I gazed around at the portraits hung on the wall and stopped when I got to one of a woman sitting under a tree. She was dressed in a white Victorian-style dress with a bonnet and puffy sleeves. And she was staring at me. Like, her eyes followed me as I made my way up the stairs, her secret smile mocking my unease.
“Hello?” I asked without wondering why I was talking to a damned painting. This wasn’t that wizarding school.
“Gus? You coming?”
I hurried up the steps and fell in behind Vinny. When I turned around, the woman in the painting continued to stare.
Chapter Three
Wilma
* * *
I don’t know how long I stood in front of the fire watching the flames. Finally, when my legs would hold me up no longer, I plopped into a wingback chair and sighed.
Where did I even begin to sort out my mess of a life?
“I’ll tell you one thing, we’re going to need a tremendous amount of…what did they call it?”
“Sierra Moovada?”
“No,” Bertram said, holding his pipe up to his lips.
“Heifferenessy?”
I giggled at that one. Gus’s cousins were so funny. Their constant jokes made things easier for sure.
“Oh, that’s right. Lagabullin.” Bertram snapped his finger.
“Plain old bovine blood will do just fine. That and liquor should keep us…settled? Although the guys have been having fun mixing the two. Honestly, once I’d had that first drink, I didn’t feel as ravenous as I’d expected after watching the others go through the change.”
“Your magic protects you from physical suffering,” Bertram said. He tapped the mouthpiece of his pipe to his temple. “I think the transition will be much different for you. It’s more your magic that concerns me.”
“Me too,” I said with a shiver. “I’ve never felt such power. It flooded my body, flowing through me until I was completely electric. It was exhilarating! Until it burst from my fingertips and flew around the bar. Someone could have been really hurt.”
Bertram sat and crossed one silk-pajama-clad leg over the other, his slipper hanging from his toes. “It’s my thought that the more you try to resist, the more you are afraid, the more dangerous your power will be.”
“You’re right,” I said. “When I woke, I was excited. Happy. The moment Gus’s face became clear, my heart sang. It was only once that feeling grew out of my control that I…panicked.”
I looked out the window—and leaped from the chair. The hail had subsided, but… “Bertram! I’m a walking bomb cyclone! The yard is flooding! How do I fix it?”
He floated to my side and gasped. Then, after a pause, “I have an idea.” He took my hand, which I registered as a slight jolt. He led me to the front doors and they opened wide in front of me.
“I think you need to go outside and face your creation head on.”
My eyes widened in fear and lightning cracked through the sky. “But Bertram! What if I…what if I destroy this place?”
“Impossible, my dear. I hired the best protection witches in the business when I had the manor built. These wards are impenetrable to natural and magical phenomena.” He shooed me outside.
“But what do I do?”
“Embrace it!”
I ran to the middle of the lawn, rainwater pooling around my ankles. I took several deep breaths and tried to clear my mind, but there was so much static electricity in my body that all I heard was snapping and crackling sounds when I tried to think. The sky was illuminated like a laser light show, with lightning coming in at unbelievable frequency.
How do I manage all this? I began to feel the electricity building more inside me, until I thought I would jump right out of my skin. The pressure became too much.
I threw my hands down toward the ground and screamed at the top of my lungs.
And I felt better.
It was amazing, the release!
I looked down at my feet—and barked out a laugh. There was a giant hole where I had been standing and I was now six feet away. Water from the lawn began pouring into the hole.
“That’s it! Do it again!” Bertram shouted from the doorway.
I giggled as I felt the energy building once more. I stepped away and pointed my hands at the ground, inside the first hole, and I waited and waited as it built and built. Finally a shriek came out of me, and suddenly…
BOOM!
“Splendid! I’ve always wanted a moat. Keep going!”
I burst out laughing at Bertram’s victory dance on the porch. Then I went from spot to spot, waiting for the energy to build. I shrieked and let out the energy, creating holes four feet deep—at the very least—all along the front of the mansion. The water continued to pour in like a waterfall as the rain poured down in buckets. It was beautiful. It was terrifying. But I was doing it.
I was doing magic!
“Bloody hell! What in the devil is happening here?”
I heard a little voice coming from the hedges that lined the edge of the property and, moments later, a brown, furry ball flowing in a stream of water towards the moat.
“Oh no!”
I ran for the creature, grabbing for him before he went over the edge of the moat. I lifted him by his tail as he hollered.
“Let me go, you infernal creature of darkness!”
He held up his little claws and tried to make a cross. His wiggly nose twitched as he bared his impressive incisors and tried to look scary.
“I just saved you from a watery grave.” I shook my head. “Wait. How is it that you’re talking to me?”
“That’s a very good question. Where am I?”
“You’re in Assjacket, West Virginia,” I said, thinking I probably looked strange having a conversation with a groundhog on my front lawn in the rain.
“And how is it that you’re not afraid of a cross, you bloodsucking nightmare?”
“Because it’s not scary? I’m a Pagan. Only those who believe in crosses are scared by them. But wait a moment…why would I…”
“Must I spell it out?”
“How do you know how to spell?”
“V-A-M—”
“Ohhh, right. Sorry. I’m new at the undead thing.”
The large rodent squirmed wildly in my arms until I turned him around to face me. We stared into each other’s eyes, me trying to figure out how he could talk, him waiting for me to fang him, apparently.
“Why aren’t you biting me?” he asked, his body suddenly still.
“I’m not much of a biter,” I said with a chuckle. “And frankly, your teeth are a little scarier than mine.”
I set the portly fellow down on the ground and he sat back on his haunches, his belly round and sticking out in front of him.
“Well,” he said, his little brows drawn together in consternation. “I suppose I shouldn’t make assumptions, although creatures of the night are normally quite dangerous. The name’s Woodrow G. Charles the Third.”
He gave me a bow, and he was so darn cute I couldn’t stand it.
“I’m Wilma Wetter…the, ah, first and only. This is my home.” I curtseyed and continued to stare at him. For some reason, I felt as if he belonged here…which is why I invited him inside.
“Me? Enter willingly into the lair of the undead?”
I shrugged. “We’ve got a bewitched kitchen that keeps us in baked goods.” I frowned. “Not sure that I can partake of them anymore. But surely you’d like to come in for a warm beverage and a snack?” I don’t think I imagined the hunger growls emanating from his tummy.
“I am rather chilled. A cup of tea would be grand.”
I clapped my hands together. “Perfect. Bertram loves to serve tea. Then maybe we can talk about how we’re talking right now.”
Woodrow looked up at me and his little eyebrow raised. I was tickled by his anthropomorphic expressions.
“We are indeed speaking. One moment…” His nose wiggled for several seconds and then he gasped. “I smell magic!
Is there a witch here too?”
I raised my hands. “I seem to be both, my furry friend. And that likely means—”
“Familiar. Bollocks. Look, Miz Wetter, where I come from, we do not tolerate indentured servitude to your kind. A familiar relationship may only flourish if the parties involved are on equal ground.” He looked down at my feet, then back up to my face. “I suppose we could discuss the possibility of a mutually beneficial working relationship.”
I felt a thrill run through me and the ground rumbled a little, sending Woodrow into a trot toward the front door. His little furry butt wiggled as he walked.
A familiar. The mark of a real witch. I’d longed for one as a child, but was told time and again I’d never have one because of my curse. I watched all of my classmates join with the creatures who would be their partners in magic for life, and my heart broke a little each time. Cats, bats, rats…
I would gladly take a groundhog!
The doors opened for us just as I felt a stinging on the back of my neck. I turned to see the sun beginning to peek over the trees.
“Oh, well. I guess my sunrise yoga days are over,” I said with a sigh, hurrying inside behind my new little buddy. I thought about my other new friends—my guests upstairs…and my mate—and even though my life was the definition of chaos, I felt pretty great.
“I wasn’t aware we had another guest, dear?”
Bertram hovered in the doorway leading to the kitchen.
“Bertram! I found him outside. This is Woodrow. He and I are going to have a conversation about—”
“A negotiation. There will be no conversation unless you are open to negotiating.”
Bertram’s eyebrows rose and I bit back a laugh. I crouched down and stuck out my hand. “You’ve got a deal.”
Several minutes later, Bertram and I sat on either side of Woodrow. Before him was a plate of goodies and a cup full of steaming tea. I’d never seen such pristine table manners on a magical, a human, a Shifter…no one. This groundhog was incredible.
“So the last place you remember waking up was Philadelphia?”
“Yes, I believe so. I went below ground with the intention of adding to the square footage of my burrow, and the next thing I know, I’m being sucked through an underground passageway, through a hedgerow, and onto your front lawn. Given those facts, I firmly believe that other factors were at play in this ‘coincidental’ acquaintance.”
Bertram and I stared at the groundhog, speechless at his impeccable diction, especially with those massive incisors.
“I think your assertion is likely correct. The undoing of Ms. Wetter’s curse unleashed quite a sonic boom of magic. I’m not surprised that the effects were so far reaching.”
“Curse? This is the first I’m hearing of a curse.”
Bertram gave me a sympathetic look. He knew I hated telling the story, but this creature deserved to know the truth. It was part of our negotiation, I assumed.
“My family has been cursed for several generations. Apparently a Wetter woman was seduced by one of Napoleon’s officers and persuaded to give favorable weather to the French troops when they invaded. The head witch in Quedlinburg, Agatha Wind, lost members of her family in the subsequent battle, and so she cursed the Wetters until the end of time. Claimed we owed her a blood sacrifice each generation.
“The curse passed to me, so when I turned thirteen and should have come into my power, it never came. My father’s sister held the curse before me, and he refused to accept that the curse would pass to me. He was convinced I’d be alright, that I would mate and bear children, not be the last Wetter alive. That turned out to not be the case. My parents and I were never close after that. I was sent to boarding school, I learned everything I could…and then I was an outcast.”
Bertram and Woodrow gasped.
“No, it’s okay. It wasn’t intentional. Like, people weren’t mean to me or anything, but they couldn’t relate to me. Witches tend to treat a cursed individual like they have the plague. They’re nice and sympathetic, but they keep you at a distance.”
“It’s the same with ghosts in the magic world, frankly,” Bertram said, smoothing a hand over his spectral hair. “Other witches pretend they can’t see you because they can’t handle the idea of their own mortality.”
“Then why, pray tell, would you remain on this plane?” Woodrow asked him. The groundhog was inquisitive and seemed to have a lot of knowledge for one so tiny. “Why have you not ascended?”
Bertram stiffened. “I didn’t want to give my murderer the satisfaction of disappearing. Besides, I love my home. And now, I get to help Wilma with her media empire.” He winked at me, and I burst out laughing.
“Media?”
“Oh, I own the TV station here in town. So far we only have a newscast and a few syndicated shows, but I have plans for more original programming, at least I did before my change of status.”
“Darling, you must go through with your plans. We will make it work, together.”
I sighed. “I suppose if I can get my magic under control so I don’t bring a tornado down on the station or flood it, and if I can manage to be around other living beings and not attack their necks, perhaps I can get back to making plans.” I rested my chin in my hand and… Well, I suppose you could call it pouted.
“Cheer up, my sweet. And tell me a bit more about our houseguests,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “That Gus is smashing.”
I couldn’t help the giant grin that appeared on my face anytime I thought about him. Or saw him. Or talked about him.
“He’s my mate, I think,” I said.
Bertram clapped a hand over his mouth. “Are you serious? That’s wonderful.” He floated over to hug me. “What great news!”
“Thank you. At least, I’m pretty sure he’s my mate. All the signs seem to be there, but…”
“But what?” Woodrow asked. “My understanding is that matings are fairly clear. Magicals meet, hormones take over, they lose all rational thought and they fornicate like rabbits.” He shuddered in horror.
Bertram and I burst out laughing.
“Sounds wonderful to me,” Bertram said. “I miss a good round of fornication.”
I bent at the waist with laughter, my face hot. “It’s not exactly like that. Well, I suppose I should come clean.”
Bertram gasped. “Was there no fornication?”
I shook my head and rolled my eyes. “No, no fornication. But I did kind of beg him to bite me, which led to this whole Weather Channel Special Event occurring outside.”
Bertram glanced out the window. “Seems to have passed for now. Keep talking, maybe it helps to get out all that angst you’ve got built up.”
“He’s wonderful, Bertram. I just worry.”
He blinked, waiting for the rest of my explanation.
“I don’t want to hurt him with my crazy weather.”
He blinked again.
“And he doesn’t quite have experience with the whole mating business. What if he hates it?”
Still only blinks from Bertram. Woodrow slurped happily at his tea.
“I don’t want to trap him here. He’s a touring musician. And he needs to find his friend. What if he resents me because the mating makes him stay?”
Woodrow set down his tea cup firmly on the table, the sound echoing off the stone walls. “All right, that settles it. There’s no need for a negotiation, Ms. Wetter. It’s obvious you need me, so I shall accept the position as your familiar.”
It was my turn to blink. “What did you say?”
Woodrow made a big show of turning himself in his chair to face me. “It’s obvious you need help. You have a lot of worries, you’ve proven to me that you are selfless, and the greatness of your power is evident. I believe I can help you, and that it will be advantageous to my own needs to ally myself with you. So you have a deal. I’ll be your familiar.”
I barked out a laugh. “That’s wonderful, thank you. But…needs? What are your needs?” I didn�
��t want another possibly disappointed person hanging around because they felt obligated.
Woodrow took his napkin in both paws and dabbed daintily at his mouth. “My needs are food and shelter, mostly. And a small allowance for personal necessities. And access to the internet. And a Brit Box subscription. I must be able to watch my shows.”
Bertram and I shrugged. “We can certainly work on those. Only the station is wired for internet at this time, but—”
“What is this Brit Box?” Bertram asked.
“Oh, it’s a channel of British programming. Much of it is brilliant, although like anything, there are often duds. A lot of detective shows, which I quite love. A good whodunnit is the perfect way to relax at night, don’t you think?”
Bertram gave me a sad smile. “I haven’t watched a film since…well, since…”
I reached for his hand and he placed his non-corporeal one in mine. I felt a jolt up my arm, but it was weak. “I’m sorry. We won’t if it’s too upsetting.”
“Apologies if I’ve offended,” Woodrow said, folding his paws in his lap.
“Nonsense,” Bertram said, trying to be brave. “I haven’t watched films since I was murdered while filming one a long time ago.”
Woodrow sat up straighter and tried to suck in his gut. “I thought you looked familiar,” he breathed. “My lord, are you really Bert Craven?”
Bertram gave a small bow. “I am. Perhaps with the right guide, I could safely indulge in cinematic viewing once more.”
A yawn slipped out and suddenly I felt lethargic. Sun poured in through the kitchen window and a ray brushed my ankle, leaving a slight sting in its wake. No burning flesh, but discomfort for sure.
“You should get to bed, young lady,” Bertram said with a stern expression. I secretly loved it when he acted as my caretaker. It was always nice to know someone cared.
“I think I will retire,” I said. “Woodrow? Er, Mr. Charles? You’ll be well taken care of by my housemate. I’ll look forward to speaking more with you this evening.”
He nodded and hopped down off of his chair, sinking into a chivalrous bow. “You may call me Woodrow. Rest well. Bertram and I shall discuss my accommodations further.”
Fangtastic Four Page 3