merlin College.

“I have to get my blood at the infirmary now,” Montague said. “Remember that? There’s a new guy down at the infirmary whose entire purpose is to do this condescending sniff thing when he gives me my pouch. The life of a vampire should be dignified and glamorous.”

“It only works like that if you murder people,” Harris said. “Anyway, Alec, I wouldn’t get too cocky.”

“That’s the only way I know how to be,” Alec said, with a dry laugh.

“Alec, your incubus puns aren’t going to be funny anymore when Piers finds some way to punish you for being a demon,” Harris said. “He has plans for all of you. I can feel it.”

“I’ve barely seen him since the first day,” I said. “Thank goodness. Dude creeps me out, but he doesn’t teach any classes.”

Of course, there was one teacher I wasn’t that fond of, and that was the necromancy teacher who replaced Professor McGuinness. Professor Pacetti was like, a tough guy Italian warlock from New Jersey, which sounded like some kind of joke, but there he was. In private I called him “Professor New Jersey”.

Professor Pacetti was tough on everyone, but he definitely didn’t like me in his class. On the first class after our orientation week, he called me ‘Princess’, for starters.

“So, Princess,” he said, in this voice that just sounded like greasy pizza (I’m really sorry, New Jersey). “I hear you’re some sort of prodigy for summoning the dead? You have the power of ‘Samuel Caruthers’, is that right?”

Montague cleared his throat while Alec lifted a hand.

“Professor Pacetti,” Alec said. “Excuse me, but she’s not your fucking princess.”

Oh damn. It was on.

Pacetti whirled on him, leaning over his desk. “Is she your fucking princess, Lyrman?”

Oh, ewww.

Montague stood up. He looked like he wanted to slam Professor New Jersey into the wall, but he said tensely, “Professor, we’re here to learn necromancy, right?”

Irving looked at the exits with wild eyes.

“Necromancy. Yes. You want to learn necromancy. I’m not going easy on any of you,” Professor Pacetti said. “My class is no fucking nonsense. I met Professor McGuinness. Not impressed. He was one of those clean cut mortician-in-a-suit types you see.” Professor Pacetti was wearing a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and jeans, so, you know. Edgy. “Well, necromancy is dirty. You’re dealing with the dead. So, Miss Charlotte, I hear you summoned a dark spirit.”

“It was my mother,” Alec said. “It wasn’t just any dark spirit. Charlotte did it for me.”

Harris glanced at me but said nothing. He had helped me expel Alec’s mom when she got angry at me and wouldn’t leave, and I knew he hadn’t forgotten that.

“Well, if I had been Charlotte’s teacher, she would have been prepared to deal with a dark spirit. I’m going to teach you the most important skill for a necromancer. The ability to purify. This is really bleeding edge magic; nobody’s teaching this yet. You’re the first school to have it.” He strolled back behind his desk. “You take a dark spirit and you purify that spirit, and one of a few options is going to happen. Either that spirit is under your control, or that spirit gets wiped off the face of the earth.”

A burly guy in the back said, “Aren’t they already wiped off the face of the earth?”

“I think you know what I mean, don’t you…”

“Nelson,” the boy said.

“Either you know what I mean or you’re fucking stupid. Which is it?”

“I’m not stupid. I’m a de Brigue.”

“Ohhh. Oh, you’re a de Brigue. I’m sorry,” Professor New Jersey said sarcastically, which almost made me enjoy him for a second. “There are only a thousand de Brigues, I didn’t realize none of you are stupid. Nelson—listen to me. You follow my lead and you will learn how to summon demon spirits and destroy them.”

All of my guys looked uncomfortable. But some of the boys were practically frothing at the idea.

“Destroy demon spirits? Are you serious?”

“I’m serious. If you’re here at Merlin, you’re the next generation of leaders. Well, most of you. So—we’re going to do some groundwork first, and before spring break you’re going to tackle a demon.” He looked at me. “You ought to be interested in that, huh…Princess?”

Now he was daring Alec or Montague to start some shit with him. I glanced at them like, don’t.

“What kind of demons are we talking?” Harris asked, drawing his attention off of me. “I was under the impression that it isn’t so easy to just ‘purify’ a dark spirit.”

“You want to see what I mean?” He glanced at the calendar. “Meet me in the grove on the night of the full moon, if you’re brave enough. That goes for all of you.”

Chapter Eleven

Charlotte

“I feel like this is a bad idea,” I said, lacing my shoes as Alec stepped out of the shower looking as luscious as he always did walking out of the shower, in nothing but a pair of jeans that were just the right amount of tight.

“I agree,” Montague said, as he loitered in the door of the room Alec and I shared.

“Are we not going?” Alec asked. “I wouldn’t mind staying in tonight after all. Waste of a good weekend…” His eyes lingered on me.

“I’m trying to get dressed,” I said.

“I’m not stopping you.”

“You’re undressing me with your eyes,” I said. “And I’m afraid if you keep it up you might actually disintegrate my clothes.” I smirked at him, signaling that assuming we made it out of our night meeting with Pacetti, I was down for that later.

“I wonder if I could,” Alec said. “That would be an interesting experiment.”

“Magic practice,” I said. “Totally legit.”

He reached for his shirt and I held up a hand. “I mean, do you even need that? It’s warm out.”

“Does my princess wish it so?” He was a little sarcastic, playing off the princess thing, but I’m not going to lie, if he wanted to claim the princess thing, I’d like that.

“Your princess demands it!” I giggled. “What would Professor New Jersey say if you showed up to his big spirit purifying ceremony shirtless?”

He shrugged. “Let’s find out. Clothes are overrated.”

“You’re really doing this?” Montague asked him. “Clothes aren’t overrated, Alec, you just dress like a slob.”

“Incubi really aren’t into that many clothes,” Alec said. “If you look at old art of incubi and succubi it’s pretty much just a little strategic fabric. So if I’m embracing my heritage I might as well go all out.”

Montague gave me a look like he didn’t really like this idea. “Clothes are like a secret. If you just tell a secret right away, it’s not interesting anymore.”

Alec snapped his shirt at Montague. “It’s not my fault you need to work on your tan, vampire.”

“No fighting,” I said. “I like Alec’s hot bod and Montague’s stylish wardrobe…equally.”

“That was a deliberate pause.” Montague bared his fangs at Alec and Alec dodged, whipping him with the shirt again. I laughed, enjoying the playfulness between them before we took on whatever was going to happen tonight.

“At least neither of you have fur,” Firian said behind me. I shrieked softly, not even realizing he had appeared.

Alec flopped into bed next to me. “Charlotte likes your fur too,” he said. “She doesn’t sleep with her arms around me. I know it’s not your ideal way to interact, but…”

“It sure isn’t,” Firian said.

“But cuddling is a real need,” Alec said. “So I hope you don’t feel like you’re not part of this relationship. We will get you back to normal soon. I swear to that.”

“Aw…” I loved that Alec and Montague had definitely gotten past the standard warlock thinking that familiars couldn’t be a part of the real world. They both seemed to accept Firian now. I had also noticed Alec’s increased confidence lately. Every day, since he’d broken the spell that bound him, his magic had grown stronger and while he was still generally the quietest and gentlest of my guys, his mood had shifted. He was more present, somehow.

I slid over to Alec’s lap and then patted my leg. “C’mon, Firian. Let me have a nice moment. I’m nervous.”

“And you should be,” he said, and I could feel the tension in his body as I stroked his soft fur. “I don’t trust these council warlocks, for reasons that should be plain to see.”

“Why are we going if we all think it’s a bad idea?” Montague asked.

“Well…I think we need to find out what his deal is,” I said. “Especially since I am focusing on necromancy.”

But the real reason? Harris was going, and even if we didn’t go, Harris would still go, and then he would nag me about it later. The Chosen One vs. Exiled One battle was on.

Look, if our rivalry had gone on longer than it should, at least I think we both knew it.

If you’re going to be stupid, at least be willfully stupid.

Sure enough, we walked to the grove under the light of the moon, which was lifting its way into the unseasonably warm sky. Harris was lingering outside, waiting to walk with us.

“Alec, why aren’t you wearing a shirt?” he asked.

“It’s the weekend,” Alec said. “Why? Are you distracted by my hot bod too?”

“God, no.”

“We really need to invite Harris in,” Montague said. “He must be paler and skinnier than I am.” Montague wasn’t really too skinny, anyway. Alec was perfect in a god-or-Hemsworth kind of way. Montague was perfect in a normal sort of way, with bonus vampire danger points. Firian was almost elven in his height and grace. And Harris…

“I am not.” Harris looked genuinely annoyed.

“You’re tan and ripped under there?” I asked, pointing my wand toward his necktie, which was…well, his necktie was perfect. I did the uniform necktie thing a lot, and I couldn’t knot mine like that. But you didn’t get points for necktie knots.

“We have places to be, so let’s just act like mature adults,” Harris said, picking up his pace. I could tell he was jealous, and he studiously pretended not to care, but I had to admit, he was keeping it up for so long, I was starting to wonder if maybe he really wasn’t as into me and as close to Alec and Montague as I thought.

Harris was the one who jumped in on Pacetti’s offer to purify demons, I thought. What if he really does choose the path of the council in the end?

Professor New Jersey was waiting in the grove, holding an old book in one hand and his wand in the other. “Okay, are we all here? I was waiting for you, Nicolescu. All right. So, kids—the only rule here tonight is that you don’t interfere with my magic. You’re here to watch and learn. What you see might disturb you if you’re the oversensitive type. This is real magic for the real world, where demons might just kill you like they killed Samuel Caruthers if you’re not willing to fight.”

If any of us wanted to leave, he didn’t really offer us an out, but no one tried. It was our group, that jerk Henry Wells, Jack the doodler of guitars, and two other guys.

Piers suddenly emerged from the trees. He was neatly dressed, his blonde hair slicked back, looking so much like an older Harris, but his expression was so cold that I didn’t want to run away until I saw him.

“Good evening, boys, and Miss Charlotte,” he said. “I am so excited about this new phase in your training. I heard that Professor MacGuinness never even mentioned the purify spell, and I am so glad to be here to make sure you are all truly ready for the real world and our real enemy. Someday, you will all be soldiers in the fight against evil, and coddling you only weakens us. But—don’t let me steal the spotlight. Professor Pacetti…” He took a step back, lifting a hand to the other man.

Professor Pacetti spilled dust in a circle and then drew the pentagram that would summon a demon with the tip of his wand.

It was quiet, except for the soft scratch of his wand in the dirt and the wind stirring the leaves. And it was dark, except for the soft glow of the moonlight. My arms prickled with goosebumps, and I felt Montague’s cool hand envelope mine.

Pacetti started hissing out spell words, choosing Latin as his magical tongue, and his voice sounded hostile. What was he summoning?

Fire burst from the pentagram, and a form took shape. It looked vaguely female, but somewhat misshapen, with long spindly arms and long pointed ears. Whoa. For all the magic I’d dealt with, I still got startled by the serious fantasy novel stuff. I took a little step back but stopped myself from reacting any more.

“A boggart!” Pacetti declared. “It’s just a weak little spirit, since I didn’t want to put you kids in any danger.”

The boggart seemed frightened. It growled like a cornered cat, trapped in the pentagram. “I mean ye no harm, human. Me body’s already dust, so I think you have the wrong beastie.”

Aww. I actually felt bad for it. It looked so nervous and pathetic already, and its growly little voice was cute.

“Demon, it’s your lucky day. I will purify your spirit.” Pacetti waved his wand over the boggart and started chanting again.

“Please, no!” The boggart cowered. “Please spare me!”

A purple glow seeped from Professor Pacetti’s wand and swirled around the boggart. It screamed with pain.

“What are you doing?” I cried. “You’re hurting her!”

“Stay back, Charlotte. He is purifying it,” Piers said.

“But what does that mean? He said it was a weak little spirit. Is it evil?”

“I am not evil,” the boggart pleaded. “I’m just a spirit adrift and I don’t want any bad business, sir! I beg ye!”

“It’s a sinistral. It’s a dark spirit that sinistral warlocks could summon to their aid.”

“But my grandfathers are sinistral!”

He looked at me very calmly. “Yes. That is so.”

“So—so what?” I cried.

He didn’t answer, but flicked a hand to Professor Pacetti. “Please, proceed.”

“Oh, I’m not distracted by her,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. Inimicos nostros…”

The boggart screamed as he spoke a string of words, clutching her head. Wisps of ghostly matter started falling away from her body as she started to disintegrate.

This is wrong, I thought. I don’t know what’s going on, but this isn’t purifying, this is murder. In panic, I flung out my wand and cast a ward. “I protect this creature! Return to the spirit world, I release you!”

“Charlotte!” Harris grabbed my arm. I shook him off, using my wand to break the pentagram with a blast of magic that wiped the dirt clean and broke the circle of dust.

“Thank to you, my lady! Thanks to you!” The boggart fell back and then disappeared.

Piers grabbed my arm and smacked my face.

“Ow!” I was too surprised for a better reaction than that.

“You deserve much worse than that,” he said. “You interrupted a spell cast by a professor. You questioned his actions. You disturbed a pentagram. You favored a demon. That was a wicked spirit!”

“You set this up!” I said. “Didn’t you? Professor Pacetti summoned some poor little spirit on purpose to provoke me and you showed up to watch!”

“Why would I do that?” he asked, with a disdainful look. “I’m trying to help you out. I warned you all this school would be different without that lenient, deceptive, rule-breaking woman in charge. We are fighting for control of magic. For the power of Etherium. Sinistrals must be destroyed, and sinistral blood must be purified.” He finally let my arm go, and I let out my breath as I stepped back into Alec and Monty’s protective arms, but I was hardly safe.

“You will be punished for this,” Piers said. He flicked his wand and my hands were jerked behind my back into some sort of restraint. “What god do you serve?” he asked.

“What…god?”

“Yes,” he said. “It will determine where you spend your night of punishment.”

“I don’t really…serve any.”

“You serve no god?” Piers said. “Well, I suppose that explains a lot. You are so very human, so modern, but if you serve no god than you have no allies.”

“Come on, Piers. Don’t do this,” Harris said.

“You are still here,” Piers said. “I know, in the end, you understand the mission. We are the ones who force the beings of shadow into the light, we Nicolescus. And so I shall.”

“She’s…she’s of a Christian background,” Harris said, in this don’t-argue-with-me-Charlotte tone.

“Very nice. Very smart. He looks out for you, you know. Yes, you would be sleeping in the trees or in the earth tonight if you said something else.”

The earth? Is there a punishment cave at Merlin College? He and Professor Pacetti put me between them and forced me, with some grabbing and some wand tapping, away from my guys.

“What are you doing?” Montague said.

Piers looked resistant to telling him, and ignored Montague for a step, but then he faced him after all. His smile said, What the hell. “Tomorrow, she will be the first ceremony in the purification of Merlin College. She will be freed from her werewolf blood. You and Lyrman are welcome to be next.”

“No—” I tried to struggle away. He gripped my wrists tight. “No! Let me go! I’d rather leave school than lose the blood of my grandfathers.”

“For one thing, you can only lose the blood of one grandfather,” he said, digging at my grandmother’s multiple lovers. “Unless your father was part werewolf as well? And for another, why do you cling to the blood of beasts? You don’t even know the man.”

“But it’s part of me! Part of my mom!”

“Your demon mother?”

“Yes! I still believe in her! She’s not lost. Even if you never let her back in Etherium, I can still save her for my dad’s sake. She still loves us and she doesn’t need your purification, and neither do I. I’m a Wyrd witch.”

“Your mother is evil. She is lost. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can embrace your talents. As for Wyrd, the faeries will never embrace a human. They have graced you with a wand, but you’re going to run into the cold reality of their control. You have an Ethereal familiar. You are an Ethereal witch. Not a warlock. A witch. But I am not sending you to Catherine because I know she wouldn’t allow you to use your potential. I hope you appreciate that. You think I’m the cruel one? Welcome to tough love, Charlotte.”

He forced me along to the campus chapel. I had been inside just a couple of times. Last year Montague asked me if I wanted to go to the Christmas concert before holiday break. I might not have been very religious, but I loved that. The chapel was glowing with candles that made the interior warm and cozy, and the small campus choir sang beautifully. Montague looked sad and he told me later he had been banned from the basilica in St. Augustine, and he hadn’t talked about it to anyone else. From what I had seen of his little parallel town, it was close-knit and married to old traditions, so this must have been crushing.

I wondered what Montague was thinking about the chapel being turned into a prison. I understood why he and Alec didn’t stop them. I’m sure Piers would have expelled them, and that would be much worse for me.

They threw me inside and locked the doors.

“Maybe you’ll find a god in there,” Piers sneered behind the door.

Chapter Twelve

Harris

My cousin knew what he was doing. I’m sure the council blamed Charlotte for all of the problems at Merlin College. He wanted her power, but he wanted her to be scared of him first.

This was the battle my ancestors had fought. Ethereals and Sinistrals had been fighting each other for thousands of years. The battle had always been bitter. A long time ago, Ethereals were the protectors of humanity. All around the world, witches and warlocks, shamans, holy men and wise women had served their people, protecting them against vampires, werewolves, malicious faeries and demons.

“Sometimes, they were so effective that the threat no longer seemed real…” My mother whispered this to all of us children once, as she lit candles to cast a simple ward upon our great estate, Ladyswald. “And once people stop believing in the danger, they wonder why they have given such power to a witch. As their weapons grew stronger, their world more toxic, their belief became the truth. The vampires and werewolves no longer came for them. Humans worry over endangered species and polluted waters, without realizing how much they have already lost. Magic…magic has been dying for a long time, but as long as we exist, there will be dark forces for us to fight…”

We didn’t hear fairy tales growing up, we heard the truth about our dying magical world. About our legacy and destiny. My father’s holy ancestors in the European courts, their magical artifacts protecting the realm. The fierce warriors of light in my mother’s family, who would do anything to end the race of vampires who fed on death.

They were my idols, once. I thought I would be like Piers. I’d work my way up the council, fighting nobly for Etherium until the day I died.

I knew where Piers was coming from, because it was the same world I had been raised into, of centuries-old relics and Bibles painted by hand with the birth of every child recorded on the front page and the date of their death written in later. The old world that still clung to us with every breath, the memory of a world where there was true darkness in the wood, and people needed Etherium in all its forms just to protect themselves from wolves and the curses of dark warlocks, the tricks of the fae, and the vampires that would leave you drained of life.

I knew the battle between good and evil was real, and the side of good could not always be nice, but these days the world just felt different. Maybe there was another way entirely.

Damned if it hasn’t gotten awfully complicated.

But it’s gone far enough.

Alec and Montague were busy arguing over whether there was any way for them to stop Piers without making things worse, while I was slouched against the wall. Part of the group, but not entirely. Not anymore. It wasn’t just about Charlotte. They didn’t know if they could trust me, and they weren’t wrong.

“I’m going to talk to Piers alone,” I said.

“What good will that do?” Montague asked. “He doesn’t seem to like you all that much either.”

“But blood is blood,” I said.

More importantly—Charlotte’s sinistral blood might be giving her power. I was going to appeal to Piers from the only angle that would be sure to work.

As I walked up the stairs to the dean’s office, I heard heated voices. His door was shut. I pressed my ear against it. Time for me to find out just how much of a dick my cousin really was.

“We’re carrying it out tomorrow morning,” Piers said. “Although I’m not sure it’ll have the result you want. She has already chosen Wyrd.”

“Sure, sound so cavalier about it,” a female voice responded. I think it might have been Charlotte’s great-aunt. “We can’t let her tap into the power of Wyrd.”

“The faeries will never let her have more than a taste. That’s what they do. They never let Samuel in.”

“They were considering it,” she said. He must have been talking to her via magical means because her voice sounded distant but clear as a bell.

“How do you know that? I was under the impression you had no contact with him anymore.”

“I hear everything.”

“I don’t think Charlotte is even worth worrying over,” Piers said. “She seems like kind of an airhead to me. Daisy has a brain under her act, but I don’t know about this one. I think she’s been corrupted by TV or rap or whatever corrupts kids these days.”

I bristled. Where did he get off? He barely even knew Charlotte.

“She’s your only real relative,” he said. “Maybe you should just…let her live her life. I’m afraid that all these measures are only driving her toward, if not Wyrd, then Sinistral.”

Hmm. It actually sounded like Piers didn’t think Charlotte was worth all he was putting her through. I’m not sure that was mercy so much as underestimating her, but if her great-aunt was the one nudging him to hurt her, then…

“And those two boys who follow her around everywhere will go with her. Same with my cousin, I’m afraid.”

“Harrison? Yes. I’ve heard,” she said knowingly.

“Here is what I propose,” Piers said. “The vampire and the incubus? They seem to be fond of her now, but it’s in their nature to pursue women. They could be distracted by other matches, if they don’t turn sinistral in the end. But my cousin struggles with betraying the family even as he keeps flirting with the darker side of magic. If we encourage a marriage between my cousin and your niece, it will be a marriage of two great families, and offer them both a distraction from a dark path.”

Marriage? Charlotte and me? My adrenaline spiked. My base instincts had wanted Charlotte from the day she arrived, and especially now that I knew she was with both of my best friends. But I had been trying so hard to resist a bad decision that would ruin both of our lives forever. Now, Piers was actually suggesting it was a good idea?

Charlotte…all mine…

It was something I had dreamed about so many times.

Hearing it now, it wasn’t as appealing as I thought. She was already with Alec and Montague. If they suffered for it, that wasn’t how I wanted it to go.

What would it be like to share her with them? Damn, I tried not to let my brain go there. Why should I share my wife?

My brain flashed over a tangle of limbs, Charlotte full of them, her eyes glazed with pleasure, kissing Alec and then Montague, and then…me.

Me.

I was welcome there. The vision was hot as hell, but it was also surprisingly…nice. It was a place I could trust. I saw her asleep between them now. Safe and loved, in a way I hadn’t felt since I was so very young that my sisters liked pretending I was their kid and putting me to bed. My parents certainly didn’t; they believed a parents duty was to instruct and mold, not coddle. But Alec, I knew, was a loyal friend and a gentle person, despite his raging libido. Montague had always seemed like he didn’t have a care in the world until the vampire thing happened; that unfortunate event had matured him without ruining him. He was the only person who could get me to laugh at something stupid, because he wouldn’t judge you for it.

I shut my eyes. I wanted it. I wanted all of it. I knew it would ruin what I thought my life was, but…

I don’t even know if they’ll have me. A witch with an incubus and a vampire is one thing, but I’m Harrison von Hapsburg Nicolescu. God, the world will laugh at me. Shun me. Ask why I can’t get a girl all to myself. Ask why I would ruin my reputation. And Charlotte, Alec and Montague all know that I care about that stuff, that I’m not like them.

I thought of her locked in that church, all alone. Maybe Firian was with her, at least, but it was so dark and somber inside, and the sky looked like rain.

“Have you seen any indication the girl is still keeping her familiar around?”

“No,” Piers said readily.

That was a lie. Charlotte could still be seen with Firian. Not as often as before, but not never either, which was a lot more time than any other student spent with their familiar.

My cousin wasn’t exactly what I would call a nice guy. He had set up this marriage with Daisy, after all. I knew all he wanted was power. If he was lying about Charlotte hanging out with Firian, I knew it was only to keep her in his clutches and not have her go to the witches. It seemed like everyone was out for blood.

“Piers, you can set her up with Harris if you think it’s best, but I still want the thing done. I want the blood of those wolves wiped from her and the Order’s methods will do it. I want all evidence of my sister’s crimes wiped from the record. My parents were lenient with my sister and she was lenient with her daughter in turn. I will not make the same mistake. Charlotte hasn’t had discipline, that’s the trouble. She’s just a girl, so this is our last chance. I don’t care if she fears you, or me either. I’d rather have her fear you than end up losing her magic, working for a demon, insane or dead.”

“That is a very good point,” Piers said. “Well, I have a ward on the church so she can’t leave and those boys can’t get in, and I will perform the ceremony tomorrow morning, as planned, but I think we need to consider how we can gently remove other bad influences from her life as well. I don’t want to offend the Xarras or the Lyrmans, but we both agree that they no longer belong here, yes?”

“Yes, although I do like the idea of the vampire clan actually taking out the Withered Lord for us, and Montague is a part of the deal, so…tread carefully.”

This was not good. She was the one who had cursed Firian. Charlotte was miserable without him. It sounded like nothing would convince Catherine to break that spell and let her be with him again.

Worse, their plans seemed to reach far. They wanted to remove Alec and Montague from school, keep Firian a fox forever, and…marry her to me?

No. I can’t be with her unless I deserve her.

I never fell in love with Daisy because I knew she would be miserable in the marriage, and she would change to fit in. She would understand that she had no other choice.

I couldn’t let Charlotte be like that.

I turned from the door in disgust. No use talking to Piers. I didn’t know what I could say to convince him not to ‘purify’ Charlotte.

I walked softly back down the stairs. The guard at the door nodded to me. “Stay dry,” he said, as the first drops of a rainstorm were starting to fall. I knew Piers would find out I had been there, but no help for that.

I ducked behind one of the buildings at the farthest corner of the gate and cast a concealing spell on myself. I checked the gate for wards. Breaking wards was one of my best talents, especially since these weren’t meant to keep students in so much as to keep enemies out. I only had to weaken them a little. Then I climbed the gate, my muscles straining as I hauled myself over. It would be a huge help to have Alec or Monty with me, but I didn’t want to get them in trouble.

I ran into the darkness, pelted by rain, to the only experienced magic user we could trust. I didn’t have much time. Hopefully, Stuart would know how to stop purification spells.

The downpour hit when I was about a mile deep into the woods, with a long way to go. The trees helped shield me from the worst of it, but it turned the warm day to a clammy chill, and despite the light spell cast on my wand, I could only see a short way ahead, light shimmering on wet leaves while the din of rain pelting the forest roared in my ears.

“Pretty unpleasant place to take a walk.”

“Shit!” I whirled, ready with an attack spell, only to see Firian walking behind me. “What are you doing out here?”

“What happened to her?” he asked. “She hasn’t called me, but I know she’s distressed. I appeared outside the gates just in case the council was watching for me. Then I saw you out here.”

It was deeply strange for a familiar to show up in the presence of another magic user and start talking, but I already knew Firian was strange. And the worry in his eyes? I knew what that was like.

“They locked her in the chapel overnight, with plans to purify her of her sinistral blood in the morning.”

“This school was a lot more fun before the dystopia kicked in,” Firian said.

“It’s the same old battle. Clearly they feel that Master Blair was too soft on everyone, and they’re probably not wrong. I wanted to learn how brutal the world can be.”

Firian glanced behind him, concern for Charlotte plain on his face. Foxes were very expressive. “So what are you out here for?”

“I’m going to talk to Stuart.”

“I see.”

I kept walking, and Firian followed me. I didn’t mention I was glad for the company, and he didn’t thank me for being out here in the miserable rain to help his witch.

But, we understood each other.

Chapter Thirteen

Charlotte

It’s probably not surprising information that a cold, dark, empty church is as creepy as a haunted house. Especially a church built in the 1880s, where everything was as ornate as a gilded theater, but more somber. The cavernous room was shadowed with a huge carved altarpiece with figures of the Virgin Mary and some saints looking down on me, and even the smell was eerie, this sweet wood-candle-incense aroma that seemed very ancient and reminded of funerals. There was a lamp post outside one of the stained glass windows, I guess, so that one window had a soft glow behind it and the rest were very dark.

I looked for the light-switches, but I couldn’t actually find any. Did the church even have electricity? Maybe it didn’t.

I climbed into a pew and huddled there so I didn’t have to look at any of it. “Thanks a lot, Harris…,” I muttered. “Woods might have been better.” I felt like calling Firian might be a bad idea, like I was being watched and judged.

But then, at some point, I heard the wind picking up outside, and then I heard thunder in the distance. So maybe not.

I tried to sleep, but it was impossible. Every sound had me shooting up off the bench to investigate, and this building seemed to rattle in the wind and creak randomly. I heard this weird movement behind the pulpit. It sounded like something slapping against the floor.

I started thinking about how sometimes people used to be buried under the floors of churches. Ohmigod, what if someone is buried in here and their corpse is scratching at the stones to be let out?

I had probably been there a couple of hours at this point.

I also needed to find a bathroom. But I was terrified to leave my pew in case the pulpit zombie got me.

I took a deep breath. “It’s probably a mouse,” I told myself. I felt a little ridiculous, but I had dealt with demon-wolf attacks, demon-bat attacks, and dabbled in the dark arts at that point, so nothing seemed off the table. But how could a mouse make that noise?

At some point, I was either going to pee on the church floor, or find the bathroom, so I got up and crept around in the shadows, looking for the door. I finally found a dimly lit toilet, groping around in the dark for toilet paper and soap. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and for the first time, I confronted what this was really about.

The council said they wanted to purge my sinistral blood. What did that mean? Did my blood make me who I was? Would it hurt? The little boggart certainly seemed upset about it.

“I’m scared,” I whispered. “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t want to lose my grandfathers’ blood…” I swallowed. “Samuel? Samuel…can you help me?”

The flopping sound continued. I huddled in the bathroom, heart pounding so hard I felt a little dizzy, but I started to feel like this was something I needed to confront.

You’re going to take on a demon and you’re afraid of a dark church and a weird noise? Come on.

So I mustered my strength and walked up to the pulpit.

There was a large white fish flailing around on the floor. Oh shit. It had been there for a while, then.

“Um…”

I had questions.

But there was no time for questions and the one thing that crossed my mind was Firian telling me how the rules of Etherium and Sinistral were different than our world, and more like fairy tales.

Maybe this fish was a mermaid. A wish-granting mermaid.

But for now, it was a fish. If it was a talking fish, it wasn’t volunteering anything. It was just suffering on a marble floor. So it was up to me. I sprang into action. I picked up the fish. This was not something I particularly relished doing, but I felt so bad for it. I didn’t want to just let it die. I rushed the fish into the bathroom and threw on the faucet. I had to grip the slippery, gross, wriggling fish under my arm while I shut the drain. Maybe this wasn’t good fish water, I don’t know. It was the best I could do.

When the fish got in the water, it seemed a bit listless.

“Oh—am I supposed to put you in the holy water?” This seemed like a moment in Fortune’s Favor. You’re stuck in a room with a puzzle to solve. Dying fish? Basin of mystical water? Duh. Once again, classic RPG.

So I ran the fish back out and put it in the stone basin near the entrance.

At this point, the fish seemed very sick, so I frantically cast a healing spell for good measure, although I wasn’t very good at those.

The fish vanished, leaving the water sparkling for a second.

My eyes darted around. I didn’t hear anything now.

“Did that have anything to do with anything?” I called. “Samuel…can you hear me?”

I told you not to rely on me. Use the resources around you, and the magic you have been taught.

Right. Classic RPG shit part two: if a wise elder teaches you a special new spell, then you should use that spell. Stuart told me I needed to practice my necromancy and keep from making emotional attachments to the dead.

I was pretty disappointed there was no mermaid though.

I crouched in front of the basin and lifted my wand, slowing my breath and focusing my concentration until I felt the shift, that subtle sense that the magical world was opening up to me. I was getting better at feeling it.

“O spirits, please guide me in your humble wisdom and tell me what the heck this fish is about. Thank you for your help.”

The faint, ghostly form of an old man appeared in front of me. He was dressed like a priest, and he had an old timey beard, so either he was a hipster priest who died a few years ago when his home-brew exploded, or he was a priest from back in the 1800s.

“Why are you in here, child?” he asked. “And why did you place a faery inside of the holy water?”

“It was dying on the floor. Did I mess it up? I’m really sorry. I’m not Catholic, although it’s very beautiful in here.” Best to compliment the ghost. “They locked me in here so they could purify my werewolf blood tomorrow, and then a dying faery fish appeared out of nowhere… I don’t know if you can help me. Maybe you don’t want to help me. Purifying people of werewolf blood might be something you’re into.”

“Do you wish to be purified of this blood of your kin?”

“Well, no.”

“Then, I would not recommend it. It seems this faery tested you, and because you did not hesitate to save her life, she offers you her protection.” He dipped his fingers in the holy water and brushed it on my brow. “The faeries had blessed water before us. Some day they might be gone, and humans will remain, but the rituals of this earth will bridge us. All things are connected, but it is usually only in death that we see it. Be well, Charlotte.”

He faded away.

I smiled. I hadn’t felt anything when he touched me, but when I brushed my brow, it was wet.

“He was cool,” I said. “But what about you, faery fish? Will I find out who you are?”

There was no answer. I guess I had to puzzle it out on my own for now. But at least, when I curled up on the pew again to sleep, all my fears seemed to have left me, and I dreamed until morning.

Chapter Fourteen

Harris

“It seems as if Charlotte has guarded herself against the purification spell,” Stuart said, after talking to his raven. “The faeries intervened and she passed their test. She is protected, this time.”

Firian’s ears lifted with subtle relief.

“The raven told you that?” I asked.

“That is what they do,” he said. “If you take the time to learn their language.”

“So I hurried all the way here in the rain…and she’s fine. I don’t need to do anything.”

“Are you angry that she fixed her own problem?”

“Of course not.” I fidgeted, as Stuart fed his raven some raven treats. “You seem very calm about everything I just told you. They were going to hurt her, and I just…I had to do something. Even if she can protect herself, they’ll just find another way. Don’t you want to put her somewhere safe?”

“She wants to be there,” Stuart said. “Ignatius would be very upset about all of this, but in the end, I am a faery. I covered up my nature with friendliness, but I must say, it’s been such a relief not to pretend to care about human concerns anymore.”

“So Charlotte’s welfare is just a ‘human concern’ to you?”

“I care,” Stuart said. “I care about her very much. I simply trust that it will unfold the way it should.”

Penny offered me some hot tea, moving quietly in the background, and added another log to the fire that was slowly drying out my clothes. The presence of servants reminded me of home, except that Stuart was living in a humble cave.

I wasn’t sure what to do next. I didn’t want to just return without accomplishing anything.

I glanced at Firian. The fox had followed me all the way here. Charlotte loved him more than anyone, and she loved him the wrong sort of way. I hadn’t even see my familiar in human form in many years.

But for Charlotte, his situation was as heart-breaking as if Alec or Montague was turned into an animal.

“What about Firian?” I asked.

“The curse?” Stuart said. “Her great-aunt cast it.”

“Her great-aunt is not going to break it,” I said. “I’ve heard enough to know that.”

“Hmm.” Stuart sipped his tea leisurely. “I wonder what would?” His eyes lifted.

“Is there something we can do about it?” I asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Do you think there’s something you could do about it?”

“Well, nothing that wouldn’t cause even more permanent and lasting damage to my relationship with home…”

“So,” Stuart said, “you could do something about it. And that is the price you would have to pay.”

“I think I liked you better when you were covering up your nature with friendliness.”

“You’re not the first one to say that,” said Orson, who was just hulking in the corner peeling potatoes. Well, Stuart’s servants were a little different from the ones at home. They were more intense, more woven into the place somehow. Orson was only of average height but he had a tall presence, with thick black hair and a warrior’s wildness, what my father would have called “a Pictish barbarian look.” My father had all of Europe dialed down to regions and tribes, even the ones that hadn’t existed in centuries.

Stuart shook his head. “I can only tell you the truth, Harris. Sometimes there is no easy choice; a hard one is all you will have. I can’t save Firian or Charlotte for you.”

“I have a feeling you could. If you wanted to.”

“I don’t need saving,” Firian growled. “Not from you, anyway.”

“Samuel and Ignatius are trusting me to guide Charlotte and everyone close to her by extension. The best skill a wizard can have is the ability to figure out solutions on their own,” Stuart said. “I also need to be careful. If I’m the last one standing, I have knowledge of Wyrd. Connections you’ll need. I can’t get captured by the council.”

“Ignatius isn’t dead,” I said. “I mean—he isn’t, is he?”

“No,” Stuart said. “Not dead.”

The look on his face seemed almost like he wished Ignatius was dead.

So where is he, then? The Haven?

I wondered what they did to women who lived as men—became men, even—in the Haven.

“Aw, fuck,” I said.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I wasn’t apologizing.”

But it almost felt like it was my fault. The councils? They were my people. My family, my family’s friends. I had been clinging to that world, afraid to stand up to them for fear of losing my own wealth and power.

I was starting to realize how hollow it was.

“I know what to do, Stu,” I said. “Thanks for the talk.”

Orson got to his feet and handed me an umbrella for the walk back. “Are you finally going to get your lady?” he asked.

“People need to stop making assumptions.”

“I know a lovesick man when I see one, and I saw one as soon as you showed up here, though I didn’t know the object until I saw the lady Charlotte.”

I grabbed the umbrella. “Damnit, how does everyone see it so plainly when I make every effort not to wear my heart on my sleeve?”

“When it’s there, it’s there,” Orson said.

“Not for faeries.”

“Not true. Most faeries just take a little longer to crack, that’s all,” Orson said, glancing sideways.

“What? Orson, you sly dog,” Firian said. “Was Stuart ever in love?”

Orson raised his thick brows. “Servant’s oath.” He shoved me along. “Go on.”

Chapter Fifteen

Charlotte

In the morning, the church doors opened and I stirred sleepily.

“Get up!” Piers cried, marching in. “I’m glad you got a little beauty rest, my dear. You are going to be reborn this morning.”

I think he was annoyed that I didn’t seem scared. But that faded quickly as I walked out, stumbling a bit on my lingering exhaustion and wishing for a toothbrush, and realized the entire school was gathered around outside looking up the church steps.

What if the faery blessing didn’t work?

“You stay right here,” Professor New Jersey ordered me, jabbing his wand at the ground in front of me. “This is a special lesson for everyone here and a lucky day for Charlotte, here. Her grandfather was a werewolf, which means—she has a natural draw to Sinistral. Last night, if you came to my demonstration, you saw what happens when we purify a Sinistral ghost. This morning we’re going to demonstrate something a little more pleasant. We will purify her blood and banish her wickedness.”

I saw Montague and Alec shoving their way to the front.

“Stop,” Montague said. “This is—a bad idea.”

“You need to be purified!” Henry Wells jeered. “Purify the vampire!”

Alec’s face cut to him. “You want to say that again?”

“Guys, don’t fight,” I said. “It’s okay. Proceed.” I stood there and tried to look serene.

“Char, are you crazy?” Alec cried. “What did they do to you in there?”

Was I a little nervous? Sure. But if you couldn’t trust magical fish and priest ghosts, who could you trust? I mean, basically I was in a whole new world of logic here. I tried to ignore the fact that Firian was tricked by fellow Ethereals. I needed to go with my gut here.

Harris was in the crowd, too, further back from Montague and Alec. I saw him cough. He looked kind of sick. I saw some of the old professors, too, looking nervous. Professor Adams was shaking his head and muttering something. But the other professors had been laying low. As powerful as they were, they were afraid of the council, too.

Piers and Professor Pacetti stood behind me and crossed their wand in front of me. “You can all repeat my words,” Piers said. “Etherium, I have here a witch who has a dark soul in her blood. We want you to turn her to the way of order.”

The students repeated it. Some of them enthusiastically, but there was a solid background of mumbling.

Professor Adams was shaking his head now. I tried to look more serene so he wasn’t tempted to intervene.

I need to go through with this, I thought. I need them to know they can’t mess with me because I have Samuel’s magic. And if I’m wrong, I’m probably doomed anyway.

“Shine the light of Etherium upon her!” Piers cried. “May she fight only for good, all her life and unto death! Bless this child, holy spirits of Etherium!”

Their wands sparked together and a circle of light wrapped around me.

Oh, crap.

I shut my eyes and huddled a little, braced for pain.

My forehead burned. My wand burned in my hand too. I felt something trying to break its way through my natural defenses, a wave of nausea crashing over me. I wanted to drop my wand as it grew warm, but I made myself cling to it more tightly instead. They wanted to take my magic from me, and I couldn’t let them.

I felt their spell shatter.

Piers made a little strangled, angry sound that came out like, “Hruuu!?” It was a delicious sound to hear in the course of surprising and annoying someone I hated, but I hoped it wasn’t a sound that ran in the family. If Harris said “Hruuu!?” during sex maybe he wasn’t meant to be part of this after all.

“Should we try again?” Professor Pacetti hissed.

“No,” Piers snapped. “It didn’t work. Her magic blocked the whole thing somehow.” He grabbed me and hauled me into the church.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

“Well, I guess the faeries gave me this wand and now they’re protecting me.”

“Like Samuel before her…”

Pacetti suddenly made a grab for my wand.

“Stop!” I wrestled with him. “This is my wand! What’s the problem? I spent the last two years ‘unpurifed’ and I was fine, so is it that big of a deal?”

“It’s not Ethereal magic. This is an Ethereal college. We have to look it over before it’s permitted.” Piers tapped my arm and it suddenly went limp, allowing Professor Pacetti to take it easily.

“If it’s safe, we’ll return it,” he said.

“You hurt my familiar, tried to warp my blood, and now you’re taking my wand.” I was seething. “Give it back.”

I was pissed off, and I could feel my anger flaring up into power. I’d never felt such a direct flow of emotion into magic before.

All the candles in the church lit at once.

“Give me the wand,” I repeated.

Piers handed me the wand without any resistance.

I ran out of the church before he realized what he was doing, but as I shoved the door open, I felt giddy.

Is this how Mom felt when she learned to use her magic?

Is this feeling what the Withered Lord promised her that made her stay?

Because I gotta say, it felt pretty intoxicating. I felt like I’d gotten a little of my own back after what the council did to Firian.

Montague, Alec and Harris were huddled together, talking, but they looked up when I ran out.

“I told you she was going to save herself,” Harris said.

Montague threw an arm around me. “Let’s get out of here.” Some students were glaring at me. It was pretty clear at this point that the school was divided into two factions: the ones who were glad Master Blair was gone, and the ones who weren’t.

“Are we going to talk about what happened back there?” Montague asked. “How did you defy the purification spell?”

“There was a magical fish on the floor of the church,” I said. “And it was actually a faery that wanted help. Which I realize sounds…strange…”

“As faery behavior goes, it sounds normal,” Montague said.

“So I put the fish in the holy water, and then a magical priest ghost appeared, and I thought he might be mad, but he said some wise things and put the holy water on my forehead and said it would protect me.”

“So you didn’t really do much,” Harris said. “You really are a Chosen One. Whenever you’re in trouble, some spirit shows up and bails you out.”

“Harris, I am telling you this after the fact, but when it first happened, all I knew was that a fish was dying on the floor and I picked it up and tried to save it, and it was slimy. I’m sorry I didn’t learn to cast Fortune’s Wheel, or throw the One Ring into Mount Doom or behead a demon, but I didn’t do nothing.”

“You tossed a fish into some water.”

Harris didn’t look well. We made it to Lancelot House, but when we reached his room, he stumbled toward his bed. He still was with it enough to stay stubbornly on his feet and glower.

“Are you sick, Harris?” I asked.

“I caught a chill in the rain last night, I guess.”

“You can’t actually get sick from being cold. Maybe there should be a science class at magic school.”

“Maybe it’s different for warlocks,” he growled, and then coughed.

“That makes no sense.” I put a hand to his forehead. “You’re burning up.”

“I’m fine.”

“Do you need to go to the infirmary? Is there a magical cure for colds?” I turned to Montague and Alec. “Why don’t you guys go see if you can find him something.”

I had an edge to my voice. They could definitely tell this was as much as me having it out with Harris as anything else.

“As you wish,” Montague said, with a smirk, and they left.

Harris and I hadn’t been alone much.

“So what is your problem?” I said. “I’m sick of it. More than two years of this bullshit. You really think I’m just some stupid ‘Chosen One’? You’re jealous.”

“I ran miles in the cold last night to get to Stuart, trying to save you,” he said. “I thought you saved yourself and it was actually faeries and ghosts.”

I actually slapped him. It just popped out and it felt so good that I realized why women in movies slapped men’s faces so often. I wasn’t usually violent, but I thought Harris could take a slap.

Hell, maybe he liked getting slapped. “I deserved that,” he said, with a crooked smile.

“Yeah, you did. You want to tell me why you always do this? One minute, you seem like you’d do anything for me, and them—” I gestured at the space Montague and Alec had just left. “But what comes out of your mouth is another story.”

“I’ve been an ass since Monty got turned into a vampire. I know I’ve been an ass, but it kinda feels like all I have. That’s what my family does. We climb social ladders, hoard money, cut out people who disappoint us…”

“You ran away from home,” I said. “It’s not all you have.”

“But—you can’t run away. Not really.” He looked pained. “I have to go back home for autumn break.”

“You don’t have to. Do you need money or social ladders? I mean, what do I know? I know I didn’t grow up in a mansion as a fancy warlock. I grew up in Ass-End, Georgia, so normal that I guess it pains you, and no one there is rich, but my dad sure wasn’t the richest there either. But we had each other. My family has my back, no matter what. And I think Montague and Alec would have your back, too. And so would I, for that matter, if you didn’t keep trying so hard to push us away.”

He walked closer to me, his breathing a little strained. “I saved you because I had one of the Hapsburg treasures. I was able to get you home to your dad your first Christmas because I pulled strings. I got Monty a car. It won’t be the last time I save you because I’m a rich asshole, Charlotte. So if I give that up—”

“You’re still a hell of a warlock,” I said. “You’ll find other ways to save us.”

“What if I don’t?”

“You would—”

He cut me off, his tone like acid. “What if I know a way to make Firian human again but it only works if I go home and grovel to my parents?”

“Is—is that—for real?” I stammered.

He grabbed my arm. “You need Harrison von Hapsburg Nicolescu,” he said. “You don’t need Harris Nobody.”

“Okay—fine.” I swallowed. “But you don’t have to act this way when we’re alone.”

He was standing so close now that my eyes met his collar. He spoke in my ear. “How do you want me to act?” His words were more bitter than sexy, but I still felt a weird thrill race through me.

“I want you to be yourself,” I gasped.

“Do you really, truly want that?”

His fingers brushed my chin. I looked up at him now, his blue eyes meeting mine with icy, yet barely pent desire. My skin shivered under his touch even though his skin was so warm.

“I want to know what’s inside your head,” I said.

He trailed the fingers back down my neck, and then he kissed me softly.

At first.

Oh…

His lips brushed mine, tasted mine—his hand slipped to my lower back and pressed me against him. I kissed him back, following his lead.

“I can still feel the sting of your hand on my cheek,” he said.

“I’m not usually so violent.”

“I don’t believe it. We have something in common,” he said. “You have a kind heart, Charlotte. But you also have a taste for…taking what you want.”

I swallowed, glancing away as he remained so close to me that I could smell the scent of him beneath the clean, rich boy scent of his clothes and aftershave. That was the wolf in me, I guess, the wolf I barely knew but had almost lost.

Harris had seen the look in my face when I walked out of the church. I felt like he was the only one who saw something I barely acknowledged in myself.

When I came here, I was scared of being hurt or losing something, but even from the start, the idea of having power thrilled me. I had been warned a hundred times or more that I might die or lose someone close to me—that it was likely, in fact. Why didn’t I run away? Why did I take risks to return?

I wanted to be a Chosen One.

I wanted to be the heroes and heroines I idolized. Not anyone real. Never anyone real. In the Princess Bride, Wesley could get out of any situation. In Game of Thrones, Arya could take out her enemies without them seeing it coming. I wanted to be cool and composed, like my dark mage alter-ego Larius, who could wave a problem away with his hand and a dark spell.

Now I knew the truth about Ignatius, Samuel, Stuart, and my mother and grandmother. They broke ancient rules and did what they wanted. Anything seemed possible for me.

It gave me such a thrill, such a desire, that I couldn’t stop even though I knew at some point, I would be hurt. Which meant, Dad would be hurt. Which meant, my heart wasn’t that kind after all.

And Harris saw that.

“You’re right…,” I said.

I reached a hand to his hair, dragged it through my fingers, and took a kiss from him now.

His hands moved to my waist and gripped me. When I slipped a tongue into his mouth, he pushed me back, claiming my mouth instead.

“I take what I want too,” he said.

“No, you don’t,” I said. “Not if you go home and grovel.”

“You don’t want me to save Firian?”

“What do you need?”

“A ring,” he said. “Another Hapsburg treasure that breaks curses. It’s in the family’s jewelry case.”

“So…” I put my hands on his chest. “Let’s figure out another way.”

“I’ll go home and steal it, Charlotte,” he said. “I will, if I can have you.”

You were always meant to be mine, I thought. Still, looking at his arrogant blond head and the way he said it, my stubbornness flared. “‘Have’ me?”

“Yes,” he said. “And I don’t want to wait. I swear I will save Firian.”

“Are you bargaining for me?”

“I’m demanding to have you,” he said, his eyes already penetrating me as much as anyone could with any body part, frankly. “I’ve been wanting you for over two years. I’ve held back. I was engaged, and I would never cheat. I tried to resist you for our own good, both of us, and now I wonder why I tried to do anything for your own good. You’ll get yourself in trouble with or without me. You’re determined to do it. So I might as well…just…”

He held me close, kissing my neck. I was hot with the need to succumb.

“My boyfriends will be back with your medicine any minute,” I said.

He lifted his hand and locked the door. “So we have a minute.”

“I’m going to slap you again.”

“Go ahead.” He swept me with those eyes. “I know you want this. We both know. Haven’t we played this game long enough?”

I did want it. He was right. It didn’t make much logical sense, but “Sexual Attraction to Assholes” is generally not a logical sense sort of thing. I’m sure there were a few like, brain surgeons or NASA scientists who went home and had dirty sex with some guy who rode a motorcycle.

But then Harris would win.

He also didn’t have a motorcycle. I could do better.

And as much as I wanted him, I didn’t want to give him the upper hand.

“No,” I said. “You can’t just demand me. And you definitely can’t blackmail me. Do you know a single thing about romance?”

“I don’t need to know a single thing about romance,” he said. “Your expressions are so transparent.”

“I’m transparent? Your skin is practically see-through, and your desperate attempts to show me up are worse.”

“They’re not desperate,” he said, “if I do show you up.”

“Save Firian first,” I said. “Show me you mean what you say. I love Firian, and I always will, and if you care about me you’ll have to care about him.”

We heard Montague and Alec coming. “I save Firian, and my prize is you. Every inch of you,” he said under his breath.

I must have been blushing so hard. “Maybe,” I said.

“No maybes,” he said.

“Earn it, and there won’t be any maybes.”

He unlocked the door with another flick of his finger and lay in bed.

Chapter Sixteen

Charlotte

When Alec and Montague came back, they brought some medicine for Harris, and they both seemed super pissed off that Piers and Professor New Jersey tried to make an example of me and hurt me, and that if they tried to do anything about it they would just get expelled or something.

It’s nice that y’all want to be protective, but I am so turned on right now! I just had to turn down Harris and now I want to get me some while he lays here feverish and frustrated! Evil laughter!

That was what I wanted to scream, but didn’t.

“I feel like they did it not just to hurt Charlotte, but also to taunt us,” Alec said. “They don’t like Sinistrals and they’re trying to goad us into doing something so they have an excuse to get rid of us.”

“So we’re just supposed to take it while Charlotte gets hurt?”

“We have to,” Alec said. “It might go against your vampire rage instinct—”

“‘Vampire rage instinct’?” Montague’s brows drew together. “She’s our lady. Rayner would never have let Lisbeth get hurt under his watch.”

“Guys, I wasn’t hurt,” I said.

“You were lucky,” Harris coughed. “But they’ll find another way to get what they want.”

“Can we talk in our room so poor, poor, sick Harris can take a nap?” I asked sarcastically.

“You and Alec can go,” Montague said. “I have some stuff to do.”

“What stuff?” I asked, baffled.

“I have a paper to finish,” he said.

Okay, whatever, I guess he needed some broody vampire time. I looked at Alec and lifted my eyebrows.

Good old Alec. One signal and I could make him forget about everything else.

We stepped outside the other guys’ room as Montague flicked on his desk lamp and picked up a book and Harris seemed to fall into an instant sleep. Boring.

“I still need to get my workout,” Alec said.

“Hey, I could come work out with you,” I said. “Maybe it would be good for me to get buff.”

He pinched my arm. “You’ve got a long road ahead in that case.”

“Or I could just watch you.”

“There’s a treadmill with a nice view.”

I changed into my yoga pants and a top with a built-in sports bra and shortly thereafter we were in the campus gym. Better yet, we were alone in the campus gym. I had my treadmill set low and I was walking along mindlessly, staring at Alec as he lifted heavy stuff, pulled on tense stuff, flexed on flexy things, and basically showed off every inch of his toned physique, his tattoos shifting around the muscles beneath, working up a sweat I swear I could smell across the room.

At one point, he was moving his arms outward and making eye contact with me, his reddish eyes burning through me, while I was panting, and he had to stop because he was getting very obviously hard. He grabbed his wand and traced it over the tattoos on his arms to try and cool his desire. But he couldn’t take his eyes off me.

He could hardly control himself. Shit, that was so hot. I knew as soon as he was done with this, I was in for it. Torturously long minutes of his medium brown skin taut against his toned, gleaming muscles while he looked at me like he was already about to come, while I—

“Wah!” I got so distracted I forgot to jog and was thrown off the treadmill, tripping over my own legs and finally falling on my ass.

He got up and walked over to me, but I was already getting up. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“That was my fault,” he said.

“Nah. I could have been thinking about anything.”

He laughed. “I doubt that.”

“You do this every day?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“And I haven’t been watching?”

“You never asked.”

I grabbed the waist of his shorts. “I think you’ve done enough for today.”

“Not enough,” he said. “The best exercise is yet to come.”

“Mm…” We sank into a kiss fit to melt my underwear right off me.

“Which piece of exercise equipment do you want me to spread you across when I fuck you?”

“This is a public place! With windows!”

“But we’re alone,” he said. “It’s a quiet corner of campus. I’m usually working out by myself at this time of day. Worst case scenario, we work on our skills at casting illusions. You’re into it, huh?” he said, as his hand stroked my slickness. “I think you need a personal trainer. Yoga isn’t enough for a full-body workout.”

“You’re terrible,” I said, with a smile that certainly wasn’t fooling an incubus.

He tugged my pants and underwear down and then he walked over to the exercise bike.

“Let’s see…this is a pretty easy workout for a beginner. You know to ride a bike, right?”

“I know how to ride you and I have a feeling that’s enough…”

“Char.” He laughed as I straddled the bike seat, standing up. He stood just behind me, the head of his cock pushing inside me.

“Ooh…” I gripped the handles and he gripped me.

“Can you pedal?” he purred in my ear.

“This is a whole new level of naughty,” I groaned. “Seriously…” I pedaled, awkwardly as he kept my ass stuck out, but his cock was so long that even with all the movement, he managed to stay in, even as I shifted. My arms burned with the strain but all I really noticed was his cock bouncing in and out of me and his hand stroking my clit. Desire coiled fast inside me as I sweated.

“That hot ass,” he said. “Fuck.”

“I’m so tired…”

“Come on. You need to train, right?”

“Mm…”

I looked up and my eyes met the mirrored wall so I could see his expression of ecstasy while I rode him, plus his ripped, tattoo-covered arms and the way his black hair was messy and he was just lost inside me.

If someone walked in the door right now, we would probably both murder them.

“Mm…”

Would we even notice?

All the build-up, and when I hit a release it was insane. I almost fell sideways. Alec had to catch me and pull me off the bike, pushing me down onto a bench so he could finish off with a few fierce strokes.

“You are so dirty,” I said. “And now, so is this gym.”

“I have no regrets,” he said. “You’re pretty dirty yourself.”

“Oh yeah.”

We tugged our pants back on, with relief at having succeeded in avoiding the public gaze, and made out until I felt like my whole face was swollen with kisses.

He slid a ring on my finger. I already had one from him for every day this week. “I wonder if you’re the reason I keep almost nodding off in class this year,” I said. “You’re wiping me out.”

“I warned you.” He kissed me again. “It would be a lie to say I can’t help it, because I hold back. A lot. If I had my way, my life would revolve around your pleasure, but humans can’t handle that much.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You want to have sex every two hours?”

“Well…to be honest, no. Not most days.”

“I thought so.” Alec opened a supply closet. “I’d better clean up, huh? I know what will happen if they find cum in the gym. Always blame the incubus.”

“Right? So unfair.”

I heard yelling outside.

“Maybe I’ll go see what that’s all about,” I said.

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Alec said.

“It sounds like Professor Adams…”

I wandered over to the windows on the opposite wall anyway, and then I couldn’t help my sheer nosiness. When I couldn’t see or hear much of anything, I cracked the door.

“This is some bullshit!” Professor Adams was yelling, very loudly, the way people yell when they’re having a drunken parking lot argument. “Bull. Shit!”

Now Alec couldn’t help himself. We both walked out to the expanse of lawn in front of the main hall, where Professor Adams was screaming at Piers.

One of the guards tried to hand him a box. “We cleared out your desk.”

“I don’t care about the contents of my damn desk!”

“Please calm down or we will have to escort you off the grounds physically,” Piers said.

“I’ve worked here for twenty years! I didn’t know anything about Ignatius Blair being a woman, but I do know that you can’t just ‘purify’ the students.”

“It’s very safe,” Piers said calmly. “A precautionary measure. We already have one student here who was turned by vampires. The council is protecting the students from danger. I’m not sure why you feel the need to rant and rave about it. Very few of the students here will have any bad blood in their lines, but I’m sure the ones who do would rather be rid of it.”

“Like I said, I spent more than twenty years here. I taught a whole generation. Never once did I need to purify anybody. I know what this is about.” Professor Adams picked up a suitcase that was sitting, forlorn, on the sidewalk, and threw it in the back of a waiting car driven by one of the school staff.

Alec frowned.

“Poor Professor Adams,” I said softly, with a sinking feeling in my gut. I remembered Adams and McGuinness watching over us like friendly uncles at Christmas when I thought I wouldn’t be able to go home to Dad. I was pretty sure he had the hots for a demoness, so I guess it wasn’t much of a surprise.

Sinistral and Etherium seem like they aren’t just fighting each other, they also have plenty of romantic crossover, I thought.

But that wasn’t going to be tolerated anymore.

Once Professor Adams was gone, Piers went back to the main building and everyone who had stepped out to watch dispersed, but Henry Wells came walking up to us. Alec stepped forward protectively. With the Locke brothers gone, Henry Wells was my biggest antagonist among the students. He didn’t target me as viciously as the Locke brothers did, at least. Snide comments were about as far as he went.

“You must be nervous,” he said to Alec.

“No,” Alec said.

“No? You’re not worried that Master Nicolescu will try to extract the incubus right out of you?”

“It’s half of my heritage,” Alec said. “I don’t think that’s actually possible.”

“I guess you aren’t in the loop,” Henry said. “This is groundbreaking therapy developed by the Order of the Blessed. They have already been purifying the demon blood out of dozens of halfbreed ethereal witches, in some cases releasing people back home who were there for years. It’s a potent weapon in securing more ground for Etherium.”

“What the hell is the ‘Order of the Blessed’?” Montague asked.

“A religious sect of warlocks,” Harris said, frowning. “They’re up in the Adirondacks, so I’ve heard of them, although still not much. I had no idea we were trusting new therapeutic methods to religious cults.”

“If it works, it works,” Henry said. “Who cares where it came from?”

“What does this therapy do when it works?” I asked, although I probably shouldn’t have engaged.

“Alec would just be a normal warlock,” he said, giving me a cool look. “He would no longer be tormented by demonic needs. What a relief for all of you, I’m sure, since you are dating Montague, aren’t you? It must be so awkward.”

“I have it all under control,” Alec said. “No purification needed. I’ve heard some little men pay a lot of money to get what I’ve got.” He slung a casual arm around my shoulders and spun me off toward our dorm, leaving Henry—who was a few inches shorter than Alec and way less built—standing there fuming.

“Great. We needed to piss off another rich-ass warlock,” I said, suppressing a smile.

“What can I say? I get overconfident when I can still feel your desire coursing through me,” he said. “There’s a reason all incubi are sinistrals. It’s a classy way of saying I’m a rape demon.”

“You’re not a ‘rape demon’. Dude. That’s just a gross way to describe yourself. You have never once hurt me, you know that.”

“I put out magic that makes you want me,” he said. “And it’s all I want.”

“At this point, who cares if you make me want you? I trust you. We’re careful. I’m happy at the end of it. You have my permission to make me want you and act on it. It’s a lot better than the first two years when you made me want you and did not act on it.”

“Fair point,” he said. “The warlock in me wants to be more of a gentleman like Montague or my dad.”

“I already have a gentleman,” I said. “I don’t need it from you.”

He stopped and gave me a devastating smile. “Watch out, ‘princess’,” he said. “Don’t make me take you again that soon. All this sweet talk. You could keep a little more distance.”

“Can you call me princess without making it sound vaguely sarcastic? Firian is the sarcastic one. You’re the earnest one.”

“I reject your labels.” He smirked. “Anyway, I’ve seen all I needed to know.”

“Know for what?”

“That we need to fight Harris’ cousin,” he said. “Whenever the reckoning comes.”

Chapter Seventeen

Charlotte

I kept hoping things would be okay-ish at school. A reckoning sounded ominous. Sure, we had this purifying nonsense, but maybe it would blow over. Professor Adams was replaced by a new guy. His name was—for real—Professor John Stamos. I was all ready with the Full House jokes.

Then I saw him. He was like two hundred years old, bald and hideous, covered in age spots, with wispy white hair and fleshy lips, and I heard him refer to me as ‘the little woman’.

I didn’t even dare call him Uncle Jesse in private. Ew. Not even funny.

Thank god I didn’t have theurgy this year.

I was finally in Alchemy class, which meant potions, and I was pumped about that. Alchemy was taught by Professor Pelham. He was British, reserved, and fairly charming, even though he had a very soft voice and we all leaned forward to hear him.

Potions was just like a dangerous chemistry class. Perhaps a more careful reading of Harry Potter would have reminded me of that. I was bad at it. It was even worse when I missed about every fifth word Professor Pelham softly whispered. A potion literally exploded in my face and burned me in the first month so I had to spend an entire day in the infirmary with this cloth mask covering my face. It was dipped in—you guessed it—potions.

The circle of life.

I had not turned myself into a cat person yet, but if Hermione could manage it, that was probably coming.

No doubt, punishments had grown more intense under Master Nicolescu. When a guy was caught with a dark magic book, he was tied to a post beneath Piers’ office window for the entire day and denied dinner. The next day, we were all gathered for another purification ceremony.

“I wasn’t going to cast dark magic. I just wanted to know what it was all about,” the guy, a freshman named Lucas, announced to everyone. “How can I fight dark magic if I don’t know what it is?”

“These are lies,” Piers said. “No one can read a book of dark magic and emerge uncorrupted. The rules of the school strictly state that you can only study dark magic within the lessons you are assigned.”

I felt generally confused, because I didn’t like Piers, but it actually didn’t sound that unreasonable. When did reading a book of dark magic in a fantasy movie ever lead to anything good? They were always tempting and had unexpected consequences, and every professor had warned us about that.

“I banish the darkness within you,” Piers said, waving a hand over him after some pretentious Latin chanting.

The guy looked sickly as some dark smoke wafted out of him.

“Uhh…” He reached out like he was going to collapse, and Piers took his hand.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Feel the shadow as it passes away, and know that this is the consequence of your actions.”

“I’m going to throw up,” Lucas said, and then he did. I winced.

Piers was hardcore. When someone tells me they’re going to throw up, I put ten feet between me and that person, but Piers barely shuffled his feet out of the way while Lucas vomited on the ground and then slumped forward into the puddle.

“I can’t watch,” Montague said, kneading his forehead.

“Squeamish vampire,” I said, petting him.

Piers crouched over him and waved his wand down the length of his body. “Take him to the infirmary to recover,” he told some other staff members. “We are lucky this was caught early. This is serious. Merlin College is near the veil between worlds, as you all know—it’s what allows us to practice magic here. But the betrayal of Professor Blair has weakened its power. It is within the realm of possibility that Sinistrals could gain control of this space. This is, more than anything, why the council sent me here. You know the adage: if you see something, say something. No Sinistral magic is permitted.”

Was it my imagination, or did he look at me when he said it?

I was trying not to attract his attention, and he was mostly ignoring me after his attempt to purify me didn’t work, but I never got the sense he forgot me. If anything else, because Harris warned me that Piers would never forget something like that.

“You made him look stupid,” Harris said while we were quietly studying in the attic. “He’s just waiting for the moment when you won’t make him look stupid next time.”

“Right. Your family hates looking stupid,” I said.

“Everyone hates looking stupid,” Harris said.

“But some more than others,” Alec said. “I don’t really mind looking stupid. Most things, you can just shrug off.”

“And then you’re even more charming than before,” I said sweetly.

“We’ll see if you shrug it off when Piers figures out a way to make you look stupid,” Harris said.

“And we’ll see if you shrug it off when I make you look stupid,” I retorted.

Alec got up and clapped his hands like he was trying to break up fighting animals. “No! Bad wizards!” he said. “Go back to your study corners. I’m working on a paper on the history of lore and ritual at Merlin, and I just found something interesting. This has gotta be your hipster beard priest.”

He held up an old book with an old photograph of a guy with a beard and a priest collar. Father Patrick Early, Merlin College (1881-1883).

“Oh yeah, that’s him!”

“It says he was the first priest at the chapel here but—get this—he was ‘hired for his skill at holy healing, but dismissed when it was found that he consorted with faeries of dubious origins for his healing spells. The morning after his dismissal, Father Early took ill with a fever and was confined to his bed, never to leave it. He died three days later, near the stroke of midnight, and it has since been whispered that the faeries punished him for his carelessness with their secrets. It was said that Father Early’s wand came from a faery tree and it was burnt with his body on a pyre of ash wood to banish the fae magic in ritual fashion, but it has since been said that he haunts the chapel.’”

My hair stood on end. This was hardcore. Faery fevers? Giving a priest a frickin’ Game of Thrones death on our college campus? “We should tell Stuart that story.”

“So he had a Wyrd wand,” Harris said.

“Sounds like it…”

“Is this about the faeries, or is it about Wyrd itself?” Montague said. “We’ve always been told to beware of faeries and faery magic. But the council seems afraid of Wyrd. Like if we could tap into Wyrd magic, we would take ourselves out of the fight between Etherium and Sinistral, right? That’s what the council really doesn’t seem to want.”

“But why do they keep wanting to fight?”

“They have to fight,” Harris said. “There is only so much territory. Only so many humans who believe in magic.”

“Well, now I know why my great-grandmother was always like, ‘Never trust an Irish priest’,” Montague said. “They really do talk to faeries…”

Chapter Eighteen

Charlotte

we seem to be far from home.

I came to these dessert realms a long time ago once, Larius said. I was here with Firia…

you miss her…

“It’s desert,” Firian said. “One s. Why do you never get that one right?”

“Shut up. I’m being wistful about you.”

Yumi… Larius reached for the tiny ninja. Admittedly, you couldn’t really hug in Fortune’s Favor, so my dark mage looked pretty ridiculous thrusting his arms out toward her.

i miss firia too. <3 <3

“Oh, you talk in hearts now?” I asked Alec.

“Yumi talks in hearts. It’s role playing.”

“Should I be disturbed that you’re so in tune with a girly ninja?”

“Only if I should be disturbed that you’re a broody man in a cloak with skulls on your shoulders.”

We adventured together for so long, I typed. but I know I’ll free her from the curse.

in the meantime…i could ease your burdens.

It’s…not easy for me…to touch as you do. I was trained in the ways of killing, not love. But Yumi…if I am being honest, my cock does hunger for attention.

Alec looked at me and slowly licked his lips.

“Stop…” I started giggling.

“I thought you were trying to find Fortune’s Wheel and unlock your omega forms,” Firian said.

“We will.”

“I would focus on that first,” Firian said. “I would love to see what Firia’s omega form is.”

“Yeah,” I said, a little absently, as I chatted with Alec. Then I caught myself. I mean, Firian had no choice but to play spectator both as a boyfriend and my long-term gaming partner. Firian would have been all about this year’s new feature, omega forms, where you could evolve your character to unlock a super-powered form for short increments. Plus, one out of every hundred characters was a Chou-Omega with a sparkly omega form, and unless you unlocked yours, you didn’t know if you were blessed by the algorithm gods.

Nah, we were just dicking around instead. I was being a jerk. “Alec, we can find that sand crystal we need in the desert too.”

Some elven swordsman had just waltzed up to Alec’s girl and started chatting with us.

hey u know where to fight lord quron

u hot?

we could team up

hey u a girl? u hot?

“Do we know this dude?”

“No,” Firian said. “But maybe he’s a cue that you should just go to sleep.”

“It’s autumn break,” I said.

“Autumn break? So you get one extra day off for Halloween,” he said. “You still have studies to work on. Need I remind you that you’re training to be demon slayers?”

“If you had hands, you would be telling me I’m wimpy for going to bed at 1 am on a Friday night.”

“Yes,” he said. “But I don’t have hands and now I see the futility of this game and all human existence.”

“Do you want me to play Firia and try to unlock her omega form?”

“As much as I miss seeing her hot elven ass…no.” He watched me brush off the other player. “Maybe it’s Montague trying to hook up with you via the game. Are you still with him? I never see him around.”

“We’re still together,” I said, but I had noticed Montague seemed preoccupied since the failed purification. I hadn’t worried about it, because we were all busy with studies, and he still kissed me and there was a hot rendezvous in the third floor library records room one day, but come to think of it, I had four rings from Alec on my hands and none from Montague this whole week.

Hmm.

Is it starting to happen? Is he drifting toward his sire?

Alec yawned. “C’mere, Firian. I’ll scratch your head.”

“You can’t just buy me off like that. I don’t need your head scratches.”

Alec finished his cup of coffee, put his head in his hand, gave Firian a look that managed to be both sleepy and vaguely sultry while not being inappropriately so. He lifted a hand and waved his fingers slightly. “Firian. Life’s too short.”

“He’s incubusing me,” Firian said with a little huff.

“I’m incubuying you off,” Alec said.

“Oh, god, it’s too soon to work on your dad jokes.” I blocked the random dude. There is a cave…a private cave…off by those cliffs, with treasures within, I told Alec’s ninja girl avatar. Sand crystals…and more.

I would like you to explore the cave and find the treasure within it. Alec looked up at me and pumped his finger in his coiled opposite hand.

“You kids could just have sex for real,” Firian said.

“But then you would leave,” Alec said, as Firian quietly moved over to him to accept his head scratches with a resigned expression. “I know you don’t really like spending your whole life in Etherium.”

“Don’t be nice to me,” Firian growled. “Grumpiness is the only shield I have.”

Alec just kept scratching his ears. Firian melted a little. I melted more. I had to resist mentioning how cute they were together because I understood why this would piss Firian off. If I got turned into like, a kitten, and instead of having a romantic and sex life I just got ear scratches, I would be infuriated.

And I missed my Firian. The real Firian.

But still.

Outside, I heard a car door shut and I jumped off the bed. So did Alec. Cars came rarely. In the middle of the night?

We looked out the window. Daisy stepped out of the car. Piers rushed out to meet her and take her bags from the chauffeur. He was talking to Daisy while she stood stiffly with her arms crossed. He waved her forward toward the path to his house, which used to be Master Blair’s house. She stayed put. He walked closer to her and said something that finally made her budge, but I could see that she didn’t really want to go off alone with him.

“I need to see if Daisy’s okay.”

“And attract Piers’ attention?” Alec said. “I’m sure Daisy can take care of herself… She’s a powerful witch.”

“Daisy looks scared.” I snatched my coat. Alec followed, of course, but I outran him. I hadn’t heard from Daisy all summer and I was so worried Piers could hurt her. I definitely wouldn’t want to be engaged to him, especially after what Harris said about how he wanted to marry Daisy years ago.

I was gasping from running by the time I reached the house. I couldn’t make in time before he got her in the house, but lights glowed from the parlor window. I pulled on the old doorbell and it made a solid clang.

I heard voices inside. Piers sounded like he wanted to ignore me. Daisy flung open the door, a little breathless herself.

“Girl, hey!” she gasped, throwing on a smile that looked fake as hell. “You’re awake?”

“Yeah! Studying late, you know.” I gave her a hug. “I saw you come in.”

“It’s late, I know. Traffic back in Indianapolis on the way, and then roadwork…” As always, Daisy looked hot and put together. She was wearing a pink coat dress and black boots with blingy, jeweled earrings. She also had dark circles under her eyes and couldn’t quite hide her fear. When I pulled back from the hug, she clutched my arm a little before letting go.

“Are you two close?” Piers asked, coming up behind her, dressed in a three piece suit at one o’clock in the morning.

“Yeah,” Daisy said, turning her fake smile to him. “Charlotte’s crew and me, yeah, we’re tight. I’d do anything for this girl. Anything.”

This sounded like a cry for help. “Same,” I said, and Daisy’s eyes darted ever so briefly to me.

“Oh, well…I’m glad you already have a friend here,” Piers said coolly.

“What are y’all up to now?” I asked. “Are you attending school?”

“No,” Piers said. “Daisy is done with her education now. She will stay in guest housing until we marry in the summer.”

“So you’re just chilling?” I asked Daisy.

“I wish,” she whispered.

“I have some business for her,” Piers said. “She will be the diviner soon, and those abilities are needed now. But…you will see her around, I’m sure.” He put a hand on Daisy’s shoulder.

“We could escort her to guest housing,” Alec said behind me. “It’s late. I’m sure she needs some sleep. And you aren’t married yet; man, wouldn’t want rumors getting back to an old-fashioned witch like Madame Pendleton.”

Piers dropped the hand from Daisy’s shoulder and I saw her tiny shudder of relief. “Then, we shall talk in the morning, my dear, and for now, I’ll dream of you,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it.

I grabbed Daisy’s hand and got her away from him as fast as I could.

“That was so close,” Daisy said, as soon as he shut the door behind us. “Feel my arm. I am like head to toe do-not-even-touch-me goosebumps. Did you hear this story, Char? Did you hear this shit? He just swooped in on my grandmother and promised all this stuff to her about how he would take care of me and love me forever and ensure that my duties were not ‘painful’ and she believed every word of it. She’s old enough to get played. I bet if my mom was still around she’d be smarter than that. But Grandmother just wants—you know.” She swallowed. “She’s worried about me. I don’t even know what I’ll do. I’m—I’m—” She started sniffing a little and took a deep breath. “Oh god. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t blame you for freaking out.” I looked back at the house. The downstairs light was off now, replaced by an upstairs light, and just the thought of Piers going to bed thinking about Daisy made me want to punch him in the face. “But—don’t worry. We have a lot of plans in motion.”

“Yeah?”

“We’re starting to figure out that there have been warlocks here with a connection to Wyrd since Merlin College began,” I said.

“Wyrd? You mean the so-called Third Realm? I thought that was a legend.”

“I guess we need to back up,” Alec said. “Wyrd is real. It’s been controlled by the faeries. And Professor Jablonsky is a faery lord from Wyrd. He says we might be able to get an in. And if we did…”

“What?” Daisy said.

“We’re not beholden to the council anymore,” Alec said. “They can’t threaten us with banishment to Sinistral if we break the rules.”

“Oh.”

“I met the ghost of a guy who used to talk to the faeries,” I said. “And I’m getting better at talking to the dead. Stuart says the faeries are antisocial, but that if we defeat the Withered Lord, they might give us an audience. He says they’re dying out because they’ve stayed secret, so at some point they talk to us or they die.”

“So that’s your plan,” Daisy said. “I mean—that’s awesome. That’s great for you. You can do your own thing and—”

“Witches can learn warlock magic,” I said. “We can smash the patriarchy and make our own rules and stuff.” She didn’t seem enthused and I started to feel stupid. “I mean—I know. It sounds naive, but Stuart believes in it, and so did Master Blair and Samuel, and my mom, so it’s not just me getting caught up in a college thing. They’re old. There must be something to it, or they wouldn’t pursue the goal for fifty years.”

“It’s not that,” Daisy said. “It’s just…even if what you say is true, it won’t matter for me. I have the blood of the diviners. Everyone wants that power and I can’t not have it. Ethereals, Sinistrals, Wyrd…people. They’re all going to want it, because the great diviners are the ones who can see where the battle should be fought. Where the parallels and gateways still exist, where the enemy is hiding. Everyone needs me. Piers is ready to use me already. It’s even worse than I thought, ‘cause Grandmother is still alive and he’s already putting me to work. What can I say? I don’t see any way out. I thought my only chance was to go off with someone totally rogue like those vampires, but it seems that Harris is right. Cash would die. So that’s—not an option. I feel so stuck, Charlotte. I’m so scared. I never wanted this. It’s finally here. I can’t talk my way out of it. People say having power is great? No. It’s not. It makes you powerless. Everyone wants you. I could have gold, diamonds, servants, whatever, but I don’t get any freedom. None. Never.”

I could see that Daisy needed a serious intervention.

“You will get freedom,” I said. “There is a way out of this and it doesn’t have to be with the vampires. Just because you can’t see it yet doesn’t mean it’s not there. We’re going to make it happen, okay? What would people on Bravo do?”

“People on Bravo don’t take shit.”

“Would drag queens and real housewives put up with this?”

“Being a sassy bitch is pretty much all that happens on Bravo,” Daisy said, nodding.

“Exactly. You’re the sassiest bitch I’ve ever met. And we’re all here together. Deep breath.”

Harris and Montague were running toward us at this point.

“Daisy?” Harris said. “Did Piers hurt you?”

She was finishing her deep breath. “No. He didn’t. And he won’t. My girl Charlotte talked me down, and I’m going to assist you in whatever phase two of this plan is.”

Chapter Nineteen

Charlotte

Halloween—or Samhain—was one of the best parties of the year at Merlin College, along with being a sacred day. It was a mashup of the Halloween I knew and a pagan holiday, and most of the warlocks, no matter whether they followed other religions or not, joined in. Around here, the idea of the veil between the living and the dead being thin on Halloween wasn’t legend, but fact.

Everyone wore costumes, some of them very elaborate, including masks, which were required. Many of them were glamours, of course. I knew for a fact that Alec’s costume, which was some sort of dark horned creature in black leather, was seriously enhanced from a Party City costume called “Demon Beast”. Montague went with an 18th century nobleman with a tricorn hat and black mask.

“You look terrifying,” I told Alec.

“If we don’t look terrifying, the faeries will kidnap us,” Alec said. “At least, that’s what I was told. And if you aren’t careful, we might kidnap you. I know you’re still into it.” He brushed a claw over my face.

“I’m still into it,” I admitted.

Harris wore the same thing every year, a black mask and a costume that he said his great-great-great uncle used to wear in Samhain balls in Austria, that was basically a Disney prince outfit with gold buttons, a sash and some kind of brimmed Germanic hat.

As usual, I didn’t have money to spend on a Halloween costume so I went with Kiki’s Delivery Service with the black dress I already had and a big red bow in my hair, carrying a stuffed black cat under my arm. I put on my basic black mask to conform to the rules.

“It’s time to guess what Charlotte is supposed to be,” Montague said.

“It looks like she’s a witch,” Harris said. “Black dress. Cat.”

“I’m a particular witch,” I said.

“A swamp witch.”

“Why would I be a swamp witch!?”

“Because they’re poor.”

I cast a spell that blew all the buttons off his jacket.

“What was that for?” he snapped, bending over to grab them off the floor.

“For wearing a dumb hat.”

“I think you look adorable,” Alec said. “Not you, Harris. Charlotte.”

“Alec, do you know what my costume is?” I asked.

Alec looked me over. “You’re not supposed to be Minnie Mouse, are you?”

“I think it’s a character from Adventure Time,” Montague said.

I let out a breath. “Wow. Just—wow.”

Daisy burst into our dorm’s main room. She was dressed as a Queen of Hearts wearing a red, white and black dress with a low cut neckline that showed off her boobs, and a full flouncing skirt. Harris was right. I did look poor, and was, indeed, poor.

“I am gluing myself to you and sharing your bonfire,” she declared, looking over her shoulder. “Twenty-four hours with Piers is already too much. He had a private dinner for us and he wanted to make offerings to the dead ancestors. I just got to hear about every Nicolescu who ever killed a vampire for the last three hours.”

“Yes, he’s very proud of that,” Harris said.

“Of course you can hang out with us,” I said. “But he didn’t try anything, right?” I couldn’t help looking at her breasts. They were really getting shown off the maximum advantage.

“I wish it was just that,” Daisy said. “I can handle that.”

“So…he’s just boring? At least it could be worse.”

“Boring…,” she repeated. “That’s enough of a sin. But I swear, you’re looking at my boobs more than he did.”

“They’re impressive, what can I say.”

“You want him to look at your boobs?” Harris asked sharply.

“I sure as hell don’t want him to touch,” she said. “But I wanted to know that he has weaknesses. If he thinks I’m hot, I can manipulate him.” As Harris looked like he was about to argue this more, she put a hand around my shoulder and showed me out the door with her.

The campus was lit with small fires, like the night when we summoned the dead, and it was hopping. Everyone was out walking around, talking to friends, putting our pumpkins carved earlier, and sacrificing snacks and desserts to their fires to appease the spirits.

“Piers wants to have his name written in history like those other Nicolescus,” Daisy said. “He went on and on about slaying demons and vampires for the whole dinner. A dude with a holy mission…ugh. So if I were you, I would really watch out for him with your boys.”

“Oh, I already know that,” I said. “Is that really all he talked about for three hours?”

“Well, he told me the entire plot of the novel he’s reading.”

“Oh no.”

“Right?” She shuddered. “Well, let’s not think about him. I don’t need him. All the men in the family have tiny dicks.”

“Oh—really?”

She burst out laughing. “Look at your face! You were so scared Harris has a microdick. Like you don’t get enough d, girl. Sometimes less is more when you already have so much more.”

My blush must have been maxed out. “I don’t care.”

She patted my back. “Nah, Harris’ bad attitude can’t be explained off that way,” she said.

“Whatever.” I shrugged.

“Honestly?” she said. “I am rooting for Harris to get into a bond brother situation with you, because he needs it. Like, there’s good in him yet. I see Piers and that’s what it’s like to have everything beaten out of you except ambition. He’s already on the council. You’d think that’s enough, but it never is. He wants more, so he’s thinking the only way to go up from here is to take out some Sinistrals. And he’ll use me to do it. My grandmother doesn’t mind because she’s just thinking about her reputation too.” Sighing, Daisy veered toward the fire where Harris and Montague were putting brush down. Alec lit the fire with a flick of his wand.

“As for me and Harris, well… I don’t honestly know if I can handle more guys,” I said, chewing my lip.

“You can,” Daisy said. “I believe in you.”

“Montague has been a little distant lately,” I said.

“I heard Firian is stuck as a fox.”

“Yeah.”

She looked at me more seriously. I had never told Daisy, or anyone outside of Montague, Alec, and my dad, that I had that kind of relationship with Firian. “Am I wrong?” Daisy asked.

“About what?”

“You know.” She continued, more soberly, “You have to be super careful.”

“Stuart said the first familiars were lovers to their witches and warlocks.”

“I don’t know that story,” Daisy said. “But I know about the witch in St. Augustine.”

“Everyone keeps mentioning it,” I said. “All I know are…my feelings… I don’t why it’s so wrong.”

“Cash is like a brother to me,” Daisy said. “He was there when I was a baby and taught me things.”

“Firian wasn’t like that for me…” Was she implying it really was like dating my brother? I just couldn’t see Firian that way. He didn’t look like me or anyone in my family. He had a home in Etherium. He knew things I didn’t know. And even if he had been watching over me since I was a kid, he didn’t seem to think of me that way either. “Daisy…do you think it’s wrong?”

“I think you should love whoever you want,” she said.

“But you do think it’s weird.”

She looked troubled. “One time, Cash asked me if we could go to a human club, so he could pretend to be a human. And I said—no fucking way. And the look on his face—it made me wonder if he was really my friend, brother, and helper, or if he was my slave. They don’t even know anymore, what they are, or where they come from…and neither do we.”

“Are you ladies going to join us?” Montague asked, walking over and offering me a soda. “Or…am I interrupting?”

“Interrupting,” I said, smiling despite a tickle of deep concern inside me. “Nah, we should hang out.”

“The dead are close tonight,” Harris said. “Be sure to spill a little of your drink on the fire.”

I poured out a sip of Cheerwine. “To Grandpa. Sorry it’s not root beer.”

Harris tossed a few nuts on the fire. “To Montague, our favorite dead person.”

“I don’t count! I’m not dead.”

“Undead.”

“I was never dead,” Montague said. “Call it what you want.”

Daisy quietly took a little sachet from the pocket of her dress and nested it in the smoldering embers. She looked at me with a tight, weird smile.

“To your parents?” I asked gently.

“Yeah, it’s my annual letter. They say if you send a letter on Samhain it’ll reach, so…I have a lot to talk about.” She hugged herself like she was cold. “They never would have sent me to marry Piers.”

“Do you remember them pretty well?” I asked.

“I hope so.” She brushed her hair back behind her ears, then adjusted the tiara with heart cut-outs she was wearing. “I was so little. But I remember things, little things. My dad was tall and my mom was short. He was elegant and quiet, but really nice. He had some job at the Chicago guild but he also loved plants and collected coins. Kind of a nerd, huh, but I thought he was like a prince.” She pinched her lips together. “And my mom was his princess. She would have made a wonderful diviner and maybe that’s why she got killed. She didn’t take shit though, and I know they would have hated this for me, but try telling that to Ermahgerd.”

It was obvious Daisy’s relationship with Ermengarde Pendleton was strained.

“So your mom is your grandmother’s daughter? You don’t have your dad’s name?”

“That’s a tradition with the diviner,” she said. “It’s always a woman and the name carries.”

“That’s cool,” I said. “Is that like the one tradition that isn’t sexist in the whole deal?”

She snorted. “Sexist? It goes both ways. My older cousin Mitchell would like to be the diviner, and his mom is like, Mitchell, you’re a man, get off your ass and go suck magic out of volcanoes! I would totally take his job.”

“Magic volcanoes?”

“Yeah, you know,” she said. “Obviously volcanoes bring up all this magic, so he travels all around and collects it.”

“Right, yeah, I read about that,” I lied.

Still, Daisy looked a little cheered up. I bet no one asked her about her parents much. I knew how that was. Once kids found out my mom was gone, they went out of their way not to mention moms around me. “Do you remember your mom, Charlotte?” she asked. “You were too little…”

“Yeah. Dad’s been giving me some of her things, though.” I showed her the engraved ring.

“It’s not too late,” she said. “We’ll get her back.”

She sounded awfully confident, but I think that was Daisy’s default setting.

“Yeah,” I said, but my stomach flipped over.

I wanted to save her, of course. I wanted to know her. But I kept thinking about Dad. When you love someone, you don’t really care. I just want to know my Emily is safe even if it messes up my life.

He knew, though. We both knew. When someone has spent the last twenty years in a dark realm working for a high demon, you can’t just bring them home for a happily ever after, can you?

Montague, Alec and Harris were talking on the other side of the fire, and Firian had shown up. Alec was giving him a grilled hot dog. They suddenly looked up at someone approaching behind me. Oh, crap. Maybe Piers was here to grab Daisy and ruin the night.

Whoever it was wore a black cloak and a mask so they were completely unrecognizable. Who thought this mask thing was a good idea anyway?

“Shh—it’s just me,” Professor McGuinness whispered. “I just thought I’d check in on you and see how you’re doing.” He glanced behind him. “The veils are thin tonight, and with the masks…well.”

“You just walked in?” Harris said.

“Stuart is more than capable of getting past the wards,” he said. “Piers Nicolescu is no match for a faery lord, I can say that with confidence. I came with Stuart. He is…looking around, trying to see if there is any word of Ignatius.”

“Have y’all seen Professor Adams?” I asked. “He got fired the other day and he was so mad.”

“Yes, yes indeed, we are in contact with him. He has a house in Savannah. I might end up staying there this summer. I didn’t have a home outside of Merlin…” Professor McGuinness, it seemed, had devoted his life to this place. “I must say, the good thing about this experience is that it’s gotten us all on the same page.”

“Do you want to sit down and have a soda?” I asked.

Professor McGuinness, removed from his position of authority, looked like some lost, wandering soul, all bony arms and legs clad in black and fingers that seemed made for some anxious hand-wringing, as he was doing now. I didn’t always like him when he was my teacher, especially after his own sexist lecture about how men were better at necromancy because they weren’t as emotional. Gag. But now I wanted to give the poor guy a break.

“A soda? I haven’t had a soda since I was in school myself.”

“Yeah, school is wild that way,” I said, suppressing an eye roll as Montague offered up a Coke.

He popped the tab and tried it. “That does take me back.” He drew a folded square of paper out of his pocket and tossed it at the fire. I stared at him because, I don’t know, I’m shameless.

“I—I wrote Samuel,” he said. “I thought about what you were saying back there. I thought it wouldn’t matter if he never knew how I felt about him, now that he’s onto the spirit realm, but…”

“Well, we know he’s still watching over us,” I said.

“Yes.” He looked at the stars, and I just knew he was still thinking that tossing a letter onto the fire didn’t feel like enough. Samuel was dead, but like…he was still around. He got in my head a few times. He was certainly capable of talking to Professor McGuinness so he could have some real closure.

“I don’t understand why we can’t summon him just once,” I said.

“Didn’t you listen in class at all?” Professor McGuinness said softly. “It’s against the rules.”

“The rules of Etherium? Or like…all rules?”

“Er…”

“The rules of Wyrd?” I pressed. “Why is it so bad to talk to a dead person just one time to ask them the questions you want to know?”

“Charlotte,” he said warningly. “A wyrd wand does not yet make you a wyrd witch. I don’t want either of us to be banished to Sinistral.”

“Would we be banished just for summoning an old friend?”

“Well…it could put him in danger. I’m sure you remember your lessons!”

“Danger,” I repeated, in a neutral tone. “I mean, I get why it’s a bad idea to talk to loved ones as if they’re still alive. I do. I know when someone dies you have to let them go…”

“Yes,” he said, looking at the flames and finishing the soda. “You must. You really must.”

“But neither of us were super close to him,” I said. “We just want some closure.”

“Charlotte,” he said, his tone sharpening. “Drop it. I don’t want to hear about this again.” He handed me the can. I guess I was the trash lady now. “I should go.”

“Oh…okay…”

Alec looked at me and waved me toward him with a hand. I shrugged like, guess I pushed him too far.

I wasn’t supposed to be too open about my relationship with Alec in public, but I sat between him and Monty, my legs touching theirs. Firian was talking to Daisy so I could have a moment with them. I mean, Harris was there, but if I made him jealous, so what?

“I didn’t expect him to be so pissed off,” I said. “I just want to talk to Samuel once.”

“So does he,” Alec said. “I can sense his desire.”

“Desire? Ergh. Spare me the details.”

“Seriously, Alec, he’s like a sixty year old coat with the afterthought of a man inside,” Montague said. “Desire seems like a strong word.”

“I have to break something to all of you,” Alec said in a serious tone, leaning close to us.

“What is that?” I asked.

“People who are not super hot feel desire too.”

“I’m not super hot,” I said.

He brushed his claw-glove over my chin. “Oh, sweet Char. Fishing for compliments. Also, people who are sixty years old feel desire too. Montague, you don’t have to worry about it, but someday, Harris will look like a senior villain from a Star Wars movie, and he will still think Charlotte is hot.”

Harris, not quite out of earshot, just lifted his eyebrows. “Samuel Caruthers was fairly ‘hot’,” he said, sarcastically. “Maybe McGuinness’ affections weren’t returned.”

“I don’t know…,” I said, as Alec’s hand crept across my lower back and to my bottom in a very distracting fashion. “If they were never returned, would he really keep thinking about him decades later? I think it would do him some—good!” I caught my breath, as Alec’s hand slipped under the bench and gave me a quick stroke between the legs.

If I was being honest with myself, I just wanted to talk to Samuel myself. Just once. How wrong was it to summon him just once? He had already whispered in my head (unless I was just crazy), so what would one little summoning do? Especially if I summoned him on behalf of Professor McGuinness, like how I summoned Alec’s mom? I know. That didn’t go well. But Samuel also wasn’t a mean succubus… with a very naughty son. Heavens. I tried to get up and Montague put a hand on my thigh and pinned me down.

“I’m dressed as a full-on demon beast tonight,” Alec whispered in my ear. “And it’s Samhain night. Wicked things are afoot, Charlotte.”

My eyes widened and darted frantically between them. Harris is right there!

“Don’t you wonder what he’s thinking?” Alec asked.

Harris’ ears were red. He looked a little pissed off, still trying to ignore us.

But he could have left. He didn’t.

Montague lifted my hand, caressing my fingers, and maybe checking out my pulse a little more than a normal guy should. At least he was present, tonight. I noticed that my skin seemed pale next to theirs, the firelight and moonlight giving them each their own glow. Montague’s fangs had sharpened. Something primal in me wanted to tell him he could sink those fangs into my skin.

Something even more primal wanted to tell Alec he could pull me into the shadows and take me right here and now, close enough that Harris could hear but not see.

What do these guys do to me? Alec alone could put me in a trance. Caught between the both of them, I could smell them. Montague was the cool, clean, almost spiced fragrance of a vampire while Alec was heady with masculine lust. Two strong thighs pressed against mine.

“Daisy? There you are.”

I quickly snapped out of it. Once again, footsteps crunched on the drying grass of autumn, and this time it really was Piers. He surveyed our bonfire site, taking in the scene. Firian was there. Alec and Montague had obviously both been…frisky with me. No doubt, Piers was in training to be a dad whose kids needed therapy someday. He put his hands on his hips. “Looks like…you’re all having fun.”

“We are, Master Nicolescu, thank you,” Alec said, with a playboy smile that seemed to leave Piers even more discomfited. Alec might have been comfortable getting caught, but I wasn’t sure we needed more reasons to make Piers dislike us.

“Daisy?”

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” she said airily. “What’s up?”

“You are here as my guest, and I hope you bear in mind that this is still a school for boys—”

“For men,” Montague said.

“All the more reason,” Piers said, turning his cold eyes to Montague.

“I’m here, cousin,” Harris said. “I’m sure you trust your fellow Nicolescu to watch over your lady.”

“To be honest, I can’t trust you,” Piers said. “You have been far too involved with dubious company. Daisy, please don’t make me have to set limits on you.”

“That’s so romantic,” she said scornfully. “Please. Don’t try too hard to win my heart. Nothing makes a girl swoon like—”

“Daisy, I am entrusted with your safety,” he interrupted her. “And I have a small task for you.”

Her expression locked up again. “It’s Halloween,” she said. “It’s not a night for work.”

“I sensed a strange element on campus earlier,” he said.

“No,” she said. “No way.”

“No one is better suited to sniff it out than you.”

“I’m not a dog.”

“Do you want to have an argument in front of your friends?”

“I think it can wait until tomorrow,” I said. “Give her a break.”

He looked at me. “Do you want to spare Daisy from using her power tonight? Maybe your wyrd wand could…give it a try. This could be wyrd magic we’re dealing with…”

Daisy stood up. “I’ll do it,” she said. “This isn’t Charlotte’s problem.”

I winced at her. There was no good way out with Piers. As he led her off, I hoped she was right when she said she knew how to handle him. Worse, now we just looked more suspicious by the day.

He’s toying with us, I thought. He knew we knew where Stuart was. I think he just wanted to see how far we’d go. I was sure he had some unpleasant fate planned for us and it was just a matter of time before we fell into a trap, but I couldn’t leave either. Definitely not now. We were stronger as a group, and Daisy needed our help.

Chapter Twenty

Montague

I tried to sneak out early. Like, five o’ clock in the morning early. Very quietly, I opened my car door, tossed a cooler and my backpack in the back seat, slotted a thermos of tea in the cup holder, and—

Charlotte came running at me in the darkness. She was wearing a t-shirt, pajama pants, and ballet flats, and shivering. “Where are you going?”

“I have something to do in town. How the hell did you know I was out here? Go to sleep.”

“I heard you leave. I’ve been up. Worrying about Daisy, and also…you. Us, actually.”

“Us?” I brushed a hand through her hair. “Why are you worried about us?”

“Because I’ve barely seen you! You were okay last night, but it was a holiday. During the school week, you’re distant, ever since I spent the night in the church. So…is everything okay between us? Did I screw something up? Is this a Catholic thing?”

I laughed. “No. You didn’t do anything wrong, Char. I’ve just felt…unworthy of you.”

“What?”

“This purification thing is no joke. If Piers actually tried to do it to Alec, he would fuck him up forever. Me? I don’t even know what would happen to me. But you’re the one he actually tried to purify first. And I was just standing there like an idiot, wondering what I could do to stop him. Plus, I feel bad for Daisy too. I hate having Piers lord it over us like he’s some seasoned warlock.”

“He’s twice our age and on the council! He is a seasoned warlock.”

I scoffed. “You saved yourself,” I said.

“Yes. Don’t tell me you’re getting competitive like Harris now.”

“You’re becoming stronger.” I couldn’t help pulling her against me, drinking in the sleep-rumpled scent of her. “But what did I sacrifice to become one of the most powerful creatures, if I can’t even protect you? So…for all the stronger you get, I need to become stronger still.”

“You don’t…have to,” she said, but I could tell she liked the promises I whispered in her ear.

“I want to.” I nipped that ear with my teeth. “Go back to bed.”

But this was Charlotte. If I thought she was going back to bed, I was sorely mistaken. “What are you going to do? Is it dangerous?”

“Vampire business.”

“Can I come with you?”

“No.”

She leaned against me and shifted her head slightly to the side, baring just a little more of her neck. Then she reached back and stroked my cock with a hand. “Some lonely country roads out there…”

“Don’t tempt me,” I said. “It could be dangerous.”

“So…it also could be not dangerous.”

“I don’t want to—ugh.” Her hand had gotten a little firmer. I bit my own lip as I tried to resist her, and then slid a hand up her t-shirt. Maybe I could persuade her just to have a quickie in the car and then she would get sleepy.

She tugged my hand down and whirled around. “You only get boob touch if you let me come with you.”

“I don’t need ‘boob touch’. I am on a mission. A solitary mission.”

She raised her eyebrows. “It’s really that dangerous? You’re going to drive off like that?”

I pounded the roof of my half-assed SUV with my fist. “Christ. Okay, I’m going to meet Silvus.”

“From your…clan.”

“Yes. After it happened, I wrote him and asked some questions about vampire magic and how I could become stronger. He’s the only warlock in the clan, and he knows what I can do without becoming Sinistral.”

“Do you trust him? They want you to join them, right?”

“I don’t trust him, but I think he does know the answers, and professional pride will mean he probably gives me something I can work with. I’m not sure what he’ll think if I bring you along.”

“Can I hide in the car? Just for the road trip? I never get to leave, and I miss you.”

At this point, she knew I was a sucker. “All right. But I need to leave now. I have an extra coat in the back, but you’re coming in your pajamas.”

“Bless your heart for thinking I might care,” she said. “I have worn these to Dollar General like, a hundred times.” She hopped in the passenger seat and we hit the road.

I had intended to be a lone wolf on this trip, but now I was glad she caught me. Charlotte worried over Daisy for a bit, and then we were flirting while she ate the sausage biscuit I bought her for breakfast. We stopped at an overlook and watched the sun rise.

“It’s so quiet here,” she said, shivering a little, slipping her cold hand in mine. I wished I could warm her up a little more. “It makes me think of when Dad took us on a road trip. He drove up the Blue Ridge Parkway and we went camping. The weather was kind of bad, though, like it was pouring rain, and the drive took forever. He got grumpy and even a little scared, I think? He never said that, though. I knew he wanted it to be perfect, and he was frustrated that it wasn’t, but when we got up, the rain was gone, and we woke up and the sun was just rising over this valley. It was so beautiful. And then his friend said we should go eat at the Mt. Pisgah Inn, so we walked in and I remember him looking at the menu and then grabbing my hand and walking out again.” She looked down. “He never talked about not having much money, but that was one of those moments when I realized that he was struggling being a single parent and he couldn’t actually afford the vacation. Maybe it was the first moment, actually.”

I squeezed her hand a little more and then draped an arm around her. She looked at me. “I’m sorry. This is so romantic. I promised you boob touch and now I’m like, hey, remember the time my dad was sad and broke?”

“Charlotte. I don’t care.”

“I thought about it, though, because…back then he seemed like the only person I had. Now it’s you and me watching the sunrise.”

“You definitely have me,” I said. I brushed her chin, pressing a soft kiss to her lips as she turned up to me. “If I’m ever distant, it’s not you or us. I just feel like some of the vampire business, I need to handle on my own.”

“But you don’t,” she said.

She pressed her palms to my cheeks and took the next kiss herself. Then she hopped back, gave me a naughty look, and popped up her t-shirt, flashing me.

I ran after her and grabbed her around the waist as she laughed, kicking as I hauled her off to the car and opened the back door. I put her down on the back seat and climbed in over her.

“Don’t tease me like that.” I pushed her t-shirt up, baring her perfect breasts. Even when she was on her back and her breasts spread out, their fullness was still apparent, ready to be taken in my hands, and my mouth. I teased her nipples with my tongue, beating a warning in my own brain. Don’t bite her. Don’t bite her. You won’t be able to stop.

I knew she was always aware of the possibility. She wasn’t quite relaxed, but she didn’t stop me either. She trusted me far enough to let me do what I wanted to her, just not far enough to let her mind go. If I drank her blood I’d taste her spells.

It was a delicate balance. Neither of us could fully relax. But the tension was not without its merits.

The sensitive tip of my tongue swirled around the textured nubs, producing some very gratifying moans from her, and her pelvis twitched.

“Not yet, my hungry girl,” I said, slowly tugging down the waist of her pajama pants to fit my hand to the curve of her hip. The smell of sweet need between her legs was like an invitation. Slowly, I pulled the pajamas off and my hand cupped her bottom under her panties, feeling her up freely before tearing them off her feet.

“Should I take this off?” she asked. Her t-shirt was still bunched up under her armpits, above those perfect breasts, and I shook my head.

“It’s kinda sexy,” I said.

I grit my teeth together, because with her underwear off, her scent was even stronger and I wanted to taste her so badly. I could just imagine biting her down there, sucking the blood out of her from that bundle of nerves, while she screamed with the pleasure of my venom that made the pain bearable.

“Are you okay?” Her hand stroked my hair. “You made a face and got all tense.”

Tense? My cock felt like it could explode. “I get these thoughts—when I’m with you—”

She nodded, a bit solemnly. “Me too. It’s a vampire thing, right? You’re not going to hurt me.”

“But I want to hurt you so badly,” I gasped. “I don’t even tell the truth at confession anymore.” Well, I also got kicked out of church. In that regard it was a relief.

She snorted. “Ohmigod, my poor little guilt-ridden vampire.”

“Hey. I’m not poor or little anything.” I swept her into my arms, letting my hardness press into her softness, grinding into her stomach while I clutched her ass tighter. I licked her neck and her jawline, tasting her sweat. It wasn’t blood but it tasted like her. I heard her soft laughter as I tickled her a bit, and then she started unfastening my buttons, and by now, man, I was ready to fuck. I had to just forget how much I wanted her in other ways, and that was the best way to do it.

“This is a hell of a scenic stop,” she said, looking me up and down.

“Especially when the best scenery is in the back seat.”

“Mm…” She wrapped her legs around my hips, the pose naturally spreading her out for me to slip inside her. Her tight sheath promised sweet relief, her warmth enveloping me. I needed a release so badly. I claimed her mouth with mine, not even caring if I was too cold for her. She used to hate that but she protested less often these days. Her body surrendered to mine, her mouth softening as my tongue thrust inside her, while she clenched around my cock as I pumped in and out of her, each stroke only making me want more. We adjusted to each other’s rhythms so well at this point, even though Alec had a lot more sex with her than I did. I could never keep up with him, and I worried she couldn’t either, but I guess his lusty vibes assured that his woman was never tired out.

“Mm…” Her hands dug into my shoulders so hard it almost hurt, my muscles worked by the sharp bones of her fingertips. “I’ve been wanting more of you, Montague…”

I had no good excuse for being a little distant lately. Just vampire shit. I don’t know if anyone would fully understand. “I’m here,” I said.

I didn’t envy Rayner having to find Lisbeth over and over again. I didn’t want to start over with Charlotte. She only got better, more perfectly matched to me.

As she started to get closer, she started raking a hand across her forehead, making little sounds. I could feel all the blood in my body rushing to my hardened shaft and for a moment I almost felt a flush of warmth pass over me. I didn’t really know what I was anymore; not really dead, but I only seemed to come alive when I was feeding and fucking. When I started coming inside her, it wasn’t just a sexual release, it was like being human again, just for a moment. I felt her heat flood my coldness, my desire for her pushing out every other hunger.

“Mm…ah…” She was a beat behind me, and as I pumped through the aftershocks, she gripped me tighter. “More, more…don’t stop…”

Then it was over, and all I wanted was to collapse into her arms in the back seat, but I had a meeting to keep.

I slipped a ring onto her finger, so Alec would see, she was still mine. The morning sun was so bright it stung my skin, and it didn’t warm me like she did.

It was early afternoon as I reached Asheville and found a spot on a side street. “You have a phone, right? How about, while I talk to Silvus, you go buy a dress, and I’ll take you to Mt. Pisgah to watch the sunset.” I fished a few bills out of my wallet.

“Montague! That’s perfect!” She looked thrilled but the money made her nervous. “Are you sure?”

“I’m not Harris, but I ain’t broke,” I said. “Find something sexy.”

“We should go to the city more often,” she said.

One more kiss, and we parted ways.

I opened the door of the tea shop, but even before I did, I knew Silvus was there. I could feel him. His dark, old-fashioned air was contrasted by fragrant tea house, the warm patterned rug and wooden chairs, windows flooding in light on old brick walls.

He glanced up at me as I approached, the way one might glance at a bird flying overhead, like I was just a blip in his long life. “Good afternoon, Montague,” he said. “I took the liberty of ordering three flavors, so the waitress knows not to interrupt. It’s on me.” He sipped. “It is quite good, actually.” His British accent held the unspoken promise that if it was bad, he would know.

“Hey,” I said, grabbing the opposite chair and trying to shake the awkwardness. I hoped no one thought we were on a date.

Silvus was everything you would want in a vampire. He looked like a broodingly attractive thirty-year-old but his eyes screamed five hundred years of I’ve seen things, man. He was wearing a black suit with a pocket square, and his necktie was elegantly tied with a jeweled pin. His hair was still shoulder-length and unchanged since my first memory of him in the 1660s.

“So, you want to improve your skill,” Silvus said.

“Yes.”

“The best improvement is time,” Silvus said. “That’s why Rayner is such a powerful vampire now.”

“And you aren’t far behind him,” I said. “You also know something you can tell me. Some vampire advice. Otherwise, why come all the way here to meet me?”

“What is your intention?” Silvus was looking at me with such intensity that even though I wasn’t sure I should talk about Charlotte, I couldn’t seem to help it.

“To protect my witch.”

“You know why he chose you,” Silvus said. “We thought you had no allegiance to any particular woman. Our clan is devoted only to Lisbeth.”

“Well, circumstances changed, and I don’t know Lisbeth. I love Charlotte. He said he might let me go if I helped kill the Withered Lord, and I’m in on that bargain. So is Charlotte, but I need to protect her. I told you in my letter, the Ethereal warlock council has taken charge of the school and we don’t even know where the old dean is right now. He might be in danger, and so might Charlotte.”

“Lisbeth is in danger, too,” Silvua said. “I know she’s alive and I can’t find her, so god knows what terrible fate she might be suffering. The rest of the clan is frustrated that we gave you this gift and you are remaining in your mortal life. We know it can’t last.”

“If it can’t last…let me have it while I can,” I said. I swallowed, feeling the draw to him and his life. My clan. My sire. I couldn’t help it. I could leave with Silvus and never mess around with the council again. Vampires often had violent lives, but they weren’t beholden to anyone.

Except their sire.

Rayner seemed to have carved out a good life for his men, relatively speaking.

Except that he kept losing the girl he loved.

“Does it bother you that he’s in charge of you? Tells you who to love?” I asked Silvus. “Or…does that just fade away over the years?”

“It never fades away,” Silvus said. “I haven’t lost my wits. Rayner forced me into this and I don’t forget that.”

“But you stick with him anyway?”

“It’s complicated. When you become a vampire, you need your sire to show you how to live. I stayed, in part, to protect this poor girl from him,” Silvus said. “I thought I was his conscience. As warlocks, you and I both know that if a human reincarnates, that is a sacred thing. They are not supposed to be treated as the same person. Rayner forced me to find her, but I thought I would help her remain the person she had become. She was not Lisbeth, she was Marguerite. But—” Silvus’ hand clenched. “I became an evil man. By the time we found Marguerite, and Rayner said I could have her too, that it was our duty to save her from the life of hardship working the fields… It was a long time ago, you know. Women were like property.”

“I saw the vision,” I said, my voice hard. “You just took her.”

“It was hard to resist Rayner,” Silvus said. “For both Lisbeth and for me. He adored her so much. No matter how she looked or who she was, he always saw the woman he first loved. Becoming a vampire had taken his human life from him, but as long as he could find her, he had the one thing that mattered most. That love fueled him; it gave him all his power. I tried to convince all of you to destroy the Withered Lord with love because I know how powerful a magic it is.”

“Is that really love?” I asked. “He forced her to be with him.”

“Maybe so, but she always fell for him. She didn’t remember the old days, but she sensed that he meant something to her. Is it twisted, obsessive? I also think it is too complicated to say it was not real love. He is selfish to want her, but he would also die and suffer for her without any hesitation. There is no pain he would not endure to spare Lisbeth from pain. Do you feel that way about Charlotte?”

“Maybe.”

The old Monty wouldn’t have said that. But I was more alone now. At least, I could have been more alone, if I didn’t have Charlotte, Alec and Harris. Going back home was no longer the same, but when I stood on the mountain with Charlotte, it didn’t matter. We had our own world.

The more my world became Charlotte, the more I understood Rayner.

“Your magic will grow stronger when you have something to fight for,” Silvus said. “When you compel someone, the spell is more potent, when it isn’t just selfish. If you love her, fight for her. You know why vampires have a reputation for romance? Vampires live a long time. If we don’t have passion, we die. Whether or not Rayner’s relationship with Lisbeth is right, it is why he survives.”

So…pulling away from Charlotte to become stronger was the opposite of what I should do, I thought. “Thank you,” I said. “I needed to hear that.”

“Books can teach you tricks,” Silvus said. “But in the end, magic is thought and will and heart, and anything is possible. The older I get, the more I see that is true.” He poured another cup of tea, his eyes shifting to the window, where a guy with a short beard and shorter shorts was walking a tiny dog.

I thought Silvus might be done with me, but then he started up again. “Montague,” he said. “Rayner doesn’t even know I’m here. We’re all vampires, but you and I are the only warlocks in the clan. Jie and Thom? They’re a couple of selfish blokes, just glad to shake off the dull shackles of humanity. Rayner always says I was his mistake. He turned me without thought, without realizing what it truly meant. I was the first one, my power greater than his own.”

I wondered what it was like to be tied to someone for five hundred years. I couldn’t even imagine what went on in Silvus’ mind. In Rayner’s memories, I saw how they bristled at each other even as they worked together. Why stay?

What was it worth to have someone you could always count on, whether you liked them or not?

“After that, he never turned anyone without spending time with them first,” Silvus concluded.

“You didn’t spend time with me.”

“We watched you,” Silvus said. “For quite a while. We noted that you had a very strong independent streak, but were also…easily influenced by your peers.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘influenced’,” I said. “I was usually the one who told them what to do. I had the car, the cell phone.”

“I’m aware of that as well,” Silvus said. “As you know, it’s why we wanted you. The world is getting away from us.”

“It was more than that. You said I didn’t have a girl yet, when you turned me. That’s true. What I did have already was a clan. Alec and Harris. There’s no room in my life for Rayner.”

“If you want to be your own man, stick by your friends, and protect Charlotte from the council…let me give you some unsolicited advice.”

“It is solicited, actually,” I said. “It’s why I met you here even though I shouldn’t be making contact with any of you.”

Silvus shrugged one shoulder. “All right, then. You’d better heed it. I was once an Ethereal warlock. I was banished from Etherium long ago, for helping Rayner find Lisbeth. It was not an easy thing to accept—even to this day. Sinistral is a more dangerous and ugly place than Etherium.”

My fingers gripped my tea cup. This wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

“But if you love Charlotte—and if you want to survive as a vampire—you can’t fear their banishment. It will happen to you, Montague. They might tell you now that they’ll keep you there if you are good. It’s no use. They are beings of discipline and high ideals. You are hunger and passion. We are quite base, we just dress well.” He sipped the tea cup with a little sarcastic twitch of his lips. “Pretend otherwise and you will only weaken yourself.”

“You think there is no way I can avoid Sinistral, then…”

“No,” Silvus said. “But you’ll survive.”

I wondered why it mattered. Rosa was already dead. It would have affected her more than me. But—like all wizards, she showed me Etherium when I was young. It was not just a place, it was a feeling that went far beyond the council. I had already been banished from the basilica in St. Augustine. But that was just a building. To be banished from Etherium and Ethereal magic was like losing my compass.

Maybe it would be different if we could get to Wyrd…

“If I embraced Sinistral…would I have more power to protect Charlotte?”

He paused and rummaged in his coat, pulling out a Moleskine and flipping it to the next clean page. He wrote down an address. “There is one vampire on the east coast who is always willing to help other vampires, if you need advice or a place to crash…he is one of the oldest in America. His name is Ulf. He knows us well enough. He knows everyone. If you don’t want to be part of our clan…”

“Savannah?” I noted mentally that this was where Professor Adams lived.

But I probably shouldn’t be looking up yet more old vampires.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the page after he carefully ripped it out of the book.

Now I was eager to see Charlotte. My love for her fuels me and makes me stronger, and maybe that’s all I need. The next time Piers tried something, I would stand up to him.

I punched her number in on my phone. The phone went to voice mail.

“Huh…”

I tried to text instead. No answer. I went to the car. She wasn’t there either.

“Charlotte?”

I whirled one way and then the other. Nothing seemed off. Downtown Asheville had lots of pedestrians enjoying the restaurants and artsy shops. Street musicians were playing bluegrass on the corner and two little girls were dancing around to the music while their mom took a photo.

But as I observed, I picked up the subtle thread undercutting everything around me.

The scent of magic.

I opened the car door and hissed, “Firian!”

Firian appeared immediately, crouched on the passenger seat. “You called me?” He looked shocked, but relieved. “She’s in danger! There’s a blocking spell up and I can’t get to her. Go—somewhere down that side street—hurry!”

“Just come with me,” I said.

“I’m a fox!”

I conjured up a leash. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”

“I’m not a dog. You’re going to get swarmed by hipster cameras.”

“Yeah, but, it’s Asheville. We’re keeping it weird. Hurry.”

Firian stopped arguing and leapt out of the car. I barely snatched up the leash and followed just behind him. We rushed down the street and I immediately noticed the antique black car badly parked across two spots, with no coins in the meter. That was definitely a wizard’s ride, and the sense of magic heated my skin.

A girl in a floppy hat and sneakers with rainbows on them practically threw herself into our path, brandishing a phone. “Ohmigod, a fox! Your fox is so cute! Is he okay to have as a pet, though? But can I take a picture?”

I met her eyes. “Out of my way now.”

She looked glazed and almost ran into traffic to escape me.

I was getting tested a lot sooner than I I expected.

Chapter Twenty-One

Charlotte

I was having a great time walking past boutiques in the fresh autumn air, considering what to buy to wear for dinner. I couldn’t wait to tell Dad about this date and laugh over the old memories of our camping trip and how he got the hell out of the restaurant. Dad always thought that stuff was hilarious later. But I knew he would appreciate Montague taking me to that same restaurant. So I needed something sexy, but not so sexy that I couldn’t send Dad a photo of us up there.

It was also going to be chilly, so maybe a coat if I could find one.

I stopped at the window of a store that had all sorts of cute things made by local artists, including clothes. They had a print minidress with long sleeves, kind of a 60s boho vibe. Maybe too expensive, but Montague gave me four hundred bucks, so…

“Hey…” the girl at the counter said, definitely noticing my pajama pants. “Looking for something in particular?”

“How much is that dress?” I asked in a breezy tone.

“Three ninety-five.”

“I’ll try it on,” I said. “It’s perfect for my dinner date.”

As I pulled it on over my head, I was madly trying to calculate what the sales tax was. I had like…ten more bucks. So…was it six percent in North Carolina…? Seven?

I’m short either way, huh? Aw, shit. And here I thought I was so cool.

The door jangled open and a second later, the dressing room curtain was ripped right off the bar.

“Gah!” I screamed as I met the eyes of Catherine Caruthers while I was struggling with the zipper.

“You are here,” she said, grabbing my arm.

“Is interrupting me in the dressing room just like, your thing?”

“Ma’am!” the salesgirl said, rushing toward us frantically. “Ma’am, I am calling the—”

Catherine waved a hand and the girl retreated to the counter meekly. “Let me know if you need anything,” she said.

Catherine picked up a vase and threw it on the ground, where it shattered into hundreds of tiny delicate pieces. “Yes,” she said. “Clean that up.”

My mouth fell open. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought Ethereals were supposed to be about order. How is that orderly?”

My great-aunt’s nostrils flared, and then she said, “You are right. I let my temper get the best of me.”

Then she advanced on me, flourishing her wand. She looked me over and then moved me aside, searching the dressing room, kicking my clothes out of the way with her heeled boot.

“What are you doing?”

She traced a message on the dressing room mirror with the tip of her wand. I could tell she was writing, but not the words. She tapped the mirror at the end and the words briefly glowed.

Her wand is not here.

My stomach plummeted. That was true. My wand was in my room, under my covers. I had dashed out the door in a hurry and then I didn’t think I’d need it on a trip to the normal world.

I felt really stupid. Really, really stupid.

“I found that wand on my own,” I said. “I spent weeks carving the branch. You can’t just—”

“Where is Stuart?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Charlotte…please. Stuart is not your friend.”

“I don’t. Know.”

“I don’t want to do this the hard way, but we need to find him.” When she saw that I wasn’t going to talk, she pressed the tip of her wand to my lips. I froze in place. Now my hands twitched for my wand, and my wand wasn’t here.

“La terre, l’air, le feu, l’eau…”

I knew this spell; it was the same one Madame Solano used to try and get me to spill the beans about being in love with Firian. I think she was connecting with all the elements first.

“The bonds of blood bind us, Charlotte Caruthers Byrne,” she said. “Tell me all you know of the man called ‘Stuart’.”

I shut my eyes and tried to summon spirits to help me like I had before, but our surroundings kinda messed up my magic, and I felt weak. Before, when I summoned spirits, I was in the parallel St. Augustine, or at the school, where magic was strong. I sensed that my great-aunt had mastery here.

Yeah, you were also up late last night playing computer games. Remember that?

“Stuart…is…a faery…lord…” My mouth spoke reluctantly, but almost without my mind being involved. My lips were just saying stuff on their own. It was like I was in a bad dream. And as I spoke, my great aunt wrote my words on a mirror. “He lives…in…a cave…by the Wyrd tree…in the mountains…by the school…”

The door banged open and Montague and Firian stormed the shop.

“What a cute fox!” the sales girl said delightedly, like she was unaware of anything else going on.

Montague had a determined expression on his face, and he flung out an arm, waving his wand like a boss. “Get away from her,” Montague said, showing fangs.

Her face drained of will as her hand dropped from me, but then she took a quick breath and shook it off. “Don’t you dare compel me.”

Montague hesitated only for a moment before he put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her to the wall. “Leave Charlotte alone.”

“Get your hands off me—” She gasped out the words, fear in her eyes. “You tread on thin ice.”

“I know,” he said.

“Do you want to go back to the Haven?”

“Not really,” he said, but he shrugged. “You will not send me there today. You can’t remember what happened here today.”

“I…I am sorry for breaking the vase,” she said.

Montague released his grip. I gave him an urgent look. We need to warn Stuart.

Firian definitely got me. He rubbed against my legs, then Montague’s, then ran to the door, leading us out. Montague grabbed my clothes off the floor. Catherine wandered toward the broken pieces of the vase.

We followed Firian out, but I wasn’t reassured. The last time Montague compelled someone, it didn’t last forever, and Catherine Caruthers was more powerful than the Locke brothers. Worse, she had already sent that message.

“I think Piers probably has my wand,” I said. “I left it behind like a fucking idiot. And we have to rush back to Stuart and tell him…Catherine made me tell her where he’s hiding. Montague…” I bit my lip. “It was so stupid. Even now, sometimes I forget I’m not just a human girl. I didn’t think, I just ran after you. I wanted to have fun and not think about stuff. I stayed up late playing Fortune’s Favor and I couldn’t summon any spirits to help me. Chosen One? Yeah, right. Stupid.” I pounded my forehead with my fist.

Firian growled at me. “You are not stupid just because you make stupid mistakes. Or if you are, I’m just as stupid. I messed up everything when I led the council to Master Blair’s familiar.”

“But you admit it’s a stupid mistake,” I said.

“I want you to just have fun and not think about stuff,” Firian said. “I wish that was—” He had to shut up because there were people turning onto the street, and they started pointing at him.

“Firian’s right,” Montague said. “You’re still a human girl. A normal girl. It’s fucking ridiculous that we’re tasked with trying to kill a demon and bargain with faeries. But—here we are. And there’s no one I’d rather do it with.”

“Yeah…” I caught his hand in mine. We made it back to the SUV.

I suddenly looked down at my clothes. “I just stole a four hundred dollar dress. Oh my god.”

“I’ll mail a check. But I’m taking you to dinner tonight. We’ll phone the guys. Alec and Harris can put your wand somewhere safe and warn Stuart. But either way, it will take some time for her to shake off the magic.”

“Okay.”

The restaurant on Mt. Pisgah wasn’t even very expensive.

Dad must have been struggling even more than I thought. I never knew. He never let it show. Back then, I thought we were rich because we lived on a mountain top and he bought me enough Pokemon cards to compete with my elementary school bff.

As I watched the sun set over layers of soft mountains as far as the eye could see, with Montague holding my hand and my other hand dug into Firian’s fur, I felt so loved that I knew I could face anything the world threw at me, even demons, faeries, and the council.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Charlotte

“I told him not to go.” When we walked in the door quite late in the evening, Harris was standing in the doorway of his room waiting for us. “Whatever you two did, it was a disaster.”

“Alec?” Montague asked. “When I talked to him, he said he would go warn Stuart.”

“What happened to Alec!?” I cried, wanting to get to the point. Alec was not here. That was obvious.

“He went to talk to Stuart and he hasn’t come back,” Harris said. “And he took your wand.”

“It’s a long walk,” Montague said.

“I told him that if anyone noticed him leaving, they’d follow him. I told him his skill at shielding isn’t good enough. But he’s gotten…overconfident this year.” He arched a brow at me.

“Oh, shut up. So why didn’t you go with him, hot shot?”

“Stuart can take care of himself.” But Harris betrayed himself with a slight grimace. “We’ve gotten ourselves in enough trouble already. Piers is waiting for an excuse to do something terrible and I’m afraid he has it now.”

“We should try to find him,” Montague said.

Harris laughed in a dry, humorless way. “Monty, I saw Piers and his two cronies go out the back gate. It’s too late.”

“Where is Daisy?” I asked.

“Her room is locked. She told me to go away. She was crying.”

“So we’ll break the lock,” Monty said.

“So that’s what we do now?” Harris asked. “We just break the lock of a girl’s room when she’s crying?”

“You just ignore a girl when she’s crying?” Montague retorted.

“Daisy can’t help you. He’s been using her divining skill already. He probably forced her to aid him in finding Stuart. She’s stuck. She’s so important, she can’t escape. Anywhere she goes she’d be at risk of getting kidnapped and used. So she has to stay on his good side.”

“Poor Daisy…,” I said.

“I can’t believe you let Alec go alone.” Montague grabbed Harris by his shirt collar, his temper flaring.

“Where were you?” Harris snapped back. “On a date? I don’t buy it. And why was Catherine Caruthers there waiting for you?” He dug a hand in his hair. “I’m trying to keep us all together and the three of you keep running off and doing stupid shit.”

“You’re playing it safe, that’s all,” Montague said. “You want to be able to run home if things get too intense.”

“I’m just trying to make it through college first. I’m being fucking practical. We’re too young to take on the real world.”

“We’re in the real world already. At least, I am, I guess you can decide if you’re a schoolboy who wants to grow up to be a council member and marry whoever your mama chooses, or a man who takes what he wants,” Montague said.

“You are definitely going to turn Sinistral within the year with that attitude,” Harris said icily. “Congratulations, Montague, you win when it comes to talking tough, as if it’s that simple. As if it is a good thing for a man to just ‘take’ what he wants. Real power comes from knowing when to play along, not just lashing out.”

They seemed about two seconds away from just beating each other up, or maybe worse. Montague had greater strength than a normal human, so Harris would be forced to use magic, and he was more talented on that front, but it could get ugly. I brushed a hand over Montague’s arm, trying to calm him down a little, while giving Harris a warning look.

“Please,” I said. “We have enough to worry about without you two fighting.”

Irving suddenly ran up to our door. “Hey—guys. I know Alec is one of your friends. Um, Master Nicolescu just hauled him to the church steps.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Alec

I made it to Stuart’s house to warn him, but the cave opening, with the house that seemed like it had been there for a hundred years, had vanished.

Faeries, man.

That was when I heard distant voices.

Someone had followed me here. I hid behind some bushes, but I knew this wouldn’t matter at all. A spell to find someone who was hiding was amateur hour.

Now what? I had my wand and Charlotte’s in my hands and I didn’t know where I could hide hers. What would Piers do if he caught me out here? Could he really purify the incubus right out of me?

My father would be so relieved and proud, if he could, I thought, feeling downright nauseated. He would have a normal son he could take anywhere without fearing that I would succumb to desire. Women wouldn’t look at me like they did now, and I wouldn’t accidentally step into their dreams. But I had Charlotte now, and rather than suppressing my nature, I was able to just go for it with her. I was getting more powerful.

So, can you fight back?

I had mostly focused on my artistic magic. I could draw someone and then influence them, or draw a scenario and make it happen. I quickly chanted a cloaking spell, then I surveyed the landscape. I took out a small sketchbook from my pocket, but even with some moonlight filtering through the trees, it was way too dark to sketch out a curse.

Wards, elemental spells, conjuring? Those weren’t my specialty. I knew Piers and his allies would be better at them than me.

My other specialty, the one that came to me as easy as breathing, was seduction. That was magic I avoided. It was the Sinistral magic coursing in my veins, the magic I’d been told to hide my whole life. It was manipulative.

Seducing Piers? I shuddered at that myself. He’d be a tough nut to crack, anyway. A powerful incubus or succubus could seduce anyone, but generally it worked a million times better if your target was willing—and the incubus was willing, too.

In this case, neither was true. So what I needed was some help. If this was a faery forest, I might luck into some forest nymphs willing to work for me…but I couldn’t get too caught up in my own magic either. I would never cheat on Charlotte, even with a nymph.

I took a steadying breath before I released some pheromones.

An incubus could attract prey easily. We smelled delicious. It was subtle on the nose, but it wasn’t subtle to the brain. If I really wanted to attract women, I could loop them in from twenty feet away, and even though the scent was invisible—released like an almost imperceptible sweat—I’d always known how to do it. It was one of the things that got me banned from all parties and gatherings when I was younger.

I took off my shirt. I barely felt the cold, anyway, and clothing helped suppress my magic.

I bet Char will be sorry she missed this, I thought, grinning. When I get back I’ll have to show her a replay…

My cock was getting hard now.

What I wasn’t getting was any faeries. The voices were getting closer. Piers was about to find me shirtless and horny.

A small hand suddenly gripped my wrist and yanked me backward.

It was Stuart’s silkie, Penny. “Shh, come with me!” she said. She pulled me through an invisible wall. I was back inside Stuart’s cave.

“Is Stu still here?” I asked.

“No,” she gasped, and then she grabbed the waistband of my pants, tugged me to her, and stuck her tongue in my mouth.

Before I could even think to react, Orson shoved us apart with his muscular arms. “He’s an incubus,” he hissed at Penny.

I wiped my mouth. “Sorry—they’re looking for me. I was trying to attract help.”

“You got help,” she breathed, her mouth hanging open. “I never realized—you were—such a tasty man…”

“Stuart is not here,” Orson said. “The other day, when he went poking around the campus, he found a tip as to where Ignatius might be held, so he left.”

“Good. That’s what matters,” I said. “Charlotte was compelled to reveal his hiding place. But I’m being followed…you need to be careful too. And I need to keep her wand safe.”

Penny and Orson looked at each other.

“We can go to Wyrd,” Penny said, eyes shining in the shadows. “But I won’t leave you, you beautiful piece of toast.” I guess this was a silkie compliment.

“What if we’re captured, woman?” Orson said. “They could torture us and get information. I’m not much for being tortured. I’m enjoying this posting for the food and the naps.”

“He needs our help too…they could find him here…” Penny looked at me.

“You only think that because he’s be-spelling you,” Orson said, giving me a judgmental side-eye.

Now I just felt guilty. “I don’t want to get anyone tortured,” I said. “I’m a nice guy. I can’t really help being seductive. I was hoping to lure in some nymphs to distract Piers, not get you in trouble.”

“Oh, how nice of you to use nymphs,” Orson said.

“I’m not some seasoned warlock; I don’t have that many options.”

We all heard voices, close now. Piers speaking to Pacetti and Stamos, their voices muffled through the rocks of the cave, but drawing closer by the moment. “Right…around…here,” he was saying.

Orson took my hand stiffly; his hand so calloused and hairy it was almost paw-like. “Fuck it,” he said. “Let’s keep you safe.”

The cave melted away, replaced by a dewy garden at dusk. We were surrounded by huge flowers, white and pink, some with elegant bells of petals and others fat and round with tiny petals. The sweet smell was thick in the air. But I hardly had time to take this in before several guards in light armor had spears pointed at me.

“He’s a friend of Lord Stuart’s,” Orson said. “So back off your men, Captain Kierellan.”

They didn’t back off more than an inch.

My heart was pounding. I sent out a thought to my familiar, and I couldn’t feel the thread connecting me to her. So this is Wyrd.

“Please!” Penny said. “He came to warn Lord Stuart!”

“Stuart,” Captain Kierellan said, wrinkling a full lip under his half-helm. “We do not answer to Stuart, only to Lord Liorgan, and truthfully, we should not serve him at all if we were not commanded to do so by the queen. His allegiances are certainly not with us.”

I had rarely seen faeries in my life. They lived in Etherium and Sinistral, but they rarely came to Earth. Earth weakened them unless they could become famous and soak up human admiration, so a normal warlock like me rarely encountered the fae. Either they were out of sight, or they were in Hollywood. I’d read that was why celebrities were so weird. A good chunk of them were just faeries and demons anyway.

I knew we were in faery territory now because everyone around us was gorgeous. The guards all had sexy mouths and lean, muscular bodies, and their armor was not just functional but also beautiful, with silver filigree of trees or animals adorning their breast plates. The captain was the most striking, with a gold half-cloak that matched his long hair and an embroidered surcoat under his armor. I might have grown up in the magical world, but now I had some inkling of how Charlotte must have felt when she came to Merlin. This seemed too magical to be real.

“We just need to give this man refuge for the night,” Orson said.

“I will bring him directly to the queen and nowhere else,” the guard said. “This realm is not for human eyes; that is the rule and this hardly warrants an exception. He does not seem to bear any gift for her.”

“No, but he is the protector of this wand,” Orson said, motioning for me to show off the Wyrd wand.

The mood of the guards shifted as soon as they saw the wand.

“This wand belongs to one chosen,” he said.

“Yes…” the other guards echoed. I couldn’t tell if they were very happy about its existence.

“But it is not this incubus.”

“I’m protecting it for her,” I said. Ha. Charlotte really was a Chosen One. Well, I would certainly choose her any day.

“We are trying to save this realm,” Orson said. “Why do you think Lord Liorgan’s garden is so beautiful? It’s because he engages with the Fixed Plane and is trying to keep Wyrd connected. I’ve heard the queen’s garden isn’t looking too great these days.”

All the guards went quiet with what seemed like cold fury. I’d always heard faeries weren’t very emotional, so it was hard to tell for sure. The garden slowly chilled as every one of them slowed down, becoming a motionless statue, staring at us.

If Orson was trying to plead my case, he was doing a lousy job. “Seize the intruder and take him to the queen,” Captain Kierellan said.

“Oh no,” Penny said. “You shouldn’t stay here, Alec! It isn’t time! The queen will be upset!” She gave me a little shove and now I was back in the cave again, with a glowing wand nearly smacking me in the face.

“Oh—” Piers was staring right at me. “Alec…” His eyes widened. “So this is the place…”

I was completely jarred. One minute I was in Wyrd, the next minute I was caught, and I had no idea how to defend myself. Fuck…

He sighed.

We both knew there was really no way I could lie my way out of this.

“You seem like a genuinely worthy person, Lyrman,” Piers said. “If your mother had not been a succubus, you would be on track for some truly great things, I expect. People like you are actually the reason the council has worked so long and hard to develop a method of purification.”

“I am not interested.”

“It’s a curse, for you,” Piers said. “Can you tell me otherwise? Truly? You don’t worry that you will never truly fall in love? Montague is your best friend, isn’t he? And isn’t he dating Charlotte? But half the time she’s looking at you. I’m impressed your friendship can stand the strain.”

“Well…it does,” I said.

“I know what you’re looking for,” Professor Pacetti said, stepping in. His tone was much less benevolent. “You think you’re doing a good thing, helping the faeries, trying to find a way into the third realm? But all you’re doing is giving Sinistral power, in the end. Betraying your people, succumbing to your mother’s way of living. You’re better than that, aren’t you? Your mother forced herself on your father with magic, had a baby she didn’t want to raise, and handed that baby to your dad. You can’t help your birth, only your life. Is that the kind of man you want to be?”

It wasn’t.

They knew this was something I was afraid of—but finding a way to reconcile the two sides of me, felt right. Changing what I was just didn’t.

“Just because Sinistrals can be genuinely evil…doesn’t make you genuinely good,” I said. “I don’t want to be purified. I don’t want to be forced to be someone I’m not, and that’s what the council does. That’s what you did to Master Blair. To Charlotte’s grandmother. Countless others.”

Piers frowned, his whole mouth tightening into a stiff curve, like he had just swallowed terrible medicine. “All right, then,” he said. “We have to purify him next.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Charlotte

“Alec!” I couldn’t help screaming as I ran toward the chapel.

When I saw Piers and Professor Pacetti standing up there on the steps, I knew we’d lost. Piers was holding my wand in one hand. Professor Stamos whipped his wand out toward me. “Wall of wind!” his ancient voice warbled, and I was slammed back by a fierce gust into Montague’s arms.

“Don’t hurt Char!” Alec shouted.

“Please, Miss Byrne,” Piers said. “Your behavior doesn’t befit a student of Merlin College. I have never seen a group of students so very upset that we found a cure for demonic elements. This will save Alec from ever having to go to the Haven, from being tormented by his mother’s curse, and from hurting anyone.”

Poor Alec had his hands chained behind his back. He was shirtless, every gorgeous plane of his chest and every sinew of his arms straining against the shackles, and I was extra horrified looking at him because I didn’t just want to save him, I wanted to jump his bones. What if Piers drained the sex drive right out of him? It would be a crime against humanity.

Montague gave Harris a cold look. “So, are we still just playing along?”

Harris, to his credit, didn’t hesitate. He ran up the steps. Pacetti rushed down to intercept him.

“Let him speak,” Piers said. “Harris, I know Alec is a friend of yours since grade school. And I also know that you are aware that your friends are in danger of turning to the darkness. As I’m sure you saw from the purification of Lucas the other day, it is a brief discomfort, but—”

“I thought you were letting me speak,” Harris said. “Piers, I just have one question. Have you tested this purification spell with someone whose bloodline was half sinistral?”

“Yes,” Piers said, with a nervous blink.

“And how did that go?”

“The subject is recovering nicely.”

“The subject?”

“I hope you trust the council,” Piers said. “We have kept Etherium in power for thousands of years so I should think we know what we’re doing.”

“I thought we were supposed to be on the side of good,” Harris said. “This doesn’t feel like good.”

“No,” Piers said. “It wouldn’t, from your perspective. You are still young. Younger people embrace a certain level of chaos. By the time you’re older, you will see, these temporary rules and adjustments are what keeps our society strong. I will purify your friend with respect for his dignity, and when the dust settles, and someday he is a great magical artist—that is what interests you, isn’t it, Mr. Lyrman?”

“Yes…” Alec stood stiffly, avoiding Piers’ eyes.

“I’m sure your incubus side has done no favors for your focus,” Piers said.

Alec just looked at me, like it was the last time.

“You will all be grateful,” Piers said.

“No!” I didn’t have my wand, but maybe I could still—

When I tried to move, Professor Stamos’ twitched his hand, threatening me with another spell. The whole school was gathered around to watch, and I couldn’t just start summoning spirits to help me. Plus, a lot of the students seemed gleeful to watch Alec stripped of his sinistral side.

“Isn’t there something I can do?” I asked Montague, stricken.

“I could try to compel them,” Montague said. “But everyone’s watching. It would be too easy to break my spell.”

“Wait!” Daisy came running across the grass from the guest housing. “Piers, wait!” She skidded to a halt like an overexcited cat. “Piers—don’t do this. Don’t hurt him.” She couldn’t help looking at Alec and nearly doing a double take. I mean, I could not blame her. If Alec was hot on a normal day, shirtless, tortured, and in chains? Somebody hose me down.

Piers, meanwhile? Well, he noticed. He definitely noticed that his wife-to-be, the one he supposedly once said he was going to ‘tame’, was looking at Alec and her mouth was sliding open. So far Piers seemed like he’d been nothing but awkward and boring with Daisy, and he looked pissed.

“So, you’re saving me, huh?” Alec asked him sarcastically.

Piers started speaking in ominous Latin (well, most Latin was actually pretty ominous to my ears), practically standing on his tiptoes as he lifted his wand. Professor Pacetti started joining in, while Professor Stamos was keeping a close eye on us.

When the spell hit Alec, he screamed and collapsed to his knees. With his hands bound, he lost his balance more easily, and it was a hard fall. His red eyes glowed.

“Please!” I cried. “Please!”

But it was useless. Piers was getting his revenge for not being able to purify me, plus, I guess, his revenge for Alec being hotter than him.

Alec hunched forward, in obvious agony. His skin broke into a sweat. He retched just like Lucas, though I guess there wasn’t much in him. I still caught my breath in horror, especially as dark smoke started wafting off him like it had off Lucas.

Daisy pushed her way through the boys toward us, her eyes puffy. “I’m so sorry, Charlotte.”

“Fight it, Alec!” Montague shouted. “You can fight it!”

Piers chanted more loudly, trying to drown Montague’s voice out.

“It’s better not to fight it.” I jumped as Lucas suddenly loomed behind me, a calm smile on his face. “The purification spell helped me a lot. I used to be angry. I’m not angry anymore.”

“Yeah, now ya just creepy,” Daisy said under her breath.

“You are not wrong,” I said. “Anyway, Alec’s not angry. Literally the only thing about Alec that isn’t easygoing is that he needs to put out.”

“And looking at him, nothing wrong with that,” Daisy said.

Alec screamed again, and this time it sounded like this low, primal roar like I had never heard from him before, and believe me, I’d heard a fair amount of interesting noises coming out of him by now. This was different. This sounded they were killing him.

I made one last effort to push forward to get to him. Professor Stamos, of course, was ready with a spell that froze me in my tracks with one sharp flash of light that burned my skin, like my entire body had grabbed a hot potato. I’d managed to get closer, but the pain made me afraid to try anything more.

“Come into the light of Etherium!” Piers said. “Any part of you that is untouched by the realms of virtue, let it be banished…”

“Alec…!” I could see it happening. Half of his blood, half of his personality—gone. Stamped out.

And it was the sexy half.

But no matter how much I personally enjoyed it, it was just who he was. The person we had all known. He would never be the same again. I couldn’t believe I had to watch as they destroyed something that had never been broken.

“Alec! No—please, stop! Stop! He’s a good person, just the way he is!”

The professors were totally ignoring me. This was a holy mission for them.

Alec thrashed. He wasn’t screaming now, but roaring like a dragon. The chains that cuffed his hands back snapped. “I’m sorry, Char,” Alec gasped.

“No!”

Alec broke away from the spell, turning his back to us, and the dark smoke that had been wafting off of him sort of…sucked back into him.

Professor Stamos and Professor Gruben tried to rush up the stairs to help Piers and Pacetti contain him, although they were both ancient, so they were like, holding onto the handrails and moving carefully. Alec seemed to be getting bigger and all of a sudden wings sprouted from his back, horns from his head, and a tail from his…tailbone. Between the tail and his larger body, his pants were splitting and threatening to come off his body entirely. His skin was glowing from within, but with some reddish light. He whirled on Piers, his eyes glowing bright red, and roared at him again.

“Alec unlocked Omega-Chou mode IRL,” I breathed.

Piers took a step back and almost crashed into shaky-kneed Professor Gruben as Alec now turned to Professor Pacetti. Pacetti was chanting some new spell, and Alec grabbed his wand and broke it in half, then grabbed Pacetti by the lapels and shoved him toward the wall of the church.

“You think I need a wand to fight a demon? Regna terrae, cantata Deo—” Professor New Jersey was in full force as he chanted back at him, managing to make his Latin spell sound like he was arguing with a cab driver.

Alec backed off, spread his wings, and took flight, vanishing almost as soon as he did.

The absence of Alec’s thrashing and roaring left a sudden hush in its wake.

“That was not what I expected to happen,” Montague said, sounding stunned.

“I am so sorry,” Daisy said. “Suddenly Piers was banging on the door, demanding I cast a spell to find this Wyrd tree. If I didn’t do it he was going to lock me in the room. He seemed so frantic. I freaked out. I didn’t know he was going to take your wand and make Alec the star of the sex demon awakening show for all the world to see although—damn, I really thought his pants were just going to full on rip off his body…”

“Someone expected this, I think,” Harris said, locking eyes with his cousin. He walked up the steps, deftly dodging the spot where Alec had thrown up on the steps. Piers definitely looked calm for what had just happened.

“Alec Lyrman rejected the purification,” Piers said. “This only proves our methods. His inner nature was corrupt and it seems we were not able to save him. He is lost to Sinistral now.”

“You drove him to it,” Harris said. “Alec was about the most decent person I know!”

“He made his choice, and he chose darkness,” Professor Pacetti said. “If he comes back I’d be happy to go a second around and obliterate him.”

A lot of the students were murmuring nervously about this turn of events.

“No more questions!” Piers said, throwing up his hands.

“Hey—cousin,” Harris said. “When you’re considering what to tell the council, don’t forget to lie. Tell them Alec was always trouble, that the purification spell failed because he was the one who was tainted. Don’t mention that you forced him into a spell that wasn’t tested because you wanted to show off. Cover your own ass.”

“Your friend,” Piers said, “was a demon. I think you just don’t want to face it.” He stormed off, cape fluttering.

I looked at Montague. “Where did Alec go?”

“The only place he can go, now,” Montague said. “Sinistral.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Alec

Where am I?

Who am I?

I tore away from the world I knew and landed in a world that was strange and shadowed. My wings were shaky and I hit the ground so hard that I felt bruised and broken even though my body seemed even bigger and stronger than before. I was in a forest, and glowing eyes peered out from the trees.

I heard a scream.

“Melanie!”

My familiar was in her human form, and some kind of slithering dragon-y looking creature was snapping its jaws at her. I clambered to my feet, picked a huge fallen branch off the forest floor, and slammed it into the dragon’s head. Hard headed as it was, the branch cracked, but it seemed stunned and scared, and hauled ass back into the woods.

Melanie, meanwhile, had collapsed to the ground. Her skin had turned white as a sheet.

“Melanie?” I scooped her up in my arms.

“Alec…” She smiled weakly. “You’ve certainly grown up nice and strong. I helped you grow up. Charlotte is waiting for you. I’m not in any pain, so don’t be sad, okay?”

“What are you talking about? Are you hurt?”

Melanie brushed her hand across my cheek as her body seemed to get lighter and lighter in my arms. She started fading away. Her body just…vanished.

“Melanie! Melanie! Where are you?” I screamed, knowing it was futile. Shouldn’t she have just turned Sinistral?

I looked at my arms, still marked with tattoos, but they were stretched a little thinner across my larger arms.

Demons didn’t have familiars. I must have…lost what was human, instead of what was dark.

If that was true…

It must be true. Melanie was the proof.

All the discipline and hard work I had put into embracing my warlock side and making my dad proud—gone. The companion who had seen me through my childhood and teenage years, the little spider on my shoulder who was shy and wise, but could also be playful and who once said, “Alec, let me…,” as she brushed a frail human hand over my shoulder, encouraging me to relieve my tensions with her…

Melanie had never been my lover, despite the fact that we had sex. But I did love her. Every wizard loved their familiar; it was the most private and intimate relationship we would have, shared with no one else.

Sinistral was my home now, and this was what I was.

But I didn’t really have a home. I had no place to rest my head.

I heard crows screeching ominously from the trees. The rustling and movement of disconcertingly large creatures in the dark brush. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that I was watched by scaled and furred creatures.

A nymph melted from the trees, appearing to me naked, her hair to her knees. “Are you lost?” The sound she made was like a purr as she came to me boldly and trailed her fingertips over my bare chest, making me shiver with need. Her hand dropped to my pants, ripping off the remains of the half-shredded fabric, and wrapped around my cock. It had grown with the rest of me and I thought, this is too much for Charlotte now.

In the Fixed Plane, I would still take my human form, but I would no longer be able to use my warlock powers in the Fixed Plane. The power of a demon became very limited in the human world.

“No,” I said, trying to shove the nymph away. “I already have a girl.”

Her laugh was like a little whispering hiss. “I see no girl here,” she said, her hand gripping me even tighter than before. She opened her mouth wide, revealing two rows of razor sharp teeth.

“Oh fuck!” I tried to shove her back again, and her hand sprouted claws that pricked into my tender skin. I had no choice but to fight her, scraping her arm with my own claws and using the full force of my strength to throw her off. She screeched, jumping onto me and biting my shoulder, tearing out a chunk of flesh.

I slammed my shoulder into the nearest tree, and then ran back to the clearing where I had landed, spreading my wings and taking shaky flight just to get away from her. My heart was pounding.

The crows took off from the tree, following me, landing on me to peck at my skin. I dodged, shaking them off, grabbing a few off my head and throwing them, but lost control of my wings, crashing through the trees.

I lay there, panting. I tried to get back to the Fixed Plane. I didn’t know how to leave this place.

“Char! Charlotte!” I called her name. She was my anchor. “How do I get out of here…”

I saw the crows whirling back down toward me.

Before they could land, a blast of fire scorched them right out of the sky. A woman appeared like she came out of nowhere. For a second, I saw the long brown hair, slightly windswept, and the curve of familiar eyebrows and the particular tilt of a nose, and I thought Charlotte was there, wearing a black dress with long sleeves and a tulle skirt.

“You stopped pretending,” she said.

“What?”

“You stopped pretending to be a nice little college boy,” she said. “I told you this is what you were meant to be. The Ethereals were just holding you back.”

“You’re…Charlotte’s mom, aren’t you?”

She nodded and crouched near me. I started to try to move into a more modest position, and she smiled. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “You’re an incubus. Your assets are your magic. You might as well use it.” She smoothed her skirts, looking briefly pensive. “Alec, is it…?”

“Alec,” I confirmed.

She made me nervous, Charlotte’s mom. What did it do to a witch to be in Sinistral for so long? I saw sadness in her eyes.

“She was a baby once, in my arms…newborn. Evan put on music, right away, trying to make a musician out of her. And I marked her with a binding to keep her magic safe. We all try to make our children be what we wish them to be, but you become what you truly are when you are free of us…”

“What about you?” I asked. “Is that why you’re here? Are you what you truly are?”

“The Ethereals are like parents who never let you go,” she said. “They tell you what to do until they day you die. I don’t want Charlotte to be a part of that world. Alec…please. Tell her to come here and be with us. Montague and Firian could be here too. I am so proud of her already. I have watched her from afar, and knowing that she has gone for what she wants and ignored the voices that try to oppress her… She would be a wonderful Sinistral witch and no one will ever try to control her again.”

“So…what about her dad?” I was chilled by the distance in her voice, the yearning in her eyes.

A little chill passed over her. “I can’t. He’s happier without me.”

“He wouldn’t be happy without her,” I said. “Charlotte loves her dad. I wish I was as close to my dad. And he still loves you, too, from everything I’ve heard.”

“He doesn’t. He couldn’t.”

“Sure he could.”

She shook her head quickly, drawing back. I was scaring her in some way.

“What about Wyrd?” I asked. “You were trying to get there, right? With Samuel and Ignatius?”

She looked troubled. “The faeries are impossible,” she said. “They are too cold. They have no passion. They don’t understand humanity—or demons, either. This is the only place where you can be completely free…”

Alec…

I felt Charlotte, heard her call my name from some place that had been distant, and suddenly became close enough to touch. My body caught fire at the sound of her voice, and I felt power uncoiling from inside me, reaching out to make her mine. I would be stronger with every taste of her.

Sinistral melted away, replaced by the sight of Charlotte in her bed. She opened her eyes slowly. “Alec…”

She was dreaming, but more than dreaming, pushing off the covers to reveal the cotton shirt and underwear clinging to her fertile curves as her eyed widened with a mixture of anticipation and fear at the sight of me.

I wondered if some of her mother’s words were right, after all.

This is what you were meant to be.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Charlotte

He came to me when I slept.

Like I thought he would.

Like I feared he would.

Like I knew he would.

There was still some of Alec in his eyes, but also a lot of…something that was not Alec. He stood over my bed, muscular and huge, with dark bat wings spread behind him, his black hair tousled by the newly sprouted horns on his head, and then there was the lashing length of his tail. Plus, he was naked, and he looked like he was meant to be naked. Like, I could hardly imagine dressing him in anything. The tattoos seemed like adornment enough. His cock was the size of a small arm, erect and pulsing.

His hands were spread, his chest rising and falling with quickened breath. “I need you, Charlotte. I have so much to tell you and I can’t think of a single word.”

He stepped closer to me and I felt legitimately a little terrified. I mean, it was Alec. But also, this was like—a legit demon. I shied back a little.

“Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m—I’m not sure if I can—uh…”

“You can and you will. If I can’t have you, I will lose myself to Sinistral. I can’t undo this.”

He pulled me up off my bed and took me onto his lap, holding me tenderly, folding his wings around me. His claws gripped the neck of my t-shirt and tore it off, and then he held my breast, pinching it as he kissed me from shoulder to ear all the way to my eyes.

“You’re mine,” he said. “I have to have you now.”

He took control of my body. He gripped my breasts as his powerful thighs moved beneath mine and shoved them open so he could enter me. I screamed as his demon cock drove into me, but this was still a dream.

There was just enough dream, just enough to bridge reality, and it felt like my entire body was nothing but a place for him to enter. It seemed like I could feel him just a little deeper inside me than any man could go. He lifted my breasts, contorting me back across his arm so he could suckle them as he fucked me. Somehow it seemed like it was his dream and it worked.

In fact, even as I considered this, I realized the room we were in was full of large mirrors with gilded frames, as if we were a Renaissance painting. I could see myself in the glow and shadow, my spine curved back, my legs spread wide as his cock split me open, my hair spilling across my shoulders, and his body—huge and dark, his wings folded over me. His tail slithered inside my ass like it belonged there, his clawed hand rubbing between my legs, and I was getting fucked so silly I think I drooled a little.

My first orgasm didn’t even make him pause. He seemed to release some extra scent that kept me aroused, and now he took my small hands in his and lifted them into the air, guiding them behind me to tug on his hair, which I did—hard.

He grunted like a beast as he switched position—oh god—his cock now sliding into my ass while his tail wormed its way into me.

“It’s a dream, Charlotte,” he said. “It’s all a dream. So don’t ask me to clean you up.”

This was one crazy dream. I started almost blacking out, as the second orgasm crashed over me, my entire body spent. I woke drenched in sweat and aching deep inside.

“Oh god…” My heart was racing. “Oh wow…oh, Alec…”

Emotion overwhelmed me, and I wanted to cry, but instead I just fell back asleep. When I woke up I found that I had somehow written a note in my sleep to myself from Alec.

I encountered your mom in Sinistral. She still wants you to come to Sinistral with her, but she seems afraid that you might not accept her in your own world. I think there really is hope for her, Charlotte.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Charlotte

My dad called that morning. Brandon from the room closest to the house phone came upstairs to tell me.

I don’t want to talk him!

That was my first thought. It was the only time I had ever not wanted to hear from my dad, and I was horrified at myself.

“Hey, Dad,” I said, picking up the heavy old receiver which Brandon had left dangling after walking downstairs on slightly shaky legs.

“Hey, you must be really busy at school,” he said. “I haven’t heard from you in a while. Just checking in.” I could hear concern between his lightness.

Guilt pierced me. I clutched my head. My brain was a stew of—Alec—incubus—faeries—Mom—battling demons—

We were all upset, but none of us knew what to do. Daisy felt like it was her fault because Piers forced her to cast a spell to find the Wyrd tree. And what had been done to Alec couldn’t be taken back.

“I’m so sorry, Dad, it really has been just like, a heavy workload.”

“I guess that’s how college should be,” he said.

There was a weird pause. I think we could both read each other too well.

“Dad—just to update you—Alec saw Mom. Like, she—uh—she appeared to him and they talked for a sec. She still thinks I should join her in Sinistral and obviously I won’t do that, but Alec said also she seemed…” I didn’t want to say ‘sad’ and worry him. “…open to the idea of…”

“Where was she?” he asked, as I stammered.

“Oh, like, one of the magical realms or whatever.”

“Alec was in Sinistral?” he asked. “I know she can’t go to Etherium.”

“Wow, you know more about this than I thought! Yeah, he was, since he’s half demon—”

“I didn’t realize he was half demon.”

“Yes. I thought I mentioned that! Half demon, yes, so, he can go—anywhere, I guess, so—he goes to other realms, sometimes, for like, business. Warlock business. We all can, so…”

“Why was he in Sinistral? I thought it was dangerous there.”

“He was—he was looking for her, so—mission accomplished!”

“Kiddo, I hate to tell you, but you sound like that Kristen Wiig character who lies about everything.”

“What!”

Son of a bitch, I thought. What am I supposed to tell my dad? What? Hey, Dad, actually, we’re all going to fight a demon at the end of this year, but it’s okay, the vampires and old warlocks and faerie lord are going to do most of the work, supposedly. I’ll probably die but I’m doing it anyway, especially now, because Alec said Mom seems sad. And then what? I don’t know. Doesn’t matter because again, we’re probably going to die and you’ll be all alone.

I cheaped out and just started crying.

“Char, do I need to come and get you? Are those boys treating you right?”

“Yeah, no, it’s just college, lots of stress…”

When I hung up, I felt terrible. This was what I had turned into. Someone who lied to my dad. It felt like I had traded the person I loved the most for everything else. Professor Adams warned us about making bargains with magical beings, but I didn’t even have to get that far. Just having the magic was a bad bargain already.

“Your wand, my lady.” Montague walked up to my door and held my wand out to me as I was doing yoga to calm my focus.

“What? How did you get it back?” I clamored out of my floor twist and wrapped my hands around the wood. Immediately, I felt it hum in synch with me, and I felt centered again. “How did you get it?”

“Firian deserves equal credit,” Montague said. “He was watching Piers.”

“Piers took your wand into the woods to use it to find the tree,” Firian said.

“So I followed him and used my vampire compel skills to demand the wand. It couldn’t have been easier,” Montague said, handing it to me with a flourish. “We’re not so helpless after all.”

It was nothing compared to Alec being lost to Sinistral, but it did make me feel a teensy bit better. “But I can’t just walk around with the wand or he’ll take it back. We need to get it out of here. Maybe Professor McGuinness could keep it for me.”

“We’ll take another road trip, then,” Montague said.

“Before he snaps out of it,” Firian said.

“He won’t snap out of it,” Montague said. “I’m getting better at compel.”

“We’ll see,” Firian said.

I smuggled my wand under my cape into Montague’s car and I sure hope Montague’s compel magic really was working, because he also had to compel the guards to let us leave. The school was operating under ‘high security protocol’ ever since the demonification of Alec.

We had also picked up Daisy in the meantime. As we were hurriedly getting in Monty’s vehicle, she sauntered over with her overnight bag and said, “Where are you guys going?”

“Professor McGuinness is staying in Savannah,” I said. “You want to road trip?”

“Hell yeah. Get me out of here.” She climbed in the back seat, tugging on her miniskirt but still flashing Firian with pink underwear as he was waiting to hop in after her. She turned around. “Do you like being petted, Robin Hood?”

I gave him a cool look. “He hates it.”

Firian just laughed at my jealous moment and jumped up next to her.

“Where did you get your ride, Monty? Didn’t you used to have a street racer? What happened to you?”

Montague hunched defensively over the steering wheel. “The warlock council confiscated my car. Harris chose this…gem.”

“I wonder if we should have invited Harris,” Daisy said, glancing at the retreating school gates.

“No time,” Montague said. “We just need to keep the wand safe. You know, we invited you, Daisy.”

“Right, well, I just want him to know that it wasn’t personal that I dumped him.”

“Let’s stay friends never works anyway,” Montague said.

“In this case it does,” Daisy said. “You know he wasn’t into me. For some reason.” She frowned out the window.

“But you weren’t into him either, right?” I said, as I held my wand close to my chest. I hadn’t realized how much more powerful I felt with the wand until it was gone. I felt like the wand and I had already enjoyed a long relationship. I carved you with my own hands…

“No. I need a man who can bring some fire. It isn’t Harris and it damn sure isn’t Piers. But how is it that I could be twenty-one years old and never have fallen in love when I’m so passionate and sexy? Am I not a catch? Shouldn’t I be fighting them off?”

“It’ll happen,” I said. “You just haven’t met the right ones yet. When I was in high school I had the saddest love life. Guys just treated me like I was one of their friends.”

“When we’re in Savannah, I need to stop in somewhere because I ran out of Chanel No. 5,” Daisy said, shaking it off. “I know that’s so basic but it’s like my thing.”

“Well, I do need to get the next Outlander book,” I said. “Maybe we could meet Professor McGuinness at Barnes and Noble.”

“It’s not as if we had anything important to do,” Montague said. “Savannah has a small parallel. It’s very elegant. We were going to meet at a cafe.”

“Yeah, but we just need to shop first, though,” Daisy said. “I just need the Chanel and maybe a new bra and I also need a cute scarf. But it’ll be fast.”

“I believe you,” Firian said dryly.

“Actually…maybe we should meet at the mall,” Montague said. “It’s a public place, so the council will have to be very careful about getting in our business. Firian, can you pass the word to McGuinness’ familiar?”

Five hours later, we were at the mall at the designated meeting place. Professor McGuinness was sitting at a table in a mall food court across from us carefully unwrapping a Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwich and spreading mayonnaise on it with a knife in an even layer.

“Chick-Fil-A is anti-gay,” I said.

“I am aware, but considering the state of my love life, I might choose these sandwiches over sex,” he said.

I looked at my bourbon chicken and now wished I had also gotten the Chick-Fil-A, if I’d known he wasn’t going to judge me over it, while Daisy walked over to him with her Cinnabon.

“This is too hilarious! Let’s get a selfie with our mall food.” She held out her phone and took a picture of Professor McGuinness who looked like he had no idea what was even happening.

“So you have the wand safe and sound?” Professor McGuinness asked.

“Yes.” I had the wand wrapped up in a towel poking out of a tote bag, which was sitting at my side. I knew I had to hand it over for safe keeping, but I was very reluctant. I didn’t want to let it out of my hands ever again. How did I know we could really trust Professor McGuinness to keep it safe? He wasn’t even my favorite professor. What if he broke it? What if he was working for the enemy? All I knew about him was that he was a glum old gent who wore depressing suits and once loved Samuel.

“Let’s see, now…,” Professor McGuinness said, starting to reach.

I held up my fork. “Wait a sec. Before I give this to you…I want to summon Samuel. He had the first Wyrd wand, and if he says I can trust you with it, then I’ll hand it over.”

Professor McGuinness looked like he wanted to protest, but instead he gave me a reluctant nod. “I suppose you will insist. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about you, Charlotte, it’s that once you have an idea in your head…”

“Yep. I just want to see Samuel one time and I think you should too. We’re not going to try and keep him here forever. Just once.”

“Since it is such an act of trust to leave your wand with me, I will relent,” he said. “If you come back to my house tonight, I will help to summon him.”

“The girls need to do some shopping,” Montague said. “I actually need to do some shopping myself, and anyway, you don’t want me around when you’re summoning the dead. It’s not my specialty. Do you mind taking them back to your place and I’ll meet you there later tonight?”

“What do you need to shop for?” I asked.

“My mom’s birthday present, for one, and I need new shoes.”

“Your shoes look pretty new to me…”

“I hold myself to a high standard. What, you really want to come with me? It’s boring. I thought I’d get it out of the way while I’m at the mall.” I got this suspicious feeling again. Montague was more present in recent weeks… Maybe I was just paranoid because I’d lost Firian to a curse, and Alec to the demon world, and I was worried over both of them, while Montague was the one that all the concerned adults seemed to think would choose his vampire life over his human life, sooner of later.

“Just be careful,” I said.

He lifted my hand and kissed it. “Always. I’ll see you tonight.”

“That didn’t work out in Cancun,” Daisy said.

“I’m wiser now,” he said, slipping gracefully out of his chair, leaving us to our food.

That, at least, I believed.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Montague

I drove past a few of Savannah’s picturesque squares and cemeteries. Spanish moss dripped off the old oak trees, occasionally even touching the tombstones and monuments, until I reached the address.

I drove a little further to park my hideous car out of sight and walked back. The wrought iron gate was shut but low enough for me to hop over without going full-on vampire acrobat. I walked up a flight of steps to the double doors and rapped the knocker, as tourists strolled by behind me. It was astonishing to me that vampires lived right in the city in plain view like this.

Vampires really aren’t like other magical beings, I thought. They usually started their lives as ordinary humans, for one thing, and even though they were deemed Sinistral, they didn’t live in Sinistral like werewolves or demons. They remained in the real world, moreso even than warlocks.

I know this house.

It was new, then, the smell of the paint still faint on a warm summer night, candles blazing from every corner, silk dresses brushing each other as ladies moved through the doorways. The gowns came from every era, going back to Medieval days.

Rayner brought Lisbeth here once, a long time ago.

“Don’t worry, tulip, you’re always safe with me,” he said, but he still kept her close as the aroma of her made heads turn and fangs flash. “I brought you here for a reason.”

He looked up to the grand staircase to meet the eyes of a broad man in the dark cloak, fastened with a silver pin, and robes, his face pale and somber as carved marble.

“A sweet that none shall taste,” he said. “An impolite gift to bring to a party, Mr. Vanderberg…”

The vampires left me hanging there on the stoop. I knew I was probably being observed, appraised, and discussed. I could faintly smell them, clean and cold. If humans were summer days, full of life and flowers but also likely to stink, and demons were the smoke of autumn, vampires were snowfall.

So they certainly knew what I was.

An old woman, walking determinedly with a cane, came down the sidewalk. She looked at me. “I’m not sure you want to be knocking on that door,” she said.

“I’m afraid I am sure,” I said.

She shook her head, walking as fast as she could to get away as she crossed herself, a small gesture that stung me because it made me think of being banned from the basilica where my ancestors had worshipped for hundreds of years.

As soon as she was gone, the doors swung open at once, with no one behind them. It was enough of an invitation that I was able to walk inside, and they shut behind me, just as smoothly. I stood in the grand entrance hall, looking up at the staircase. A massive crystal chandelier, wax candles still stuck in their bases, hung down.

Somewhere in the house above my head, I heard a woman gasping and moaning, somewhere between pleasure and pain. But she fell silent almost as soon as I walked inside. The house paused at my entrance, the flooring and walls letting out a soft groan.

Further in the depths, an old telephone rang. I heard the clatter of a receiver and a muted female voice saying, “Allo. Oui. He just walked in.” The phone went back in the cradle heavily.

I should have felt out of place, but Rayner’s memory had given me just enough to know that this house was always full of activity, the center of vampire life on the southeast coast. It was both the spectator and the show. This house was the home of a six-hundred-year vampire, and it would make no particular effort to accommodate itself to me.

A girl hurried down the stairs, wearing a long silk kimono, a flash of a bandage showing beneath the sleeve. She quickly tugged it down, ignoring me. At the foot of the stairs, she paused, swaying dizzily, but before I could offer help, she opened the door without looking at me once.

Meanwhile, Ulf came to the top of the stairs, to the same place he stood to greet Rayner.

“Rayner’s youngest creation,” he said. “Montague Xarra. This is quite a moniker. You are a warlock, I am told?”

“Yes, sir. I’m from the St. Augustine Xarras.”

He nodded without the slightest interest. “You are not with your clan,” he said. “So you have not embraced this life yet. You do not obey…? Rayner, is he still looking for that little cursed girl of his?”

“Lisbeth,” I said. “She’s cursed?”

“Well, we call it cursed,” he said. “That is, Rayner cannot turn her. Her family put a protection upon her soul, so he loses her, over and over…” Ulf came down the stairs like it was a slow sort of dance. His accent and his movements both seemed alien. People spoke and moved in very different ways six hundred years ago, I guess.

“I never knew that…”

“It explains a lot, doesn’t it?” Ulf said, with the smallest spark of humor. “Why have you not joined your clan, boy?”

“I already have a life,” I said.

“With humans…,” he said. “Well. Yes. For now. Patience, then.”

A woman brought out a tray with two glasses of blood for us. “Be my guest, Mr. Xarra.”

The blood smelled so tantalizing, so fresh and sweet, that it was only after I put it to my lips that I could even think of refusing it. And by then, it was already down my throat.

“I know that look,” Ulf said. “Not enough fresh food in your diet.”

“It’s good blood,” I said. “But—I’ve also heard drugs aren’t bad until they fuck up your life. I imagine that’s the same deal.”

He laughed. “I’ve only seen it a thousand times,” he said. “Every young vampire tries to resist. Not all of them argue with me, I’ll give you that. But Silvus sent you to me, he said, because you wish to know more about how to yield the power you were given. You cannot speak to Rayner, then, because he does not wish to teach you anything that isn’t in service of finding his beloved.”

“I guess that’s it,” I said. “Silvus recommended this place, so I came.”

“Let me see you…” Ulf clamped a hand on my shoulder and lifted his eyes to mine. He seemed to be peeling back my soul with plenty of experience. I wanted to look away.

Six hundred years. So many years that they scared me. Who wanted to live that long, to see the world change that much? Ulf hadn’t just outlasted friends, he had outlasted forests and nations and entire ways of life, more than once. Even his face seemed to be a strange face, some idea of what was handsome from a long time ago, in some provincial place. His eyes were penetrating and blue, and I couldn’t decide if he was brawny or graceful. It was a little of both. He seemed like a rock softened by water, from a time when nearly all men knew how to ride and swing a sword or a hammer or a scythe, but now he lived in a mansion in Savannah, hosting parties for other vampires who saw him as nearly god-like.

He finally eased off. “You are not ready for what I have to say,” he said.

“If I’m not ready, I’ll just ignore the advice,” I said. “But if you won’t tell me what it is, how can I become ready for it?”

He chuckled. “None of it will surprise you. Your body knows what it needs to become stronger. It’s really so simple. Vampires are not complicated like warlocks. They are like animals who can survive on their own in the wild as soon as their eyes open. You simply have not opened your eyes yet, but the time will come. Sometimes, it does not come until you see the ones you love begin to fail.”

“I need blood…,” I said. “That’s all you’re saying.”

“You need blood right from the vein, boy. You must be well nourished to fight.”

“So that girl…”

“She is one of my thralls,” Ulf said. “She takes great pleasure in giving herself to me. When she has recovered from today, she will be back. Sometimes, sooner.”

“She’s addicted to it?” I didn’t like this.

“As you get older, you learn control. You will not hurt anyone. Their blood is power for you, and your venom is a drug to them.”

“I can’t imagine this is a life anyone would choose,” I said. “Getting addicted to any drug can be pretty great, I’ve heard, for a little while, and then…”

“Not ready,” Ulf said. “I told you. Eventually, you will stop concerning yourself over it. You see the humans suffer and die, and all you think is, how nice it is to take what you need and bring them a little happiness. Or maybe you don’t even care about that very much. I can’t say I think about it anymore, but we are comfortable in our routines.”

“So you never fall in love with them?”

“I don’t,” Ulf said. “I choose my partners among vampire society, or I did once. These days I don’t even think about such things. But everyone is different. Your sire, yes, he is my opposite in so many ways. He lives for his thrall. So, maybe…you are more like him. But the one thing Rayner and I have in common is that we take what we need, and that is the end of it. If you want to be strong, you will take what you need.”

“Taking blood from a living person is very…intimate,” I said.

“Oh, yes. Your thrall will crave you, and likewise.”

“My clan drank Harris’ blood and I don’t think he craved them.”

“He is very cold, or he lied, this Harris,” Ulf said.

I snorted. “Either is possible.”

“If you don’t fuck your thralls you are not really living.”

So, drink Charlotte’s blood, or…betray her love?

Of course, Alec and I aren’t so different, I thought. He needs her, too. I could drink Alec’s blood, but…

I knew that would mess everything up just as badly. Alec was a demon, he couldn’t really be my thrall, and if we started to want to have sex with each other, that would just be very awkward on multiple levels.

Charlotte was the one I wanted, the way Rayner had Lisbeth. She was the girl I wanted to taste…and fuck. Nobody else. Rayner lives for his thrall.

I never wanted a thrall. I wanted a wife. Kids. A home. Normal stuff.

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m not ready to hear it.”

“I know,” Ulf said. “It takes time. That’s all. Time and pain. But what a relief it is, when you finally let go of your human life. My doors are always open for any vampire who needs a place to get on their feet.”

I struggled not to choke on the sickening feeling of ever losing my human life, mingled with the sense that a part of me wanted it.

It could have been good, maybe. But only if I didn’t lose Charlotte. And Charlotte would lose Firian. So it could never be and I was just going to have to pretend I was still normal for as long as I could.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Charlotte

“I guess that’s everything,” I said, paying for some clearance socks with llamas on them while Daisy had a bag-full.

“I do wonder if maybe I should get something to wear,” Professor McGuinness said. “Since Samuel was always so fashionable.”

“Yeah, definitely,” Daisy said. “I mean, now that mention it you look like you dress out of a haunted mansion.”

“I’m a necromancer,” he said.

“Does that mean if I become a necromancer I have to dress like a funeral director too?” I asked. “I mean, talking to spirits is a totally different job. I think you could use some color. You’d look younger.”

“And a haircut!” Daisy said. “This is all just kind of shaggy.” She waved her hand around his face. “I think you have a good face for hats.” She grabbed a wool tweed cap and tip-toed to put it on his head. “See? This Professor of Necromancy just got Necro-fancy.”

Professor McGuinness looked confused. “I just never think about these things.”

“We need to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy him!” I said. “Or—Straight Eye for the Queer Guy…?”

“You are speaking my language, girl,” Daisy said. “Queer Eye is my soul mate.”

“Have you seen the Netflix one?”

“Netflix one?” she screamed. “No!”

“It’s really good,” I said. “It has new guys.”

“New guys! That feels like a betrayal.”

“Nah, the originals just have their own lives now. You’ll like this. The new guys are as good as the old guys.”

“But where’s my Carson?”

“You haven’t met Jonathan yet.”

“Okay, I’m listening.”

“I do think we’d better make it quick, though,” Professor McGuinness interrupted. “I think we can all hear about Jonathan later. Just try to find me something that when Samuel sees me he says, ‘You’re looking well.’”

We ended up being at the mall until it closed. We got Professor McGuinness as ready for his date with the dead to the best of our cumulative abilities.

Daisy seemed like she was in heaven and would have to be dragged out. “If my grandmother was here there would be so much drama,” she said to me at one point as I was looking at a clearance rack. “She’s a beast to salespeople and nothing is ever right. I love how you’re just like, ‘I like these jeans!’”

“You secretly think I’m a simpleton, don’t you?”

She did that ‘hmm hmm hmm!’ laugh.

Haircut, shave, a little makeup for the dark circles under his eyes plus a tiny bit of guyliner under protest, upscale leather jacket, black shirt with blue fleur-de-lys pattern, shoes that didn’t look like they had been to a shoe repair place three times already, and Professor McGuinness…

“You’re kind of hot,” Daisy said.

“Oh, really,” he said skeptically, rolling his eyes.

“No, she’s right. I bet Samuel will be impressed,” I said. We must have shaved twenty years off of dour old Professor McGuinness somehow.

“I haven’t seen him in years. I’m not trying to impress him, anyway, he is dead.”

“This is super depressing,” Daisy said. “We just made him look beautiful for a love that can never be.”

He turned red. “It’s not love. It’s just that I want to look on par with Samuel; I’m sure he’ll be a very handsome ghost. Let’s get going.”

Professor McGuinness had a car, that it seemed like he barely knew how to drive, but after being passed by every angry driver in Savannah, he found a parking space from which we could enter the parallel. I saw the air shimmer as we approached and waited for the right moment, trading electric lights and traffic for candlelight and carriages.

“Adams has a little house where I’m staying,” he said. “He’s out tonight.” He said this in a tone where I knew Adams was out with a lady, maybe his demon lady, unless he was really getting busy after leaving the confines of Merlin. “Just here…”

When we reached the house, Montague was sitting on the steps. “What the hell? I’ve been here for two hours.”

“The door is open—oh—” Professor McGuinness’ eyes widened. “I forgot the vampire problem.”

“Professor,” Montague said, standing up to get a better look. “I have to admit, you look fantastic. So that’s what you were doing.”

“And we did all this without even having basic access to a Nordstroms or a Bloomingdales,” Daisy bragged.

“Terribly sorry to leave you out in the cold,” Professor McGuinness said.

“Well, at least I don’t really get cold either,” Montague said. “But I wouldn’t say no to a crackling fire and a cup of tea.”

“Did you get your mom’s birthday present?” I asked him. He still had this distant, troubled look.

“Yes. Earrings.”

“Ooh, can I see?”

“I had them shipped from the store.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Is that a thing?”

“Yes,” he said. “It is a thing.”

McGuinness got a nice fire burning in the old parlor and made tea for everyone, and then it really was time to get to summoning. I think he was more nervous than I was, but I was still nervous. Samuel told me not to summon him, so I didn’t expect him to be pleased with me. But I do have a reason, I thought, clutching my wand.

“I’ll let you begin,” Professor McGuinness said. “More practice certainly won’t harm you. You can use the fire.”

“All right.” I looked into the flames, although this reminded me uncomfortably of summoning Alec’s pissy mom. I lifted my wand and shut my eyes, finding my concentration. It had been such a crazy week, and that made it harder to center myself, but I was getting better at the tricks. Breathe in and out…feel the magic flowing through the wand… Montague was watching me carefully, making me feel self-conscious, although he also seemed to relax by the fire. I wondered why he was lying to me, but the trouble with Montague is that a part of him was always far away from me.

I felt kind of blocked up. I was the tiniest bit afraid to summon Samuel, maybe. I don’t know why. I guess there was a lot of hype surrounding him, and then I feared he might be mad at me.

I also didn’t want to give my wand to Professor McGuinness. I knew I had to keep it safe, but it was mine. My wyrd wand. It was what led me here and made me special.

I could hear Harris sneering, Is that the real reason? You’re afraid of losing your Chosen One status, eh?

The fire started roaring high enough that Professor McGuinness had to intervene with a bit of hand waving.

“Charlotte…?” he said. “What is troubling you?”

I bit my lip. “Fares wyrd as she must,” I murmured. Fate didn’t leave room for a big ego. Classic fantasy novel stuff, again—power corrupts. Rings, thrones, the ‘Fortune’s Wheel’ spell in Fortune’s Fate that dealt death to your enemies but also slowly sapped your vitality stats… “I’m good,” I said. The fire calmed down.

A moment later, a smoky form drifted out of the fire and we all took a step back as it coalesced into the slightly translucent form of Samuel Caruthers.

Even though I had summoned the dead before, this did feel different. I had already heard Samuel’s voice in my mind, and our wands came from the same tree. Samuel was my blood. But unlike my poor mom, he wasn’t here to try and drag me into the abyss.

He looked debonair and vaguely disappointed. “I knew you’d do it,” he said. “But I tried to tell you not to. Please, Charlotte, I am trying not to get attached. I don’t want to be a ghost.”

“Um…sorry,” I said. “We won’t get attached. I promise. I just have a question.”

But I had so many questions. So many!

Samuel Caruthers looked a lot like my mom. They could have been siblings. I didn’t realize how much they looked alike from the few photos I’d seen of him. I wanted to ask him about his life, about my mom and Ina. I wanted to ask him what the heck I was supposed to do about the faeries and the Withered Lord and his friggin’ mom.

“What is the question?” he asked.

“Wait—uh…” Professor McGuinness stepped up now. Samuel seemed like he had just noticed him. Maybe our world was sort of translucent to him too.

“Igor? Is that you?”

Igor? I mean, why not.

“Yes, it’s me. It’s been a long time.”

“I hardly recognized you! What happened to the all-black? Are you wearing a hat?”

“Well, the young ladies told me my look was a little musty.”

You know what else is musty? Calling us ‘Young ladies’.

But I behaved myself. Samuel looked happy to see an old friend.

“I know I’ve always been a pretty…provincial warlock, compared to you, roaming the world…magazine covers… Well, what am I saying? I am very happy for you, Samuel. I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed our time together at Merlin. I never really—told you. I think when you invited me to that picnic, and then down by the creek, you were trying to signal something and I knew it even at the time but I was just too nervous to reciprocate.”

“I knew you were,” Samuel said. “I was pretty disappointed anyway, but in hindsight, you wouldn’t have gotten the teaching job if…”

“And damn all that,” Professor McGuinness said. “I could have been there when…maybe I could have…”

“Picnic? Creek? Y’all were serious!” I said.

Samuel looked grim. “I’m glad you weren’t there, Ig. It was—not a pretty scene. Why should you die with me?”

“I think I was just a coward,” Professor McGuinness said. “The rest of you were trying to improve the world and I just wanted a cushy job.”

“Fame and fortune never suited you,” Samuel said.

“Well, the fortune part, I wouldn’t mind, but the fame? You’re right.”

“We had different paths,” Samuel said. “At some point I realized I had to accept that…”

“I am in the fight now,” Professor McGuinness said. “I promise you, Samuel, I will protect these children.”

Samuel reached a hand out to Professor McGuinness and their fingers brushed, but Samuel seemed to be made of air.

Well, this was getting sad. They both seemed like they regretted some decisions and would have liked to talk more and my brain was like, Oh shit, you’re not supposed to form attachments to the dead. I can’t let Samuel become a sad ghost.

“So…you were killed by the Withered Lord?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “The Withered Lord came in the night to assassinate me. He has a bone to pick with our family, Charlotte, ever since your grandmother freed her wolves. He brought them up from childhood, but not kindly. She gave him her magic to rescue them, but he still felt like he had lost the fight, and he doesn’t lose many fights.”

Shoot. I was really hoping there would be a twist and it wouldn’t be the Withered Lord. Not a pretty scene? He doesn’t lose many fights?

“But he is lashing out because he knows he’s losing,” Samuel said. “That’s the good news.”

“Cool,” I said. “So…you really think…we have a chance?”

“Oh, yes,” Samuel said. “It must be done. It’s our best chance to earn entry to Wyrd, and that would change the magical community as we’ve known it for thousands of years, breaking the old guard and giving us—or…you—more opportunities.”

“But we might die though?” Daisy said.

“Well, anything worth doing can kill you,” Samuel said.

“Do you think we’ve trained enough?” I asked.

“You will always feel like you haven’t trained enough,” Samuel said. “But the core of magic is your will and your heart, not your age. Fares wyrd as she must, Charlotte. Everything has fallen together, not as we anticipated, but it never does. You know what you must do.”

“But we might die, though.” I glanced at Daisy. “And my dad…”

“Well, I can’t force you to do it,” Samuel said. “But I gave you my magic. You are the one I chose. Ina and I never had children. You are the only Caruthers, and we’re a tough lot. You can make us all proud, and you can save Emily from that dark place. I have faith in you.”

Do you even really know me?

I guess I thought he would be like, You’re going to go kill the withered Lord? No way! That’s too dangerous. You need fifty years of training first!

“Samuel?” I swallowed down my nerves. “I need to give my wand to Professor McGuinness for safekeeping. I can trust him to keep it safe, can’t I?”

“Yes.”

As I handed my wand to Professor McGuinness, Samuel smiled. “And you’ve passed another faery test. That wand gives you power, and surrendering that power to someone else isn’t easy to do. The faery queen will look upon this favorably. But don’t summon me again.” He bowed to me. “I will be close, but unseen. Fare well, Charlotte. Igor…”

He drifted away, melding back into smoke, and now the fire crackled like a normal fire again. Professor McGuinness quickly rubbed his eyes. “Well…he seems at peace.”

“He seems like he’s making the best of a sucky situation,” Daisy said. “But he shouldn’t. Like, he’s dead and that demon killed him like it was just a fun night out. I can’t wait to have his head. I mean, the demon. And if we also get to change the world?” She squeezed my shoulder. “Girl, don’t be scared, we’ve got a whole team assembling. And you’ve gotta help Alec, right?”

“Definitely. You’re right. No one said being the Chosen One would be easy.”

“If we can make Professor McGuinness look like a million bucks with an outfit from Stein Mart, we can do anything.”

“Yeah, that checks out.”

Professor McGuinness looked at the fire sadly. “I swear I will keep your wand safe and sound, Charlotte, until the time comes. I just hope you’re all right at Merlin…”

“We’re stronger together than scattered across the country, even if we have to deal with Piers,” Montague said. “There is still nowhere else I’d rather be right now.”

“I hope you can compel him not to notice we left for the weekend,” Daisy said. “Otherwise, this is going to suck.”

Chapter Thirty

Charlotte

“You are all coming with me.”

Piers looked mad. He was surrounded by like, ten guards. They also looked mad.

This was going to suck.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said. “Please, get my cousin. He should see this as well,” he told one of the guards. “Daisy…you can go back to your room. This doesn’t involve you.”

“I’ll stay,” Daisy said, crossing her arms. “If you’re going to traumatize my friends, Piers, then you might as well traumatize me too.”

“Well…you are a loyal friend, I’ll give you that,” he said. “Fine, come along. Maybe that is a good idea, actually. You all need a better understanding of procedure.”

Procedure. Is there any word in the English language sexier than ‘procedure’? Besides most of them? I prayed that whatever he was going to do to punish us would be boring.

Piers took us to a small chamber in the basement of the main hall and opened a big glowy portal with one circular swish of his wand. “You must be silent,” he said. “I am bringing you here to observe. If you interfere, you will be painfully zapped and dragged from the room, which will only cause more distress, I’m sure.”

“We’re going to Etherium?” Harris asked.

“Where else?”

“Why?”

“To witness the trial of Amelia Halt.”

Ignatius.

Oh no.

We were urged through the portal by Piers, who looked like he wasn’t really enjoying this either, but was doing his sworn duty or something. He tried to give Daisy a vaguely apologetic look, but she wasn’t interested.

We stepped into a hall with soaring ceilings. Light fell through tall windows with stained glass panes at the top. The floors were marble or something marble-like, and there were a lot of people and some animals walking around, which was the big tip off that we were in Etherium.

“Come, let’s get seated before it begins,” Piers said, waving his hand.

We settled into this court room that smelled pleasant in the most unfeeling way and the vibe was definitely procedural. We probably only had to wait for ten minutes before stuff started happening, but it was a long, excruciating ten minutes.

The judge entered and took his place behind the big table with the gavel. Standard court stuff. He was wearing a long white wig and everything. Then, the councils filed in, both witches and the warlocks, at the same time as Ignatius was brought to the stand, escorted by a businesslike young witch. Piers had joined them down there, and he seemed stiff, and was trying not to look at us.

Ignatius looked like he had lost weight and sleep in considerable quantities. He had the cheekbones of a supermodel. And…he was wearing a plain black dress.

This embarrassed him tremendously. That was obvious, even though he was holding his head high, which made me cringe. As prison uniforms went, it wasn’t even ugly. It didn’t look that different from my prom dress, which was black and very classic, bordering on boring.

But they made him wear it to shame him, and that made me want to look away, even though he was attractively androgynous and could have worn absolutely anything.

“So—,” Daisy started.

“Shh.” Harris was sharp.

Ignatius didn’t seem to notice us yet, which wasn’t a surprise, because the lights on us were dim, and more people had filed in to witness the trial. I didn’t see an obvious jury, so I assumed the councils were the jury.

Ignatius slowly rolled his shoulders back, let out his breath, and put his hands on the stand like he was bracing himself.

Madame Solano stood up, squinting her old eyes at a piece of paper before looking up at him. “Amelia Halt,” she said. “You will be judged this day by the council of witches, as all witches are, but as you see, in light of your situation, some of the warlock council is present as witnesses.”

“If that is what you decided,” Ignatius said, his fingers twitching. I could see how nervous he was, but two of his fingers were the only tell.

“Miss Halt, you say that when you were a child, your mother said, and I quote from the witness account, you wanted to be a boy, and your mother said, why not be a boy. Can you elaborate on whether or not she performed a spell on you to physically alter your gender?”

“My mother is dead,” Ignatius said. “So am I on trial for her spell? Or is her spirit on trial?”

Catherine said, “We need to know your charges. Did you physically alter yourself? Or are you using illusions?”

“I am aware of the law. It has no bearing on my charges. I understand the charges. I was born a witch and therefore, attending a warlock school without explicit permission is illegal. I also understand that gender swapping spells have been illegal for hundreds of years, but in that case, the law only says that the caster is to be held accountable. The caster is dead.”

“How could your mother have known you wanted to be a boy when you were only four or five years old? What sort of mother follows the whims and babblings of a child? When Samuel was a child he said he wanted to be a dragon and I didn’t try to find some spell to turn him into one.”

The council members laughed.

“What kind of mother doesn’t follow her instincts to know what is best for her own child?” Ignatius countered. “Did your son live out his entire young life as a dragon? I lived mine as a boy. She wasn’t wrong.”

Catherine very quietly simmered for one long beat. “Miss Halt, did my daughter believe you to be a warlock when she was seeing you?”

“Where is that law?” Ignatius said. “Lying to a girlfriend isn’t illegal and neither is one woman dating another.”

“So she didn’t know.”

“She did know,” he fired back.

“She did know? She knew she was dating a woman?”

“She was dating Ignatius Blair.”

“Ina was a good girl.”

“She was a wonderful girl,” Ignatius said, his voice getting a little softer. “Is…a wonderful woman.”

“She is in the Haven and she’s not the girl I knew,” Catherine said. “My daughter died when a demon killed her. I’m sure something like that would never have happened if Samuel never met you.”

This upset Ignatius too, clearly. He had to look away from her. “None of us knew that would happen.”

One of the other witches cleared her throat. “You attended warlock schools throughout your entire education, all of grade school and university, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Did anyone at school know your secret?”

“Yes. Samuel Caruthers and Stuart Jablonsky.”

“No one else?”

“No.”

“The entire time?”

“There was no need to tell anyone,” Ignatius said.

“What spells did you use to maintain this lie?”

“It wasn’t a lie,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“It didn’t feel like a lie,” he said. “As you noted, I went through school including a master’s degree and then went on to teach and become the dean of a warlock university and no one ever knew or guessed, that entire time, except my two best friends, because I told them. The purpose of this law is…what? Please explain it to me.”

“You clearly know the law.”

“And I clearly don’t understand its purpose.”

Montague smiled a little. “He’s good at pissing them off.”

“The purpose? Men and women are different and have different roles in our community. This system has worked for thousands of years and the vast majority of witches and warlocks thrive within it. When wizards try to use magic that doesn’t suit their role, it becomes very dangerous,” Madame Solano said.

“Who wrote the rules?” Ignatius said. “The official document, the laws of the Ethereal Councils?”

“They were written, as I’m sure you know, by the councils of their day.”

“At which point the majority was from the Holy Roman Empire. How comforting to know we have seen no need to update the document since then; clearly they had it right. When was the last time you actually tried it?” Ignatius asked.

“Tried what?”

“Letting women learn elementals and conjuring. Letting men practice enchantment and divination.”

The warlocks laughed and a few of the women shuddered. “We don’t want men learning enchantment,” one of them snapped, standing up. She was slight, with a faint purple tint to her black hair. “It was wise and right that they were banned from it. They used to use it to control women. You are doing us no favors.”

“That doesn’t make sense!” Ignatius said. “We’re all magic users here; a woman should be able to defend herself from a man with her elemental magic as easily as he could enchant her.”

“So you want witches and warlocks to battle each other?”

Ignatius sighed. “All I wanted was to live my life as a man, and I never tried to deceive anyone who would be affected—namely, Ina. I know you don’t want to hear it, Catherine, but Ina loved me and I loved her.”

Catherine got a look in her eyes like she was out for blood now. “You ruined her life. You corrupted her. I lost both of my children and I blame you and I blame Emily and no one else! They were good children and you brought them in league with a demon because you were trying to open up a path to a realm that is forbidden to you! You were power-hungry, Miss Halt, and you enjoyed fooling everyone around you with your perversion.”

“Why do you have such a problem with women’s magic?” Purple Hair asked. “It is every bit as powerful. We are proud of our magic and we don’t want to share it with them. How is it our fault that you ‘wanted to live as a man’?”

“There is no place for questions in this world,” Ignatius said. “All the rules are set and woe to anyone who wonders why they exist. I knew many boys at my magic school who struggled with the elemental arts or were afraid of conjuring higher spirits. They might have thrived if they could learn enchantment or healing instead. Not everyone thinks the same. In the Fixed Plane, all over the free world,” Ignatius said heatedly, “they are grappling with these same issues and things are changing rapidly there. Women are gaining more power in the male sphere, and men are also gaining the ability to be softer. To be healers and nurturers. To love who they want to love, in every way.”

A black warlock scoffed loudly. “You are going to lecture us about the Fixed Plane? When the Americans were bringing slaves from Africa and slaughtering the natives of their land, we were rescuing our own and giving them the dignity they deserved. My great-grandfather was working on a plantation when my great-grandmother rescued him, married him, helped him learned to read, and he went on to start the first magical library in the midwest.”

“That’s a wonderful story,” Ignatius said. “But…getting some things right doesn’t mean you’re just done thinking, does it? I won’t even get into how European witches set down the rules globally.”

“I think you already touched on that, Miss Halt,” Madame Solano said primly. “It is clear to me, your position. You think you are smarter than the rest of us and all these rules were made just to oppress you. Good heavens, usually by the time a witch is as old as you are, she is past this sort of nonsense. Let’s move on to the most troubling part of this. Your teaching career. You have spent your life guiding warlocks into adulthood and teaching them about magic under the pretense that you are also a warlock, which you are not, however you may protest. Hundreds of boys have been exposed to your views.”

“Not really,” he said. “I learned to keep them to myself.”

“Oh yes. Because you had a motive,” Catherine said.

“A motive?”

“I would like to call Charlotte Caruthers Byrne to the stand,” she said, looking back at me.

I had actually settled my head onto Montague’s shoulder and now I jerked upward. “No one told me I was…going to be a witness,” I said.

“Come here, Charlotte,” Catherine said. “You’re not in trouble.”

Now Ignatius saw us seated there and I saw the look of humiliation reappear on his face. I guess he didn’t want us to see him forced into a dress and referred to as ‘Miss Halt’, but I tried to give him an encouraging look. He was holding his own.

“Piers,” Harris said. “You lied to her.”

Spots of faint pink shame appeared on Piers’ pale cheeks. “Well, I didn’t really know how it would unfold.”

Shakily, I went down the stairs until I reached the spot where Catherine was pointing her wand. I was now one step below the council. There were about fifteen of them, men and women, most of them very old, not that the younger ones were any better, all of them looking down at me. Ignatius was looking down at me too, and he seemed anguished.

She tapped her wand to the back of my hand. “Do you swear to speak nothing but the whole truth as long as you are before this council?”

“Errr…” I was terrified, on multiple levels. I feared they might ask me about Ignatius but also Firian, Alec, Professor McGuinness and Stuart. What danger could I cause to my friends?

“What are you hiding, Charlotte, that you are afraid to speak?” Catherine pressed.

“I…nothing, I’m—”

“Speak, Charlotte, or we will force you to speak.”

“I did have a motive,” Ignatius said. “Stop. I know what you want to know. You want me to tell you that I conspired—along with Samuel—to send Charlotte to Merlin College. We planned this from the time of her birth when we sensed she had strong potentials. We bided our time, behaving ourselves. Samuel helped me fake her application and I allowed her to attend. We had long planned for Charlotte to follow in Samuel’s footsteps, and acquire a Wyrd wand, and everything was going according to plan.”

“I see.” Catherine whirled on me. “He used you. He controlled your destiny for you. He tore you from your father and put you in great danger.”

There is some truth to that.

A part of me had always been suspicious of Ignatius.

Ignatius looked at me. “I believed you could be the first Wyrd sans-pareil. Maybe I did use you. Then I tried to send you home, but you returned. I guess the question is, do you believe in my fight?”

I gave the tiniest nod as Catherine said, “Now we can all see you trying to corrupt innocents in real time! This is the sort of thing you whispered to Ina, I bet! And you seem to be unrepentant.”

“Oh yes. I am wholly unrepentant,” Ignatius said, gripping the stand with both hands now. “Just leave her out of it. Charlotte should not be put in this position.”

“She confessed,” Catherine said.

“Miss Halt, you have the right for your lawyer to speak on your behalf before we decide your sentence.”

“I already know there is nothing he can say,” Ignatius said.

“Charlotte, thank you, you can return to your friends.” Catherine dismissed me with a look of feigned concern and I ran back up to the balcony, but I felt just…icky. Like when you clean up an overflowed toilet and how everything just feels toilet-y for a while afterward, but emotionally. A toilet had overflowed inside my head, and that toilet was my great-aunt.

The witch council huddled to discuss, but they seemed to decide quickly. Madame Solano stood again and said, “Amelia Halt, you and your familiar are hereby banished from Etherium. Present your hand.”

He was breathing a little raggedly now, facing down his fate. I saw him swallow down his fear. He held out his palm and Madame Solano traced a mark upon it.

“Ahh…” He winced, curling his fingers up, as the symbol seemed to burn, and then some invisible force shoved him out of the realm right before our eyes, leaving a weird flash in its wake before that also faded.

Harris was almost on his feet. “It’s dangerous for him there,” he said.

“He can’t just stay in the Fixed Plane?” I said.

“He will be banned from all Ethereal parallels now,” Montague said. “His familiar will be in danger in Sinistral. And he won’t be able to use Ethereal magic. It’s a very precarious position for any wizard. Especially with…”

“With what? My heart can’t take any hesitation, Montague!”

“The Withered Lord is probably going to target him,” Harris said. “I know what we need to do.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Charlotte

We met over dinner after a really awful day of trying to keep it together, because Piers told Daisy she was forbidden from entering our dorm. Not gonna lie, I skipped my last class and called Firian to tell him what happened. I was so shaken by everything, and I wanted him with me.

Daisy sat down at our table. She looked over her shoulder. “This is out of control. Girl, you look awful. But I do like your llama socks. I was skeptical but now that I see them I get it.”

Harris came up to us with some books and notebooks tucked under his arm. “Make room,” he said to Daisy, who had one half of a booth to herself.

“Is that how you talk to a princess?”

“You aren’t a princess,” Harris said.

“I have to do important magic for other people thanks to my bloodline and marry someone I don’t want to marry. Sounds like a princess to me.” She stirred her stew tensely. “Did you spend your whole day locked in a dark room under orders to do magic for Piers?”

“My cousin’s actions are unconscionable,” Harris said, giving up on sitting down and leaning against the booth instead, tossing the books in front of us among our sad gray bowls of barley stew. “We need to shame him out of his position and save Alec and Master Blair.”

“How can you possibly manage all of that?” Montague asked.

“Piers was sent here to restore Merlin College to its old, council-run, Ethereal, patriarchal mode,” Harris said. “But he’s failing. He couldn’t purify Charlotte. Alec’s dad is surely devastated. Alec was his only son and he’s never really done anything ‘Sinistral’ before. So, where does he go from here? If he can’t purify you successfully, he’s just going to get rid of you. I’m sure Montague is next. At this point, you’re alone, and that is when your great-aunt is going to wrangle a marriage between me and you.” Harris looked at me. “Having lost everyone you cared about, my family will offer you wealth, your power back, and no doubt, a chance to redeem the people you lost. A bargain. My guess is that they will offer Alec and Monty a path back to redemption if they bring the head of the Withered Lord to the council.”

“What? Marriage? How do you know that?”

“Because I heard Piers and Catherine conniving a little while back about arranging a marriage between us,” Harris said. “I told you I had a plan to save Firian. The Hapsburg artifacts have great healing power. As I was puzzling over all the possibilities last night, it all started clicking. What does the council want? They want the Withered Lord dead and the Caruthers family redeemed, but they don’t want a bargain with the faeries or Wyrd to gain any power. If they claim the spoils, that takes care of that. And what do our families want, especially mine? They want me to follow in Piers’ footsteps. Catherine wants her family’s dignity restored. If you marry me, the Caruthers are back in the good graces of the council. Daisy, I’m guessing, might be offered up to Alec instead of Piers. The Lyrmans are a good family and if Alec can be credited as the hero that kills the Withered Lord, his redemption arc is complete and little diviner heirs are guaranteed. It would be a heroic act worthy of being readmitted to Etherium.”

“Ohhh…,” Daisy said. “I mean—horrible plan. Poor Charlotte and Alec.” She pouted just a tad.

“That is a lot of conjecture,” Montague said.

“It sort of adds up,” I said. “Catherine did try to give me the whole ‘we’re family’ spiel.”

“I guess I have wondered why they haven’t took us aside and told us we can’t summon the Withered Lord,” Montague said. “So in this scenario, I ride off with the vampires and never see the rest of you again…”

“I don’t think Piers wants to give me up,” Daisy said. “But thank you for trying to give me a happy ending.”

Harris nodded faintly. “Well, Daisy, I think Piers is already starting to realize that you are a little much.”

“It’s my life goal to be as extra as possible,” Daisy said.

“And I suppose I just fade out of memory,” Firian said.

“We’re not letting that scenario happen,” Harris said, giving me a private glance that reminded me of the bet we’d made.

“All right,” Montague said. “Tell us the plan. I can see you’re bursting with it.”

“I never ‘burst’ with anything,” Harris said.

“What did I tell you? Nicolescus can’t bring it,” Daisy said, offering me a high-five. “Up top.”

“And down low.”

“I am not gracing that with a comment,” Harris said. “We need to take out the Withered Lord and give his head to the faeries as soon as possible.”

My high-fiving session came to an abrupt end. “Like…how soon?”

“I tell you, they don’t think we’re really going to do it. I assure you the Withered Lord isn’t expecting it either. We need to do it. We have a faery lord, two professors, a clan of vampires, and whatever Hapsburg treasure I can nab… We’ve got some fire power.”

“Okay,” Montague said. “You’re right. Another year of training isn’t going to matter to centuries-old vampires or faery lords. I’m in.”

“We’re—sure—we can do this?”

“Charlotte, as I have said all along, I am happy for you to not be involved,” Harris said. “In fact, I would much prefer it if you sat this out.”

“Reverse psychology,” I said. “Okay, fine. I can do it.”

“It’s not reverse psychology,” Harris said. “I don’t want you girls to die.”

“You’re still doing it,” I said. “Always with the ‘girls’. Do you want Montague to die?”

Montague rapped a teaspoon on the table. “Order,” he said. “We have to organize better than this if we’re going to take down a demon. I will contact Rayner and tell him this is the plan.”

“During Christmas break, I will try to get my hands on some artifacts,” Harris said.

“I can divine Stu’s location,” Daisy said.

“And I can find the other professors’ familiars and get in touch with them,” Firian said.

“What do I do?” I asked.

“You can tell Alec to find Ignatius and his familiar in Sinistral and stick together. They need to stay safe somewhere,” Harris said. “So get to dreaming.”

“Okay,” I said. “Mission accepted.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Alec

The good thing about Sinistral is that intention was everything. Once Charlotte told me in my latest delicious dream that Ignatius was here, I rushed down the forest path to one point.

The crows were gathering toward the same point.

“Ignatius!” I cried.

“Gyah!” I heard around the bend.

Ignatius was struggling to beat crows off with a stick while his familiar, in human form, drew a ring of fire to protect them. Then she collapsed, sweating. The crows fought past his stick, pecking at his face.

I took flight and rushed them, growling. The crows backed down.

“Alec?” Ignatius looked up at me, shoving his messy hair out of his eyes. “Is that you? You’ve gone full demon,” he said, as I offered him a hand.

“It was either that or lose my demon side,” I said.

I realized he was wearing a dress. It didn’t look right on him. The dress made him seem more feminine, like for the first time I saw how he could have been a woman, but it didn’t look right either. He quickly snapped up an illusion spell, replacing the dress with a red velvet smoking jacket.

“I’m sorry, Alec,” he said.

“I mean…we’re both in the same boat, I guess.”

“Can you un-demon yourself?” Ignatius asked, as he patted his familiar’s clothes as if to check that she was all right. “You could go to the Fixed Plane.”

“I haven’t been able to,” I said.

“What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing. I just—”

“You’re afraid of something, or you’d be able to do it,” he said, with the sharpness of someone who has taught too many kids the same lesson.

“I don’t want to have sex with someone who isn’t Charlotte,” I said. “The demons have been coming onto me, but I’m not into demons like I’m into…humans.”

Ignatius sighed. “So you’re afraid of cheating on Charlotte.”

“I don’t want to do that,” I said. “But I do need strength.”

“I don’t want to go to the Fixed Plane,” his familiar said, looking at the woods nervously. “But I can’t stay here alone…and would you be any safer there either? Those warlocks might come after you. This incubus looks big and strong…maybe we should…stick with him, huh?”

“Kim…be careful, please, you know what he is.”

“I’m sorry.” Her eyes widened. “He’s just…um…releasing a scent.”

“Yes, Alec is our resident sex demon. Please try not to release a scent,” Ignatius told me.

“I don’t think I can control that,” I said. “But I won’t touch your familiar.”

“Where is your familiar?” Then he saw my face. “Oh…”

“Oh?” Kim said.

“Sinistral warlocks still have familiars. Demons don’t,” Ignatius said.

“Oh…” She petted my arm. Ignatius quickly pulled her away when she started to clutch me.

“We need to find a safe place,” he said. “There are good demons. One of them might give us refuge.”

“How do we find anything here?” I asked. “Are there safe places?”

“Try to imagine safety,” Kim said. “Solid walls to protect us from the crows and a warm hearth. People who will offer us food and a place to rest without asking for much in return, since…we don’t have much to offer.”

“A friendly holding,” Ignatius said. “And a good bowl of stew that isn’t too strange. And some wine, or ale, or whatever they drink in Sinistral…”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

The path ahead seemed to change a little. I would have thought it was my imagination, only I was starting to get used to how Sinistral worked, after surviving here for a little while. It was true, the magical world tended to give you what you wanted, if you stayed calm and asked for it. When I was hungry, I found berries and nuts. There were plenty of birds and rabbits to eat, too, but it wasn’t like I knew how to kill animals and prepare them for eating, even if I had the nerve to do it. I would kill for some meat stew by now.

“You have seen Charlotte, haven’t you?” Ignatius asked, as he found a stick to stroll with.

“In her dreams…yes.”

“I should never have put her through all this…”

“Nah. Charlotte is tough. As long as she doesn’t get killed.”

“Well, that’s what I’m afraid of. My friends and I were both prepared to die to open up Wyrd, and I…I’ve seen Charlotte as someone who might be put in danger for the good of the realm. I didn’t know her. It was easy to detach myself and I got increasingly excited when she showed a strong potential…but she didn’t sign up for this.”

“At least you admit it,” I said. “Nothing better happen to her when we fight the Withered Lord.”

“I swear to you, Alec, I will take a fatal blow for any one of you kids. You are, I hope, the ones who will carry on what we started, and now it’s down to…just Stuart and me…” He stopped and looked at me, his eyes not quite focusing on mine at first, like he was seeing something in the past. “I hope you know what it will mean if we could get a foothold in Wyrd.”

I wasn’t sure I truly did, but one look at his face and I know he really was prepared to die for it. “Take care of yourself, too,” I said. “We’re going to do this thing.”

“Yes,” Kim said. “Please take care of yourself. I’ve been hiding out way too long.”

After hours of walking, occasionally battling crows and one ornery lizard-beast about the size of a goat, we reached a small castle. There were some baby dragons playing outside in the grass.

“Aww!” Kim said.

Three of the dragons started growling like nervous cats, and the other one took flight back to the castle. “Papa!” it cried. “Demons!”

It took about two seconds from there for a much bigger dragon to swoop out of the castle.

“So much for that welcoming hearth,” Ignatius said, as two more dragons joined the first one and the baby dragons retreated into the castle.

“I’ve never seen dragons before,” I said, and I was trying hard not to freak out. Considering I had turned into some sort of creature myself, maybe I should have taken this in stride, but the dragons were big and they had teeth as long as my arms.

Ignatius lifted his hands. “We mean no harm, good sirs. The path led us to you.”

“An incubus,” one of the dragons said, leaning in to sniff me and then giving a hot, disparaging snort. A little smoke came out of his nostrils. “Stay away from our mate and her kinfolk.”

“Do you see the tattoos on his body?” Ignatius said. “Look—they’re control spells. This incubus has a mate of his own already.”

“That’s right. I have no interest in yours.”

“I must demand your sworn oath or I will not permit you to enter.”

“I swear.”

“He means a spell,” Ignatius said.

“Yes. If your cock should so much as twitch in the presence of our mate, we will turn you to ash.”

I bristled. “I can’t promise that! I’m still an incubus. I think I need to find somewhere else to go.”

One of the other dragons laughed. “Guys, do we really want an incubus to not be attracted to our girl? That would be an insult to Lady Dakota.”

“Hmm.”

“Perhaps.”

“But you must swear not to touch her nor anyone in our household in a purposeful way, nor to enter her dreams.”

“I swear. If I go anywhere in my dreams, it’s back to my own girl.”

The dragon cast a spell that made his eyes glow, and a heaviness settled through my body. “Come in, but…I will be watching you closely, incubus.”

“I think our wife can take care of herself,” the other dragon said.

As they turned to the castle, they shifted into human forms, which…I was trying to be cool about this, but I had to admit that just because I was a demon, didn’t mean I was used to seeing shapeshifting.

The castle seemed like a busy, pleasant place on the inside. It was very Medieval-looking, but the furniture was abundant and comfortable, and some women were hanging out while kids played. I think the kids had been the dragons a minute ago.

“I am Lord Hiron. These are my bond-brothers, Xado and Rafe, and this is our wife and children,” one of the dragons said. As men, Hiron and Xado were more jacked than I was, even in my demon form, while Rafe was obviously the artsy one, because he was wearing normal clothes and looked like a guy who might live in Los Angeles and drive an old fin car; his style almost had a rockabilly vibe. You really could find anything in the magical world.

“As I said, stay away from our mate,” Xado said.

“I mean…,” their ‘mate’ said. This had to be Lady Dakota, a cute blonde—no, damnit, don’t even go there—old enough to be my mom. Better. One of the easiest antidotes to my incubus mojo was to remind myself that my human side was really not into women old enough to be my mom. Ignore him, Lady Dakota mouthed, with a little dismissive wave.

“We will be happy to offer you supper, as you look like you have been on a long journey,” Xado said.

“Yes,” Ignatius said. “Long enough, certainly.”

“What is your final destination?” Hiron asked. “Have you lost your way?”

“I’m an Ethereal warlock,” Ignatius said. “I was banished…and Alec, here, was the same, but they attempted to purify him.”

“Purify?” Lady Dakota asked. “What does that mean?”

“They have some way of trying to purify demons,” I said. “We watched them try it with a Sinistral spirit and it seemed to vanquish her entirely. When they tried it with me, I turned into this and ended up here. I haven’t seen my friends or girlfriend since.”

“You should be able to take a human form and get to the Fixed Plane,” Hiron said. “We are all able to do so.”

“He needs to rest up, that’s all,” Ignatius said.

“You can stay here for a few weeks,” Lady Dakota said. “This is the party pad.”

Xado was staring us down. “You are our mate, and I desire your happiness above all else,” he said, “but they are strangers.”

The dragons and their lady started arguing in lowered tones off in the corner while Dakota’s friends shrugged at us a little, calming down some bursts of child screaming, and one of them offered to pour us some ale. I caught some occasional words from Dakota like “never get to hang out with humans!” and “my mom would…murmur…good example for the kids…” and “test them?”

Xado didn’t want an incubus in the house. He kept glaring at me. I got the feeling that if my cock did twitch, he would tear it off.

“My first duty is to my kingdom and family!” Hiron hissed.

“These pure Sinistrals get very heavy handed,” Ignatius said. “They don’t use contractions when they speak either.”

“You don’t seem worried they might kick us out.”

“The path led us here,” Kim said. “So it must be right. The woman is a human and she seems kind.”

Something rumbled outside. The kids shut up abruptly, running to their parents.

“Haxon, you must be brave,” Xado said gently to one wide-eyed little girl. “You’re a dragon. It’s just thunder.”

Ignatius ran to the tall but narrow window. The gloomy sky crackled with eerie lightning that streaked across the sky. The wind had picked up so much that it rattled the panes. The temperature in the room plummeted. It become so cold it was painful. Now I wished I had more clothes, but clearly it didn’t matter. The cold seemed to come from inside me. The kids were shivering and crying.

“I’m coming for you…” A dry, rattling voice seemed to swirl around us from outside, but it was also in my head.

The kids screamed, covering their ears. “Mama…!”

“Shh, Mara…it’s all—right!” Lady Dakota shrieked as the window glass shattered. Ignatius barely dove out of the way and he still ended up with cuts.

“It cannot enter this castle,” Hiron said. “The protections run deep.”

One of Dakota’s lady friends, whom I realized were actually triplets with matching sets of fanged grins, helped Ignatius up along with Kim. “Are you okay? You’re bleeding.”

Rafe had run to the window.

“Get back from there,” Xado said.

Through the jagged shards of what was left of the windows, a bone-white face appeared in the window against the backdrop of lightning and swirling wind. Horns sprouted from his head, but he was so still that I wondered if what I was seeing was real. Then I saw his eyes track us and settled on Ignatius.

“A warning, Ignatius…you know what I am capable of… Emily is mine. Ina is mad. And Samuel is dead. What shall I do to you, now that you are in my realm?”

Ignatius buckled over into the glass, his eyes flashing blue light.

The Withered Lord is attacking him somehow, I realized. Was I looking at his face right now? I quickly grabbed some paper and a quill that were sitting on a desk in the corner and started to sketch the face, and the demon hissed and vanished as he realized I was trying to capture his likeness.

The raging storm died down like a summer shower and Ignatius hardly seemed to notice Kim and the demon girl as they tried to check for glass in his hands.

I blinked and the face was gone. I let out my breath and quickly finished up the sketch from memory.

“Are you drawing?” Haxon asked, having urgently wriggled out of her father’s arms.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m drawing the demon so I can get power over him.”

“Oh…” She looked at her sisters like she was considering how well that magic worked.

“What was that?” Hiron asked. “That demon got through the wards, warlock. We can’t put our children in danger.”

“Hold still,” Kim said. “There’s glass in your palm.”

“That was the Withered Lord,” Ignatius said, still shivering as he slowly came back to himself. “He can hurt me through the wards because he has a strand of my hair, given to him long ago. You’re not in danger here, but I am.”

“Why does he want you?” Hiron was still clutching a scared child. “You may be in Sinistral, but this is a peaceful region. I don’t want high demons coming around.”

“He doesn’t want me in Sinistral because I was a good friend to someone who is in his clutches,” Ignatius said. “If I saw her, I like to think she would remember who she really is. But it’s my business. I won’t trouble you and your family. I can find a safe place in the Fixed Plane, away from demon magic…”

“Your familiar is still in danger?” Dakota asked. “Do I understand that right? Maybe she could stay here. I’ve been learning witchcraft but I grew up human so I never had a familiar, and maybe she could help me with my spells…the kids, too.”

“The children are dragons,” Xado said.

“Ohmigod, come off it,” Dakota snapped at him, like this was something they’d argued about. “They can be two things at once!”

“Well…” Kim changed into her bearded dragon form. “I would fit right in.”

One of the other girls gasped. “Mama, I want her!”

“She’s not a pet,” Dakota said.

“I don’t know if it’s safe,” Hiron said. “But if we keep the children in the castle for now, it would be the honorable thing to do…if this demon is as cruel as you say.”

“I would be deeply grateful if you give Kim a safe home for now,” Ignatius said. He looked at me. “Alec, I’ve got to go back.”

“I’m coming with you,” I said.

“Do you think you can?”

“I think so. I feel a little more like myself now, after being lost out there for a few days. It was good to see someone I know. Anyway, you could use the help and I need to get back to Charlotte and…”

“HAM without Alec is just ‘HM’,” Ignatius said. “Come on, then.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Charlotte

“O Christmas break, O Christmas break, you’re going to be so awkward…” I shoved clothes into my bag, my goofy singing barely staving off my sadness. Oh shit. I stopped with a sinking feeling. I never even bought Dad or Grandma their Christmas presents. I never thought about it. I’m a terrible daughter. “O Christmas gifts, O Christmas gifts, I need a ride to Target…”

“Are you singing a narrative of your life?” Montague asked behind me.

“Stop sneaking up on me like that!”

“I don’t sneak up on you.”

“Yes. You do. See how quiet your footsteps are?”

He was walking into the room. “It’s a vampire thing.” He crouched next to me as I was grabbing pairs of shoes from under the bed. “You’ll have me this year.”

“That won’t add to the awkwardness at all. Grandma knows we’re dating. She doesn’t know I’m not just dating you. And she never will. But it’s more than that. I’ve barely called Dad this year and—”

“Come here. Stop stressing over stuff you can’t control.” He pushed me down to the rug and kissed me. His lips held fading warmth from the thermos of hot tea he was carrying.

“Make me forget.”

“Challenge accepted…” He unfastened the button of my pants, tugged down the zipper, and stuck his fingers in the tight space there between my underwear and my most sensitive bits, as he unbuttoned my shirt.

“Mm…”

“I think we should sneak off and have sex in Firian’s cabin.”

“I don’t know what Firian will say about that.”

“He already told me we could.”

“When did you talk to Firian?”

“We were both wandering the halls the other night. I couldn’t sleep. He said you were making a lot of noise.” He lifted his brows. “Alec?”

“Oh stop…”

“I miss him,” Montague said. “And I miss seeing you with both of us. You miss that too, don’t you?”

“So much,” I groaned, which was easy to do with his fingers wigging around in my underwear, teasing me. “I really need skirts with my uniform.”

“So these other jerks get to see your legs? Nah. I don’t mind the challenge.” He yanked them off me and then he scooped me up and carried me into bed. He dropped me on my face and then stopped to stroke a hand over my backside. “I think I’d better make sure you’re still ready for Alec to come back and check on that tight ass.”

I pushed his hand away. “Maybe you should wait to open your presents until we get to the cabin…”

“You don’t want it?”

I blushed. “Oh, I do. It’s just, when Alec’s around, I get so relaxed. I feel like I could do anything. It feels like the first time.”

“My vampire mojo isn’t good enough?”

“Your vampire mojo makes me want…other things.”

“Oh?”

“It makes me want to give you…my life.”

He shut his eyes briefly, repressing a wave of desire.

“I shouldn’t even say things like that,” I said.

“No. Definitely not.” He put a hand on my shoulder and lowered himself close to me, taking a deep breath, drinking in my scent. His hand slid back down my pelvis again, finding my clit and rolling it between his fingers. “Lift your ass, girl.”

I did, as he unfastened his own pants, rubbing his length between my cheeks. He nipped at my shoulder, a little hard, not quite breaking skin. I felt my wetness gush over his hand as he stuck his fingers inside me, and I shuddered, lifting my head to cry out.

“I can only imagine how loud you get at night,” Montague whispered. “I’m not even inside you.”

My body wanted to let go, needed to let go, and it was. I was unwinding fast, feeling his fingers digging inside me and his cock still teasing at my ass. “I need you inside me.”

“Maybe we should wait to open our presents until the cabin.”

“Oh, no…no. Nooo.”

“Tell me,” he said, “that I can do what I want to you.”

I hesitated only for a moment, because what I wanted right now was to feel his teeth break my skin. Maybe it was wrong. Maybe he would hurt me. He certainly could. His control could slip. It had already slipped once, and I had to stop him, and what if, one day, I couldn’t stop him…

“Please,” I said.

He took a shuddering breath and I felt him desire the same thing. His fingers brushed my neck, sliding my hair to the side. His breath brushed my ear. He licked my bared neck and I let out an involuntary moan as his cock throbbed against me.

“How badly…I want you…to taste you while I fuck you…”

As my adrenaline spiked, Firian suddenly appeared on the desk chair, staring at us.

“Firian…” I gasped.

“Firian, you son of a bitch,” Montague groaned.

“Just chaperoning,” Firian said. “Charlotte started putting out some…signals.”

“Then you’ll just have to watch,” Montague said in a slightly strangled tone.

Firian looked hungry. He blinked and suddenly his male form appeared, sitting in the chair.

“Firian…”

“Illusions,” he said. “But I’d like you to think of me.”

“You can do that here now?” I felt a little heartbroken to see his face and know that if I touched him, I would probably just break the illusion. To see his eyes, his slightly sarcastic smile, his long legs…to remember how it felt to have the boy who knew me best so close…

“I’ve been working on it,” he said. “It was going to be a Christmas surprise, but maybe it’s actually cruel and I should just save it for moments like this.”

“Don’t hurt her,” Firian said.

“Oh, I’m definitely not hurting her…” Montague kept two of his fingers inside me, thumbing my clit. “And she told me I could do whatever I wanted.”

“Well, don’t listen to her,” Firian said, raising an eyebrow.

“Ungh…” I could only moan as waves of pleasure crested over me. I was so happy Firian was here, in any form at all. I didn’t care if he watched; I didn’t care if he went back to Etherium and lost his mind for wanting me and not being able to have me.

But I would do anything to get him back.

“Charlotte, this must be getting serious!” my grandmother screamed when she saw Montague. Grandma never expressed surprise at a normal volume. “I remember him from, what was it, two years ago?”

“Yeah, it is kinda serious.”

Montague smiled at me. “I adore Charlotte.”

“Now what happened to that other one? The really buff one? I liked him.”

Montague’s smile faded slightly. I snickered. “He’s still around,” I said.

“And your friend Firian?”

“He’s…also still around,” I said. “They just couldn’t come to Christmas this year.”

I tried to enjoy seeing Dad and Grandma and not to worry about problems I couldn’t fix, but all it drove home to me was how much Alec and Firian were also my family now. The holidays really aren’t the same without the people you love.

Alec would be spending his solstice in Sinistral, and I had to try not to even dream about him so I didn’t start screaming his name at night, ohmigod. I hoped he was safe.

At least I knew Firian was safe, but his holiday would be sad too.

I felt like I was just going through the motions as I baked some cookies and watched Christmas movies with Dad. I almost teared up watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, of all things, because it made me think of having a big family around. But technology made me feel sick more than it used to, and all the lights and TV and computers and phones was giving me a constant headache, like nothing could just be fun anymore.

Dad fell asleep in his armchair while Grandma had already gone to bed at Old Person O’ Clock, so I took some of the leftovers outside for Firian to eat. The sky was brilliant with stars, and my breath was frosty, and I tried to enjoy the beauty of a winter night, but it just felt lonely.

“Just put them down and go,” Firian said. “You are not going to watch me eat cold leftovers outside on Christmas Eve.”

“Aw. Okay.”

“You don’t want to watch that, do you?” He nudged me. “Charlotte. Is there anything I can do?”

I plopped to the cold ground and wrapped my arms around my legs. “I knew this would be weird. I’m trying to be the old Charlotte and I don’t know how. Earlier Dad and Grandma wanted to play a board game and I usually love that, but I just didn’t care.”

“I think we’re getting old. Holidays change. Families change. No shame in being distracted when you’ve had so many losses, and you can’t even tell your dad and grandma what’s happening.”

“I wish I could.”

“I know. You’re a very honest person.” He nudged me and I dug my hands deep in his fur. “I still like this better than the Christmases where you didn’t know I existed,” he said.

“When you put it that way…me too.”

I heard tires on pavement and then I had to fling up my hand to block out headlights. I thought the 80s luxury sedan might belong to a neighbor, but the door opened and who stepped out?

“I must be dreaming,” I breathed.

“Merry Christmas,” Alec said.

“Alec!?” I ran for him before Firian intercepted me with a growl.

He sniffed Alec. “It really is you.”

I gripped him tight, savoring his warmth as his arms folded around me. “Alec…I was so worried. They said it wasn’t safe for you in Sinistral.”

“It wasn’t. We saw the Withered Lord. Me and Ignatius.” He looked back at the car.

“Ignatius is here?” I looked at the driver’s seat.

“Joyeux Noel,” he said, waving a hand at us. “You never saw me.”

He backed up and I swear the second the car disappeared around the bend, my dad came out of the house with his big flashlight that could probably double as a club. It was cute how he was still getting tough when I could incinerate an intruder if I wanted. Less cute was the fact that I was in Alec’s arms and Grandma was behind him.

“Who’s there?” he said.

“Um…” I jumped back. “Alec’s here! Surprise!”

“There’s the fox!” Grandma said. “Right there standing next to Charlotte! I would get my camera but instead I have to wonder what is going on here when you have that nice kid Montague in there and—I’m sure it’s innocent—but…” She looked like she was not sure at all that this was innocent.

I sputtered, “It’s innocent. Grandma, come on! Alec and Montague are bffs. We’re all close.”

Grandma looked at my dad like she expected him to give me a talk. “I know what I saw,” she said in what she probably thought was a low voice. “I saw hands on a bum.”

My hands, or Alec’s hands? I couldn’t even remember.

“Look at that fox!” she exclaimed, easily distracted at least. “She’s still here!”

“That’s a male fox,” I said. “He’s very tame, because, uh, we’ve been feeding him.”

“How did Alec get here? I don’t see your car, Alec. And we don’t even have any food left. I don’t even know where the macaroni and cheese pan went. If I’m being honest, there is something about this Christmas that just seems wrong. Charlotte, are you in trouble at school? I really hope…I hope you aren’t P-R-E-G-N-A-N-T.”

“Why are you spelling? Everyone here can spell!” Dad was starting to sound really upset. “I need to tell you something.”

“Dad!” I gestured wildly. “She’s eighty years old!”

“I am never too old to be told anything!” Grandma snapped back.

“I can’t keep lying to her! I already felt bad about lying when it was Emily and now it’s you! You’re her flesh and blood too, you know!”

Montague was walking up behind us. “I could break the news.”

“Why would you?” I asked.

“My magic helps to soften things,” he said, taking my grandmother’s hand. “Madam, can I tell you a story about when my family came to Florida to escape persecution in Spain?”

“When was this?” Grandma asked, calming down. Somehow this seemed to work. Montague was getting that little accent he got when he was trying to use Latin romantic stereotypes to his advantage, and Alec shook his head as Dad went with them into the house.

“We actually get a moment alone, I guess,” I said. “I’m not dreaming?”

“No. I was trying to get back to you, but I needed to calm down to become human again and get back to the Fixed Plane, and I couldn’t do it at first. Ignatius and I found each other in Sinistral and we came upon a safe place there, some Sinistral dragons who were mostly decent people. His familiar is there. Mine…passed away.”

“Oh…no! Because you became a full incubus?”

“Yes.” He got a look of guilt that turned into pain, taking off his glasses to wipe his eyes. I took them from him.

“Shh,” I said. “Let me kiss those tears away. I’m just so glad you’re okay.”

“Sinistral isn’t a good place,” he said. “Etherium really is better, no matter how strict the council is. We’ve got to get to Wyrd. Ignatius is staying with Professor Adams and McGuinness right now. I hope I didn’t ruin your Christmas. I just thought…I’d be the best present you could get.”

“Oh, is that what you thought?” Firian asked.

“Besides both of us, of course. C’mere, man.” Alec crouched and gave Firian his preferred ear scratch.

“Damnit, Charlotte, he’s doing it again,” Firian said.

“But I’m not responsible for anything Montague tells your grandmother,” Alec said.

“Oh god.”

What happened in the house? I would never know for sure. I never wanted to know. But somehow my grandma came out of it knowing everything, including the fact that the tame fox was also Firian and that I was theoretically in a relationship with him, once he got de-cursed, as well as with Alec and Montague.

She also knew I was a witch, but that wasn’t half as embarrassing.

“You’ve done so well for yourself, Charlotte, and I’m proud of you. I know your mother would be too. Three handsome boys and a talented witch! I sure hope I live to see the grandkids.”

“What did you do to her?” I hissed at Montague once they went back to bed and we were alone again. “You compelled my grandma!”

“Trust me,” he said. “It was better this way. Do you really want to go through all the stages of confusion, disbelief, pain and horror? Like you said—she’s too old for that. Now she’s just excited to see the grandkids.”

“Okay. I guess you did good.”

“Do I get my Christmas gift yet?”

“Mm…maybe. I got you both the same thing.”

“You didn’t even know I was coming,” Alec said. “How did you know to get me a gift?”

“The gift was you coming.” I snorted. “And Firian’s gift is letting us use his cabin.”

“It’s unlocked,” Firian said. “If you need me I’ll be outside chewing on an old barbecue rib.”

“What if we try something else?” Alec said. “We could just go to sleep together. I can arrange for a meeting in another realm.”

“A dream isn’t the same,” Montague said.

“But Firian could be there.”

“You could do that?” I clutched their hands. “Oh, come on, we have to! Poor Firian! It’s Christmas.”

“The cabin is cold,” Firian said. “You’ll want me there.”

“We just have to get back in the house super early before Grandma wakes up,” I said.

Firian’s bed would never fit all of us, so we made a pile of pillows and quilts on the floor and the guys snuggled close around me. Alec was almost too hot, and Montague was too cold, but Firian was just right, and there was still nowhere else I’d rather be. I fell asleep quickly, only to step into a dream version of the cabin, where for some reason I was naked on a bed of furs.

Some part of my brain wondered whose brain came up with the furs, but I guess it was okay in a dream. No animal had to die for these pelts. They looked like polar bear fur or something and they felt so soft on my skin. Where were the guys?

No sooner had I realized I was alone than the door opened and Firian walked in, wearing a nice dark red suit, collar loosened. He leaned over me with a soft smile. “How long have you been waiting?”

“For you? For a long time.”

“The others will be here soon. But no one gets you warmed up like me, do they?” He bit his lip hungrily as he slowly ran a finger down my slit. Heat rose to the surface of my skin as I immediately grew wet. Then he started unfastening his buttons.

“Let me help you,” I said.

We worked his shirt loose together, button by button. He let me take his cock out of his pants but not to take them off. “Wait. I don’t want them looking at my pale ass instead of yours,” he said.

“You’re so shy sometimes.”

“Not shy, just…considered,” he said. “You deserve every eye on you, beautiful girl.” He climbed over me and started working his tongue over my folds, the way only Firian could do very well. The way he leaned over me, I could see his cock right above my face, and I gave it a little tug.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “You haven’t touched me in so long.”

“We haven’t tried 69ing yet,” I said. “I’m an equal opportunity girl.” I ran my tongue down his cock and was rewarded with his tongue tasting me deep and the most gratifying sound coming from deep in his chest.

I was making some very gratified sounds myself as he stroked in and out and circled around spots that made me squeal and then remember I had offered my own part in this, and I wrapped my mouth around his cock and sucked and licked up the length.

Just as we were really getting into it, the door opened and Alec and Montague walked in. Alec was already totally naked while Montague was, of course, wearing what looked like some fine Italian suit but he started stripping out of it while he made eye contact with me.

“No need to greet us,” Alec said. “When your mouth is already full.” He bent down and took my breast in his mouth and now I was practically spasming with overstimulation as Firian was sliding his tongue from my clit to my entrance and back again with side explorations of every fold, and Alec sucked and bit my nipple, and I was watching Montague while I was sucking on Firian like he was an oversized lollipop.

Montague dropped his shirt on my eyes and then he bent down and put his fangs around my other nipple.

“Ohfuck,” I tried to say. I writhed and arched as they played with my breasts, my core pulsing hot. Alec and Montague reached for my knees and they each wrapped an elbow around them, spreading me out so Firian’s tongue seemed to his even more sensitive spots, and I felt like I belonged to them completely.

“You’re so flexible,” Alec said.

“Yoga,” I panted. “I’m in better shape than I look.”

“I’d say you’re in excellent shape,” Montague said, as I started seeing stars. “Good thing.”

“Oh, I know,” I cried. “I want to make all of you happy tonight!”

“You always make us happy,” Firian said.

“We’ll build you back up slowly…,” Alec said, now gently grazing my skin with his fingertips. “And then claim you…one at a time?”

“Ohh…”

“Two at a time?” he purred. “Three?”

I flushed. “I don’t know.”

“It’s a dream.”

“Is it?”

Alec shifted position so my head was in his lap. He stroked my hair and my face, as Montague and Firian just as gently explored the rest of my body with their hands. Firian started giving me a foot rub that made me wonder if I could fall asleep inside a dream, but paired with Montague caressing my breasts it was also arousing. Before long I was craving them as urgently as if the first interlude had never happened.

“I want to feel you here,” Firian said, moving up to stroke my bottom.

“I want to feel you everywhere, Firian…”

“Stay nice and relaxed…”

“You too,” I said, as Montague and Firian were getting a little tense with the close proximity, but I soothed them with my best sexy expressions and needy caresses and tugs of their arms, their hair, anything I could get my hands on, as Firian’s stiff cock slid inside me and I knew Montague was hungry for me.

“Three,” I said. “Let’s try three.”

It took some awkward shuffling around but in another minute Montague was almost in Alec’s arms, as close as they were, while he steadied me to claim my pussy. Firian waited patiently, throbbing inside me, while I sucked Alec’s cock, clutching his hips, hardly able to process what Firian and Montague were doing to me except that it became a blur of ravishing pleasure. I was only in control of Alec, who groaned for me, letting me know I was doing my job well despite exhaustion. In fact, he came quickly and let me go so Montague and Firian could catch me between them and sate themselves.

When they let go, I let go again with them, and I felt like I was melting—or exploding—but then I woke up.

“Ohh…Alec…dang. That was nuts.”

“Just a dream,” he said.

“Tell that to my aching loins.”

“Heh…” He kissed me. “All right. I’ll have a talk with your loins later.”

“Just a dream,” Montague confirmed. “I wouldn’t have wild sex on Christmas Eve.”

“Oh yeah. If anyone asks you were at midnight mass,” I said.

Alec and Montague seemed to fall back asleep within seconds.

Firian was still a fox again, warming my feet. He blinked at me.

I blinked back.

“I love you, Charlotte,” he said. “I love your hot ass but I’d love you just as much if you turned into a possum forever tomorrow.”

“Same.”

“You’d be a hot ass possum, anyway, I’m sure. Just like I’m an especially foxy fox.”

“True,” I said. “Merry Christmas, Firian. Wake me up at four am.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Harris

“Hello, Harrison,” my father said coolly. “I’m glad you decided to join us.”

Behind him, my mother’s ice blue eyes bored into me. She looked a little scared, I thought, like she thought something terrible had happened to me, but when my father looked at her, she smothered it with a tightened mouth.

I was going to have to put on the Perfect Son Show. I bowed my head. “I want to make amends.”

“We were worried sick,” Mother said. “You still haven’t given us a sufficient explanation for where you went this summer. To stay with ‘friends’? What friends are you keeping these days?”

You think I don’t have friends? You think I have new friends you disapprove of even more than Monty and Alec?

Well, that’s probably true. A faery lord of Wyrd is probably worse, considering it could destroy your carefully constructed hierarchy.

But, I bit my tongue.

“I just want to say that I’m sorry,” I said, even as I heard the voices of my parents and teachers ringing in my head, telling me that one of the worst things a magic user can do is to tell a lie, because magic thrives on truth. “I made a mistake. I realize this. I needed to get away from home to work through some thoughts. I’ve had some personal issues at college that I’ve had a hard time talking about.”

“You don’t have to hide those things from us,” my mother said, which was as much a lie as anything I’d ever said. “I am very happy to have you home. How are things going with Piers as the new dean? I would think that structurally he would run a tight ship.”

A tight ship? He forced Alec into exile and he almost did the same thing to Charlotte.

“I’m sure you heard about Alec,” I said, in a neutral tone. “I suppose…it was inevitable.” That was the best I could say in Piers’ favor.

“It is truly a shame,” Father said. “Dr. Lyrman must be distraught. He really paid the price for sleeping with a succubus. But it is a cautionary tale. One mistake can ruin your life. Same with your friend Montague. So…your mother and I have been talking with members of the council…”

“Yes,” she said, as they started to walk down the main hall of Ladyswald, past the somber posthumous Medieval portrait of my ancestor Rudolf II, which guarded over the treasure vault, and to my right, the Lady Elena Alexandra Nicolescu, famous for killing a vampire while heavily pregnant. A couple of my sisters popped their heads out of doors to listen in, and Mother shooed them away with a wave of her hand.

“Harris, my dear son,” Mother said. “Is one of those personal things you don’t want to talk about…Charlotte Byrne?”

I frowned, probably revealing too much.

“I have heard,” she said. “And it would explain a lot about your mood these days. Look, your father and I are actually very happy about this. I’m sure you thought we wouldn’t approve of Charlotte, but the Caruthers bloodline is worth redeeming, and Councilwoman Caruthers wants Charlotte to be safe. Since things didn’t work out with Daisy, we would like to consider a betrothal between you and Charlotte.”

I knew this was coming, because of what I’d heard, and yet, hearing these words actually escape my mother’s mouth…

“This would keep her safe,” my father urged. “She would come here to Ladyswald right after graduation, and we would find you a newlywed home right here along the Hudson, so we can all help to show her through wizard society.”

Charlotte…

Daisy would have fit in here, in the long run. She would have found her place, lost her edges. Charlotte was like another species.

What sort of expression would a dutiful son have? My acting ability was smothered by the thought of Charlotte, holding hands with my two best friends, as intimate with them as I once was (well, actually, way more) while I held back. Out of necessity? I wondered if I could ever let my guard down.

“What do you think?” Mother asked.

“I…I don’t know.”

“You’re blushing,” she said, wagging a finger and then giving my father a knowing little pat on the arm. “I can never hide my feelings as well as I’d like either. Now, Harris, I think you realize that Charlotte is in a lot of trouble. She was accused of consorting with her familiar, which is troubling enough. She has a Wyrd wand, and I heard about the incident in the chapel. Something happened in there, didn’t it? And what about Stuart Jablonsky? Anyway—do you know how close she is to being put away in the Haven for not just her safety, but everyone else’s?”

“What’s stopping them from just going ahead with it, anyway?”

“Councilwoman Caruthers is heartbroken at the thought of losing her last family member.”

Councilwoman Caruthers doesn’t give a shit about Charlotte. Not who Charlotte is. She’s just a symbol to her.

“Harris,” my father said. “When I was young, I had a moment just like you did, where I did some rebellious things, and I know that you are a trustworthy kid, and you’re going to do us proud. You’ll be on the council someday with your cousin. And Charlotte can be at your side. She’s cute, isn’t she? It’s true, you and your mother can never hide a blush. So shall we go along with the plan?”

It’s true. They want me to forget about Monty and Alec…

If I didn’t need the holy treasures of the Hapsburgs that were in that room, I might have told them just how it felt to watch my two best friends getting closer, to Charlotte and each other. Now Daisy was even starting to enter their orbit. I would tell them that Firian wasn’t just a ‘familiar’, he was a person and he followed me through the woods in the rain to help Charlotte. I would tell them that was what love looked like, and I hardly even knew how to share it.

I would tell them I never intended to be on the council. I wanted to get to Wyrd.

“Sure,” I said, sounding idiotic.

They walked into the dining room, where Councilman de Brigue was sitting in one of the substantial wooden chairs. He looked up at our entry as if waking up from a nap, pausing to wipe his glasses. “Good day, young Mr. Nicolescu,” he said in a craggy voice that could barely hit a standard volume.

I had the immediate sense I’d been tricked. My parents had this shift, suddenly, like they were taking a little kid to get shots instead of ice cream, which I knew well because they had actually done that to me.

“Harris, dear, the councilman wants to ask you a few questions,” my mother said.

“Yes…yes. I am going to need the truth, young man,” Councilman de Brigue said, coughing. “Is he amenable to the marriage arrangement?”

“Yes.”

“You will be doing her a great favor, young Miss Byrne,” Councilman de Brigue said. “She would be at the Haven as we speak if not for a few of us standing up for her, on account of the Caruthers legacy…ahem-hem…” He looked at some papers. “Yes, well, sit down.”

What if I refuse?

The question was on the tip of my tongue. I had to calculate the risks quickly.

We needed the Hapsburg treasures to fight the Withered Lord, especially so soon. That was pretty much a fact. The holy relics were devastating to demons. If my parents didn’t trust me, I would not get the relics.

But what will he ask?

I walked up to the table, trying to catch what he had written down. I saw Stuart’s name.

They really want Stuart, I thought. Piers keeps trying to find him. But Stuart is a frickin’ faery lord. He can take care of himself.

“All right,” I said, plastering on a slightly aggravated smile now. “Seems like a lot of fuss…”

Councilman de Brigue gave me his hand. “You must swear to tell the truth, a promise that is binding, a lie shall burn upon your lips and set your mind unwinding.”

“Why would I lie?”

“Your hand, please.”

I slipped my fingers in his withered claws. Councilman de Brigue was over a century old.

“Do you swear?”

“I swear to tell the truth.”

I couldn’t help a little cringe as I felt the spell settle on my lips. I hope this isn’t a huge mistake.

“Is Stuart Jablonsky one of the fae race?”

“Yes.”

“Does he come from Wyrd?”

“As…far as I know.” My attempts to mince words made my lips tingle. “Yes.”

“Do you know his whereabouts?”

“Not right now.”

“But you did.”

“He had a cave in the forest near Merlin College.”

“Who else was with him there?”

“Professor McGuinness and two servants…”

“Did you stay with Professor Jablonsky when you ran away from home?”

“I—I—yes.” Damn, for being so old and doddering, de Brigue was a very focused interrogator.

“Oh, Harrison!” My mother looked both distraught and angry.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I needed somewhere to go and I was trying to figure out his deal. But to be honest, I’m not sure Stuart is that important. He doesn’t seem close to the faeries either.”

“Did you see any other faeries while you were there?”

“As I said, just his two servants.”

“Two servants? Faeries? Did they have any power?”

“Orson is just a gruagach who makes a lot of trips to Publix, and Penny is a house silkie who cleans up after you if you so much as drop a crumb on the floor. You don’t have to worry about any of them.”

“I see, I see. And you don’t know where Stuart and his servants have gone?”

“I’m sure they are hiding from you,” I said.

“Reasonable of them,” he said. “Thank you, Harrison. That’s all I needed.”

That’s it? It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it might be. They didn’t ask about any of Charlotte’s business, at least.

“Would you like to stay for dinner, Councilman?”

“No, madam, I will be going,” he said, with a look in his rheumy eyes like he had Things To Do.

“I’ll see you out,” Father said.

“You might as well have a seat,” my mother said. “Dinner will be starting soon. Let me just inform Marius and then I’ll call your sisters.”

“You did very well,” Father said. “I’m glad you’ve realized what must be done.”

Crap. I had a bad feeling about this, but I had to just go with it. Any attempt to dig deeper would alert my family that I wasn’t a dutiful son after all, and then I wouldn’t be able to steal from them, which was the whole reason I’d come for Christmas in the first place.

I endured days of holiday festivities. I used to enjoy our holidays, with the ten foot tree that was cut from our own woods on Christmas Eve and lit with real candles, the long table heaped with food, and all my older sisters getting along for just one night when they usually fought like a house full of rescue cats. This time, I suffered through every second of it, knowing what I had to do on my last night here. I would only have one chance and then I had to get the hell out of here before any noticed.

Anyone with direct Hapsburg blood in the house could just walk into the treasure room. It was unthinkable that anyone in the family would steal anything. Because of the nature of the wards, the family legend was that my father had to drink three drops of my mother’s blood to be allowed to enter. The treasures had been in the family for centuries, carefully kept. If our home was ever attacked, we were to flee to the treasure room and defend ourselves there. We might not be royalty anymore, but my parents had taught us royal paranoia that we might be attacked or poisoned.

On the last night, once everyone had gone to bed, I crept down the stairs around three am, after everyone was sleeping but before any maids got up to work. I opened the door beneath old Rudolf. A steep stairway led straight down to a windowless room that was permanently lit like a museum, with that dim, soft lighting that places all the emphasis on objects. Necklaces, rings, bottles, knives, rosaries, books…there was even a snuffer for putting out sacred candle flames, and baby shoes that were said to have belonged to Princess Julia of the shadow Hapsburgs (the magical line which had been born in secret and hidden away while witch hunters were particularly active in Europe).

This was, certainly, the creepiest room at Ladyswald besides maybe the private chapel which had more remains of dead family members. My sisters used to tell me that ghosts lived down here.

Initially, I was terrified of the treasure room. Then, I realized all my sisters were equally afraid of the treasure room. That was when I started spending time there. I could actually get some alone time away from the chatter of six older sisters (often doubled, when they had friends over). It was an early lesson in steeling myself against instinctive fears, and I knew every object in the room like it belonged to me personally. No one in the family had looked at them so often.

My target was a simple reliquary ring. It was a powerful charm, and my mother even used to wear it on her finger sometimes when I was young, but as she got older and more sensitive about her beauty fading, she was no longer satisfied with an odd ring. It was very simple and had a little glass capsule on top that contained a shard of bone surrounded by tiny carvings of vines and flowers. Legend was that the shard was from the bones of St. Columba, patron saint of witches, and could also break curses. I carefully opened the back of the case and took the ring from its perch, holding my breath.

The house remained quiet as I slipped it in my pocket.

The most sacred relic was the water of the holy grail. This vial had its own story, as it was poured from the agate bowl of the holy grail that was still held in a museum in Vienna, to my mother’s chagrin. Only a magical person could glean water from the grail, so it was useless in a Fixed Plane museum, but there it was. This water would do a number on the Withered Lord.

I had done what any sensible person would do and brought a decoy vial. How often did my parents actually take out the relics and test their magic? Never. I knew that much. The old grail water was swapped out for an old bottle of healing potion, and the sacred waters went in my pocket as well.

I was moving slowly and carefully so I wouldn’t make any noises, and it was going without a hitch.

And then…the doorbell rang. In the middle of the damn night? Oh, shit. That could not be anything good.

I hunched behind one of the cases as I heard someone rush to the door. Then more commotion.

“What is it?” I heard Father say. “Come in, sir!”

“It’s de Brigue. He—he was killed by the faeries. I thought you should know.” I didn’t recognize the voice, but the young man was probably a courier for the council.

I was edging closer to the door to hear.

“What?” Mother cried. “Killed? How? How could he be killed?”

“The gruagach killed him.”

Well, that wasn’t good. How long had it been since a faery killed a member of the council? And if I remembered my history, the last time, it didn’t go that well.

My stomach was turning, wondering what we might have unleashed. My family had been fighting for the Ethereal realms for centuries and I was the first one to toss it all aside and align myself with faeries. They always said you couldn’t trust faeries. What if Stuart had actually infiltrated warlock society and used Ignatius? Maybe I was about to wreck the world. I imagined the burly gruagach killing frail old Councilman de Brigue.

But weirdly, no matter how I tried, I felt more sorry for Orson than the old man. De Brigue would have done something terrible to Stuart.

And I wondered why my family never told me about Wyrd, if all of this was so important and faeries were so dangerous.

“What is a gruagach, anyway?” one of my sisters asked sleepily.

“They’re Scottish fae who work on farms,” my mother said. “How could one of them kill a member of the warlock council?”

“Protecting his master. They’re strong,” Father said.

“They are not as strong as a high warlock. This is absurd,” Mother said. “This gruagach must feel the wrath of our order.”

“Oh, we’ll have trouble with the faeries now,” Father said. “They don’t forget things like this.”

“No, they’ll have trouble with us,” Mother said, sounding annoyed at my father. Sometimes she felt he was a little too weak for a Nicolescu because he didn’t go around slaughtering vampires, or anyone else for that matter.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have been so quick to try and kill a faery, then,” my sister Helena said. She would be the one to defend me, if anyone did. What would happen if anyone started looking for me?

“We weren’t going to kill him, we were going to capture him.”

“Oh, well then!” I could imagine Helena, her hair disheveled with sleep but her eyes alert, throwing up the sleeve of a silk kimono as she expressed exasperation.

“Go to bed, girls,” Mother said.

“Like we can sleep now.”

“Well, go be quiet, then. Your father and I will talk about this.”

They all started to leave the room. I listened for the various footsteps, my sisters pattering up the stairs, hitting the one that creaked. My parents went into the library; the heavy door shut.

It was still a while before I dared to open the door.

The door almost hit one of the oldest maids, a Austrian hedge witch whose ancestors had served my family for five generations. “Master Harris?”

“Yes—” I had managed not to make any sounds of surprise, but I was briefly frozen.

“Aren’t you a little old to be hiding in the treasure room?” She smiled, and seemed to interpret the expression on my face as fear of a war with the faeries instead of anything more insidious. “Well, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thank you, Heike.”

“The family will be fine,” she said. “The council will take care of this. You’ll be safe at school. You’re going back tomorrow, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Thank you. I’m sure I will be very safe there.”

The next day, I left with the relics, and so far, no one was the wiser for it.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Charlotte

Judging by the smug look on Harris’ face when he came strolling up to me the evening after I returned from the holiday break, I knew two things right away.

One, I was getting Firian back.

Two…

“You owe me now, Chosen One,” he whispered as he passed me a ring. When I tried to take it from him, he snatched his hand back. “No. You have to earn it. Remember the deal?”

I blushed hard. I blushed like someone had smacked me. “You’re not going to hold me to that,” I said.

“You bet your boots I am.”

My eyes darted back and forth, but he had caught me alone walking back from the library. “You…want me to…”

“I know what the rings on your fingers mean,” he said huskily, his blue eyes just as intense as they were in our first year. Harris was part of the group, but a part of him remained aloof—a maddening mystery. “Let me put one on your finger.”

“I—”

His fingers reached for my chin, pinning me in the air, his fingers cool against my hot skin. “Do you know what I risked to get this ring? All for you. All to make you happy, so you could have Firian back. But not just Firian…”

I squirmed. “Harris, you’re the one who is always acting like you don’t care. If you wanted me so badly, you should have just said so.”

“Unlike my friends, I’m not a horny moron,” he said.

“Oh yeah?”

“I bide my time because I know the cost. I’ve finally decided that you’re worth paying the cost.”

My mouth flapped open and closed stupidly before I said, “Why?”

“You’re not like other witches. You’re not like other humans either. You’re somewhere in between, and you’re—” His hand still gripped my face, but now the other hand joined the first, cupping my face. “You’re mine.”

I mean, really, I had barely unpacked my travel bag and I had all this to process, but was any of it really news to me? I had known long ago that I wasn’t like other witches, and that Harris was drawn to me. He was competitive with me, and attracted to me, and he held back because that was how he was. Cautious. Proud. Ruled by his head.

And it wasn’t like I needed another man interested in me. Four? How greedy was I? How many ingredients did that HAM sandwich need?

I mean… was he really talking about having sex with me tonight? I ought to tell him to take a hike, but instead my heart was pounding and I couldn’t breathe as he pressed his lips to mine. He might be cold in personality, but his lips were warm and pliable and I found myself responding like I had been craving him for years. Our last kiss wasn’t bad either, but this one was better yet. When I reciprocated, his breath quickened and he put a hand around my waist, holding me closer.

“Can’t help yourself, can you?” he said. “Alec and Monty still aren’t enough for you…?”

“Um, speak for yourself. I’m not the one bribing you. That’s the only reason I’m doing this, you know.”

His thumb ran across my lower lip, the sensitive skin tingling with the memory of his kiss. “Don’t lie,” he said. “Not if you want to impress the fae.”

“You can’t hold a candle to Alec anyway,” I said.

His eyes flashed. He took my arm, dragged me into the stacks, and tore open the button of my pants. “Oh yeah?” His hand went right to work on me, thrusting down my panties, fingers fucking me while the knuckle of his thumb brutishly rubbed against my clit.

My temperature rose by like a thousand degrees. “Harris—no—not—not here.”

“No one is on this floor but us.” He said, “I can give you something no one else can.”

I clenched his arm, feeling the tension in his muscles as he worked me hard and relentlessly. “Is this—how you treat Daisy?”

“Hell no,” he said. “I’m not interested in doing this to Daisy. Only you.”

My wetness soaked his hand.

“Putty in my hands,” he whispered. “That’s what I’ve dreamed of.”

“You’re still an ass, even now!” I snapped.

“I know. So why haven’t you fought me off? Haven’t heard the word ‘stop’ escape your lips once. Alec’s nice. Monty is charming. Firian is your best friend. What are you missing? An ass.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You’re my asshole?”

“I’m certainly going to get to know yours. And every other bit of you. First—tonight.” He rubbed my clit hard until I started coming on his hand, and I was coming so hard and messily that my brain was like, oh great, I’m flattering him. I couldn’t help myself. He was infuriatingly right. I was missing an asshole. Well, not really an asshole, but a guy who would just live out my dirtiest fantasies without hesitating. It wasn’t like the other guys didn’t hit some of those buttons, Alec could certainly get into it, but they were gentlemen. Harris’ hand was fucking me like he was channeling rage into lust. I don’t know why it was so exciting. I guess I knew he would never hurt me, but I also didn’t know what he would do.

Anyway, I couldn’t help it. I was in the throes of it and he was the one who sent me there, gasping, mindlessly yanking a few library books off the shelf in an attempt to get a grip on something.

He drew back his hand. “Go to my room and wait for me,” he said. “I made sure Monty is occupied.”

I went back to the dorm with the most awkward post-orgasm glow, because as soon as I walked away I wanted to be annoyed. Okay, I was a little annoyed. Like, how dare he. I should just go to my own room and shut the door!

Well, I’m doing it for Firian, I thought.

Riiight. For Firian. Aside from the fluttering inside me that just unabashedly, inexplicably, was ready to check if Daisy was right and he had a small penis.

Spoiler alert: He didn’t.

I went to his room and sat on Montague’s bed, and I crossed my arms, ready to bring some attitude. I looked at his side of the room and saw that he had taken down every photo of his family and Daisy that used to be there. The only thing left was a picture of him with Alec and Montague when they were younger—8th or 9th grade maybe. Figured, that Harris had actual photos. They were all so cute.

He was really taking this seriously. It was us—and me. Or them. His family. His old life. His destiny.

The door opened and he immediately tore the photo of HAM from my hand.

“Harris—”

“I don’t want to get all touchy feely about this shit,” he said. “I just want you. And you want this ring.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Hush.” He pressed me back on the bed by the shoulder. “You’re beautiful,” he said, like it almost surprised him. “You’re not a bad reward.”

I wanted to say something sarcastic, but the way he said it was weighted with the loyalty he had shown his friends, and the risks he had taken to help me.

He cared about us. He didn’t know how to say it.

He really thinks I’m beautiful…more beautiful than Daisy…or any of those other wealthy witches?

Uhhh…like I care.

I was just fooling myself. Harris was…not so bad, himself. He was my prince. Maybe he was more like the jerk prince from Frozen than the nice princes, but…I would certainly never be bored with him around. He was a real life prince. Flawed, arrogant…

Mine.

Something in me just felt like…we fit. I fit with him, and he fit with all of us. Even when I was with Alec and Montague in the most intimate way, Harris’ absence was with us somehow. As he started to kiss me again, it felt so right. I really had been waiting for this forever.

He stripped off my shirt, and there was real tenderness in the way he cupped his hand around my breast, letting out the smallest ragged sigh. How long had he been dreaming of me? Of this? How many nights had he stared at the ceiling above this very bed and told himself that he should stay away from that Charlotte? Just that sigh said it all.

I reached for his buttons and he stiffened briefly before allowing me to unfasten them. I’m not sure anyone ever touched Harris with love. I’m not sure he even had much experience with girls.

There was still an exciting authority to the way he stripped me down and took out his cock, taking out a condom without even asking if I was on birth control, which I appreciated. Assuming responsibility is hot. “Now you earn that ring,” he said.

I glanced at his junk. “I guess that’s not bad,” I said, with a little sniff.

He took my hands and smacked them down into the bed covers. “Well, I’m not as gentle as Alec.”

“You think Alec is gentle?” My eyes flew open as he went for it. He forced himself inside me. I mean, maybe forced isn’t the right word considering I was laying under him with my legs spread and a few saucy remarks flying off my tongue, but I didn’t expect him to actually just take what he wanted. “Ungh…”

“Big enough for you?”

My skin heated. “No,” I managed. “Not a contest though.”

“Hmph. You sure look flushed.”

“Is any of this supposed to be romantic?”

He gave me a half-cocked grin. “You get enough of that elsewhere.”

“I think you’re a virgin.”

“I guess you wouldn’t be a bad first, but do you really think so?”

“Judging by the way you’re blushing, maybe. On the other hand, you do know where to stick it, which isn’t nothing.”

He scoffed as he rocked his shaft deep into me, and I was kinda hot for the fact he wasn’t shy about it. There was no need to beat around the bush (a particularly apt metaphor in this case—ohmigod, is that where the phrase ‘beat around the bush’ actually came from?).

“I’ll leave you to wonder,” he said.

“So you think you don’t have to be romantic because your friends are romantic already?” I panted, trying to pretend that he was barely doing anything for me, just to troll him. Although, in fact—

“I guess you won’t be doing the dishes either?” I continued, trying not to enjoy his beautiful eyes or his perfect, faintly sneering mouth.

“Nope.”

“What’s the point of having you around?”

“Magic,” he said softly. “I brought you this holy spell. It will break Firian’s curse. Moreover, I brought something that will do serious damage to the Withered Lord. We will bring the faeries their head, Charlotte. My ancestors might have been famous for staking vampires…but I…will be the first Nicolescu to behead a demon.”

“Every girl’s dream.”

“Not every girl’s. But maybe…yours.”

“I could pass on the beheading.”

“You can handle…whatever this magical world throws at you,” he whispered, drawing his lips close to mine. “Chosen One…my chosen one.”

“Mm…”

“That’s what I’ve been waiting to hear.”

“Shush.”

We kissed again and I let myself melt into the feel of him. Every one of my boys was so different, and with Harris…it was the edges that I craved. I arched my back as he took me like he needed me, like he’d been waiting for me, and for some reason I felt more vulnerable than I had felt with anyone else. This moment felt fragile like it was no more real that when I saw Alec in my dreams, which is to say…sort of real, and sort of not.

When Harris hit his peak, he started driving even deeper, groaning low with satisfaction. He was breathing hard, taking a minute before he pulled out.

“What about me?” I asked.

“I already took care of you.”

“That didn’t count.”

“Well, it’s all you get. The bargain was that I get you and you get this.”

“Bargain,” I snorted. “Well, now that you’ve had one taste of me you’re going to have to find some more rings because you’ll be back.”

“Maybe.”

He slid a ring on my finger. It looked ancient, and a little creepy. It was the kind of thing a goth girl would sell at a craft fair booth called something like ‘Poe’s Raven’. “What is the little white thing?”

“A shard of a saint’s bone,” he said. Then he added, “You know, my parents really wanted me to marry you, so they could watch over you.”

“Oh…uh…so you said no, I assume?”

“Of course I did.”

“You were quick with that answer.”

“Because…” He turned to me. “I wouldn’t send anyone I care about to live under the gaze of my family. Things are…getting more dangerous. You probably haven’t heard…Stuart’s butler Orson has been accused of murdering councilman de Brigue.”

My eyes widened. “Your post sex talk could use some work too.”

He shrugged. “I figured I should tell you. They’re seriously hunting for Stuart. We need to work quickly, but I need you to stay safe, Charlotte. I will always save Firian for you, or anyone else who loves you, because the more people who will shield you, the better.”

That was the first thing that for realsies pissed me off. I grabbed my shirt and started reconstructing my now-rumpled uniform. “I don’t need to be shielded. Y’all think it’s romantic to protect me? It’s condescending. How about I shield you?”

“Just…don’t take off the ring,” he said. “It’s very special.”

“And I can use this ring to break Firian’s curse?”

“Yes. Just cast a simple curse breaking spell and this ring will super charge it.”

“Then I guess I have work to do.” I buttoned my shirt up quickly. Harris leaned back on the bed and looked me over like he enjoyed the sight of me. He had slipped his boxers back on but I was struck by the gorgeous vulnerability of his lean, strong limbs, fair skin without even a single weird mole or spot. He wasn’t as muscular as Alec or even Montague; but I knew that Harris was more of a warlock than the two of them put together, and there was a sense of power laced under the surface of his skin.

“You have the skin of a princess,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said, sarcastically.

“I thought Hapsburgs were supposed to be in-bred.”

“Sorry to disappoint you. Maybe you should stop ogling me and get to work on that curse.”

“Ugh.” I flounced toward the door and flung it open, more than a little frustrated—only to bump into Montague, who looked at me with a little flare of anger in his eyes.

“Charlotte,” he said. “We have a problem.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Charlotte

Montague stopped, his nostrils flaring slightly. I felt…judged.

“What have you been up to anyway?” he demanded.

I crossed my arms. “Saving Firian.”

Montague looked at my hands and saw the reliquary ring. “What is this?” He shoved past me into his room where Harris had managed to get all his clothes back on in no time. Montague grabbed his shirt and rattled him. “Are you fucking around with Charlotte?”

Harris lifted his wand and a flash of light threw Montague back.

“I can smell you on her,” Montague said, baring his fangs. “We have some serious shit going on and you took the time out to treat my lady like a plaything?”

“Excuse me!” I waved my hands between them. “No one is treating anyone’s lady like anything. Harris and I had an arrangement, and—”

“You’re mine,” Montague said. “I won’t share you with anyone who doesn’t cherish you.”

“I’m not your property. Harris does cherish me, don’t you, Harris?”

“I suppose.”

“He totally does,” I said. “He’s just being difficult. I know y’all are friends so don’t fight, okay? It’s a waste of time.”

“He’s the one who just told me we have a crisis on our hands,” Montague said. “He told me to go check on Daisy, and now I find out that while I was checking on Daisy, he was…” He grabbed Harris again and shoved him into the wall.

“You know, I’ll let you have that one,” Harris said, with a crooked smile. “I didn’t want to miss my chance. Now that I’ve stolen the reliquary of St. Columba and the grail water, I have effectively left my family for good. They haven’t noticed yet, but they will. I know that some of us won’t make it out of this alive. Before I started dumping all the bad news on Charlotte, I was taking my moment of joy.”

“What bad news?” I asked.

“You know how Daisy was supposed to go back to Chicago for Christmas?” Harris said. “Well, Irving was one of the few students to stay here this year. He said her car left in the afternoon and then in the middle of the night, it returned, and Piers escorted her into his house, and she hasn’t been seen since.”

“What? When were you going to tell me?”

“After you saved Firian,” Harris said. “You can’t break curses when you’re all worked up.”

“You are the worst.”

“How am I the worst? I’m trying to help you save your familiar. As for our interlude, tell me with a straight face that you didn’t enjoy that.”

Ohmigod, he was so infuriating, but to be fair, I couldn’t think of how to argue that he was the worst. He actually said what I kept trying to forget—some of us might die fighting the Withered Lord. “Let’s—focus,” I stammered. “So is Daisy still trapped there?”

“She was just transferred to the infirmary,” Montague said. “She’s passed out. The guy there said she caught the flu.”

“So Piers used winter break to overwork her magic,” Harris said. “I would bet you anything they are using her to find Stuart and his cohorts, and that was how Councilman de Brigue was killed by Orson. They actually found Stuart, and he thought he would go in there, but Orson defended Stuart successfully. Now, the council will really be out for blood.”

“Will Stuart be able to help us fight the Withered Lord if he’s hiding from the council?” Montague asked.

“Probably not,” Harris said.

“We need Stuart,” Montague said. “He’s our link to the fae.”

I had this tingling sense of terror, like everything was going to collapse. If it collapsed, everything Ignatius fought for and Samuel died for would be lost. Mom would stay in the clutches of a demon. Alec would be stuck in Sinistral forever. The guys looked hesitant, and I huffed. “I’m…I’m gonna go see Daisy.”

I ran out of Lancelot House, hugging my jacket around me, shivering because it was really coat weather and not jacket weather. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to fight a demon. If Stuart’s gone…and we can’t even try…

The infirmary always felt eerily quiet because it was such a large building for what it was. More like a hospital than the small clinic you might expect a college campus to have.

“You can see her,” the nurse said. “But she needs her sleep. This is a nasty strain of the flu this year.”

“The flu, huh?”

“Have you heard of it? The flu?” he asked sarcastically. He wasn’t here last year. One of Piers’ cronies.

Daisy was the only patient, and she was tucked in bed up to her chin, fast asleep—or comatose. I had never seen her without makeup, her skin a washed-out olive color instead of the usual healthy golden-tan.

“Daisy?” I whispered. “Girl, you look rough. I wish I knew how to apply makeup like you do. Not that you need it. You’re still gorgeous, actually. I just know that you’re the type who would apply a red lip if you were dying. I’m rambling, I realize.”

A lump rose to my throat when she remained unconscious. I gave her shoulder a little nudge. “Daisy, please wake up. Did he hurt you?”

I shut my eyes and clasped her hand in mine, casting a quick energy spell to help with her spell exhaustion, since Harris said that was the real cause. “Light from your hand to mine, light from your eyes to mine…I give power to Daisy Pendleton.”

Her eyes fluttered open briefly. She gripped my hand weakly. “Charlotte…”

“Daisy?”

Her eyes welled. “He made me find Stuart…”

“Councilman de Brigue was killed by Orson,” I said. “I think Stuart got away.”

“I don’t want this anymore…” Her voice was barely a wheeze. She sounded so weak. “I don’t want this magic. Take it from me.”

“I can’t take it from you,” I said. “And I don’t want to. You’ll do good things with your magic someday.”

“He…used me.”

I paused. “I mean…did he…touch you?”

“No. No. You keep thinking that’s worse. It’s not. I’d rather he take my body than my magic if he has to take something. Maybe I could at least…detach from that. But no. He just wants my magic. He locked me up all alone for all of winter break… All alone. For two weeks.” She started sobbing. “Fuck him. I hope he rots and dies. I hope a demon spider catches him in a huge web and sucks the magic from him really slowly.”

“It’s all going to be okay,” I said.

“I think your grandma had it right,” she said. “I wanna give up. I don’t want my magic. I hate it.”

“You’re just tired. You have to avenge your parents, right? Your mom and your dad…they’re looking down on you, giving you strength. I’m sure of it.”

She looked off into the distance. “It’s been a long time,” she said quietly. “Sometimes…I don’t remember them as well as I used to.”

I grabbed a tissue from a nearby box and handed it to her as her eyes welled. “Memories fade. Love doesn’t. And you only get stronger all the time.”

She managed a smile. “Yeah, I guess I’d be tougher too if I had three hot boyfriends.”

“Well, you need to live if you want three hot boyfriends of your own,” I said. “Three or four.”

“Four?” She tried to sit up. “Did Harris finally—”

“Maybe… Sorry. I don’t want to rub it in but for the sake of transparency I should probably tell you we just had like, argument sex.”

“You can have him. He’s not good in bed. I just know.”

“Mm…”

“Yeah, right.”

“No, I’m serious. He’s not bad. I kinda liked argument sex.”

“Did he worship you like a queen?”

I snorted. “I wouldn’t want him to.”

Daisy threw out a hand. “Not for me. I accept nothing less than goddess status.”

“Okay, single girl, good luck with that.”

She dabbed her eyes. “You really do amuse me. Thank you.”

“I amuse you?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s usually an insult,” I said.

“No, no,” she said. “My grandmother would always say that my cousin amused—” She paused. “Okay, maybe it is an insult. But I mean it.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Charlotte

Classes had an air of tension, and the professors seemed to be keeping a close eye on us. Daisy was still weak, but the plan was progressing anyway. The vampires were on their way. I was having a hard time focusing.

“You can’t break the curse like this,” Firian said, when I tried to set aside an evening to restore his human form. “You’re jittery. Remember your meditations? You have to calm down.”

“I’m—I’m sorry. I’m not doing it on purpose. I just keep thinking about…”

“I know you’re scared, but you have to keep your focus no matter what. Sit and take a deep breath.”

“I want to at least try.”

“Practice your focus first. I don’t want to get turned into a two-headed wombat instead of a human.”

“Random.”

His eyes narrowed. “I wish that was random. It’s a real story I heard one time.”

I tried to meditate and calm down, but I couldn’t seem to cast the spell. “I think Harris gave me a broken relic!”

“I think you are just panicking about fighting a demon,” Firian said.

“Ya think?”

The next day, as I was leaving my necromancy class, Piers caught me outside the door and said, “Charlotte, please see me in my office.”

“Now?”

“Yes.” He smiled. “Now.”

I wasn’t comfortable with this at all. When I hesitated, he just kept looking at me. “Are you afraid of me, Charlotte?”

“No.”

“Good. Then, come. I just want to show you something.”

I followed him to the room that used to be Ignatius’ office. He’d had it recently redesigned, and then I set it on fire, so it was renovated again. Well, Piers had put his own stamp on it, and that stamp was gloomy clutter, which did fit a warlock well, at least. The walls were lined with photos and paintings of relatives that all looked creepily similar.

As soon as I sat down, Piers sat down as well, and opened a drawer. He took a little doll from the drawer. The doll had a crude face and a simple body, but it had a head of what looked like coarse dark hair. It was also wrapped in bands of iron. Piers stood the doll up on the desk between us with another tight smile.

“Most faeries suffer in the real world,” Piers said. “But there are two types that still fare pretty well. Gruagach and house silkies. We’ve long heard that a lord of the gruagach and the princess of the house silkies serve the queen as spies in this world. Sound familiar? They worked for Stuart.”

Orson and Penny were royalty? Sheesh.

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“Sure. Sure you don’t. Well, Lord Orson killed a man from our council. I’m sure you realize this can’t stand. Professor de Brigue, before he was killed, managed to rip hair from the prince’s head. With this doll, we can make him sick until he dies. De Brigue will be avenged, but that isn’t enough. We must have Stuart. We have given the faery queen one week to decide if she wants to go to war with us or not.”

“War with…the faeries? What would that mean?”

“Well, I don’t think they will look kindly on you,” he said. “Fickle humans. This is just what they fear about us. Your Wyrd wand can be used to break into their world.”

“I won’t let you use my wand. Plus, I lost it.”

“You ‘lost’ it.”

“Yes.”

He smacked his hands on the desk. “You’ve been distracted in class. You’re scared. You have your whole life ahead of you. A father who loves you. You don’t want to die, Miss Byrne. The fear is written all over your face. The weakness. But I don’t enjoy using innocents, so I am giving you one last chance. Leave this place. Go back to your human life and never return. Otherwise, I can’t promise anything.”

“You don’t enjoy using innocents? What about Daisy?”

“Daisy was born into this life.”

“She doesn’t want it. Just so you know, you are not the good guys. You aren’t ‘ethereal’. When you make creepy dolls out of real hair and use them to kill people, that’s your first tip off.”

“Then, you had better run from us,” he said. “Go back to your father. At the end of this week, the faery queen’s time is up. These bands of iron will tighten.” He held up the doll. “Lord Orson dies, and Professor Jablonsky is next. You and Daisy will help the council. Like it or not.”

I swallowed. The voice that came out of me hardly even felt like my own. “No way will I help you. You are not going to touch my wand. You already tried once and it didn’t go well.”

He slowly stood up. “Choose your next words carefully, dear.”

“I am not your ‘dear’.”

“You’re just a young woman and we have been lenient with you because we don’t hurt young women. But your grace period is up. Go home. I beg you to go home.”

The council is going to war with the faeries.

I wondered what that meant, exactly. The faeries could just stay hidden away in Wyrd, but Piers had the ability to kill Orson, and it seemed feasible that Stuart might step forward to rescue him, so it would keep getting messier.

“I’ll go,” I said, in a low voice.

“I knew you would make the right choice,” Piers said. “Stick to it. Forget all of this.”

I left his room in a blur and ran back to Lancelot House. Montague was sitting at his desk writing and Harris was taking a nap, but he woke up quick when I stormed in the door.

“We have to defeat the Withered Lord and get to Wyrd,” I said. “Now—or never.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Charlotte

“So you know where we’re going?” I asked Montague, puzzling over the road map of Savannah.

“Rayner is waiting for us,” he said. “You can put that down. I’ve been there before. Then we’ll get Professor McGuinness, Master Blair and Alec. Then…” He grimaced, his knuckles white gripping the steering wheel even though we were on a straight highway.

“Then we fight a demon,” Harris said.

“This is going so well,” Firian said.

I had to break the news to Firian that I didn’t have time to meditate and focus and lift the curse. Breaking curses requires a totally different mindset than the aggressive magic we would cast to defeat the Withered Lord, and I just couldn’t seem to get my head in the game, so I was feeling like a failure. So much for my yoga practice, my meditation training, ‘Fares wyrd as she must’ and everything else. I was letting Firian down when he needed me.

And we were missing part of the crew. Daisy was still drained of magic and it was too dangerous to sneak her out and we didn’t know where Stuart was hiding.

The danger was real, but running away wouldn’t fix anything either. I didn’t even believe Piers when he said the council would leave me alone if I went home. If my wand had power, they would want that power.

“Just leave this to me,” Harris said. “I have the grail water.”

Montague raised an eyebrow. “I can’t wait to see how you plan on getting the grail water into the demon.”

“He doesn’t have to drink it, Monty. Just the touch of it burns. We just need enough distractions to get close to him.”

“It’s that easy,” Montague said. “Why didn’t your family kill this demon a million years ago?”

“Because there is only one vial,” Harris said. “That’s why using it will make me an enemy of the Hapsburgs. I just want to make it crystal clear that the two of you should stay back. The vampires can weaken a demon and I’ll deal the finishing blow.”

“‘The vampires’,” Montague said. “What am I, then?”

“You’re my best friend,” Harris growled. “I don’t give a shit about the other vampires. After all, if Rayner and his clan get taken out you don’t even have to worry about having a sire anymore.”

Montague got quiet for a long moment. “Don’t ever say that again.”

“Monty, if you start to care about your sire, you’ll become beholden to him,” Harris said. “You’re stronger than that. There is no reason to protect him. They are real vampires but you’re not that far gone yet. I’ve seen you waking up from nightmares about how they murdered Lisbeth’s family.”

“Lisbeth might be in trouble, though,” Montague said. “And he protects her.”

“You don’t even know Lisbeth.”

“I sort of do,” Montague said. “At this point…I know all of them.”

Harris made a sound of frustration. “It’s happening.”

“What?”

“We’re losing you. I knew we would lose you. We can’t fight vampirism.”

“You’re not fucking losing me. I just don’t want Rayner to die.”

“No good warlock would care if a murderous vampire gets killed fighting a demon.”

“Guys!” I shouted, clapping my hands like I was breaking up a cat fight. “It’s so awesome to be in-fighting right before a big battle!”

Ohmigod.

For the rest of the drive I took charge by force. I turned on the radio and I wouldn’t let Montague keep “Welcome to the Jungle” on either. “We are listening to the bubbliest damn pop music I can find until y’all mellow out and if you don’t behave I am putting on those morning show guys who were talking about NASCAR!”

By late afternoon we reached Savannah. Montague drove us to a truly impressive mansion right in the heart of the city, and in the real world—not the parallel.

“This is where the vampires are?” I asked.

“Yes. They’re staying with Ulf.” He put the car in park. “This is where I went the last time. I wasn’t getting my mom a birthday present. I went to visit one of the oldest vampires in America.”

“Why? And why did you lie about it?”

He stroked a hand over the top of my head, his brown eyes tender but a little distant. He didn’t seem to know what to say.

But I got it. He was…becoming a vampire. When I first met him, he was trying to disregard the idea that he had a sire, but now…

Eventually, would he come to love Lisbeth? Instead of me? Would he consider Rayner, Silvus, Jie and Thom his brothers instead of Alec and Harris?

I wrapped my hand around his.

“I’m all yours,” he said.

Then he threw open the door. “Wait here,” he said. “I don’t know that this is a safe place for humans.”

I watched him walk into the grand house. The door opened for him, and he stepped inside. I knew he’d be back in a minute, but I was disconcerted.

“He can’t help it,” Harris said gently.

In a few moments, Montague did return with the rest of his clan. He could fit in with them now. I saw it. He was changing, becoming more graceful and assured with every year. He seemed sexier than he ever had, when I saw him with the others, the predatory beauty that they shared. They fit together, but I wasn’t going to let them have him.

Rayner walked up to Harris’ window. “Good day, little spawn of the vampire hunters,” he said. “This is truly a day for the history books. We would rather not step into your parallel, but we’ve rented two rooms at the Econ Lodge off of the I-95 highway, and we will prepare the gateway into Sinistral for you while you collect your friends.”

“The Econ Lodge?” Harris said. “Did you blow all your budget on those suits?”

“No one cares if you open the gates of hell at the Econ Lodge,” Jie said. “Yelp said ‘it was so bad I slept in my car’ ‘reeks of marijuana’ and ‘so many cockroaches’. That’s where we go for shenanigans, and a good meal.”

“Good lord, what a poor choice of words,” Silvus said. “Just to be clear, we are feeding on the humans, not the cockroaches.”

Okay, so they looked sexy, but they still didn’t quite have a monopoly on suave.

“I have given Montague the key. We’ll see you this evening,” Rayner said. “I hope you’re all ready for what you’re about to take on. I expect we’ll do most of the work, but we will need distractions.”

“We’re ready,” Harris said. “And I was thinking the same thing about you. I have plans for this fight.”

Rayner looked unimpressed, in the way that probably only a multi-centuries old being can look. “Well, we’ll discuss it at the hotel.”

From there, we entered the parallel. I was nervous because I half-expected the council to have spies or to have murdered Professor McGuinness or something, but he answered the door right away, and this time Professor Adams was there too.

“Come in,” he said. “I’m glad you made it here safely. Are you ready for this?”

“You look great!” I said. “Like…I barely recognized you! Is this your demon battling outfit?”

Professor McGuinness had gotten a tan and he was wearing linen pants and a pink shirt with the sleeves rolled up. “Oh—well,” he said. “I’ve been getting out, dear. After all that stuff you were saying about humans and that very enlightening trip to the mall…I thought, maybe I need to get away from the magical world now and then. In the Fixed Plane Savannah has this thing called a Pride Parade.”

“They have those in a lot of places,” Firian said.

“Don’t burst his bubble, Firian,” I said. “That’s great! So you went?”

“Yes. It was very eye-opening. Now I really see what Samuel meant when he always wanted to get out and about with the humans. I was always more of a stickler for the rules. I thought warlocks were obviously superior. So I’ve been sprucing things up around here. No more black.”

“It’s been good with me,” Professor Adams said. “I don’t know anything about decorating, but my lady has been appreciating the upgrade.”

“Have you been to this place called World Market?” McGuinness asked.

“Ohh…you redecorated too.”

“I got this rattan set on clearance for the porch but they wouldn’t give me a credit card. Apparently I don’t exist in the computer.”

“Are we killing a demon at a shitty motel or are we just talking about rattan?” Harris snapped. “This is our moment. Professor, I’m glad you’ve been enjoying life, but put on a cloak and let’s go.”

“Are you with us, Professor Adams?” I asked.

“Oh no no. I’m not fighting a demon,” he said. “I’m dating a demoness and I don’t want to tangle her up in any trouble with a high demon.”

“Well, we are going to kill said demon,” Harris said. “But, do what you have to do.”

Professor Adams shook his head. “You kids, I don’t know about this.”

McGuinness grabbed his cloak off the coat hanger. “None of us do, but we have to try.”

It was cloak time, baby. We’re talking wands out, fluttering velvet, smoke machine wizard action. We’re talking fashion for walking out of a building just before it blows up. This was the calm before the storm where we could show off, and nobody brought it like Master Blair.

We arrived at the motel and he showed up giving us Howl’s Moving Castle. Perfect hair, almost too much collar, some killer lace-up boots, and his wand. And then there was my demon stud in t-shirt and jeans. I ran into Alec’s arms.

“So no one has heard from Stu?” Ignatius said. “The vampires said Daisy couldn’t come either. And I thought you were turning Firian back into a human.”

“We ran out of time,” I said, shivering. “But…it’s enough, right? Harris has some holy magic from the Hapsburgs.”

“Water of the Holy Grail,” he said. “Stuart has to hide. The council is looking for him. Did you hear what happened with Orson?”

I could hear the girl at the check-in desk whispering on the phone to a manager about whether foxes were allowed inside, but the vampires were right. It seemed like anything could somehow blend in at a cheap roadside motel.

“I see,” Ignatius said, as Harris told him the story.

“I have something to show you,” Alec said, his arms around me.

“Oh yeah? I feel that,” I said, grinding against him.

“Not that. Well—maybe that too. We have a minute, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What we don’t have is a clean surface, but…”

“That’s okay,” he whispered in my ear.

Rayner and the rest of the clan had shown up, and it seemed like the adults were talking, so Alec pulled me aside into his motel room and picked me up by the legs. One thrust of his cock inside me and I almost forgot how much it really did smell like both pot smoke and cigarette smoke and also Raid, but he was strong enough to hold me so that I barely touched anything. The sex could have seemed as routine as needing to pee, but Alec always made me feel like I was the center of the universe. He made sure I was as satisfied as he was; half the time his incubus length could get right at my G spot, and luckily this was one of those times because I didn’t want to linger too long here.

He grinned at me as I panted. “It hasn’t really been that long,” he said.

“Yeah, right, don’t play cool,” I said. “What are you going to show me?”

He handed me a locket. “I made this for you…”

I opened it, and inside I found a miniature portrait of my mom. Like all of Alec’s art, it wasn’t an exact likeness, nor was it trying to be. He captured her essence.

“I saw her in Sinistral,” he said. “I wanted to see if I could paint her. So I’ve been trying, and trying, but I think I finally got it. So take this, and…it will help you.”

“Alec…”

“You helped me find out what happened to my mom,” he said.

“Yeah, and that didn’t work out very well…”

“It did,” he said. “I needed to know that side of me. And even if she had a terrible way of showing it, her motherly advice wasn’t wrong. I needed to embrace my incubus side and stop trying to just be a warlock. Things will work out better with your mom, Char. I promise.”

I wrapped my arms around him. I felt like we could go for a second round, so I forced myself to keep the kiss quick. “Thank you so much, Alec.” I tucked my hair behind my ears. “I should also tell you…”

“You slept with Harris?”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course you would know somehow.”

“I feel like I smell him on you…”

“Don’t say it that way. God, it just sounds skeevy.”

“Was it good?”

“It was…Harris. Like—we couldn’t stop bickering. But it was hot.”

“That’s how Harris shows affection,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to it…”

“To…”

“Seeing all of us inside you at once…” He brushed a hand under my skirt, teasing me through my panties with his fingertips.

I clamped my thighs around his hand, trying to shut him out. “If we make it out alive!”

“Spread those legs, princess…”

Aw, crap, okay, second round in a crappy motel.

Might as well live while I can.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Charlotte

“The moment is at hand,” Ignatius said. “We will open the gate and summon the Withered Lord. We will be drawn into Sinistral to wage the battle. It will be a dangerous place for Ethereal wizards, so you’ll have to be strong.”

“The Withered Lord has an unknown number of Sinistrals enslaved to him, willing to fight for him. We have to get through them quickly. They won’t stay loyal to him if he’s killed. They are prisoners,” Silvus said.

“Harris has the water from the holy grail,” Ignatius said. “All we really need to do is make contact.”

Anyway, I can sum this strategy meeting:

1. They talked for two hours.

2. They went around in circles.

3. No one knew for sure how to battle a high demon, but they sure had a lot of confidence anyway. You want egos? Throw a bunch of old vampires in with warlocks who are competitive with the vampires.

There was talk of tricks, battle formations, etcetera, but basically everyone was just going to do what they did best. The warlocks would cast spells while the vampires were going to do vampire stuff with this cache of weapons they had unfolded from a big wool blanket, swords and daggers for the older vampires and pistols for Thom.

My job was to save Mom.

I kept looking at Alec’s painting, and wondering how it would be enough this time if it wasn’t enough last time. What was I missing? Why wasn’t I good enough? Why didn’t the mere mention of Dad and me and how much we loved her make her want to come back?

“Enough,” Rayner said. “I’m tired of talk. I’ve walked this earth for five hundred years. I won’t die today. Let’s meet this demon today and tomorrow I’ll have Lisbeth in my arms, God willing.”

“I’m ready,” Ignatius said. “Ready to plead my case to the faery queen. I’ve always lived between worlds. Wyrd is where I belong.”

“Let’s do this,” Harris said.

“Join hands,” Silvus said.

“I’m opening the gate,” Rayner said. “We don’t need to join hands.”

“If you won’t do this my way, at least indulge me,” Silvus said. “Love and connection is anathema to demons. We might be unlikely allies, but we are allies all the same. Some of us love each other, and we all can find something to respect.” He held out a hand to Rayner. “Come on, my old adversary. You know it’s true.”

Rayner slowly held out a hand to Silvus, grumbling. He took Ignatius’ hand in his other, while Harris held out a hand to me readily, surprising me with the purpose of his touch. Montague gripped my other hand, and Montague and Alec took Firian’s paws, a subtle show of solidarity. Firian wasn’t just mine anymore. He was a part of what had become Us.

“I summon to me the demon of winter’s chill, the demon who snaps hearts like brittle twigs. I summon to me the demon who collects children like butterflies on pins, to suck the magic from their bones. I summon the high demon known as the Withered Lord,” Rayner said.

Personally, I could have done without all that. Maybe it was part of the process.

A crack appeared in the fabric of space ahead of us, and then it tore open, and darkness seeped out. The room turned cold, and the crack kept opening wider, becoming a portal that started tugging us in with suction.

Oh, shit. This was happening. I managed not to pee myself during this part, and that was worth bragging about.

The portals opened to what must have been Sinistral. We dropped into a frigid forest, bare trees dusted in a bleak, dry snow—and as soon as we landed, a bunch of demonic creatures raced out to attack us. Like, no talk, no preamble. Pretty rude. The vampires got to work without blinking. Rayner’s sword slashed outward as he grunted angrily, blood splaying on the snow. Thom shot some ravens out of the sky, crumpled black feathers falling.

Almost immediately, I could feel the forest turning colder. It was angry. I could just feel it. I hadn’t dressed properly for cold weather but I could tell it wouldn’t even matter. This cold wouldn’t be held back by clothes.

Ignatius threw up a protective bubble around us. It shimmered briefly and then a voice spoke as if from the trees in some dark tongue, maybe that language they speak in Mordor. Whatever it was, it ate away the protective bubble. One minute we held onto a fragile safety, and the next minute I felt completely exposed again.

Ignatius was driven back a step, nearly crashing into me before he switched to a fire spell. I was, at this point, huddled around Firian while fire leapt around me, driving back the wolves enough to keep us safe.

“Kili Forest, Charlotte,” he said. “You’re good at fire spells.”

That was the region of Fortune’s Favor where you were always getting attacked by wolves and if you stayed there too long, your charisma would drop out of sadness, but everything in the forest was weak against fire.

“Right.” I cast a quick fire spell, the flames bursting around my wand. The vampires had killed a couple of wolves already. It wasn’t a pretty scene and the battle had hardly begun.

“Aren’t these wolves captives of the Withered Lord like my grandfathers?” I cried.

“Probably. Doesn’t matter,” Rayner said. “They have to work for him, so we have to kill them.”

“Careful—” Harris yanked me out of the way just in time before an arrow landed at my feet.

Archers? Yeah, now we had archers. Professor McGuinness let out a sudden yell of pain and I thought he was hit, but instead a snake was biting his ankle.

The vampires charged the trees to bring down the archers, who were these pale, wiry, dark elf looking girls. We turned our magic toward the trees, flushing a few more out to be dispatched by the vampires, but the vampires were killing them too. Like, without even blinking. Pointy-eared girls with dark hair and blue-hued skin collapsed around us with lifeless eyes.

We really could die too.

It was hard not to feel completely rattled.

“Behind us!” Montague said, pulling my attention in other directions—too many directions. While the vampires were duking it out with the girls, the temperature seemed to get even colder. The forest was misty behind us, and as I was watching, the mist half-formed into phantoms. Every phantom had the same face, white skin stretched against the bones of their faces, their eyes glowing blue in a hollow way. They drifted toward us.

“They all have his face,” Alec said.

“Welcome to my forest,” the phantoms said, almost—but not quite—in unison. “There are only eleven of you. And infinite numbers of me. I thought there would be more of you. I thought there would be thirteen, thirteen…”

Firian growled in a low, worried way. “It would be really stupid,” he said, “if we failed because we needed thirteen. Stuart is the thirteenth child. There were supposed to be thirteen of us. The magical realms love numbers.”

“I’m not going to accept losing over that,” Alec said. But his hot demon ass was shivering. Since he was in his full on Sinistral demon form, even his tail was shivering.

It would be really stupid, I thought, if we died of hypothermia and not even fighting demons, but that started to feel possible on top of everything else. I was shivering so much I thought I might break my teeth. I tried to cast a warming spell but my brain seemed stuck in a reeling loop of fear as the phantoms came closer and closer.

“Come on, everyone,” Ignatius said. “Holy ward!”

We all chanted together, generating a new barrier of warm light, and this one seemed a little stronger than the one Ignatius made by himself. Life slowly bled back into my frigid—

Aaand nevermind. The phantoms came toward the ward. The moment their bodies struck the shimmering bubble, they melted it instantly. And they kept coming. I scrambled back. The vampires moved to the forefront to protect us. Well, maybe not to protect us, really, because I don’t think they cared, but let a girl dream. I wanted someone to save me, but maybe there was no one. The vampires couldn’t touch the phantoms with their blades or their strength.

“Speak to me, demon,” Rayner said.

All the phantoms opened their creaking mouths and spoke, still not quite in synch, in the brittle voice of the Withered Lord. Your compel magic means nothing to me. You cannot touch me.

“Speak to me! Where is Lisbeth?” Rayner swept his blade toward the phantoms, meeting no resistance, but he swiped it again anyway. “What have you done with her?”

I am shielding her from you.

“Why?”

Because you vampires and your arrogance and your insistent affection for one stupid girl is annoying. Because I can. Because I feed off of your misery, and there is nothing more delicious than toying with all of your affections…

“At least come out here and fight me with your corporeal form!” Rayner growled.

The Withered Lord’s phantoms lifted their hands and shot cold fire at Rayner, his clothes burning away and then the flesh of his chest singeing as he screamed.

Silvus threw up shielding spells while Montague moved away from me and toward them to help. I saw Harris’ brow furrow.

Rayner collapsed to his knees, hissing with pain. “Don’t touch me.”

Harris moved forward a step, but then hesitated.

“What is it?” Firian asked.

“He hasn’t shown his true form yet. Would it work?”

I knew he meant the grail water. “But he can hurt us with these ghost creatures, so why would he ever show his true form?” I whispered.

“This really is a boss battle,” Firian said. “Charlotte, you’ve been training for this all your life.”

Meanwhile, the Withered Lord wasted no time swooping around Ignatius with the cold phantom fingers of his three illusionary forms. You know, Ignatius, the more time I spent with you, the more I like you. You smell like ambition. Like Emily.

“I am not joining you,” Ignatius said. “I would rather die.”

I could arrange that.

“Wait—no,” I said.

“Ignatius? Charlotte?”

I heard my mom’s voice emerging from behind the phantoms, and I felt faintly dizzy as I saw their ghostly forms part. She walked toward me. She looked…normal. Human. She was gorgeous, too. I could see why Dad idolized her. I never looked that put together and sophisticated, but…I saw the family resemblance. It was so weird, seeing so much of me in another woman. She had on a black trench and, no kidding, skintight gold pants. Mom showed up to the battle in skintight gold pants. Fucking rock star. Her hair was past her shoulders, thick auburn, with some light curl mine didn’t have.

“Mom?” I felt choked. “Mom…”

She held out her hands. “I want you here, little goblin. You and Firian.”

She seemed more mellow than when I summoned her. Kind of sad. I didn’t know what to say at first. I wanted to hug her and talk to her like she was normal, but she was working for a demon who took pleasure in killing people.

“I can’t be here, Mom,” I said. “I already told you that.”

“But now you have friends here,” she said. “I would teach you everything I know. No one would ever hurt you or control you again.”

“Do you realize this demon killed your cousin?”

“Y—yes.” Some tears formed in her eyes although her face was resolute.

“Emily,” the Withered Lord said, speaking from just one phantom now, instead of the multi-voice-stereo-effect thing he had going on before. He was more gentle with her, but it was just as terrifying, especially since the voice was coming from this dead-eyed ghost. “You know the bargain.”

“Charlotte will join us,” she said sharply. “She will. Just let me talk to her.” She looked at me again, a spark in her eyes that said, Bad things will happen.

I took a step back. “No. I won’t join you.”

She swallowed. “Charlotte, I’ll protect you here. Do you think the council is so innocent?”

“No.”

“The faeries of Wyrd? The ones who won’t even see you? Evil is everywhere.”

“Love is everywhere too!” I said. “No matter what world you live in, you can choose that instead, but you didn’t do that! You chose a demon who kills people and I keep waiting for some…catch, some explanation, and all I can see is that you chose this. Mom, please…come home.”

“Your family will no longer accept you, Emily,” the Withered Lord said. “Did your parents ever come to rescue you? Would Evan understand you at all? Your marriage is ruined. Your family doesn’t want anything to do with you. I am all you have.”

“That is not true,” I said. “My grandfather Rhys came to me in a vision and told me that he wanted to save you. That they had been trying all this time.”

“Well, they never came for me,” she said. “And they didn’t bother to see you in the US. They’re still in bloody Australia, aren’t they?”

I frowned. “Maybe there is a reason. Maybe he is keeping them away!”

“They are afraid I might kill them,” the Withered Lord said. “Because I might. However, the fact is, you are far too broken to ever belong with your family again.”

“He’s right,” she said. “I can’t go home. But you could come to me and be with me. If you don’t—”

I felt like I was standing on a wobbly rock at the edge of a gorge. One wrong move… “I am willing to meet the Withered Lord,” I said.

“You have,” the demon replied, a hint of annoyance in his fragile, ragged voice.

“I mean, you know, formally,” I said. “These are just your illusions.”

“Ah, you want to shake hands, little witchling? You want to see me in the flesh? Follow me and I’ll show you the power I can offer you.”

I glanced at my guys. “I need to meet with him.”

They exchanged very tense expressions, and Montague put an arm around me and kissed my head, followed by Alec, giving Harris cover to slip the grail water in my pocket. The Withered Lord’s phantoms turned to a path that appeared between the snowy trees. Mom gave me a pained look as she started to follow him. I glanced at Firian and he came with me. The phantoms whipped back, their ghostly wisps trailing around them like rags, and created a gate of ice that separated me from my guys.

Your familiar may come. No one else.

Mom was next to me. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”

“Is it, though?” I whispered back. “Mom, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

I don’t know why I was asking. Her body language answered for me. She was scared. She didn’t know what she was doing at all.

I started to get even more nervous. When would I reach max nervousness? Was it actually infinite?

The Withered Lord’s path dead-ended at a rocky cave. On the exterior the huge doorway, which must have been nine feet wide and tall, was shaped from massive grey rocks. Inside, ice sparkled from the interior walls, lit by a few blue flickering witch lights. A few sad looking animals were around, sleeping or staring at us. I thought a high demon might have a castle, but no, this wasn’t even as nice as Stuart’s cave. Cave living was trendy in the magical world, I guess. The phantoms gathered around the wide entrance, watching us as we entered.

I brushed my fingers along Firian’s head, thankful that at least he was with me, because the sense of dread and despair that swept over me as we neared the cave was almost overwhelming. Firian was shivering too.

“Oh…” I was feeling near tears without being sure of why.

You feel a dying world, the Withered Lord said. The magical world. I have taken in these creatures of Sinistral, children without homes, desperate souls too weak to survive without my protection, and I give them a home.

“They still look desperate,” I said.

“These do not work hard enough, so they will always be desperate!” The voice came from inside the rooms of the cavern. My mother bowed as I heard soft footsteps approach from the depths of the cave. Everything went silent.

The Withered Lord had arrived. He was bony and white, with admittedly terrific cheekbones, black claws and horns, and glowing blue eyes that I couldn’t meet without immediately shying away. The sight of him had definitely ruined some fan art for me, and I felt like something terrible would happen if our eyes met.

“Here I am, Charlotte,” he said. “A demon in the flesh. I know you find me terrifying now. Repulsive, perhaps. But I can give you so much. I can give you the ability to forge your own destiny. You will have all the power you need. You can take your lovers as you choose, live as you choose, protect the people you love.”

“As long as we obey you,” I said.

“You must give me strength from the Fixed Plane,” he said. “That is necessary. It’s the bargain I offer, as I once offered your grandfathers a home when they were orphaned, and all I asked for them to do is play the music they enjoyed and send the power of the crowds back home to their master.”

A part of my brain was like, I cannot even believe you’re standing here in a cave in a parallel world talking to an early rejected design for the Night King, or maybe cocaine-era David Bowie playing an ice demon. I tried to keep holding onto that thought because otherwise I really would pee myself, because there was this permeating sense of despair and futility that surrounded the demon, and my mom was right there next to me, close enough to hug, but a million miles away.

I was so scared of losing her, and so scared of getting her back. She was broken. If I brought her home, would…it all be okay?

You know it wouldn’t all be okay.

But I had to try anyway.

When you love someone, you don’t really care.

I decided that I had one moment, and everything I tried before already failed, so I was just going to be honest.

“Mom, I can’t follow a demon,” I said. “I won’t hurt people to gain power. I came here to bring you home, and—and I’m scared. You haven’t been in the real world for twenty years and I don’t know how you’ll fit in. I don’t know if you and Dad will still know how to love each other. I don’t know what you’ll do at our house. I’m sure you’ll have PTSD. Maybe you’re not even a good person anymore. I don’t actually know. Dad realizes all this too. We talked about it. We know it’s going to be hard. But he still loves you, and so do I, and no matter how hard it is…we want you back with us.”

I took out the painting of her Alec gave me and offered it to her. And then I tugged off my ring that was actually her ring and held that out too. “We never stop thinking about you. Never.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “Charlotte, I—I can’t believe he’d say that if he really knew me as I am now.”

“He said it. You can believe him or not. And it’s how I feel too. There is nothing harder than growing up without you. What do you even have to lose?”

The Withered Lord looked at my mother and beckoned his claws. “Come to me, Emily.”

Mom hesitated, and I could tell he wasn’t used to this, so that even the slightest hesitation made him suddenly straighten his long, bony limbs and dig his claws into her. “You know what you have to do,” he whispered.

Mom’s face.

I would never forget the way she looked when she suddenly cried, “Charlotte, run!” and I saw the demon’s teeth bare, the look of fury in his eyes when he realized she would betray him for me. He’s going to kill her, I thought.

I didn’t run. I tore the bottle of grail water from my pocket and tossed it at him. Instantly, it started eating at his flesh, leaving black burns behind, and he let out a roar of pain.

“Mom!” I grabbed her hand and we both started running.

“What was that?” she gasped.

“Holy grail water!” We ran down the passage out of the cave, but we were immediately confronted by a Hitchcockian level of ravens swarming at us, aiming for our eyes. I screamed, quickly casting fire spells and swinging my wand around like a club. The various beasts who had been bound to the Withered Lord were edging away.

“Hey spectators, I just killed your captor, you want to give me a hand?” I cried.

Is that what you think just happened? You think some holy water can kill me? The voice seemed to penetrate my brain.

“Bloody hell!” Mom screamed. “He’s still alive! Just run, run!”

I whirled. “Where’s Firian! Oh—there you are. Oh—!”

My hesitation almost cost me; I heard a skittering behind me although what came out was not the if-Nosferatu-was-almost-good-looking white bony demon, but a huge white spider, and it still had these black horns.

I wish I had not even seen that in my whole life. I let out a scream that was like ten cats getting their tails stepped on. The spider was limping and kind of charred looking on its entire right side, which was the only thing that kept it from advancing toward us with completely terrifying speed.

The guys had already been battling more creatures while we were gone; I could see that my group was exhausted and bloodied. Rayner had been injured before I left; Thom was also on the ground collapsed. And then I saw Montague, collapsed in the snow while Alec and Harris were doing their best to fend off a snarling bear-like beast with glowing red eyes.

“Is he okay? Is anyone helping him?”

I ran for Montague. Ignatius was leaning over him, trying to cast a healing spell. He frowned at me. “No one here has studied advanced healing!”

Right. That was women’s magic.

“I have,” Mom said.

Ignatius and Mom exchanged the briefest complicated look, two old friends meeting, and then he saw the Withered Lord just behind me and immediately shoved me down to Montague and took up a fighting stance. “Just stay with him.”

Mom put a hand on Montague’s forehead. “He’s a vampire…he needs blood.”

The Withered Lord spider was gathering speed as it locked its multiple eyes on Harris. The demon let out a crackling roar of agony as it cried, “You, boy! The holy water came from you!”

He launched at Harris, lifted him up, and flew into the air with a crazy spider jump that carried him well out of our reach before landing. Harris barely kept hold of his wand, and I heard him shout the French words of a spell, trying to land a final blow on the Withered Lord, but he was cut off by the demon goring him with his horns.

Blood.

It happened so fast.

Harris’ body, flung upward, pinned on the horns. They drove through him, coming out of his back. He screamed and I knew he…

After that one scream, Harris went limp.

He wouldn’t live through that. No. I didn’t know what an advanced healer could do, but I knew they could not heal that.

I stood in shock. Paralyzed. The demons could have killed me in that moment, if I didn’t have my friends to protect me. I shook my head, quickly forcing myself back into action, casting a paralysis spell at a boar that advanced on Montague.

The Withered Lord shook off Harris’ body so he was thrown into a snowdrift like trash to the curb, and then the demon turned back to us.

Montague clutched my arm and pulled me close to him. “Charlotte,” he said, his eyes wide. “Trust me. Let me taste you.”

Chapter Forty

Charlotte

I only paused a moment.

“I do trust you,” I said.

“Good.”

“I’ve…I’ve wanted this.”

“I know.”

He pulled me to him and bit my neck. The pain was a sweet sting as I felt my life force flooding into him and his arms around me, his vitality returning. It felt even better than I expected as his venom was drug-like. Not that I’d done drugs, but if drugs were like this, no wonder they were a problem. There was a brief wave of lust and euphoria, although it didn’t last long because too many terrible things were happening around me.

Still, we both felt better for it.

The other vampires perked up. After a moment, Montague lifted his head, wiping my blood off his mouth, and held me. “No,” he said. “You’ll get your Lisbeth. She’s all mine.”

“Oh…” I was just a little dizzy. Montague handed me to Professor McGuinness for support, because Alec and Ignatius and my mom were already hurrying to fight the Withered Lord and check on Harris. Check on? More like…confirm the worst.

“I feel ready to deal this bastard a death blow,” Montague said. He picked up a sword abandoned in the fight, maybe Rayner’s. “I’m going to be your Wesley today, Char.”

“If you’re going to drink my blood, you’d better!” Then I added, “I love you, Montague.”

I was so afraid he would die too. Right before my eyes. Just like that. I couldn’t even process.

I clutched Firian, who formed a protective bubble just for the two of us, but Professor McGuinness was still struggling to keep up a wider defense, and I knew I couldn’t dwell on what had happened. I had to help my friends.

Dead.

Ina was dead, too.

She’s in the Haven now, but she is alive. She came back.

Alec picked up Harris’ body, my tall arrogant strolling boy now seeming so limp and fragile, and he brought him to me. His blue eyes were still open. I couldn’t handle it. Well, I thought I couldn’t, but somehow I did. I just silently shut his eyes with my hand. “Watch over him,” Alec said, his Adam’s apple lifting as he swallowed back his own sadness. “So we can bring him back home.”

“Oh no…”

It was too real.

He was so, so pale.

“Charlotte,” Firian said. “I’m so sorry.”

In this moment, Firian didn’t make any jokes, he just quietly acknowledged that I had feelings for Harris, that he had finally started to really become a part of us, and now he was gone…so quickly and stupidly…

The Withered Lord was still fighting ferociously, despite many injuries. Plus, Jie didn’t seem to like spiders, which I could not blame him for at all, so Silvus was the only vampire in the clan still fighting in earnest. Jie picked up one of the bows from the fallen dark elf girls and tried to shoot the spider demon from a distance.

“The holy grail water really did it,” Firian said.

That was generous, maybe. It wasn’t looking that good. He was making me feel better, like Harris’ efforts had some reward. Like we would make it out of this.

“Yeah. Yeah. We never would have had any chance without it. But—” I wiped my eyes. “I have to help them.”

“No. Just stay here. Alec told you to watch Harris. And Monty just drank your blood. You’re weak.”

“What good is any of this if Alec dies?” I got to my feet, just in time to see the Withered Lord grab Alec by a wing and tear at it. The thin skin of his demon wings split and his back arched in what I could tell was some serious pain.

“Alec!” I tried to run but a wave of serious dizziness overtook me from giving Montague my blood.

“Just hold me, Charlotte,” Firian said. “He’s too strong for us. Sometimes you can’t fight anymore. Just hold me like you used to hold your stuffed cat in bed when you were sad.”

I knew he was telling me this for my own benefit. He didn’t need to be held; familiars would accept death for their witch. But he always knew what I needed. I shut my eyes but I could hear Montague scream as he was struck and Alec still groaning in pain and when I opened them again, I saw the Withered Lord aim for my mom.

“I told you what would happen,” he said. “Your life or hers, Emily.” He shifted back into demon form and grabbed the sword that Montague had dropped.

“Kill me and let her go,” Mom begged, leaving herself open.

“No!” I staggered toward the fray, shooting fire that fizzled in the snow.

Sometimes you die fighting the boss, I thought. The whole party, wiped out.

“Don’t give up, Mom, please! Dad—Dad needs to see you!”

Chapter Forty-One

Charlotte

A portal opened, ripping into the fabric of Sinistral with sparks of light.

I stopped in my tracks. This could be bad. Maybe the demon had backup.

Stuart and Daisy appeared.

Stuart. Daisy. Like fricking ANGELS.

“Daisy and Stu in the house and we’re going to destroy—!” Daisy began, before seeing Harris and tripping over her own feet. “Oh—oh no no no…”

“I’m so sorry,” Stuart said. “The council is looking for me, and I was trying to get to Daisy.” He said that and then he immediately turned to the Withered Lord. “Ignatius!”

“It’s bad, Stu!” Ignatius cried. “Very bad!”

“My magic is fresh,” Stuart said, and now the Withered Lord did start to back down as Stuart waved his wand, his fae robes flowing, his hair whipping around, and warm light surrounded the Withered Lord and made him glow.

The demon seemed to be bound by the faery magic. In his already weakened state, he finally seemed deflated by this last strong burst of magic.

“Get the sword!” he said. “While I have him held down. We need to get his head.”

Who’s going for it? I looked around. Silvus was the only vampire still standing, and he didn’t look like the beheading type. Oh wait, there was Jie, now that the Withered Lord had gotten out of the spider thing, but he still had sort of a ‘hell no’ face. Ignatius?

It was Mom who reached for the sword.

“Emily, do you know what you’re doing?” Ignatius asked.

“Yes.” She picked up the sword. “Master, you showed me the power I craved,” she said, and even now, her words were not entirely reassuring. “But you never could offer me the family I needed. I can’t follow you anymore. I am releasing all of your children.”

“You will miss me, Emily,” he said, as she swung the blade.

I cringed. I wanted to look away. I’m not sure why I didn’t, because the sight of my own mother striking the head off a demon with what must have been a really sharp sword would be seared on my brain forever.

The body of the Withered Lord crumpled into dust, while Stuart picked up the head and tossed it in a sack. He hoisted it up. “It is done.”

Daisy was dry heaving a little. When we looked at her, she quickly tried to look nonchalant. “I’m glad he’s dead. Revenge at last. Although I didn’t really do much.”

“You did plenty,” Stuart said. “You got me here. Charlotte, now you and I are going to bring this to the faery queen.”

“Me? Just me? What about Harris?”

“We will, of course, give him a proper burial when we return,” he said gently.

“No, seriously,” Montague said. “I can’t think about the faeries right now. Our best friend just got killed.”

“We’re injured,” Alec said, through gritted teeth. “But Harris—”

“Professor?” I asked. “Is there a way to…I mean…necromancers can bring back the dead, right? Ina was brought back.”

“No.” I knew he was going to give me a look. “There is a price to pay for that, Charlotte. You have to pay a price.”

“What price?”

“I had to offer my power to…him…for Ina,” my mother said.

“I—I know. I know that. But you had to give yourself up to the Withered Lord, and now he’s dead anyway,” I said.

“Something very precious to you,” Professor McGuinness said.

“Like my magic.”

“Charlotte, you can’t give up your magic,” Stuart said. “You have the Wyrd wand. You’re the only one the faery queen will want to deal with.”

“I don’t care about that. I know all you care about is making this deal, but I need to protect my friends first. Harris never even got to enjoy his life. He had just disowned himself from his family and—and he got the grail water that let us weaken the Withered Lord long enough for you to get here, and now you’re just going to let him die?”

“If we don’t get the power of Wyrd, you are all in danger anyway!” Ignatius said.

“You too,” I said. “You are both willing to let terrible things happen to us. I was with you until now. But I can’t…I can’t…just let him die.”

I wrapped my hand around Harris’ cold one. “Come back to us, Harrison Nicolescu. We still have so many things to argue about. I give you my magic… all of my magic!”

My hands glowed and I felt woozy, but nothing really happened.

“Damn it!” I was freaking out. Ignatius and Stuart looked about two seconds away from pulling me off of his body.

Professor McGuinness knelt beside me. “You will need help.” He took my hand, elegantly voicing a spell in French, but speaking slowly, prompting me to join in.

“Igor!” Ignatius said. “You can’t let this girl give up her magic.”

“I’ll do it,” Daisy said, walking forward. “I’ll give up my magic to save his stupid ass.” I knew Daisy felt her magic was a terrible burden anyway, and I knew she must have some affection for Harris even if they didn’t match well as a couple, so I wasn’t going to complain. I was very touched that both Professor McGuinness and Daisy were so willing to help.

But Rayner, despite his serious injuries, managed to get to his feet awfully fast when he heard that. “No way,” he said. “We helped you take out the demon. Now, I need your power as the diviner to find Lisbeth. That was part of the bargain.”

“Get my grandma to do it!” she snapped.

“No,” he said. “We had a deal. You said you would do anything to take this bastard out, and we fought ourselves to injury protecting your friends, whom we honestly have no reason to give a damn about.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Daisy, he’s right. I’ll give up my magic. You need to divine the fate of Lisbeth. Just one last divination and then you can stop.”

“Oh, I can stop? I can just ‘stop’?” Her hands clenched into fists. “Fine. Whatever.”

I turned back to Harris and the professor and I took up the threads of the spell again. Now I could feel magic beginning to flow through our hands.

“You are making a huge mistake,” Ignatius said. “The fate of the entire magical world depended on you.”

“There must be another way!” I said. “I’m sure you can find someone else with a Wyrd wand, or maybe try just talking to the faery queen anyway!”

I was already weak from Montague draining my blood, and now I could feel the magic draining out of me and into Harris. It wasn’t the best feeling, but I could see it working. I could feel the warmth flowing out of me and into him, see color returning to his face.

I exhaled, a small laugh-sob, as I felt his body twitch.

Mom rushed close to us. “I need to heal his wounds now.”

All three of us had our hands on him, and he groaned with pain as his eyes fluttered open.

“Harris!” “Harris!” Montague, Alec and me all descended on him now.

“Ugh…ow.”

“You’re alive.”

“What the hell happened?”

“Well, the Withered Lord just straight up killed you in like two seconds,” I said, through a wave of extreme weariness. “And I gave up my magic to bring you back. So, basically, you owe me big time forever and ever.”

“I owe you? You owe me. The grail water worked, didn’t it?” He coughed and winced. “I was dead?”

“Yes, you were very dead, and now you’re undead, so I will need to prescribe you a vitality regimen,” Professor McGuinness said. “Post-revival care is crucial.”

“Oh god,” he groaned. “I’m fucking undead.”

“How about ‘thank you’?” But I couldn’t stop smiling. “I just wasn’t ready to stop arguing with you this soon,” I said. “I saved your life. You owe everything to me.”

“You already said that.”

“I’m gonna say it a lot.”

“Charlotte…,” Firian said behind me, and then suddenly his arms were around me.

“Firian!? Are you human again? Or is this just an illusion hug?”

“I felt your magic drain away and just like Adia lost her ability to turn into a bird, I guess…I also am losing my foxiness.”

“Oh.” That wasn’t the outcome I intended. It started to hit me that I had done something drastic.

“I’d rather be a human than a fox,” he said.

“But you’d rather be both.” He wasn’t fooling me.

“You did the right thing,” he said softly. “Magic has consequences. Painful ones. It doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing.”

Harris looked at my mom. “So this is…”

“Emily,” she said, offering a hand. “I’m Charlotte’s mum. Mom, I mean, I—yes, we were going with Mom.” She looked troubled.

“And that’s the head?” He looked at Stuart and his conspicuously head-shaped, bloody bag. “That actually happened?”

“Yes,” Stuart said. “But we do have a problem now.”

Chapter Forty-Two

Charlotte

So, this is how I, Charlotte Byrne, went from being the Chosen One with the rarest and special-est of wands, the inherited magic of my great-uncle Samuel, and all the hopes of a band of dedicated band of rebels, gave it all up to save the exiled son of former royalty.

When you put it that way, I felt a little bit awful. I had the chance to make a whole community a better place, and I botched it.

But at the same time…

Ignatius and Stuart still chose power over love, right? They let bad things happen to their friends and they knew some of us might die fighting the demon.

Love meant more to me.

Keeping my own clan together? That was more important. Did it really matter if we used our magic? If we lived in a parallel? We could just be normal, and we’d be together, and that was better. I think Professor McGuinness saw that, and that was why he helped me. What’s really a better way to spend your weekend, learning to raise the dead, or going to a pride parade in Savannah? Shooting fire out of your hands, or watching Netflix with your dad and the boys you love?

I couldn’t control what the witches and warlocks wanted to do with their lives. I had to protect my own.

Stuart and Ignatius could handle this. They still had a demon head. Maybe that would count for something.

They weren’t that happy with me. They opened the portal back to the Fixed Plane and warned us that none of us would be welcome at Merlin College anymore.

“We haven’t been welcome there ourselves,” Montague said. “Good riddance.”

“And since I’m a Sinistral now, I don’t want to deal with magic,” Alec said. “I’d rather just become an artist for the sake of art.”

“Even in high school, we were always sneaking out to the real world and getting in trouble for it,” Harris said.

“Emily, are you going home, then?” Ignatius asked.

“Er…yes,” she said. “Yes. Charlotte and I are going home.”

“I wonder if Dad will let us have some tenants…,” I said.

“I have a cabin that sleeps three, and no current bookings on Airbnb,” Firian said. “So his opinion doesn’t matter. Although two of you will have to double up and then we’ll get an air mattress.”

“This could be fun,” Alec said.

“Indoor plumbing?” Harris asked.

“Yes,” Firian said. “And wifi.”

“This is such a waste,” Ignatius stormed, pointing a finger at me after a dramatic whirl of his jacket. “We fought for fifty years to get women admitted to warlock schools and vice versa and you threw it away.”

“Lay off her,” Professor McGuinness said. “She’s young and they are all so close to each other. Closer than I ever let myself get to anyone. The magical world has hardly begun to eat them alive, so just let them enjoy themselves. All you’re doing is starting a war that will wage for generations.”

“It’s a war that needs to happen and you’ve always been with me on that in theory! A war that would bring so much opportunity to so many!” Ignatius shook his head. “You’ve always been a coward, Igor. I’ve never been so disappointed. But it’s done. Go home.”

Daisy left with the vampires, after giving me a hug, and then giving all my boys a hug. “Goodbye, Robin Hood. Goodbye, Undead Boy. Goodbye, Sexy Demon. Goodbye, Montague.”

“I don’t get a nickname?”

She squeezed me tight. “Bye, girl. I’ll see you around someday.”

“You’ll see me soon, right? You can come visit.”

“I’m not leaving the magical world,” she said. “I wish I could. But I’m a realist.” She whispered, “Maybe they’ll never find Lisbeth and be in the market for a new thrall.”

I hoped she was joking. Man, it was hard to tell with Daisy. “Be careful,” I said.

“Hmm hmm! Of course. I can handle myself. Think of me when you watch Queer Eye.”

We had lunch with Professor McGuinness and Adams, Montague had to stop off and beg for blood from the vampires of Savannah, and we jammed into his SUV. Alec was still injured although his injured wing luckily vanished in the real world, and Harris still looked sickly, while I was still dizzy and craving steak, so we were all a bit lethargic.

“Where are we?” Mom asked.

“Savannah.”

“So we’re still in Georgia,” she said, looking out the window. “I forgot how green it is here. It smells so good even in the winter!” After a moment, as we pulled out of the city, she turned to me—as we were crammed next to each other in the back seat—she said, “You did the right thing, Charlotte. I’m not sure what we set out to do is really possible, and none of us were happy for the fight.”

“Yeah…thanks,” I said.

A part of me was still uncertain. I remembered Ignatius at the trial. How they treated him, humiliated him, and insulted him. What battle for a better world had ever been easy? I was the person who just gave up.

But look what Mom did to save Ina. If you have the chance to fight with death…who could resist?

I shivered, knowing that I had failed to be the sort of necromancer Samuel was. I let my own desire get in the way.

And my magic…

Mom saw the look on my face. “You might not be a witch anymore, but you’re still a werewolf.”

“A quarter werewolf. What does that do?”

“Well, have you ever tried?”

“Tried to turn into a wolf? No. Wouldn’t that just happen?”

“Well, let’s see,” she said.

“Where will Monty get his blood now?” Alec asked. “Is he going to have to become one of those deer hunting vampires?”

“My dad knows some deer hunters. I’m sure we can figure it out. ‘Mom’s back, and they eat blood sausage in the UK, got any?’ See, problem solved.”

Montague looked at me like he had no intention on surviving with deer blood alone.

“I can’t believe I’m going to see him again…,” Mom said, sounding nervous, but then she tossed her hair a little, running her fingers through it, trying to pretend she could handle anything. “Well, I suppose whatever happens, I’ll find a way. And you said Adia and Richard are still in the states? I do miss them… I forgot how much I missed them.”

Dad had no idea what was coming.

When we pulled up the driveway to our house, it was late in the afternoon and considerably colder in this part of the state. Mom’s fingernails scratched the window glass as she started tearing up. “Fuck me,” she said. “It’s all coming back now.”

“So the Withered Lord makes you forget?” I asked.

“Not forget, exactly. Fade. All of this seemed so dim. I’ve wasted so, so much time. I’m going to make it up to you, Charlotte. I’m going to be a proper mother to you now. I’ll take you shopping and show you how to become a wolf, maybe…”

“Oh, yeah, proper mother stuff like that.” I laughed a tad nervously. No doubt, Mom was gorgeous and classy and worldly and boy, did she not seem like she belonged in Appalachian Georgia. “Let me warn Dad you’re here.” He was already stepping out of the front door.

She completely ignored me and opened her door. “Evan?”

“Emily?” He started running.

She flung herself into his arms and held him tight and they were both crying and then I started crying too, but Montague and Firian grabbed me and Alec and Harris piled onto them. It was major hugging time all around and then we scrambled—or limped—out of the car.

“I—I can’t believe it,” Dad said. “You haven’t even aged a day! Holy shit, you must think I look ancient.”

“Oh no, you’re a silver fox, my love. I’m just so happy to see your face. I have so much to apologize for—to attempt to explain…”

“Well, I just picked up some beers, come on in! I have no idea how this happened. I’m sure it’s a story. And—you brought—everyone. Come in.”

“I appreciate your hospitality,” said Montague, always a gentleman, shaking his hand.

“I’m sorry it’s not much. We’re not fancy around here.” Dad noticed Harris. “I haven’t met you, have I?”

“Hey, Dad, um…this is Harris. They’re all, like, a clan. Bond brothers or whatever you call it.”

“Like my fathers,” Mom said.

“Oh, a…fourth…”

“Yeah,” I said. “But that’s it. Just these four. Which I realize is a lot of boyfriends, all here at once, but, um, yeah. They’ll stay in Firian’s cabin.”

“And you’ll stay in your own bed.”

“Of course she’s not going to stay in her own bed, look at them, they’re bloody gorgeous,” Mom said. “Good job, my little goblin! My own mother, well, she wasn’t always the most attentive mother but she did seem like the happiest woman I ever knew.”

Wow. Okay then. My own mom just knocked me speechless and possibly ruined my relationship with my dad forever.

“She’s kidding, she’s kidding,” I said.

“Do you want to just get back in the SUV and peel out?” Firian whispered.

“Shh. It’s—it’s fine.”

I had a vague sense of loss, that weird unsettled feeling you get when you feel like you’ve made a mistake but you’re not exactly sure what could have been different. I guess it was just how major changes felt, and I’d get used to them. We would all find a way to live a normal life in the Fixed Plane.

I walked into my room and dumped my bag on my bed, amidst the stuffed animals. “Hmm?” I said, noticing a note addressed to me in very florid cursive on my computer desk.

Charlotte,

One more test for you. One chance to redeem yourself. When you have licked your wounds, come to the Wyrd tree and speak my name…

Queen Morgana, Seventh of the House of Coral, Her Royal Majesty the Queen of all Faeries.

I shoved the letter in a drawer. Life was complicated enough…for now.

Battle of the Hexes

Chapter One

Charlotte

“Aw yeah! Look at me! It’s happening. I’m spaaaarkliiing.” I reached over and fist bumped Firian.

“Chou Omega mode achieved,” he said. “Just in time for the sunrise.”

“Should we go to bed? Now that you mention it…am I blind?” I blinked at him. My eyes were dry yet watery and I was also kinda starving.

Firian started unbuttoning his shirt. He tapped my chin and I realized I was watching him.

“Not blind,” he said, giving me a soft kiss.

“Good.” I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he lifted me up and dropped me on the bed. My sock feet caught his knees, and I arched into him.

“This is the life,” I murmured. “Just playing video games all night with you and Alec…no worries. No technology sickness.” After some marathon sessions, we had finally achieved the big new level up feature in Fortune’s Favor.

He paused only a second. “I’m just glad you’re safe, Charlotte. Safe from everything…but me.” He slid a hand up my t-shirt and pulled the fabric up, baring my breasts, giving my nipples a little nip, which shot eager lightning bolts down to my core. Is that why they were called nipples? Because it felt good when someone nipped them? Whoever named them that knew what was up, I thought. They would have just been called ‘suckles’ or ‘nursers’ or something.

Firian dragged me back out of my inane thoughts, which was a necessary skill for all my boys to have, by tugging down my pajama pants and spreading my legs so he could skillfully stroke me with his tongue.

Girls, all y’all should date a canine shifter. They love to get their tongues in there. Oh man. Oh damn, I had missed Firian for unselfish reasons but also highly selfish ones. I dug my fingers in his hair.

I heard little “boop” sounds from the chat box as Alec was obviously trying to talk to us. He was typing from Firian’s cabin on the other ridge. I hadn’t been sleeping very well alone, so Dad said maybe Firian needed to stay with me. Probably because he’d known Firian since he was a kid, he didn’t get as weirded out by him in my room, but Alec, Montague and Harris were another matter. They were banished to the cabin and he was very firm about it, even when Mom tried to convince him otherwise.

Mom.

Mom was here.

It was going to take us all a while to get used to that.

“Char?” Dad yelled. “You up?”

“Uhh…yeah!” I gasped.

“Were you up all night again?”

“No—o!”

Firian sucked on my clit in the middle of the word so that I squeaked guiltily. I yanked on his hair. He growled at me. I cuffed his head with my sock. We started wrestling.

“Well, I was thinking we should go out for a special day with your mom,” Dad said, in a slightly stressed out tone. “Like maybe we could drive to Helen.”

“Oh…okay!” I said.

I let the wrestling match play out to its natural conclusion, because priorities. I missed Firian so much, and even if he wasn’t magical anymore, he still looked and smelled magical, and I guess a part of me craved that. I wanted things to be normal. If normal had ever really existed for me. I was starting to get over the awkwardness of having sex in my childhood bed because other options were lacking. After a quickie, I hopped in the shower and then picked out a nice sweater and boots, but I was jittery.

“Helen is the tourist town, huh?” Firian asked. “It’s like a faux German village?”

“That’s the one. I think he should take her there alone and be romantic. Or maybe he should just take a weekend in Atlanta.”

“Do you want to get rid of her?”

“Ohmigod, no!” I cried. “She’s the coolest person I’ve ever met. Do you think this sweater is…” The sweater was older and pilling and also boring. I pulled other things out of drawers. I had a kitten sweater and a gorilla sweater from the Ugly Christmas Sweater party in 10th grade. “Why did I buy so many clothes with dumb animals on them? What am I, five?”

“Just be yourself,” Firian said. “Adorned in gorilla sweaters, fox pajama pants, llama socks and sloth shoes.”

“Oh god, it’s even worse than I thought when you put it that way! I dress like a hipster nursery threw up on me!”

“Or what about this one?”

“With the Death Star?”

“The Death Star is classic,” Firian said. “Classic design.”

I flopped face first on the bed.

Three days ago, my mom had been working for a high demon. I had set her free and convinced her to come home, so I should be pleased with myself. I thought she might have trouble settling in and Dad would feel awkward around her.

It didn’t quite work out like I expected. From the first moment, my mom seemed to dominate the house. Dad brought down boxes of her old clothes from the attic. “Evan, you saved them?” she said, tearing open the boxes with excitement.

“I knew you’d be back someday,” he said.

Then she kissed him—deep and tongue-forward. I averted my eyes. We all needed some ground rules to help each other neatly avoid each other’s sex lives. Still, it was sweet. I was glad to see Dad’s arms go around her, and the fact that he was obviously still as attracted to her as the day they met. Like, very attracted to her. Once he got over his initial shock, he was slipping right back into acting like he was in his twenties. I heard them speaking in low voices, laughing, calling each other ‘Lightning Bug’ and ‘Firefly’—who knew?

Don’t get me wrong. I had my own life. I wanted Dad to be happy and taken care of more than anything in the world, and especially with my own real mom, so I wasn’t jealous.

It’s just that Mom was sooo cool.

I had been warned. She slipped right into her early 2000s designer clothes that looked timeless anyway, when paired with perfect makeup and slightly witchy jewelry, putting out a vibe that was somewhere between Stevie Nicks and some beautiful British actress. She had an accent, of course. I worried that she wouldn’t want to be domestic but our second morning she was up at dawn, having gathered wild berries out of the woods and made fresh scones and whipped cream to accompany them.

I loved to bake, but my baking just wasn’t this A-level.

I threw on the gray sweater and black pants and came downstairs. “So what is the plan?” I asked.

“Well, I thought your, um, the boys could come too,” Dad said. “If Montague can drive. They won’t all fit in the truck.”

I suppressed my sigh of relief. “I’m sure he will.”

“I’ll make reservations at the grill,” he said. “It’s a little fancy.”

“Not too fancy,” Mom said. “You look beautiful, Charlotte.”

“Oh? Oh. Yeah. My hair is still drying and, like, these shoes are old.”

Firian elbowed me. “You do look beautiful.”

“Don’t you have a hair dryer, love?” Mom said.

“Nah. That’s what the air’s for,” I said. Really, I didn’t want to throw Dad under the bus, because he was the one who always said that. He didn’t want to run up the electric bill with anything, plus he didn’t buy extra stuff. Sure, there were girls in high school who got very serious about hair, but they were in a different crowd from me and my nerd friends.

“Evan, what have you taught my daughter?” Mom laughed. “The poor thing.”

“I taught her how to use a drill,” he said.

“I’m staying out of this,” I said. “I’ll go wake up the guys.” I grabbed my old barn jacket and Firian and I walked down our hill and up his hill.

I couldn’t forget that I spent my summer in these woods, learning to tune my magic to my surroundings so I could wield spells more effectively and commune with the dead. My hand itched for my wand, which made for a perfect Gandalf-style walking stick.

Now I was just ordinary human Charlotte again. My magic was gone to save Harris’ life. A good trade. Yeah, the only trade I could have made. And I was with my perfectly normal boyfriend.

Firian had spent so much of his life in these woods as a fox, and now he was human too. He glanced at me. He always knew what I was thinking. Then he reached in my pocket and pulled my hand out, warming it in his own.

“It’s not the same,” he said. “But it can still be good.”

“Yeah.” I bit my lip. “It feels really impossible to go to a normal college now. I wonder if I should just move to a city and…we could rent an apartment together. Get ourselves together first.”

“Sure, why not,” Firian said.

“Do you know what you would do?” I asked.

“I’m extremely talented and charismatic,” he said. “I can do anything.”

“Oh, okay. Sure. That’s my plan too.”

“I don’t really like cities,” he said, a moment later. “I like…acreage.”

“I don’t think we can afford ‘acreage’.”

“Don’t you have inheritance money from Samuel?”

“Yeah! But…how? Where? Where is the wizarding bank?”

“Not sure.”

“Still, we should have some long term goals. Dream goals. What have you always wanted to do?”

“To be at your side,” he said.

“That goal is achieved, so what then?”

“I don’t need anything else,” he said. “Maybe we could start some sort of business together.”

“I do like that idea. I just hope you’re really happy, Firian. You can be anything you want now.”

For a brief second, I saw that look on his face that showed me he didn’t just want to be by my side. And he couldn’t be anything he wanted. In fact, he couldn’t be the one thing he actually was, besides mine. He couldn’t be a fox, or go to Etherium and see the Ethereals dance, and he couldn’t work magic.

So, basically his entire identity…

“Maybe like a game themed cafe,” I said. “Something fun and nerdy. We could go to Atlanta. Maybe we could find a place near a park. They have some nice woods there.” I babbled nervously until we got to the cabin, but at least Firian kept a tender hold of my hand. He wasn’t mad at me. In fact, as usual he was going out of his way to make me feel better. But…he was unhappy. I felt some responsibility.

When Harris opened the door, I remembered what it was all for. He gave me that slow, naughty smile of his, the one that promised he was going to hassle and tease me unrelentingly. If I hadn’t given up my magic, I would have lost that forever. We would have a world without Harris in it at all.

“How are things up at the bachelor pad?” I asked. “You’re all awake already?”

“My dad had us all waking up on military time,” Harris said.

“Your dad was in the military?”

“No.”

“I was up playing Fortune’s Favor with you,” Alec said. “Where the hell did you go?”

“I was making up for lost time, incubus,” Firian said. “You’re not the only one who can charm the pants off our witch.”

“Oh yeah? Well, it didn’t take very well, did it?” Alec said, snapping my waistband. “Looks like she has pants on.”

“It’s forty degrees outside,” I said, but I knew he was just teasing anyway.

Montague actually was sleeping on the sofa.

“Family day trip,” I said. “This is exciting. Dad wants us all to go to Helen to eat at the grill.”

“What is ‘the grill’?” Harris said. “That sounds…general.”

“I don’t actually know. It’s probably not whatever salon your family eats at, whatever.”

“We don’t eat out. We have a chef.”

“It’s a tourist restaurant in a tourist town and I think he wants to go there so he doesn’t have to explain to Bill at the diner where my mom has been for twenty years, and he definitely doesn’t want to take my super glamorous Mom to the diner, and he definitely—definitely—doesn’t want explain all y’all. So we’re escaping town and having an awkward dinner at a grill, okay? Don’t dress up too fancy and make me look bad.”

Of course, Montague and Harris still overdressed. They always did and I guess I wouldn’t really have it any other way. Alec, meanwhile, ran hot and could get away with a short sleeved shirt in the winter, showing off his toned arms. Firian was the only one slightly put out by the situation, because he had always conjured his clothes magically and now he had to actually wear real clothes. It was slim pickings where we lived so he was wearing Wal-Mart jeans and my dad’s flannel shirt, but he looked adorable.

I had never brought all of Team HAM plus Firian out among the general public before.

“You guys are going to be a public health hazard,” I said. “Old ladies are going to get in car crashes, tweens are going to spontaneously hit puberty; I’m not sure this is even safe.”

Harris tugged my ponytail. “You certainly are pleased as punch with yourself, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am, actually.” I stuck my tongue out at him. “And no snarky talk from you. You live and breathe thanks to me.”

“You all live and breathe thanks to me.”

“Not the same and you know it.”

“Perhaps I’ll find three sexy girlfriends in addition to you, just to even things out.”

“Try and find three more girls that will put up with you.”

Down the hill, Dad started yelling for us. We piled in the car for a drive through the mountains, and the conversation always turning to our future, even though it was a touchy subject. All the guys had expected to be a part of warlock society when they grew up. They all still had their magic, however; I was the only one who had given mine up, but it was dangerous for them to get involved with the magical world now that Alec was a Sinistral demon and Harris and Montague were on the wrong side of the council.

“I like the idea of opening a cafe,” Alec said. “You know we would have clientele.”

“Bartending would be better,” I said. “Shake those guns. Not that I want any other girls looking at you. Maybe we could open a gay bar.”

“None of us know how to actually cook,” Montague said, ignoring my idea. “I can’t exactly whip up spiced blood for the locals.”

“I can bake,” I said tentatively, but I was thinking of Mom’s knockout scone, plus I wasn’t a commercial baker.

“What about becoming a yoga instructor, Charlotte?” Alec said. “I could be a personal trainer.”

“I could teach foraging classes,” Firian said.

“I can do some custom car work,” Montague said.

“This sounds like a really cohesive business,” Harris said, giving us all a look like we were idiots.

I kept thinking of Ignatius’ face when he said, We fought for fifty years to get women admitted to warlock schools and vice versa and you threw it away.

I clutched my head. Damn it, can’t I just enjoy myself and be a normal girl?

I don’t have to be a Chosen One.

But I had to admit that the idea of me teaching yoga classes while Montague put racing stripes on cars sounded…fucking ridiculous.

“Can we just talk about something else?” I said, reaching up from the back seat to turn on the radio. “Umbrella…ella…ella,” the radio got out before the mountains turned it into a staticky country station. Montague just blasted his mix CD instead, which got Harris arguing with him, and I guess that did the trick, but I was feeling nervous the whole way.

Helen was the tourist center of the Georgia mountains where we lived; it was over an hour from our house but once in a while Dad had taken me there to go tubing. The buildings all had an alpine look and it had a big Oktoberfest celebration. I’m not sure who got that started, it always made the town seem fake, but it was also charming and I could tell Dad was in hardcore impress-Mom mode, which wasn’t easy when we lived in the middle of nowhere. Since it was winter, the town was kind of dead, and we really stood out to the people who were around. I really did see a lady almost run a red light looking at my guys.

On the other hand, I felt like I couldn’t hold anyone’s hand because I felt watched. In the magical world, we had been discreet, but both vampires and demons were often polyamorous so it didn’t seem that strange either.

We’re never going to be able to be honest in the real world. Like, never. If we ran a business and we ever let it slip that I was involved with all these guys, people would probably ban our business or something.

My stomach plunged.

We walked around for a little while, Mom and Dad ahead of us holding hands, eventually vanishing into a shop that sold jewelry and artwork, after reminding us to meet for our reservation at 7.

“Does anyone else feel like we’re being watched?” Montague asked.

“Yes,” Harris said. “And I expect we are.”

“Oh?” I tensed. I felt like losing my magic had also put blinders on me; now they sensed something I didn’t.

“Do you think the council would let us go without observation?” Harris said.

“Are we in trouble?” I asked.

“We killed that demon for them,” Montague said. “Maybe they’ll leave us alone if we don’t cause any trouble.”

“Let’s hope so.”

I was relieved when we made it to dinner.

“Your dad bought me earrings,” Mom whispered to me, showing me silver skulls in her ears. “I told him not to. He’s still broke as ever, isn’t he? But they’re pretty. I can’t believe that I forgot how much I missed him.”

“I can hear you,” Dad said, shaking his head. “I’m not actually as broke ‘as ever’, I’m just dipping into Charlotte’s college fund.”

The restaurant seemed like it was probably trash to Harris, while Dad’s budget was probably reaching. The tablecloths were white, and topped with candles, while he usually considered Cracker Barrel to be a hot ticket.

“We have the private room reserved,” Dad told the hostess.

“Of course! Come on,” the hostess said. “The rest of your party is already here.”

Mom shot me a smile. I couldn’t tell if she was nervous.

“Who?” I demanded. “Who?”

The hostess led us past some couples and ordinary little families enjoying their super normal dinners, and opened a curtained French door into a private room, where we were immediately met with screams of joy.

“Emily!”

“Mum…!” Mom was immediately swarmed by a neatly dressed older woman and four men whom I could tell at first inhale actually smelled like werewolves, even though I barely knew what that smelled like, while Adia and Richard stood just a step back waiting their turn, but beaming at me.

It’s real, I thought. It’s really real. I have a family.

Chapter Two

Charlotte

All of a sudden, I had arms around me from all directions as Mom and my grandmother pulled me into an embrace and then I was piled on by my wolf grandfathers with their strangely familiar wolfish smell. It was like something I knew from my dreams, a woodsy, homelike scent.

“My own granddaughter!”

“Look at her—fucking look at her—she’s big. I keep thinking of her as a baby.”

“She is an adult,” my grandfather Rhys said. He was the one I’d met before. The rest I didn’t know.

“I know, but my brain can’t take it. And who’s this lot, eh?” The one who seemed to be the most loud-mouthed of the group sniffed around Montague and Alec, a little less so around Firian, and he finished with Harris. “Who’s this private school prick? You’re with them?”

“I’m Harrison von Hapsburg Nicolescu, if you want to start a pissing match. I’m sorry I didn’t dress for the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame.”

“Whoa,” I said. “Harris, that’s my—grandpa…ish.” I didn’t know how to handle this.

My grandfather laughed loudly, pointing at his ripped plaid suit like he appreciated the burn. “I like this one, he’s got a little mouth on ‘im.” Adia giggled nervously in the background while Mom wiped tears.

“I missed you all so much,” she choked.

“So these are your grandfathers,” my grandmother said. “Or your uncles, in a sense. It’s always been complicated. We spent a lot of time among the humans, so your mother called them her uncles, even Rhys, who is her blood father.”

“We used to say we had a brother who died, who was the father,” said the fairest grandfather, who had an enigmatic smile. “No one ever seemed to think it strange that the rest of us were competing for the widow’s attention…”

“At home I called them all ‘Dad’,” Mom said, smiling. “And they are.”

“That seems like it still must have been hard to keep up,” I said, even as I thought there was no way I could pass my group off as brothers anyway, unless I said two of them were adopted. Tawny Firian and blonde Harris, both of them tall and thin, could have maybe been brothers despite very different facial features, but Montague looked so classically Spanish that sometimes just looking at him made me crave paella, and Alec’s darker skin and facial features reflected his (blackish?) mom more than his (whitish?) dad. Alec didn’t talk about his background anywhere near as much as Harris and Monty, so I wasn’t truly sure.

“It was a lot easier to keep up back then,” Grandmother said. I had to think of her as ‘Grandmother’ because I already had a grandma, but she didn’t seem like the Nana type or any other variant. “Before the internet. It was also a very swinging lifestyle we were leading.”

“I heard you guys were kinda…crazy,” I said.

“Oh, were we ever. My god, the stories we could tell you would burn your ears off, wouldn’t they, Dick? So I’m your Great-Uncle Malcolm, then, I reckon—“ Grandpa Loudmouth took my hand in his and shook it.

“Claude,” the blonde one said. “And this is Guy.”

“We’ve met,” Rhys said, through a pen cap in his teeth. He was already sitting at the table writing things down.

“It’s good to see you again too, Evan,” Claude said, everyone finally getting around to my dad, but he had always been a good background player, which I think is why he enjoyed a longer career as a roadie than as a musician.

“Thanks, man, I hope you had a good flight,” Dad said. “I guess you’re used to it.”

“We hate flying,” Rhys said. “Never get used to it. Wolves on a plane; defiance of nature. Hmm.” I saw him write ‘wolves on a plane, ain’t it insane? horses on ships, ain’t it a trip?’. Then he scratched that out and whispered, “No.”

“David Bowie wouldn’t fly,” Dad said. “For years.”

“Right, right, that’s true. Well, he was a changeling or something, no one ever said for sure, but just look at ‘im.”

The mundane direction this was turning was both comforting and bizarre to me.

“So…why are you here now?” I asked. “Is it because we defeated the Withered Lord?”

“Yes,” Grandmother said. “You should never have done something so dangerous, but you were also wonderful. We knew that if we ever came to visit you, we would put a target on your back. I would much rather you had a long and happy life without us than a short and tragic one with us. But your mother’s friends, well, they did get you involved. Maybe I shouldn’t have protected you because you handled it so well, but that still just isn’t something parents and grandparents could do. Now that the demon is dead, we can all relax!”

A waitress came in, but no one had even sat down, much less looked at menus. We settled in and quickly ordered, except Montague, of course. He just had a drink.

My grandparents regaled us with stories of their rock star life and my parents reminisced about their early days, and I felt so happy just hearing this whole chunk of my history I’d never known.

“We were so excited when you were born,” my grandmother said. “We had no idea it was all about to turn to hell…but there is still time to make up for it all.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And you probably have a lot of questions about how to navigate life as a witch, or…not a witch anymore? Well, we do have a lot in common. Too much, really. I don’t envy you,” Grandmother said. “It’s a difficult adjustment.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes. What now? That’s my whole brain at this moment, to be honest. I don’t know if anyone can answer that, because y’all were rock stars hanging out with David Bowie and—”

“We didn’t actually hang out with him,” Claude said. “To be honest. He was pretty weird. We hung out with a lot of guys named Mick, it seems like, who was somebody’s bassist.”

“We weren’t famous enough for the coolest parties,” Rhys said. “But we were pretty big in Japan for a moment or two.”

“Anyway,” Grandmother said. “We all have to figure it out in our own way, but I always felt lucky because I had the support of all of these dear men.”

“Aw,” Guy said. I think it was about the only thing he said all night.

“Someone always had a solution or a comforting word. When your mother had her close-knit group of friends I thought she might have that same net to rely on. I didn’t realize how much danger they were in. My advice would be just to…enjoy yourself. This is a good life. Just enjoy yourself.”

Mom was poking at the bread course a little. “Well, Mum,” she said, “we were trying to do something pretty important.”

“I know, I just think you’ve all done enough now. You’ve been through more than enough. And Charlotte lost her magic, so that’s the end of the matter, really.”

There’s a letter from the faery queen in my desk… ‘One more chance to redeem yourself’… Does the faery queen know I lost my powers? Does she have a way to return them to me?

No. I wasn’t going to think about that letter. Like I needed to redeem myself anyway. I had my family. I was safe, and the second I went to the faery queen, I would stop being safe, and so would my guys.

“Should I try to go to college after all?” I felt pretty lost. I used to have other dreams, but learning to be a witch had sucked up all my energy and I couldn’t help but feel like I wanted my life to mean something. “Or was this dinner my whole college fund, Dad?”

He laughed. “It’s going to take time to figure it out,” he said. “Don’t stress about it too much.”

“I agree with your dad,” Montague said. “Let us take care of you for a while.

We’re adults. We can do other things besides magic. A vampire can get any job he wants.”

“So can an incubus,” Alec said, cracking his knuckles.

“You are going to work in a lonely cubicle in a basement,” I whispered. “In a box that only I have the key to.”

“Of course, you should also be an independent woman,” Mom said.

You mean like abandoning your family and going to work for a demon? some evil voice inside me said. “Of course I will be an independent woman.”

“It’s all right to just be taken care of now and then,” Grandmother said. “You might want to have babies.”

“Let’s not get her going on that yet,” Dad said, waving his hands.

“She’s twenty-two, isn’t she?”

“Almost…,” I said.

“Twenty-two was a perfectly good age to have babies for all of human history.”

“I don’t think she’s ready for babies,” Dad said, looking panicked.

“Mum, I think she has her own life to lead,” my mom said.

“I can figure it out for myself!” I snapped. “What is going on here?”

“I’m sorry,” Mom said. “We haven’t seen each other in a while. Your grandmother can be a little old-fashioned.”

“I’m not old-fashioned,” Grandmother said. “I was considered a complete radical in my day which is why I was banished from the family! I just wanted you to have a normal life.”

“Like I could have a normal life when I was a witch with four dads, so I don’t want to lie to Charlotte!”

“Mom, I thought you were okay with this arrangement? Like, proud of me, even?”

“Yes, I am okay with you making your own decisions, but if you try to have a ‘normal’ life, you are going to fail and be miserable.”

“Stop it,” Montague said, in a soft voice that shut everyone up. “I don’t think your opinions are helping anyone. We will protect and take care of Charlotte, no matter what. If she wants to have babies, or if she wants to run for senate, or if she wants to work at the mall. We will do whatever needs to be done to make her happy.” He looked at Harris, who I guess was the only member of our team he worried might not agree.

“Yes,” Harris said. “Our parents tried to tell us to be fine, upstanding warlocks and it didn’t work out very well. Let Charlotte be Charlotte.”

“He’s right,” Malcolm said. “I told you so, back in the day. The little prince of Austria is right.”

Harris gave a small for-fuck’s-sake shrug. I suppressed a laugh. I guess making fun of his royal airs ran in the family.

“Well, maybe we have some other crossroads to discuss,” Dad said. “We have something to talk about. Emily and I, well, we’ve only had a short reunion, but two things were clear to me from the first instant. One is that I love this woman as much as ever.”

Mom grabbed his hand and kissed it, looking charmed. I was trying to decide if this was all cute or just like, too much.

“Two is that, well, the land I bought back in my twenties, and the life I’ve been living…it ended up being a great place to raise Charlotte. But it’s not going to be a great place for the kind of family we have now. We’re going to look for a place in Atlanta.”

“You’re not selling the house, are you?” I asked.

“I am,” Dad said. “It’s paid off, so that will be a great down payment on a new place.”

“Are you kidding me right now!?”

“It’s okay,” he said. “You never made many friends there.”

“You built that house! That was like—our life! We know everyone there. It’s—it’s home. What if someone buys it and tears down the trees? You just decided this in less than a week?”

“This is for you too,” he said. “You know you can’t come home and take all these guys to the diner. You’re not going to buy a house there. It’s pretty far from an airport. Plus, I don’t know if I want to retire there. I haven’t had anyone to play music with since Greg moved to Raleigh.”

“Everything’s changing really fast,” I said, twisting my fingers.

I guess life is just funny that way. You finally get what you’ve always dreamed of—in my case, my mom and family—and it doesn’t look exactly how you thought it would. Maybe you lose something else instead. I understood Dad’s reasons for wanting to move to a big city, but…

That was the forest where I really started to learn magic, I thought later, and that pushed me over the edge. I had this memory of a day where Firian made me stare at a dead branch with lichens and tiny bugs, and really focus on it. First I was annoyed at him because it was boring, and then a switch flipped and I could sense the circular nature of life, the dead tree and the tiny creatures making life from its death, drinking in the very spirit of the tree as it lingered in the forest like a memory. Little moments like that were what helped my magic grow stronger, as I started to gain a real understanding of the mysterious forces that govern life and death, time and space, plants and animals, water and fire, and everything that goes into magic.

At this point, me and Firian were sitting on the porch of a rental cabin. The family had the run of a whole campground. My grandfathers had disappeared into the night, and so had Montague. He had to get blood from somewhere, poor guy.

“I’m sure I could get a job as a dog walker,” Firian said. “Just to start. Dogs are just like stupid ugly foxes. I know their deal.”

I sniffed. “Dogs are cute.”

“Ehh, I guess, to your human eye. I mean, I guess I’d date a shiba inu or a klee kai. Maybe a corgi if they had a great personality. Of course, I’d still date you even if you were a possum.”

“Why do I have to keep being a possum?”

“I like possums a lot, actually. They eat ticks and I hate ticks.” He rested a hand on my head. “You okay?”

“Mm.”

“Just thinking about the house?”

“Our time studying magic in the forest.” I shrugged.

“Yeah,” he said, more raggedly.

“Are you okay?” I asked, a little worriedly.

“You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Adia…you know…she always seems a little lost. She seems really happy with Richard, but…her eyes are a little sad like…”

“Do you want me to tell you that I miss being a fox?”

“If you do, then yes. I want you tell me everything.”

He squeezed my hand, his touch light and soothing, but he was a little different, I thought. I didn’t want him to look hollowed out and sad as he got older. I didn’t want him to miss things. I didn’t want him to lie to me.

“Stop worrying so much,” he said.

Chapter Three

Charlotte

“Let’s see how far we can get,” Mom said, clapping her hands. “There is magic here. Feel that? It might be enough. I’ll test it first.” She looked at me. “This won’t frighten you, will it? You must be used to it by now.”

“You mean—you—turning into a wolf?”

“Yes.”

“Uh, no. I’m used to it. Firian was always…turning.”

I didn’t know what to expect, but I guess I still managed to not expect the one thing I had been told would happen. My stylish, gorgeous mom dropped to her hands and like…just turned into a wolf.

“Where did your clothes go?”

“To the magical realm,” she said. “Somewhere, I expect, there is a magical wardrobe where they poof in and out! I hope so. That’s what Uncle Claude used to say. Try it!”

“So…like…I just…”

I did not know how to turn into a freaking wolf. Presumably, if it was easy to do, I would have done it already. At some point, when I felt threatened at Merlin College, shouldn’t I have just wolfed out and like, eaten Piers Nicolescu?

“Charlotte, love, don’t be nervous. You can do this. Just allow yourself permission.”

I fell to my hands and knees while trying to imagine myself doing the same fluid transformation as Mom had done.

Nothing.

“Wolf!” I cried. “Magical wolf! Magical wolf transformation power! Lupus transformicus!”

“I feel as if you are not taking this seriously.”

I flopped to the ground. “I am taking it seriously! I just talk a lot when I’m nervous.”

“Please don’t be nervous…” She sat down next to me and put a paw on my leg. “It’s my fault, isn’t it? I’m sure I make you nervous, just being here, changing everything…”

A small laugh spurted out of my lips at being regarded by such an earnest wolf. “It’s probably a factor.” I sighed and twisted at the rings on my fingers, particularly the reliquary ring—one bit of magic Harris left in my hands. “I was starting to get pretty good at being a witch. I still had a long way to go, but I was excited about it.”

“You kept your friend alive,” Mom said. “That’s the best spell anyone can ever manage. And you didn’t have to sell your soul to do it. You should be very, very proud.”

“You’re also very cool,” I said. “It was just me and Dad, you know, and neither of us were cool.”

“You and your dad are both very cool!” she said. “Sure, I’ve thought it might be nice to do a few things to your hair. But only if you want to. You’re brave and kind and funny and you have four very sexy young men who are crazy about you. I have always tried very hard to be cool. Glamorous and a little mysterious, and rebellious…and miserable. An ‘artiste’, who doesn’t actually do much of anything. It was that little bit of emptiness inside me where he got in…” She turned back into a woman and immediately crossed her legs, gracefully, even as she put a hand to her stomach.

“The…demon?”

She nodded and put her hands on my cheeks. “You remind me much more of your father than myself, and I am glad. You aren’t too wrapped up in your own head.”

“Well, I’m only one quarter wolf. What if I don’t have it in me?”

“I believe that you do. Remember how hard it was to do magic at first?”

I grinned. “I burned Ignatius’ office.”

“You did? A fast learner, then?”

“Controlling it was still hard.”

She was right, though. I remembered that moment when they asked me to light a candle and it sounded insane. I thought the same thing I was thinking now—that surely if I could light candles with my brain, I would have done it already.

I thought of everything in me that had ever felt more primal than civilized. Smells on the wind. Lust. The itch to go outside for no real reason. The moon, the wind, grass under bare feet…

I planted my hands in the soft green covering of the forest floor, and I let go of my tethers to my human self.

Wolf.

I became a wolf.

Mom transformed with me now, and she ran ahead of me, luring me forward. I let her teach me the things I should have learned a long time ago, the heritage of my grandfathers who could turn into wolves. Maybe they weren’t too different from Firian’s ancestors, just untamed versions of familiars. I felt wild and free—

—my feet hit a path and the magic seemed to suck out of me, knocking me back, tumbling me into girl form. I fell flat on my back.

Mom had taken a slightly different way, but now she turned back as well and helped me up. “Just a little pocket of magic,” she said. “I guess you found the end of it.” She glanced around. “It might be gone for good if we returned here in another year. But it was nice, wasn’t it? I told you you could do it. I can’t wait to tell your grandfathers.”

“Let me tell them!” I said, and then I laughed. “Sorry. I sound like a little girl.”

She grabbed me and hugged me tight. “That’s okay,” she said. “Let’s make up for lost time.”

Chapter Four

Harris

What do you know? A few days in some rented cabins with Charlotte’s family, and I already liked them better than my own family.

Not that I’d ever admit it. Especially to her grandfather Malcolm, who had targeted me for hassling, but I could give back as good as I got. I guess Charlotte had a bit of an irascible British werewolf frontman in her. That explained a lot. Even if Rhys was her blood grandfather, in my mind I could see a bit of all of them in her mom and even in her.

Will it be like that for us someday?

It was a lot easier to imagine now that I had an example. If Monty couldn’t have kids anymore, so what? My family would be so upset that I didn’t feel possessive over my own kids, but I’d rather they have Monty or Alec to read them bedtime stories instead of me. I wasn’t good at that sort of thing, but someday I would teach them to cast wards. How to stay away from the council. How to conduct yourself in society. Knowing when to fight and when to back off.

Defense. Survival. I knew that stuff well, because I’d been training to be on the council someday and put myself in real danger.

So it was a little ironic and irritating that I had died. Fuck. Now I had to drink this nasty tonic in the morning so I wouldn’t turn into an undead monster. Professor McGuinness told me that like it was no big deal, but it felt like a little bit of a big deal to me.

Of course, it wasn’t as bad as…

I was having some insomnia, and I noticed that Montague wasn’t in his bed. Still. At three am. He’d been hunting at night, keeping his feeding to himself. I’m sure he didn’t want to be a hindrance to the family reunion, and remind everyone that he was a vampire, but it also meant he was tired and pale during the day, a little aloof. What was he eating? I didn’t think he could take down a deer without coming home a bloody mess, so more likely it was rabbits.

I went outside. Firian was asleep on the cabin’s sofa, while Charlotte had a bed in the cabin loft. Her dad didn’t fight the arrangement on vacation, losing out to the laissez-faire attitude of her other relatives. The night air chilled my skin. I cast a searching spell, a faint trail of light whispering off into the trees, and I followed it.

If you had asked me what my aim was, I probably wouldn’t have given you a straight answer, but of course I knew.

The night woods were no place for warlocks, even the tamer woods of the Fixed Plane. My feet rustled the brush and snapped twigs even as my eyes adjusted to the faint moonlight, and my other senses tried their best to pick up slack. The winter woods were so quiet that every sound was like an explosion.

Suddenly I heard a rush of almost silent footfalls moving quickly. Vampires didn’t have super speed like in the movies, but they could still be very fast, and unusually agile.

The sound made my hair stand on end, because I’d never seen Monty move the way that sound suggested.

“Monty?” I hissed, hearing the faint rustling in the distance.

He dropped out of a nearby tree. I had no idea how he had even gotten into the tree so quickly without me seeing him. “Oh, Harris. It’s you. What the hell are you doing out here? I’m kinda busy.”

“Did you catch anything tonight?”

“A snack,” he said sarcastically. “This really blows. I found a faun with its mother and that actually looked delicious but it’s like…a baby animal. I can’t fucking kill a baby animal in front of its mother. No wonder the old vampires seem amused by me, but…come on.” At least he still always sounded like Monty. “What are you prowling around out here for?”

I thrust out my arm. “You need human blood.”

He looked at me. “We’re going home tomorrow. I have beef blood in the freezer.”

“Monty, you’re starting to look dead.”

“Speak for yourself.” His eyes had moved to my arm. “Why?”

“We need to have each other’s backs.”

“Rayner drank your blood already. How was that?”

“I wasn’t into it,” I said. “If that’s what you were asking.”

Some books said it was a sexual experience for a vampire to drink your blood, and it hadn’t really been like that, thank heavens. At the time I put up a fierce mental resistance, and it was painful and unpleasant. I would never have lived it down if, in the middle of a humiliating assault upon my person, I had also gotten hard for old male vampires, the natural enemy of the Nicolescu family.

But I kept thinking about it. That particular pain. The burn of fangs sucking the life out of me. Monty drank Charlotte’s blood after I died, they told me. She had been wearing turtleneck sweaters to cover the Band-Aid on her neck. I kept thinking about that too, in a way that drove me nuts. I guess it stirred something. I wasn’t sure if it was sexual, or more like a drug. Once we all tried a cigarette and we coughed and it didn’t seem worth making ourselves sick over, which seemed a common enough experience, but how did you end up with a second cigarette anyway?

“Don’t tempt me like this…,” Monty said, reaching for my arm. He stopped himself and dug his hands in his hair. “It’s too dangerous when we’re alone. So far I’ve always been able to stop, but…” He made a face. “It’s…man, I don’t know if we should go there.”

“I think we have to go there,” I said. “There are four of us. If you drank our blood in a regular cycle, you would be stronger and not so hungry. We can look up how often it’s recommended to give blood and space it out.”

“You know this isn’t just a clinical thing,” Monty said. “It’s very…intimate.”

“Yeah. I know.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. “I want to watch you drink Charlotte’s blood. But she’s not ready yet.”

“You’re still recovering,” Monty said, but he reached for my arm. “Don’t let me take more than a taste.”

“Okay.” My heart was beating fast as Monty lifted my wrist to his mouth. He wet his lips. My mind went blank and in the moment, the man I was looking at didn’t seem at all like the friend I had grown up with.

I wondered if he was thinking the same, because I felt like something inside me had come back different when Charlotte revived me. Everyone in my family had always been defined by the family. I had kissed that goodbye. If I saw them again, I would be regarded as a traitor.

I didn’t really care.

“Gentle,” Monty said, as if to himself, and then he sank his teeth into me. His fangs went deep and they weren’t like needles, they were teeth—they left a mark, tearing flesh, but I remembered this pain now and the burn was satisfying. Vampire venom made you want what they offered. My body still struggled, instinct taking over. Hunter and prey. His arm went around me, stronger than I realized he could be, keeping me there. Once my skin was broken, he licked and sucked so not a drop of my blood was wasted.

I don’t know if there’s such a thing as ancestral memory, but this almost felt familiar to me. Nicolescus have been vampire hunters all their lives, but they have also dabbled in the forbidden fruit, I thought. How could they not? Centuries of men and women, hunting down some of the most charismatic beings in the magical world?

You only hurt the ones you love.

When I let Monty drink fully, I could feel my mind letting go of everything that troubled it, succumbing to weakness that would lead to death, but sometimes as I was drifting to sleep at night I would suddenly wake myself violently. I had been trained for this, and now I whipped out my own magic, sparking him with light.

He staggered back and snatched a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe his mouth. “Good,” he said. “Good, thanks.”

He already looked healthier. “You’re welcome.”

He cast a healing spell on my skin to seal it up, but he still pulled out another handkerchief and tied it around my wrist. I started back for the cabins, a little dizzy.

“I’ll come with you,” Monty said, offering a hand.

“I don’t need it, I’m fine.” I stuck my hands in my pockets. “I’ll go alone.”

“I’m heading back anyway.”

“You’re going for Charlotte, aren’t you?”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“Yeah, but now you’re turned on. I can smell it.”

“Fucking vampires,” I muttered, my skin turning hot.

“I feel the same way,” Monty said. “Let’s wake her up.”

Chapter Five

Charlotte

I knew life was back to normal because Alec wasn’t in my dreams anymore. Instead I was having a dream about Daisy. She was sitting in front of a television like a zombie watching a show called Detroit Pet Psychics. (That wasn’t a real show, was it? It was a testament to the absurdity of modern reality shows that I wasn’t actually sure.)

“Daisy?” I said in the dream. “Did something happen to Cash?” For some reason I was concerned that her familiar wasn’t around, even though he usually wasn’t, like any normal familiar.

“Yes,” she said, glazed. “But it’s okay. The TV is my familiar now.”

“Okay, seriously, where is he?” I asked, looking for a remote. I didn’t see one. I didn’t see any buttons on the TV either. In fact, there wasn’t even a cord. Daisy’s eyes never left the television. “Daisy, you have to stop watching this and do something.”

“Naw, girl. This is all I need.”

“Daisy, we have to get to Wyrd!”

“But I have this TV though.”

I waved my hand in front of her face but she wouldn’t even look at me. “Daisy…Daisy!”

I woke up to a few arms around me.

“She’s having a nightmare,” Montague said.

“Well, we’ve all been having a few of those,” Harris said.

I relaxed when I realized I wasn’t alone. Harris and Montague were with me, for reasons I didn’t question, their arms strong and secure around me, their scent comforting and…mm, suggestive. I also smelled iron. No, blood.

“Why do I get the feeling you aren’t here to comfort me?” I said. “Did something happen?” I awoke more fully. “What just happened? Did you drink Harris’ blood?”

“Her sense of smell is really getting keen,” Harris said, sounding irritated, but then, when did he not sound irritated?

“I still have a few special powers,” I said. “Did you let Monty drink your blood? You seem okay,” I whispered. “Ohmigawd, was it hot?”

They looked at each other.

“Why do you think we’re here?” Harris demanded, as he ran his hand along the curve of my waist and hip, the only part of me exposed between winter PJs.

“What time is it?”

“Late,” Montague said. “Or early. But you’ll sleep really well after this. Just try and have a nightmare now.”

“Naughty.” I was warming quickly between them, even though Montague was cool to the touch, he was hot to the eyes and I guess that was plenty. Anyway, Harris felt nearly feverish with desire. My eyes searched him, finding the handkerchief tied to his wrist.

“Did you…offer?” I asked. “Or did Montague…take?”

“Hush,” Harris said, his fingers quickly working off his buttons. “I don’t want to talk. I just need to fuck.”

“Your romantic dialogue, on point as usual,” I said.

His arm wrapped around my shirt, tugging it off, my skin prickling in the cold, while the other hand dove between my legs and fingered me so roughly that he got his wish. I shut up, quivering with pleasure.

“I wouldn’t take what wasn’t offered,” Montague said. “But he knew I was suffering. I don’t know why he’s incapable of admitting he cares about us, but maybe he’s lucky we all have such a good sense of smell. He can’t hide that.”

“I don’t really see the need to go on and on about it.” Harris’ thumb stroked the exact spot that drove me to the verge faster than anywhere else, as he slipped two fingers inside my slickness.

“You were into it, huh?” I gasped. “The blood thing. Vampires can seduce anybody.”

“It’s you I want,” he said, taking his hand back. “You.” His eyes were pale but colorless in the dark, the blue washed out by shadow, but his skin was beautiful in the moonlight. I was kind of fascinated by the fact that he had whipped all his own clothes off. He could have just stripped me naked and whipped it out, kept that level of power, but instead he actually let me look at him, including the scars left behind from his death.

I traced them with my finger, with a certain pride in my work. He could never look at himself in the mirror without being reminded that I had saved his life. He trembled, just slightly, under the light touch of my finger. Then he put his hands on the bed on either side of me, locking eyes, before claiming my mouth with his own.

He tasted so sweet, I bet his blood was good for Monty too. “I wish I could have watched,” I said.

“I want to watch him drink yours,” he purred in my ear. “When your body is ready.”

“It’s ready for something,” I said.

“Oh, and you’ll get it.” He nipped my ear, running a hand through my hair, tugging it gently, as he pulled off the rest of my clothes and plunged his length into me.

“I’m pretty tired so you better work for it,” I said.

“I will.”

I’d had so many dreams about Alec, I didn’t mind being woken up with something real for once, although if they made a habit of it I’d be a very tired girl. Lately, my dreams had been filled with demons and bad school dreams and disconcerting scenarios, and nothing felt better than just a good, hard sexy interlude. I guess Montague definitely didn’t take too much blood from him, for Harris to have this much energy. I made him work for it, but I still tightened my muscles around him with every thrust. It was amazing how easily we found a rhythm, for two people who couldn’t stop bitching at each other, but I guess that was a rhythm too.

“Montague…,” I groaned.

“I don’t mind just watching,” he said. “For now.”

“He’s already fed,” Harris said.

“That doesn’t count!” Montague hissed. “You had burgers earlier.”

“I don’t think she’s going to have anything left to give,” Harris said. “It’s going to take me forever with you watching like that.”

“You’d better get used to it,” Montague said. “I like to watch.”

Well, that was obviously a bunch of lies because Harris growled and flushed and pumped hot seed into me about two seconds after Montague’s slightly threatening declaration was delivered in a soft, sexy voice, his eyelids heavy, savoring the sight of me.

They were drawing closer, all of them, a protective shield that surrounded me with their affection. As I lay there in the aftermath of Harris’ release, I was still tingling with yearning, although my body was so tired I could have drifted back into dreams. Montague reached for me, his fingers impatient as his hands slid under my armpits and caressed down to my nipples. I was a little ticklish there and giggled.

“Shh.” His grin flashed fangs at me before his lips met mine, their softness not concealing their need. I was hungry too. I needed someone to satisfy me. When he drew back, his lips gleamed in the shadows with my own kisses.

“Kind of a sloppy kisser tonight, aren’t you?” He laughed. “That just means you can’t help yourself. Can’t hold back. I bet you feel empty inside with the memory of Harris… Shall I take care of you now?”

Montague was so handsome, the way his dark hair fell across his brow, artfully disheveled, his masculine jaw with a little shadow at the moment. He could have been an actor, I thought. Casting directors seemed to love a good stubble. Anyway, he made for a perfect vampire. No wonder a vampire clan targeted him. I mean, the cheekbones alone, and the fact that he seemed perfectly young but also maybe a little older than his years.

“Let me look at you when we’re together,” I said, trailing my fingers down his cheek.

“Whatever you wish. How about this…” He took my legs in his hands and edged closer to me, settling my legs onto his shoulders. This brought us together almost naturally, spreading me out as his thighs wrapped around my hips, and my hands moved around his neck for support. My leg muscles were stretched satisfyingly, giving me some bonus endorphins.

“The best thing about her is she’s so flexible,” Harris said.

“Oh, that’s the best thing about me?”

“Probably,” he said, with a languid disdain that was definitely on purpose just to get a rise out of me.

“Shut up,” Montague said. “And watch how it’s done.”

“Not sure I’m happy just to watch.” Harris slid in behind me and took my breasts in his hands, supporting my back so that now I was between them, my back resting against Harris while Montague spread his hands on my hips and started fucking me. His motions were tight but fast. The friction and speed were amazing on my already sensitive inner need and I could relax into their touch, the support of their bodies around me. I had all of Montague’s beauty to admire, the strength and grace of his neck, a line that moved to the taut muscles of shoulders and arms as he held me, urging my hips in and out as his cock stroked me, teasing my G-spot slowly but surely until…

I was gone. The orgasm was like a storm rolling in, slow and intense, rippling through my entire body. I felt how heavy I was in their arms. Montague held my legs up so they didn’t slide off his shoulders. His seed spilled into me. I never knew it would turn me on to feel so wet with two different men’s seed inside me at once, but it turned me on to think of them sharing that space inside me. I bit back my cries, hurting my lip.

“I’m dead,” I said, shutting my eyes. “I need to pee. But I’m dead.”

Montague scooped me up in his arms before I could even think twice, whisked me out of bed and plunked me down on the toilet. “Pee,” he said.

I stared at him. “Are you going to watch that too?”

“Well, I’m waiting to bring you back to bed.”

Heat rose to my cheeks. “Damnit.”

“What, you ready for more already? I bet Harris is. We could do this all night.”

I felt so swollen with lingering arousal that I could hardly even pee, although the gorgeous naked man looking at me like he had all day probably didn’t help. “Better…save some for later before you kill me.”

“I thought you were already dead.”

Chapter Six

Firian

Honestly, I don’t know what was more difficult to get used to, losing my ability to turn into a fox, losing my ability to conjure things with magic, or losing my ability to vanish into Etherium any old time. I had the horrifying realization that when normal people were having a boring or awkward time, they were just stuck there.

“You’ll get used to it,” Adia told me, unprompted, while I was finishing off a bowl of guacamole in the kitchen as the rest of the family was swapping memories.

“Will I?” I knew just what she meant.

“Mostly…”

“I’m not quite sure I believe you. Did Sally ever get over losing her magic?”

She sighed. “Well, I think they did their best to distract her.” She wiggled her fingers at the maturely handsome, wolfish men who rarely left the older witch’s side. “She saved their lives and they adore her, and they gave her a very exciting life jaunting around the world.”

“Well.” I raised my eyebrows. “I don’t think our rock band is going to be invited anywhere. And what about you? Did you and Richard have any kids?”

She chewed her lip. “I don’t think we could. We tried.”

A twinge of pain went through me. “So I’ve heard.”

“We have a little cottage in the countryside. It’s very sweet. We’ve done a few different business endeavors. I can’t say it hasn’t been enjoyable. We’ve been very happy together and I prefer the peace and quiet. The people in town are so kind. I mean…every life is complicated.”

“I just wonder if the ache ever goes away.”

She shook her head. “No. You learn to live with it, though. You really do. But it’s a part of us, a big part to give up, no denying that. But I’m supporting Sally. That’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” I agreed with that.

I guess the conflict came from the feeling that maybe Charlotte needed something more. Or was I just jealous? She gave up her magic to keep Harris alive.

Of course, I would never forget Harris going out in the rain to try and help her. I knew he actually cared, so I couldn’t get too upset at his prickly moods. I guess I would have saved him too. Ugh.

It just felt so…wrong. This. Trying to be normal.

Charlotte deserved an interesting life. A good life, too. But not just…a boring one. She wasn’t that kind of girl. And I wasn’t that kind of familiar, for that matter.

The vacation was over soon enough, and her parents started contacting realtors to move to Atlanta, and packing up their stuff, like they couldn’t stand one more minute in this place. Her extended family didn’t go back to Australia yet either; they rented a house, “just to stay nearby for a bit.”

Charlotte seemed stressed. She didn’t know where she fit in now, whereas when we were at Merlin College and studying magic, she seemed to be coming into her own day by day. Now she was spending too much time staring at a computer screen, trying to run away from her bad dreams, worrying that Daisy hadn’t called, fretting over her future.

“Where’s Charlotte?” her dad asked.

I was stealing oatmeal from her dad’s pantry because I had these guys living with me and they ate a lot. “She’s back at the cabin.”

“Playing her game again?”

“Yeah.”

“Is she okay?”

“Probably not.”

“She doesn’t like change,” her dad said.

“I think she does really well with the right kind of change. I know she’s really happy to have family. But, she was a really special witch. And that was all hers.”

He leaned against the door. “Are you just making off with my entire container of steel cut oats?”

“Evan, let’s be real here. You never eat these. Your doctor told you to buy them.”

“You know too much about me.” He narrowed his eyes. Then he leaned in, slightly conspiratorial. “Do you know what was in that letter?”

“What letter?”

“Oh—“ He scratched his hair. “Shit. I was sure she’d tell you everything.”

“Too late now. What letter?”

“I shouldn’t have said anything.”

I put down the oatmeal and bolted for the stairs. I immediately started opening her drawers.

“Firian!” her dad snapped. “That is unacceptable!”

“I am the one person who always does everything in her best interest,” I said. “I am not always sure she does, but I do.” Charlotte was not a super subtle person, so I found a letter in the very first drawer, under a layer of notebooks and some books on necromancy.

Charlotte,

One more test for you. One chance to redeem yourself. When you have licked your wounds, come to the Wyrd tree and speak my name…

Queen Morgana, Seventh of the House of Coral, Her Royal Majesty the Queen of all Faeries.

“So you didn’t read this,” I said.

“Definitely not,” he said. “It was in the mailbox, but without a postmark or anything. Sealed.” He paused. “What does it say? I mean—no—don’t read it.” He tried to grab it from me.

“It’s short,” I said. “I already read it. It’s from the faery queen.”

“Ha ha,” her dad said. “Seriously.”

“That wasn’t a joke.”

“There’s a faery queen? A faery? Like a Titania-and-Oberon faery queen? Emily never told me about that.”

“We don’t know anything about her, but she’s…” I sighed. I didn’t have time to school Charlotte’s dad about faeries. “I need to talk to Charlotte.”

I definitely wasn’t mad at Charlotte. I couldn’t be. That wasn’t possible. But why didn’t she tell me about this letter?

“Charlotte?”

“Shh,” Montague said. “She’s sleeping.”

Charlotte was slumped in her computer chair, drooling slightly. “Wake up,” she murmured. I picked up a pen and drew a small mustache on her face. This small rebellion made me feel a lot better like I wasn’t mad at her anymore, not that I ever really was, of course.

“Oh—Firian.” She clutched my arm. “Was I sleeping?”

“I want to talk to you. Let’s take a little walk.”

“A walk?” She groaned. “I don’t want to walk in the forest anymore. We’re leaving anyway.”

I put the letter in front of her. She rubbed her eyes. “Shit. Fine.”

I guess we were having an argument, sort of, because she grabbed her coat and started walking along a step ahead of me with her arms crossed. Well, she tried to stay a step ahead of me, but I had longer legs so nyah nyah. I got in front of her and walked backwards.

“Why would you not even tell me about that letter?”

“I just—I wasn’t going to act on it, so…”

“You still could have told me.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

“What did you think I would say when I read the letter?”

“Just come out and say whatever you want to say, Firian!”

“You’re worried that I’m upset that we lost our magic.”

“Yeah. Well, obviously.”

“Why wouldn’t you talk to me about it? You’re upset you lost your magic.”

“I lost it saving Harris’ ass!” she said.

“It was the right thing to do.”

“You’re just saying that because you have to.” Her sad face was even cuter with the scribbled mustache on her face. She would be so aggravated when she noticed.

“Are you trying to make me say verbally that I actually like Harris?” I asked. “Fine. I do like Harris. But I also think that you need to fight to get your magic back. If the faery queen wants to bargain with you, maybe you shouldn’t just shove that in a drawer.”

Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. “So I can put all of you in danger again?”

“So we can have our witch back.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “You’re a witch and nothing has ever made you seem more purposeful. I watched you through middle school and high school, and I loved you but I know you never stood out there. Your destiny was to be a witch.”

“Stop!” She turned from me, wiping her tears quickly. “I finally have a chance at a normal family and life, and—“

“Normal? Really?”

“Okay, not normal, but not like, fucking dangerous! Dad’s really happy, overall, and I’m excited for him. I bet he’ll start playing music again, and yesterday he was in the garage playing with Claude and Guy, and you’re all here safe and not gored by demons or with the council trying to hurt you. I don’t need magic now. I have all of you and Harris’ ring to protect me.”

“But what about you? You’re going to live your life based on the idea that someone could get hurt?”

“Well, yes, Firian, that is actually a thing, trying not to get killed.”

“I know when you’re not happy,” I said. “You were happy studying magic. You still have your magic study books. You were taking it more seriously than any of your high school classes.”

“You think I should actually go talk to the faery queen?”

“Yes. I think you must. My girl…” I ran a hand through her hair, which was currently loose around her shoulders. “It’s going to eat at you. You’re going to wonder what she could give you. And everyone isn’t safe. You keep having nightmares about Daisy and Ignatius. You know you left some business unfinished.”

She bit her lip, leaning slightly into my touch. “It’s so annoying how you won’t let me just lie to you.”

“You need a familiar to keep you on track, that’s all. How about this? If you get your magic back, I’ll give you that anime fox yokai sex you wanted.”

She scoffed, but pursed her lips, thinking. “Like ears and a tail? Role playing?”

“Oh, like hentai.” I pulled her a little closer. “I could probably find some tentacles to invite.”

“No, like pretend to be dangerous and enigmatic. Don’t make any stupid jokes or show up in a Garfield shirt. I want you to wear yukata and say something hot. Like you are a tormented demon and my love is the only thing that eases the pain of your immortal existence.”

I laughed.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “You failed the test. I’m not doing it.”

“I’m only laughing because you make me laugh, mortal,” I said. “You are the first such girl to amuse me in my thousand years of eating the flesh of mortals.”

“Well, that’s dark.”

“You said you wanted me to be a fucking tormented demon. Make up your mind.”

“You’re right. Go on.”

“No. To be continued,” I said. “After you talk to the faery queen.”

“Are you blackmailing me, Firian?”

“This is not really blackmail. It’s just a fact, I can’t give you a foxy night unless you get my magic back.”

“Oh, I do want that foxy night.” She brushed my face with her fingers. “I really don’t like this. I don’t want you to be human like Adia. I don’t want to be…normal.”

“I know.” I met her lips, slowly, feeling the sweet warmth of her breath brush my cheek before I teased my fingers across the plump softness of her lower lip and then finishing with the joining of our mouths, giving it a minute before I slipped my tongue against hers.

I hadn’t spoken about this to the other guys beforehand, but I wasn’t surprised at all when Montague, Alec and Harris were all more than willing to make one last drive back to the Wyrd tree. After all, no human witch or warlock had met with the faery queen in centuries, as far as we knew. Should we be afraid? Maybe. But someone also had to be the first person to climb Mt. Everest or try out skydiving. Charlotte had an invitation from the faery queen herself, and that could mean anything, but I didn’t think we had anything to fear.

Chapter Seven

Charlotte

I guess I didn’t realize just how much I missed my magic, until Firian told me, but he was right. I took my books on necromancy out of the drawer with relief, like I was visiting old friends. I smelled the pages and flipped through creepy drawings of people rising from graves. I had Samuel Caruthers’ legacy tugging at me, but it didn’t feel like a burden so much as a promise.

I thought the other guys would try to stop me.

“Why didn’t you tell us about this letter?” Harris said. “I hope you weren’t trying to protect us. You’re certainly not protecting yourself, what with all the moping.”

“I haven’t been moping! I’ve been brooding. Like a dark mage.” I tossed my head.

“You’re too cute to brood. Sorry.”

“You’re too sexist to charm me with comments like that. Sorry.”

“All right, kids, let’s just get our bags packed already,” Alec said, shoving me and Harris apart. “We have a faery queen to visit.”

“I’ll drive,” Montague said, which was obvious because no one else knew how to drive, although he had been giving Harris some lessons. I should be learning myself, but instead I’d been—brooding. You know. In a cool way.

“Dad, we’re going to North Carolina for the weekend. I’ll be back.”

“To meet the faery queen?” Dad said.

“Firian told you about that?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m still processing that information. Faery queens. I hope she’s not dangerous.”

“It’s a wonderful thing,” Mom said. “It’s certainly what Samuel wanted.”

“Yes,” Dad said, and I could tell his brain was like, Samuel, the guy who got murdered.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll have backup and I have this holy ring, and she obviously wants to negotiate so I’m sure she won’t hurt me.”

“All right,” he said. “I’m not even going to say goodbye because I’ll see you Monday.”

I gave him a hug anyway, and then I gave mom a hug, and that did feel really good. Then we hit the road for the familiar drive up the mountains into the middle of nowhere region where Merlin College and the Wyrd Tree were located. I didn’t start to feel nervous until I knew we were close. School was still going on without us, which meant all the professors were just on the other side of the mountain, including Harris’ cousin Piers. We had more to fear from them than the faery queen. Montague took a longer way around while Harris cast cloaking spells on the car. The road was rugged and the SUV was bumping around, the wheels just inches from a drop-off down the mountain.

“Don’t look,” Harris said, seeing my queasy face as the car rocked across bumps, seeming like it could tip sideways at any moment.

We rounded the bend and a truck was parked across the road, blocking it entirely. A couple of guards from Merlin were sitting in the truck, one sipping at a thermos, the other picking at a guitar.

We all caught our breath but they obviously didn’t see us.

“Shit,” Harris said. “Turn off the car before they hear the engine.”

“Your cloaking spells are working really well,” Montague said. “But…”

On either side of the truck, the mountain was steep.

“A fox would have no trouble getting under that truck,” Firian said. “Or…a wolf.”

“If they’re smart, they have a ward around the truck,” Harris said.

“I could probably scale those rocks with Charlotte on my back,” Montague said.

“No fucking way, you are not Edwarding me this time,” I hissed. “I still like Firian’s idea better. If I go past the truck, the three of you can create a distraction if there are wards.”

“Well, my warlock powers are gone,” Alec said. “Unless I’m planning on seducing two middle-aged men, which I’d rather not, it’s all on you two.”

“We can handle it,” Harris said, both of them taking out their wands like gunslingers getting ready for a saloon battle.

We opened our doors very slowly. The guards still seemed oblivious. I got the feeling they’d been guarding the roads ever since we left, and it wasn’t that they expected us today in particular, which was good. It meant they were bored. But it was also unnerving. They really didn’t want us to get at the Wyrd tree.

“You can handle this,” Firian said.

I stood there and tried to transform. I had only ever done this the one time. I couldn’t just turn into a wolf anywhere. Magic had some weird rules. Only wizard magic worked in the Fixed Plane. Werewolves couldn’t turn into wolves, and Alec couldn’t go into his demon form, although he could still seduce people. Vampires could still be vampires, of course, because otherwise they would have died out a long time ago. It had something to do with what the laws of the human world accepted as true.

Since Merlin College existed in a place where the worlds met, more types of magic worked here, and humans couldn’t find it easily. So I should have been able to easily just…become a wolf. Right? I couldn’t remember how I did it the last time. My body was feeling very Current Mood: Mostly Hairless, Bipedal.

“You’ve got this,” Alec said.

“Yes.”

“Take a deep breath and stop looking at those guys.”

The guard had stopped playing the guitar and was now asking the other guy if he thought the porridge this morning tasted a little moldy.

Ew. I so did not miss that terrible chef Piers dragged in.

I slowly inhaled and exhaled, breathing from my stomach, imagining that the core of my being was this powerful, malleable force that could transform easily into a wolf. My birthright. Yes.

I slipped onto four legs like it was nothing and then I lifted my head proudly like, oh yeah, I did it. The guys all gave me thumbs up and made encouraging hand gestures toward the truck. It was crazy to me that none of them looked super surprised to watch their girlfriend turn into a wolf for the first time, but such was the magical life I guess.

Having succeeded at the wolf part, I took a few stealthy steps toward the truck. It was easy to walk softly on four padded feet than—

“Hey, it’s my turn to walk,” one of the guys said.

I froze and looked at my crew. Walk?

“All right,” the other guy said, getting back to his guitar. “Holler if you see anything.”

“Sure, wouldn’t that make Piers’ day,” the other guy said. It made me smile that apparently even warlocks had their average day job dudes who complained about the boss. But less smileworthy was the fact that he started marching right for the SUV. He was going to smack into Firian on his current trajectory. They all scattered as quietly as they could. “What was that?” the guy said. “I heard something.”

Both guards got their wands out, flicked them, and chanted spells, as Harris quickly whispered a counter-spell.

“Run! We’re counting on you now!” Montague told me as the guard’s wand whacked the SUV’s windshield and the wards collapsed.

I ran under the truck, getting mud on my hands—paws, whatever—and stomach. Ick. But I didn’t look back. I knew they would all do their best to cover me and if I hesitated that would be a waste. I ran for the tree, knowing the paths pretty well by now, passing by the cave where Stuart used to live. It was quiet here now and I wondered how Stuart’s servants were doing. I had a pang of guilt, because last I heard the council had captured Orson, and I didn’t know if anyone had saved him. I had been so cut off from the magical world.

The adrenaline racing through me now, the sense that I was helping my friends, and their friends, and so on?

It really does feel right.

I got to the tree and it felt like I exploded back into human form. It left me feeling dizzy, and now I was still covered in mud. “What the hell, magic? How come my clothes come and go but the mud is here to stay?”

The leaves of the white tree shivered in the wind, and it seemed very quiet.

“Hello? I am here to speak to Queen Morgana, of the Faeries, please? This is Charlotte Byrne. Is anyone here?”

A bright light emerged from the tree, growing and growing until I had to lift my hands to keep from being blinded. As I cringed back from the vivid white glow, I felt everything shift and spin around me. The light faded and I was standing on a path inside two columns of cypress trees. They formed a perfect natural hallway walled in by straight trunks, and a roof of leaves above my head, while the path was surrounded by pools of lily-pads and other lush flowers and mangrove trees, so it seemed almost like I was inside a room, but I was outside. I was no plant expert, but I felt like all this stuff didn’t usually grow together, which made it seem more strange.

At the opposite end of the long path, I could see a huge white throne with someone sitting in it. I took a step forward and soldiers immediately rushed up from behind and blocked my way with spears and pikes.

I lifted my hands. “Sorry! Sorry! I don’t know the protocol.”

They had moved so swiftly and quietly that I was completely startled by them, especially since there were over a dozen of them. They didn’t disappoint. They were all beautiful in a way that was extremely masculine but also graceful and a little delicate, with pale bluish skin and hair in shades of indigo, purple and crimson. Some of them had webbed hands, so I guess these were the water fae. They wore leather armor with gold accents, all of their chests marked with a shimmering emblem of red coral.

Behind this layer of male warriors, I realized the trees had another dozen female archers perched high in the branches.

Although they were all attractive and looked like they could probably kill me in two seconds, I sensed a certain malaise. Stuart said that Wyrd was dying because they had cut themselves off from the human world. Maybe that was what I picked up on.

“The queen sent me a letter,” I said. “I mean no harm.”

A tall, slender but broad-shouldered man was walking down the path. He had white hair that was obviously natural, because he looked fairly young. His grayish skin and green-gold eyes gave some hot dark elf vibes to his absolutely gorgeous facial features, but he didn’t look especially welcoming. He was carrying a scroll, wearing a knee-length robe/coat thing over black leather boots, and looked like the Battle Librarian class that Fortune’s Favor briefly flirted with before some dumb male fans made a meme joking about it and they ended up retiring the whole thing.

“Battle Librarian?” he said, lifting an eyebrow.

“Did I say that aloud?”

“No.”

He read my mind? Oh crap. That was the creepiest magic ever.

He stared at me with cold, narrowed eyes. “I am Lord Cyrus of the House of Hemlock, and I serve as liaison to Queen Morgana. Please tell me what you wish to say to her and I will bring her the message.”

“I can’t just talk to her?”

“She has no wish to look upon a human,” he sneered.

I guess I couldn’t help an expression of defiance as I said, “Oh? Well. Tell her—“

“Do you take issue with our queen’s wishes?” he asked.

“Her wish not to look upon a human?”

“If she heard your tone, I think she would have you punished,” he said. “She is the queen of the faeries and you are a witch without magic. Do you think you are worthy of looking upon her?”

“I think a strong queen would look at everyone she does business with right in the eyes,” I said.

As soon as I said it, I saw his eyes widen and burn with an inner flame that only comes from offending a beautiful immortal. I wanted to take it back. I didn’t want to rot in faery prison. She was the one who sent me a message, for crying out loud, so if it was going to be this much trouble, well, never mind.

Then, the fire in his eyes calmed down and instead he gave me another small smile that seemed like it might actually be worse. “You are bold,” he said. “Come forward, then. You wanted to meet the queen.”

Fortune favors the bold. I took a deep breath. “Thank you,” I said.

He strolled forward, and I noticed more and more faeries watching me silently as I walked. Faeries in the trees, faeries in the bushes, faeries in the water peering out from under lily-pads.

It felt like we walked a mile to actually reach the throne. It was so far away. As we got closer, I saw slender, bluish white limbs hanging wearily off the arms of the huge throne, with bracelets of thin red coral wrapped around her wrists. The faery queen wore a veil like a bride, and a gown with layers of shimmering purple, red, and silver. I could just barely see her eyes, glowing out from under the veil.

“Ila aru, arhal lai,” she said, in a very thin voice. “Shi’il na…?”

I couldn’t tell if she was sick or really old, or if she was actually very strong but frail in appearance. She definitely looked frail, but I had goosebumps all over my body. I felt like she noticed every move I made, every breath, and was testing me.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Cyrus said, bowing to her. “This is the Wyrd witch girl, Charlotte.”

She said a bunch of stuff in her own language, sounding breathless, but also dangerous. I mean, I’m not saying she was a villain, too early to judge, but a lot of villains also look and sound half-dead.

“She says you can come closer,” Cyrus said.

“It sounds like she said more than that.”

“Come closer,” he repeated. “No, no, closer.” He nudged me forward until I was closer than I wanted to be.

“Do you want me close, or far away?” I said. “Make up your mind!”

“She says you are not what she expected,” Cyrus said, and then he considered me and said, unimpressed, “Indeed.”

“What do you mean by that?”

I could see more of her face under the veil, but still not enough of her face to know that she was more than a pair of glowing eyes and pale, wan cheeks. She reached a hand out, her webbed hand skimming the air in front of me. She whispered more rapidly, musical words pouring out of her.

“She says you are a true child of Wyrd,” he said. “She is more pleased with you than she expected.”

That sounded promising. Maybe I could actually get somewhere with her. It would be so amazing if I could actually negotiate this treaty and save everyone from the council. “Thank you.”

The queen gestured at my hand.

“She would like the ring you are wearing,” he said.

I knew she must mean the reliquary ring I was wearing for protection. “To keep?”

“Yes, it is customary to bring an offering when you are given a reception with Queen Morgana,” he said.

“I’m sorry. She can’t have that one. It isn’t even mine. I’m borrowing it—“

“From the Hapsburgs,” he interrupted. “They are a Ethereal family. If you wish to be welcomed here, you must relinquish your Ethereal artifacts. We are considering whether we want to allow human wizards into Wyrd for the first time in centuries. This is something you desperately want.”

“I’m not desperate,” I said. “Not desperate enough to give away something that isn’t mine.”

“It was given to you by a boy who loves you, was it not?” Cyrus asked. “You don’t think he would understand?” He said something to Queen Morgana. She stared at me.

“I don’t know if he like, loves me, loves me,” I said. “It’s still not right, anyway. I have honor. I’m not going to give it to you unless I know you’ll give me something in exchange.”

“She actually is very stubborn,” he said, in response to another question from the queen. “But, she is very loyal to her mates.” They said something, nodded to each other, and Cyrus beckoned me off to the side, to one of the pools of water surrounding the throne. He swirled his hand around over the water and an image appeared in the water of Piers and the other professors swarming my guys. Piers zapped Firian, who was helpless without his—our—magic.

“Oh god!” I gasped. “Is that real?”

“I’m just showing you what’s going on back home,” he said. “You will need us if you want to have magic. Your Ethereal council will banish all of you to Sinistral, and you’ve seen Sinistral. It is an unstable world and only the heartiest mages would ever survive there. The queen needs you to show your loyalty to her.”

“I came here to negotiate,” I said. “I’m not giving her anything until we’ve hammered out the terms of the deal.”

“The queen doesn’t ‘hammer’,” he said.

“I think the queen needs me as much as I need her, so she’d better start meeting me halfway.”

“The queen doesn’t need you.”

“Oh?” I said. “This world isn’t sick? Stuart told me Wyrd is dying, and everyone here looks awfully pale. Even the plants just seem…off.”

“We have been dying for centuries, so I suppose it will take a while yet,” he said. “There will be others like you.”

“So you don’t need me at all.” I was definitely catching a whiff of weakness off Mr. Arrogant Mind-Reader. “I’ll just go and you can find someone else.”

“Hass!” the queen called out before slumping wearily forward. She snapped her fingers. She said a bunch of stuff. It sounded like she was upset at Cyrus.

He stared back at her with a little twitch at his temple before saying, “Very well. The queen will present herself clearly. She will open the gates of Wyrd to thirteen witches. You may name their number. Each of these witches must join with the great houses of Wyrd, tied in future by blood. She asks for your reliquary ring as a token of the agreement. In exchange, she will return your magic to you.”

“You’re saying we only get faery magic if we agree to marry faeries?”

“Yes,” he said.

“So what happens to me and my mates? We aren’t allowed into Wyrd? I’m trying to keep my friends safe, too. Professor McGuinness is gay; do you have someone for him? Plus, what if they don’t want to marry faeries?”

Cyrus frowned as the queen continued. “She says that if you give up the ring, you will be permitted into Wyrd, as will any other witch or warlock who comes into Wyrd magic naturally.”

The queen tapped her fingers on the arm of her throne. She seemed to think she was giving me a generous concession.

“That won’t help my people!” I said. “I don’t know anyone who wants to marry a faery! Did she get the head of the Withered Lord from Stuart?”

“Yes. She was very impressed. That’s the only reason she is speaking to you at all.”

“I feel like we’ve done a lot,” I said. “We killed a demon. That’s your enemy, right? We’re fighting with the Ethereal council. That’s also your enemy. I’ll give you the ring if you give me my magic back, but then I want all my boyfriend and friends who fought with me to be allowed into Wyrd. No marriage alliances. We’re not interested.”

“Killing a demon proves you have some worth,” he said. ”In the scheme of things, it’s nothing compared to opening our gates to humans. The queen must maintain control over this alliance or she will not make it. We will not allow our culture to be corrupted. Each bride will be trained in our ways so we don’t have uncouth humans just running around, popping in and out.”

“That’s not the deal I need,” I said.

“Well, then, it seems we can’t come to terms.”

“Wait, wait!” I said, frantic. I didn’t want to go home without figuring something out. “Please! We want to help you too.”

The queen suddenly spoke in English herself, with a beautiful accent, but she still sounded weary. “This is the only bargain we shall offer today, child.”

“What about the ring for my magic? At least?”

I mean, the ring wasn’t actually mine to give, but I knew Harris would want me to get my magic back. The fact was, Harris liked our little competition over who was the best wizard, and it was no fun if he had magic and I didn’t. He told me to wear the ring to protect myself. He wasn’t going to ask for it back, anyway. If I had magic, I could protect myself with my own power, which was obviously better.

Plus, Firian would have magic too. Double score. (And I’d get that kitsune sex fantasy. Not that this factored into my negotiations at all or anything…hmm.)

She held out her hand. I pulled the ring off my finger and gave it to her. I trusted she would hold up her end, because bargains were so important in the magical world, and I was right. She took my hand and I felt warmth flood through me. I could feel my powers coming back to me and it brought me a huge sense of comfort and relief, like a missing limb had grown back. I think I had been trying to deny how much my magic meant to me.

Then I saw the queen running her fingers over the ring, the suggestion of a smile beneath the veil. “Goodbye,” she said.

I was suddenly shoved out of Wyrd and back into the meadow overlooked by the tree. As soon as I appeared, I heard shouts and a guard shot me with a paralyzing spell, knocking me to the ground.

Chapter Eight

Charlotte

“You came back to the tree.” Piers Nicolescu paced past us. “Harris, how stupid are you?”

“Apparently, very stupid,” Harris said dryly. “Go ahead. Enjoy the moment. Strut. Puff. You want to try out a villain laugh while you’re at it?”

“I’m sad for you,” Piers said, looking faintly wounded. “That’s all. Now I have to call the authorities on my own cousin.”

While I was in Wyrd, my guys got into a brawl with the guards and Montague bit one of them, so…it seemed unlikely we could talk our way out of this now.

“You know, Catherine and your parents and I had all agreed to let you youths go.”

“‘Youths’?” Montague said. “When was the last time you fought a high demon?”

“He’s just mad because his familiar is a sugar glider,” Harris said.

“Awww, really?” I said, although I probably shouldn’t.

Piers looked completely pissed off that I thought his familiar was adorable. He struck Harris’ face. “Are we insulting familiars now? Two of you couldn’t even keep yours alive.”

Montague lunged forward to tackle Piers and some guards rushed forward to break them up. They locked Montague’s hands up in some tight cuffs that glowed.

Piers had been knocked to the ground. Someone tried to help him up and he brushed it off with a muttered curse, straightening out his cloak. “You are all going to the Haven,” he said. “It’s where you belong.”

“The Haven?” Harris said.

“Yes. If you can get your head on straight, maybe your life isn’t completely ruined.”

“Don’t do this,” Harris said. “Charlotte is with her family. Look, let’s just give the ring back. Charlotte lost her magic; we killed a demon. There is no reason to put a regular girl in the Haven.”

“Er…” I hadn’t really had a chance to talk about what happened in the faery realm except clearly things had not gone as well as hoped.

Harris looked at me. “You don’t have the ring?”

“No.”

“You gave it to the faeries? Why would you do that without even getting anything in return?”

“I did get something in return. My magic.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Piers lifted a hand. “Well, that settles that. Anyway, Daisy is already there.”

“Daisy?” I cried. “Daisy is at the Haven? Is that why we haven’t heard from her?”

“Probably. It seems she split with the vampires in New York, and she was promptly picked up. I’m sure she’s being well taken care of there.”

“What about Ignatius?”

“Oh…Ignatius. They are certainly looking for…that person.” I got the sense that if Ignatius was caught, it was going to go very badly for him. Hopefully he and Stuart and Professor McGuinness had a safe place to hide.

Piers went to talk with the guards and other professors. They gestured and someone went to the old-fashioned box in the main hall that held a telephone.

Montague looked more nervous than when we went to fight the demon. “I don’t want to go back there,” he said.

“Is it that bad?” Alec asked. “Isn’t it just like rehab?”

“No. It’s not ‘just’ rehab. They only had me for the summer,” Montague said. “And my parents sent me there, so it was…the ‘lite’ version. I’m not sure it’s going to be temporary this time. It’s like prison for warlocks and witches who stumbled into bad magic but aren’t actually bad themselves. Crazy people, and vampires and incubi with all their impulses tamped down. They…things happen there. And now that they’ve got this purification spell, who knows what they’re doing to the people there.”

“Ina is there,” I whispered. “Ignatius’ love.”

Ina. The one family member I had never met. The one family member that no one had seen in many years, by the sound of it.

I felt terrible for her. Everyone said she was ‘crazy’ now, too, so maybe she wasn’t fully aware of what was going on, but what if she was? And she was abandoned by everyone she once loved? It didn’t sound like a place with visiting hours.

“Maybe…I’m supposed to go there,” I said.

“Just to see Ina?” Montague said. “You can’t help her.”

“Maybe I can,” I hissed back. “How do you know?”

“I just told you, it’s prison,” he said. “There are guards everywhere. Security at Merlin College is absolutely nonexistent in comparison, so don’t think just because you can sneak around here that you’ll get any of that there.”

“They still have your car, right?” Alec asked.

“That shit is probably impounded by now,” Montague said. “They’re not keeping that thing and I bet they wouldn’t even know how to sell it. No, we need to fight this.” As Piers came back, Montague said, “I want to call my parents.”

“Your parents have already met with the council,” Piers said. “They already know you have been having increasing contact with your sire and other vampire clans, and they want you to be safe.”

“Alec, what about your dad?” Montague asked.

“You know that’s no good,” Alec said.

“I am not just giving up,” Montague said.

“Monty, I think you’re digging yourself a deeper hole at this point,” Harris said. “You’re in handcuffs. And if Daisy’s there, we can’t just ditch her.”

It was true that Montague couldn’t do much to fight back, but he got that look in his eyes like he was just thinking about how every man in the room would taste, like he would happily murder them all at the first opportunity. It was the face that reminded me, oh yeah, vampires aren’t just cute. We were definitely going to have to keep him under control while we figured out whatever plan we would surely figure out. I had my magic back, so…we could work together and escape, surely. We didn’t need the faeries. We didn’t need the council. I had watched enough cartoons to know that any team of five people with disparate powers and personalities as cool as we were could defeat anything, and we’d already proven it once, so…yeah. Yeah, I wasn’t nervous.

“The car will be here for you in three hours or so,” Piers said. “I have business to attend to, but you will wait here under guard.”

“Can I—can I call my parents?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “They will be notified by courier.”

“So that’s it? We don’t get to appeal or anything?”

“Your friends tried to kill the guards,” Piers said.

“I never intended on killing them,” Montague said. “The world would be a better place if everyone stopped assuming vampires want to kill people instead of just sampling them.”

Piers ignored Montague. “I wouldn’t bother asking for an ‘appeal’. I wish this was not happening, Charlotte.”

“Well, I wish your guards would stop trying attacking us.”

“I want to run a school of talented, well-behaved students,” he said. “And you are still enrolled. So you are my students. I’m sorry I won’t see you back here.”

Chapter Nine

Charlotte

The Haven.

It sounded like it could be a retirement community, but from all I’d heard, I was imagining a 19th century insane asylum. Like, with towers, and walls that were painted some weird color that no one painted walls anymore, with so much lead in the paint. I imagined weird back staircases, and mysterious cries in the night, and an overcast sky.

On the other hand, they showed up to collect us in a 70s van painted black, which ruined the Victorian atmosphere I was conjuring, but I guess that was in the budget.

They were called “Warlocks for the Maintenance of Peace and Order” because I guess police sounded too ominous, but they were basically the cops, complete with yelling at us and physically shoving Montague in the van, trying to clonk his head on the doorframe on purpose, but he dodged. They looked less enthused about shoving around Alec, since he was more buff than they were, or Harris for the sheer fact that he was warlock royalty.

(Firian, of course, had vanished, although I don’t know if he was really much safer in Etherium.)

The Haven wasn’t actually that far away, just a couple hours’ drive, long enough for me to get increasingly nervous about the fact that I was going to be trapped in this place that scared Montague, and I hadn’t even been allowed to contact my parents. I wondered if they would try to purify me again.

At the end of a winding mountain road, a bell tower loomed up from the trees. We passed through the iron gates, under the script that said ‘Sky Haven Home’.

It was pretty much like I imagined, a sprawling complex of Victorian buildings, with a big green lawn in front peppered with goats. I guess the goats helped them avoid using lawn mowers, and they brought a little cheer to the surroundings. A parking lot was shoved off to the side.

“Isn’t that your car?” Harris whispered.

Montague’s eyes widened as he laid eyes on the one car in the parking lot that stood out like a rap star walking into a old white people fundraiser. Every other car was some sort of old, dignified vehicle in a subdued color and then there was this one import racer with electric blue paint that faded to black in the back and a huge spoiler. Montague put his hand on the glass window like he had seen a long-lost lover on a passing train platform.

“That’s my fucking car,” he whispered.

The car vanished from view as our creeper van pulled up to the front and the warlock cops flung open the doors as a few staff members came down the steps to greet us. The three women all wore prim blue dresses down to the tops of their boots with aprons, and the man wore a black suit. Behind them, the stone face of the Haven rose behind them, almost cathedral-like from here, four stories if you didn’t count the central tower, which was a few more stories.

“There are the Merlin kids,” said Warlock Cop.

The ‘Merlin kids’. Ooh, we sounded kinda infamous.

“Well, they don’t look too bad,” the man in the suit chuckled. “I’m Mr. Coopman and this is Miss de Georgel. We’re going to take good care of you all and help you get back on your feet.”

“We were on our feet to begin with,” Harris said.

“You must be Harrison von Hapsburg Nicolescu!” he said. “We have a very fine room for you. There is no shame in what you’ve done. Killing a demon. Very impressive. But I think you know you have done something wrong, Mr. Nicolescu. Thievery is beneath you.” He turned to Montague and Alec. “Mr. Xarra, I wish I could be more pleased to see you again, but I haven’t lost hope. Often, vampires find purpose, contentment and safety with residence here. And Mr. Lyrman…you’re going to be an interesting challenge, but you are of good stock. I have faith.”

“Mr. Nicolescu says that the girl is the ringleader,” Warlock Cop said. “She is Amelia Halt’s protege and part-werewolf, the granddaughter of Sally Caruthers.”

“Yes. I got the message,” Mr. Coopman said. “Charlotte, from the sounds of it, you still have a lot to learn about the wizard community. Piers’ noted that you may have dealt with some personal aggression from your great-aunt Catherine. She is a strong personality, talented as she may be. Well, I want to assure you that our aim at the Haven is to find ways for everyone to be safe and fulfill their potential.”

“And that’s why you trap vampires here for life,” Montague said.

“I know this is hard to accept, but vampires are rarely safe in society,” Mr. Coopman said gently. “You are dealing with strong needs. It only takes one lapse and you could kill your loved ones, or someone else’s loved ones. Mr. Xarra, we do want to work with you.”

I took Montague’s hand and squeezed it. I knew he didn’t want to be here, but I also knew we weren’t going to argue, snark or punch our way out of this. We had to do something more crafty.

We walked through the doors and I shivered. This place felt extremely haunted. I actually didn’t know just how haunted a building could feel until I walked into the entrance hall, lit only by the tall windows, dreary light falling on chipped white tile and cracked white plaster. There was a check-in desk and a few wooden telephone booths, one currently occupied, and a guard at the door.

“I’ll be showing you to the women’s rooms,” Miss de Georgel said.

“Oh—“ I looked at the guys frantically and Harris lifted a hand.

“No,” he said. “We’re engaged.”

“You and Miss Byrne?”

“Yes. My parents wished it,” he said. “I require a conjugal relationship with Charlotte. Feel free to call them and ask.”

“Very well,” Mr. Coopman said, raising a brow. “I’ll call them now.”

What the what? In what universe could Harris just say he wanted me in his bed and everyone was going to be like, oh sure, that’s fine? Especially considering how old-fashioned this place was.

“They wanted us to get married,” Harris said. “We’ll see if it’s still true.”

“You two in a room alone?” Alec said. “I’m coming over every night.”

“I figured that already,” Harris said. “I know I can’t get rid of you and your demon dick, but it’s still my room.”

“No one has a room yet,” Montague growled. “And good luck getting one. They’re not going to let you have that much fun.”

Mr. Coopman returned. “All right,” he said. “Your parents were pleased with the idea. So let me see if any marriage beds are open.”

We all stared at Harris.

He grimaced. “To be honest, there is a dark side to this, and that’s why it works. I’ll explain later.”

“Ah,” Montague said, nodding.

“What?” I said. “What dark side?”

“Hsst,” Harris said, because Miss de Georgel was staring at us. She gave us a tight smile when we noticed her.

I was definitely on edge as we were shown up a well-worn wooden staircase to a hallway of numbered doors. It smelled sort of herbal and I heard low murmuring behind one door, soft violin music behind another. The walls were a weird sickly yellow color and the doors were brown. Miss de Georgel opened one with a skeleton key. “Here you are, Mr. Nicolescu. It is one of the better rooms we have; of course, I’m sure it is no Ladyswald.”

“Not…quite,” Harris said, like he was trying to eat a very strange foreign meal without offending the hosts.

The room had a big bed with a very heavy headboard. Actually, all the furniture looked like each piece would kill multiple people if you dropped it out a window. Heavy dresser, heavy wardrobe, heavy bookcase, with a worn patterned rug and thick red velvety curtains. On the wall was a still life painting of things I recognized as spell components: herbs, a bottle of tiny crystals, unknown vials, and a small skull. We also had a bathroom with a clawfoot tub and a toilet that had the tank on top and this big deep sink, like, a sink you could drown someone’s face in ohmigod why am I thinking of it that way?

Of course, I knew why. This place was hella haunted. I was going to wake up to see a woman in Victorian clothes at the foot of my bed crying. For sure. Maybe worse. Blood dripping from the walls? Sure. Unknown baby cries in the night? Definitely. One of those Korean ghosts? Nothing would surprise me.

And I had to sleep with Harris and no one else?

Firian can be here, too. You can insist on that. Calm down.

“Are you scared, Chosen One?” he whispered.

“No, because you owe me your life in order to protect me. And honor is your only good quality.”

He gave me exactly the sort of look I was hoping to provoke—the slightly irritated narrowing of his blue eyes and the quick smile that said, I’ll get the better of you.

Of course, I think I’d gotten the better of him by saving him from death. How could anyone beat that?

But what the nights would be like with him…I shivered to think. And it was a shiver that shot heat straight through me, and made me anticipate the night as much as I feared it.

“Please, settle in and read the rules in the book on the desk,” Miss de Georgel said. “I’ll show you two to your rooms.”

“If you think you’ve figured out a way to get Char to yourself, you’re dead wrong,” Alec said before leaving. “If they chain me to my bed I’ll be in her dreams so much she’ll be too tired to deal with you.”

“Alec, would I do that to you?” Harris said lightly. “We’re friends. I share my toys.”

I elbowed him as Montague tugged Alec out of the doorway. He seemed too grumpy for flirting.

Harris looked in the mirror and checked his appearance, in a casual way that was kinda sexy. I reached for the rule book but he took it from me and dropped it on the bed. “Later,” he said. He reached for my wrist, pressing my hand into the covers as his larger one folded over it, and stole a kiss.

“This isn’t the way I intended to keep you,” he said.

“What were you planning? Christian Grey’s play room?”

“Hmm, what does it say psychologically that you think I’d go there?”

“It says I read a lot of trashy books…”

His hand slipped up my shirt, but in a slow, gentle way. An exploratory mission that took its time finding the sensitive nub it was seeking. They pebbled as he brushed fingers across them. “Charlotte,” he said. “Don’t be scared.”

“I’m not scared.”

He scoffed.

“Okay, well, this place is a freaking nightmare. It’s only smart to be scared. There are ghosts here.”

“You are very sensitive,” he said, lightly swirling his fingers around one of my nipples until I let out a little moan. “To ghosts.”

“Ohh…”

“Must be that necromancy study,” he said. “I’ll protect you. All right?” His voice was soft but authoritative, demanding an answer.

“All right,” I said breathlessly as the space between my legs cried for some attention.

“I just wanted you to myself now and then.” He kissed my neck. “I want you to forget where you are. Forget what you’re afraid of. Forget everything but me.”

“Such a narcissist, but I guess all exiled princes are.”

He wrapped his hand around my chin and claimed my mouth, the force of his kiss suggesting that he would like me to be quiet. I decided it wasn’t worth it to fight, certainly not when his touch felt this good. Now his hand felt up my thigh, pausing to cup my bottom before tugging my panties down. I was a little embarrassed by how needy I felt, in the midst of everything else going on. A few minutes ago I wasn’t even thinking about Harris pounding me on a creepy old bed while ghosts probably watched, and now I found myself saying, “Mm…yes…”

Our bodies pressed together now, leaning close, tangling up together, his erection confined by his pants but pressing against my naked skin as he flung up my skirt, and he was kissing me, caressing me. I started undressing his lower half with the urgency of a wolf in heat who happened to have girl hands, and he quickly started unbuttoning his shirt too. Fair enough. We didn’t need to Winnie the Pooh this.

Fear sex also makes for hot sex. I guess it was up there with makeup sex. Intense emotional states had their perks. I had no idea what it would be like being confined to the ward for bad wizards, and I shut my eyes to block out the sight of the place. Harris grabbed my knees and split me open, and since my eyes were shut I didn’t realize he was going to prime me with some tongue action.

“Oh damn,” I gasped.

“Spread that pussy,” he said, before his tongue slid to one side and then the other, urging me open.

I felt like I should say something snarky, but I was way too turned on.

“You’re mine,” he said, before sinking his cock into me deep. “Say you’re mine.”

“I’m yours,” I said without hardly thinking, shutting my eyes again. I had a micro-orgasm just from the first thrust, and it only drove my need deeper. “More, more,” I groaned as I dug my fingernails into his back.

“Ha,” he said, like he’d won a round. And he had, I guess. Maybe. But I didn’t mind losing like this.

Chapter Ten

Charlotte

After sex, I wanted to fall asleep. Harris was holding me. It was actually pretty nice. He wasn’t a gentle presence, exactly, but I felt safe with him. He seemed very awake and it made me feel like I could let my guard down.

Still, there was an eerie, faint moaning sound that might have been wind creeping through a crack in the window, or maybe was just the building settling, or maybe was a desperate cry from beyond.

I remembered something. “Harris, what was the dark side of us sharing a room?”

“You’re taking something for birth control, right? A spell?”

“Yeah, they gave it to me at the infirmary at Merlin.”

“They’re not going to give you that here, I can guarantee it.”

“Are you saying they want me to get pregnant?” I furrowed my brows. “Before we’re even married?”

“If we had a baby, my parents would have an easier way of forcing us into the life they want us to have,” he said. “They know we wouldn’t want a baby to grow up here. So, when they offer freedom in exchange for good behavior…basically, a baby makes you easier to control. As an individual person, you can jaunt off and put yourself in danger. Once a baby is in the picture, you won’t want to do that.”

“Who says? Maybe I want to jaunt around with my baby? My family has somewhat of a wild record.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you,” he said. “But then my parents would ask the council for custody. If it was my child, they would win. Then, at least, they have my heir, which I guess is better than nothing.”

My mouth fell open. “That—that is awful.”

“I warned you it was dark,” he said. “But I know how they think. My parents don’t even approve of birth control; how do you think there ended up being seven of us? Anyway, we’ll work around it. You can’t get pregnant with Montague and Firian, so you won’t be lacking for attention. And I’ll still get what I want out of you. If I fill that little mouth of yours I won’t have to hear so much complaining coming out of it.” He ran a thumb over my bottom lip.

I slapped him, my skin hot. “Then I guess I’ll have to complain twice as much the rest of the time.”

“I don’t doubt that you’ll get me back.” His smirk was so confident that I wanted to slap him again. Harder. I’d left a pink mark on his cheek but it was fading. I wondered what he’d do to me if I tried it, and I realized I was getting turned on again.

“I—I wonder where Alec and Montague are staying,” I said, feeling the need for a palette cleanser.

He sat up suddenly and reached for his clothes. He got himself put back together in about two seconds. I don’t know how it was that his clothes didn’t even look wrinkled. “I want to find Daisy,” he said. “If she’s been here for weeks already…”

In the distance somewhere, we both heard a woman screaming, “Nooo! Nooo!” It was an unhinged, desperate scream, laced with tears. “Don’t put me back in there, oh god, please, don’t take me back, nooo!” The voice shrank away and then stopped. The hall was dead silent now.

Harris’ eyes cut to mine.

“Let’s find Daisy,” he repeated, more tense.

We walked around, getting a feel for the place. There were halls full of bedrooms, of course, occupying most of the upper floors, but the side wings were blocked by guards. Windows overlooked an inner courtyard, showing that the building was actually a square, but the back side of the square also looked like it was gated off.

“Can’t come in here. Therapy in progress,” the first guard said when we tried to go left.

I was pretty sure I’d heard the screaming over here, but at least it was quiet now.

“Are you looking for someone?” asked the guard at the building’s right wing.

“Daisy Pendleton. She’s a friend of ours.”

“The diviner, oh yes. She’s always in the lounge. It’s in the basement. Follow the signs to the swimming pool but turn left before you get there.”

The basement vibe was like, 1970s college library meets a church basement where you would hold a really lame party, with a dash of Soviet recreational building. Lots of tile, gold carpet and retro furniture that was almost cool but was also somehow not. The air was cold and sterile but seemed uncirculated.

Summary: Depressing.

This was where we found Daisy. In a small room, curled up on a worn out green couch, watching television. She didn’t look up at first, not until Harris said, “Daisy!”

She blinked like she’d forgotten to do it for awhile. “Harris? Charlotte? Is that really you?”

“Can I turn a light on?” Harris asked, but did it anyway. “Yes, it’s us.”

“I was hoping they wouldn’t catch you,” she said, wiping sand from her eyes. “But I guess, since they did, do you want to watch TV? I caught up on Queer Eye, Charlotte. I cried so much. Like, it’s so beautiful. You’re right. I love Jonathan. I want to be him.”

There were several empty shot glasses by the couch. Harris picked one up and sniffed. “What are they giving you?” he asked.

“Some stuff to like, I don’t know, make it easier.” She reached for his jacket and clutched the hem, not letting go, just holding it. “I still have to do my magic but at least I can watch all the TV. Grandmother didn’t let me watch all the TV. So I’m all caught up on Queer Eye and Project Runway and I watched all the Marie Kondos…”

“Fun,” I said.

“And then I watched all of Key & Peele and all these, like, Marvel movies.”

“That’s a lot…”

“And then there all these adorable movies about Christmas, and I saw some Real Housewives, and there was a documentary about rappers and I watched this Lego Elves show, and—”

“I have no idea how you even got to all of those things,” I said. “You must have broken the algorithms. I think it’s time to stop watching TV, though. You look like you need fresh air.” I turned off the TV and made her get on her feet. She wavered a little, and then gave me a dazed look with dark shadows under her eyes, and then she threw her arms around me.

“Something’s wrong with my head, Charlotte,” she said. “How long have I been here?”

“Daisy, have they been forcing you to do magic the same way Piers did?” Harris asked.

“Yes. They make me look for dark spots.”

“You mean Sinistral parallels?”

“Yeah.”

“And they’re giving you drugs so you don’t resist.”

“At least the magic isn’t so bad with the drugs,” Daisy said. “I don’t feel so alone when I’m alone. And when I send my mind off searching for the things they want, it doesn’t feel as weird.”

“No more drugs,” Harris said. “The Daisy I know might be crazy but she’s definitely in control. How did they get you from the vampires?”

“Oh, the vampires. They were all like, ‘We think we found Lisbeth. Goodbye!’”

“That’s cold!”

“Well, they did offer to find me a place with some other vampires, but…” She rubbed her head. “I don’t really want to be a vampire’s thrall either. I spent a week with them and they look hot but they’re actually like, old people.”

“The sad truth about vampires revealed,” Harris said dryly. “They are old.”

“So I was like, just take me to New York. And then the warlocks grabbed me. I’m never going to escape. Never. So the only thing I can do is take the edge off.”

“Well…you…could have options,” I said.

“Oh yeah?”

But it wasn’t a very good option. As soon as I said it I realized that anyone who took the faeries’ deal was still trapped. “The faeries are looking for witches and warlocks to marry. They said they will allow us to access Wyrd if I bring them thirteen brides.”

“Faeries…” Daisy looked pensive. “They’re worse than vampires.”

“But maybe they won’t force you into using your powers,” I said. “They don’t seem very interested in our magic. I have a feeling they’ll be pretty controlling, though. They want the faery brides to fit into their society.”

“Ugh. Nooo,” Daisy said. She looked sleepy.

“Let’s get her back into her room to sleep off this stuff and find the other guys,” Harris said. “Now that we know she’s okay.”

Daisy stumbled to her room and collapsed face first on the bed. It was similar to our room, just smaller in scale. Daisy had pinned magazine pages to the walls. Harris turned her over and put a blanket over her.

“Are the drugs addictive?” I asked. “Maybe I should ask Firian to watch over her.”

“Luckily, she’s also from a well-regarded family,” Harris said. “They won’t want to fry her brain or mess her up too much. The thing I know about the Haven is…well, it’s a prison, and like any prison, if you have friends in high places, you are treated well. I don’t know what’s going on behind the guarded doors.”

“All of us have friends in high places…right?” I asked nervously.

“If I’m worried about anyone, it’s Alec.”

Chapter Eleven

Alec

“Mr. Xarra, this is your room.”

Monty took one look at his small, spartan room and shrugged. “Is Alec next door?”

Miss de Georgel gave me an expression that confirmed what I already knew. I didn’t belong here. I had already been ‘purified’ and it didn’t go well. It banished my warlock side and made me a full-on demon.

“You two can’t do everything together,” she said. “Alec has…his own quarters. Follow me, Mr. Lyrman.”

“I’m going with you,” Monty said.

“You may not,” she said.

“What are you going to do to him that I’m not allowed to witness?”

“Every patient here has their own course of treatment. For the sake of privacy, you must stay here.”

“You’re going to hurt him! I know you’re fucking liars,” Monty said. “I’m not going to let you hurt my best friend. He might be an incubus but he is in control.”

“Do I need to call the guards?” she asked sharply, holding up a hand as he bared fangs are her.

“Monty, I’m fine,” I said, trying to de-escalate the situation. Montague’s temper wasn’t doing anyone any good here. “Maybe you can find Charlotte and Harris and hang out until I get back.”

I was pretty good at staying calm, usually. So I was trying to hold onto that. Why panic now? They were probably just going to ask me some questions and maybe give me one of those spells that blocked me from touching the girls. Even if they wouldn’t let me touch Charlotte, I could still get to her in my dreams. They hadn’t figured out a good way to block dreams.

“Sorry about him,” I said. “He has a lot of Aries energy in his chart, so he argues even when he shouldn’t. He was always getting into trouble when he was younger, but I guess you know that, since he was already here.”

Usually, people expected an incubus demon to be hot-headed and seductive. Little they know, I’d had a lifetime of trying to win my dad over, and I was great at mature behavior. When I started speaking in a calm voice, it never failed to settle down old witches either. After all, on a deeper level, I still couldn’t help but be seductive. The combination was a winner every time.

Except…this lady. She wasn’t even that old, maybe fifty, but she had a strict air even I couldn’t seem to penetrate.

“I hope my room has good natural light,” I said. “With these old windows, I’m sure most of them do. I don’t really care about the bed or the bath half as much as a good space to paint.”

That was angle #2. Almost everyone liked having an artsy guy around, just minding his own business.

But I already had a feeling it wouldn’t work.

We passed by a guard and turned a corner. The atmosphere changed. It seemed locked down and sort of apocalyptic. The doors were metal instead of wood and had heavy locks. I heard a banging noise and some cries and one door opened. Two nurses pushed out a gurney with a girl strapped down on it, unconscious.

“We’re done with the room,” they said, seeing us.

I immediately dropped the nice guy attitude. “What’s going on here?” I said. “They already tried to purify me once and it didn’t work.”

“Come in,” she said, pointing me through the door.

As soon as I stepped in, a few guards seized me, wrestling me to the ground.

Now I was just flat out fighting them as best I could, trying to shake off one while shoving another out of my face. Then I slammed back an elbow at the third guy. That was as good as it got for me, though, because they swished their wands at me and with a few spell words, my hands and feet were bound with magical glowing ropes.

They stood back. I heard murmuring behind me, and Miss de Georgel stepped out. It seemed like we were waiting for something.

I twisted around as best I could. “You don’t need to do this. I’m not hostile.”

“Well, you probably will be,” one of the guards said before another one nudged him.

When the door opened again, the man who walked in had a very calm vibe that seemed to fill the entire space. He had long, straight dark hair that came just past his shoulders and large blue eyes, and he wore a long coat embroidered with Hand of God symbols, blue eyes to match his own glaring out from palms. He made me think of photographs of Rasputin; he had that same intensity. The guards got very quiet as soon as he entered the room.

“Hello, child.” He placed a hand on my head. “So I hear you are a lost one. They drove out your Ethereal nature and banished you to Sinistral. Do you want me to help you turn back to the side of righteous order?”

“I don’t know who you are,” I said. “My familiar already died because of what they did to me at Merlin College. I don’t think I want any more experimentations.”

“My name is Father Bogdan and I am a priest of the Order of the Blessed. We are a group formed from wizards of many religions who have come together as one, working silently and tirelessly to turn back the darker forces that influence our world. As the human world is ruled by sins, our task becomes more difficult. Technology is poison to magic, and it leads to greed, corruption…and lust. As long as you are an incubus and subject to lust, you are a sinner.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “I shouldn’t lust after the girl I love? She’s the only one I want. The only one I’ve ever had.”

“You lust after others.”

“I don’t,” I said.

“You are lying,” he said.

“I mean, I have physical attraction to other women, but not like I care about her. If I don’t act on it, how is that a sin? Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it.”

He walked behind me so I had to twist again to see him, and spoke spell words, tapping my back with his wand. As soon as the tip touched me, an electric fire shot through every nerve in my body and I screamed with pain. The demon inside me stirred, wings and tail sprouting from my skin as my body grew larger to defend itself. I thrashed against the ropes. That was the kind of pain that reduces man to animal. All I could think of was escaping it. I swung my head, trying to shove him back from me with my horns.

“There it is,” Father Bogdan said. “The demon inside you requires little provocation to strike.”

I was drenched in sweat, the seams of my clothes split.

“Calm yourself and I won’t do it again,” he said. “Tell me, what would you do if your lady told you she had no desire to copulate with you for a couple of weeks?”

“I’d respect her,” I ground out.

“You would not invade her dreams?”

“The tattoos on my arms…help me resist,” I said.

“Did you invade the dreams of other women before?”

“I…I couldn’t help it, sometimes.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Despite the tattoos, you couldn’t help it. You don’t have control. You are a monster who will steal the innocence of maidens.”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it like that. It’s just a dream.”

“It’s not ‘just a dream’ and you know that, Alec. That’s why, even if you are kept from your lady, you can dream of her and be satisfied, and she will remember every moment of it as if it was real. Any girl whom you have dreamed of has been defiled as surely as any man ever forced himself on a woman.”

This man was getting right at the heart of my own terror and shame. He was right. That was why my father didn’t want to bring me to family holidays when I was younger, why I was sent to all-boys schools, why I couldn’t play with other kids. Because I was a monster. I couldn’t help it. I made girls grow up. I corrupted minds. I tried so hard not to be a monster but I was never really safe for anyone around me.

“But Alec, it’s all right,” he said softly, as my expression cracked. “That’s why you’re here. If you are truly willing to change, we will help you.”

“She loves me as I am.”

“No, she doesn’t,” he said. “She loves Alec. She loves a man who desires her. Any woman does. She will love you more if you’re a normal warlock who desires her but will never hurt her.”

I wasn’t sure. “There’s more to my mother’s blood than just…desire,” I said. My mother was a demon. My dad never told me much about her, and she hadn’t been very nice to Charlotte. I still couldn’t help but feel that there was something in me that was a part of her, and it wasn’t just sex. It was my art too. It was the part of me that was passionate and creative in ways my father never was. I didn’t think I could just get rid of my incubus blood without losing other things.

“Do you admire your mother, Alec?”

I grimaced.

“Your training begins today,” he said. “It won’t be easy. You will suffer, and your suffering will cleanse you. You’ll emerge on the other side, a man of control and wisdom.” He whispered a poetic spell, whispering the French language, and although I was pretty good with ‘wizard French’ I only caught about half of it. My skin started crawling all over, and I felt heat rushing to my cock. I started to get hard, but as I did, the heat started to turn to pain.

“You will not make love to any other person,” Father Bogdan said. “You will not even touch yourself. You will not dream of any woman at the Haven without waking up in agony. You can trace your tattoos, but the only way to truly find relief will be to turn to the sacred spells of the warlocks and master your desires completely.”

“Gods, no, please,” I panted as I broke into a fresh sweat.

“If you can overcome this, I will bring you before the Ethereal council and allow you to come home. You will be one of the great holy warlocks,” he said. “And your father can finally be proud when he names you as his son.”

“This isn’t what I want…”

He patted my shoulder. “Deep down, you know that it is.” He walked away. To the guards, he said, “Leave him tied down until he calms himself enough to turn human again, and then bring him some new clothes.”

Chapter Twelve

Charlotte

I was worried sick about Alec when we got to dinner time and we hadn’t seen him. The food was okay, served cafeteria style with a few different options, but I didn’t have much of an appetite. We didn’t know where Daisy had gone either, but when we asked one of polite women working in her section of the rooms where she’d gone, the woman smiled, wiped her hands off on her dowdy apron, and said, “I believe they had some things for her to do this evening.”

“Damnit,” I said. “One of us should have stayed with her.”

“Man, we just need to get my car and get out of here,” Montague said, sipping blood from a wine glass. “I’m going to go hunting for the keys.”

“But don’t do anything half-cocked,” Harris warned. “We have to put up with it long enough to get a feel for where the guards are and where the weak spots might appear. I need to cast some tests to see what wards they have.”

“Like they haven’t thought of all that before,” Montague said. “Fuck! We’re going to be fucking stuck here for the next hundred years! Or in my case, until the world fucking ends!”

“Shh,” I said, because his outburst had provoked some stares. “I think the first rule of escaping is being subtle. Aren’t vampires supposed to be cool and collected?”

As I was finishing my chicken strips, Alec finally showed up.

“Did you change clothes?” I asked. I was pretty sure he’d been wearing a black t-shirt and now he was wearing a casual button-up.

He put down his bowl of beef stew, his gorgeous red-tinged eyes looking a little bloodshot.

“Alec, what happened?”

“They—“ He cut himself off. “There’s a guy here named Father Bogdan you need to watch out for. He’s with the Order of the Blessed that Piers mentioned.”

“A church?” Montague asked.

“More like a cult,” Alec said.

“What did they do to you?” Montague demanded.

“Shut up,” Alec said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Alec…” Now I was getting really worried for him. I reached for his hand and he shook me off.

“Not right now.”

My mouth fell open. Alec had never refused my touch.

“It’s not you,” he said. “I’m just going to eat this before it gets cold.” He wasn’t really eating with enthusiasm, though.

“Ohmigod, my poor baby, they did something really bad to you…”

In the midst of this, Daisy came over with her own plate of chicken strips and the same honey mustard sauce packet. She pointed at the remains of mine. “Twinsies.”

She didn’t look good either. “Have they been making you use your magic?” I asked.

“They are ever-vigilant in their hunt for Sinistrals,” she said, a little sarcastically. “I found a pocket of Sinistral demons for them today, so I was off the hook fast. They all got excited. There’s a little spot in the islands off the coast of South Carolina where a small family of Sinistrals are living in a parallel. They’ll try to take the territory and kill them. So that’s fun.”

“You mean, just a family? Like the dragon shifters I stayed with in Sinistral who helped me?” Alec asked.

“Yes,” Daisy said. “A little family just like yours. Three demons and a human girl. Well, maybe they won’t kill them if they surrender peacefully. Or maybe they’ll put up enough of a fight that the council will back off. It could go either way. It always does, just fighting and fighting and no one ever winning…” She stabbed her chicken strip with a fork and shoved it in her mouth. Then she stopped and wiped her eyes. “I need the drugs, okay? I just need them if I’m going to do this.”

“Enough,” I said. “Montague is right. This all has to stop.” I stood up and quickly scanned the room, locating Mr. Coopman. He seemed like he was trying to be nice before.

“You’re being an idiot,” Harris said before me. “He’s not going to listen to you!”

I ignored him. I didn’t really know what I was going to say, I just knew I had to save my friends from misery and I couldn’t wait until we got a ‘feel’ for things.

I was running over everything I could think of in my head and when I got up to Mr. Coopman and he said, “What is it, dear?” I bit my lip and gave him my best nervous confession face.

“Can—can I tell you something?” I said. “I’m worried about Daisy. Daisy Pendleton.”

“Yes, I know who you mean,” he said.

“She’s…um…she might be pregnant.” I couldn’t believe I was doing this. But as soon as I saw his expression, I knew I was getting somewhere.

“Pregnant?”

“Yeah, so I’m really worried about the drugs she’s been taking. And all this strong magic. Daisy’s really sensitive. She acts tough but she’s not.”

“Pregnant,” he repeated. “With…Harrison?”

“No, no, no,” I whispered. “Alec.”

“Alec?”

I nodded. “Please don’t tell anyone I told you this, sir. It’s super secret. She’s afraid her grandmother won’t let her be with an incubus.”

“I thought Alec was with you. That was the information Councilman Nicolescu had passed along…”

“I’ve been pretending in order to protect her,” I said. I really hoped this didn’t backfire spectacularly. If Daisy actually laid a finger on Alec, I wasn’t going to let that stand. But—I remembered how Harris had speculated that the council might try to set them up to give Daisy a husband from a good family and redeem Alec’s name. And Daisy definitely thought Alec was hot (obviously, girl had eyeballs), and Alec could get turned on for anyone (only in a pinch, though, right?) so they could sell this lie.

“Hmm. Well. If that is true…”

“I’m just so worried about protecting her baby because they’re both like, our besties,” I said. “That’s the only reason I would ever tell you so please please keep it secret, but…go easy on her.”

“All right. I will see what I can do.”

“Oh, thank you so much.”

He smiled. “I really appreciate your honesty in protecting your friend.”

I scurried back to the table, feeling newly empowered. Level up! I thought. You have learned a new skill: Manipulating Middle-Aged Men with Girl Charm!

Ew.

“What did you do?” Harris asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Um…well…y’all are going to have to do some role playing,” I said. “And it better just be role playing.”

Chapter Thirteen

Charlotte

That night was my first night with Harris and I was nervous as hell. I knew it was too soon to try sneaking Montague and Alec into my room. Firian also seemed like a risk. I worried someone might hear his voice behind the door.

When we came in after dinner, Harris turned on a lamp and started pulling his tie loose. A casual gesture that made me feel like I’d seen him do this a thousand times already.

So why am I nervous?

I’ve already gotten as intimate with Harris as I could possibly be.

I’ve slept with him. But I haven’t…slept with him. Alone.

All those nightmares I had. Seeing him breathing slow, vulnerable in sleep. Why did it make me blush?

He glanced up. Did he know how much the shadows flattered his face in the dim light? His pale skin glowed, while his blue eyes held some inner darkness. His hair was a little longer these days, a little more messy. We’d never talked about it, but I liked it better that way, and he knew it. I just knew he did.

My heart was beating faster.

“Do you need to take a bath tonight?” he asked.

“Oh—um—do I stink?”

He gave me that tiny I-find-you-hilarious rich boy smile. “Not yet.”

I looked at the bathroom. It smelled clean, and looked clean, but it was so old that it had a very uninviting vibe. “It sucks that we don’t have a shower,” I said. “I love baths, but not so much here. I would rather not be naked in a bathroom here for long periods of time.”

“Too many ghosts?”

I nodded.

“Do you need me to protect you?”

“No!”

“Are you sure?” He stepped into the space between my back and the bed, curling a hand around my upper arm as he leaned close to me from behind. “I’m good at keeping ghosts away. My childhood home is full of them. Or maybe I need to get you dirty before I clean you up.”

“We…we should probably sleep.”

“Is that what you want? Just to sleep? No, I’ve been waiting a long time for you. And I’m not satisfied yet.” He reached a hand down my underwear and slid his fingers along my slick folds. “Seems like you aren’t either.”

“You don’t get to just—stick your hand down my panties any time you want,” I gasped.

“Don’t I? What are you going to do? Wave that wand of yours and fight me off, and go right to sleep, when you’re this wet for me?”

“I’m not wet for you,” I said, which was probably the biggest lie I’d ever told.

“You’re just wet, generally? What a naughty little witch.” He kissed my ear and followed the kiss with the slightest nip. My senses were stirred by the masculine scent of him under a faint veneer of expensive cologne, my nerves set aflame.

“What’s this scent you always wear, anyway?” I asked. “From the corporate raider line? You smell like a big fancy grownup.”

“I am a big fancy grownup. And you smell like my naughty…little…witch.” His voice was a whisper in my ear as he fucked me with his hand again. I tried to stop him because I remembered the last time when he gave me an orgasm with his hand and then fucked me, got himself off, got me turned back on again, and didn’t bother to give me a second release. Asshole. I grappled his hand out of my clothes. He finally kissed me on the mouth and I was into it. He pressed me into the bed and we made out like our tongues were arguing the way our words usually did.

Soon I was leaning my pelvis into him, silently urging him to get on with it already, as he unhooked my bra.

“We have to be careful,” he said.

“Oh…right. Birth control,” I said. “I can’t believe this.”

“Like I said…we’ll work around that,” he said. “If you think I’m staying in a room with you and not getting what I want…” He lifted my shirt off my arms and pulled me against him, my back to his front, his cock teasing my back entrance.

“Why are you blushing?” he said. “This is no virgin ass.”

It’s the way you talk to me, I thought. Like you’re just going to take whatever you want.

But I wasn’t going to say that, because I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of saying that I liked it.

Even though I did.

I felt his hands moving down his shirt, unbuttoning. The unzip of his pants followed. Now, his length pressing against me with nothing between us.

“Stand there,” he said.

I heard the squirt of a container of lube, and I trembled with anticipation knowing he was stroking his hand over his cock, readying himself for me. His hands spread around the top of my thighs, and he drew us back to the edge of the bed, sitting down and urging me down with him.

“Sit here.”

Stand there. Sit here. I was reduced to following a string of orders, his hands forcing me down onto his hard shaft. His fingers flicked between my legs before reaching inside, urging me back up, and then down again, up and down, working his shaft while he just chilled out on the bed.

“You’re making me do all the work!”

“What are you going to do about it?” he said, now drawing his fingers out to slide back and forth across my clit. He didn’t have to say a word. His fingers were a demand. Wriggle for me, Chosen One. Do as I say. Back and forth, up and down, whatever I demand.

As I did, I was rewarded by a growl of pleasure from him that I’m not sure he meant to make.

Just about as I was getting pretty turned on by this whole thing we had going on, Firian appeared, casually naked.

“Hey,” he said, raising his brows. “You look busy.”

“Hwaah!” I barked, as both of us sort of spasmed in surprise, but Firian put a hand on my shoulder.

“Calm down,” he said. “I just got my human body back and this is how you repay me? Where was my invitation?”

“You’re the one who ‘showed up’. Please. I don’t have time for two annoying men at once.”

“Please?” Firian said. “I’ll show you ‘please’.” He kissed me and of course I just melted like a half-eaten chocolate bar left on a sunny windowsill by someone who got kind of involved in the novel they were reading. (How do I know that? Am I the idiot who left a chocolate bar in the hot southern sun? Shut up.)

“Mmm…”

“How much have you missed me? A lot.” I guess he was just going to answer his own question. “And you left a slot open for a two player game, huh?” He slid a finger between my pussy lips and hooked his finger inside.

“Go right ahead,” Harris said. “I can’t fuck her. No birth control.”

“Firian…you’re terrible,” I panted. “Harris must be a bad…” I didn’t even get to finish. Firian started kissing me again, slinking closer, wiggling his finger inside me, and Harris pushed me toward him.

Holy smokes. They were getting too good at this. I never guessed they would be so comfortable with each other. I thought this would be awkward for years. Instead, they were knitting together around me, like this wasn’t just me and each of them, it was all of us. Reading each other’s signals. Knowing when they could play off each other to drive me crazy with lust.

Firian slid his hands up to the small of my back, the space between Harris and me. He growled low as his cock nudged me, Harris sort of…guiding me in for a landing.

I was almost crying, but in a good way, as I sank onto Firian’s shaft, feeling them both inside me, getting along so well. Firian fell back on the bed, his smile sly and fox-like, pleased with himself, as I immediately started riding him. I could hardly help it. I needed to feel things.

“Oh yes,” Firian said. “Glad I decided to hop in and be player two.”

“If you say any more nerd things, you’ll be summarily ejected,” Harris said.

“Summarily ejected…,” Firian repeated. “I might do some ejecting of my own before you can get that far.”

I snorted. “I might summarily eject…both of you…if you don’t shut up…”

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Harris said, shoving himself deeper into me.

“Are you going to let him talk to me like that?” I squeaked.

Firian took one of my wrists in his grip and pulled it above his shoulder, tugging me closer to him. “You don’t need to worry about me, Charlotte. See? I am capable of being selfish.”

Even when Firian talked naughty, there was still such affection in his every caress. My pleasure was everything to him. If my breath hitched or if I stiffened with pain, he would easily and immediately adjust until everything felt right. He balanced out Harris, who acted like he didn’t give much of a shit what I thought or felt.

Weird, how damn good it felt to be caught in the middle of that, how much I loved satisfying them both, feeling my self and all my stress melting away until all I could think about was the two stiff cocks that found a perfect rhythm inside me, the hands touching and caressing me anywhere they wanted, the nibbling and kissing.

Pretty soon Harris was covering my mouth while I screamed, my whole body rippling and shuddering. You know how orgasms are referred to as ‘The Big O’? Ha. The Big O is an anime. This was an Epic O. A Cosmic O. A Montage of 1950s Atomic Bomb Test Footage O.

Harris whispered in my ear. “Now you need a bath. I’m not sleeping with you when you’re this much of a mess.”

“And who made me such a mess?” I shot back. “Boys are the ones who are just like bleeeah, look at me, I’m gonna mark my territory!”

Firian turned into a fox and settled down on the bed. I’m staying out of this one, his eyes said.

“You don’t agree that you need a bath?” Harris said.

“You need a bath too. And you can protect me from the ghosts.” I grabbed his crumpled shirt.

“That’s mine,” he said. “I don’t have that many clothes here.”

“Well, I’m wearing it to bed when I get out,” I said. “Your clothes need more wrinkles.” I crumpled his shirt into a ball, held it between my boobs, and ran into the bathroom. Harris chased me down and tore the shirt out of my arms.

“Business shirt, return to me, into my arms where you’ll be free!” I cast a spell to whip the shirt back into my grip.

“Rhyming spells are for kids,” Harris said.

“Okay, well, feel free to get your shirt back with French or Latin. ‘I am Harr-ees, I do not know French, but I will speak like a weezard snob’—“

Harris swept me into his arms and turned on the faucet, which blasted out of the old fixture so hard I hoped it didn’t break. No worries about water pressure here, anyway.

“Hey!” I tried to struggle as he stepped into the tub and sat down. The sleeves and hem of the shirt hit the water gushing out of the faucet. I let go of it and it started to float around us.

He put his arms around me and kissed me.

Some nights, sleep is just overrated.

Chapter Fourteen

Alec

The fallout from Charlotte’s plan occurred the next afternoon. Mr. Coopman called Daisy and me to his office. I rubbed my eyes, praying this plan wasn’t crazy. Last night was hell. Every swish of Charlotte’s hair and flirtatious smile made me wild for her, but if I so much as put a hand on my dick I was greeted with pain like a hot poker. I didn’t want to tell anyone about it because if warlocks made bro comedy movies I’m pretty sure this would be the plot to one of them. Channing Tatum has a hilarious turn as the divorced incubus looking for new love with wedding cake baker Amy Poehler, until he accidentally curses himself with a burning dick spell.

It didn’t help that Daisy was wearing a tight, off-shoulder dress today that showed off her generous curves. My brain was just looking for anything it could work with.

I’d spent all morning working out in the gym here, trying to exhaust myself out of my desire, and it didn’t work, especially since girls kept coming in and smiling at me.

“Daisy,” I growled as we walked behind Mr. Coopman. “I’m not sure what this is about. Charlotte trusts you.”

“I’m not gonna betray my girl,” she said. “It’s just that no one has checked out my ass in weeks. Those vampires were just on about Lisbeth and you know not much is going on in this place. But I know you will.”

“So you’re just using me to give your ego a little boost.”

“I appreciate your sacrifice,” she said, giving me a wicked smile.

“Whoever does end up with you will have their hands full,” I said.

Mr. Coopman had gotten way ahead of us in the hall. He cleared his throat, opening his office door. “Please sit down.”

I wanted to think Mr. Coopman wasn’t a terrible guy, because he had a picture of his kids on his desk, and a nice array of succulents in the window. Not exactly the picture of evil. The council and the warlocks and witches who supported them definitely thought they were doing the right thing. That was how Father Bogdan got to me. He reminded me that I was a demon who could lose control and hurt someone.

And he’s right.

“So, I spoke to your father, and your grandmother,” Mr. Coopman said. “They have consented to this match.”

“Oh, really? That’s wonderful!” Daisy said.

“If Alec can prove himself worthy of control and be welcomed back to Etherium.”

“So you’re not going to do anything about this spell?” I was about the flip his fucking desk over. “How long will it take to prove myself?” I was going to last about three days before I lost my mind.

“Mr. Lyrman, you should be pretty grateful we’re even considering bringing your case before the Ethereal council. Do you know how rare that is?”

“How long?”

Daisy put a hand on my arm like, I got this. “To be honest with you, Mr. Coopman, look, you guys here have been running me ragged already, making me do a very stressful and lonely job. You know how thrilled my grandma would be if I’m pregnant? She’s been so worried that I’m the only heir. But a girl’s gotta have low stress levels to make that happen. I need someone to take care of me. I need a little incubus magic, you know what I’m saying?”

Flustered, Mr. Coopman said, “Well—Father Bogdan really stressed the importance of control, but I suppose…yes, I do understand.”

“Good,” Daisy said, with the snap of a VIP. “I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

In the end, Daisy was the one no one would want to piss off. Monty and I were from good families, but in the end, no one cared. Harris was a step above us, the only male heir to his family. But no one else in the magical world could do what Daisy did once her grandmother was gone.

“I’ll get you a remedy,” he assured us. “In the meantime, you will have a room together. I know nothing would make Mrs. Pendleton happier in her twilight years than a grandchild.”

“Exactly,” Daisy said. “Thank you.” She shook his hand.

As we walked out, she looked at me sideways. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m impressed,” I said. “I hope you and Charlotte stay friends. Between the both of you I think you can talk your way out of anything.”

“If only I could talk my way into something,” she said, nudging me. “I’m kidding. I don’t want to steal Charlotte’s boys. Plenty to go around, I guess. Although where they are, I don’t know…”

“Come on,” I said. “I’m just speaking objectively, but you’re one of the hottest witches around.”

“No one ever seems into me…”

“Maybe you intimidate them, at this age. You’re unapologetic. Most warlocks don’t know how to handle girls like that.”

“Nice try,” she sighed. “I know I don’t have a filter and drive everyone nuts. But seriously, Charlotte’s lucky. I don’t know how she puts up with Harris but I’d take the rest of you.” She smiled sadly. “But at least it should be easy for you to sneak out and go visit Charlotte. I’ll try not to be too weird, but I am going to ogle you. I heard you spent all morning in the gym just keeping yourself pretty.”

“I just have energy to burn,” I said, shrugging, like this morning hadn’t been total hell of lifting weights and trying not to imagine fucking Charlotte on an exercise bike, Charlotte on the yoga mats, Charlotte’s hot ass when I came to her in her dreams and gave her the full-on demon treatment…

I took a deep breath. I needed to get back to the room and trace my wand over the spells branded in my skin before I got too turned on.

We were trying to get back to the main common areas from Mr. Coopman’s office, but I was starting to think we had turned the wrong way. “This isn’t the right staircase, is it?” I said.

“I have no idea,” Daisy said. “If you ask me for directions you’re going to end up in the middle of a crime scene.”

I heard a low cry of pain somewhere.

“What was that?” Daisy asked. “Was it behind this door? One of these?” She paused. “We probably shouldn’t mess around with screaming in the towers of the Haven, huh?” Then she pressed an ear to the closest door.

“You aren’t very good at taking your own advice, are you?” I asked, and then I took out my wand.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “Are we doing a detective team thing? ‘Cause I’m down. Let me handle this. Seeking answers is my thing.” She lifted a hand and whispered to herself.

For a brief moment I saw the entire hallway gleam with different colors of lines that were almost, but not quite, invisible. A map of sorts. A magical map that traced the sources of everyone who walked the hall and cast spells here.

One door glowed yellow at the crack under the frame.

“There,” she said. “There is something strange behind that door.” She looked at me, tapping her chin with her wand.

“Oh, so you find the dangerous stuff and I have to open it?”

“You’re the big bad buff demon. Not moi.”

I tried the handle; locked, of course. I heard a man behind the door groan out, “Who’s there…?”

I heard footsteps in the distance and I knew we really shouldn’t be up here poking our noses in the upper offices of the staff, but I’d already been on the bad end of the council’s spells. I didn’t want some other poor bastard to suffer. I quickly cast a spell to break the lock, opened the door, and pulled Daisy inside.

“Oh—god!” Daisy clamped a hand over her mouth.

The sight that greeted us was not a pretty one, and certainly not what I expected.

“Orson?” I said, rushing to the unfortunate faery.

Poor bastard indeed. Orson was chained to the wall by one of the glowing magical chains they used on me, but worse, his skin was wrapped in iron bands that were burning his flesh and weakening him. The room smelled bad, stale and sour, terrible condition for domestic faeries who kept a spotless house. It looked like he had just gotten to his feet when he heard us, but the burly gruagach had clearly lost weight and strength, his skin turned a sickly shade while his hair and beard grew out unkempt.

Iron would kill a faery, eventually. In this case, it would go slow.

“You know him, Alec?” Daisy asked.

“He worked for Stuart,” I said.

“This is terrible! You look like you’re in a lot of pain. We need to get these bands off him. Iron’s poison to faeries!” Daisy grabbed one of the bands and tried to tug at it, which only made Orson hiss as the iron shifted on his skin, burning him in new places.

“Lass, you’re not making it any better. I can handle the pain; it’s Lord Stuart I’m afraid for. I’d rather be here, because it means that I haven’t given in to their demands.”

“Mmhmm, well, I have to say, stoic bullshit is one of my turn-ons, but it’s still stoic bullshit. They’re going to kill you.” She tried tapping the bands with her wand instead but an attempt to break the band only knocked back at her and threw her against the wall.

“So they captured you,” I said, helping her up.

“Aye,” Orson said. “They came for Lord Stuart and I stayed back to fight. At first I eluded them bodily, but they got a bit of my hair and so they were able to wound me from afar. Before long, they had weakened me enough to summon me and here I am. I hate to think my end is to be killed by warlocks, but better me than Stuart. If anyone is going to save Wyrd…well, he’s the better man for the job.” Orson huffed, trying to straighten out his dirty clothes. “I’m sorry I’m such a sight.”

Even in a weakened state, Orson was a large presence. His arms and legs were thick with large bone and muscle, his hair was thick and black as night, and his hands were three times the size of Daisy’s. I’m sure he got stares when Stuart sent him to the grocery store for food, because no human looked like Orson.

Daisy bit her lip. “Well, no wonder. So you’re a faery?”

“Just a low faery, mind. You were probably thinking a faery would be prettier, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, appraising him with her eyelids lowering, but I wasn’t sure she disliked him. She had placed her hand on his arm and suddenly she seemed aware of it, and how small her own hand was against his muscle. She drew it onto her lap, uncharacteristically shy.

“A lord of the gruagach,” he said. “We’re just domestic fae. Keepers of the cows. Even as a lord I don’t have any interest in ruling or court politics, none of my kin do. But I’m practical. Wyrd has become a weak and sickly land and the only way to save it is for a fine lord like Stuart to make alliances with young wizards like you two.” He was sweating. Talking through pain. I was starting to sweat myself out of sympathy, knowing I would be in pain myself if I dared to do what incubi do. Does Mr. Coopman have that antidote yet?

“I hardly know a thing about faeries,” Daisy mused. “I thought they were all cold.”

“Most of them are,” Orson said. “And if we gruagach aren’t, it’s because we spend more time among the beasts. What’s the point of being cold to a cow? They’re not impressed by formalities…” He swayed on his feet and nearly slumped to the ground before I offered him an arm.

“Just let me go,” he said. “I’ve got to lay me back down now. You’ll only get yourselves in trouble.”

“We can’t just leave you like this!”

“I appreciate your concern, lass. Not a damn thing you can do, though.”

The footsteps down the hall came closer and closer and it was obvious we were about to get caught. Daisy tugged me against the wall. “Concealment spell!” she whispered, and we both cast one together. I hoped it would be enough. Concealment spells worked better when you had brush or junk to blend in, and here we just had a few random bits of furniture. The room was pretty spartan.

Two guards walked in, one carrying food and water and the other ready with his wand. The guards at the Haven generally didn’t seem to be the best the magical world had to offer. I got the feeling they had to do some brutal stuff, so they all looked like the sort of men who could find enjoyment out of doing so.

“This is a faery?” the second guard said. “I thought y’all was supposed to be pretty.”

“He’s a cow faery,” the first one said, laughing. “That’s why he needs his milk.” He held the pitcher up to Orson’s face. The faery tried to back off, struggling against his weakness. I could tell that he still wasn’t used to how much the iron had drained his power away. He tried to move away and briefly collapsed.

“I don’t want your poison,” he said.

“Poison?”

“Yeah, he gets super dramatic when I try to give him the cheap stuff. He wants milk from happy cows like a hipster kid.” He tried to force Orson to drink and when Orson wouldn’t drink the milk, he kicked him and then dumped it on his head. “How do you like that? At least we’re feeding you.”

Beside me, Daisy trembled with rage.

“Do you know that he’s a lord of the faeries?” the first said mockingly. “But he was the butler to Stuart Jablonsky!”

“What the hell, man!” The second guy started almost giggling with amusement. “You’re a lord? That’s crazy.” He shook his head. “But those iron bands are going to kill him, though, aren’t they?”

“Eventually.”

“That’s brutal. So we come in here one day and he’s just dead?”

“Yeah, well…you get used to it.”

“I mean, I’ve seen people get killed before. My cousin got killed by a demon so I don’t care about a cow faery.”

The door opened again and a man in a suit looked in. “Have you boys been guarding him this whole time?”

“Yes, Mr. Robins.”

“I thought I saw you leave.”

“I went to get him some lunch but Jordan has been here the whole time.”

“All right. I hope so.”

The door shut and the guards immediately started complaining.

“Nobody comes up here anyway. We’re just here so this faery doesn’t die alone.”

“Well, it’s their money to waste.”

“Stinks in here.”

“Because you keep dumping milk on him, stupid.”

We needed to get out of here. Once they sat around bored for too long, our concealment spell would dissolve. Daisy was still trembling, looking like she might take a more aggressive approach any second. I put a hand on her shoulder, trying to convey that she should stay calm.

There had to be wards on this room to keep the faeries from rescuing Orson. “Daisy,” I whispered in her ear. “Can you cast a spell that will show us what wards are in place here?”

She nodded, mouthing a spell, and patterns lit up around us.

The guards looked up. “Hey, why are the wards showing like that?”

Orson looked at us wearily, like he thought we were idiots, and then he started speaking spell words himself, in a musical language that sounded like Gaelic, or maybe a related faery tongue. The guards clearly thought he was the one casting the spell and grabbed him.

“What are you doing?”

“Your magic should be drained by now!”

“C’mon,” I barely whispered to Daisy, trying to tug her away. Orson spoke spell words more dramatically as I opened the door, but Daisy dug in her heels. She pointed her wand at one of the wards and the pattern shifted.

I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder, running her down the hall all the way to the staircase while she struggled.

“Hey, hey!” she said, when I put her down. “We’re just going to leave him there to be tortured and die?”

“Right now? Yes. We have to. Let’s tell the others about it and maybe we can figure out a plan, but these people aren’t messing around. They did something to me already.”

“Something?”

“Yes. I’ve never felt such excruciating pain in my life.”

“What did they do?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“It has something to do with that stuff you and Coopman were saying about control and spells, huh? They cursed your dick, didn’t they?” She started laughing.

“It’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny. But they’re fixing it, right, because of Charlotte’s plan? Come on, it’s not like the hell they’re putting that man through.”

“I’m an incubus, I can’t live without my dick!” Then I had to laugh a little. “All right, fine. Laugh. But you know yourself, they are willing to do terrible things to keep power. They drugged you and made you do terrible things yourself.”

She hugged herself. “Yeah, Alec, I know. That’s why I hate to leave him there like that. We can’t trust anyone to be decent.”

We headed back but I immediately settled in with my sketchpad and drew Orson, as well as I could remember. When I was still a warlock, before the purification stole that power from me, I could have tried to capture his likeness, and used my artistic magic to lend him strength and healing from afar, the same way they captured him by stealing his hair first to weaken him. But now I had lost that part of me. He was still an interesting subject. My pencil made rough lines of muscle and I realized Daisy was watching.

“Ya know, I might agree to that whole deal with the faeries if I could get one like him,” she said. “He wasn’t cold. That’s my type, personally, I’ve had enough of spoiled warlocks waving wands around.”

I wouldn’t get too attached.

That was what my brain wanted to say. A warning. There was a very real possibility that we were going to lose this and Orson would be a fatality. On the other hand, shit, that was grim. I was usually an optimist.

“Well, perhaps you could send the faery queen a message and let her know.”

“Good idea. Maybe she would get off her ass and save him.” Daisy grabbed a sketchbook from my desk and stole a piece of paper to write on.

“You’re tired of spoiled warlocks, huh?” I muttered.

“Hmm?”

“Never mind.”

Chapter Fifteen

Charlotte

That evening the conversation with Daisy went from “What!? Poor Orson!” to “You want to marry him?”

“Well, I don’t actually know him, but I also don’t like anyone I do know. And it would solve your problems, right? Plus, he has a cute faery way of talking. And a man like that who works with his hands… Hell, he’s a lord and a butler? I bet he knows how to treat a girl like a queen. Not a bad body either. Shave and a shower, and I’d hit that. Nah, I’d let him hit me. Actually, maybe the shave isn’t even necessary.”

“Hmm. Hot butler…kind of Scottish accent…faery…” My head made a little Venn diagram. Outlander + Black Butler + Fae romance… “I guess it’s probably not the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

“Girl, all my ideas are awesome,” Daisy said dismissively. “The faery queen wants girls who are willing to go marry faeries. So I need to get this letter to her.”

“You do realize you’re going to have to go live in Wyrd,” I said.

She crossed her arms. “I just don’t want a hot faery to die. And all my life options are bad right now, so whatever, I don’t care. I just want to get it done.”

“Does Orson want to marry you?” Harris said. “You might be the death of him.” She threw a hand at him as it block him out.

“I’m really not sure about the faery queen’s bargain, Daisy. We’d lose you to them. It’s very serious. They don’t even seem to like humans. Even if Orson was okay as faeries go, we don’t know anything about his family or home, and I don’t know if we could ever protect you or bring you back.”

She sobered a little. “I’m just afraid that maybe the queen could save him but she won’t. He’s there alone and no one’s helping him. Like maybe he isn’t important, and maybe I could help. I don’t know. I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“The faery queen wanted thirteen brides,” I said. “It seems to be the magic number. So even if you’re sure about this, I still need to find twelve more people.”

“Ohmigod, this is the perfect place to recruit. Look how sad everyone is. You tell these girls they could escape the Haven and marry a hot faery and you won’t have trouble filling slots.”

“Hey, Daisy, did you watch Outlander on your TV binge? I think you should.”

“What is that?”

“Oh, it’s our evening is what it is.”

Well, I needed a job to keep me busy around here. Life at the Haven was pretty mind-numbing. Weeks passed, each one the same. It was obvious that there was a dark side, kept out of sight. A literal dark side, behind the guards, where people were tortured and maybe killed, and I guess my main goal was to not go there, except for the voice in my head that whispered, Where is Ina?

On our side, it was like being at a hotel. An old hotel, that had never been renovated, but still. We had a pool, and exercise machines, and a lounge and library, and the dining hall, and even a smoking room, being the old Victorian building that it was.

Actually, I think it pretty much had all the amenities of the Titanic, and maybe there was a metaphor to be drawn from that.

Also, much like being on a doomed ocean liner, we were cut off from our loved ones. Sometimes we heard the guards mustering outside to block some vehicle from entering and turn them away. Everyone in the Haven would discuss what sort of car it was and figure out whose family member it had been.

“Oh, that’s definitely my Dad’s Benz” or “A Jeep? Yeah, that’s the town car” as many witch towns were very small and just had one car to share. It was a part of life here that once in a while, your family might show up to attempt to see you. Maybe drop off a care package.

One day it was a black Ford truck, described as “new” but “grubby”.

“Who drives that?” one girl asked, and I swear that people I barely knew turned to look at me. Word traveled fast about who was who in a place like this.

By now, I knew that witches and warlocks considered every car from the last 20 years to be ‘new’, as if a grubby black Ford truck wasn’t enough of a tip-off.

Dad.

Dad was trying to get to me and they turned him away. I was totally cut off from my family. We all were. The telephones at the Haven were guarded and could only be used with permission—permission we were told we hadn’t ‘earned’ yet. The unsympathetic woman at the main desk told me I could write my family letters, and they could write letters in return, but she warned me that the staff would open all letters.

“Miss Byrne,” she said, “please don’t forget why you’re here. You have had communications with darker elements of the magical world and we have to make sure you are not continuing these communications.”

“I just want to talk to my parents…” I swallowed back tears, knowing she didn’t care. She’d heard it all before.

I was trying to be strong, and I thought I was holding up pretty well, but as the days went by, some mornings I was queasy from stress.

I wrote a letter to the faery queen and dared to use some magic to send it to her up one of the old chimneys, telling her Orson was in trouble and Daisy was willing to help him. A reply appeared under my pillow the very next day.

I, Queen Morgana, consent to the betrothal of Daisy Pendleton and Lord Orson of the House of Clover—if you can find twelve more witches to bring to me, and if you can free Orson. As long as he is encased in iron, we the faery folk are unable to save him.

“Okay, Daisy, this is happening.” I told her about the letter. “I hope you were serious about it.”

“Sure I am.” She rubbed her neck, looking thoughtful. “I mean…my goal all these years was to get revenge for my parents and we already accomplished that, so there isn’t much left for me here.”

“At least we have a goal now,” Montague said.

“A goal?”

“We can find twelve more single ladies who want a faery of their own,” he said. “It shouldn’t be too hard. Who would want to stay here?”

“I agree, I’m just not sure how to do this. A lot of these people are werewolves and stuff.”

“What did the queen actually say about the bargain?” Harris asked. “She said you had to find her witches, right? What did she say beyond that?”

“Just witches…that’s it.”

“Everyone here is still a witch. Just because they’re half-something else doesn’t mean they aren’t a witch.”

“She did say I could name their number.”

“Well, in that case, pick anyone you want,” Montague said. “A faeries’ word is always the truth.”

“It’s not that easy!” I said. “Most people don’t want to marry a dude they’ve never met and if I get caught recruiting for Wyrd by the staff…”

“Charlotte, you need to get acquainted with a handy thing called a forgetting spell,” Harris said. “You ask the girls if they want to escape this place by marrying a faery, and if they say no, you make them forget you asked.”

“I can just make people forget things?”

“Be careful,” Alec said. “Those spells don’t work very well if the information is important. Just try to bring it up casually first and back up as soon as you run into trouble.”

“Oh, but make sure to pretend you were talking about something else,” Harris said. “Wizards aren’t stupid. If you’re just standing there staring at them when they’re feeling dazed, they’ll know you fucked with them, but if you keep talking they’ll think they just had a momentary space out. But I know if there’s one thing you’re good at, Chosen One, it’s talking about nothing.”

At least I had a goal now. I had to scout out girls who might want to marry a faery, although it wasn’t the easiest conversational topic to drop casually. My pool of candidates was…limited.

“Faeries…,” said a vampire girl who had been here for ten years, but still looked seventeen. “I don’t know. I need blood. I think I’d rather just stay here because I know I’ll get treatment.”

“Treatment?” I said. “It’s just blood.”

“They help me control my urges,” she said, shaking her head and slinking off. “Sorry.”

The werewolf girl I approached next seemed offended by the very suggestion of faeries. She always looked sad so I thought she might want to get out of here. Instead, she turned snippy. “I have a duty to my parents, God, and my fiancee Christopher Sutton to get well. I have no business with faeries. They’re no friend of werewolves, anyway. Faeries are elegant.”

“The faeries just want witches,” I said. “You’re a witch.”

“You don’t even know who Christopher Sutton is, do you?” she said, apparently irritated that I didn’t react.

“I definitely do not.”

“He’d skin you, wolf girl,” she said.

“You’re a wolf girl too!” I said.

“But I am serious about mastering myself,” she said. “You’re a wolf bitch. I heard you’re dating all three of those boys you’re always hanging out with.”

Okay, I definitely made her forget we ever talked.

So Alec and I tried to talk to a succubus. What imprisoned succubus would turn down a hot faery husband?

Apparently Rosemary from room 521, who took a lot of smoking breaks, so she was easy to find out on the balcony.

“I could never be satisfied with just one faery,” she said. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Oh—I didn’t realize you were hooking up with people here,” I said. “I always see you kind of off by yourself.”

“Yes,” she said tightly. “Because I’m learning to be satisfied with no one. That’s what I want. I need you to stay back.” She pointed at Alec and shooed him with an elegant hand of red nails.

“So what kind of pain are they putting you through?” Alec demanded. “They don’t like that you get off the normal way, so they get off torturing you, you know that?”

Mellow Alec was…a little less mellow lately.

“I need this healing,” she said. “My father was an incubus but I will cleanse the family line. If you think this is only pain and torture, you will never shake yourself free. They are trying to help us.” As she walked by, she bit her lip. Then, quickly, she stroked his cock with her hand. As if, no matter what she said, she couldn’t resist the raw power of a succubus and incubus arguing.

Still, fuck this situation where everyone thought Alec was Daisy’s fiance so they could flirt with him right in my face.

“Hey!” I cried, taking the collar of her blouse in my hand. “Forget the words that I have spoken, may these thoughts inside your mind be broken.” Then I quickly had to start talking about something else. “So…get ahold of yourself!” I said. “Don’t touch Daisy’s fiancee!”

“No. I’m—I’m sorry.” She drew her hand back quickly and tapped her hand with her wand. She had tattoos on her skin like Alec’s and they glowed bright red. She hissed with pain.

“Hey, Rosemary…don’t hurt yourself,” Alec said. “It’s all right. We all have lapses.”

“No!” she shrieked. “Stay away from me! I have to be purified! I know that you’ve been—you all—my therapist said I need to stay away from all of you. You’re the reason they won’t purify me the real way, because you turned.” She was trembling, her tattoos still on fire. She looked like she had caused herself some serious pain.

“This purification thing is wrong!” Alec said. “I couldn’t help but turn because they were going to take away everything that makes me myself.”

“I don’t want what makes me a demon.”

With tears flowing from her eyes, she ran away.

“Well, that went well,” I said, frowning at Alec.

“I’m sorry, but this place is really fucked up.”

“That isn’t breaking news at this point,” I said. “Who is Christopher Sutton?”

“No idea. I don’t pay attention to the wizard society pages.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

“About that?” I raised my eyebrows at his hard-on.

“I meant, about tempting trouble by trying to talk to her. I mean…you know I can’t help this, Charlotte. That’s why I’m still me, and not her.”

“Oh, I’m glad.” Since we were alone on this balcony, which overlooked nothing but trees, I took a moment to kiss him. “So that healing ointment Mr. Coopman gave you is starting to work? You ready to join us tonight? I miss the Incubuster 3000.”

Along with all the shitty stuff we’d been dealing with, apparently the spell cast on Alec was not easy to break. Mr. Coopman gave him some herbal ointment but he had mumbled something about how he couldn’t really break the original spell.

“I don’t care if it works,” he said. “I’m getting tired of waiting. I need you.”

“Okay…” I ran a hand over his erection. He was wearing pretty thin dress pants so if I put a little pressure I could get a delicious suggestion of the texture, the eager throb, the thick head, the—

“Hsst…,” he said.

I drew back. “Alec! You’re still in pain.”

“But I’m going insane.” He started tearing open the buttons of my shirt right there on the balcony. He somehow got my bra off like, I swear, almost with his mind. “I haven’t even been able to jerk off. I never realized how much I’ll go crazy without…something.” He took my breasts in both hands and started biting them.

“Oww…,” I said, but it didn’t come out like much of a protest.

“I’m going to fuck you against this wall,” he said. “Fast…and hard.”

“You can’t,” I said. It took a lot of restraint to be sensible around Alec, so this was a proud moment for me.

“No one’s watching.”

“No—it’s—I don’t have birth control,” I hissed. “And I’m sorry, but I can’t take you in the ass. This isn’t dream you and we don’t even have lube. i suppose…I could try to pleasure you with my mouth…but that’s slower. And…well, actually, I’m not sure if I can get on my knees here because it’s like, concrete.”

His breath came quick, agonized. I could see the silent curse in his eyes, which glowed a blazing red. “We’re going to the bedroom,” he said. “To ‘study’.”

He grabbed my hand and practically hauled me all the way to the bedroom, hardly paying attention to anyone we passed.

“Alec…,” I tried a few times.

It was like he didn’t even hear me. His grip was iron around my wrist.

As soon as we got to my room, he shut the door behind us and immediately he tore off his clothes in the nick of time before he went full demon on me. There he was, all corded muscle, wings and tail, and in his vivid red eyes, a hungry beast who hardly seemed to see his beloved Charlotte, but just a raw need.

“Alec…it’s okay…”

He grabbed my wrists in one huge hand and shoved me onto the bed on my back, opening my mouth with his thumb on my tongue before he replaced it with his cock.

“Lips tight,” he said. “Make me come as fast as you can.”

“Mm!” I made a sound of protest and a little fear, although I stopped short of biting his dick off, because I knew that under this was my Alec in pain.

He seemed to remember that like, women tend to be more willing when you make them happy, not that he had to do anything to make me happy. Just looking at him was good enough for me. Still, I wasn’t going to complain when he yanked off my underwear and thrust his tail inside me while groping his big hand across my clit roughly. At the same time, he groaned with agony while I was stroking my tongue around the head of his cock.

Oh my god, there was no way they weren’t going to hear him. I tried to do everything in my power to get him off fast. He was slowly thrusting in and out of my mouth, helping me along, gritting his teeth. I think the pain was extending his orgasm, and at the same time, I think it was hard for him not to hurt me.

But he didn’t.

It sounds funny, but there was something super romantic about the fact that Alec didn’t hurt me. I could feel the agony in him, the restraint it took not to just choke me on his size or ignore the birth control thing. Incubi were not wired to care about their partners. They existed to seduce and use their magic to suck up power from the sex act. Alec, however, cared about me so much that every fiber in his being was fighting against his nature even now, and I loved making him happy.

Not that I could make him happy in this situation. Not having sex made him crazy, but sex itself was making his light brown skin turn ruddy, his eyes bloodshot, his entire body sweating, his teeth grinding as he tried not to outright scream.

As he started coming, he made a sound that was almost a sob.

“Fuck…oh…fuck it hurts…”

As soon as he pulled out of my mouth, he flopped beside me, writhing around a little. His tail was still inside me, twitching with his pain. I swallowed, rubbing my aching jaw and lips briefly.

He pulled me against him, caressing my hair, but avoiding my eyes as his suffering seemed private. His hand slid down my back and bottom to reach between my legs, where he took hold of the tip of his own tail and stroked me with it fast, like it was a toy and not his own tail, but it was still twitching too. I don’t know why, but it was kinda hot the way he was gripping it.

Pretty soon his hand and tail sent me over the edge. I mean, sure, I guess I understood why you had to be careful around an incubus, to know that they really loved you and not just having sex. But once you trusted that the love was real? Holy shit, the sex was never less than mind-blowing. And he was always so gorgeous.

Even right now, when he looked like he was in so much pain.

“My poor demon muffin,” I said. “I’m going to get you out of here, and the spell will fade. I promise.”

“God, I must look like a mess.” He wiped sweat from his brow. “But it’s okay, Char. You don’t have to fix everything. It’s still worth it.”

“Well, if you need to like, rip off my clothes and demand things again…” I licked my lips. “You know. I’ll survive.”

He snorted through a little shivering aftershock of pain. “Damn, I love you,” he said. “Naughty girl.” He pulled me to him.

“At least this doesn’t hurt, right?” I asked.

“Kissing? Nah. I could do this all day.”

Chapter Sixteen

Charlotte

By the end of the week I had one recruit. She was a were-gator from Jacksonville, Florida, and actually Montague recruited her by getting into a conversation about Florida and then selling her on the idea of a faery husband. Did you know that ‘were-gator’ was a thing? I did not know that was a thing.

I was very unsure about Polly the were-gator’s prospects in faery land. For one thing, she really was not an attractive witch. She kinda looked like if a gator became a person, with a strong brow and just sort of a weird face, and she was also big boned and heavyset. I felt like the faeries were going to be mean. Just a hunch. I don’t think faeries were going to embrace all types of beauty. On the other hand, she was very bookish and polite, like she had been trained to try and hide her gator-ness, and maybe the queen would like that?

After I told her, she sat down at our table at breakfast. “Good morning.” She smiled. “So when is this happening, anyway? When do I get to meet the faeries? I’m sorry—did I interrupt a conversation?”

“Girl, it is just too early for like…this question mark energy,” Daisy said, sipping coffee. “Anyway, I am trying to process what happened on the Bachelorette last night.”

“Ohhh,” Polly said. “I understand. Because there won’t be any television or movies in the faery realm. Best to get it in now. Maybe I would like to see Pride and Prejudice one more time.” She smiled at Daisy like, I, too, enjoy the television.

Daisy’s eyes locked into a gaze of horror. “Maybe I can’t do this.”

“You know faeries don’t have electricity,” Montague said.

“Yes, I know, but I had not actually thought about it.”

I felt like I definitely needed to do better with the other eleven. If I showed up with Daisy and a were-gator, I was not going to get us into Wyrd in this lifetime.

“This place is so boring,” Daisy said, looking around. “I thought there would be more drama.”

“Don’t wish that on us,” Montague said. “It’s a good day if there is no drama here. When I was here before…I had a roommate.”

I perked up from my own coffee. “Something happened?”

“How do you think they pay for all this?” he said. “It seems fairly nice here, right? The food, the amenities? Just keeping the lights on? There are two ways you get to be here. If you’re lucky, you or your family pays, but if not, I wonder how they justify all this. Well, when they dragged Benjamin away, they said something about how his family wasn’t paying anymore and he—” Monty swallowed. “You know anything about this, Harris? With your family being on the council? He grabbed my arm and said, they’re going to treat me like a lab rat. He was really scared, and I never saw him again. I tried to ask about it and they said, ‘Don’t worry, you’re only here for temporary observation, and your family has the means.’ Benjamin was just a normal guy. He didn’t even know much magic. His mother was a single mom, living in the human world, doing some basic healing spells and calling it Reiki. He was turned into a vampire by a girl who didn’t even have her own clan.”

“You’ve never talked about this,” I said.

“The memory really upsets me,” he said. “Because…I’ve since tried to find out what happened to him, and no one would tell me, not even with a bribe. I don’t know. Maybe he was able to leave. Maybe he’s fine.”

“Let’s just say it,” Harris said. “The Ethereals don’t like vampires. My family has been killing vampires for centuries. It doesn’t mean we don’t acknowledge that vampires are intelligent and charming, but the opinion has always been that they are too dangerous to be allowed to live. Everyone here is considered dangerous and the longer they’re here, the less value their lives have to anyone outside of this place. This is where inconvenient things go to be forgotten. Benjamin has value now as an experiment, or else, they gave him a swift end.”

“Harris!” I hissed. “That’s so creepy! Are you sure?”

“We can all pretend to be horrified and speculate for another hour or two if you like.”

“You’re just so…blunt.” I felt a little hopeless.

“That’s terrible!” Polly said. “What do we do? How do we stop this? So you think Benjamin is dead?”

“Shh,” Daisy groaned. “Polly, you need to take it down a notch. We can’t stop this. We just need to get our people and get out of here.”

“You know…if Benjamin is dead, we might be able to talk to him,” I said. “Summon him. Ask him what happened.”

Montague nodded. “Let’s try it. I hate to think he might have died alone here.”

“Are you summoning the dead?” Polly asked. “Are you a necromancer? We don’t get to study that in witch school. How does it work?”

“Polly…,” Daisy said warningly.

“Can you summon anyone or only other witches? And when you summon people, do they look like they’re on their death bed or are they young and beautiful?”

Now Daisy looked at me like she actually was curious about the answer to that question.

“I don’t think they show up looking like they’re dying,” I said. “I summoned Alec’s mom and she didn’t look like a cancer patient.”

“Ohhh.”

“I haven’t summoned enough people to be sure. And no, you can’t summon just anyone. Spirits move on, eventually. Sometimes they even get reincarnated. I don’t think you can summon Jane Austen, for example.”

“Drat. Of course, I wouldn’t want to infringe on her privacy…”

As Daisy rolled her eyes, I stuck next to her as we left our table. “I know Polly asks a ton of questions,” I said. “But she seems loyal, and she is literally the only person in this whole place that would agree to marry a faery she’s never met. Plus, I just have to note, as someone who was not popular in high school, not everyone is rich and gorgeous.”

“You’re totally gorgeous,” Daisy said.

“So you admit that is a factor for you?”

“Ohhh, she’s just so hopelessly awkward,” Daisy said. “A gator shifter. Gawd.”

“You can ask all your friends in Chicago to be faery brides instead so you can be best friends forever.” I knew Daisy didn’t really have amazing friends in Chicago.

She slumped. “Charlotte, I’m just so bad at being nice. How do you even do it? My grandmother has never been unnecessarily nice to anyone a day in her life.”

“Well, you don’t want to be like her, do you?”

“Touche.”

So, that evening, we all gathered around for a little necromancy ritual in the Charlotte-Harris suite. Polly showed up with a little notebook with a cover depicting a pastel-hued cup of Earl Grey tea. “I’m going to take some notes, if you don’t mind, Charlotte,” she said. “I’ve never seen necromancy before.”

Daisy gave me a look like, You invited Polly to this?

And I gave her a look back like, Remember what we talked about.

“So what do you do first?” Polly asked. “How do you make sure you don’t summon a demon instead? Are we going to light those candles?”

“We just put all these candles in the center of the room for no reason,” Daisy said.

“Oh, haha, right.” Polly blushed.

Sometimes I forgot that Daisy was still as spoiled as Harris or maybe even worse, because she was an only child with dead parents, and the only heir to her important magical job. I don’t think anyone had ever asked Daisy to do something unselfish in her whole life so it didn’t even occur to her to be nice to someone who rubbed her the wrong way. Maybe it would do her some good to go impulsively betrothing herself to a sexy faery. That faery queen wasn’t going to put up with much, I had a feeling.

“A leopard can’t change its spots!” Daisy hissed to me. “It just slips out.”

“You’re better than a leopard.”

“Am I, though? Are any of us really better than a leopard?”

I took out matches. Fire was the best thing for spirit summoning, and then Harris set up wards to keep unwelcome spirits out. I expected a fairly easy spell casting session, because either Benjamin was dead and he wanted to talk, or he was alive and we wouldn’t get anything. My main concern was the sheer number of ghosts here. I could feel them at all times, like a background hum, and I wasn’t sure if that would cause a problem. I’d never tried to do necromancy in a ghost-heavy area.

“As a flame lives and dies, only to be brought back by the flick of a match, so shall your spirit be offered entry to the world of the living. Benjamin, answer our call to speak.”

“Not terrible spell work,” Harris said. “See, you don’t have to rhyme.”

“Please, you flatter me, sir,” I whispered sarcastically, just before—

Oh shit.

Three different spirits battled their way to life in front of me. No—four actually. Four ghostly figures started swirling around: an older man, a handsome younger one, a clean cut dad type, and a guy who kind of looked like a sad Adam Sandler. The first three were all claiming to be the Benjamin I summoned and Adam Sandler was just screaming, so I got a cacophony of “My name is Ben…” “It’s Ben…” “Let me tell you my story…” “NOOOOO—”

“The good looking one is my Benjamin,” Montague said. “Hey, Benjamin…”

“Monty?”

“For over a century I have waited,” interrupted Dad Ben. “Please, young lady, you must help me take revenge!”

“MY WIFE! THE BABY!” said Sad Sandler.

“Shh, please, we must be cautious,” said Old Ben.

“I guess we really needed a last name,” Firian said. “A lot of Bens have died here.”

“A lot of everyone has died here!” Dad Ben said, his ghost whooshing around. “This is where the forgotten souls go to meet their ends…” The room had turned ice cold. Sad Sandler started flying toward the wall.

“No!” I snapped. “Benjamins, I command you to stay within sight of me! I need you all to calm down and tell me what happened one at a time!”

“FREE ME!” Sad Sandler rushed at me, although by this time his human form had sort of vanished and he looked more like Ghost Classic, just sort of a floaty mess of fog with a semi-human face and hollow eyes.

“Monty, they killed me and they’ll kill you too!” said Monty’s Ben. “You need to get out of here. All this place is for is so the council can try out new techniques to battle and control Sinistrals, and if you die in the process, they don’t care.”

“Ben, what about your family?” Montague asked.

“THEY SAID I DIED. MY WIFE…MY POOR WIFE…”

The frantic ghosts sizzled when they ran into Harris’ wards. Harris pointed his wand at Sad Sandler. “Stop making so much damn noise. We’re trying to get to the bottom of this.”

“The only bottom you’ll get to is the bottom of a grave,” said Old Ben.

I realized quickly that I needed to get these spirits under control. They were all flying around and screaming over each other and not giving us any important information.

“I summoned you,” I said, holding out my arms, taking up space. “I can banish you again in a second, and no one will ever hear your story. Your screams will only alert the guards. I said, one at a time. Old Man, tell me who was responsible for your death.”

“It was a so-called holy man, Father Thomas.”

“Was he from this Order of the Blessed?”

“Yes, miss, he sure was.”

“Did you all have this experience of being killed by someone from the Order of the Blessed?” I asked.

“Yes…” Nods all around.

“I thought they were trying to help me,” said Dad Ben. “I was so ashamed that I had feelings for my own familiar. I had already tried everything I could on my own to keep our relationship confined to magic only, but I could call her any time of night and she was always there. No one else…was there for me like Dru…”

I swallowed. That was hitting close to home.

Sad Sandler looked near a break down as he calmed down. “My dad was an incubus. I cheated on my wife. I checked myself in here to try to recover but my wife cut off payments for my rehab and they moved me to the back. They would…just leave me tied up for hours…unspeakable things…torture… I never got a chance to try and make things right with her. Never saw my little girl again.”

“Okay,” I said. “So…this place is basically where they send witches and warlocks who have ‘tainted’ blood or do things that go against the rules,” I said. “Everyone knows that and thinks it’s a place where people go to get better, right? But in fact, ‘rehabilitation’ is reserved for people whose families pay the Haven, and it sounds like some wizard families are happy to cut off their family members because they bring shame. When that happens, they are moved to the back rooms away from the more privileged magical folk, and can be tortured and killed. And this all happens under the watch of the Order of the Blessed. Do I have that right?”

“Yeah, sounds about right,” Monty’s Ben said. “I just don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”

“Well, I’m working on a plan to get help from the faery queen,” I said, although I realized even as I said it that the plan involved escaping the Haven and ignoring the entire Ethereal witching world. Along the way, I might ‘save’ thirteen girls—by forcing them into marriage with strangers.

Honestly, this is not my problem, I thought.

Except, it also kinda was. Clearly, the corruption among the Ethereal councils had affected my family for generations now. It was the very thing Ignatius spent all his life trying to end. And seeing all these depressed ghosts still hanging around—and dear lord, this was only the ghosts named Ben—carrying regrets and missing loved ones, I really wished I could do something besides just running away.

I thanked the ghosts and let them go, and then I turned to my crew.

“Okaaay,” I said. “What we have is a pee in the Lego bin problem. But I am not just going to lose those Legos.”

“The what?” Montague said.

“When I was in day care as a kid, somebody peed in the bin of collective Legos,” I said. “No one saw who did it, and no one would admit to it, so the lady who ran the place said that we had to clean it up ourselves. And no one would do it. Because all each of us knew was that we didn’t coat all those tiny Legos in stinky pee. I mean, you know a boy did it, for starters. Anyway, the next morning Miss Heather was so mad she threw the entire bin of Legos in the Dumpster.”

“Oh, man, I think I finally know what all your emotional turmoil in the spring of 2005 was about,” Firian said. “That’s insane. Legos aren’t cheap.”

“That’s right,” I said. “And what’s even more expensive is a man or woman’s life. So…we can’t throw anymore Legos in the trash. We have to clean up the pee even though we shouldn’t have to. Is this metaphor still working? Well, anyway—I think I need to go to the back of the building.”

“No way,” Montague said. “The ghosts just warned you that people die there. I am not letting you go.”

“I have a plan,” I said.

“Great. More plans,” he said. “Because our last plan went so well.”

“It did go pretty well,” I said. “We killed the demon, saved my mom, and—“

“Yeah, I died, no big deal,” Harris said dryly.

“I brought you back!”

“You brought him back from the dead?” Polly asked. “I thought that was really hard magic! How did you do it, Charlotte? Did you have to give up something really important? Did you have to kill someone?”

“Oh, no, no…” Polly probably shouldn’t have been invited after all. She was going to know too much. Daisy put a hand on her hip and cocked an eyebrow, reading my mind.

“Don’t give me expressions you learned watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, Daisy. Uh, yeah, we’ve done a lot of crazy stuff. That’s just how warlock school goes, I guess. It’s a lot more exciting than witch school, from what I hear. They tried to send me to the Southern Ladies’ Finishing College of Magic and it looked very boring.”

“Are you stalling now, or do you actually have a plan?” Harris asked.

“I have a plan! I mean, I haven’t been studying necromancy for nothing, right? You all saw what just happened. Unless someone here just really hates the name Benjamin, this place is full of angry ghosts. We need to plan a massive ghost summons. But first we need eleven more brides for the faery queen, so that we have somewhere to go after the attack where the council can’t hurt us or our familiars.”

“But how can you protect yourself until then?” Montague asked.

“If Charlotte goes, I go,” Harris said. “And if I go, you should all go. She’s going to need us. She has a tendency to do stupid things without guidance.”

“‘I owe her my life so I will follow her to the ends of the earth’,” I said. “There, fixed it.”

“You know I’m definitely going where you go,” Alec said.

“I think this is a terrible mistake, but let it never be said that I was a coward who abandoned my lady at a time of need,” Montague said.

“And of course, I go where you go,” Firian said. “Even if I have to stay out of sight. A part of me will always be with you when you’re crying over pee-drenched Legos.”

“Fine, I’ll go too,” Daisy said. “These other eleven witches are going to be the only girls I have to talk to in Faeryland so they better be good.”

“You can talk to me, Daisy,” Polly said.

“Yes. Of course. We will also talk,” Daisy said.

“Great,” I said. “So…we just have to get the eleven faery brides quickly, but the women in the bad half of the Haven are probably really desperate, and unfortunately we’re just going to have to exploit that desperation to save their lives. All we need is eleven agreements, so if we can knock that out in one day, then we won’t be there for long.”

“So how do we get them to send us to the bad half?” Alec said. “We’re going to have to do something—“

At this moment, he trailed off as we heard footsteps charging down the hallway.

“Drop your wands, shut your mouths, and put your hands up right now!” a guard barked. “We’ve had reports of suspicious adult male screaming in this room and we’re going to have to search all of you for signs of unauthorized spell usage!” A key turned the door lock and then the door was thrown open. No one had even dropped their wands or raised their hands yet, but as soon as I saw the clenched jaws and hard eyes of brutes with guns in one hand and wands in the other, I dropped my wand fast.

I was about to find out whether our screaming ghosts had either made things really easy, or really hard.

Chapter Seventeen

Harris

I kept looking at Montague. He had a better idea of this place than the rest of us, and I’d never seen him look this nervous, not even when we were heading off to fight a demon. He’d never told us that his roommate here was dragged out and killed. I thought it was becoming a vampire that made him seem more mature after that summer, but maybe that wasn’t the only factor.

I was worried for him, less so for myself. In the end, I was still pure warlock and my parents’ son. They were going to treat me gently. My parents would never cut off funding or let my death go unpunished.

“What are we doing with them?”

“There are traces of necromancy in the room, buried under wards. The girl does the former and the Nicolescu boy is skilled at wards.”

“So…”

“Separate them.” We had all been dragged back through the halls. “Initiate step one.”

They escorted us into separate rooms. No one fought the guards; we had come here on purpose, but Charlotte definitely looked scared. She didn’t say a word, though. She seemed like such a normal human sort of girl when I met her, but she had the steely blood of her witch ancestors.

Then I lost sight of them. The scuffle of footsteps echoing in the hall was replaced with the silence of a small, dim chamber. It was lit by just a few candles so I couldn’t really see what I was in for.

The man attending to me was huge, as burly as the men who worked for my family, but without any of their warmth. He wasn’t wearing the standard black uniform of the guards, but a robe, so he must be a higher rank warlock. “Mr. Nicolescu, please stand against the wall.” He stood at a tray of spell implements and pulled on some gloves.

For the first time, I started to think maybe there was some mistake, that he didn’t know who I was. But it was impossible that he would call me by the Nicolescu name and not know.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, as coolly as I could manage.

“You have a choice,” he said. “You can summon your familiar, and he or she will take penance in your stead as you watch, or you will take your penance alone.”

“You’re not going to hurt her.”

“All right.”

“Do my parents know about this?”

“Your parents have authorized us to treat you. They are praying for your recovery. I hope you will be more grateful to them when you go home.” He picked up his wand and waved the tip. Bindings of golden light wrapped around my arms and dragged me against the wall, lifting my arms until I was prone there.

“Now,” he said, “it is time to see the consequences of your actions.”

He walked close to me. He was an older man, but like with most warlocks, it was hard to say how old. They tended to look like they were about fifty years old for a very long time. He appeared to be a warlock in his prime, old enough to be a master of the craft. All my studies could hardly compare to the years of experience older warlocks had, but a younger person could gain some advantage through will and craftiness. I wasn’t feeling very crafty at the moment, however.

Outside of the shadows of this room, the older warlock could have been anyone. A professor, a friend of my parents. He had shoulder length brown hair, black, squarish glasses frames with light eyes behind them, and a long nose. His robes were perfectly pressed and tidy. The only unpleasant feature he had was the way his lips seemed a little too wrinkled or something.

“Are you with the Order of the Blessed?” I asked.

“Yes. I am an elder of the church,” he said.

“Father Bogdan?”

“That’s right. Your friend must have told you about me. The Order of the Blessed has been formed simply to give coherence to the mission of all warlocks and witches. Our only true purpose is to save the lands of Etherium from falling to the darkness. Or…neutrality. Wyrd is our enemy as much as Sinistral is; we just have not considered them a threat, as the faeries have preferred to wither away rather than fight for scraps, but as you should know, those are our only choices. Your ancestors knew it, Harrison. Our world is dying. I will treat you unpleasantly this afternoon, because these are unpleasant times.” He picked up a bottle and put his hand around my jaw. “Drink.”

“What is it?”

“A hallucinogen.”

“Why?”

“For sight.” Or maybe he said ‘foresight’. I was tied to the wall, my limbs already aching. I drank, but I didn’t want to hallucinate. I was always in control of the situation.

He started to unbutton my shirt, baring my skin. I twisted away as best I could.

“I am just going to trace your history,” he said. He picked up a different bottle, unscrewing the cap. There was a brush inside the cap, dusted with gray powder, which he whisked over my skin as if uncovering fossils. He whispered spell words as he went, ancient ones. I didn’t understand a word but I’d heard that some witches spoke the Ethereal tongue.

There is still so much I haven’t learned. So much I wanted to know. The doors to that ancient knowledge will shut to me forever as I turn away from my history.

As he brushed the powder over my skin, marks appeared and then vanished, coaxed by his whispering. When he put the brush away, he picked up his wand instead and now he was back to the familiar languages of magic. He bid the wand to burn with holy fire and cleanse me.

I knew there would be pain, and I couldn’t fight, because I could already feel the hallucinogenic started to work its way into me and steal my strength and will, while my vision began to swirl and dance gently.

He pressed the tip of the wand into my breastbone and traced downward.

I wanted to scream, but I refused to give him the satisfaction. I would not succumb. I would give everything in my power not to show fear.

I felt a hand brush my neck.

“Do you want to dance with death?” Montague whispered in my ear.

I saw Charlotte across the room, looking small and vulnerable. She was alone, looking for a friend, and she didn’t see me.

Monty? Charlotte?

They’re not real.

My skin was on fire but I didn’t see the warlock now. Reality had slipped away from me. The room seemed to meld into a shadowed, sinister forest.

Monty wasn’t alone; I realized. His clan was here too. Rayner and Silvus, holding my wrists; Monty at my neck. Thom and Jie, waiting patiently for their turn. They all started biting me, drinking my blood, and I wanted to fight them off but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. My skin was on fire and I felt my life draining away, but I always had a little more to give. I, who had always been the person who could give a command and make it so, wielding my name more fiercely than any weapon, had lost all control to the vampires.

No, to death itself.

What did it feel like to die? Some part of me remembered the moment my tether to the world was broken.

The vampires were the bringers of death and the offering of life, both at once. They drained me without killing me, giving my body a chance to rejuvenate, only to feed them again.

I was weak and I didn’t want Charlotte to see me like this, but even as I tried to hide my vulnerabilities from her, I saw her surrounded by demons. Alec was one of them, but he was not quite our Alec. He seemed more possessive than tender as he took her arm in his hand. The vision was soundless as the demons swarmed Charlotte, tearing off her clothes. Four incubi were sharing her, and they seemed to be demons known to Alec, but not to me. They didn’t love Charlotte, and she was afraid of them. All they knew was need.

I saw her mouth forming Alec’s name. Crying out. He shoved his cock into it, while the other demons spread her legs. Raping her. This was nothing like when I took command of her in the bedroom. I always knew how much she enjoyed it, her little smiles and sighs and wet heat telling me everything I needed to know. This was brutality.

“No…” I felt myself saying. “No!”

This isn’t real. A lump rose in my throat, another scream that wanted to get out. This isn’t real.

The trace of burning pain in my skin was spreading down my arms and legs.

“There is no safety in this world,” Thom said, grinning at me. “No order. Sinistral will do with all of you as we please.”

I realized that my blood was running out, all over the leaves and grass of the forest floor, trickling out of the vampire’s mouths. They let it go to waste as I felt weaker and weaker.

I was dying again…slowly, this time.

“No,” Rayner said. “Not yet. Maybe not ever. You will yearn for death when we’re done with you, our little Hapsburg Prince…they used to say the blood of royals was too holy to taste, but we always knew that was bullshit. It’s the sweetest of all.”

The vampires lifted me into the nearest tree and lashed my limbs to the branches, my palms bleeding like some mockery of a crucifix and Monty was there laughing. It’s definitely not real. Monty’s too religious.

The pain was so real. The weakness. The humiliation of them all staring at me, their faces pale in the moon shadows.

It’s not real.

In the clearing, Charlotte was now giving birth to a demon, a squalling, hideous creature with sharp nails and teeth and she was screaming with pain, left to writhe alone as the incubi looked on, including Alec.

It’s not real. None of this is real.

The demons poured out of her now, a dozen of them, with black wings, and they turned on her and started to tear at her flesh with their teeth.

“Stop! Make it stop! What do you want?”

The words finally tore out of me.

I felt cool palms grip my cheeks, slowly dissolving the vision and stirring me back to reality. The warlock studied my face. “Most men have tears streaming down their cheeks by now,” he said. “You are a cold one, Mr. Nicolescu. What did you see?”

I was hyperventilating a little as I drank in the precious sight of the real world, reminding myself that my friends were here. They would never do the things they did in the dream, and that I knew.

“You made that vision,” I said.

“No. I simply drew out your fears,” he said. “You don’t know if you can trust a vampire or an incubus.”

Was the vision real? I was haunted by the vampires tasting me, by my own brush with death. More than a brush, in fact. That was the part that made me doubt myself. But it didn’t fit. The one thing I absolutely knew my brain would never conjure was Montague mocking a Catholic symbol. He was pure Spanish St. Augustine in that way, taking religion far more seriously than my family, or than Alec with his old ways that were not as rigid.

I bet he heard some things about Monty from when he was here before, I thought. He saw Monty’s tricked out car, they probably confiscated his iPhone, they knew he liked girls and was off partying in Mexico. So they assumed he wouldn’t care about that stuff and threw that in the vision.

“You are lying,” I said calmly.

“Why would you think that? You mean to tell me you never have dark thoughts? Is your mind so pure?”

“Sure, I have dark thoughts. But I know my friends,” I said. “You gave me the wrong ones. You made an assumption. I’m sure you’re good at these head games by now. But Monty would never make a mockery of religion. Alec might be horny as hell but he’s also a better person than I probably deserve as a friend. He would never hurt Charlotte. I know these guys. You crafted these vision and put them in the spell to trick me.”

His ugly lips pursed, sneering toward me, as he shoved his glasses up his nose to narrow his eyes at me.

I knew I’d won. I’d seen past his trick and he didn’t like that, but he would go to sleep tonight cursing himself for getting caught by a mere boy.

He slashed his wand through the air and burned lines of fire across my skin. I growled through the pain. Anything to keep from screaming. When his arm fell back to his side, a funny smile twisted my face.

“So this is ‘order’, huh? This is what the Ethereals wanted.”

“You can rot there, boy,” he said. “We’ll break you. Trust me on that.”

Chapter Eighteen

Charlotte

I mean, I knew this was going to be difficult.

I knew.

I guess I just didn’t realize…

The dim room had some serious Medieval torture vibes going on, and when the witch chained my wrists straight above my head and then stripped me down to a bra and skirt, I knew this was going to be bad.

“Can we—can we talk first, maybe?” I tried. “What do you want? Aren’t you supposed to ask questions first and then torture me if I don’t answer them?”

This witch looked like a crazy person already, like she was not interested in questions. Her hair was a wild dark mane streaked with silver, her eyes a lovely pale blue—she was actually rather beautiful for an older woman—but they didn’t quite make contact with mine. She picked up a switch off your classic wall-of-torture-thingies. This was going to ruin any chance of getting experimental with Harris later, wasn’t it?

“Ohmigod ohmigod please—please wait!” I shrieked.

Then again, I don’t actually want her to get me to talk, I thought. I have a diabolical plan of my own. I can’t let her know about it.

“Oh god,” I whimpered.

Charlotte, you fought a demon. This is nothing.

But…this was actually somehow worse than fighting the demon. At least I could fight the demon. Right now I couldn’t do anything. I was just trapped in anticipation, with no idea of what she would do or how long she would do it for. It could reach the female equivalent of James-Bond-in-the-testicle-torture-chair and was anyone going to rescue me? I had a feeling my friends were busy with their own…stuff.

She struck my bare stomach with the switch. Once, twice, three times. So fast that the pain didn’t hit until they were over.

And then it was worse than anything I could imagine.

“Is that all you got, bitch?” I said.

No, I wish I had said that, or anything besides what I actually said, which was to sob out, “I want my daddy.”

I hadn’t called my dad ‘daddy’ regularly since freshman year of high school when I realized that all the sophisticated girls had moved on to ‘dad’, but I was being tortured, okay, don’t judge.

“Which one do you call ‘daddy’?” she asked.

“Oh my god, I mean my actual dad!” I saw myself through her eyes. She had probably gotten the scoop on me, that I was the witch who went to warlock school and was suspected to be in a relationship with more than one guy, and I must seem really pervy to her.

Maybe I am really pervy, actually, but not in a bad way. So there.

But I still felt myself turning crimson.

She went back to pacing, occasionally brushing the switch across my skin so I shivered back, but drawing out the time, making me wonder. I trembled, tears already blurring my vision.

“They told me all about you,” she said. “You were at Merlin College already. You broke the rules. You need to understand down to your bones what the consequences of this behavior will be.” She struck me again, this time on the back of my legs. “Witches need to know their place. Witches need to be gentle—demure—ladies—wives—mothers!” With every word she hit me with more force.

“Please stop…please, please, it hurts…”

Turns out I was not very tough when it comes to torture. I hoped Harris never found out. Were they torturing him? Was he crying? I liked to imagine that he was just sweating it out. Alec already worked out every day, which was basically torture already, so he should be able to handle it. Montague? Not sure.

It helped to think about them while she was between lashes. I tried to make my brain go somewhere else. The pain demanded attention, though. It was hard to ignore that some of the most tender places of my skin were screaming with pain and I couldn’t even clutch at them. I remembered when I got a wasp sting while playing outside and I ran crying to dad. Your mom always said honey is good for stings. Let’s try that, okay? Here, eat a spoonful and make sure that honey is still good. It is, right? Delicious.

I felt so alone right now.

She struck me again and again and I was a sobbing mess. How long would she do this? What if she struck me until she broke skin and I was scarred for life like when Black Jack whips Jaime in Outlander? Why oh why did I watch so much stuff with sexy men getting tortured really badly?

I was blubbering out my pleas.

“Don’t worry, I won’t do anything to you that time won’t heal. A fair bit of time, perhaps… The pain is cleansing, sweetheart. You’ll realize that eventually.”

“What do you want from me…? Please!”

“Stop.” Firian suddenly appeared next to her. “Take me in her place.”

“Firian, no!” I screamed.

“I’m her familiar. I’m supposed to tell her the ways of Etherium. Right from wrong. I’m the one who failed her. I’m the one you should be lashing.”

I swear, Firian had never looked sexier than in that moment. He was so much taller than the older witch, and his golden eyes were so intense when he looked at her, and so tender when they briefly switched to me.

I remembered that I was never alone. Firian knew when I was in pain even when he wasn’t present.

I felt so much stronger, just seeing him. It gave me the one thing I could fight for. Sparing him from pain. “No,” I said. “This was all my decision. You’re a good, devoted familiar. I’m the one who broke the rules.”

“Charlotte,” he said gently. “Let me do it.”

A part of me wanted to say yes. Just to escape the pain. Just to let him protect me, because he always did. But that was why I absolutely could not let him suffer for me. Firian lived for me. He was bound to me. I would never know if he acted entirely out of free will. I had to protect him too.

The witch looked at me. “It is good that he watches.”

“Firian,” I said. “I command you to go.” I shut my eyes. “Plea—ahh! Ahaa…ohh…”

The pain lashed my back. The witch hammered me with several blows in a row only to pause and let them sink fully into me. All I could do was scream. All I knew was pain.

When I opened my eyes, Firian was still there. Torn between wanting to intervene, but not to make things worse; to leave me alone in my pain but to stay by my side. I knew what he was thinking.

He wouldn’t leave me.

Chapter Nineteen

Charlotte

“Okay. Not gonna lie, this place is horrible,” Daisy said, sitting down with her plate of beef stew and rye bread. “They made me talk to my grandmother on the phone for like two hours. I mean, actually, she just yelled at me, not like I got a word in edgewise.” She looked at the rest of us. “Oh—wow—you guys look bad.”

“Charlotte was tortured,” Montague said somberly.

They all looked ready to kill for me.

“Tortured how?”

“I mean, struck. Whipped. She can barely walk.”

“I can walk,” I hissed. “Calm down.” I pulled my hood over my head. I was in so much pain that I came to dinner in my pajamas. Firian had to help me change clothes, after tending to my wounds with magic as best he could. I wished he was still here, but we knew it was too dangerous for him to be seen with me.

I was still in constant pain all over. Ms. Torture Witch had hardly left anything unscathed. My skin was ribboned in red markings, some of them now turning to bruises from the force of her blows. Just lifting a spoon to my mouth hurt. I was only here and not in bed because I didn’t want the guys to completely lose their shit over what happened.

Anyway, I didn’t know what they’d been through either. They all looked upset but none of them seemed physically harmed.

“Here, let me help you with that,” Alec said, taking the spoon from my hand.

“No—don’t feed me.”

“Your arms are shaking just trying to eat. Please. I want to take care of you.” There was something a little extra fierce in his defense.

“How are you guys?” I asked. “Y’all don’t seem hurt…but…” There was something haunted in all their faces.

Except maybe…

I raised an eyebrow at Harris. He had a different look. Just plain pissed.

“They gave us visions,” Alec said, glancing at the other guys. They must have had some time to talk in private before I hobbled out here. “Of our worst tendencies, and…hurting you.”

“They were very vivid,” Montague said, poking his fork at his napkin. Of course he didn’t have food, just a table setting. “Very vivid.”

“But they weren’t real,” Harris said. “They tried to make us think that the visions were conjured by our own minds, but they were not. Just illusion.”

“Yeah…but we do worry about it,” Alec said, lifting a perfectly sized square of beef to my mouth. I rolled my eyes but I ate it. “Monty and I know that we could hurt someone.”

“No,” Harris said. “I know that you won’t. Don’t fall for it.”

“Well, let’s not spend any more time here than we have to,” Montague said. “We better start working on finding these girls tomorrow.”

I hadn’t had much mental energy to think about my surroundings yet. Or maybe I was trying not to think about it. While the front of the Haven retained a certain level of luxury, this part? Pure horror movie. And part of the horror came from the inmates themselves. Er, patients. I mean, captives.

We were sitting at a battered old table on metal chairs that were already making me cringe and wriggle my tortured ass around, trying to get comfortable. Brown metal lights dangled from the ceiling, looking like office lamps that had been dismantled and hung up to die slowly. The floors were made out of the same tile that lined the pool area in the front. I bet they just hose this room down when they want to clean it, I thought. Some things you know without being told.

There were probably a hundred other witches and warlocks (with various other sorts of tainted blood) filling the room, some ancient and others barely old enough to consent to marry a faery. Some of them wore their own clothes, but a lot of them were wearing simple black robe-like garments and loose pants. The official uniform, I guess. Like, once your clothes wore out, that was it. You became part of the background noise, black-clad and weary and pale. This was not a cheerful place. People were lethargic, poking at their meals, and the worst cases were talking to themselves or wandering around aimlessly. One man was clutching what looked like a doll made out of a pillow case and a Sharpie.

Is Ina in this room? Am I looking at her right now?

I was nervous, glancing over the women, pausing over what might have been a familiar hair color or nose. But I just didn’t know and part of me was scared. She’s been here for so long…

“Man, we’ve gotta pick the faery brides from some janky bitches,” Daisy said.

Polly’s brow furrowed. She was there with us, but she seemed like she had finally learned to be quiet around the group. I felt bad for her. She was definitely getting more than she bargained for at this point, but she also wasn’t begging to leave.

“Well, they look like they need a better life,” I said. “Hopefully it’ll be easy.”

“How old can a faery bride be?” Polly asked.

“Um…child-bearing age, I’m going to guess? We’ll worry about it tomorrow.” I was running out of steam for pretending I was okay. Alec noticed. He put the spoon down and very gently caressed my hair before sitting back in his chair and casually flexing his hands, making his arm muscles flex all the way up to his wide shoulders. I’m not even sure it was conscious, but I liked to think he was dreaming of beating up that witch.

“Charlotte needs to get some rest,” he said.

I got to my feet with Alec’s hands supporting me. Montague gathered up our trays to return to their spot by the trash cans. Harris was not gathering up anything or helping me up, just saying.

Daisy gave me a hug. “Okay, get some rest—“

“Ow!”

“Oh my god, are you like really tortured?” she asked in a horrified whisper. “Like—they beat you?”

“Why do you think Alec’s been feeding me?” I cried.

“Well…I mean…” She gestured to Alec’s entire body. “I would exaggerate if I were you.”

“I’m not exaggerating, Daisy, this is real! This is Outlander real.”

“Oh.” Daisy looked around. “Oh no. They would really…hurt a Caruthers?” She bit her lip. “Okay, we’re going to get this done tomorrow. Eleven girls. Or peri-menopausal women. Something. I swear to you. I’m even going to be nice to Polly.”

“Oh, please, I know the modern equivalent of a cut direct when I see one,” Polly said. “And I know you have adopted the manners of the Fixed Plane. We can continue to be cordial with each other in society, of course.”

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Nice and cordial,” Daisy said, giving me a look like, she’s a gator shifter from Jacksonville, right?

“I’m going to bed,” I said. “Y’all be nice.”

I managed to make it out of the room and then I almost collapsed. I swear the pain was worse now than it was before. I really, really just wanted to cry, even though Harris was there and I hated crying in front of him.

“Let me carry you,” Alec said. “I’ll be careful.”

“Ohh…” I let him pick me up, even though I felt a little silly and his hand still brushed inflamed skin. I felt better being close to him and clung to his shirt. “I’m scared,” I whispered. “I still need to do some serious necromancy, and…I’m not sure…if I’m ready. Magic takes a lot out of a person. I don’t know what they’ll do to me tomorrow. What if…they break me?” I swallowed. “What if they already have? We’ve made it this far, but…today…I was just such a mess. I would have told that witch everything if she asked. I would have let you all down.”

“Don’t apologize,” Montague said. “Not for being tortured. Good lord. None of us are prepared for that. Just get some rest and it’ll work out. We’re here with you.”

But they couldn’t stay. I didn’t have Harris anymore. I had a tiny room with a single bed, the hall guarded, and none of them were allowed to follow me there.

Of course, I wasn’t alone. As soon as I lowered myself to the bed, Firian was there for me. He still looked as pissed as when I last saw him, and I could tell that he’d just been brooding over his fury at what had happened to me this whole time.

“Firian…”

“I’ll take care of you,” he said. “Just rest up.”

“Everything hurts…”

He unzipped the hoodie and pulled it off my shoulders for me, handling me with the lightest touch until he had me stripped down to my underwear. I hardly recognized my own body, covered in red stripes and bruises. I made a little hiss of pain as I put my head on the pillow. Firian whispered spells like poems, running his fingers lightly over me, taking his time to focus on every separate area where I’d been struck until finally I caught his hand in mine and pulled it around me.

“Okay,” I murmured, descending into needed sleep. “Just hold me now.”

His arm was a protective embrace through the night, his body like an extension of my own, and I slept soundly until morning, when I was awakened by a pounding on my door, ordered out of bed, and dragged back to that same room, with that same witch, who looked approvingly over my skin and said, “You heal up so fast. Your familiar takes good care of you, doesn’t he? You must treasure him, always…” She tested the length of a strap between her hands.

“No…” I sobbed. She came closer. “No!”

Chapter Twenty

Harris

They were breaking my girl down.

This was the girl who never stopped fighting me, trying to best me and prove herself at every turn, always quick with a retort to match mine. This was the girl who wasn’t intimidated by the werewolf spirit of her mom, demon summoning, ghosts, a vampire clan, the Withered Lord, Daisy at her bitchiest, or Alec’s unnecessarily large dick.

She was the girl for me and they were going to destroy her and there was nothing we could do.

When do you admit defeat?

Days passed. The witch knew when to hold back so Charlotte could still walk and eat. They wouldn’t feed her in her rooms, or let us go to her in bed, so the only way to get any sustenance in her body was for her to go to the cafeteria and eat with us, trying to put on her best brave face. Days went by, and then a full week. She wouldn’t even tell us what they were doing to her, but Firian knew.

“Ice,” he said. “Burns. Lots of beatings. The other day the witch brought in her yoga tape and told her to work her way through it. They must have got it out of her dorm room or something. That might have been the worst of all because that tape was her anchor to her mom all those years, and, you know. Yoga is torture. I don’t know why she subjects herself to it willingly, much less when she’s already exhausted and in pain. Still, if she would just say the word, they would put me through the pain instead. But she won’t.”

“I think I would kill that witch if I had to watch,” Montague said. “You need to insist.”

“I wish I could,” Firian said. “But they won’t let me insist. She’s in control. And killing her wouldn’t make things any better for Charlotte.”

“We can’t escape with her,” Alec said. “There are just too many guards with too much magic. But something’s gotta give.”

“That vision they subjected us to, of us hurting her with our own nature? They’re going to make sure it comes true,” Montague said. “They’re shorting me on blood supply, Alec, I’m sure you’re horny enough to do something terrible, and Harris…you look like hell.”

“They’re not giving me that medicine,” I said, dismissively. I was still so annoyed that I’d had to go and die. Now, without that medicine, my body would start to slip into more of an undead state. My hands and feet were always cold, my skin was white as a ghost and my energy levels were low. Hopefully craving brains wasn’t next. I had not really asked about the details of what happens when a necromancer drags you back from death.

“What if we’ve…lost?” Alec said. “What if coming here was just a mistake, and there’s nothing we can do?”

“Damnit,” Montague said. “We made it through so much shit together. I’m not giving up. Where is Charlotte’s aunt who’s here? Maybe if we found her…”

“We’ve been asking,” Alec said. “Daisy’s been working this place. No sign of Ina. We have six women who have agreed to be faery brides, but that isn’t enough to deal with the faery queen either. Do we have time to find six more? And even then…”

“So you’re giving up,” Firian said. “Just giving up?”

“Well, what do you suggest?” Montague said. “I tried sending a note to my vampire clan, but that was a long shot. They want to rescue their own girl, not mine. I want to just start killing people but as I said, that won’t fucking help!”

“Don’t kill people,” Alec said. “Please. You’re starting to sound like a vampire.”

“I’m kidding,” Montague said, but Alec shook his head. Yeah, I don’t think he was kidding because I was also feeling murderous over Charlotte’s situation.

“What is more important?” I asked, frowning. “Saving her life, or going down together?”

“Saving her life,” Alec said without hesitation.

“Definitely,” Montague said.

Firian didn’t even bother to answer, but he was looking at me like he knew what I’d say.

“A part of me wishes you’d said the other thing,” I said, wincing a little. “I don’t want to get too sentimental, but I’m not sure there would be anything in me that she’d like if I didn’t have friends like you two.”

“We’ve had some amazing times,” Alec said softly. “Before she ever came along. And then…it felt so right to me. All of us, and her…”

“I would’ve lost my mind with those snotty shits at high school without you,” Montague said. “I mean, you were also a snotty shit, but you were our snotty shit.”

I nodded a little. They knew too. That made it a little easier.

“I’ll have to go to Sinistral,” Alec said. “I have to admit it. I’m…afraid of what I’ll become if I live there, without her. A demon. I don’t feel like a demon, but there’s that part of me. I know it would come out, eventually. I won’t be able to hold it back forever.” He rubbed his hand against his forehead with a low groan. “But if it saves her life, it’s better than nothing.”

“I know what you mean,” Montague said. “I guess I’ll…go to Ulf’s place. I don’t think I can get in on the Lisbeth thing, and I think Rayner understands that too.”

“I’ll call my parents,” I said.

“So is that the plan?” Firian said. “You’re going to marry her and take her to the Hapsburg Hut?”

“Ladyswald,” I said. “Yes. It’s the only way to get her out of this. It’s what they wanted all along. My parents and her aunt both. She won’t be able to make any trouble there, but…she’ll be safe. She’ll still have us.”

“Fuck,” Montague said softly.

“We’ll find a way to get her out, someday, when things quiet down,” I said. “It’s temporary”

I could tell that none of us knew for sure if that was true. If I took Charlotte to my parents’, considering our history now with rebellious behavior, we would probably never be trusted again, not unless we proved ourselves. And it seemed possible to me that in the course of proving ourselves, we might start to care about the lives we’d built. There would be children. And manipulation.

Am I really saving her at all?

My stomach clenched and I realized I’d been running from that all my life. Sure, I talked about wanting to be on the council, to be someone important. Deep down, it sounded stifling, but I also knew how it worked. It’s easy to give up money and power before you have it. Afterwards? Forget it. We’d have kids to think about, their friends at school, money Charlotte could send home to her parents to help them out, all that sort of thing that ties you down.

I’ll make her happy. We’ll fight and tease and I’ll find all the ways I can make her forget what we had to leave behind.

Montague and Alec looked solemn. They loved her enough to let her go. I wondered if I loved her that much. It seemed like a funny phrase. Sure, I guess, when you love someone you’re supposed to just want them to be happy, but I couldn’t imagine a life with an empty place where Charlotte used to be.

Hell if I could let her go.

It was hard enough letting them go.

Chapter Twenty-One

Charlotte

For some reason, the next morning, they let me sleep in. Like, waaay in. I was perpetually exhausted and I decided not to fight it, even though I wondered idly if maybe the main room had a carbon monoxide leak and everyone died or something. I felt wretched. I threw up in the sink and crawled back to bed, in tears from the pain.

Then, Daisy opened the door.

Usually I was greeted by the Torture Witch, and this had been going on long enough that I wondered if the Torture Witch had just cast a spell to make herself look like Daisy and this was some new game.

I’d been thinking a lot about Torture Witch. There was something weird about the other day…I couldn’t pinpoint it. Couldn’t think straight.

“Hey,” Daisy said gently, sitting down in the chair that was the only furniture in the room besides the bed and desk. “They won’t let the boys back here, so they sent me, and…” She bit her lip. “Well, I just want to say, I think it might be the best thing. Seeing you like this has really been freaking me out. I don’t say things like this much, like…I just want to say that you are the coolest witch I know. You’re super brave and kind and you don’t care too much what other people think or say, but you don’t just act like that to annoy your grandmother. You’re like, real.”

“Aw…thanks. I actually do care what other people think and say, but…”

“Okay, well, everyone does. You still care less.”

“Daisy, what’s happening? Are they executing me or something?”

“What? Ohmigod. I wouldn’t say that might be the best thing!”

“Oh. Right.” I let out a breath. “But something is happening.”

“You’re going to marry Harris and go to Ladyswald,” she said. “I am still going to try to find five more faery brides so I can save Orson, but I doubt I can make it in time to help you. Alec and Montague have to go their separate ways.”

“What,” I said, throwing off my blanket even as I was in pain every time I moved, or didn’t move, or anything really. “What? No. Nooo no no. We had a plan.”

“Okay, can you summon all these dead spirits right now?”

“I…I don’t know. Maybe I should try.”

“No. You can’t. They basically broke you, they got Ignatius and Stuart on the run, Orson is dying…it’s bad. It’s really bad. We need to bail on all of this. Harris is going to take good care of you.”

“I don’t want to be taken good care of like I’m an old dog whose owner died! I…I…” I was close to tears, thinking of Ignatius at the trial, and how upset he was when I gave up my magic and just wanted to go home to my family, about Samuel and Professor MacGuinness saying goodbye after never being together, and all the things I might have had a chance to change for the future. Did I really have to just give up?

Daisy rubbed my back and even though it kind of hurt, it was also nice that she was trying to comfort me. “Who knows where the future goes, right? Let me tell you, you should definitely remind the Nicolescus that you helped take down a demon. Like, constantly.” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, it got real fast. I’ll help you dress nice but pretend I didn’t say anything because Harris wants to propose.”

Not gonna lie. I felt like someone had kicked my legs out from under me. Like I had no choices.

But when I saw Harris waiting for me, with this tiny glimmer of nerves in his blue eyes, for one second I could pretend that this was a happily ever after. That I was just a girl who got butterflies in my stomach when I saw this boy, and now he was going to ask me to marry him, and it would all be okay.

It only worked if I forgot everything else.

Daisy had done her best to spruce me up, but she couldn’t put me in a dress because of all my wounds, so I was wearing my short cape and slim pants, and she worked some kind of magic with my hair and a curling iron. I don’t know how or why she had a curling iron. I had never seen her curl her own hair.

Harris had this look on his face that reminded me just how upsetting it must be for my guys to see me suffering. Like, I was back to some normalcy right now, and I knew he was relieved.

Harris being Harris, he tucked all of his more vulnerable emotions away by the time I reached him on the other side of the room, which was sort of a parlor with musty old floral-print furniture.

“Charlotte, I know you’re going to be upset at me. I hope so. I am looking forward to all the ways you’re going to yell at me over this decision, and my only recourse will be to find ways to shut you up.”

My lips twitched as I suppressed a smile. “What did you do?”

“All of us agreed,” he said. “I need to get you out of here. No one could withstand what they’ve been putting you through for long. Everything we fought for, all the happiness you’ve known with Alec and Monty…it’s worthless if we have to watch you get broken down into a shell of yourself. I hate giving in more than anything, except…I love you more than I hate giving in. So…I want you to marry me, and I’m taking you home to the Hudson.”

I’m glad Daisy warned me. It was still a shock to hear him say the words. Even when I knew it was coming, I reacted with surprise that wasn’t fake. “To your…parents’ house?”

“For now,” he said. “Before long, I think they would want us to live on our own, but they will not trust us very much. However, they won’t hurt you. They want us to marry.”

“You’re supposed to ask a woman to marry you, not just tell her.”

“Too bad,” he said. “You have no choice. I would rather command you than watch you die in front of me…”

I punched him in the stomach. I wasn’t very strong at the moment, but I did want to hear him make a “Guh!” sound, which he did, so I judged it just right.

Then I patted him on the head. “It sounds like my zombie forgot that he already did die in front of someone and she brought him back with her power.”

“Are you ever going to get tired of bringing that up?” He looked super annoyed at me. Rich people were so good at looking sexily indignant. Then he reached for me, hands spread on my back and bottom, and pulled me against him, filling me with a sharp need that surprised me. Just because I was in too much pain didn’t mean I didn’t think about it.

“No,” I said. “I’ll probably bring it up on your actual deathbed when you’re a hundred.”

“Charlotte, I will make you happy,” he said. “It won’t be pleasant there, in many ways, but I will bear the brunt of it all. Just try—try—not to agitate the native inhabitants.”

The time for fighting was done. I knew he was right. He was trying to give me some kind of life, where I would still see my family and be free. “Okay…” He kissed me, and at first I savored the taste of him, yearning only for the affection I’d been missing. Then, I gripped his shirt. “Alec and Monty…” A lump rose to my throat.

“I’m going to miss them as much as you will.”

“No…no…”

“It’s not forever. We’ll find a way back to them. I swear.”

I started to let myself cry but that just made my ribs hurt. I stopped and forced myself to just…accept the hand fate had dealt me. The wife of Harrison von Hapsburg Nicolescu. Well, well. That was definitely not what I expected. My mind wandered to a scene of us getting announced at a ball by one of those guys who pounds a stick. “The Lord and Lady Harrison and Charlotte von Hapsburg Nicolescu…they have generously bid on this artwork by the renowned Alec Lyrman to benefit the Human Fund tonight…”

I waved my fan coyly in front of my face. “Ho ho ho, yes! He is certainly my favorite artist!”

We’d find a way to be happy, right? Right?

“My parents are already on their way,” he said. “As is your great-aunt. I couldn’t really…stop them, if we’re going to be serious about this.”

“On their way? To here? To pick us up?”

“For a handfasting,” he said. “That is, in this situation they want to rush the binding of our vows, and then take the time to prepare the public wedding. Your family will be invited to the public wedding, but the hand-fasting will take place here, tomorrow.”

“Binding vows? Tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Do I need a wedding dress?”

“You need something presentable. I have some very potent healing spell for the bruises here. Let Daisy help you. I presume she will be your handmaiden and she did do well with your hair.”

“So this is…this is like a wedding. And my family won’t be here. Just…Catherine Caruthers? Who is terrible?”

“We’ll get through it.”

“This isn’t romantic at all. It’s so…sad.”

“Chosen One,” he said. “My chosen one. I’ll make it up to you later. I promise.”

I wasn’t sure whether to smile, because I got a genuine thrill when he said those words, or just sob until my insides ached as much as my outsides.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Charlotte

If anything kept me together, it was Alec and Montague. They were so good to me. They didn’t want me to be sad.

“You’re the woman I love, Charlotte,” Alec said.

“Alec, I know you will have needs,” I said. “I want you to know not to feel guilty. Don’t wait for me. I want you to be happy.”

“I don’t want to think about that,” he said.

“But I need you to know that the last thing I’d want is for you to hate who you are, because of me,” I said. “If you have to have sex with someone else, I want you to enjoy it.”

Of course, I didn’t love this idea. Like, at all. But I could tell he loved it even less than I did, so I couldn’t be too upset. The only thing that bothered me was just thinking about time passing, and that they would be lonely.

“Princess, I have so many memories of you to keep until I see you again,” he said. “And we will see each other again. There’s always dreams.”

“Yes…” I brightened a little. The dreams weren’t real enough. I got incubus Alec in the dreams, but I wanted human Alec just as much. Relationships weren’t just hot dreams. They were knowing you could turn to that person any time, and have their arms around you, or just sit around sharing a meal and talking about the day. That was how we fell in love.

“I’ll be happy knowing you’re safe,” he said. “It’s you I’ll be thinking about. You on that exercise bike. Every time I work out.” He grinned.

I clung to him. “Oh, Alec. I can’t stand it. Harris isn’t half the slab of man meat that you are.”

He snorted. “Yeah, I’m aware. But at least I trust him with my favorite roomie.”

Montague tried to hold himself a little more aloof. Of course. I knew he would have the easiest time out there in the world; he would be the hardest to recapture once he was gone. That scared me too.

“Man, I fucking hate goodbyes,” he said. “Plus, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous of Harris. I was your first boyfriend. If anyone gets to make vows to you, it should be me. But I’ll say the gracious things about being glad you’re safe.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “This sucks.”

He lifted a lock of my hair and twisted it around his finger. “You are probably safer without me. But…”

“I’ll miss your brand of danger,” I said.

We kissed, and then I kissed Alec, but there were tears on my cheeks and before long the salty taste of them intruded on the sweetness of our kisses and I had to stop and wipe them away. This parting didn’t seem real, but it was. Mr. Coopman gathered us all up and said our families would all be proud that we’d made the right decision. He waved a stack of clipboards in front of us.

“As soon as the wedding is over, you can sign these release papers.”

“Hand-fasting,” I said. “The wedding is later when my family can be present.”

“Details, yes, hand-fasting,” he said dismissively.

“So why can’t my family come to this?” I pressed.

I could see him trying to decide what excuse to present. “We have a visitor limit here so as not to strain our security resources,” he said.

“But Harris’ parents and Councilwoman Caruthers can come.”

“The Nicolescu family is being very generous to you,” he said pointedly. “Young woman, you would be in a whole heap of trouble that you would never escape if you didn’t have the Nicolescus and your great-aunt to vouch for you. And if I may give you a word of advice? I would keep quiet and appreciate the generosity bestowed upon you.”

As he dismissed us, Harris glanced at me like, Why did you bother? You knew how that would go.

And I looked at him back like, If I’m going to marry you, you better have my back when I challenge the status quo because I honestly can’t help it. I’m a modern girl who was raised on saucy memes.

I’m not sure he really understood all that from just my expression. Whatever. He knew what he was getting into.

The next morning, the Nicolescu parents arrived, and so did Catherine Caruthers. They all had this ‘last season of Downton Abbey’ look: rich, well-dressed, vaguely aware that the modern world was intruding upon their comforts. I barely saw them, because I was whisked off to be made ready for the ceremony. Meanwhile, I saw staff bringing in flowers, all carting them off to the Haven’s chapel, while there seemed to be a vague light of interest in the eyes of the denizens as they were murmuring about a wedding. I had a feeling this half-crazed assortment of magical rejects weren’t going to be allowed to watch the ceremony, but I guess even just the buzz in the area was a change of pace.

The jitters in my stomach were building as I struggled to eat breakfast with the guys, thinking this was the last time we’d ever be together. This wedding felt like the wrong thing to do and I also felt like I couldn’t stop it. After breakfast, one of the staff summoned Daisy and me to a private room just off of the chapel to get ready. This room was actually slightly elegant, with a tall bay window and elegant wooden furniture. A big cardboard box wrapped with a white bow was sitting on the window seat. I looked at it nervously.

“Where were you at breakfast?” I asked.

“I have the thirteen girls!” Daisy whispered urgently.

“You do?”

She nodded. “You just looked so depressed, I have been working this place hard,” she said. “And I have to give credit to Polly because she knows people here and she convinced a few of them herself. We have the thirteen brides for the faery queen. I got them all to sign their names for a binding oath. I got the last one like, ten minutes ago.”

“Wow. So…what do we do? If we got a message to the faery queen right now, maybe I could get out of this?”

Daisy took some paper out of her pocket and nodded toward some candles in a multi-candle sconce on the wall. I pulled one out so we could light it and send the message. She unfolded the paper with twelve names written on it, and at the bottom, with a brief pause, she signed her own.

“Um,” she said. “Just so you know…”

“What?”

“They are really…rough. These girls. Because, I mean, you’ve seen this place.”

“They’ll probably clean up okay in the faery world, right?” I said.

She looked at me.

“Like…how rough?” I asked.

“Well, this place had been hard on them, and some of them have been…you know…mistreated for a while. I sort of made promises to them that the faeries might not keep, but I’m not a faery, so I can lie. It can’t be worse than here, right? We also have a nonconformist artsy chick who calls herself ‘Persona’, and it was like hell getting her to sign her real name, which is Lucinda by the way. She’s this sloppy mess here.” She pointed at a garbled signature. “She’s probably going to be real fun when the faeries tell her they expect her to just be a wife and breed little faery babies, so I sold her on this bohemian vision of faery dances and art and stuff. Then we have a girl from the Bathorite Society. They’re witches who believe in dominating the Fixed Plane via an alliance with vampires. She’s only agreeing because she is convinced that they have her slated for execution here, and I told her the faeries—”

At this point, I got the idea, so I cut Daisy off. “So you…lied to most of these people to get them to agree.”

“I’m trying to save your ass! What am I supposed to do?”

“Is it really a contract if it’s based on a lie? The faery queen isn’t going to like this at all!”

“I’m stuck here,” Daisy said. “So there isn’t exactly an awesome pool of witches to pick from, but if I was out there in the real world, it would be really hopeless, because no decent witch I know is going to throw her life away and leave her family to marry a faery she’s never met. The only reason I got you thirteen names is because we’re in this hell hole.”

I bit my lip, looking at the paper. “Yeah. You’re right.” I mean, I would never agree to go marry a stranger that was of a different species, live in his world and abandon my family. “Let’s just send it and cross our fingers.”

“Together,” Daisy said, and we both held a corner of the paper as we let the flames consume it. As the flames started licking toward our fingers, we dropped it in the fireplace—nearly every room had a fireplace—and let it burn out on the stones before I cast a quick spell to put out the embers, as tempting as it was to set the Haven on fire accidentally.

We both glanced up.

“I guess it’ll take time,” Daisy said. “Nothing more we can do now. Let’s get your dress on.”

She opened the box as I hovered over her shoulder. I’m not sure what I expected, but certainly not the endless quantity of cream silk with golden beads set in patterns of vines. I expected a white, traditional gown but there was color in this dress, especially as we pulled it out. The sleeves were long and draping, the interiors lined in a dark rose color. It weighed a freaking ton. I felt like my entire closet weighed as much as this one dress, because the fabric was so substantial and with all the beads added on…

“Traditional,” Daisy said. “But gorgeous. This gown is from one of the old magical couturier in Paris, the House of Fontaine. I think it might be Harris’ mother’s wedding gown. There’s no way they could have ordered a new one up in a day.”

“I have to wear his mother’s wedding dress?”

“Oh, but it’s dreamy. It’s Medieval but blingy and look, it’s got this low back…I do love a nice back,” Daisy said.

“My back is all bruised.”

“Nothing this healing balm and some makeup can’t fix. Come on, you must admit…” She held it up to herself. “This dress is giving me Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine at Studio 54 realness, girl,” she said, in her best Jonathan-from-Queer-Eye voice.

I did my best Jonathan-hair-toss in return. “Okay,” I said. “Hand me the gown.”

I took off my comfortable clothes and subjected my body to this attention-grabbing gown. I had never worn anything that asserted itself over me and made me feel unworthy of it like this gown did. I felt like this was a preview of meeting Harris’ parents.

But it was gorgeous. I definitely liked my mom’s Betsey Johnson dress better, but once in my life, it was fun to look like a queen, and it did give me a certain level of confidence. Like, even if the faery queen herself showed up and interrupted my hand-fasting, I’d be ready in this. If she complained about the girls we found, I would be like, Does thou question my judgment in choosing yon brides!? as my arm swept forward grandly…

Daisy opened her makeup kit and set to work on my face. She did some little elegant braiding with my hair while leaving most of it loose. As usual, she was good at this sort of thing, although I thought this was also a moment where I could be bonding with my mom, and I felt a deep pang that my parents were barred from attending. They were already trying to sever me from my family, and if I’d learned one thing from watching a Scientology documentary, it was not to join up with people who messed with your tie to family.

I watched the minutes tick by, and someone knocked on the door and asked if we were ready yet. I think it might have been Catherine Caruthers, and my nerves knotted further.

“Soon!” Daisy said. “You can’t give a girl bruises and then expect her to get ready for a wedding in no time, kay? An artist needs time to work!” She brushed some makeup on my back, seeming more nervous herself.

All of a sudden, a letter dropped down the chimney and we both flinched. She ran over and opened it. “‘Dear Miss Byrne, I have received your list of names. Part of the bargain we have arranged is that Miss Daisy Pendleton will marry Lord Orson, but as you know, he is trapped in iron. Iron is poison to faeries, and therefore, I can’t fulfill my end of the bargain until you free him. Sincerely, Queen Morgana.’ …what?? She can’t rescue us and give you Wyrd powers first so we can actually do something?”

“She loves testing me,” I growled. “There’s nothing she can do to save him? Yeah, right. There’s no way I can sneak off and do it!”

“Shit. There’s no way I can either. Harris’ family knows me and they would notice if I wasn’t there. But…I’ll try to see if the other girls might be able to sneak off and free Orson while everyone’s distracted with the wedding.”

“Polly and Persona?”

“Yeeeah,” she said. “May the gods help us all.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Charlotte

Before I headed downstairs, I wanted a moment with Firian, because he wouldn’t be able to attend. I called his name, and of course he appeared in front of me almost before the last syllable left my mouth.

“Charlotte…” He looked at my loose hair, the braids, the long draping sleeves and train, the low cut of the bodice—it did cover my breasts reasonably well, but barely covered my shoulders, and then the back plunged. Boning held everything together, and my breath came quick and shallow. The rich colors, the warmth of the cream and pink and gold, and the cool heavy silk, made me feel swathed in royal wealth. Ready to be a Hapsburg. What a strange feeling, because I was the last person that I could imagine any royal family would want; whatever importance the ‘Caruthers’ name held, I felt completely detached from that legacy.

“I wanted you to see me first,” I said.

“You look…” He mussed his own hair.

“Did I render you speechless?”

“You look so beautiful.”

“I don’t really look like me.”

He paused. “I’m not sure that’s true. I think you underestimate what’s inside of you. You look like a powerful woman, and that’s exactly what you are, if you haven’t noticed.” He took my wrists in his hands and then slid his arms up my generously draping sleeves, pulling me closer to him.

“I wish you could be there,” I said.

“We don’t need vows,” he said. “The bond between you and me doesn’t need to be spoken. It’s in our bones.”

“That’s true…”

He tilted my chin toward him and we shared a kiss that must have looked like one of those old romantic paintings, me in my gown against the backdrop of the window seat and wainscoting. I wondered, for the hundredth time, how I could not have known Firian existed for so long, but…he was like my heartbeat. Always there, part of life itself, even when it goes unnoticed. I knew we were closer than other witches and familiars, forever and always. Alec and Montague’s familiars had died, and they seemed to go on with life. It seemed like, for most wizards, familiars were like childhood imagination—fading away into the background. But Firian wasn’t an imaginary friend, he was a real person. I clung to him a little tighter.

“Charlotte, dear?” Catherine knocked on the door again.

“Go,” I whispered, and he went. Reluctantly, I opened the door.

“Wow,” Catherine said. “Charlotte! You look absolutely beautiful.” My great-aunt was deceptively pleasant.

“Please, don’t,” I said. “You got what you wanted. Let’s not act like we get along.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said. “I was only being honest. You are beautiful and you and Harris will be a stunning couple. You will have everything you ever dreamed of with the Nicolescus. More gowns like this, and vacations in Paris and Prague, sailboats and fine wines…”

“You don’t know what I’ve dreamed of,” I said. “And where is my family in all of this? I bet you’re not planning on welcoming my grandma and her wolves home for Thanksgiving. You want me to throw away the family that loves me in favor of the rich family who expects me to be someone I’m not.”

Catherine stopped. “You just have so much potential. More than anyone since—my boy, Samuel.”

“Samuel might still be here if you hadn’t tried to make him into something he wasn’t,” I said.

She looked like she wanted to snap at me for that, but she caught herself. We were coming to the end of the hall and behind the door I could hear a loud clamor of voices. Guards had the door locked.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“The residents of the Haven want to see the ceremony,” the guard said. “But don’t worry. We’re keeping them out.”

“Why can’t they see the ceremony?” I asked. “Honestly, I don’t care if they do. That chapel is huge. It’ll be creepy if no one is filling the seats.”

“They will be too disruptive,” Catherine said. “You know as well as I do that some of them aren’t right in the head.”

“You mean like Ina?” I flung a hand at the door and cast a spell to break the lock. Let them have fun containing that.

The hallway was packed with witches and warlocks who rushed in the moment the doors opened. Some of them just rushed to the chapel to try and slink into a pew while others wanted a look at my dress. Hands plucked at the beads and lifted my train and sleeves. One witch who seemed half feral, running around on all fours like an animal, yanked a bead right off.

“Hey, hey, no!” I immediately realized that maybe this wasn’t the best idea after all.

“You see why they were locked out?” Catherine said sternly. “Now we’ll have to—“ She turned and suddenly she was eye to eye with a witch from the Haven staff in her black dress.

I swayed a little as the wolfy witch kept helping herself to beads. The staff witch was the witch who tortured me. “I’ll get them in line,” Torture Witch said, looking straight at Catherine.

I was frozen like she’d lobbed a paralyze spell at me in Fortune’s Favor.

“I told you,” the witch said softly. “Your job is to get married, have babies, obey your husband, and behave yourself. Now you’re going to live happily ever after, Charlotte.” She gave me a twisted, sad smile.

Catherine grabbed me and hustled me away from her. She looked pale but forced composure. “All right, well, dear, I hope you’ve learned your lesson about those sorts of stunts. Let’s get you in. Everyone is waiting for you.”

“Do you know that witch?” I asked her. “The one who tortured me?”

She ignored me, shoving open the doors. The chapel was two-thirds empty, with a few of the people I had let in being escorted out, the front rows filled and Harris standing at the altar waiting for me. Someone started playing dramatic organ music, but not the wedding march. It sounded more imperial. I guess there was no wedding procession. I saw Montague and Alec twisting in the pews to look at me, and their admiration was so bittersweet. Daisy was looking at me nervously.

I can’t do this.

The chapel was similar to the one at Merlin College, just bigger. It seemed very Victorian, but not as overtly religious. The stained glass windows were of ladies and flowers, like Tiffany-window nature goddesses, not saints. The walk to the altar looked very long but also not long enough.

I’m not ready.

But Harris…

Whatever he was thinking, whatever turmoil we shared, he was excited to make his vows to me. To make me his. He had this serious look on his face, and I could tell he was shutting out everything else in the moment because he wanted this to be our memory, not one forced upon us.

If the faery queen swept in and interrupted us, I wouldn’t see that look on his face, that protective, grave expression, with all our competitive arguing briefly put to rest.

I started to walk, my heavy gown dragging on the carpet.

I was still puzzling over Catherine and the other witch.

They have some kind of a history…

Where is Ina? Did that witch torture her? Break her?

I should have asked her about Ina…

Suddenly, I felt the click of two pieces of knowledge falling together in my mind.

The yoga tape Torture Witch showed me wasn’t my mom’s yoga tape, because my dad once taped a blip of a Seinfeld episode over the end of that tape. I had forgotten that. I always cut the tape off before that part.

Which meant that the witch knew what my mom’s favorite yoga tape was and had her own copy to use against me. Who would know something like that? A witch who was friends with my mom?

Is Ina is the one who has been torturing me!? Is that why she and Catherine were exchanging such a potent expression?

I could see the whole thing in a different light now. She was trying to make things bad for me, I thought, so I wouldn’t stick around and become like her. Or maybe she was just crazy and sadistic after years of terrible treatment. A heartbreaking end for the woman Ignatius loved…

I reached the altar, my feet moving almost without me, propelled by the stares. Of course, Harris was dressed up as well, but it didn’t seem that surprising because I’d seen him wear expensive suits on a regular basis, so this was just another one. I half-expected he’d be wearing a top hat and white gloves or something, but it was just a normal, elegant dark blue suit. Still, I would never get tired of looking at him, cool blue eyes and pale skin, like all the color in him went to his shell-pink ears and kissably warm mouth. He always stood so straight that I found myself straightening up in his presence, his jacket framing his broad shoulders, slim waist and—well, I didn’t let my eyes travel down his legs. That would be weird with everyone watching.

His hands were cool as he took mine in his grasp.

“We are gathered here today for the hand-fasting of Mr. Harrison von Hapsburg Nicolescu and Miss Charlotte Caruthers Byrne.” I barely noticed the warlock conducting the ceremony at first. He had creepy eyes and was wearing robes embroidered with those hands that had eyes in the middle. Ohhh. That guy. Harris told me about Father Bogdan. “Witnessed by all of us here today and by all the gods of Etherium, these two will pledge themselves to each other…”

He was saying the usual preamble to vows. Harris’ parents were staring at him while he never took his eyes off of me. Every little cough from the audience and noise outside the doors made me twitch, wondering if the faery-brides-to-be had freed Orson and maybe the faery queen would come for me…

I wondered how that would actually go down. There had to be a lot of wards on this building. She could probably whisk me off to Wyrd no problem, but would she help my guys? If I was safe in Wyrd but they held them prisoner and hurt them, that wouldn’t be any good. But then, I was getting stronger again, so maybe I could save them…

Father Bogdan twined a ribbon around both of our wrists. “You shall now speak your vows to swear your fealty and loyalty, and let us all hear this today, that if these vows be broken, a curse will fall upon the one who broke them. Miss Byrne? Do you promise to be faithful to Harrison and neither love nor touch no other man as long as you live?”

“Um…what?” I swallowed down the taste of panic. “What curse?”

There was a gasp around the room, mostly from the Nicolescu family.

Oh, come the fuck on. Like they didn’t all know by now what their son was up to.

“This is a matter between us,” Harris said to Father Bogdan.

“Your parents requested this be in the ceremony,” the priest replied.

Harris’ mother slowly stood up, and although she tried to look all horrified and suffering, I felt like she planned this out. “It is time to put away childish things, my dear,” she said. “Harris loves you very much, and he will give you a name you can pass on to your children.”

“No,” Harris said. “I won’t let her agree to that. You’re getting almost everything you wanted. You can’t control every aspect of our lives.”

“They can,” said the witch who was probably Ina. She had snuck in the back of the room. “They most certainly can. Say the words. Go free. Don’t choose this place.”

“Who the hell are you?” Harris asked.

“Harris, it’s…it’s okay,” I said. “She’s right. My only choice is between you and this place, and…I’d rather have you. I promise to be—“

The doors slammed open in the back of the room. A slender figure in robes appeared, hair gloriously lit by the shifting position of the sunlight through the stained glass windows.

“The faeries…,” I breathed.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Charlotte

“Sorry, it’s actually just me, Stuart Jablonsky, and I’m going to assume that whatever I’m interrupting was a bad idea.” Stuart spread his arms and a wave of magic swept through the whole chapel like an earthquake, rattling the pews out of place, knocking us to our feet, and breaking some of the windows.

Chaos erupted. Harris and I had been knocked off the altar and I had tumbled into some candles, setting my sleeve on fire. Harris cast a quick spell to put it out and clambered toward me on his hands and knees as some plaster particles rained on our heads.

“Didn’t mean to break the windows,” Stuart said. “Damn. They were lovely.”

The witches and warlocks present sprung to immediate action attacking him back. Pews splintered and more windows shattered as elemental spells were cast quickly, and I assumed some curses would come next.

Montague, Alec and Daisy did a hunched run toward us. Harris cast a ward to deflect attention. Catherine Caruthers had rushed into the fray while Harris’ mother was huddled in the pews. Some of the other staff were scurrying away and opening doors, only to allow the captives of the Haven to run in.

“This is the perfect cover for us to try and get Orson,” Harris said.

“But what about poor Stu?” Daisy asked.

“I’m going to guess he planned to take care of himself,” Harris said.

“Yeah…I hope so,” I said. “I think Harris is right. We don’t have time to ask Stuart why he’s here so we’ll just have to take advantage of it and hope we all have the same goals.”

“You do.” Suddenly Ignatius was right behind us, laying on the floor like he’d been there a while. “We have a spy in our midst so we know what you were up to. Charlotte, you didn’t disappoint. Come on…let’s help Orson and get out of here. We have to hurry. Stuart got ahold of the Eye of the Ancients, which was quite a quest on its own, but he can’t hold off so many people for long.”

I filed ‘Eye of the Ancients’ with ‘volcano magic’ and ‘my fiancee Christopher Sutton’ as “things people assumed I knew about so I would pretend I did”. “Cool,” I said. “Thanks. I’m glad you’re here.”

“We have thirteen brides for the faery queen,” Daisy said. “They were trying to help Orson already.”

“Professor McGuinness is scoping out the situation,” Ignatius said. “But…his main power is looking nondescript, so we’d better hurry.”

I had to admit relief that The Grownups were here, although if I’d actually had time to think it through, I might consider that so far we had saved ourselves more than they saved us.

We made use of the general chaos to get to the door, elbowing our way through a curious crowd of stragglers. By now the healthiest people of the Haven were already inside so I had to edge past an old lady who stared at me and a man in a wheelchair. However, what I mainly noticed was that when Ignatius reached the door, Ina was waiting for him, and he took her hand in his.

“I…um…” I swallowed, following them out, but I couldn’t look at Ina without my entire body breaking out into tingles of panic. “When I was—she—Ignatius, that’s—that’s Ina?”

Ina clung to Ignatius’ coat, looking at him with the sort of crazy affection of a Helena Bonham Carter role. “Ignatius, I tortured her.”

Ignatius looked back at her with the expression of someone who remembers a different person with the same face, but who was still hopelessly in love with whatever was left. “Oh…no,” he said, in a soft voice that was about the most defeated tone I’d ever heard from him. “Well…that is how she was able to get a message to me.”

“Oh,” I said, tightly. “Okay.”

“The whole reason I was getting married to Charlotte was to rescue her from this brutality,” Harris said.

“They were breaking her,” Montague said. “That is—you were.” He looked at Ina.

“I needed to do it,” Ina said. “They told me to do it and I needed her to understand what happens to a naughty girl. Naughty witches die, and they roll them out under a sheet and take them away. But good witches are purified by pain and when they’re purified, they are safe and sound. Darling…are you mad at me?”

“Yes. I am a little bit mad,” he said, putting a hand on her head as his eyes shifted through a few levels of discomfort, apology and resignation. “She has been here for many years,” he said softly. “Charlotte…please forgive her.”

I swallowed. “Okay. It’s okay. Let’s just hurry.”

I hadn’t mentally prepared for all of this. I guess I expected my mom to be the really fucked up one, working for the Withered Lord, and when they said Ina was crazy, I thought she would just be just like a sad woman murmuring nursery rhymes or something, not a whip-wielding torture witch working for the enemy. Even if she was still passing messages to Ignatius, she definitely had enjoyed her job.

Watching Ignatius with her, it was easier to forgive the pain I’d suffered. The look in his eyes was like an echo of the past, a memory of the normal girl I saw in photographs.

It made me more grateful that my mom was still the person she was, that my dad could still love her wholeheartedly.

We scurried down halls, Daisy leading the way by now. I guess she was ready to get this show on the road and see her future husband again. I don’t know that she seemed excited, exactly, but she probably just wanted to get it over with.

We managed to get up the stairs, wards shielding us from notice, but at the top of the stairs we heard some wailing female voices. A second later, we noticed that Professor McGuinness was knocked out in the hall.

“Please!” a girl cried. “I told you! It was Daisy Pendleton, she told us to do it!”

“Oh, that bitch,” Daisy hissed. “Throwing me under the bus. So, they’re onto us. Now what?”

“I can distract the guards,” Ignatius said. “Get the iron bands off of Orson and then call the faery queen.”

The two guards came out of Orson’s prison just then, herding out the girls at gunpoint and wand-point, a weapon in each hand. They were tied together at the wrists into two groups, except for one. The werewolf girl who had been bragging about her stupid fiancee. She pointed at Daisy. “There she is!”

“Shit,” Harris said. “They’re looking at us too closely. The ward is broken.”

“Daisy, you asked her?” I groaned. “She’s the one who was such a pain before. I tried to erase her memory.”

“You erased my memory?” Werewolf Girl demanded.

“Well, I didn’t know,” Daisy said. “I got this all done in one day. You should be impressed! But now we don’t have thirteen girls anymore.”

“Yes, we do,” I said. “She still signed her name.”

“Do you think that my fiancee, Christopher Sutton, would let you drag me off to the fae?” Werewolf Girl said.

“I still don’t know who that is!”

“Dear god. You know, of Sutton Pelts?”

“Oh,” Harris said. “Yes. Sutton. They sell magic furs for spells.”

“Pelts?” I winced. “Gah! You’re a werewolf engaged to a pelt dealer? Did the dalmatians fall for Cruella de Ville? Jesus. Well, too bad, you signed your name and promised yourself to the faeries. That’s binding magic. Boom! Finishing move!” When I started the sentence, I actually had no idea if it was truly binding magic, but she started to look so horrified as I talked that I got progressively cockier as I went.

“No!” she screamed. “No, you can’t do this to me! I won’t go. I won’t. But if you make me—” She pointed at Daisy. “I’m going to destroy you, Daisy.”

“Whatever, I’ve got my man and I’m going to go live happily ever after.”

“If you’re quite done with the playground smackdown, ladies…” Harris grabbed me and pulled me toward Orson’s cell. Montague was already at the door, standing guard as we hurried inside, while Alec grabbed the wolf girl.

“Hey,” Alec said. “So, Christopher, huh? What is he like?”

He must have hit her with a full-on dose of incubus charm. Her eyes roamed down his arms where he was holding onto her. “Uh…I dunno…he’s not so great…”

He glanced at me. “Sorry, Char. I need to make myself useful.”

“She can look,” I said.

While we had been having this conversation, Ignatius had already started battling the guards, dispatching them with some shadowy spells. Sinistral magic, I realized. He’d been banished from Etherium so that was all he could do, and it looked pretty unsettling. The guards turned glassy-eyed, their faces vaguely green, before they dropped to the floor. One of them vomited up some black bile and then started choking on it. Werewolf girl screamed.

“Demon curses,” Ignatius said. “I know it’s ugly. Don’t watch. But if you don’t shut up, you’re next, girl.” He waved his wand and flipped the guard over so he stopped choking. “Just save Orson. Hurry.”

Ina wandered over to Professor McGuinness and grazed a hand over his face. I hoped she was going to heal him and not hurt him, but I had to trust Ignatius to keep her under control. I turned to Orson.

“Oh no…no…” Daisy went to him.

I hadn’t seen him before, but I’m sure someone would have mentioned it if he looked this bad. I remembered how he looked at Stuart’s house, burly and solid, a man who looked reliable and protective at first glance. I could see why Daisy would sign up to be with him. He definitely seemed like pretty solid husband material.

Maybe it was because I was so close to my own pain. I knew what torture felt like. I could hardly look at him. The iron cut into his flesh, blood crusting wherever it touched, while his skin was grayish. His strength seemed unbreakable, but slowly but surely, he was starting to hollow out, his ribs showing over the concave of a hungry stomach, past the tattered rags of his clothes. He was hairy and smelly but to Daisy’s credit, she wasn’t prissy about that.

“Orson,” she said. “We’re here to rescue you.”

“Ahhh…and do you know how to get this iron off of me?”

“Yes,” Daisy said. “We saw the wards when we were in here before, so I’ve had time to crack them. Harris…can you give me a hand?”

“Of course.”

They traced their wands in patterns, hardly my area of expertise.

“So what’s the plan?” Orson said. “And I certainly hope you’ve got one.”

“Stuart is here providing cover,” I said. “The Faery Queen said that if we could get thirteen girls to agree to be faery brides, she would open up Wyrd for us, so we can use Wyrd magic.”

“Ah. Well. She must be truly impressed—or else, she finally sees that the end of Wyrd is coming soon if we don’t act. I wonder what the high lords will think of these human brides; aye, that’ll be a sight to see.”

Daisy glanced over her shoulder and then tossed her head like, If he doesn’t know he’s supposed to be with me, let’s not tell him yet.

I guess she was nervous.

“She’s not a lady you’ll find easy to bargain with, I shall warn you,” he said. “But like all faeries, her word is her word…” He trailed off.

“Save your strength,” I said, getting nervous. It sounded like more guards had arrived on this floor; I heard footsteps getting closer. “How’s it coming?”

“Hsst, woman, I’m working,” Harris said.

“Okay, man.” I glanced around, looking for anything I could do.

“Shit,” Montague said, from his post at the door. “Here they come. Guards—and Catherine.” He ran up to me and gave me a very quick kiss. “I need to fight. We can’t lose now.”

“Montague…!” I tried to cling to him but he slipped from my grasp all too easily, with grace beyond any human. I ran to the door as he grabbed a guard and bit his neck.

Oh—my. Montague didn’t hesitate before tasting blood. He took a long taste before throwing the man aside, leaving him staggering and bleeding but still alive. I don’t know that the man had really lost that much blood, but he seemed dazed by Montague’s magic. A vampire’s prey was not just weakened physically but also subdued by the vampire. Montague was on to the next, leaving a trail of bleeding guards.

This was getting serious.

The twelve potential faery brides were huddled against a wall, although some of them looked like they were considering joining the fight. Ignatius already had a few men down. Ina had her hand on his, apparently lending him strength. Her hands glowed and she looked younger, more alive. They moved together like they were one person, although it didn’t erase the streak of madness in her eyes.

“I’m here to stop you,” Ignatius said. “And as you can see, I’m not playing around. The council drove me to Sinistral, and now dark magic is all I have to wield.”

“It’s that traitor witch—Amelia Halt!” one woman said, lifting her wand to strike.

Ignatius and Ina vanished, reappearing to the left of their prior position. Ignatius flung his wand toward the witch and struck her down.

“It’s Ignatius Blair,” he said. “And like I said—I’m here to win or die trying. Ina…are you ready?”

“Oh, yes. Always.”

Maybe they weren’t too different, at their core. They both had a dark streak, I think. Ignatius had always been willing to put ambition over anything else. I could never quite trust him, but over time, I’d come to understand what it was all for.

Ignatius chanted a summons, calling up more dark magic, a toxic smoke that wrapped around the witches and warlocks. One of them collapsed, his face breaking out into dark pustules.

“Ugh,” Ignatius said, stepping back, repulsed by his own spell.

“Don’t back down now,” Ina said, taking out her wand and waving it lazily, a twisted smile on her face.

“Ina,” one of the witches said, spreading her hands. “Please don’t do this. You’re one of us. You’ve been on our side for years, helping to purify. This—Halt—woman…?” She glanced at Ignatius like she was not really sure what to make of him. “She’s a dark wizard now. We need to take her down.”

“I was never on your side,” Ina said. “I just realized that I have a taste for the switch. And not the receiving end…well…then again, it depends…” She tapped her finger tips along her wand. “The day you released me from my room and gave me a uniform was a good day. I got a little of my own back. You started to trust me and I could finally send messages to my friends. Your predecessor used to tell me I was too pretty to be such a troublemaker, and that she would save my face for my future husband. Every good woman has a husband and now mine has come for me. I think dark magic suits him very well…but what could be darker than the magic you taught me?”

She whispered. “Go to sleep, perchance to dream, for one need not wait for death to see the shadows slink about you…the visions you shall never scrub from your sight, your fears in the night, I curse you to view… The pain you caused others is now your own, and no place you lay your head will ever feel like home…”

The witches slunk back, covering their ears, speaking their own counter spells. They couldn’t seem to escape Ina’s spell. She seemed to be getting in their heads, drawing out some inner darkness that made them shriek and cower.

Ina bared her teeth, relishing the moment. Ignatius looked like he was about to cast an elemental spell and she stopped him. “There is nothing you can do to them physically compared to the suffering I can inflict on their minds,” she said. “I know how they tick.”

But just as she seemed to have driven everyone in the hallway to some private hell, a fresh group came charging up the steps, and this included Catherine Caruthers and Harris’ parents. They were marching toward us like they intended to put an end to this nonsense.

“Ina!” Catherine said, seeing crumpled black uniforms on the floor, hands clutching heads as the witches moaned. “My god, did you do this?”

“I didn’t do anything, Mother. I just told them to take a good look at themselves. They’re thinking about the things they’ve done here and the rest isn’t my responsibility.” Her hand draped, sweeping her wand back and forth like a clock’s pendulum. “Do you want to try?”

“Sister Ina.” Father Bogdan spoke to her sternly. “Come here. You are one of us. Don’t revert back to these bad habits. If you stand on that side, we’ll have to hurt you, and your soul will not go to Etherium when you die.”

“No,” she said. “My Ignatius is here.” She gripped his arm. “The joke is on you. I never believed any of that stuff I said.”

“Ina, Stuart Jablonsky is dead,” Catherine said.

All of us chilled.

“No,” Ignatius said. “Prove it.”

“He was perfectly willing to die for you. Your mission, ‘Ignatius’,” Catherine said. “So, this is where you stand. Your friends are dead. Ina is not what she was. Just give up now.”

“Where is my son?” Mrs. Nicolescu said. Harris was still in the side room with Daisy, out of sight from the battle in the hall. Harris’ mother tried to move ahead and Montague blocked her path. He slowly wiped blood from his mouth and put a hand on her chest. My heart clenched, expecting him to be attacked any moment. “Charlotte, we will still accept you as Harris’ bride if you stop this now,” she said.

Ignatius was reeling from the death of Stuart. I could see that the fight had gone out of him. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be the only one of your friends left alive and undamaged after years of fighting. He had to be wondering what it was all for. Sort of like how I felt when I gave in to marrying Harris and leaving Alec and Montague behind.

“It’s too late for that,” I said. “I’m not the daughter in law you want. I’ll never make you happy or proud. And I think you know that, and so does Harris. He told me that all you want is for me to have a kid.”

“Well, that’s not true. We want our boy home.”

“He’s our son,” Harris’ father said. “Our only son. Of course we want him home.”

“And why are you so eager to marry him to me? I’m a hot mess of a witch. The thing is, that’s what he likes about me.”

Ohmigod, is Orson freed yet? I didn’t know what to say to buy more time. It was pretty quiet in the prison cell.

“Your great-aunt is the one who pushed for you to marry him,” Harris’ father said. “And you should really thank her. What kind of girl doesn’t want to live in a mansion with all the clothes and jewelry she could ask for?”

“I don’t care about clothes and jewelry!” I said. “Or mansions. Or any of it. What I care about is Harris himself. I would much rather live in a shack with Harris, Alec and Montague than in a mansion with Harris and you. But I realize, you probably don’t want to give me that option. Maybe you’re going to kill me now. I don’t know. I hope not, but I’m prepared for fight for it just like Stuart was. Stuart knew perfectly well what he was doing. He wanted us to fight on.” Dad has Mom now. If something happened to me…

I shoved that thought aside. It would make me cry. I needed to pep Ignatius now. I needed us all to be ready for a last stand.

Professor McGuinness had been sitting on the sidelines, recovering from whatever blow he’d taken, apparently to the head. He got to his feet and came up to us. “Ignatius, your friends aren’t dead. I know I wasn’t one of the original crew. I chose safety and security over Samuel and his ideals, but I’m sorry I did. We might have had a bit of happiness before we were killed, and is a long life of security nearly as good as a short life of joy when life is already so short? I stand with you now.”

“Are we about to fight?” Harris’ mother asked incredulously. “Are you actually planning to fight us?”

“Aren’t you wizards?” Ina asked. “Too out of practice? Fighting is what we do.”

“This is ridiculous,” Harris’ mother said. “I’m not fighting you. Where is my son?” She took a step forward but Ina wasn’t having it. Ina actually just flat-out hit Harris’ mom in the face.

“My god, control yourself!” Harris’ father said, trying to intervene. “What kind of uncouth behavior is this?”

“It’s people like you who lock up people like me, and throw away the key—don’t want to look—don’t want to know how dirty your hands are. They put me here and I never saw the ones I loved, now a curse upon you, that your fate will be the same! You will never see your son again!” She was shrieking at Harris’ mother now, just before a whole bunch of witches and warlocks blasted her. Ignatius tried to deflect the spells but she still got knocked down, face meeting the hard floor.

Okay, I thought. It’s go time. Let’s see what I can do. Time to unleash my special attack, Super Sparkle Multi-Ghost Blast—

I heard a loud whoosh sound behind me. The entire color of the hallway changed slightly, like watching a film with a color filter, a rather lovely bluish light tinting walls and faces before the doors swung open. A brighter light poured out of the room, accompanied by the whooshing sound.

Or maybe I can put it off, actually. That’s cool.

Lord Cyrus of the House of Hemlock, liaison to Queen Morgana, stepped out of the humble room.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Charlotte

Faery guards in beautiful armor accompanied him, and despite the air of a dying land that clung to the faeries, it was impossible not to be impressed. Ina rolled over with a groan. Catherine Caruthers looked visibly distressed. A guy in Order of the Blessed Robes started murmuring something about, “Etherium protect us, let not this corruption sully thy name…”

“You, in the robes,” Lord Cyrus said, with a dismissive gesture. “Silence. Your religious blather means nothing. You don’t even believe it yourself.”

“How dare you—“

“I know charlatans,” Lord Cyrus said, with a small sniff of impatience.

“He reads minds,” I told Alec, Firian and Ignatius, plus anyone else in my general vicinity, which I think actually ended up being everyone because I get loud when I’m nervous. I reminded myself to whisper. “Just so y’all know not to think too much…”

“I am here to make an announcement on behalf of my queen. The realm of Wyrd has, as you know, stayed out of mortal affairs for centuries. Truly, we have no taste for fighting you. In Wyrd, we pride ourselves on our utter lack of interest in either causing chaos or maintaining order; in the end, you are two sides of the same coin. Always fighting.”

“We are not two sides of the same coin!” Father Bogdan said. “If you’ve ever stared down a demon, you know. If we didn’t fight back, the Sinistrals would rule the magical world.”

“I stand corrected,” Lord Cyrus said. “Now you are speaking some truth. And yet, I still don’t care. Nevertheless, our queen acknowledges that the world is at a tipping point where the belief of humans in our kind is no longer enough to sustain us. We must claim some ground of our own. If you stand in our way, we will have to engage you in battle. I hope, for the sake of fairness, you will acknowledge this list of the following sites that are currently or have always been in the hands of Wyrd. We know that for many years you have not spoken of Wyrd. The name has become taboo on your lips, knowledge that only the inner circles of magic are privy to. This will end now. Every wizard child should know the realm of Wyrd and the name of Queen Morgana and respect our status as an independent magical realm.”

Lord Cyrus made a scroll appear from thin air. “You seem to have some authority here,” he said to Catherine, handing her the scroll. “This is a list of parallels and magical sites that we claim for Wyrd.”

She snapped the paper open and read. “Merlin College?” she said. “You can’t claim our college.”

“It is the site of a Wyrd tree,” he said. “It was our land once, and Wyrd warlocks were always attracted to it. All of them wished for us to reclaim it. You will note that the queen is quite reasonable and has not requested the return of any more land in the eastern United States. We are only asking for seven new territories and all of them are locations of Wyrd trees.”

“What do we get out of it?”

“The faery queen will leave you well enough alone,” he said. “We will otherwise focus our magical efforts on drawing power from mortals.”

“We need to discuss this,” Mr. Coopman said.

“Yes…,” Catherine said.

“I’ll wait,” Lord Cyrus said.

They all started huddling to talk, but I could tell they were all wondering how much he could read their minds. I was trying very hard not to think about him at all, so I looked at Alec and thought about what it would be like if he just scooped me up and ran off with me while everyone else was busy, and nudged my underwear aside just enough to slide his cock up inside me, and I said, I have to pee, and he said, You’ll just have to control yourself, Princess, unless you want to make a mess, because you’re getting fucked before you do anything else.

“What are you thinking about?” Alec whispered. “Naughty girl.”

“I don’t know. Definitely not something sexual and embarrassing. Or if I am, you’re making me think it with your whole vibe.”

Alec chuckled while Lord Cyrus gave me an idle look and I quickly dropped my eyes to the ground and thought about porridge.

The witches and warlocks were whispering for a long time and Lord Cyrus looked at me. “This is not going well,” he said. “Humans are so tiresome. Where are the thirteen girls the faery queen asked for?”

“There,” I said, pointing at the group. I was surprised he even had to ask. It seemed obvious to me that the twelve girls huddled together looking nervous while everyone else was fighting were probably the ones.

“These are the girls,” he said. “The girls you expect the fae to take as brides.”

“Yes,” I said. “And you should be polite to them, because they all agreed and that was really awesome of them to agree to give up their entire lives and everything they know.”

“No!” the wolf girl said. “I won’t go. She tricked me. I wont’t go!”

“You shouldn’t have signed your name,” Lord Cyrus said, unsympathetically. “I count twelve.”

“There’s also Daisy,” I said. “With Orson. The faery queen said she could marry him if she found a way to free him.”

Daisy was working on some healing spells for Orson’s numerous wounds. He seemed in rough shape. She heard her name and peered out of the doorway. “Are we cool?”

“So you’re the thirteenth,” Lord Cyrus said. “Very well. At least you’re comely.”

“I’m the first, actually,” Daisy said. “You better not be complaining about my brides I found for you. Those girls have been through hell and they’re tough; they’re going to be a lot better than a bunch of prissy rich witch bitches.” She snapped her fingers.

Of course, Daisy herself had been complaining about them mere hours before, but it made sense that Daisy would be the type who didn’t allow an outsider to complain about her people.

“We must be prepared to exit this situation,” Lord Cyrus said. “This building is not an advantageous battlefield for my men and we try not to involve ourselves in the fighting of mortals. Once the Ethereal wizards come back with their response, if it’s as I expect, I will take you and the brides with me to Wyrd, as promised.”

“What about my mates? My friends?”

“You want Merlin?” Ignatius said. “Take us to Merlin. To the Wyrd tree. If you’re saying they won’t give up, then let us fight for it. We can take it back together. Merlin has been my home for the past couple decades. I know the place and all the forest around it. I’ll be the caretaker for you if you help me seize it back from the council.”

“All right,” Lord Cyrus said. “If you wish to help us recapture that territory, repeat after me here and now: ‘I pledge to fight for the realm of Wyrd and renounce my tie to Etherium or Sinistral.’”

The witches and warlocks were starting to break up their discussion, sensing that something was going on behind them. Alec and Montague, Ignatius, Ina and Professor McGuinness all repeated the oath. So did Firian and I. This was the path we’d set from the beginning. We were throwing our lot in with the faeries and hopefully, it was the right thing to do.

“But before we leave,” I said, “we need Stuart’s body.”

“He wouldn’t want to be brought back,” Ignatius said. “And you can’t do that twice, Charlotte. It’s too much.”

“Not to bring him back,” I said. “I just need to talk to him. We have to bring his body to Merlin.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Charlotte

“Oh, no. We can’t move his body through Wyrd,” Professor McGuinness said. “If we bring him to his home realm, he probably won’t come back to this plane.”

“So, let him return home,” Lord Cyrus said. “You can speak to him in Wyrd. But saying goodbyes to a dead man is never wise.”

“I don’t have time to explain,” I said, as Catherine Caruthers was walking up to Cyrus. “But I need him.”

Montague tapped a finger to his chest like, we got this. He nodded at the other guys.

“Good sir,” Catherine Caruthers said as she approached Lord Cyrus, forcing politeness onto her face.

“My name is Lord Cyrus,” he said.

“We have no interest in challenging the parallels that you currently hold,” she said. “We are pleased that they are in your hands and not the demons. We welcome the chance to tell our children about your queen.” I could see her straining to be gracious. “However, I’m afraid we can’t upend our own people from their homes and land in these locations with Wyrd trees. We would be willing to meet with your queen and council and negotiate a treaty that phases out the land from our hands into yours.”

“Well, I figured you would say as much,” he said. “But we don’t have the luxury of a century. The only reason we are opening our doors to any of your kind is because our isolation has cost us. We must have the land now or else we will be too weak to claim it then; you are betting on this.”

“We are not! Our word is good,” Catherine said. “However, we have no reason to want a treaty with you. These rogue witches and warlocks are the ones who contacted you. The Ethereal Council wishes merely to avoid war with the faeries, and in that regard we will allow you the realms you currently possess in Europe, the British Isles, Japan…”

“We need land in the Americas,” Lord Cyrus said.

“How are you going to anchor these realms?” asked Father Bogdan, looking suspiciously at the group of girls. “What sort of deal did you make?” He jabbed a finger at Ignatius, then me, then the girls. Just jabbing that finger all over the place, really.

I knew that spots where the realms connected needed some kind of an alliance between humans and magical creatures. Like, demons or faeries couldn’t go to Earth willy-nilly. They needed a human anchor.

“I’m taking those women,” Lord Cyrus said. “They have already pledged themselves, so this part of the deal is not negotiable.”

“We don’t want a deal,” Father Bogdan said. “The Order of the Blessed would rather go to war with you than allow you to take our women.”

Catherine looked unsure, but her focus narrowed to Daisy. “We want to avoid conflict with you, but sir, you must understand. You can’t take the Diviner and we can’t just hand over our valuable lands.”

“All the lands I am asking were once opened by Wyrd,” Lord Cyrus said. “Hence, the presence of the trees. I grow impatient. We either claim the girls and lands without a fight, or a fight we shall have.”

“We’re having a fight,” Harris’ mother said. “That’s all there is to it, then.” Her wand was at the ready.

“Queen Morgana anticipated this,” Lord Cyrus said. “That’s why she sent me.” He smiled in a way that was neither bloodthirsty nor excited nor scared. Just sort of all-in-a-day’s-work, really. He drew his sword. “Fair ladies, get behind me. My men will usher you to Wyrd through the portal.”

“I’m not going!” Wolf Girl said. “I was tricked.”

“You signed your own name. Is your word not your bond? Are you not a magical being? You should have asked a few more questions. I think a part of you is relieved to depart this place.” He gave her a merciless smile and she shook her head. One of the other faery soldiers nudged Wolf Girl along, while Daisy looked at us frantically.

“I—I guess this is goodbye,” she said. “I’ll be fine. I can live without TV or…or shopping. I would definitely rather marry a gruagach than be a prisoner of my own magic, so…see ya, girl, good luck.”

“It’ll be great,” I said. “Orson’s going to be a great husband and I’m sure the faeries have fashion. Dressmakers, or something fun. Like a princess.”

We were both lying hard, but that was about all we got because a fight was breaking out around us even as we spoke. And Lord Cyrus? Dude was not messing around. He had his sword in one hand, striking like he could read his opponent’s mind, which I guess he could. He seemed to be trying to avoid too much bloodshed, at least for now, but he was dealing out some nasty cuts and sent someone’s thumb flying. As if that wasn’t enough, he gestured with one hand and threw Father Bogdan into a wall with an impact that broke up the plaster. Ignatius and Ina were trying to help but they hardly had to do anything. Cyrus seemed like he could take on the whole crowd all by himself. The faery queen definitely sent her best. Harris’ mother withdrew and she was whispering spell words, holding up a piece of jewelry. Based on what I knew about the Hapsburgs, this was one of the magical artifacts that was about to unleash some crazy shit.

“Let’s go,” Montague said, hustling me out of there. The other guys were behind him, although Harris was looking back. I followed his eyes just to see one last glimpse of Daisy stepping through a portal. She seemed very alone, but of course, Orson was so sickened by the iron that she couldn’t talk to him yet. Once he had recovered, he would surely be there for her. I knew him well enough to trust him, right? He served me tea a few times…

Man, Daisy was pretty brave herself.

“We’d better run before my mother unleashes holy hell,” Harris said.

“Then what?” Alec asked. “How do we get out?”

Montague took keys out of his pocket. “I compelled a few guards. I wasn’t leaving here without my baby.”

“So that’s why you don’t have a pet name for me,” I said. “Your car already took it.”

“But just wait until you get to take a ride in her,” Montague said.

“Oh boy.” I didn’t want to hurt his feelings about it too much, but his car looked like it came from a Hot Wheels line on clearance. Clearance, I tell ya.

“It’s better than a dented low-end Kia,” Montague growled at Harris. “And anyway, I don’t see anyone else with a driver’s license or a vehicle.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Harris said.

“You were about to. I know you.”

We reached the chapel. A few guards lingered there, and they were putting Stuart’s body in a bag.

My heart dropped to my knees. I had blocked out what we were actually doing. I was trying to be a badass necromancer and I figured necromancers could handle death without crying, but as soon as I saw Stuart just…helpless and…lifeless…

“Get away from him.” I ran toward them, almost tripping on the hem of the wedding gown.

They took defensive positions immediately. “Stay back.”

“Hands off the body,” Harris said, casting a spell that threw up a glowing force field around Stuart. Montague moved in and picked Stuart up.

“Halt!” One of the guards tried to freeze him in his tracks.

“Dispel!” Firian hastily blocked the spell. I shot a blast at them while Alec and Montague hustled Stuart out the door. One of the guards tried to get past me and shoot them, but Alec vanished before the spell hit, and it struck the ground instead, burning a hole in the carpet runner from the wedding.

“Let’s go.” Harris motioned for Firian and me to go to the exit while he formed a glowing, defensive barrier, gritting his teeth as the guards pummeled it with spells. Once we were all through the door, Alec reappeared with us in his demon form as we ran like hell to the main set of doors. His wings had destroyed his t-shirt and his sweatpants were so tight nothing was left to the imagination, plus they were barely staying on with his tail hanging over the waistband.

“Why did you tear up another set up clothes?” I asked.

“Damnit, I can’t seem to keep a human form in Sinistral,” he said. “As soon as I get there I smell other demons and I turn. Defense mechanism.”

I was afraid we’d have more fights ahead in the front hall, but it seemed like the place had been evacuated. The rooms stood empty except for a few women cowering behind desks; I recognized some of them as nurses or cafeteria staff. The main doors were locked. Montague tried to kick them open while Stuart was draped over his shoulder.

“All right, calm down, Bruce Lee, it’s a ward,” Harris said. “Just hold on a sec. It’s a tricky one.” He crouched beside the lock and cast a spell that made a glowing multi-layered pattern appear over the lock.

In the back of my mind, I always thought it was a little weird that Harris focused on studying wards and defensive spells more than, like, blasting fire everywhere. Now it made sense. We wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without his skills. It was like undoing a knot—even after he forced the ward to become visible, it took patience to untangle the pattern. He danced the tip of his wand around the pattern until it suddenly broke open and disappeared. He opened the door and now we just had to bolt to the car.

Montague unlocked the car doors. “Hmm,” he said, sizing up the interior. “I think we have to put Stu in the trunk.”

“No kidding,” Harris said. “It’s hard enough cramming five of us in a sedan. Alec, you have to change back.”

Montague opened the trunk. At this point, we’d had a minute to catch our breath and suddenly it hit us at once. Montague tried to fold him inside the trunk gently, arranging his arms and legs, like he didn’t know what the most respectful position for placing a friend’s body inside a trunk could be. Stuart had a calm look on his face, and he was elegantly attired in dark blue silk with buttons made of gold with little pictures of trees. His skin was getting a waxen look as he sunk further into death.

“He looks like he was okay with dying…,” Montague said.

“Yeah…” I swallowed. “Stuart was always so calm. I guess he did what he needed to do. It just happened so fast. Like, I didn’t think he would die. It feels like the end of Harry Potter where all these characters just die and it’s like, why? I know that’s how real life is sometimes, but it sucks. It just sucks. Poor Ignatius has lost so many friends, and I…I don’t know. It feels like you can’t trust anything to be permanent. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to hang out with Daisy again either. She didn’t really want to marry a faery. She just did it so we could make this happen. I hate this.”

It was very quiet out here. I didn’t hear anything in the distance and I wondered if they were still fighting Lord Cyrus.

“Fares Wyrd as she must,” Firian said. “It’s the lesson your mom left for you if she never came back. Farewells are painful but they’re part of the fabric of life. A Wyrd witch can’t hang on. Your power comes from the life and breath inside you at this moment. It’s not dependent on Stuart or Daisy or even any of us.”

“Firian, don’t even talk like that.” I had to stop looking at Stuart. I climbed into the back seat of the car, waiting for the comforting warmth of Alec and Firian cramming in on either side of me. Montague popped the hood.

“What are you doing?” Alec said. “We need to get going!”

“I’m just checking to make sure the engine isn’t a mouse nest,” Montague said. “I don’t know if this thing has been driven in three years. The gas might be bad.”

“Well, let’s just see, huh?” Alec said.

Montague opened the gas cap and sniffed.

“You want to stop and wash it off while you’re at it?” Harris said. “Get out one of those windshield cleaner things?”

Montague ignored them both and pulled some leaves out of the engine before slamming the hood and climbing in. “Cross your fingers.” He turned the car on and we got blasted by classical radio.

“Hey, those sons of bitches actually did drive my car around,” he growled, fiddling with the controls. The CD player made some grinding sounds. “Where is my Iron Maiden CD?”

“At least it works,” I said, privately thankful that someone had stolen his CD. I was not in a metal mood now, if I ever was.

Relief swept over me as Montague drove out through the gates. I knew that soon we would be fully in the normal, human world, on normal, human highways. My own clan was safe, although I tried not to think about the price we’d paid, or the battle still to come.

We didn’t talk all that much until we’d reached I-81, where Firian stopped and grabbed me a normal outfit—a t-shirt with a fox on it that said ‘Foxy Lady’, oh ha ha—and then Montague found an automotive place and insisted on changing the oil even though I was really freaked out by the fact that we had a dead body in the trunk so maybe we shouldn’t be stopping? He pointed out that it would be very bad to break down in the middle of nowhere when we got to North Carolina and started out on the lonely roads to Merlin College. I begged for the use of a phone so I could call Dad, just to tell him we were fine, although I couldn’t tell him much with Chet from Auto Zone leaning on the counter next to me.

“We tried to get to you at the Haven,” Dad said. “Even though Ignatius sent us a message telling your mom not to go. I had to talk her down from not blasting through the doors. Just be careful.”

Mom seized the phone from him. “Hello, darling. I really was. I was going to burn the place down. Your father pointed out that if they killed me on the lawn that might make things worse for you, but I’m still not sure. I might have killed them instead. How did you all fare? Do you need me to join you somewhere?”

“Um…” I swallowed.

Join you somewhere.

I wasn’t used to this at all. If I told Mom we were going to fight the council with Ignatius, she would probably want to show up and help. If she was fighting, I would want to show up and help.

Did that mean I should invite her?

I didn’t want to. Mom, you need to stay home with Dad and learn to be normal again, I thought. Just let me handle it. I was glad she didn’t really get the chance to kill anyone.

“We’re all fine. Here. Did Dad mention I’m using the phone of a helpful employee at Auto Zone in Wytheville, Virginia? I’d better go hand the phone back to Chet.”

I hung up before she could change my mind.

“Helicopter parents?” Chet said sympathetically. “They’re probably freaking out that you’re on a road trip with some dudes.”

“Something like that. Thanks for letting me use this.”

It was when we were back on the road that Harris finally said, “So just what is your plan with Stuart? You’re not bringing him back, right?”

“That’s definitely too much for you,” Firian said. “You’re still recovering. I’m not sure any necromancer can handle bringing two people back from the dead in one lifetime.”

“I said I wasn’t bringing him back!” I said, although I had to admit, I was tempted. I’d done it once already. Harris was fine. I was fine. I’d lose my magic for good, but Ignatius’ face…

Firian brushed a hand over my knee, bringing me back. “No. Even if you could, you shouldn’t. Stuart wanted you to keep your magic.”

“No,” I agreed. “I know. I know I can’t.”

Firian was right, when he told me I had to try and get my magic back, that nothing else had ever made me so happy. I had never been a bad student, but I’d also never cared that much. But with necromancy, I’d been reading every book I could get my hands on, and one lesson that sprung to mind was how to move ghosts.

“So…I read that ghosts are usually anchored in one place. Where they died, usually. Sometimes another site with unfinished business. The Haven was full of angry ghosts. I’m still annoyed I didn’t get to give them a chance to attack the place that killed them. I never had the strength. Now I’ll be at Merlin, and they’ll be stuck at the Haven, unless…I can move the ghosts.”

“Can you move ghosts?” Alec asked.

“I read that you can. There was a book that said that sometimes one ghost can lead the other ghosts to a new place. You need to move the body of someone who died there and then summon that ghost in the new location, you know, create a new anchor. Then that ghost can lead the other ghosts to a new spot. But it helps if it’s a powerful spirit, which Stuart surely is. So if I summon Stuart to Merlin, maybe he can lure the other ghosts.”

“That’s cool,” Montague said. “It would make sense.”

“I suppose it’s worth trying,” Harris said. “We’re in for a fight there. With Piers, and probably other members of the council. They’ll be fresh and we’ll be tired. We have the faeries, but how much can we trust them? I’d rather count on you, Chosen One.”

“I wonder if Stuart knew that was possible,” Alec said. “You know, maybe he planned it.”

“This sounds like the spell you were meant to cast,” Firian said. “I’m proud of you. You really studied.”

“Oh, wow.” I blushed. “Thanks, guys. I was afraid it sounded like an unrealistic plan.”

“It’s a good idea,” Harris said. “Hopefully, you can pull it off. Otherwise we might all be dead by the end of it. No pressure or anything.”

“Can’t you just be supportive for once in your life?”

“You know our agreement. That isn’t my job.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Charlotte

Two armored faeries were standing guard on the road to Stuart’s cave. A fire was crackling outside with more soldiers and Lord Cyrus leaning against the rocks, arms crossed. It was late in the night, and I was just glad we’d made it without getting into any fights with the council, but the look on his face still annoyed me a little. Of course, he didn’t seem surprised to see us, because I guess he read our minds. He didn’t say hello or ask us if we had found Stuart, or tell us what happened to Daisy, or offer us whatever they were drinking out of flasks.

Nothing.

Faeries really were an arrogant bunch. Stuart was always a little emotionally detached, but he was nice, and his home was welcoming.

“So…hi,” I said. “We’re here. Where are Ignatius and Professor McGuinness?”

“Inside,” Lord Cyrus said. “They needed rest before the battle ahead.”

“So you didn’t have any trouble sending Daisy and the other girls to Wyrd?” Harris asked. “Are they safe?”

“Well, Queen Morgana will determine what to do with them,” Lord Cyrus said, shrugging. “It isn’t my business.” He glanced at us and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Oh,” he said. “You’re worried. Well, not much you can do about that for now. They made an agreement and they will never return to this world.”

“Never?” I said. “Not for visits?”

“I see no reason why they ever would.”

“But what is the reason why they couldn’t?” I wondered if Daisy really realized how permanent that agreement was.

“They need to learn to assimilate into our realm,” he said. “And I expect it will not be easy.”

“Well, I believe Charlotte had an agreement with you that she could draw magic from Wyrd once she delivered the brides,” Firian said. “So as her familiar, I need access to Wyrd.”

He shot me a quick, reassuring look. Right. At least Firian could check on Daisy. Good thinking, Firian.

“That is correct,” Lord Cyrus said. At least, while he didn’t seem like he wanted to be helpful, he also didn’t put up a fight. “I can establish that connection for you now, so all of you who swore yourselves to Wyrd can access our magic.”

“We also have Lord Stuart’s body,” Montague said. “In my car. I’m sure Ignatius would rather he had a proper burial instead of spending the night locked up in a trunk.”

“Your…car,” Lord Cyrus said, looking down the gravel path to the electric blue Mitsubishi. His expression was that of a conservative billionaire realizing that the host hotel for his fundraiser was being shared with the after-party of a particularly flamboyant pride parade. However, he softened slightly. “Well, I doubt Ignatius is sleeping. By all means, your friend and my fellow should be buried properly. He was almost never seen at court but he did fight for us.”

Cyrus was right. Ignatius, Ina and Professor McGuiness were sitting around inside drinking whiskey.

“Charlotte!” Ignatius said. “There you are. I was just saying, your mom—“ He laughed. “I was living in New York City and we went to this punk show at a club, pretty rough, this neighborhood. We were coming back, no one on the street—“

“Stu was there looking like Stu,” Ina said, in a husky voice that still made me shiver when I heard it.

“Like he worked for IBM,” Ignatius said.

“And your mother had a little doll of a dress and these white boots up to her knees.”

“That was really a time of boots,” Ignatius said. “We thought we were alone and we ran into a homeless werewolf. You really don’t see that much but he must have smelled us, and he wolfed out and just ran at us like it was his last stand.”

“We were eating hot dogs,” Ina said. “That was why. He wanted our hot dogs.”

“And your mother, Charlotte, she just kicked his face with her boot, said, ‘No’, and kept walking and the wolf had this look like ‘huh?’” He doubled over laughing.

He was clearly halfway to drunk, but I started laughing too. I could imagine my mom doing this. I felt a pang. Maybe I should have told her to come and be with her old friends. I hated to interrupt their happy memories.

“We brought Stuart,” Montague said. “We don’t have much time.”

“No.” Ignatius stood up and poured out more whiskey, four glasses of it. “Sort of an Irish wake tonight.”

He stood up, still steady on his feet at least, and Ina and Professor McGuinness followed. I let them take the lead. Stuart had helped me, but he was really their friend. Plus, Ina terrified me and I wanted to avoid her.

“We shall keep guard while you bury him under the tree,” Lord Cyrus assured them.

The three of them got Stuart’s body ready for a funeral while my guys offered to dig a grave.

This was not how I anticipated on spending a date night.

“I wonder if this is how it will always be,” I said. “Being a witch. Digging graves.” I was sitting under the tree. They wouldn’t let me help. I still needed to heal.

“I don’t think so,” Montague said. “Merlin College went a long time without any on-campus murders. We never had this kind of trouble when we were kids. Once we establish territory and everyone has to acknowledge that Wyrd is part of the magical world, it’ll calm down.”

“Then we can get back to the real business,” Alec said, stopping to wipe his forehead off with his shirt. Probably to cheer me up, as much as anything.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Making our girl happy,” he said. “Settling down.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Why not here?”

“Can we live at Merlin College forever?”

“It’s true,” Firian said. “If this becomes a gateway to Wyrd, it will be the only one in America. And who better to be the gatekeeper than you? As more Wyrd witches and warlocks come forward, they’ll need a place to learn magic.”

“It’s a good point,” Harris said. “There’s no rule saying this place has to stay a college exactly as it is. We could take over Lancelot dorm and live there. It’s a good old house with plenty of rooms.”

“We’d have to make this a place to gather for all ages, since this is new,” Alec said.

“So there would even be kids here?” I asked.

“Kids?” Firian groaned.

“You don’t like kids, Firian?”

“I’m sure I will like your kids, because I like you enough that it’ll be required,” he said. “But as a familiar, no, I don’t like kids. Kids are so rowdy. You can’t just be a fox without someone trying to grab you.”

“I like it,” I said, looking up at the stars. “When we have kids they’ll have someone to play with who is more like them. I never had that. I didn’t know what I was, but I knew I was different.”

“The rest of your family might even want to live here,” Montague said.

“Hmm.”

“Too close?” Alec asked.

“Too close with all of you around,” I said. “The only thing more awkward than your dad interrupting sex with your boyfriend is your dad interrupting sex with three or four boyfriends…”

“And there will be plenty of that,” Alec said, parking his shovel in the dirt for a moment so he could sit down beside me. His arm went around me, and I leaned into his strength.

“We can’t do this over Stuart’s grave!” Montague said.

“Well, we’re almost done,” Firian said. He had been using earth magic to loosen the dirt before shoveling, so things moved pretty fast. “We can go back to the cave and have cave sex.”

“It still seems disrespectful,” Montague said.

“You’re a vampire now. Making love at graves is what you’re supposed to do,” I said. “Anyway, I need to summon Stuart first, but I don’t think he would care. I mean, if I was dead, I would want the people who were still alive to enjoy themselves. I want to feel alive. This is the first time we’ve ever all been together at once and sort of safe, my bruises are doing a lot better, and we don’t know what tomorrow will bring.”

“That’s what I think too,” Alec said, kissing my forehead. I grabbed his cheek and dragged his face down to my mouth.

“Mm,” he said. “Already been too long.” He kissed my neck.

“Ahh…” My hand slid down his t-shirt, found the hem, and slid up his bare skin underneath.

“Mm…” His hand cupped my breast.

“That’s the sound of the men working on the chain gang,” Firian sang, whipping some dirt our way.

I tossed a small rock at him, knowing he would duck. I guess Dad exposed him to oldies at some point.

“I don’t think you have any right to talk about how rowdy kids are,” Montague said.

“I think we’re done,” Harris said. Only their heads were visible above the hole in the ground. “It’s close enough to six feet and god knows what time it is. Charlotte needs time to summon the spirits and it’s a good moon. Let’s see if they’re ready.”

“Yeah…” I didn’t want to peel myself away from Alec’s warmth.

But I had this one hugely important task to do.

“We’re ready,” Professor McGuinness said, when we went back to the cave. “We don’t really have the time or resources to make a coffin, but faeries would rather go straight back to the earth in any case. But we did make a board out of an old door so we can carry him to the tree. I wired the corpse down so he won’t fall off.”

I think we all grimaced and Professor McGuinness said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say corpse. I had an entire year of studies just for funeral necromancy and sometimes I am too matter of fact. I tried to treat dear Stuart with the utmost respect, though. I asked Lord Cyrus about faery practices.”

Lord Cyrus stepped into the cave just then. “Orson and Penny wanted to pay their respects.”

Orson leaned gently on Penny’s arm, but he was looking better. He was cleaned up and shaved, wearing clothes that were simple but fine, a coat and leather boots. The little redheaded silkie was already dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, in a restrained, faery sort of grief.

Orson gave us a very slight bow, although the movement obviously hurt. “I wanted to thank you all for helping me escape,” he said. “And I assure you, I’ll take care of your witch friend Daisy. Aye, she’s a handful. I do half wonder what I’ve gotten myself into, but—gruagach are patient. I tried to bring her with me, but Queen Morgana is assessing the ladies now. I don’t envy them the scrutiny of her gaze.”

“But Daisy will be all right? You’ll take her home with you? Will she be able to visit?”

“Don’t you worry, dearie, we’ve still got to sort it all out but I won’t let any harm come to her. It’s just that we haven’t had humans in Wyrd since before any of us can remember.”

“Poor Stuart,” Penny said. “He was a kind man. Let me see him…”

Professor McGuinness nodded and showed us into the little room where Stuart lay, covered in white flowers that must have been conjured because it was too early for flowers. He looked very peaceful. It was somehow easier than I expected to see him, maybe because he seemed peaceful in life. Stuart always seemed to accept any turn of events calmly. Even his own death, I guess.

Harris, Montague, Alec and Firian offered to be the pall bearers. Some of the faeries accompanied us. The night was cold up on the mountain but a suggestion of spring was creeping into the air, a kiss of humidity, clouds sliding over the moon. The procession was eerie; the people I knew hardly looked like themselves in the moonlight. Firian looked more elven than ever, and seemed older. Ignatius and Ina held hands, cloaks fluttering behind them. The faery guards began to sing softly in a beautiful language. Penny bowed her head, the color of her hair more vivid than it should be in the dark. Montague, his hair and suit black as night, held his corner with just one hand, as if it weighed nothing.

Once again, I was stuck wearing a goofy t-shirt while everyone else looked awesome. I quickly waved a hand over myself and made the illusion of my witch cape.

Ignatius spoke. “We are gathered here, under the moonlight, to lay to rest our old friend, Stuart Jablonsky, otherwise known as Lord Liorgan, thirteenth son of the House of Elderflower. It is a fitting house for him. As every hedge witch worth her salt knows, elderflowers turn to elderberries, and elderberries make a tonic for healing sickness. Stuart was a rebel as much as I was, but rebellion can easily turn toxic. He was a voice of reason and patience. If it wasn’t for his wise council, I don’t think I would have become a professor and then the dean of Merlin College, proving myself and biding my time…” He took a deep breath. “I don’t need to say much more. I didn’t prepare anything. I’m still drunk.”

Ina stared at Stuart’s body. I had no idea what she was thinking. Finally, she said, “You are still the same as ever, Ignatius. I think Stuart must be a part of that. Stuart was as much a force against change as for it. Like rivers and rocks. They are always the same. When you are with him, you feel safe. I do remember that about him.” The way she said it made me think that, like my mom, her memories of a better life were dim.

“I stayed with Stuart for two months,” Harris said. “He gave me a place to go when my home was turning to shit. I wasn’t welcome there, but I was welcome here. ”

“He was a good master as well,” Penny said. “We were all part of the family.”

“But he was a little too good at pretending to be a dorky warlock from Kansas, and his dancing was terrible, I don’t care what anyone says,” Montague said, getting Ignatius to laugh again.

I waited until everyone seemed to have said their final words and goodbyes before I spoke.

“I still can’t believe Professor Jablonsky and Lord Stuart are the same person,” I said. “But it also makes some weird sense. To me, he was a teacher, and a good one. He really tried to help me understand the lessons. I hope I’ve done them justice… I need to speak to him, one last time. If you could give me a minute alone…”

“Of course,” Ignatius said.

My friends retreated into the trees, just close enough to keep watch over me.

I put my hand over Stuart’s cool, lifeless ones, which were clasped over the flowers. “Stuart,” I said. “I know you always told me not to be attached to the dead. I know I need to let you go. But I need you, just this one more time, to help me. I call your spirit to me…”

The fabric of reality seemed to shift slightly, the forest around me growing darker. I no longer heard the soft murmur of Alec and Montague having some background conversation. Tiny lights winked out of the trees like fireflies—or lures into some other world. Stuart opened his eyes and looked at me from lowered lids.

“Oh, Charlotte,” he said, with a smidge of frustration.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I needed to call you. I need you to summon the ghosts—“

“I know,” he said. “I know your plan.”

“Will it work?”

“It’ll work.” He sat up, the flowers falling away from his hair and arms. “It’ll work, because you’ve done the work. But it’s not the only reason you called me, is it?”

“Well…I mean, I…” I frowned, knowing the answer he wanted. “Look, we weren’t even with you when you were killed. Ignatius didn’t get to say goodbye to you or anything. You died just like that. And it feels like my fault.”

“It was not your fault,” he said. “I chose my own path. I’m old. You’re young. Better the younger generation live on. You’ll make mistakes and you’ll learn from them, and get better and better, and wiser. Hopefully, you’ll have a nice long stretch of peace to enjoy your circumstances.” He pressed his fingertips together. “Well…I can’t linger long. I do need to tell you something. I’m afraid you’ll take it too much to heart, but it needs to be said.”

“Uh-oh.” I started to feel a sense of dread.

“Charlotte, what is the lesson I taught you? The one lesson, above all?”

“Um…there is no way but forward?”

“Yes.”

“You know I just got that from a yoga video…”

“What else?”

I twisted my hands. “When someone dies…I have to let them go.”

“That’s right,” he said softly. “It’s the hardest lesson you will ever learn. But it’s the path to becoming a Wyrd witch. A great sans-pareil. A white necromancer. All the potential within you.”

“And I…I didn’t listen. I brought Harris back. So did I ruin everything, when I did that?”

“No, no,” he said. “But you can’t do it again, Charlotte.”

“I know.” I couldn’t look at him. “I know it was…against what you told me. I just couldn’t let him die like that…”

“Grieving hurts,” he said. “But you can’t magic your way out of it. You would have moved on without Harris. You were supposed to let him go. Death is very serious and should never be tampered with.”

I started to cry. I was so embarrassed; I tried to stop. But I had tried so hard not to think about seeing Harris die. As soon as it happened all I could think was that I had to fix it. It couldn’t be true. Couldn’t be real. Everything I’d learned went out the window. Who could resist saving someone they loved?

“I know,” Stuart said. “There isn’t a person in this world who doesn’t understand how hard a decision that is. I’m glad Harris is still with you, but…part of the reason I’m here is because Harris lived. Nothing comes without a price. You haven’t really paid a fair price, so I’ve paid it for you. You will miss me, and you’ll see Ignatius missing me, and it will hurt, and I need you to feel it and let me go.”

“Oh god, it is my fault! You died because I had to pay a price?”

“It was my choice,” he said. “I wanted to save all of you. Just do your elders justice. I know you’re more than capable of it.”

I was shaking now. This isn’t fair! I thought. This is too hard. Why do I have to go through all of this? You’re a faery, you said yourself you don’t feel emotions like we do, so you don’t even understand how hard this is!

Chosen One. I heard Harris, in my mind, the snap of those words—an insult on the surface, but admiration deep down.

Being chosen was never going to be easy. It was something I had to choose, too, and I had chosen this. I had more than one chance to go back to my old life, and I never did. I couldn’t. This meant something to me. This mattered. And if I was going to live a life that mattered, if I was going to choose this, I had to be stronger than a normal person.

I took a shuddering breath. I could cry later, when I was safe. When Merlin College was ours.

“Good job,” he said. “I’ll do what you need me to do now. It will probably take me a full day to bring the spirits here. Hold off the battle until you feel the change in the air. Get some sleep.”

“Stuart—! Penny said there was someone you loved. Do I need to tell someone…?”

“I would rather you didn’t,” he said. “She’ll certainly hear the news. But she fell in love with someone else. A human. A human who was a lot cooler than me. With a guitar.”

“Oh! Ohh.” Stuart loved my mother.

“Goodbye, Charlotte,” he said. “I won’t see you again. But we are all connected, always.”

“Goodbye, Stuart—oh—oh…wait…”

But I had no reason to make him stay anymore. I guess he knew that. He just smiled and settled back down into the peace of death, his spirit fading away like a dream I’d woken from. I whirled away, back to the living.

Firian folded me into his arms, Montague piling on behind me. I shut my eyes and mastered my emotions.

“It worked,” I said. “The spirits from the Haven will be here. Give him twenty-four hours, he said.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“They’re aware we are here,” Lord Cyrus said. “A twenty-four hour delay could benefit them as well, because they are awaiting their own reinforcements.”

“This is easy. Sabotage the mountain roads,” Ina said. “A few landslides could destroy any chance of help getting in within moments.”

“That’s true,” Ignatius said. “No one gets in, no one gets out. Some witches and warlocks can travel through Etherium, but that can be difficult to do. The magical planes aren’t so straightforward. It’ll give us an edge. No spirit needs a road.”

Trapped? Great. I didn’t love being trapped. But no one had any better plans, so it was settled. Ignatius volunteered to lead a road-destroying mission, Cyrus assigned him some backup, and the rest of us were ordered to get some sleep.

I have to admit, when I saw our beds, I realized how exhausted I was. I went to the mattress and flopped on it. The bed linens smelled like sunshine and the feather-stuffed pillow was soft and inviting.

I could feel the presence of four men standing over me, staring at me.

“I have a meeting with Wyrd,” Firian said.

“Oh, so you’re leaving?” Montague said.

“Not yet.” Firian pulled my shoes off my feet. Then my socks. Then he rolled me over onto my back and leaned over me. “You must be tired.”

“Yeah…”

“But it might be our last night alive.” He crawled into bed beside me and gave me a kiss.

“You don’t have to convince me,” I murmured. “I’m the one who wanted to get frisky before the funeral. I’m just tired, but somehow I have a feeling I’m about to get a lot more tired before I sleep.”

“It’s the first time we’ve all been together,” Montague said, giving my shoulder a few gentle nips.

Alec, Firian and Montague were all surrounding me in the bed by now, barely taking turns to kiss and caress me. I could quickly lose track of who was touching me where, except they all had a different feel to them. Montague’s skin was cold while Alec burned hot. Firian’s touch always had a lightness to it and it always felt right, like he knew what I was thinking. Alec was more dominating. My familiar and my incubus both had different ways of knowing what I liked. Montague was more of a predator; I’m sure he tried to consider what I wanted, but in the heat of the moment he just wanted to sink his teeth in me.

Harris hovered back, his arms crossed. Firian slid a hand up my shirt, exposing my bra to view.

“She’s not on birth control yet,” Harris said warningly.

“We’ll be careful,” Montague said.

“You don’t have to worry about it.”

“That is the one perk of being a vampire, yes, although I’d trade in an instant for having a child,” Montague said. “Still, that isn’t what this is about. Are you feeling shy now?”

A blush crept into Harris’ cheeks as he said. “No!”

“Harris has never been that great at sharing his things,” Alec said.

“Oh, please,” Harris said. “That’s a rich person cliche. I can share. I’ve already shared with Monty. And Firian…not that I invited him.”

“Harris, that isn’t nice,” I said.

“Fuck being nice,” he shot back. “Anyway, don’t worry about me, all I said was not to get her pregnant.”

“Actually…I don’t care,” I said. “If we make it out of this alive, I don’t mind if I was pregnant. We’d be ready, wouldn’t we? We’d have graduated, sort of. It should be easy for five people to raise a baby.”

“Music to my ears,” Alec said. He took off his clothes and stood before me like a god with a gym membership. “That means I can finally have you the way I need you.”

I reached for his cock to tease him with my mouth, but Firian stopped me and pressed me back down into the bed. “Charlotte, we have to talk about your physical favoritism of Alec. No wonder Harris is over there moping.”

“I’m not moping.”

“Firian,” Alec said. “I’m happy to share.”

Alec took my hands in his and kissed them both before he wrapped them around his thick neck and freely, almost casually, open my legs and split me down the middle with the length of him. I wanted to say I wasn’t quite ready, but sometimes I wanted what I wasn’t quite ready for. He was still in pain when he slid inside me, and I felt his cock twitch as he broke into a sweat. He pushed my body against Firian and we both ended up falling into a spoon position.

“Slow down,” Firian said. “She’s not quite relaxed enough. You’re still aching, aren’t you?” He ran his fingers over the yellowing bruises on my arms. “Our poor witch has been through a lot.”

Alec stopped moving and just let me adjust to his size. His breath was still quickened and I hoped he wasn’t in too much pain either.

Tears stung my eyes as I clung to Alec and felt Firian’s hands wrap around my arms. He nudged my chin toward him, kissing me, and slowly reached into the small warm space between me and Alec to part my petals with his fingers, teasing pleasure out of me very slowly, so my body seemed to melt around Alec. Montague sat on the bed behind Firian so he could reach in and tease at my nipples, rubbing and caressing my breasts.

My level of sensory stimulation quickly heightened as the four us relaxed together, and I let my entire body go, becoming a part of them. They touched me, teased me, kissed me, their groans and sighs tickling my ears. I got so wet between the legs that when Alec started to flex in and out of me again, there was an audible sound of slick friction.

“Oh, shit, you’d better get on with it,” Montague said.

Firian took me in back now; I was ready to feel the overwhelming fullness of both of them together. They lifted me up so I was still close between them but held up by them, losing the grounding of the mattress, Alec lifting up one of my legs so they could both go deeper.

I screamed, loving every moment of it. I really needed this.

As Montague kissed my neck and Firian nibbled on my ear, hands still brushing all my erogenous zones, or maybe ever inch of my skin was an erogenous zone at this point, I looked out and saw Harris still just sitting on the sidelines.

“Harris,” I breathed. “You don’t…want?”

“I want,” he said. “I want very much.”

“So…come here…” I held out a hand.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Harris

I don’t know why it bothered me.

I mean, sure, on one hand, I wasn’t exactly raised to assume I’d be sharing my future wife with my best friends. But it wasn’t bad, not in theory. I liked knowing that if I died, my girl wouldn’t be left alone to fend for herself in the world. I liked knowing that I didn’t have to be everything for her, because talking things out? Emotional support? That was never going to be easy for me. My family didn’t talk and I didn’t want to start.

This arrangement made a lot of sense, assuming you had a girl who could handle the four of us.

Charlotte clearly could. I was starting to think Charlotte could handle anything. Killing demons, summoning spirits, torture, group sex…all in a day’s work.

Why did I hold back?

Fuck, I kept thinking about Stuart. That wasn’t a good thought. Unlike the others, I’d actually lived here for two whole months. I saw Stuart reading big stacks of books on necromancy so he could get a better idea on how to help Charlotte, and making trips to Wyrd to try and butter up the faery queen. He didn’t say much about what he was doing, but the clues were there anyway. He was welcoming without being nosy, and if I asked him a question he immediately stopped his work and gave me his attention.

It was very different from what I was used to, growing up. With six older sisters, I didn’t receive much attention, and when I did it came with a heavy dose of expectation that they were mostly spared.

I had seen different ways of being a family, now. It made it easier to leave the one I’d been born into. But…kids…Charlotte was ready to have kids?

Of course she is. She always has more to give.

If I touched Charlotte now, if I let her unwind the knot inside me, I wondered what else might come out. Jesus, what if I cried or something? In front of Monty and Alec and Firian? I’d never live that down.

Sure, I’d shared her. But I’d never been vulnerable.

I was vulnerable now. I sensed it, like a wound that could bleed if you moved wrong. If I was going to fuck her tonight, I had to take complete charge of the situation, but there was one person I’d never shared with, and that was Alec. I was just a normal human; how was I supposed to compete with that?

Instead I was just watching. It was easier to watch. I was so used to seeing Charlotte by day, and she wasn’t a bombshell or anything. She didn’t play up her assets. She was cute, but she didn’t look like a model. She was curvy, flexible and strong but neither toned nor especially skinny, and she had no cosmetics game like Daisy, plus her hair turned into a humid mess in the warmer months.

Objectively, she wasn’t the sort of woman I should choose. But that was probably why I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

She was fucking perfect.

So perfect.

The sight of Charlotte pinned between Alec and Firian, moaning incoherently, eyes glazed, round breasts bobbing as her thighs quivered with exhaustion and rough movements…

And then, when she beckoned to me…

Charlotte, you truly want me, after everything these other men can offer you? Even though I hardly know how to tell you what you mean to me? Even though your strength always makes me want to put you in your place instead of telling you that you impress me?

She did. Her eyes, her hand…just because she was with Alec and Firian now didn’t mean she would forget me, or Montague. We were a family now, and not just a group of friends ditching school to have some fun. That was because of her.

Her eyes shut and her back arched, a groan ripping from her as Alec and Firian were clearly getting better at synching their movements. Her hand flailed and Firian caught it in his, holding her as she screamed out an orgasm. Alec’s grunts of pleasure and pain grew into a scream as he was swept up into it and Firian, a little more shy, grit his teeth rather than make a sound.

Montague tapped my arm. “It’s our turn next, and we might have to work to tease her back up after all of that, but…” He wet his lips.

I got his meaning. Monty remembered what I wanted. He was letting me take the lead.

“Charlotte,” I said, gripping her exhausted face in my hand before Alec and Firian had even pulled out. “Monty needs a taste of you tonight.”

“Is she strong enough…?” Firian said.

“Yes. She is,” I said. “The beasts have had their fun, and you’re ours now, my dearest girl.”

“Time for the necromancer to dance with the dead.” Montague gave her a fanged grin.

Alec and Firian surrendered her, Alec sweaty from the pain of a curse that hadn’t yet faded and Firian taking his fox form to get out of our way, leaving her spent and wet, marked by their pleasure, but far from earning her rest.

Each of us understood the other. And we didn’t even have to say so. That was a place for me here, and an equal place for every person in our union.

“I’m home,” I whispered in her ear, as I slipped a hand between the swollen wet folds of her pussy.

Chapter Thirty

Montague

Four years after I turned, four years after I swore nothing about me would change, I had changed. I felt like a vampire now, not a human. I didn’t miss food anymore. What was food compared to even the smallest taste of Charlotte’s life? I traced my tongue down her collarbone and then the swan curve of her neck, tasting the salt of her sweat, knowing that soon I would have more.

Memories rippled through my mind. Maybe they always would. I had accepted that my clan was a part of me, even if we parted ways. They would be there for me again someday, I thought, or I would be there for them. I couldn’t yet accept that I might outlive my friends and my girl, that I might someday have to face the choice of letting Charlotte move on to the next world, turning her, hunting her down in her next life…

Bertie stumbled, trying to pick up an apple that rolled from the bowl in the course of tidying up the house. The lovely boy Rayner found on the western plains was getting old and frail, but Rayner never saw the age of the soul he loved. It was exciting to find Lisbeth, young and virginal, to teach her the ways of a thrall all over again. But as the years went by, Lisbeth—with luck—grew old.

Rayner didn’t see the wrinkles just as he soon forgot that his Bertie was a boy. In private, he whispered the same words as always. My precious tulip. He was her lover, always.

Yes, it was only moment like this that he remembered that Lisbeth would leave him again soon, and that was the thing that brought him pain. He never allowed that to show. Nor did Silvus, Jie, or Thom. This was their pact: to give her a beautiful life until her last day, whether it was tomorrow of an untimely fever, or at a ripe old age.

“Here, dear, let me help you.” Rayner plucked the fruit and put it in Bertie’s hand.

“I’m getting old.” Bertie shied back from the touch, just a bit, but Rayner never allowed that. He clutched the hand and kissed Bertie’s palm.

“Humans do that,” he said. “It would be very inappropriate if you didn’t. I would keep you with me forever if I could, but since I can’t…I do expect you to follow the natural order.”

“I’m not that pretty anymore.”

“I’ll smack you if you talk that way.”

“But—“

“Do you think I follow you around the world for a pretty face? You were a fine boy, but I don’t even like boys. There were prettier people than you ever were in every city in the world. It’s you I want. You who captivates my soul, and if there is a god in heaven someday he will let us be together forever without all of this trouble…”

Rayner put the apple to his lover’s lips and Bertie, with a slight flush, took a bite.

“Then again, perhaps, we will never get to heaven. We know too much.” Rayner slid a tongue along an ear, his touch more gentle than rough these days, mindful of what a fragile creature every human was, but all he ever wanted was to see pleasure of his tulip’s face.

I had seen Rayner’s rough and possessive side more than his tenderness, but now the hot-burning memories were starting to make space for the softer ones as well. I didn’t mind the memories of my clan anymore. They showed me ways forward. How to share my love with my own clan, how to give and take. I hoped that Rayner had found his Lisbeth again.

Right now, I had my Charlotte.

“Be gentle,” she pleaded. I forced myself to stop drinking of her after just a small taste, giving the wound a lick before I spoke a healing spell to stop the bleeding.

Harris leaned close, watching me lick her blood off her lips. His eyes hooded as he moved his focus back to Charlotte.

“Gentle…,” he said.“Like this?” He lifted the tender skin of her wrist to his mouth and kissed it, gentlemanly, in the spot where I had just bit her. My mouth watered, still wanting more. Always wanting more. It was my lot in life to never be satisfied anymore, so I had to take what I could get.

Now Harris and I drew closer to her, handling her softly after Alec and Firian had wrung so much pleasure out of her already. I pulled her backward, almost into my lap, and leaned down to kiss her and then, to nibble her breasts. Don’t bite. Don’t bite, Monty, you would never hurt her.

Harris went the other way and slipped a tongue between her folds. That was one place I didn’t dare to use my tongue. She smelled so delicious between the legs that I knew I could never hold back; she had other mouths to please her there. Whatever he was doing, her little sighs and moans soon turned to more desperate breaths and cries. I heard her pulse in my ears, the beat of her heart.

She was licked and kissed and nibbled on until she was begging us for more and we were happy to give it. I rode her until her heat was like fire in my own veins, and she passed out within seconds afterward.

Firian and Alec were asleep already. Amateurs.

Nothing like before-battle sex, I guess.

Pretty soon I was the last one awake. Charlotte’s head was resting on my stomach and I was slowly stroking her hair.

Deep inside of me, in the place where buried thoughts live, I think I already knew the answer. I would protect her as long as she loved. I would be what she needed and wanted, even if it meant that someday I might live without her. Someday, she might be gone, but this love would last forever.

Chapter Thirty-One

Charlotte

I was stirred from my plastered state by a very annoying sound. My brain registered as a bird tapping a beak on the window.

“Charlotte?”

Hell naw, my subconscious said, continuing to dream stubbornly.

Taptaptap. “Gentlemen?”

I felt bodies stir around me, and my comforting cocoon unraveled. I was forced to rejoin the waking world as I heard rustling clothes. “Don’t open the door, I’m not decent!” Harris snapped.

“Oh, who cares,” Alec said.

Montague zipped up his pants, gave his hair two finger-comb swipes, and opened the door while Harris yanked a blanket over both of us.

“We have trouble,” Lord Cyrus said. “Get dressed. I would guess you have five minutes.”

“Until what?” Montague asked.

“Until the warlocks are here to fight with you.”

“What happened to sabotaging the road and waiting for backup?” Montague asked. “How many warlocks are you talking? I count about three dozen staff members but I doubt they’ll all lift their wands to battle other former students. How many fae warriors do you have?”

I was glad he was awake enough to take charge because the only content in my brain was a dancing coffee mug. And I was concerned—nay, terrified—that no one was going to make me coffee before this battle.

I was still more awake than Firian, who was in his fox form but drooling slightly. I elbowed him. “Conjure me some coffee,” I whispered.

“They have doubled their number,” Lord Cyrus said. “I’m not sure how. No one got in or out through the roads. We’ve been watching. The additional fighters seem very brazen and skilled, but a little uncertain as well.”

“That many witches and warlocks were able to travel through Etherium?” Harris asked. “That seems impossible. Who are these people? What are their names?”

“I don’t read minds,” Lord Cyrus said. “Just emotions.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “You knew I thought you looked like a Battle Librarian!”

“Well, occasionally I read loud thoughts.”

“It is possible, isn’t it, that they could travel through Etherium?” Alec asked. “I was able to travel through Sinistral.”

“Yes—once you became a demon.”

“But Ignatius was with me.”

“All right, it’s possible,” Harris said. “But that would mean the Ethereals must have helped them. It’s very difficult for humans to use Etherium as a method of physical transportation. It’s more of a spiritual realm, so we can only go there when accompanied and supported by the natives.”

This was true; I couldn’t just go to Etherium. Firian took me there. It was a strange place where the normal rules of time and space didn’t quite apply.

“What?” Firian said. “You’re claiming that humans traveled through Etherium? How many?”

“Thirty or so,” Lord Cyrus said. “Which you would already know if you weren’t sleeping. If you’re going to have sex before a battle at least reserve enough energy to focus.” He looked at me and snapped his fingers near my nose. “Stop thinking about artificial stimulants and start thinking about our impending battle and the fact that you might very well die, then let it light a fire beneath you. We’re heading toward the buildings within ten minutes. We fae will be busy enough trying to cast spells to claim the land for Wyrd, so we expect you to be ready for the fighting.” He left the room, his leather armor making slight groaning noises as if it was as tired of him as I was.

“Ten minutes?” I grabbed my clothes. “Did he just say he wasn’t even fighting?”

“You can’t count on the fae,” Harris grumbled.

Firian conjured me a cup of Starbucks coffee with the name SHARLETTE written on it. At least I could die amused.

“Well, we always knew Etherium could be a potential hole in the plan,” Firian said. “If I was still an Ethereal familiar, I’d be able to check on what happened, but…since last night I officially became a Wyrd familiar…” He paused. “I bet they were waiting to see if I’d leave. That way they could attempt to sneak up on us.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” Harris said. “We’ll just have to deal with it. If the council is here, the council is here.”

When we fought the Withered Lord, we’d been all prepared and together. This was another story, because we were on the defensive, waiting for the spirits to show up. I didn’t feel a thing yet, so I would have to make do with the spirits that were around the school grounds. We didn’t even know who we were up against. I thought it would be Piers and the professors, and I wasn’t that scared of them.

I was also aching all over from last night, but you know what? Not sorry. It was a good reminder of what I was living for. Although I wasn’t so happy about the fact that I was queasy again. I scurried off to the bathroom to retch out my nerves. It had to be stress. I hadn’t gotten my period either, but we’d been so careful, and I was definitely stressed.

The guys dressed up in their usual outfits. So, a designer suit for Harris, a more casual suit for Montague, and for Alec, athletic shorts and a t-shirt so thin it was ready to be ripped against his pectorals.

Damn! I wish I had my phone for one pre-battle selfie with my boys.

“Firian!” I snapped, noticing that he had conjured himself a shirt that said I FOUGHT THE WITHERED LORD AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID T-SHIRT.

“Charlotte, I have to work on my dad jokes,” he said. “Since you could have a little scone in the oven as we speak.”

“Aww.” I wrapped my hands around his waist and slipped my hands in his back pockets. “I’m still waiting for the night you promised me.”

“It’s a date,” he said.

“Deal.”

He kissed me, easing the flutter of fear in my stomach as Ignatius came to the door.

“We have to go,” he said.

We stepped outside. It was late morning at this point. Maybe almost noon. It was still winter, but the trees were starting to get a little color as their buds began to appear, so spring was in the air. About a dozen faery warriors were posted around the cave, weapons at their waists or in their hands. Some had swords, others pikes or twin blades. The most strapping one, who was built more like Orson, held a battle axe. Generally, the fae were tall and thin, their muscles graceful like a dancer. Most of them had beautiful hair that fell to their shoulders. Waiting for battle, they looked gorgeous, like a fantasy painting, and at least they didn’t look like they planned to be useless. I hoped Daisy was happy during her first day in the faery realm checking out smexy fae left and right.

The weather was brisk and gorgeous, blue skies and puffy clouds, a gentle wind stirring all the trees throughout the forest. You could hear it moving over the mountaintops, beyond what we could see, coming closer.

Lord Cyrus and his men came running through the woods. They were light on their feet, but the forest was so thick that Lord Cyrus still had to swat a twig out of his way. “My kingdom for a horse,” he muttered before saying, “They’re coming very fast. It’s not wizards; it’s an army of familiars.”

“Familiars?” Harris said. “No way.”

“Do I seem like I would lie?” The faery’s lip curled. “Birds. Beasts. All manner of creatures.”

“That’s such a taboo to other wizards,” Firian said. “To send their familiars to fight without them?”

“You’re a taboo,” Harris said. “So maybe they figured all bets are off.”

“Damnit,” Firian said. “I’ve never known a familiar to come out alone!”

That was all the time they had for discussion. Cyrus drew his sword as the birds—plus, a bat—swept in. One was a bald eagle. Bald eagles are fucking huge, y’all. You really don’t realize until they’re flying toward your face. I screamed as it swept low and landed on my head. When I tried to throw it off, it scratched me with its talons before rolling to the ground into human form.

The familiars varied widely. A female cardinal, a mallard, a hummingbird, and the aforementioned eagle and bat. But all the familiars shifted easily between human and bird forms when we tried to get a handle on fighting them. Ignatius whipped up an elemental attack that swirled air around him and Ina, keeping them off. This was devastating to the birds, but all they had to do was turn into humans and battle the rest of us who were outside of the swirling air.

“Has anyone seen the movie ‘The Birds’?” I yelled. “Because I haven’t. Do they ever defeat the birds?”

“It’s a Hitchcock movie,” Montague said. “I don’t think it ends well.”

The bat had turned into a beautiful but definitely older woman with two long dark braids. “Miss Halt,” she said. “These children will be hurt. Call this off now and the council will have mercy.” She sounded stiff. Familiars weren’t usually used to talking, and she looked like she would rather disappear.

“Sorry,” Ignatius said. “For one thing, all of you know I answer to Ignatius Blair by now. So why should I even begin to negotiate with this kind of passive aggressive bullshit? Tell the council that the faeries are here and our alliance with Wyrd is already complete.”

“He’s right,” Lord Cyrus said. “This is Wyrd territory. Even if we were to lose this fight, Queen Morgana will continue to be a thorn in your side.”

“Oh yeah?” the hummingbird squeaked, trying to peck at Ignatius’ eyes. He blasted her back. She flipped into human form in midair and landed, ninja-like, turning into a petite black girl. “If that’s how you feel, then let the best man win!”

“We don’t want to fight,” the eagle said, having perched in a tree nearby. He had a serious, eagle-appropriate voice, like a national news anchor. “We are familiars. We’ve never fought without our wizards in all of our lives. But we must. You—“ He looked at Firian. “You drive us all into the fight by flaunting yourself in society where you don’t belong.”

“You really enjoy this?” Firian said. “Not sharing the life of your witch or warlock? Fading into the background when they grow up?”

“We don’t belong here!” the hummingbird said.

“But if they need us, we do our duty,” said the duck, who had an unexpectedly deep voice. He was holding back from the fight, but seemed to have healing skills. He was helping out the cardinal, who took a hit earlier. “That’s what we were put on this world for. Not living our own lives.”

“I would do anything for my witch,” Firian said. “But I can’t…think like that. I can’t leave her just because she’s grown up.”

A second wave of familiars was showing up as he was saying this. A lot of these familiars were total cuteness. Cat, two dogs, ferret, chipmunk, beaver, otter, mice, bobcat with a sugar glider riding on its back…ohmigawd. Was that Piers’ familiar? As much as I hated him, how was I supposed to attack this cuteness?

Shit. They kept coming. A coyote, an armadillo bringing up the rear…wait, no, here came a pair of iguanas…

I could only guess some turtles and things were yet to arrive, and insects could be hiding out unnoticed. No matter how cute they were, no matter how much I didn’t want to fight them, they were ready to fight us, and when Firian didn’t back down, the bobcat said, “All right, you know what to do.”

The familiars started pushing their battle line forward, attacking us and trying to get past us. Since they could make themselves small, this wasn’t hard.

“Protect the tree!” Cyrus said.

I ran after him, happy to retreat. I didn’t know what to do. I had been sort of prepared to fight fellow witches and warlocks. I was not prepared to attack a ferret or a furry little tabby cat, even if I knew they could take human forms.

They didn’t find us as adorable. The beaver shot Alec with a spell that slowed his motions down, while I suddenly had a snake chomping into my ankle.

“Ow!” I grabbed the snake to throw it and it transformed into a big tough blonde guy, which completely freaked me out. The snake man did a sweep kick and knocked my legs out from under me, then pinned me down under a foot.

“We’re here to fight, girl,” he said.

“So are we!” Montague grabbed him and shoved him off me, grabbing his shirt to slam him into the nearest tree.

He turned back into a snake, slipped right out of Montague’s grip, and slithered into the underbrush.

“You little bastard!” Montague cast a finding spell, a stream of light dancing from his hands to follow the snake’s course, while Firian dropped to his knees next to me and put a hand on my ankle.

“Venom,” he said. “Stay down. I need to draw it out.” His hand warmed. My skin burned hot and a sudden wave of dizziness came over me. Alec was trying to shake off the spell that slowed him down. Even when he spoke spell words, he sounded like a tape at half speed. Harris had to help him.

“Good lord,” Harris said. “A slow spell. I’ve heard of time wizards, but I’ve never met one before.”

“Kids, you need to shoot to kill,” Ina said. “They might look cuddly, but they are our enemies now.”

I bristled when I heard her voice. “We’re trying to defend our territory, not slaughter people. They haven’t killed any of us.”

“They will.”

“Well, you have your methods and I have mine,” I said, struggling to get up while Firian was still grabbing my ankle. “And your methods included torturing me, so excuse me if I don’t jump on your advice.”

“You can handle a little torture,” she said.

“Not really!” I shivered.

“All things pass,” Ina said. “Look how strong you are now.”

Ignatius was a few steps ahead with Lord Cyrus, but he heard us yelling and backtracked down the sloping path.

“We can talk about this later,” he said.

“Yeah, fine with me, but I’m going to just kill animals!”

“They’re not animals,” Ina said. “You’re showing your weakness. What do you think your spirits will do? Kill for you. But if you won’t kill yourself, they won’t respect you.”

“That’s enough,” Ignatius said to Ina, hustling her along. He gave me an apologetic glance, but didn’t say anything. The faery soldiers were putting up a decent front against the familiars for now.

Firian tugged me to my feet. “All better.” He gave me a crooked smile. “Don’t let Ina get to you. Remember, she was in the Haven for twenty years. She’s been tortured herself. All you need to do is defend yourself until you can summon those ghosts, and they can make their own judgments. Let me protect you…” He was still holding on to my hand, like he didn’t want to let me go.

“Don’t you listen to them either, you know,” I said. “I’m glad you’re not like the other familiars.”

“Yeah. I know,” he said. “I just…wonder…”

“What?”

“What am I? Why do I love you like I do?”

“Do you really want an answer to that?” the bat woman said as she manifested in front of us, blocking our way to the others. Alec and Harris were being driven up the hill toward the tree, getting farther away from us. Ina and Ignatius were already out of sight. Pretty soon we’d be cut off.

“No thanks,” I said. “We know what Firian is.” I didn’t trust her.

“I doubt you do,” she said. “The council could tell you, but the council doesn’t tell anyone. They would rather let nature take its course. They want familiars to be in their place, because that is where power comes from. And if a familiar breaks the code and dies, that makes things easier for them. Why should they explain it to anyone? If you love Firian, Charlotte, you will let him go, or else he will die.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Firian

Die?

The look on Charlotte’s face was enough to break me before we’d even begun. She didn’t need to be worrying about me right now. We were in the middle of a fight. But of course she was worried about me. Charlotte was loving and generous, and despite that she was also pretty brave, she wasn’t really meant for fights like these. Killing a demon was one thing. Killing people—

No, she wasn’t going to be able to do that. I knew it.

“Tell me what you mean,” I said. “What is this code?”

“You probably don’t know what familiars really are,” she said. “Just as the faeries are dying now, familiars were once the animal spirits that helped early man, in a time when most religions were more shamanistic. As humans and their beliefs evolved, the animal spirits started to die. And just as the faeries make a bargain with the witches today, so did we animals make a bargain to serve the witches and warlocks.”

“Stuart said that familiars learned to become human so they could be in love with their witch,” Charlotte said, her voice getting thinner as the authority in the bat woman’s voice made her nervous.

“That might be true,” the woman said. “At first, it is believed that the witches and warlocks and their familiars did mate and start families. The councils started to realize that arranged marriages and important alliances were falling apart. One can only imagine the complaints that must have been brought forward of infidelity, even after the marriages occurred.”

“Oh, so the witches were pressured to marry snotty warlocks but their familiar could sneak in any time and make love to them,” Charlotte said. “Let me guess—the warlock council didn’t like that one bit.”

“I believe you are probably right,” the bat woman said. “So—the practice was not just banned, but cursed. If you have a child with this man, he will die when the baby is born.”

“I thought we couldn’t have children!” I said, as a sense of foreboding passed over me.

“They tell you that so they can catch you,” she said. “You have a baby and your familiar dies, thus exposing your crime and ending the relationship.”

Charlotte glanced at me, panicked. “But we—“ She turned back to the bat woman. “What about Adia?”

“Adia…?”

“My grandmother’s familiar became human and married a human man and they never had a baby.”

“Well, she became human. That is the only way that a familiar can live. As humans, a familiar is barren.”

“Oh…” She gripped my hand.

“Charlotte…if I have to become human to be with you, then I have to become human. What if you’re already pregnant?”

“Is…is that why I’ve been getting nauseous? Firian…!” She reeled back a step. “I don’t believe you!”

“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “But it’s true. And you do believe me. You just don’t want to believe me.”

Charlotte looked at me. “I already got your magic back once. I can’t let you lose it again.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I don’t care about losing my magic. Especially if we get to have a kid. That’s—wonderful news. Really.”

Of course, I did care about losing my magic. But the outcome was the same. All I really cared about was Charlotte, and I needed to keep her safe. I could see the conflict and pain in her eyes, wearing away at her ability to fight. “Charlotte,” I said. “It’s all good. We need to catch up with the others.”

She looked up the hill, through the trees, and it was clear that everyone else had rushed to the tree, losing us in the chaos of the fight. “Right.”

I took her hand. We started to run.

Only to have the path blocked by a man who appeared out of nowhere. He must have taken the form of some small creature in the brush, but now he was a sturdy chap from the ‘magical bazaar’ school of wizard fashion. Gold jewelry, shirt with draping sleeves that he was only wearing half of for some reason, the other sleeve dangling to show off a muscular arm, loose pants tied with a sash. He was also very blonde and Nordic looking. Oh, right, this was the snake who bit Charlotte earlier.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You might want to check with Twitter about that genie outfit. Then again, even if it’s not cultural appropriation it’s definitely bad fashion.”

“You are one to talk about ‘fashion’, scrawny boy,” he said. “Your friend Twitter sounds like a fool.”

“All right, that’s mostly fair,” I said. “Except the scrawny boy part. I’m a fox spirit, what do you want from me?”

He ignored me at this point. “Did you tell them, Maria?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Good. None of it matters now, but I like to leave my foes with thoughts of sorrow before I kill them.” He lifted both hands and blasted me in the chest.

Reflexively, I turned into a fox, so I took up less space and had more agility.

But I guess he was right. None of it mattered. I slammed into a tree and heard Charlotte scream my name before darkness closed around me.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Charlotte

“Firian!” I tried to run toward him, only to have the bat woman fly toward me—as a bat—then turn into a human again and fight me, pinning me against a different tree with a spell. I had to cast a counter-spell to break the hold, but I had barely done this before I saw the other man walk over to Firian and draw a long knife from a scabbard at his belt.

“You’ve been warned,” the bat woman said.

The man lifted the knife and drove it into Firian’s heart.

The look of shock on his face would be seared into my brain forever.

“No!” The scream ripped out of me as the bat woman drove me back with blue flames that glowed hot from her hands.

“It’s too late,” she said. “You’d best worry about your living friends.” She glanced at the man, and he vanished.

I tried another attempt to get past her and get to Firian, at least to hold his fox body as he died—

“No…” I choked on the word. “No…” She was fighting me back, and the hummingbird girl showed up beside Firian, planting herself in front of him, daring me to reach him.

I had no choice but to give up and run toward my other friends. “No…” Firian was always with me. Always.

The battle wasn’t going well. I mean, even besides Firian. The familiars were powerful; they could zip in and out, changing forms, wielding magic of their own.

The familiars seemed to be trying to drive my friends apart from each other. Everyone was scattered. I saw Alec fighting two men by himself.

“Alec!” I cried. “Alec—Firian—he’s—he might be—”

“Firian?” he said. “No way. He’s fine. Don’t worry, Firian’s tough.”

“Well—I’m not sure this time… Alec, watch out!”

I’m sure women were staying away from Alec, considering his seductive powers. He was in his demon form, but physical strength was about all he had when he was fighting most men. One of the familiars cast a spell that created a sort of swirling vortex under his feet, knocking him off balance. He stumbled, trying to escape it, only to get slugged by the other guy.

“Hey! Cowards!” I screamed, casting a spell of my own to blast the guy.

Alec finally jumped, grabbing a tree branch to get his feet up above the vortex, and kicking the other guy. He looked so strong and tough, I swelled with pride. His tail swept forward to grab the guy’s arm before he could try to escape, and held him there while Alec kicked him again, right in the face. The guy got knocked right out.

He dropped to his feet again, and we were about to take on the next guy, when who should show up but hummingbird girl. She hummed in and turned human right behind me, tackling me, pressing a knife to my throat.

“Watch,” she hissed. “This is what will happen, again and again, until you stop this fight.”

She whistled, and guess who showed up? The time witch. Oh, crap. The time witch was the worst. She cast a spell to stop Alec like a statue.

“Nngh…” Alec groaned.

I drew breath to call for help, and the knife pricked my skin. “Don’t you dare scream.”

Even though Alec was frozen so he couldn’t even look at me, the time witch still paused and started to check him out. She reached out a finger, tracing a line down the center of his chest.

“Don’t,” the hummingbird girl said. “He’s an incubus.”

“I know. Look at him…”

Hummingbird Girl started to look. The time witch slid Alec’s shirt up as she stepped closer, then put her hands on his ass.

Hummingbird Girl was getting distracted.

I grabbed her hand. “Let the fire I summon scorch your skin, let it burn you to your very core!”

She was knocked back, as flames swept from my hand over her body. The time witch had to rush over to help break my spell. I rushed to Alec—

I wasn’t the only one.

A snake slithered up to us and transformed into the same man who attacked Firian. Oh, not this asshole again.

Kill him, I thought. Come on. He killed Firian. Just do it. Kill him!

Before I could get to Alec, his blades whipped out and slashed off Alec’s wings. I screamed as I saw Alec’s face struggle to contort while the time spell held him in place. I couldn’t imagine the pain. The weight and size of the two wings as they slid off his back and fell to the ground, crumpling—I would never forget the horror of it.

“Alec! Alec!!” My gaze whipped around, looking for help as Alec’s eyes rolled back into his head. As blood gushed down his back, he passed out. That broke the time spell, like it did any good now. I still tried to get to him, but now a blade was thrown at my feet.

“One more step and I’ll throw one through your heart,” said Snake Man.

“Charlotte!” I heard Harris call my name.

I whirled and ran toward help. Of course, Harris’ voice came from a direction from which there was no obvious path. One of my shoes got caught in the brush when I stepped through a hidden hole in the ground. I had to leave it behind like Cinderella, but now my foot was pricked by sticks and thorns as I ran. I hardly even registered the pain.

I scrambled up rocks and saw Harris trying to heal a fallen faery soldier. He waved a hand to me. “Charlotte—I’ve got a shield up around me. Get in close. They scattered us in every direction. Have you seen Alec and Monty?”

“Alec—they—cut off his wings.” I smeared away some wayward tears with a dirty hand. “He passed out from the pain. He’s losing blood. They wouldn’t let me near him.”

“Shit.” Harris looked conflicted as to whether he should keep helping the faery or just go right to Alec.

“And Firian—might be—he might be— They put a knife through his chest!”

Harris frowned. “Did you feel the connection between you sever?”

“No.”

“Then he’s still alive.”

“But for how long?”

We heard a man scream.

“Was that Monty?” Harris looked scared, and it wasn’t often I saw him look scared. My ears were attuned to every rustle in the trees around us, wondering if some tiny familiar was sneaking up on us.

“They separated us so they could pick us off one at a time!”

“I’m going to send Eleanor to check on him.” He held out a hand and his hawk familiar appeared, perched there. I had only seen the hawk once before, but that was normal enough for other familiars besides mine. She regarded me with a slow, haughty bird blink before looking at Harris.

“I wondered if you would ever call me,” she said. “You seemed to be in trouble.”

“Well, I don’t want you getting hurt,” Harris said.

“No shame in needing me,” she said.

“I can handle myself. Just fly over that a way and see if you can see Montague, but be careful. There are many other familiars around.”

“Yes, the familiars of Etherium are quite restless,” she said. “The usual rules don’t apply today. The council has broken them all to fight you. You should be proud of yourself.”

“I am.”

He lifted his arm and she took flight, sailing over the tree tops. He watched her, clearly anxious.

“Cousin?” Another voice called out in the distance.

Apparently the staff of Merlin College had finally arrived. Piers was heading our way. “Cousin, where are you?” he called. “I don’t really want to fight you.”

“It really drives me insane how he calls me ‘cousin’,” Harris said. “Charlotte—you stay here. I’m going to head out to meet him, head him off at the pass so to speak. Stuart and the other spirits aren’t here yet, but we know there are other spirits at Merlin. I’m going to buy you enough time to summon what you can. We need backup. Okay?”

“Okay…but…Alec and Firian…”

He put a hand on my shoulder. “They’re going to live, all right? I promise. They can take care of themselves, but you need backup. We came here to fight. This is your moment, Chosen One. Don’t fuck it up.”

“Oh, please.” I laugh-sobbed. “Get out of here.” I gave his ass a spank the second he turned away from me. He gave me the finger.

I smiled. Funny how much that infuriating guy could cheer me up.

But that was the last smile I would make.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Charlotte

Okay. I took a deep breath. No big deal. Just raise up the spirits of anyone you can. I already knew Merlin College had a priest who was also a Wyrd warlock, Father Early. He would definitely be on my side. He helped me before. I conjured up a vague memory of his image, Victorian beard and all.

“Father Early,” I said. “I need help.”

I thought about Alec bleeding and how he was alone right now. I felt like he would be there for me if I was hurt. He needed me now.

“You helped me before, and now…I need help again.”

Then I heard a small rustle in the brush. Was it the snake man again?

Silence followed. No, I couldn’t worry about that. I let my senses flow, my breath steady, tapping into the spirit world…

I was struggling. This was not the time to struggle. I knew that. I needed to be focused and tough, but the sight of Firian getting stabbed and Alec’s wings falling away from his body, the blood everywhere…

What were a handful of ghosts going to do for me against this kind of onslaught anyway? A choking knot was forming in my chest and wrapping up my windpipe until I struggled to breathe.

Eleanor swept overhead, flying with speed, going toward Harris.

“Eleanor!” I shouted.

She didn’t want to stop for me, but reluctantly wheeled around and landed on top of a fallen tree, the roots at the base pitched upward, the wood rotting back into the soil. “Montague has fallen,” she said. “I’m sorry to say. He and Ignatius Blair both.”

“Wait, what? I mean—they’re dead?”

“He’s barely conscious,” she said. “And they were force-feeding him some kind of potion. Ignatius looked like he might be—“

A potion?

Maybe they had a new technique for purification. They would drive the vampire blood out of Montague, send him home to his family. Alec, too. Since their families were still well-respected, they would be allowed to live. But there was no reason to let Firian or Ignatius live.

What about Harris? He’s with Piers. Maybe they’ll drag him home.

And me? My family?

My mom and grandmother were both on the council’s shit list. Catherine kept trying to offer me some sort of ‘redemption’. I had a feeling she was done with me now.

I was all alone in the forest. Trembling. I felt naked without being able to call Firian to my side. Worse than naked. Firian could offer more protection and support than a layer of fabric ever could.

I understood the whole plan now. Separate us. Damage us. Kill the ones that didn’t matter, drag home the ones who still had a chance. Show the faeries who was boss. Some kind of cruel bargain to force Daisy home was probably next.

They would never let us get away with our plan. The sheer number of familiars attacking us just drove home how small and helpless we were, how ridiculous we were for trying to change the world.

I didn’t know which way to go. They all needed my help. For the first time, I wished I hadn’t embarked on this shared relationship that split my feelings four ways. When I was the last one standing, who did I choose?

“So you’re the girl Harris has fallen for,” Eleanor said.

I had forgotten the hawk was there, since she was as silent as a stone, blending in to the forest around her. “Yeah, I…”

“You’d better do something,” she continued. “Just standing there isn’t any help.”

“Boy, you really are his familiar, aren’t you?”

“I don’t usually talk to humans,” she said. “Consider yourself lucky just to get any advice. Your friends are dying. Do something.”

I stopped thinking so much. Maybe I stopped thinking at all. I let my gut decide.

I ran back to Firian.

HAM had each other as well as me, but Firian was mine and mine alone. Even if he could be friendly with other people, he wasn’t human. No matter what we were doing, his golden eyes roamed back to me like I was a beacon. He existed to protect me.

I owed him so much, but maybe all I could give him was me, one last time.

No…

I ran back to the clearing and my heart stopped.

Firian had reverted back to his human form. He was laid out on the forest floor, dead leaves cushioning his body, his hands folded over his chest, covering the wound. His skin was eerily pale now.

I rushed toward him, desperate to touch his skin, to feel if there was any warmth in him. It seemed really cruel for him to die wearing his joke t-shirt. I didn’t have a nice suit to put him in.

Oh god, I just needed to feel his embrace. Hear his voice in my ear telling me everything was okay, that he was always there.

“Firian? Firian, are you—“

My great-aunt stepped out of the woods, intercepting me. She had picked some evergreen sprigs, and she crouched to place them under his hands, in the absence of flowers.

“Charlotte, I’m sorry,” she said, tucking her hair back behind her ears. “I really am.”

“He’s not dead,” I said. “I didn’t feel it.”

“You might not,” she said, in a way that was so casual it was like a twist of the knife. “Who told you you would feel it? Familiars very often die before their witches do. They are our first line of defense. They sacrifice themselves when we are too young to know better.”

“I—“ I couldn’t stop looking at him. His chest was still. The color of his skin…it was just like when Harris died.

“I really am sorry it had to be this way.”

“Sorry?” I screamed. “Sorry? No, you’re not sorry. It didn’t have to be this way. It never did. Not with my grandmother. Not with Samuel and Ina. Not with me. The reason you don’t have family now is because of you.”

I got to her, a little bit. She made this small pause as her mind tried to spin her actions into something justified. “This didn’t work out as anyone hoped. I have realized how harsh the council has become, in the course of trying to save you from your mistakes. We used to be the good guys, and we must not look that way to you now…”

“No shit!”

She winced. “But they are mistakes. You are hitching your wagon to the frailest of all the magic realms, and you don’t know anything about the faeries. None of us do, really. They have avoided dealing with us. We can’t let them gain ground, and if you join with them, we’ll have to keep hurting you. Yes, Firian had to die. But you don’t have to die.”

“Firian didn’t have to die. You could have just let us have this place. We would leave you alone.”

“Let you ‘have’ Merlin College? Dear, that is not realistic. Why do you think we could give up such a sacred place without a fight? You are children under the bad influence of deviants. But they’re all gone now. I just got word that Ignatius has been killed.”

“Ignatius…” Ignatius too? Was I going to lose every single person who supported me?

“It’s not a sad ending for him or her,” Catherine said. “The friends are together in the afterlife. It’s sweet. But I wouldn’t like to see your friends follow them, so young…”

“My grandmother was right,” I said. “I couldn’t believe that a member of our own family could truly be heartless, but you killed Firian. I bet you would have applauded if my grandfathers died, too, and if your sister Sally was forced home to be a good little witch. You pretend to care and you don’t know what caring really is. What a family is really like. I don’t know the faeries and you’re right, they might be a bad alliance, but at least my magic is no longer tied to the council. This is what my family was working toward, and I intend to see it through.”

“A lot of good that will do you, tying your magic to such a strange place as the faery realm.”

I spread my arms.

I felt ready now. If Firian was dead, if everything was on the brink of being torn from me, I had nothing to lose. My despair brought a certain calm, in the moment. I was going to give this everything I had in me.

Maybe I would die. Maybe that was okay. Firian looked so peaceful.

“Blood and bone, spirits without home…the hour calls for your unrest, the hour for our greatest test…I summon you to stir and fight, to follow me and make things right…”

I really did like rhyming my spells. Even Harris teased me about it. It’s my party and I’ll rhyme if I want to.

It would have been really awesome if Catherine just stood still and let me summon some ghosts, but nooo, she had to run toward me, wave her wand around, and knock me to the ground, where tree roots lifted up from the cold earth and tried to encircle my hands. I had to play some defense, battling with the trees. Luckily I was coursing with adrenaline. After all the bad stuff that had happened, I felt like a living cup of espresso, just trying to survive the next hour or so. I got back on my feet and repeated my spell again, while keeping my eyes focused on her.

This was the lesson Stuart kept trying to teach me. To live in the moment enough that I didn’t have to live in grief. I could keep fighting.

“Fares wyrd as she must…”

I felt all of the energy around me coming alive. All my training kicked in, all the hours I spent with Firian telling me I had to stay focused. The hours of meditating and practicing different kinds of spell and getting in tune with different energies. I felt it all working for me now. I had become stronger than I ever realized. Even now, when I was all alone, I could still put up a fight against a witch from the council.

Ghosts started to materialize in a circle of protection around me, keeping Catherine from hurting me.

What do you want us to do?

Shall we kill her?

Some of the spirits whispered to me, not quite friendly.

“No…” I couldn’t go that far. “I want her to be trapped. Subdued. Powerless.”

Catherine whistled. Familiars came flying and running in to help her.

“I need you to contain Charlotte,” she said. “She’s beyond reason. Another woman in my family will be lost to sense and spend her life in the Haven.”

The familiars and ghosts started battling each other, which was just strange, like seeing a movie with a major special effects budget playing out around me. I kinda wished my dad could see this. Even as I was trying to hold on to my sense of calm and power, I couldn’t help but appreciate how cool it looked. The ghosts came in different forms, some wispy and some more like translucent humans. Some of them passed through the familiars, leaving them stunned, while others turned partly solid to attack.

The familiars, of course, could shift easily back and forth. Spells of different colors flew through the air, rustling leaves and scorching tree trunks.

I tried to join in, but a wall of ghosts still held me back. “Please, I need to help,” I said. I wasn’t sure if my side was winning.

“You are the Wyrd Witch…you are the link. You must live to see the alliance through,” one of the ghosts whispered in my ear before flitting away again.

I must live.

I never would have guessed that those words would upset me, but right now I was so afraid. Stuart’s warnings were coming true. I might lose the people I loved and be left alone in this world to finish what I started. What was the point of any of this, then?

Father Early appeared before me with this cool rippling effect. “Are you all right, Miss Byrne? Don’t you cry, now, after all this. Look what you’ve accomplished. You actually managed to make the alliance that we’ve been working on for a century, and more. Every witch with a Wyrd wand will be able to come home.”

Come home? I had never thought of Wyrd as a home. But I guess so much of me was still a human. I didn’t feel a life or death attachment to Etherium or Sinistral or the other realms. I didn’t particularly care about the fight to capture magical territory. I just loved magic, and I used to think it was a dream that only existed in fairy tales and video games. Now it was real, and it was mine, but just like anything else, it wasn’t any good to me if I didn’t have someone to share it with.

“I don’t want to be alone…Firian…”

“Do you think you’re really alone? Is there nothing left when we pass on?”

I slipped a hand to my stomach, almost without thinking. What if I was pregnant? “But if he’s not here with me, to play computer games with me and banter and laugh…if his kid never gets to know him… I can’t bear that. It’s like, the council wanted to erase him as a person. And they won.”

“They didn’t win,” Father Early said. “They can’t take love from you.”

Suddenly, a knife flew into me, sinking into my stomach.

The snake man had thrown another blade that had made it right past the ghosts protecting me and into my skin.

Blood was pouring out of me, onto my hands. I felt no pain at all, nothing. I guess I was in shock. It’s over, I thought. I’m going to die. I’ll lose the baby.

“While she’s dazed,” Catherine said. “Get her tied up.”

I fell back, sitting hard on the leaves. There was nothing more I could really do, I thought. The familiar army had the ghosts outnumbered. My elemental powers would never beat a council member. The other magic I had learned seemed like nonsense in a life or death situation.

Hold on, Charlotte.

I thought I heard Stuart’s voice.

At the same time, two men grabbed me and hauled me to my feet, dragging me toward Catherine. “Charlotte…” She actually had the audacity to be in tears. “You have put the Ethereal Council of Witches in danger, attacked the Haven, tried to stage a coup at your own college, for heaven’s sake, and you might even be pregnant by your own familiar. Any other witch would be executed for this, but I will stand up for you in front of the council to live out your days. If Ina makes it out of this, you’ll be together in the Haven. It’s all I can do.”

She put her hand on the knife and yanked it out of me, blood everywhere, a sudden burst of pain. “You can never have his child,” she said. “Or any child. The Caruthers line…dies with me. And Wyrd goes back to the shadows.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Charlotte

I felt the air change around me even as she spoke.

The ghosts from the Haven arrived.

A moment too late.

The men gripped me more tightly, trying to keep ahold of me against the coming onslaught.

What does an army of the dead sound like? Not like thundering footsteps, but like a strong wind rushing in on the mountain top. The temperature dropped, chasing away the hint of spring in the air. And whispers swirled around us, invisible spirits leading the charge, whirling Catherine’s hair and skirt around her.

“Take her to Etherium—now,” Catherine said.

“No…!” Father Early flew toward me and took one of my hands. I felt another hand take my right hand and I felt that Stuart was with me too. They were giving me an anchor to this world so the familiars couldn’t drag me away.

Okay, then. I felt their spirits grip me. I thought of all the wizards who had fought before me. Just when it seemed impossible, I still had some fight left. “I draw strength from the earth, I know what I’m worth, your hands cannot touch me, your magic cannot claim me!”

I knocked the men back and ran for one of the tree trunks, leaning against it heavily while I put my hand over the blood on my shirt.

“Charlotte!”

“Montague!?”

“I finally found you!” Montague came vaulting over logs and bushes to get to me as fast as possible. His jacket was torn in several places and he had leaves in his hair and I’d never been so happy to see him.

“Maybe you shouldn’t get too close—I’m bleeding,” I said.

He looked at the wound and his brow furrowed. “I don’t smell anything.” He placed a hand on my stomach. “Blood should be hot and sticky. Charlotte, this is an illusion.”

“An illusion?”

Oh my god.

Witches studied illusion magic in depth. Warlocks only learned the basics. Catherine conjured up an entire fake office complete with a chair when we met at Merlin College last year. But I hadn’t considered this too much, because I only learned enough illusion to like, cover up zits. I thought illusion magic was kind of superficial.

I never really considered how dangerous illusions could be.

“Montague, are you okay? Harris’ familiar told me you were down and being poisoned.”

“I was knocked to the ground and they had me tied up with magical bonds,” he said. “No poison, though.”

“How did you get out of it?”

“Your mom showed up.”

“My mom is here?”

“Yeah, your mom and all your grandfathers.”

The wolves burst onto the scene and no further explanation was necessary.

The tide had turned. These ghosts from the Haven were working out just like I planned. They were some extremely angry ghosts.

Maybe a little too angry. Within moments I saw a ghost wrap itself around the ferret familiar. The little creature struggled and thrashed as the ghost sucked its air away. I screamed.

“It’s not a real ferret,” Montague said.

“It’s a—a person,” I said.

“But you would be even more sad if it was a ferret.”

“That’s probably true, but—this isn’t what I wanted either!”

“They’re the ghosts you gave permission to enter this world, so I think you’re the only one who can control them,” Montague said.

“Okay, I know, I read the manuals,” I snapped, but now I was feeling panicked in a different way because the ghosts were going way too far.

Stuart always told me I had to talk to the ghosts I summoned with authority, so I tried to pretend I was Arya or Galadriel or Sailor Moon. If this sounds conflicted, well, yeah. It wasn’t easy to imagine myself worthy of bossing ghosts around. I just needed to feel it.

“Spirits, I honor your wish to fight, your desire for revenge, but shed no blood unless you must. We are not here to cause senseless pain, but to pave a better world. This is my battle. I called you here. And I’m not here to match a bad deed with another bad deed, because then it will never end. We just need a place where we can safely be Wyrd witches, LGBT warlocks, vampires with tuner cars, familiars who fall in love, and everything else. You all went to the Haven because you didn’t fit the ‘order’ of Etherium. You deserved a place where you could be who you were. I want to give that to future wizards. So please—make this a better world!”

“Very nice,” Montague said. “Very cute. But…did it do anything?”

“Yes. It did.” I dared a little confidence as I gestured to the scene. The ghosts stopped trying to murder ferrets, but they didn’t hold back too much. They had all been wronged by the council, so this was personal to each and every spirit I had summoned.

I don’t really how I knew that the ghosts understood me. It was a wizard thing, I guess. A necromancer thing. I just…felt it. I felt that I was strong enough to speak with confidence, and I said what I really believed, and then…I let go.

I couldn’t control every ghost or every thing that happened. I just had to trust the process that led me to this moment.

Catherine was standing in front of Firian’s body. She was under assault by the spirits and the wolves, but she was holding her own.

More than holding her own. She wove her fingers through the air and one by one, my grandfathers started slowing down, freezing in their tracks.

“You must be Sally’s men,” she said. “You’re the ones who lured her away from the family with promises you never even kept. She lost her magic and her good name and I heard that you’re broke on top of it all. Go home,” she said. “Go home and never come back!” Her words held the force of magic and the wolves were all forced to step back.

One of the wolves turned into my mom. I guess I should have recognized my own mom, especially since she was the smallest wolf, but I wasn’t great at telling wolves apart when they were all running around as a pack.

“Catherine, please,” my mom said. “You’re just mad that my mom had the life she wanted. You have the life you wanted too, so what business is it of yours?”

“Because I had to live under the shadow of her shame. I had to explain to everyone what happened, and prove that I was different. And then—you lured my children away, Emily.”

“Oh, you really think I’m that powerful?”

“I think you’re wicked like your mother. She fought a demon just so you could join him. Blood will tell,” Catherine said. “And I have tried to save yours. I have tried to spare your daughter the fate of my children, but she’s yours. You’re both…hopeless, but you’re lucky. You’ll never have to see your children turn their back on you.”

I saw it coming, a second too late. Catherine struck my mom with a spell that threw her toward the precipice of the mountain path. I lunged for her. I was too far away to do anything. I saw my mom’s look of shock as she scrambled for purchase, fingers scrabbling hopelessly against the rocks before she fell with a scream. And all my grandfathers were stuck, frozen, unable even to look back and see what had happened to her.

“Why?” I screamed at Catherine. “Or is that an illusion too?” Please…

“That was the last thing I wanted to do, but your mother served demons. Do you really think—“

“I saved her life!” I cried. “She was with my dad and they were finally happy! So I do really think! Firian…my mom…” I spread my hands. “Spirits—come to me and bring your anger and your hate, send my great-aunt to a dire—“

Ina leapt up the rock. “Silence, child,” she said, shooting a spell toward me that sealed my lips shut.

“Mmm-mm!” I said, which, you know, is what everyone says when their lips get sealed shut.

Then she reached a hand down and helped my mom climb up behind her.

“I’m okay,” Mom said. “Ina cast a spell to break my fall.”

“Mm!” I said, with relief.

“Charlotte, are you okay?” Mom asked. “Why can’t you talk?”

“I shut her up,” Ina said. “She was going to cast a spell that would haunt her. She still hasn’t seen such things as dark as we’ve seen, and she doesn’t need to have blood on her hands. I’ll handle this. Mother, dear…” Ina walked up to Catherine, holding her wand with the tips pressed into her palms.

“Don’t kill me, Ina…” Catherine started crying. “Not you. Please. I just wanted to keep you from harm.”

“Harm! Is that all? Is that why, when I was in the Haven, a mere shell of myself, brought back from the dead and touched by demons, separated from my beloved, you came to me and said—I will never forget what you said. Do you remember?”

“It was a while ago, I don’t know. I’m sure I was upset.” Catherine looked away.

“Say the words you said to me then. Four words. That was all you said to me. Say them now and I’ll let you live.”

“Ina, what happened to you?”

“You know what happened to me!” Ina growled. “A childhood of you breathing down my neck telling me what to do, how to be a good little witch, a brief escape with the people who loved me, and then an adulthood of captivity and torture—sanctioned by you…” She pressed the wand to Catherine’s lips. “Burn…”

The tip of the wand glowed red. My mom watched, not interfering.

“It serves you right!” Catherine screamed. “That’s what I said…”

Ina pulled the wand back. A line of angry red was seared dark on Catherine’s lips.

“You thought that was best for me,” Ina said. “Hmm. Maybe it was. I’m not afraid of anything anymore. I’ve had so many wounds seared into my flesh, I’ve screamed myself hoarse, I’ve cried for people I thought I would never see again. And I learned. I learned to be the good little witch you wanted. You came to see me when they promoted me from patient to teacher… You were proud. I learned to behave. I learned to hurt others instead of being hurt. Maybe I reminded you of yourself, that day…you love to hurt people.”

“I don’t love to hurt people. I hated what you had to go through in the Haven, but I trusted their therapy. I try to use other methods. Yes, I threw Emily off the rocks but first I cast a protection spell on her. I just wanted to frighten her. I don’t want you all to be caught by the council and go back to the Haven! I did all of this for the honor of our family.”

“Mm mmm?” I demanded, pointing at Firian.

Catherine snapped her fingers at Firian. “It was just a joke.”

Just like that, Firian transformed. He was still unconscious, but the knife was gone. The blood was gone. The deathly pallor vanished.

Oh, thank every god that ever existed.

“You should have paid more attention to the witchly arts, Charlotte,” Catherine said. “You shouldn’t have sneered at female skills. You would have seen past my illusions.”

“Aunt Catherine!” Mom said. “This is too much. How did you even pull this off?”

“My familiar is skilled at illusions as well. We were able to cover the field between the two of us, with help from the other familiars of the council. I’m a member of the council, so protecting Ethereal territory is my job, after all. That’s what I did. I made you think your friends were hurt to get this taken care of with minimal damage.”

“Minimal damage? You made my daughter think her Firian was dead?” Mom looked pissed. “You and your magic can rot.”

“I used my illusions because I didn’t want to kill my niece either, so hate me if you like, Emily, but it could have been much worse. There was only one Piers said he wanted to handle on his own.”

“Oh yes,” Ina said. “All your ‘pain’ is an illusion, but your illusions are far worse than being whipped or beaten. I remember how you used to play little tricks on me and Sam for ‘discipline’ so we never knew what was real or not. I would put on my favorite dress to go out and when I left the house it turned into some ugly dress you bought me. You thought that sort of thing was harmless but it was so hard to trust anyone or anything! I want you to swear a blood oath to me that you will never come near me or any of your family again, nor any of their loved ones, nor seek to affect any of our lives from a distance, and that you will never contact us, not even Samuel’s spirit. The honor of the Caruthers family will live on with the blood of wolves and the magic of Wyrd, and have nothing to do with you.” She took a knife from her pocket and handed it to Catherine.

Catherine was resigned now. I almost felt sorry for her as she cut a line in her own skin and made her promise, but my mom looked pissed off at her too, and when I thought about what she did, I wasn’t too sorry. Anyway, I hadn’t lived through the years of hell they had.

“Goodbye, Ina,” Catherine said. “I’m sorry it had to come to this.”

“Me too,” Ina said, with an edge.

Catherine hurried away down the path, as Ina snapped her fingers at me. ”You can speak now, Charlotte. I hope you’ll forgive me for what I did to you at the Haven. They asked me to do it and I couldn’t say no. I needed to get that message to Ignatius.”

You still enjoyed it, I thought.

“You’re stronger now,” Ina said.

“I was pretty strong already,” I said.

“What did you do to Charlotte at the Haven?” Mom asked, looking at us both, but I didn’t really want to talk about it and Ina just smiled coldly. Montague put an arm around me.

“Well, I think Tolstoy said, all happy families are alike, and none of them are wizards,” he said. “Let’s check on our family, Charlotte.”

His hand entwined with mine, and I realized he was right. I was happy to see Mom again, but I didn’t sign up for Ina. I wasn’t sure how long it would take before I really stopped feeling weird around my family, or if I would ever feel close to my grandmother and grandfathers. Deep down I was looking forward to seeing my human Grandma in her glorious normalcy, and I’d been feeling guilty about that. Montague had complicated relationships with his home town and his vampire family too, to say nothing of Harris or Alec and their families.

But the thing that wasn’t complicated was the family I had chosen to love for myself. My guys and me and the future we would build.

Hopefully.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Charlotte

Firian was still unconscious, but that terrible pallor had left his skin.

I went to Firian’s side. and took his hand in mine. Warm. Warm and alive. He stirred a little, groaning. “Is it over? Was I helpful? I got knocked out, didn’t I? Oh, fuck. I’m the green mage.”

I smiled. The green mage was the most useless class in Fortune’s Favor, the one that always got taken out first. “A little bit. But it’s okay. Just rest up.”

“And the others…?” Firian asked.

“We should check on Harris. He went to confront Piers.”

“Yeah, I’m not too worried about Piers,” Montague said. “He’s not going to hurt his own cousin and Harris is good at defensive magic. Let’s make sure Alec really is all right and then we’ll all go down together.”

“Go ahead,” Mom said. “You can relax now, darling. The spirits will cover the territory. Enjoy some time with your men.”

“Mom! Jeez. I’m not here to enjoy myself.”

“That was last night,” Montague said, as I jammed an elbow into his ribs.

Firian was on his feet, brushing leaves off his clothes. He was unusually quiet, but just started walking with us. The wind had turned colder, and he conjured up a slouchy reddish-brown cardigan and stuck one hand in a pocket, and slipped the other around my waist. His fingers splayed protectively across my hip. I looked at him.

I knew what he was thinking. I still remembered plain as day when he lost his magic before, how it was a loss of identity for him, and how he tried his best to cover up his grief because his job was to make me happy. I hated that. I wanted a partner, not a slave.

But we’d have to talk about it later.

“I’m just glad we’re all okay,” I said softly.

“Yeah.”

“I hope so, anyway…”

I felt miles better when we found Alec, in the same place where I saw his wings fall around him. He was back in his human form, tied up and gagged, left on the cold forest floor, struggling to break free of the cords that circled his wrists and ankles. That seemed to be the tactic: tie the guys up so they couldn’t break the illusion.

“Mm!” He stopped struggling when he saw us. His wrists were bleeding from how much he’d been trying to escape.

“Oh no. Poor Alec. This looks painful.” I tore the gag off his mouth.

“What the hell happened? They grabbed me and tied me down, and you had this look on your face like I was dying right before your eyes. Then you left, and they were just guarding over me, doing nothing, until some ghosts showed up and ran them off!”

“Catherine created illusions to make me think you were all dead or horribly injured. I saw your wings get cut off. She hoped I would lose morale and just give up…but I didn’t. Even when I thought it was hopeless, and you were all dead and dying, I kept going.”

Alec grinned. “Oh, our girl is proud of herself. So maybe Harris was right, calling you the Chosen One.”

“I really just…did what I was practicing…,” I said. “But heck yeah, I am proud of myself. I had help, of course, but still.”

“You actually did practice,” Firian said. “That’s how good wizards become sans-pareil. It’s not really being chosen. It’s just practice. Just like Fortune’s Favor. You have to grind, and you did.”

“That is the most ‘familiar’ thing you’ve ever said,” Montague said.

“I’m sorry I was so useless. I tried to charm the familiars, but that went nowhere. Fuck, I was so much more powerful when I was a warlock,” Alec said.

“You just need to practice too,” Firian said. “That’s what Melanie would say, isn’t it?”

“Melanie. Yeah. She would say that.” Alec smiled sadly. “I never told you my familiar’s name.”

“Well, I know these things,” Firian said. “When a witch and warlock love each other very much, their familiars always introduce themselves in the Ethereal world, just so we know.”

“Oh really?” Montague said.

“I never met yours, unfortunately,” Firian said to Montague.

“I know. She died before…”

“You’re the group familiar now,” Alec said.

Firian paused.

“Firian…might have to give up his magic for good,” I said. “If what that other familiar said was true, he’ll die if he doesn’t.”

“Why?” Alec said. “He’s not dying now.”

“Because I might be pregnant.” I meant to tell them when Harris was here, but it was coming out anyway. “And it might be his.”

“I thought that was impossible.”

“So did I.”

“You’re pregnant?” Alec said. “You mean…you were already pregnant before last night?”

“I don’t know for sure! But supposedly, if I have a baby with a familiar, they’ll die.”

“How do we know she was telling the truth either?” Alec asked.

“I’ll look into it. But I think it is true. It’s okay,” Firian said, pre-empting Montague and Alec from saying the things they obviously wanted to say. “If that’s the only bad thing that comes out of this, it’s not really bad at all. I didn’t think I would ever be able to have a kid with Charlotte.”

“You’re wearing a glum cardigan,” I said.

“Cardigans don’t have emotions.”

“Yeah, right. Cardigans have more emotion than any other garment!”

“That’s not true,” Montague said. “Hats have the most emotion.”

“You don’t get to have an opinion on a concept I just made up, wise guy. Firian…” I bit my lip. “I wish I could help, but at least you can admit that you hate this. For my sake, you’ve been trapped as a fox, and trapped as a human, and now…maybe it’ll be permanent. I hate it, so you must hate it more. Don’t pretend you’re okay with it for my sake.”

“What familiar wants to complain to their witch about the things they do to protect them? It’s not in my nature,” Firian said.

“Well, then I demand you complain. How about that?”

He considered this. “I’m losing a big part of my life. For good. I’m happy about potentially having a child, but…I don’t even feel ready for that. I hate that even if it happens, I’m going to see my son or daughter with their familiar and miss…” He paused. “See? Complaining just sucks. And we’ve been through this before. I’m telling you, it’s fine.”

“Maybe you’re safer as a human, Fir. If I ever turn her into a vampire, you won’t die,” Montague said.

“No way, I like food! You’re not turning me into a vampire.” I formed my hands into a cross and put them in his face.

Bemused, Monty grabbed them and pulled them apart, then slipped one finger in his mouth and gave my finger a small bite. My heart quickened at the look in his eyes. I guess in the back of my mind, thought we would find some way to make Montague human again.

He doesn’t want to be human again. Not anymore.

He’s not afraid to outlive us all.

Will he find me someday? Will he become more and more like Rayner until he follows me into my next life?

“You scare me sometimes,” I breathed.

“I know.” He smiled.

Firian ruffled my hair, trying to tell me with a gesture that he was fine, same as always, whatever happened. But it really, really did suck.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Harris

Family. What a stupid concept, I thought, as I approached the cousin who looked so much like me that it was truly annoying. Hurting him would be like attacking my own face ten years down the line.

We met on the edge of campus. Eleanor was perched on my shoulder. Piers’ sugar glider was gripping the sleeve of his coat. My dad said kids teased him about it mercilessly in the early grades of school, where your familiar still pops in regularly to help you with your spells. Worse still, it was a male familiar.

Familiars were wonderful allies that always seemed to perfectly suit their witch and warlocks, which meant there was also a very dangerous side to a familiar. They revealed who you really were to everyone from the day you were born.

Even in our own family, it was a running joke that a promising warlock like Piers had such a little adorable familiar who was not even a girl.

A female hawk was right up there with the best familiars a boy could have. I didn’t even consider how it would look to Piers when I walked up to him with her accompanying me. Since his familiar was out of sight by the time I was born, I had never thought about how, when he was a kid, his own family members no doubt thought he might be wimpy or gay, no doubt expressing this to him with the—ahem—sensitivity of all high-born European wizard families.

He had come into the world fighting to prove himself, I realized. He wasn’t even a Hapsburg, just a Nicolescu, so his family lacked the snotty royal element and was populated by scrappy vampire hunters, while his mother’s family was known mainly for turning out a hero in an 18th century wizard battle in Ireland.

Meanwhile, I was always expected to do great things.

Now Piers was on the council. He’d proved himself. But he didn’t look like a man who was satisfied. Daisy couldn’t stand him, said he talked too much, and the professors he brought into Merlin College were generally more loyal to him than talented.

He seemed pretty alone in the world.

I always felt like, in the end, Piers was family. He seemed to have at least a scrap of decency. I didn’t think he would be that much of a danger. Catherine was more aggressive. I thought I’d be fine taking on Piers by myself.

But there was something on his eyes that made me think, I made a mistake coming here alone. Sometimes decent people were pretty dangerous when life knocked them around.

“Good evening, cousin,” he said.

“What are we, prepping for a duel?” I said. “Why do you always talk like you’re a hundred years old?”

“Maybe because I’m on the council and I present myself in the language of gentlemen.” Piers shrugged. “Maybe I am prepping for a duel. Harris, you know I can’t just give up Merlin College to you. I wanted this job, and if I lose this spot, it’ll mark me. I just can’t let that happen. But you have no intention of backing down either, do you?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve been working too hard to give up.”

“The family is so disappointed in you,” Piers said. “I guess they really thought you had potential. But that’s how these things go. High hopes, squandered. Well, I don’t really see any point in talking it over. We know where we all stand.”

“Yep.” I took off my jacket and rolled up my sleeves. Then I lifted my wand, prepping for a good old-fashioned warlock brawl, like the kind I got into now and then around seventh or eighth grade, before we decided fights were just stupid.

Piers, meanwhile, held up a fragile glass orb. I recognized the orb, or at least, my family had an orb like it in the treasure room. It was for saving and containing power. Tupperware for wizards, from a time when even glass was precious. In French he said, “You, deemed unworthy by your own blood, are thus commanded. Your magic is now mine.”

He thrust the orb toward me.

If I ever wondered how Piers got on the council, the confidence with which he spoke the spell told me. I threw up defenses.

Too slow.

The spell hit me like a bolt of lightning. I threw out a counter spell, hardly having time to think about it. My reflexes just told me not to go down without at least one shot. I hit Piers in the leg, which was where I wanted to hit him, and then his spell really hit me. I was knocked back, barely keeping my footing. Eleanor had flown to a nearby tree. I barely heard her call my name through the rushing sound in my ears.

A wave of sickness swept over me and I swayed. I had never felt anything like this before. It wasn’t like nausea or fever or nerve pain, but it was a little like all of those…draining the life out of me, or so it seemed.

“My parents…gave you that orb to use on me, didn’t they?”

“You know the Hapsburg treasures,” he said. “So do you know what it does?”

“It steals my power.”

“Yes. Your parents felt that you are using your magic in a manner that is disgraceful to your ancestors, so they decided to take it away. I’m sorry, cousin, I can only imagine how embarrassing this is for you.” He slowly twirled the glass in his hand.

“The power of my own family turned against me.” I laughed dryly. I felt so weak. After all these years of practicing magic, being at the top of my class, and some obscure artifact from the vault where I used to find solitude to practice—it could waste all those years of work in a moment. “Whatever makes you feel like a big shot, Piers.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You have my magic. Growing up, I thought that was the most important thing. Becoming the best warlock out there, advancing through the ranks, getting the acclaim of older warlocks, impressing the family…”

“And I suppose now you’re going to tell me that you’d rather have your amazing friendship with a bunch of shady characters sharing your equally shady, stupid girlfriend.”

“You don’t get it at all. Then again, judging by the fact that you look unhappy even though you’ve won, maybe you do get it.“

“Maybe it’s better if I don’t just steal your magic, but wipe you off the face of the earth,” Piers said. “These mountain ridges are a good place to have an accident.”

He tried to take a step closer to me, but then he winced. I’d gotten in a better hit than he realized when he was standing still. He resorted to magic instead. When I saw his wand spark, I threw up my hands, a feeble defense, and spoke the words of a defensive spell. My magic was like an engine struggling to start. I felt something, but it didn’t really take.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

All my life, I’d been good at defensive magic. Between my reputation and my own power, I was untouchable. I wasn’t afraid of anyone.

Now, I had nothing.

If he wanted to kill me, it was going to happen. Either this spell would blast me into next year, or he’d hold back. Maybe he’d do something really cruel like throw me down to the rocks and break so many bones that I’d never walk again.

Eleanor swept down from the tree to intercept the spell.

“Eleanor, fucking—no! No!”

She turned human just in time to take the full brunt of the blast. When it hit, it threw her back. Her body, tall and willowy, seemed very fragile in the face of the spell. That alone must have hurt her, but it was easy to see what happened next. Her feet staggered to the edge until they met nothing but air.

“Eleanor, fly!” I cried.

She met my eyes and smiled sadly before she fell. At the same time, I heard a bunch of shady characters calling my name.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Harris

Eleanor did turn into a hawk before she died. A hawk with a broken wing.

I found her on the rocks, her eyes opening to slits to meet my eyes one last time, to say wordlessly that I didn’t need her anymore and dying for me was just part of her job.

Then she faded away as I held her, vanishing to Etherium.

Her life was over, just like that. I thought she’d be with me forever. She protected me, but as I became skilled at protecting myself, it was rare that she even appeared at all. My strength protected her. And it made her unnecessary.

Maybe she wished she had more purpose.

While I was down here with her, my friends had shown up to battle.

“Try and get that orb!” I had told them as I was already starting to scramble down the steep rocks.

“Do you need me to Edward you down there?” Montague said.

“Fuck no, just get him. I blasted his leg so he’s slow. Still, I don’t care about him, just the orb.”

So now I was standing here still holding the imaginary weight of Eleanor in my hands. At the same time, my friends were scuffling with Piers. I glanced up to see Piers knock Charlotte to the edge of the rocks. I waited, holding my breathe, ready to catch her if she fell.

But as soon as he got in one hit, Montague grabbed him and tugged him away from her. Piers shot a fireball at the crotch of his pants.

“Hey, that is not cool, Piers!” Montague yelled.

“Your vampire balls heal fast, don’t worry,” Alec said.

“Ungh!” Charlotte turned herself into a wolf so she was back on her feet in seconds, and knocked Piers down.

Piers was good, but I was willing to bet the four of them together were better.

Even without me.

My magic had been sucked out of me. I might have been able to sputter out a kindergarten spell. Nothing more. Without my protective wards, my friends were definitely more vulnerable to some of Piers’ attacks, but they worked together well enough that they were able to keep him busy, if not take him out.

As they were fighting, something changed in the very forest, all around us.

It was like a partial eclipse. The lighting shifted. The feeling shifted. At first, I didn’t know what it was. Charlotte turned back into a girl and snatched up her wand. “It’s glowing…”

“What is this?” Piers said.

Charlotte waved her wand. “Let your fingers unwind, from your hand to mine, give me the glass, and I won’t hurt your ass.”

“What did I tell you about rhyming spells?” I shouted.

She leaned over and stuck out her tongue at me. “I’ve got the orb!” Charlotte called down to me. “Harris…what happened? Why are you down here?”

I didn’t know what to say. I hated to even talk about Eleanor’s death. I didn’t share those things with Charlotte or anyone else. My girl just fought her way through her enemies and she was feeling good, and I wasn’t going to burst her bubble.

So I just said my usual shit. “Better be careful showing off that tongue of yours or I’ll just get ideas.”

“We’ve got Piers pinned down,” Montague said. “Do we have a plan with him? Can I taste him…?”

I could hear Piers struggling to speak through a hand over his mouth.

“Sure, Monty, go ahead,” I said. It would serve Piers right to keep thinking about vampires for the rest of his life.

“Wait!” Piers growled. “Enough! You’ve won. Did you feel that? This is a Wyrd realm now.”

“I felt it,” Firian said.

I clamored up the rocks. I was still so weak from the spell that I was sweating and dizzy by the time I got there. I fought with everything inside me not to show that weakness. “We won,” I repeated. “So what then?”

“So, I’ll leave,” Piers said. “I know when I’m beaten. The faeries hold this territory now, fair and square. If we want it, we’ll take it back, but not today.”

“Let him go,” I told Monty.

“Shit. Fine.” Montague hauled Piers to his feet. “You’d better run because I’m hungry.”

Piers and his familiar looked at each other, and then Piers vanished. His familiar protected him like any familiar would, whisking him to Etherium, where he could make his way back to the council in disgrace.

“My wand is glowing. I can feel it…,” Charlotte said.

“We won,” Alec said. “We did everything we set out to do.”

Charlotte bit her lip. “Yeah.”

“It’s time to make a life here,” Alec said.

“We lost…people,” Charlotte said. “I guess it just feels…I don’t know. I mean, I am happy. It’s better to win than to suffer in vain.”

“I know what’s wrong,” I said.

“Oh you do, do you?”

“You like the fight, Chosen One. You don’t know what to do with yourself now that it’s over.”

“I don’t like fighting…”

“You don’t like killing,” I said. “Fighting? I beg to differ.” I walked up to her and took her chin in my hand, a little roughly. “Don’t worry about that.”

I noticed that Firian kept looking at me funny, and the feelings I was trying to shove away just…refused to be shoved.

“I need to tell you something first,” I said.

“What is it?” Her eyes abruptly filled with concern, and even a little wariness. I hated to upset her. Maybe even more than that, I hated for her to think I was weak. I was giving her—and all of them, really—something I never gave anyone.

“Eleanor… Eleanor died. Protecting me from Piers. The orb you’re holding contains my magic, and it’s another one of the treasures from the family vault. When he took my magic, she…”

“Oh no!” She slid her arms around me and squeezed me, resting her head against my chest. “Oh no…brave Eleanor…”

“I know how you feel,” Alec said.

“Me too,” Montague said. “I think it’s even worse now, with Firian around. Rosa always seemed not-quite-real to me, but she was more real than I thought.”

“Melanie was definitely real,” Alec said.

“Firian! That means you’re the only familiar left…”

“I can tell you this,” Firian said. “They were happy to do it. Maybe it means I don’t really have a mind of my own. I don’t know. I’d be happy if I’d died for Charlotte. I guess that’s it, really. The worst part of being human is thinking I can’t protect her anymore.”

His words chilled me. It was just what I was thinking about Eleanor. Protecting me gave her purpose. I actually felt guilty that I hadn’t needed her in so long. “Why can’t you protect Charlotte now?”

“Firian has to become human,” Charlotte said. “At least, we think so. We’ll research what the spider lady said first, but…it’s possible that I might be pregnant with his baby. And she said that if he’s still a familiar, he’ll die. It doesn’t seem fair. But I guess it would explain why familiars and witches never fall in love, and when they do…”

“Bad things happen,” Montague said. “Like our infamous witch of St. Augustine. I think it might be true. It matches the story of the witch.”

“It’s fine,” Firian said. “It’s fine. I’ll just be a dad. Man, it’s going to take a long time for me to say that without it sounding strange. But maybe my work as a familiar is done. You can protect yourself, and you have these guys to pick up the slack when you screw up.”

“Ah,” I said. “So that’s how it is…”

Charlotte looked annoyed at my smug tone. “Yes, this is how it is.” She stuffed my hand with the orb. “I guess you’ll want this back.”

I held the orb, feeling its power. With the magic sucked out of me and concentrated in this glass, it didn’t feel like mine anymore. It seemed a little misshapen somehow. I wondered if this was how a dog or cat feels when their owner comes home with a strange scent.

Like Piers, my magic had always been my ticket to esteem and riches. It was what my family expected, and I was good at it. I thought it mattered so much to me, but…

Maybe it actually belonged to someone else.

I handed the orb to Firian. “I want you to take it,” I said. “After you turn human, take my magic. Then you can still protect her. You’re the only familiar left now, and…no one is going to use these spells to protect our girl like you would.”

“Harris! What!?” Charlotte cried. “You would just—“

“You don’t want Firian to have magic?” I asked her.

“No, but—“

“You don’t think he’s more deserving of it than me?”

“Okay, I mean, yeah…Firian is more deserving of everything than you.”

“You know what the best part is?” I leaned in closer to her, until I could admire every individual eyelash flicking up toward me as she stared at me with perpetual annoyance.

“No,” she said.

“I’m being very generous and self-sacrificing,” I said. “And you can’t lord it over me anymore that you gave up your magic to save me, because I’m giving mine up now, just to make you smile. So you’re going to owe me. Big time. For the rest of your life. And I won’t let you forget it either.”

“Firian, give it back,” she said.

“I don’t think I will,” Firian said. “Protecting you is my job. I’ll use all the tools at my disposal.”

“But what about protecting me from him?”

“Not my job,” he said. “I’m allowed to be a little selfish now and then. I definitely enjoy the look on your face when you have an asshole in your asshole.”

She covered his mouth with her hand.

“So this is what winning feels like, huh?” she said. “Just as ridiculous as our daily lives.”

“But with more hard work,” Alec said. “If this place is really ours today, that means we have to keep it. We need to find more wizards with Wyrd wands…figure out what to do with them…keep the council off our back…maintain like fifty Victorian buildings…”

“Sounds like barely won at all when you put it that way!”

He shrugged. “You might see me shirtless in a tool belt, Princess.”

“What would the Chosen One be without a fight?” I asked her.

“A girl without a story,” she said. “So I guess we’d better get to work.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Charlotte

We walked to the campus buildings and found that the warlocks had cleared out. Once the faeries staked their claim, I guess Professor Stamos and Pacetti weren’t about to take one for the team. They must evacuated the students too.

“This is now a Wyrd parallel,” Lord Cyrus said. “We hold power here. Well—we and you, I suppose. It should be reasonably safe from intrusion. Of course, I would keep up a strong defense. I will have Queen Morgana’s head chronicler send you a list of all the known human mages in your land who hold a Wyrd wand, and you may contact them.”

“Ooh, a chronicler,” I said. “That sounds fancy. Thank you for your help, Lord Cyrus.”

“Well, our other options were becoming limited,” he said. “Now, I can’t stay. Queen Morgana has promised me one of your human brides.”

“Oh, really? Which one do you have your eye on?”

“The strongest one should be mine.”

Man, I saw the way you were looking at my girl after you saw the other twelve, I thought. “Well, Daisy is already promised to Orson.”

“Oh.” He waved a hand. We’ll see, his narrowed eyes said.

“You’re not her type at all,” I added.

“I have ways of making a lady reconsider her type,” he said.

“We’re having a party tonight, Lord Cyrus,” Ignatius said. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay?”

Ohmigawd, don’t invite the faeries to our party, I thought before reminding my stupid head that fucking Cyrus could read minds.

He glanced at me. Damnit. I’d been through so much and I still care what a stupid faery man thought about me mentally dissing him? I’m allowed to think whatever I want, I thought.

“No, thank you,” he said. “I don’t think a human party will really satisfy my men, but thank you for the offer, Master Blair.”

His men, a crew of gods—I mean the ancient, weird kind with their own problems—nodded to us and then Lord Cyrus opened a portal and they all vanished into it.

“What a bloody cunt,” Grandfather Malcolm said.

I half expected Mom to yell at him for language but then I remembered she was not a normal mom, and she was actually talking to Ina in the background, discussing the alcohol stash in Stuart’s cave.

Ignatius walked up to me. He had more white in his hair than I remembered noticing before, like Stuart’s death had aged him a few more years just in the last night. I’m sure for Ignatius, this would always be a very bittersweet victory. I had gathered that a small pack of familiars had run him out into the woods and kept him busy with a battle and chase, so he hadn’t seen any of the action, and I’m sure he would remember burying Stuart more than anything else. He had Ina back, but she was no longer the woman he loved.

“Thank you, Charlotte,” he said. “And all of you. Please, take a break now. Igor is setting up an channel for the spirits you brought from the Haven to anchor here, at least the ones who weren’t able to move on after today’s battle. We should be well protected.”

“Where is Professor McGuinness anyway?” I asked.

“You know, those old necromancers never get enough exercise,” he said. “He was having trouble with the hiking trails being so steep. A little rheumatism in the knees. We left him sitting on a rock somewhere.”

“Is he still there!?”

“Oh no, I mean—he’s in my old office working on the spell now, just the battle got away from him. Don’t bring it up. He’s embarrassed.”

“Are you okay, Master Blair?” I asked.

He glanced at Ina. He knew what I meant. “I love her,” he said, a little sadly. “My broken girl, but she doesn’t belong to anyone but me. She’s mine. It’ll be all right. This is the first time she’s been free since she was young, and time will heal. Are you all right having her around? She told me what she did. I don’t think she fully comprehends how much she might have hurt you.”

“I’m okay,” I said. “If you love her, that’s enough for me.”

Mom came up to us and rubbed my back. “Charlotte, we’re going to go release your father and the rest of the family from ‘the fortress’,” she said. “We should be back by about one. Right? One? How long did it take to get here?” She yelled back toward my grandfathers.

“Not long, the way Claude drives,” Rhys said.

“In the morning?” I asked.

“What other ‘one’ is there? The night will have hardly begun. Darling! Do you not have parties?” She saw the look on my face. “You’re twenty-two, in college, with four boyfriends, and you don’t have parties?”

“We have parties,” Montague said, swooping in to rescue me. “One time I stole my uncle’s boat and we fucking trashed it, didn’t we? He was so pissed off, we had to spend the next day cleaning it up while hungover.”

Mom laughed. “Oh, all right, well, I’m glad you didn’t just study! You had me worried there for a minute thinking my own daughter was a nerd!”

“I know you were young in the eighties, but nerds are cool now, Mom,” I said, bristling.

I tried to scurry away from her only to bump into Grandfather’s Malcolm’s hand, giving me a little smack on the shoulder. “‘Ey, you don’t mind if we…” He pretended to snort up one nostril.

“What the fuck,” Alec murmured as I turned crimson with horror and then Malcolm cracked up laughing.

“I’m just teasing you. We’ve been clean since ’92. Don’t lie to your mum, all right?” He winked.

I reeled away. “Holy shit. My grandparents are making jokes about snorting coke.”

“They’re rock stars,” Harris said. “What did you think they were going to be like?”

“I don’t know, old, boring rock stars? But in fact, I am the one who’s boring! The old people are lugging wine casks onto the square and we, the youths, are boring! Montague just had to lie about how exciting we are!”

“We could fix that,” Alec said. “Have we ever seen you drunk, Princess?”

“I might be pregnant!”

“Oh, yeah. That’s right. So…you are going to have to party completely sober tonight.”

“We’re stealing a car!” Mom announced, popping open the door of one of the old black cars in the lot that was routinely used for the warlocks to venture into the human world.

“I’m not sure a person should party with their parents and grandparents anyway,” Firian said. “It disrupts the natural order of the universe.”

“That’s how wizard parties are,” Montague said. “We had a few ‘teen’ parties in St. Augustine but usually we had clan parties instead.”

“It’s true,” Harris said. “How can you make connections if you don’t party with the older people?”

“Well, I’m just tired and I don’t need to make connections, but I don’t want my mom to think I’m uncool.”

“What if your mom already thinks you’re uncool?” Firian asked. “What if it’s already too late and none of your efforts matter? What if you’re a nerd, Charlotte? Then what would you do?”

I sighed. “Aw.”

“You’re always cool to us,” Alec said, tugging on my ponytail. “I think you should just relax.”

“You know what would be awesome? Just…watching a movie and having some dinner. Maybe we can raid the kitchen and see if there’s anything but porridge in there. I have this weird craving for a big, thick…” I slipped an arm around Alec. “Pickle.”

“Definitely pregnant,” he said.

“As you wish,” said Montague, raising his brows.

So, I got to celebrate in the best way possible. The Princess Bride, which was still in the player at the theater (ooh, I would bet money one of those snobs from the film club watched it), a big roast beef and Swiss sandwich, a pickle, Cheerwine that Firian conjured, but hey, no diabetes…and my clan. My pack. My family. Whatever I called them, I couldn’t blame Ignatius for feeling like, whatever happened to Ina, she just didn’t belong to anyone else.

They’re mine.

And I’m theirs.

Chapter Forty

Charlotte

Weeks passed by super fast. We were all busy overhauling the campus, settling into the houses. My whole family moved in, and I thought this could be a nightmare, but actually it turned out to be pretty nice. The grounds were big enough that the generations had their own space.

My parents took over the kitchen. It turns out my dad, who loved to grill, also loved using one of those huge restaurant-size skillets. Ignatius settled easily into managing the whole place and planning out what the future of Merlin College would be—no longer a college in the traditional sense, but a community and school for all ages. Richard and Adia claimed the jobs of financial manager and secretary. Richard actually started trying to hunt down and demand our inheritance from Samuel Caruthers.

“I guess Dick grew some balls since you were our manager!” Grandfather Malcolm cackled.

Poor Richard.

Harris took over the library and contacting the other Wyrd wizards around the world. Some of them only spoke French or even some obscure tribal language so he had to do his best to translate the message and summon them here. We got notes from people who were heading our way from all over the world. Many of them wouldn’t get on airplanes and would take months to get here.

I was sort of amazed that the councils left us alone.

“At this point, there isn’t nearly as much benefit to them to battle to have this place back,” Harris said. “They would probably rather all the wizards come to this one spot instead of trying to establish multiple Wyrd territories. They’re going to want to minimize territory loss.”

“Huh. Okay.”

“It’s like in Civilization,” Firian said.

“How do you know about Civilization? I haven’t played that since middle school!”

“Oh, well, when you weren’t playing it anymore and got a new computer, your dad gave it to me because he felt bad I didn’t have any friends,” Firian said. “Anyway, wizards are sort of like Civilization. When your enemies steal one of your cities and pour all their units back into the city and build a wall, as long as it’s just one city, often it’s easier to just go, ehhh. Basically we’re like that one aggravating group of Zulu who just stole Vladivostok.”

“Ohh, okay, I get it!” I gasped. “We’re not playing Fortune’s Favor anymore, we’re a city management sim now!”

“God, no wonder I can never explain anything to you,” Harris said. “I have no idea what you two are talking about.”

The faeries came to check in on us often, in a way that felt slightly oppressive, and I wasn’t especially reassured when they mentioned that Lord Cyrus was courting Daisy and they weren’t sure who Orson was (“oh, maybe he’s that large man I’ve seen around”, one of them said), but they had to give permission to every Wyrd wizard to become a part of their world. They never turned anyone away, and a lot of the trust we were building was thanks to Professor McGuinness. The faeries related to his more intellectual manner and he was good at talking to them.

We all had a place in this new life. And I was definitely pregnant. I never expected to be having a baby at twenty-two, because in my human life no one I knew had been thinking about kids at all, but my mom was the same age when she got pregnant with me. I don’t think anything could have bonded me to the other women in my family more quickly. My mom and grandmother made sure I had everything I needed and every question answered. Although they did argue about literally everything from how to deal with babies who won’t sleep to decor.

“A wolf themed nursery would be cute!” Grandmother said.

“Mum, where is she going to find wolf stuff for a nursery? A fox theme would be better.”

“I can make wolf stuff.”

“You’re not going to make nursery stuff. We’ll get it on Amazon.”

“Oh yes I will. I’m very crafty. Adia can help, I bet, and your fathers can build a crib.”

“I’m just going to take Charlotte to the mall, then, and buy her a fox nursery.”

“Charlotte, you don’t want the same old nursery as everyone else has, do you?”

“Oh my god, why don’t we just do both?” I cried.

Like that. All the time.

But I also kinda loved it. And the fox and wolf nursery was just right.

Still, there were losses. Familiars and friends who died along the way. Families who would never speak again, who would meet as enemies if they ever saw each other. Alec’s dad cut all ties from shame and quietly broke Alec’s heart. My poor demon sex muffin was also my sensitive artist soul and his dad’s rejection was painful, I knew, even if he saw it coming. The entire council ‘wrote Harris out of the book’, the same fate that befell my grandmother all those years ago. It meant he was shunned—and human.

It was time for Firian to become human too.

We did the research. It was true. Familiars were cursed to die if they had a baby with a witch. That was some serious b.s. but fixing it was a problem we couldn’t tackle right now. He had to renounce his role as my familiar if he wanted to live. He could accept Harris’ magic afterward, but we didn’t know for sure if he would ever be able to be a fox again.

But first? I was getting my fantasy night.

“Pretend it’s your birthday,” Firian said. “I want you to enjoy every minute. I don’t want you to worry about a thing. Just go to your room…” He trailed a hand down my neck and kept going down to the button of my shirt. “…make yourself comfortable…and wait.”

The attic bedroom in our old dorm was now my bedroom. The guys all had their own rooms. Not that I slept alone much, but it was my own space, with all my shit in it. Tonight, I was waiting for Firian. He told me to wait there. When I walked into the room it was lit by candles.

I smoothed the bedspread and put away a few books and some laundry. Despite all that, in the soft light, the attic was a pretty romantic place, with the creak of the wind and the beauty of the old fireplace mantel. A lot of Alec’s art was still tacked to the wall, eerie creatures and magical symbols, plus some recent portraits of the people in my life.

I sat on the bed, the springs creaking a little. We hadn’t replaced any furniture and the beds were old. Everything was old. And if I concentrated, I sensed spirits in the air. That used to freak me out at first when I was trying to get in the mood, but nowadays I didn’t worry about it. After a while, you just couldn’t care about voyeuristic ghosts. Like, that’s their problem.

As I was listening toward the door, the window blew open. Rose petals drifted in on a stiff wind and swirled around.

Somewhere, the music of a bamboo flute played a sparse, melancholy tune as the wind swirled around me, tugging at my clothes, and a fox spirit appeared on the wide old wooden sill. First, I saw just the fox, and then he transformed into a man, wearing a kimono with his hands folded in the sleeves, with a tail swishing behind him and fox ears. “Oi, onna. Omae…ja nai?”

“Ahhh,” I whispered. “Mind. Blown.”

“Uso da.” He flew toward me and grabbed me.

“You know Japanese?”

“Nah. Not really. I’m just saying things I’ve heard anime people say, in a cold and dominating voice. Yurusenai…iku ze!”

“Oh yeah. This is better than I expected. You look so hot.”

“Amai na…Chararotte-chan…” He whispered toward me and waved his hand over me.

His hand-wave replaced my clothes with very skimpy armor. I mean, very skimpy. Like a variant of slave Leia in blue and gold. “I recognize this….hey, I’m not your elf slut!”

“If it’s your birthday…it’s my birthday too.” He slid a hand down my naked skin. I’m not sure how an illusion could make me feel so very naked when I had been wearing a t-shirt, but it did.

“Firian…!”

“Hahaha…” He lifted my t-shirt and panties up dangling from one finger.

“How did you do that?”

“One last magic trick. Poor little elf. You should never have come to this cottage, or to these woods. They belong to me and I have protected them for these past centuries.” He gave me a sideways look and licked the corner of his lips. “I do like the taste of elf…”

He looked really sexy and magical, the candle light casting weird shadows on his pale skin, making his golden eyes gleam, and it really was more convincing than I expected. His furry ears tipped forward a little as he lifted my elf-girl loincloth and slid a hand over my mound, no doubt feeling my wetness even through the fabric.

“Onegai…,” I breathed. “Please” was about it for my anime Japanese, at least, words appropriate for this moment, but I thought he would appreciate one good hentai moan.

“Oh, I’m afraid there is no mercy for you here… I have lived alone here for hundreds of years. Waiting. Watching. For a woman worthy of my affections…”

Suddenly a demonic form flew to the window. Alec appeared in his full glory and crouched on the sill. “I have been tracking the elf to take to my bed tonight, yokai,” he growled.

“Too late, incubus,” Firian said. “She’s mine.”

“We’ll see what my tentacles have to say about that.” Alec flung out a hand, tossing a long colorful cloth inside that snaked around one of my feet and tugged me toward him. Firian snapped his fingers and a gold chain appeared at my other foot, binding me to the bed post, so now my legs were spread between them.

“That’s all you could do for tentacles?” Firian hissed. “It looks like one of those woven belts from Guatemala. You told me incubi could do some illusion work.”

“I’m having trouble concentrating because Charlotte looks so fucking hot in the elf outfit. Whatever. I have a natural tentacle,” he said, swishing his tail.

“Oh god,” I panted. “Yeah you do. I mean—no, please, I’m afraid!”

“I smell your fear…and your desire,” Alec said.

“You’re forbidden from entering my cottage,” Firian said, folding his arms again.

“Try and stop me.” Alec bared his teeth and leapt toward Firian.

“Easy. You’re a mere brute and I have dealt with many demons in my centuries of existence, ha ha ha!” He spread his kimono sleeves and summoned some little blue flames, sending them toward Alec.

Alec dodged them and slipped around me, curling his tail around my leg. “You will feed my magic, little elf…” His eyes flashed like red flames at me, and he seemed so big and impressive I was almost intimidated. He was wearing kind of a loincloth himself, which was probably just an illusion, and he tore it off to press the head of his huge cock into my belly.

“Ooh…” I leaned away. “Yokai-sama, please, protect me from this demon!”

“Hmm…” He smoothed his chin with two fingers, that still had slightly fox-like claws, and his tail twitched. He snapped his fingers and Alec froze in place. Or pretended to. His tail was still wrapped around me.

“What can I expect in exchange?” Firian purred, stepping up to me and leaning down until we were almost nose to nose. “What could an elf give me that I would want?”

“A kiss?”

“A child,” he countered. “I want…the two of us…to have a child.” For a minute, his lips twitched in a real smile. “But I’ll take the kiss too.”

Our lips met, softly.

“If that is what you demand to save me from the demon…”

At that moment, Montague kicked down the door. Which honestly made me almost trip while my feet were tied up, because I truly didn’t expect anyone to kick the door off its damn hinges, and the way he looked at the slab of wood hitting the rug, I’m not sure he did either.

“Oh shit,” he whispered. “I’m strong.”

“I left the door open a crack!” Firian said. “What kind of a kick was that?”

I giggled a little and Firian grabbed my chin. “Shut up, elf, this is serious! This is a vampire. What manner of creature are you to attract such troublesome beings to my doorstep? What trouble. I was just going to eat this bowl of ramen in peace.” He conjured up a bowl of steaming noodles.

“Don’t let me stop you,” Montague said. “You can eat that ramen while I take a good taste of this elf…” He walked over to me and licked my neck. “I didn’t know I was into elves in skimpy armor, but you’re pretty cute…”

At this point I was having a very hard time not laughing my ass off, as Harris stepped in the door with a crossbow pointed at Montague, who was slipping a hand down my loincloth and froze mid-touch.

“Ah, good. Maybe I don’t have to do anything after all,” Firian said, eating the noodles. “Looks like the vampire hunter I hired got here faster than I expected.”

“Hands off the elf,” Harris said. “But you know what I demand in payment, fox.”

“A turn? Fine by me. As long as I get to have her first.”

There was a scratching sound outside the window. “What is that?” I tried to pull Montague’s hand out of its rather delicious but embarrassing location.

A black fluttering shape rose up into the window. I realized it was a cloak on a hanger with an excellent colored pencil rendering of Piers’ face blown up and stuck to the top.

“Yare yare,” Firian sighed, with the perfect long-suffering tone of an anime boy pretending not to care. He really must have watched a lot of Youtube or something when I was going to stupid high school. “Someone from the magical council is here to rescue the elf. How annoying.”

“I say we have a truce,” Montague said. “This elf girl looks pretty tough to me. I think we could all battle off the wizard and share her instead.”

“Oh, fine.” Firian waved his hand. “I release you, incubus.” Alec started moving again. Harris shot the Piers face out of the window while Firian shot off a few more blue lights, but no one seemed very interested in staging a battle compared to figuring out how to share their ‘elf girl’.

“Ooh, be gentle, I’m so scared,” I said, covering my mouth with both hands.

“How long do we have to keep this up?” Harris asked, tossing the crossbow on the bed. “You’re about to laugh.” He pressed a finger to my chest.

“Keep what up?” Alec said. “I’m not really pretending…” He slid a hand around my waist, Montague and Alec now flanking me on both sides and letting their hands roam freely over me.

Firian shrugged. “I’m getting into it,” he said. “Anyway, this yokai needs to make sure the lost elf is properly ravished before she’s released.”

“Did you guys practice this?” I asked.

“Well, I thought we should have a proper script,” Montague said. “But everyone else preferred improv night.”

“Monty, no one cares about the script,” Alec said.

“You drew a really good Piers face, though.” I said.

“Yeah, just so Harris could shoot it.”

“I’ve been working on my aim,” Harris said. “My cousin will be back someday, I’m sure, and he’s probably heard that I gave up my magic, but…some of the best vampire hunters weren’t warlocks. They just got their hands on magical weapons and made good use of them.”

“Are you sure you really want to give me your magic?” Firian arched a brow. “Now that you’ve had a few weeks to think about it? It is yours. And you can hold that gift over Charlotte’s head, but you’re not holding it over mine. Once you give it to me…”

“You’ll use it to defend her to death,” Harris said. “No, Firian. I want you to have it. My magic was part of my family legacy, and in some way, I’d rather figure out how to be tough in some way they can never take credit for. When I see them again, I want them to know I earned my power.”

While they were talking Alec started licking my ear and then quietly snaked a tail up across my cleft and then, deeper. “They can talk,” he whispered. “I’m going to take what I need…”

“Ooohh…” I moaned incriminatingly as Alec’s tail and his very tasty magic started to work on me like a drug and all I could think about was how I wanted more of him.

Naturally, this stirred everyone to get a little competitive.

“Hey.” Firian snapped his chopsticks at Alec’s tail. “I said I was going first.”

“What if we all went first?” Montague asked, still stroking me between the legs in an almost idle way that made me writhe, giving everyone a show of heaving elf boob armor.

“You’re in for it now, Chosen One,” Harris said, blue eyes merciless.

“She likes the idea, judging by how wet she just got.” Montague took his hand away and licked his fingers. “You’re lucky. I don’t need to fuck you yet, I just want to taste blood.”

“Not when Charlotte’s pregnant,” Alec said. “You can taste mine, Monty. As long as you’re not the only one sucking on me.” He gave me a dangerous look.

“I think you’ll…have to untie me,” I said.

Firian broke the bonds and then he drew me over toward the bed.

This really could have turned into a pretty hardcore situation and I’m not gonna lie, we fucked those sheets up.

But what I felt was the complete love and trust and shared laughter between four best friends and me. We met in our first year of college and we had all become different people since then, but it had brought us closer.

Where did I end and where did they begin?

My body was theirs. My heart was theirs. The hands and mouths that caressed me all blurred and I succumbed to them gladly. I shut my eyes as I lost myself to their rhythms; I gave them everything I could. When they weren’t inside me I reached them, stroking them until my arms ached, licking and sucking until they were calling my name.

Because they were mine too. They might argue, but when it came down to it, these boys knew how to share. Man, did they ever.

I was passed from one to the next, meeting the raw lust in Alec’s reddish eyes and the devotion in Firian’s gold ones, the shell of ice that surrounded Harris’ heart and mind and reflected in his cold eyes, and the warm brown charm undercut with hunger in Montague.

Each gave me love in their own way, and it was always exactly what I needed. They each claimed me in turn, filling me, rough and tender.

My boys. I could have lost them, but they were here with me still. We had changed, and we would continue to change, in ways that hurt and ways that were good, but we would always be here for each other.

My family.

41

Epilogue

Ten Years Later

Charlotte

“Char! What are you doing on a ladder? Let me help you with that,” Alec called, as the doors busted open and he walked in with the Christmas tree.

“Oh, please. I know my limits.” I tapped another nail into the wall. “I’m barely past the first trimester and I think I know how to stand on a ladder.”

“Mommy, we got the biggest tree!” Cassandra announced. “We had to go to three different tree lots.”

“We went all the way to Asheville,” Viktor said. “We went to a Christmas market.”

“What? Why? No wonder you got back so late.”

“Shh.” Montague covered his mouth.

“Surprises? For me?” I smiled as I came down the ladder, where Alec was already spotting me. When I got to the third step he picked me up and put me down.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You don’t like this?” His arms were still around my waist.

“Well…I didn’t say that.”

Alec looked at Anna, sleeping in her stroller with her rabbit familiar snuggled in her arms.

“She’s been sleeping all day,” I warned him. “I hope y’all saved some energy. I’m tired, but we’d better decorate the tree. The faeries always get here whenever they feel like it and it might be the crack of dawn.”

Viktor came up to me and slowly unfolded his hands to show me a small animal skull. “Look what Uncle Monty bought me.”

“Oh wow, what is it?”

“The lady said it’s a rat snake just like Dorothy.”

“How…does Dorothy feel about that?”

“She loves it. Where’s Daddy? I want to show him too.”

“Probably in the library. Go tell him the tree is here, okay?”

Cassandra was twirling around the ballroom floor with a spangled shawl.

“Christmas came early,” Alec said. “They were bouncing off the car doors.”

“One early present each seems fair,” I said. “They don’t get to see the human world very often, anyway.” My children were part of the magical world, through and through. They ran around in the forest with their familiars and seemed half like faeries themselves. I could hardly believe Cassandra, my firstborn, was almost ten. She strongly resembled Firian, with his reddish hair and golden eyes, although her familiar was a falcon. Tristan kept his human form a lot, just like Firian.

When I was heading into middle school I was going through a Pokemon obsession, hunched over my Gameboy Color. (Yeah, that was totally out of date, but it was one of Dad’s ways of saving money.) Cassandra had grown up riding in the woods on the back of a wolf (hey, some kids got horseback riding lessons, my kids rode their great-grandfathers, and yeah it does sound weird when I say it aloud), learning how to make potions from flowers, and sewing her own protection spells into cloaks. She seemed very childish in some ways and much wiser than her years in others.

Viktor came two years later. He was Harris’ son, quiet and drawn to anything to do with skulls and bones and death, so I expected he might be another necromancer in the family, and he also enjoyed hunting. The circle of life didn’t faze that kid at all. It would have been a little creepy except he had so much respect for it. Even though he was Harris’ son, he was very close to Montague. He’d already told me he was going to be a vampire when he grew up, but kids had some weird ideas.

Or maybe he really would become a vampire. I don’t know. You had to get used to some strange possibilities when you lived the magical life. Fares wyrd as she must, I told myself with a deep breath, whenever my own kids freaked me out.

A year and a half after Viktor, Anna came along. Alec and I had been putting off a kid. Alec was nervous about having a kid who inherited the incubus sex drive, and no wonder, because Anna was a knockout baby. I mean, no one would ever say a baby was hot, because ew, but whenever I took her to the human world, they do say things like “She’s going to be a heartbreaker some day, isn’t she?”

Yikes.

But I couldn’t be too upset because she was such a cute baby. She was breaking my heart already. She was born with a head of dark curls and eyes that were almost purple, and she slept through the night from day one, which is pretty charming on its own.

But oh damn, you better believe the first thing I did when she was born was research spells to tamp down a succubus’ sex drive for at least the next eighteen years…

After Anna was born, all the parents and grandparents started asking me if I was done, so I kept going, just to be contrary. (Actually, I just kinda liked the idea of having a big family.) Anyway, I felt I had a certain responsibility to populate our Wyrd town. Just like the other realms, once you were accepted into Wyrd, all your children were automatically Wyrd witches and warlocks. Merlin was full of love connections between our community of Wyrd wizards, and there was already talk of reclaiming territory in Ireland, which was why the faeries were sending envoys to our Solstice/Christmas ball.

Firian came in from the cold, and Harris and Viktor a moment later, while Montague and Alec were making sure the tree was straight. It was a nine foot monster, and taller in the study old tree stand, filling the grand Victorian ceiling of the ballroom. I already had generations of ornaments set out on a table nearby, and two ladders so we could cover the top.

“Tomorrow’s going to be crazy,” I said, a little tired at the thought. “The faeries are so different from us. We all get along, and I’m glad, but…you know?”

“They’ve gotten better since they married those human girls,” Alec said.

“Oh, I imagine even Daisy by herself was quite the cultural bomb dropped in the faery kingdom,” Harris said.

“I am excited to see her of course,” I said. “We’ve got some shows to binge.” I knew she was going to love ‘Trailer Trash to Trailer Splash’, where a fabulous southern decorating team buys old Airstream trailers and decorates them in vintage style to flip, plus there was that new show Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir were hosting. I only watched an episode and saved the rest for a Daisy visit.

Most of the ornaments had been here in the storage attic at Merlin College when we took over, but one of the boxes of ornaments was from my own childhood. Every year, I teared up when I saw the ones from Grandma and Grandpa, from the nativity scene to the angel they thought looked like me, and Pikachu in a Santa hat. I could still hear my Grandpa saying proudly, “That’s the Pokey-man, right there, isn’t it? I saw that and I thought of you.”

Then there was the ornaments I made out of pasta in elementary school, and the one given to me by my very sweet 5th grade teacher who was also our neighbor over on Skyview Road of an owl reading a book. Just memories, you know?

Memories of the time when it was just me and Dad in ‘the real world’.

Now I was watching my own kids and their own version of reality, watching Montague send ornaments flying up to the high branches with a spell. Why did I even bother with ladders? It was much easier just to climb a few steps than try to use a spell. Showoff.

“When do I get a wand?” Cassandra asked.

“That’s too strong for you now,” Tristan said. He was in his human form, a polite but opinionated boy whom we treated like another son when he let us get away with it. “You get a wand in ten years.”

“Ella Starr has a wand and she’s only twelve! I saw it in my magazine.”

“Some kind of celebrity witch does not count,” Harris said. “When we were kids, that wasn’t even allowed, but they’re training them younger nowadays.”

“Why don’t I get to train younger?”

“Because it’s dangerous,” Alec said. “And we’d rather protect you than teach you to fight other witches.”

“Uggh. You’re always protecting, protecting, protecting.”

I suppressed a small laugh. Firian came up to me and crossed his arms on a step of the ladder. He wiped a tear off my cheek.

I shook my head. “Shit. I’m not crying. I just can’t believe it’s been ten years already. I’m still afraid the shock killed Grandma.” She lived just long enough to see Cassandra born. She was so in love with my adorable firstborn, but we basically had to use magic to brainwash her into understanding the situation, which I felt awful about.

He smiled. “I think trans fats killed Grandma. You gotta let a good southern woman die happy. She did. She missed your Grandpa, right? She was probably hanging on because she was worried about your dad, and when she saw that he wasn’t alone, she could go.”

“That’s probably true. I know they’re still close, one way or another.”

“Do you miss the simpler times?” he asked.

I looked at him. “Well…no. When I think about it now, I can’t believe you weren’t with me.”

“And yet, how awkward if I was, considering the adult nature of our relationship later…”

“But I love the childhood friends to lovers trope!”

“It usually involves a years-long separation,” he said. “Because ten year olds hitting puberty is not romantic. If Tristan starts getting handsy with Cassandra I am sending him away for ten years.”

“Oh god. You’re right. I guess I finally understand why it was forbidden now. Sometimes the rules make sense when you’re older.”

“But not too much sense.” He kissed me.

The French doors opened, and Mom and Dad peered in.

“Need help?” Dad asked.

“There’s already too many of us, Grandpa,” Cassandra said, with the bluntness of a kid.

“Well, then, maybe I should put the inflatable Santa out there.”

“No! Dad, no, not until the faeries are gone. At least. And only in the corner of the grounds, please, you know how the witches got weirded out by your Santa with a guitar…” The wiccans were offended. Not really because of the religious aspects, but because they thought my dad was tacky, which was not untrue.

He dumped a cold six pack on the counter and waved his hand like he didn’t give a fuck. “Okay, I’ll put it up next weekend.”

Firian left me to grab a Guinness before they were gone.

“If anyone’s hungry we have a pot of stew here,” Mom said. She set it down and Viktor immediately announced he was hungry.

Harris took his hand and led him over to get a plate. Dad started putting up ornaments. A few minutes later, my grandfathers showed up with instruments. At this point, it was just a given that we’d have some Christmas carols and witchy songs, plus a few old Wild Eyed Boys hits. Hearing the music, some of our friends came in to listen. Ignatius and Ina were dancing, Professor McGuinness and Professor Adams were talking on the sidelines, our kids were getting hyper running around with other kids…

“We’re not going to get any sleep before the faeries get here!” I hissed to my guys as I hung Santa Pikachu on the tree. “And you know the fae are going to look amazing.”

“We could all slip out and go to bed,” Montague said. “One of your folks would put the kids to bed. Hopefully it won’t be Rhys reading them Hans Christian Andersen again.”

“Oh lord. So many nightmares that year.”

“We really wouldn’t get any sleep if we slipped out and went to bed,” Harris said.

“We never do.” Alec held a sprig of mistletoe over my head. “Just give in.”

I smiled and lifted my face for a kiss times four, and then I asked my mom if she could put the kids to bed.

Oh, endings! They are so hard to write for me. I get sad saying goodbye to one group of characters. As you can tell, I feel like Charlotte and her guys had a lot more to do in getting their new alliance settled, but I know it’s a good life and I think their future battles were more on the diplomatic front. If there is one thing that surprised me here, it was Montague. I originally planned for him to sacrifice his immortality so he would live the same amount of time as the rest of the group, but as I was writing him, he kinda told me in one of those subtle character-to-author things that this wasn’t really the ending he wanted. Harris ended up being the one who gave up something, which was not what I planned either! So the book ended up being even more about accepting that sometimes we outlive the people we love…but not the love. Is that a little too deep for a RH? Well, I have to let the characters be themselves. I am an anime fan after all, so you know a little pathos just HAS to sneak in to my romance now and then. This was my first story like this where the guys were best friends beforehand and I loved how much they cared about each other too.

Thank you reading! I so appreciate the support for this series! Please join my Facebook group and come hang out! And sign up for my mailing list to get a free copy of the Witch Among Warlocks prequel novella, The Wild-Eyed Boys! If you’re curious about Charlotte’s grandmother Sally and her werewolf mates…it’s a fun read!

Now we’re on to a different dynamic. Fae Sworn is the first book of Daisy’s story and I’m excited for it too. Daisy is outrageous on the surface…but she also has a heart under it all, and she needs someone to love her. She is not prepared for it to be these faery men though…how WILL it ever work out? Read the first chapter ahead!

42

“Fae Sworn” Preview!

Daisy

My life has taken a pretty weird turn, I thought, as I stepped into the faery realm with my new husband-to-be at my side.

Orson was a sexy, muscular gruagach from the House of Clover. Gruagach were the faeries that tended the cows, and I had gathered that other faeries looked down on them, but this was okay with me considering I didn’t like the other faeries.

The first thing everyone should know about faeries is that most of them are assholes.

I mean, you’ve heard the stories, right?

They steal babies? They play tricks? They offer you food and next thing you know, a hundred years go by?

It had been centuries since humans had been allowed into this realm, but we’d made this bargain, and I was the crazy witch who had decided to be the spokesperson for humankind. I had agreed to marry a man I didn’t really know at all, and leave behind everything I knew, but then…to say I had some issues with my grandmother and the witch community was an understatement.

Sometimes you just have to jump on a new opportunity when it comes up.

Now I was standing before Queen Morgana of the faeries, trying to look like I wasn’t going to take any shit from her. I was good at that expression. This might be one reason I didn’t have a lot of friends back in the Chicago witch community. My family was wealthy, and I had magic everyone wanted to make use of, and my parents had been murdered when I was a kid. If this sounds like the combination that leads to not trusting other people, and maybe even super-villainry, well, yeah, it does. But I’m a pretty awesome person anyway all things considered. I like having friends as long as they don’t try to fucking use me.

Most people I’ve ever met only want to use me.

“Daisy Pendleton.” A handsome blonde fairy male was standing in front of the queen’s throne, consulting the paper on which I had signed my name and intention to be a part of the faery realm. “That is your name, correct?”

“Yes, I am the one and only Daisy Pendleton.” Gotta lay down the ground rules. “As you can see, I brought myself and twelve more witches to be faery brides, as per the agreement. You have their names there. We expect to be treated well here, and we’ll reward you in return with more power in the magical world.”

I had been escorted to an outdoor throne, within a hall formed of cypress trees. The throne ‘room’ was like a little island, surrounded by pools of water with lily pads and lush aquatic flowers blooming under mangrove and other strange trees. All up and down the line of trees, faery guards with crests on their golden armor and attendants in flowing fabrics were watching the scene.

The faery queen was seated in a throne behind the blonde faery. She wore a long, diaphanous gown over a way-too-thin body, and a veil over her face, so I had no idea what she was thinking. She whispered something to the man.

“Queen Morgana welcomes you to the realm and looks forward to a long and fruitful alliance,” he said.

“Splendid,” I said, sweetly, but not nicely, if you know what I mean. Like, bitch, show me your face if you want some respect.

Look, I had been warned to never trust the faeries. Even as a kid, every witch and warlock was probably told the same stories. They never lied, but they loved to trick you. They were an alien species without much emotion. They lived for centuries and they didn’t respect us very much. Faeries mothers probably told bedtime stories to their kids about how stupid humans were. We were all gathered here for only one reason: we needed each other.

“You and your twelve fellow witches are invited to the capital city,” the faery man continued. His voice had a musical accent that I could have listened to forever. “In La Serenissima, we will give you our best hospitality and throw a grand celebration to celebrate your arrival.”

“That is very kind of you,” I said, warming up just a bit.

I was going to get to party in magical Venice. Sweet.

For centuries, all magical beings had been getting pushed out to the fringes of society. Magical beings needed humans to believe in them. That was where their power came from. Being human, witches and warlocks like me had a slight advantage. Unlike faeries, demons, shapeshifters and the like, we could use our magic in the Fixed Plane (otherwise known as “the real world”). We belonged to the human world. We were just leftovers from a time when every village had a witch or healer or shaman. But there were certain spots in the world where magic was especially strong, where humans still believed magic was real, and in these places, parallel cities existed. These were towns that existed between realms, where witches and warlocks could gather and mingle with truly magical beings.

The parallel of Venice was considered one of the great ‘lost’ cities where humans couldn’t go, because the faeries controlled it and didn’t allow humans in. Now I was going to get to party there. No doubt, that was gonna be tight. Venice without any tourists? Venice run by the faeries? I wondered what the wardrobe situation would be.

“In La Serenissima, the lords of the great faery houses will assess all of you to choose their brides,” the blonde man continued, and I cooled right the fuck back down again. His tone made me wary.

“Oh yes, the other twelve girls do still need their husbands,” I said.

“Lady Pendleton,” he said, so grandly that I almost liked him again. “You will also be under consideration.”

“We already have an agreement that I will marry Lord Orson,” I said. “And I know you keep your promises.”

The faery queen whispered a few sentences to him.

“Yes. We keep our promises. You will wed Lord Orson, but he is a gruagach. A low faery.”

Orson, by the way, was standing in the background this whole time. He seemed to take this treatment with a shrug, like he didn’t really care what the high faeries thought or planned.

“A lord of his kind, but not one of the great houses. A lady as beautiful and talented as yourself cannot be shipped off to some remote faery holding, nor would you enjoy it there, I assure you. You will be married into one of the great houses as well as to Lord Orson. You chose him, but the high lords will choose you.”

Ohhh damn.

I should have seen this coming. I should have known they wouldn’t let me just scurry off with a big handsome faery who seemed pretty normal, and mind my own business.

“Okay. Okay. I get it. Good old faery tricks. You didn’t lie, you just withheld some extremely important information that you intend to let some faery lord pick me out of a lineup and offer me two husbands, and I don’t get any say in it.”

“Queen Morgana is sure you will not find any of these men wanting,” the blonde guy said. “They are all as beautiful as the stars, wealthy enough to give you anything you desire, and strong in battle, magic, or a respected profession.”

“So they’re not pampered snots? Thanks for that, at least, although I will be the judge. And what about Orson?”

“Lord Orson is already accustomed to serving the higher born. He understands the hierarchy of our court, and you soon shall as well.”

“No. This is not what I agreed to. I don’t want a higher born husband. I just want him.” I pointed at Orson, who really could have backed me up. My heart sunk as he just accepted this ridiculous situation.

The golden faery ignored me. “In La Serenissima, we are pleased to have assembled these lords together to teach you and the other brides how to comport yourself like high fae. You will all stay together in the great palace, and have instruction in our music, dances, manners, and ways of pleasure, along with everything else you need to know. We will depart for La Serenissima on the morrow.”

‘On the morrow’. Lord.

“I don’t need to be taught how to be anyone’s bride!” I said.

Still ignoring me, “The faery queen wishes for you and the other girls to dine here at her winter palace tonight.”

I didn’t even know where I was in the faery realm, because I had just strolled in through a portal and ended up here. This was happening so quickly. So we were at the winter palace. Okay. That sounded pretty fancy.

Two can play this game, I thought. I already know how to behave myself, but I also know how to raise hell. If you’re going to fudge all the rules and then ignore me, I’m just not going to act like a good faery bride. I’m going to be a total diva until none of your faery ‘high lords’ can stand me.

“What about magic lessons?” I asked.

“Magic lessons,” he repeated.

“Yes. We’re witches. Magic is our thing, and we joined your realm to gain access to the magic of your realm, so we need to learn how you use it. We need instruction in magic and it behooves you to give it to us so we can fight other witches and warlocks effectively. It’s a waste of our talents to focus only on music and manners.”

He conferred briefly with the queen and she nodded.

“My witches need proper dinner attire,” I continued. “I don’t think you want us dining with the queen in our current state.”

He sniffed slightly. “You won’t be dining with the queen—“

The queen interrupted in her soft voice, speaking her own language. He flushed. “Yes, Your Majesty. She says you and the other humans can follow Lady Melis to the dressmakers.” He gestured to one of the attendants.

“Thank you,” I said, my voice sharp.

I couldn’t read the queen at all, because she never spoke English, even though she clearly understood it, and when she spoke it was always in the same soft, weak, measured tone. Clearly, she wore a veil by design and it drove me nuts. How was I supposed to judge her when I couldn’t read her expressions or even her voice?

Orson started walking out at my side. He gave me a little wink of a smile, like he thought this was funny, or maybe he was just wincing from pain.

“Lord Orson,” Lady Melis said. “You’re badly injured from your battle with the humans. Please, the queen would like to welcome you to the healing baths.”

“Yes, just give me a moment with my betrothed,” he said. He put a hand on my shoulder and urged me aside a few steps. “It isn’t like home, lass. You can’t be bossing around the faery queen or you’ll make an enemy of everyone in her court.”

“Actually, that’s just like home. I have a lot of enemies.” ‘Enemies’ was exaggerating, but it had a better ring than ‘people who don’t like me that much’.

“Well, maybe that tells you something.” He looked me over and then swayed a little on his feet. I immediately put my hands against his rock-solid chest; even in his weakened state he almost knocked me over, but he caught himself.

“Lord Orson!” Lady Melis said.

“I’m fine!” He motioned for her to stay back. “I assure you, I’m made of tougher stuff than that. Although, it is a good thing you rescued me when you did. So please—just try and behave yourself, eh?”

His injuries were the reason I was in this position. Our ‘romantic’ back story in a nutshell is that we met at the Haven, the place where deviant wizards were held so they didn’t corrupt magical society. It was basically a prison. I was trying to run away from home when they caught me, and I stumbled upon Orson being held captive in one of the upstairs rooms, with bands of iron around his limbs, slowly poisoning him.

He was in pain, he was sexy, and I knew the fae queen wanted an alliance with witches who were willing to marry faeries. I had the key to saving his life. So I made this bargain. Let it never be said that Daisy Pendleton let a sexy-ass man die on her watch.

“You do need to rest,” I murmured, seeing the burn marks on his wrists when his movements drew his sleeves up higher on his muscular arms. “These look bad…” Dots of blood spotted his shirt in places where the wounds had opened a little, despite our efforts to heal him.

“Bah,” he said. “I really do hate being tortured.”

“Everyone does.”

“But I’ve had worse.”

“So you don’t mind that you’re going to have to share your wife with some pompous lord?” I asked, crossing my arms. “What is this other man going to say about your home and your….cows?” Trying to have a conversation with Orson really drove home the fact that I literally knew nothing about him except that he had a sexy accent, gorgeous eyes, and he was ripped. Hmm. Even contestants on the Bachelor were more informed than me. I didn’t even know if Orson had a house. For all I knew he slept in a pile of hay. “I chose you,” I said. “Not anyone else.”

“You chose me, eh? A perfect stranger?”

“I’d seen enough,” I said, raking him with my eyes.

“I’m used to the arrangement,” he said. “The low faery lords often do swear fealty to a high faery lord. They act as a…” He snapped his fingers, like he’d been searching for a word I might understand. “Sponsor. In court. And our country lands send them food and wool, fools and wood, as they say. My sponsor was Lord Liorgan—that is, Stuart—and now that he’s passed on, I shall need a new one, alas for me. Stuart was a good friend, but he told me his intent to sacrifice himself, so what was I to say?”

“Maybe don’t?” I couldn’t imagine that if my friend told me they intended to sacrifice themselves I’d be like, oh okay. But faeries had a weird sense of honor. “You seem cheerful enough about this other man horning in.” My arms remained crossed. My neck relaxed into a tilt. Some girls have resting bitch face but I think I had developed resting bitch neck. “I get it. Exchanging contacts for goods. Sure. That makes sense. Sharing your wife? Not so much.”

“It’s not uncommon in the magical world. You surely know that; aye, but I know you do. Your friend Charlotte had how many lads flocked around her?”

“It’s common among people who already know each other! That’s why it’s called ‘bond-brothers’ and ‘clans’ and such! Not just letting your future wife be subjected to whatever this is going to be.”

His hand cupped my face. It was dry and warm even though his brow was sweating.

This was the first time he had ever really looked at me. Or vice versa. It was intimate and I realized I wasn’t used to that at all.

“You need rest,” I said. “Let’s get you to the healing baths or whatever.”

“Lass, who do you trust in this world?”

“Trust? What does that have to do with anything?”

“I asked you a question, and it has everything to do with everything. You must learn to trust if you’re to thrive here.”

The reason I’d agreed to this crazy idea was because there was something about Orson that made me like him, and I didn’t feel that way very often. Not at all. I searched his face now. His eyes were greenish, although their color was not quite settled. Having been captured for a while, his wild black hair and beard and eyebrows were all a mess. He had a strong nose. My grandmother would not like me producing kids with a man like this. She liked everything to look refined and clean. But what I liked about Orson was that he looked like he could protect me. He seemed strong enough to scoop me up like a baby. Nah, forget that, he could probably carry me in his hands.

Just thinking about those big arms around me and hopefully a big something inside me and oh damn, I did not have time for this level of hot and bothered. I had never been with a man before, but it wasn’t for lack of wanting it.

And yet, there was something in his eyes that didn’t match his words. Something guarded. I knew what guarded looked like. Why hadn’t I seen it before? What was he hiding from me?

“You won’t be matched according to what power you have, what money you have, or anything of that nature. You’ll be chosen because of intuition. The lord who chooses to be with you—with us, in fact—will choose us for a reason. He’ll choose you because you suit him, and the fates shall agree.”

“And what about me?”

“You’ll surely agree as well—or your life will be long and miserable, won’t it?” His hand slipped away from my skin, leaving a tingle in its wake, and I straightened up.

Who do you trust in this world?

What did it say about me that not a single person sprung to mind?

Chapter Two

Daisy

Oh well. Onto one of my favorite subjects: clothes. I needed to know what the situation was around here, because I was used to having a world of designer clothing available. If there was one thing my grandmother and I agreed on, it was dressing to impress, stun, or kill.

When Grandmother was young, she was hawt, I mean, like most witches she lived a long time so she was a teenager in the 1940s and a young married in the 1950s and she had hats, gloves, leather bags, heels, perfume in deco bottles, furs, cigarette holders and cases, brushes with ivory handles…

I don’t know how many different animals died for her wardrobe. I tried not to think about that part, because I like animals, but let’s just say a lot. I’m sure they were all blessed and thanked for their sacrifice, at least. Witches knew you have to thank the land if you want to keep taking stuff from it.

When I was growing up, she had a dressing room with all that stuff still in it, the old hat boxes and everything, and she still wore them. Witch fashion changed very slowly. Circe’s Monthly, the oldest witch’s magazine, still had spreads where young women wore hats with feathers, gloves, and never ever pants, all designed by old magical fashion houses in Europe, so that was Grandmother. She never went out without her hat and a dress. The dresses were the one thing where I was old-fashioned too. I almost never wore pants. Like, I knooow. “Pants are very practical, Daisy!” That’s why I didn’t like them. I prefer looking impractical at all times, like I need a manservant to pick things up for me.

In this regard, I think the faeries and me were gonna get on fine.

Lady Melis took me down a narrow boardwalk path through the fenland (her words, not mine, I would have called it a swamp but I guess that wasn’t very poetic). The boardwalk had wooden railings carved from beautiful wood that curved in natural angles and felt soft and smooth under my hands, practically begging me to slide my fingers along them as we walked. Under the boardwalk, the water was thick with aquatic flowers and unusual plants.

“The other humans are already getting dressed,” she said, “while Queen Morgana met with you.”

“We prefer to be called witches,” I said. “Not humans. Humans don’t have magic.”

“The other witches, then,” she said graciously, but it was a grace that humored me. So far the faeries were not very friendly, which is what I expected. “I apologize that the conditions here are humble. This is Queen Morgana’s winter retreat where she likes to relax away from the court and she can swim through the cold season.”

“You’re the water faeries, hmm?” I said. Lady Melis, like Queen Morgana, had webbed hands.

“Yes, Queen Morgana is of the House of Coral, one of the great water faery clans. I am of the House of Mangrove and the winter palace is here in my own families’ lands. But there are many other houses and the thirteen most powerful with unmarried sons will be choosing from you and the other witches. I don’t envy their choice…”

That was definitely a swipe at my girls, as she showed me into the dressmaker’s hut.

It was a small two-story cottage resting on stilts, accessed by the watery paths. It was constructed from wood that had turned gray and weathered, and it had a roof that overhang the building with vines and moss growing over everything. The windows were numerous and some of them were round like portholes, and tilted open. I gotta be honest, it looked pretty ramshackle, like the whole thing could collapse into the swamp.

I could already hear the other girls chattering through the windows. Lady Melis opened the door and I was greeted by a flurry of laughter, fabrics and girls messing with their hair and accessories. All of them wore beautiful gowns, although the styles varied from light and frilly to dark and dramatic. I assumed the dressmaker was the very short, squat, elderly fae woman with blue frilled fins around her face like a collar. She immediately hurried over to me.

“Lady Daisy! You’re the last one, then! I’m the dressmaker, Yami. Let’s get you into something! Hurry up, it’s almost time for dinner and I don’t want you to keep Queen Morgana waiting. The ready-made gowns are all around you, so please choose whatever you like.”

They all paused and looked at me expectantly.

There were my twelve fellow faery brides. I had recruited them all at the Haven in order to fulfill the contract with Queen Morgana to save my own ass, and they were not a very choice lot if I’m being honest. Who do you think signs on to leave their home and family forever and marry a man they’ve never met?

Some messed up bitches, that’s who.

I didn’t remember half their names.

Worse, I had lied to a lot of them and told them about all this cool stuff that would happen in the faery realm, when I didn’t actually know the first thing about life here. Luckily, they all seemed pretty happy with the clothes, and the glasses of sparkling wine they were drinking probably didn’t hurt either. Maybe it wasn’t a lie so much as a prophecy. Yeah.

“Do any of them appeal to you, Daisy?” Polly asked.

“Give a girl a minute to actually look,” I said.

Polly was a gator shifter. She had a sturdy brow, sharp teeth, and her body was big boned and squarish. She looked ready for a street brawl, except that her personality was completely at odds. She wore her hair in a soft bun with a few curls escaping and a hair ornament made of tiny pearls, and I wasn’t surprised that she had chosen a long, sort of cutesy dress made of white cotton and lace with silk flower trimmings. Polly was a Jane Austen fan girl. You would learn that if you talked to her for two minutes. Jane Austen novels were very popular with hedge/cottage/kitchen witch types. That class of witches were everyone’s favorite kind, with all the feminine virtues down to a tee.

“Be careful which you choose,” Rowena said, with a slow smile.

“Why?”

“Every gown has meaning.”

I reached for a rack of fabrics, enjoying the caress of silk, fine cotton, wool and linen on my skin. They were all gorgeous but most of them were definitely not my style.

“Daisy, I thought we were going to throw off the shackles of conformity here,” Lucinda said. “You told me that faery life is free but now I am being told that faery noblemen are going to make their choices among us and we’re going to be trained to be faery ladies. Trained. Like dogs. This is not the sort of life that is good for my spirit or mental health.”

“Well, I’m in the same boat, so just chill,” I said. “I thought I was going to marry Lord Orson and now I just found out that one of these high lords is going to get to pick me too, so none of us are getting exactly what we want, but it’s better than wizard prison, right?”

“I don’t know. I was not some man’s object at the Haven.”

“Girl, they murder people at the Haven, and if you really think that’s better than getting married, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t think the faery men like us either so fair’s fair. This is what’s called a strategic agreement.”

Yeah, so in contrast to Polly were Lucinda and Rowena.

Witch society was pretty strict, so a lot of the witches at the Haven were rebellious types that I guess roused too much rabble at some point.

Lucinda described herself as a ‘non-conformist’ when I met her. Have you ever met a person who describes themselves that way who is also fun? Yeah, exactly. Lucinda went by the name ‘Persona’, which was just like, ugh. Was she a girl or a bad college poem? She was tall and slender, dark-skinned with wild curly black hair, probably mixed race like me and many other American witches. She had chosen a shapeless gown with one sleeve, made out of what looked like hemp cloth, but she had one of those gazelle bodies that looked good in a sack.

Rowena was a Bathorite. You might have heard of the Countess of Bathory, the Hungarian noblewoman who tortured and murdered young women and supposedly bathed in their blood? Anyway. That really happened, and Elizabeth Bathory was a normal human, but sometimes normal humans could become witches, and there was some evidence in the witching community that the Countess of Bathory became a murderess in order to learn blood magic. No good witch wanted to be associated with such a person, but a certain group of witches admired her moxie, and the Bathorites were born, fueled by rumors that maybe the Countess became a vampire or an immortal witch and was still alive today, and that she was in fact a heroine for defying the bonds of her human life and the patriarchy and councils that say witches shouldn’t do blood magic.

That’s kinda cool. I get it.

But yo, they’re just a straight up cult. Rowena had chosen a long, dark gown with tight black sleeves that ended in points, and a skirt of fluttering dark green leaves, and a headdress made from tree branches and crow feathers that her vivid red hair was wrapped around. She also looked beautiful, in a goth way.

So some faery man was probably in for a surprise when those two started talking, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.

“The dressing room is there,” Dressmaker Yami said, pointing to a curtain, fidgeting with impatience. “Queen Morgana will be waiting.”

“I gotcha, I gotcha.” I had selected a few that were okay off the racks and then I saw it. The gown for me.

It was bright pink with frilled hems at the bottom that looked like they were dipped in gold, but the collar was the real showpiece. It was like huge flower petals that stood up behind the strapless gown. My boobs and face were going to be like Thumbelina being born out of a damn flower.

“Oh my god, that is hideous,” said my nemesis, Erin the wolf girl.

“Sorry I’m not basic.” I went into the dressing room and hurried the dress on, because I was a tiny bit worried about wanting Queen Morgana to like me, even though I wouldn’t admit it. This was all pretty overwhelming if I started to think about it. It would have been easier to just shrink away and see what happened, but Pendleton women do not ever shrink away.

The dress was boned in the bodice, it made my boobs look amazing, it was extremely uncomfortable, and there was no way I could reach the hook and eye clasps.

“Cash!” I whispered over the loud conversation about my choice of dress going on beyond the curtain.

My cat familiar appeared right away. He looked at the gown. He saw me trying to reach the clasps. He changed into a human. He sighed.

He walked behind me and flicked his finger at the huge, stiff fabric petals. “Insanity,” he whispered. “Complete insanity.” He did up all the hooks and then he grabbed the fabric around my boobs and yanked on something and twisted something else, and suddenly it wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable.

“Good luck,” he said.

Then he vanished.

I let out my breath. I couldn’t let any of the witches see him. I would never live that down. But—okay—there was one person I completely trusted, if I counted him as a person.

I stepped out of the dressing room. Erin snickered while some of the other girls looked in awe. I looked either stunning or ridiculous. It was a fine line, but walking it was one of the best ways to assert your dominance over other witches. Nothing says Don’t cross me like wearing something no one but you would dare to wear.

“I’m ready,” I said casually.

“Interesting choice,” Yami said.

I shrugged, selecting a few gold bracelets from a wall of accessories.

“The gowns you choose will send a message about your alliances here.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Gowns are like flowers, meant to attract certain bees,” she said. “Wearing a gown like that, you will certainly attract men from...a strong house. Well, it will be interesting to see how all of you fare here. Let us head to dinner. I’m sure we are late!”

Fae Sworn is available now!

More Romantic Fantasy from Lidiya!

Finishing School for Faery Brides

Book One: Fae Sworn

Book One: Fae Tempted

Book Three: Fae Bound

Forever in Their Thrall

Book One: Take Me Slowly

Book Two: Love Me Madly (coming soon)

The Sky and Shadow saga, a reverse harem fantasy with epic world building, dragon shifters, and steam:

Guardians of Sky and Shadow

Complete Series Box Set

Available in audio!

Kingdoms of Sky and Shadow

Complete Series Box Set

Brides of the Sinistral Realms

(Reverse harem paranormal romance)

Book One: Tempted by Demons

Book Two: Captured by Dragons

Book Three: Guarded by Wolves (Coming soon!)

Fairy Tale Heat

Every book is standalone and can be read in any order, although some characters might pop up in later books!

Book One: Beauty and the Goblin King

Book Two: These Wicked Revels (A retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses)

Book Three: Rapunzel and the Dark Prince

Book Four: The Beggar Princess (A retelling of King Thrushbeard)

Book Five: The Goblin Cinderella

Book Six: The Mermaid Bride

Book Seven: Tasting Gretel

Book Eight: Taming Red Riding Hood

Surrender of Sleeping Beauty (Darker romance set in the Fairy Tale Heat universe)

Complete Series Box Set

About the Author

Lidiya Foxglove spends most of her time writing, drinking hot cocoa, messing around on the internet, and drinking tea, before reading about 15 pages of any manga with lots of pretty boys in it, and then falling asleep. Sometimes she also does yoga and gardens, but not as often as she claims.

lidiyafoxglove@lidiyafoxglove.com

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