by H. D. Gordon
The hard wood of the handle smacks my palm in a pleasant manner, and I swing one leg over, leaning forward over the shaft before leaping into the air.
As it has for as long as I can remember, magic carries and lifts me. I whistle, and tiny Park Pixies appear around me, their wings flitting faster than a hummingbird’s, their auras shimmering like glitter around them. Along with the structures and toys, magical treehouses and legendary obstacle courses, the Park Pixies of Cherry Gardens are one of the coolest things I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve lived a pretty magical life.
The tiny, beautiful creatures braid my hair as I fly through the air, pulling it back into two french braids and adding flowers and colorful strings before taking off to attend to other witches.
The Gardens are busy, and I swerve around other witches in their own game of Brooms as I chase after my sister. An airborne form of Tag, You’re It!
I’ve always been faster than Flora on a broom, but there are few witches more clever than my little sister, and knocking her off her mount has never been easy.
I lean forward further still, my body parallel with the broom, wind whipping against my face as I dodge around the trees and structures, weaving between pixies and witches alike.
Flora races up ahead, pinwheeling on her mount, twisting through branches, and somehow avoiding collision with others. I see the girls below, chasing each other through the largest treehouse on the grounds, poking their heads out of leaf curtains and running among the tiny lizards that call the trees home.
The sky changes as I fly through it, going from the sunny glow of day to the star-flecked canvas of night, as it does every twenty minutes or so. Stars replace the fluffy clouds, the moon appearing in place of the sun. A comet blazes across the dark blanket of the universe, and I know every witch here is casting a wish to the Goddess above.
My wishes flash through my head with the same unstoppable brilliance, there and gone before I can halt them, the light of them lingering behind my eyes.
I wish Edmond Harvey Jackson were still alive…
I wish I was not such a coward…
I wish I had done the right thing…
And…
Was it too late to make it right?
Fuck.
Just… Fuck.
8
6:30 p.m.
“It’s dangerous. Like, really, really dangerous, Mir.”
I nod. “Yeah, I know.”
Flora shakes her head. “I’m not sure you do. I’m not sure either of us do.” She glances toward the doorway to the parlor, and I know she is thinking of Winter and Echo.
As am I.
But it was the right thing to do… Wasn’t it?
“What do you think the Coven will do?” I ask.
“You know what’s fucked up?” Flora says. “I’m not sure whose reaction to be more afraid of; the humans or the Coven.”
She gestures toward the MacBook in my hand. “You gonna look, or what?”
I stare into the fireplace and tug the blanket up tighter around me. Without looking at the device, I slide it toward her, where she sits beside me on the rug.
“Will you?” I ask.
Flora releases a slow breath and opens the Mac. My heart races as she powers it up and clicks some keys. The lump has returned to my throat. This time, I am ready with the chamomile tea. I sip it and stare into the flames as she scans the screen for answers.
I watch with bated breath as she reads the article.
“They aren’t saying much,” she says after a terribly long moment.
I wait, resisting the urge to grab the computer and have a look for myself.
Flora clears her throat. “This is in the Philly Gazette… ‘At approximately one a.m. on Saturday morning police responded to a call in east Philadelphia regarding a robbery. A suspect was shot and pronounced dead at the scene. There are no further details at this time.’”
No further details at this time.
Well, that was bull-fucking-shit.
The man they shot was unarmed–there was a Goddess damned detail for you. Also, how could he be responsible for a robbery when he had been busy at the time saving my life?
Saving my life.
Fuck.
I stare into the fireplace, watching the flames dance. My sister sits silently beside me.
I think most people like to think of themselves as good. Sure, we all make mistakes, and sometimes, our worse nature wins out. But most of the time, I don’t think people wake up thinking, How can I be an asshole today?
It would follow that most of us like to think that when we are faced with a choice between doing what is obviously right, and doing what is wrong, we would do what is right.
However, the longer I live, the more I learn that life is rarely black and white, rarely a simple choice between right and wrong.
This situation was no exception.
“Alright, so say you want people to know what you know,” Flora says. “How do you go about that?”
I tell her about the visit from the Warlock. This makes her sit up straight.
“In the house?” Her voice rises with the words. “He got past the wards? Why the hell are you just now mentioning this?”
“I didn’t want to freak you out. Only one of us can be freaked out at a time.”
Flora makes a noise low in her throat but waves a hand for me to continue. “We are going to recast the wards as soon as you’re done telling me everything,” she says.
I nod. “I already re-warded the house. Twice… You asked where I would start if I wanted to speak up about all of this. I guess I could start with the Warlock.”
“Mm. But we don’t know shit about him… Is there anyone we can trust in the Coven?”
We simultaneously snort at this. Like all of the other witches in the Philadelphia area, we are automatically considered part of the Philly Coven, which maintains two strongholds in the city; Center City (of which Old City is a part) and Hazelnut Hill.
This made up around fifteen hundred witches in all, putting us second in size on the East Coast, behind the New York Coven. Like any other organization of people, being part of the Coven meant following certain rules.
The Philly Coven had been one of the first to pass the new mandates when the existence of supernaturals had been brought to the attention of the human world. The laws had been practically passed overnight.
Witches were to lay low, to continue living among the humans in secret, to wait and see how the reaction to the rest of the supernatural races played out. To hide, because we still could, because we were not as scary to the humans as the wolves or the vamps.
Never mind that it had been a pair of witches that had spilled the beans about the existence of supernaturals to the public in the first place. One could see how this did not put magic users in a favorable light as far as other supes were concerned.
This also meant the Sisters Superior—the HBIC’s as far as witches were concerned—restricting the use of magic that might be recognizable to humans in public, telling humans about our powers, or anything else of the sort.
At the time, these orders had not seemed like that big of a deal to me; we had been hiding among the humans forever. In reality, our lifestyles as witches in the world had not changed much, while we’d watched the lives of other supes change entirely.
Now, these restrictions seemed so much more…
Fucked.
That was the only word I could think of for it.
The question was, if these rules were broken, what would be the punishment?
What would the Coven do if I spoke out about what I’d witnessed? With how quickly they’d sent someone to the police station to get me to sign that paper, I would guess they would not be happy.
But what if I spoke out and didn’t reveal I was a witch?
Flora sighs. She’s doing a lot of that today. “I mean… I just don’t know, man. I don’t know what they would do. From what you’ve said, and what we know about the Cov
en, I don’t think they would let it go.”
“Witches look out for other witches first,” I grumble, feeling no better for this conversation at all.
“People look out for their own first,” Flora says. “Witches are not the only ones. Everyone does it.”
I snort. “Since when does everyone doing a thing make it right?”
To this, Flora says nothing, because there is nothing to say.
9
7:30 p.m.
This time, I would take the long way around.
And Flora would come with me.
We sit on the train, side by side, watching the city flash by through the windows. Subtle magic surrounds us, making us unworthy of a second glance to anyone nearby, but also not a blatant enough use of magic to piss off the Coven.
We seem to be walking a fine line these days.
So fine, in fact, that Flora had not wanted me to go tonight, and when I’d insisted, she’d demanded she come along.
It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in what I was doing; it was that she was afraid for me, herself, and the girls.
And I couldn’t blame her. I was afraid, too.
But I’d promised Sasha that I’d come check on her and the baby today, and it’s a good deed I feel compelled to do, since I feel I’m failing in other moral regions.
I watch the buildings go by, the graffiti decorating the stones of the overpasses, the tall corporate skyscrapers with their glass faces, the overlapping highways and aggressive drivers. I have lived in Old City, Philadelphia all my life, over thirty years, and yet some of the immediate surrounding areas are utterly foreign to me. Many are places I dare not visit during certain hours, and others are those I have no business entering at all.
We reach Northeast Philly soon enough. Flora and I hop off the train and head down the boulevard, toward the row home I’d visited less than twenty-four hours ago.
Flora’s eyes flick around and she draws closer to me, no doubt uncomfortable with the fact that we are fully within werewolf territory. We pass by a couple of wolves in their human forms, sitting upon their porch, unrecognizable from humans save for the magical shifter energy that surrounds them. If not for the Goddess’s Blessing I’d received at birth, they would look like nothing more than very large men with dark eyes and rugged faces.
One of the males whistles at us, a wolf cat-calling. We hurry along down the street, and I breathe a sigh of relief as we reach Sasha’s house at last.
Jackie opens the door to the dark brown row home as we are climbing the porch steps, before we can even knock. Werewolves have the sharpest noses and ears. She no doubt heard us coming from down the street.
“Hey Mir,” she says, looking up and down the block over our shoulders. “Come in. Come in.”
She gives us both hugs and kisses, as is wolf custom, though she hardly knows Flora beyond her relation to me.
“Thank you for coming,” Jackie says.
I nod, thinking that I do not deserve her kindness. “Least I can do,” I say.
Jackie flips her long crochet braids over her shoulder and leads us down the hallway toward a room in the back, where Sasha gave birth less than twenty-four hours before to a beautiful baby boy.
As we pass the living room, I catch sight of two wolves I do not recognize. The two enormous males eye me and my sister as we go by. I swallow, and notice that my palms are warm with sweat.
Then we are at the doorway, and Jackie is grinning as she announces our arrival to the new parents.
“Look who’s here,” she says.
Both mom and dad turn to look at me. They smile wide. I do my best to return the gesture.
My heart lifts a little as I spot the baby cradled in Sasha’s arms.
“How is everyone this evening?” I ask, my natural inclinations as a healer kicking in to override my other jumbled mess of emotions.
Sasha looks tired but happy, and this goes a long way in raising my spirits. The previous evening had been touch and go for a while, the little hybrid baby large even for a bigger woman, which Sasha certainly is not.
It is almost hard to believe the big bundle in her arms came out of her tiny body, but I suppose the female anatomy is just amazing like that.
The father, Linus, climbs to his feet, towering over the women in the room and clasping my hands together in his giant ones. He pulls me into an embrace.
“Thank you, Miracle Meadows,” he says, his voice a deep thunderous rumble as he holds me tight. “Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome,” I say.
Linus looks over my head at Flora. “This must be your sister. You all look just alike.”
I nudge Flora. “You hear the compliment he just gave you?”
Sasha and Linus laugh as Flora rolls her eyes at me and says, “Nice to meet you,” to Linus.
I move to the table beside the bed where Sasha rests and set down my kit. Withdrawing a few of my instruments, I set out what I need to do the check up and turn toward the bed. I hold out my hands.
“May I?”
Sasha doesn’t hesitate. We’ve been friends and Coven sisters since we were girls. She holds out her child, and I take the babe into my arms.
Big brown eyes stare up at me, a twelve-pound bundle with a head of thick brown hair. Half witch, half wolf.
Whole perfect, I think as the babe squeezes my pinky finger in his tiny hand. I grin; he has his father’s grip.
How could such a beautiful creature be so frowned upon among our peoples? Simply because of what he is, he will never belong to a coven, nor any pack. What powers he will manifest remain to be seen, or he could manifest none at all. But, even so, with or without magic, how could anyone look upon such an innocent creature and declare it unfit for the basic rights afforded others?
I swallow, exiting these thoughts before I am forced into an inappropriate display of emotion.
Summoning my magic, I scan his tiny body with my healing powers.
I smile. “He’s doing very well.”
“Hell yeah he is!” Linus exclaims. “Thanks to you, Mir.”
Everyone in the room laughs, while Sasha playfully chastises him with a smirk.
I pass the babe back to his mother, sending a silent prayer up to the Goddess that he live a long and happy life, as I would with any witchling newborn.
“You’re an angel,” Sasha tells me as she cradles her new baby.
I wonder if she’d still think that if she knew about the events that had transpired directly after the birth of her beautiful child, if she knew about that horrible paper I had signed.
10
8:00 p.m.
I’m an asshole, that’s what I am.
Or, at least, that’s what I feel like.
Flora lets out a heavy sigh as we step out of the house and back onto the sidewalk.
The neighborhood is quiet in the early evening, though that small thrum which hangs in the background of all cities is present.
Flora loops her arm through mine as we begin walking the few blocks back to the nearest train station. When she sighs again, I look over at her. I am about to question her when a voice calls from the direction of Sasha’s house.
“Excuse me,” the voice says.
Our heads swivel in unison.
One of the wolves that had been in the living room when I’d arrived is bounding down the steps of Sasha’s house. I’d only glimpsed him earlier, but now I see his face fully for the first time.
Flora and I exchange a look.
Dude is handsome.
Like, very handsome. He moves with the grace of a predator, a subtle power that is offset by the attractive face. His skin is a brown that indicates his parents are of mixed backgrounds—a combination I’ve always found particularly beautiful. His hair is dark and short, his gait easy and confident.
I take in his beauty in the heartbeats it takes him to reach us.
He nods politely to my sister, who I can just feel smirking beside me. Then he looks at me and holds o
ut his hand. I take it and am struck by the heat of his fingers; the body temp of wolves runs higher than that of humans and other supes.
“I wanted to thank you,” he tells me, voice smooth and deep. His other hand encloses the ones that we already have clasped, and I swallow against the fresh scent and heat he’s exuding.
“It was a brave thing you did, a selfless thing,” he continues. “The Pack will not soon forget this.”
Dear Goddess, how I wish everyone would stop thanking me. It is no small thing to be in the graces of the Philadelphia Wolf Pack, but I’d never felt less deserving of thanks in my life, and receiving it was somehow making it worse.
He releases my hands, and they are immediately chill without him despite the mild weather. His deep voice lowers as his light brown eyes hold mine unwaveringly. “As I understand it, this is not the first time you’ve offered your services to one of our kind.”
I shrug, feeling as fake as cubic zirconia. “It’s no big deal,” I say.
“But it is,” he replies. “I’m Milo. You’re Miracle, right?”
I nod. “This is my sister, Flora.”
“It’s nice to meet you both… There’s a meeting this evening, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in attending.”
Though I get the feeling both my sister and I are invited, Milo holds my gaze as he says this.
“What kind of meeting?” I ask.
Milo clears his throat. “A collaboration of people from different backgrounds.”
I chuckle. “That’s notably vague.”
Milo smiles. His kind face is even more appealing when donning the expression. “Notably and intentionally,” he replies. “Tonight, ten-o-clock, at the Senna Street Harbor. I hope to see you there, but if not, thank you again.”
Then, as if he is from another day and age entirely, he takes my hand again and kisses the back of it.
He has disappeared back into Sasha’s house before my heartbeat regulates in my chest.