"Did you say something, Master?"
"Nope. Head for the coffee aisle. We need to stock up."
"Should I grab another cart?"
"Har, har."
My phone dinged in my pocket. Pulling it out, I rolled my eyes. I had texted my mother before I headed for the bookstore. I told her to call me when she got up, but I doubted she had slept in until after lunch. She was ignoring me, but finally caved and texted instead of calling.
What can I do for you, daughter?
I hit the call button. It rang four times and went to voicemail.
I am indisposed at the moment. What do you need, Child?
Therapy. We need to talk.
I shall be home for the remainder of the day. Feel free to stop by.
You're still at Nana's?
Of course. Where else would I be?
"Oh, I don't know, Mother. Building a candy house to lure children into your oven?" I wanted to type it, but my fingers wouldn't let me. Sometimes, my fingers were smarter than I was.
"What?" Yuki was staring at me like I had lost what little of my mind I had left.
I shook my head at her. I'll see you this afternoon, I texted to my mother and stuffed my phone back in my pocket. "Let's get the coffee and get out of here. I have a hag to banish."
"Banish?"
"Yeah. She needs to get her ass back home before she doesn't have a home to go back to."
"I'll pretend I know what you're talking about if you buy me an iPad."
"My mother, but I'm not buying you an iPad," I said with a laugh, thinking she was joking. She might have been, her face was all smiles, but I could feel disappointment wafting from her in waves. A scene played itself out in my mind. Yuki, in an effort to defy her father, cut off her beautiful, waist length hair and bleached the tips to hold the purple dye better. In a fit of rage, he had destroyed everything in her room, including her first-generation iPad. The one she had saved for and bought on her own. It had happened just before he had sent her to live in Cedar Falls in disgrace.
"I know. I was just kidding, Master."
We turned down the coffee aisle and she ran ahead to replenish the three boxes of coffee we'd gone through since the last time I made it to the store. By the time I made it to her, she had them stacked in her arms and set them on the floor, shoving them on the bottom rack of the cart one by one. "That's it. To Grandmother's house we go."
"One more thing." I pushed the cart and headed to the back of the store instead of toward the registers.
When she saw we were headed for electronics, she started getting antsy. When I stopped in front of the Apple display, she growled, shook her head, and started pulling on my arm. "I told you I was kidding! You're not buying me an iPad. I was really joking!"
"I know you were, but then I saw what your father did."
She hissed and stepped back away from me. "No."
"Yes," I said sternly and started looking around for one of the sales associates. Two of them were hovering around another female employee with pink pigtails stocking the DVD rack. "Can I get some help over here?"
"Coming," the older of the two headed in our direction. "What can I get for you?"
I pointed at the largest tablet on the display. "One of those, please."
"Sure thing."
"That's an iPad Pro!" Yuki stared in awe, clearly having a vocal debate in her head about shutting her mouth or continuing to protest.
"Yep."
"Seriously, Master. You can't!"
The associate unlocked the sliding glass door on the display and pulled out the matte white box. "You want it?"
"Yes," I answered.
"No," Yuki protested.
"I'm paying." I ignored her, and after my proclamation, so did he.
He stepped behind the kiosk and rang it up, and I held out my card before Yuki could utter another word.
I had seen something else in the brief moment I'd been in her memories. Something I didn't know about Yuki. She loved to draw. Her dream had been to become a graphic artist. The fight between her and her father had boiled down to one thing. She wanted to go to night school. He had adamantly refused. And then made her life a living hell when she rebelled.
The associate stuffed the purchase into a bag and handed me the receipt. "Come on. Let's go pay for the rest of the stuff and go torture my mother." I handed her the bag and leaned in close to her, whispering in her ear, "Draw me something pretty." I kissed her cheek and ruffled her hair, and then dropped the whole topic.
"Thank you, Master." She was shuffling her feet and I barely heard the words that escaped her lips.
"Don't thank me. I'm going to put you to work."
Clearly confused, she asked, "How?"
"Well, first I'm going to find you a local art school. I'm going to get you enrolled. And then, you're going to pay off your tuition by creating all the graphics and advertisements for the bookstore. Then, you're going to start writing and drawing the graphic novels that you've always loved, and then I'm going to start selling them once we figure out how to get them published."
She almost dropped the iPad. "Are you serious?"
"I'd never joke about your dreams."
"You saw?"
"Saw and felt." I sighed and put my hand on her shoulder.
She sniffled and nodded, but still had enough in her to give me a little smile of gratitude. That alone was worth what I had paid for the stinking tablet. If I hadn't already turned her father to ash, I would have animated his corpse, hung it in my garage, and taken up boxing.
∞ ∞ ∞
My grandmother finally answered the door after the twelfth round of knocking. "Dorothea?"
"Hey, Nana. Where's the witch."
"Which one?"
"The wicked one of the West."
"Entertaining some guests…in her room."
"Ewww." I stopped and stared at her in horror, hoping to the Lady that she was joking.
Yuki made a gagging noise behind me.
"Would you care for a cup of tea? Glass of wine?"
"Wine."
"Dear?" She peeked around me to look at Yuki.
"I'll have a glass of wine, please. Ma'am."
"Oh, shush. Call me Nana."
Yuki blushed and hid behind me. Nana scared her. And me. And the neighborhood, county, and tri-state area, so she wasn't alone.
"How long is she going to be entertaining?"
"For as long as they can keep her occupied, I would imagine." She led us through the modest house and into the kitchen. "Sit," she said and pointed to the kitchenette table in the alcove. "I'm assuming this is about the coven."
"You knew?"
She nodded and waved her fingers at one of the bottles of wine on the counter. Wiggling its way out of the top of the bottle, the cork ripped through the tinfoil and plopped merrily on the counter while Nana pulled three glasses from the cupboard. "The question is, how did you find out?"
"Stopped by Tir Na Nog for a drink."
She blinked in surprise. "That's a long way to go for a drink."
"Needed to get away for a bit. I ran into Nestor and some of the other coven. They're a hot fucking mess, Nana."
"Nobody stepped up?" She set a glass in front of each us and sat across from us.
Yuki was watching us like we were a tennis match.
"No."
She shrugged. "Someone will. The goddess will see to it."
"You're good with this? That was your coven, too."
She smiled and gave another noncommittal shrug. "And everyone I cared about has either moved on or moved here. Like it or not, Granddaughter, this is our home now. That includes your mother."
"She's really staying?"
"Called here by the goddess herself. She didn't have a choice."
"And did the goddess make you open your home for the woman you despise most in this world?"
Her smile turned into a frown. "Tone, Child. Your mother and I might not get along, but she is still my daughter."
"And she's still my mother. I love her, but I'd rather hug a moving Peterbuilt on the highway than let her move in with me."
Nana cackled. "It was easier to have her here with me."
I narrowed my eyes at her. "To do what?"
She sighed and stood, beckoning for us to follow her. Yuki shot me a nervous glance and followed Nana into the living room. I downed my wine and set my empty glass on the table before joining them.
Nana was standing in front of the far wall and waiting for me, watching me enter the room before facing the wall. "Oscailte," she canted softly, and the wall shimmered and melted, splitting apart and revealing a workroom within.
Nana and Mother were more into potions than I was. The huge cauldron in the center of the room was proof enough of that. I didn't own a single one. Not even a quart sized one. "Double, double, toil and trouble," I said with a giggle and stepped inside. And whistled…
The workbench was natural wood that looked like it had grown from the earth itself, twisting and winding up to form a flat surface along the wall. The floor of the workshop was hard packed earth. Faerie lights illuminated everything from overhead as the ceiling spiraled up into nothingness. One thing was for certain… We weren't in Kansas anymore. "How come I don't have one of these?"
"I believe you skipped out on your magic lesson to snog your boyfriend from Ireland on the day we covered enchanted workspaces."
"He wasn't from Ireland; he was from Virginia. He moved to Ireland."
"He should have stayed a virgin. You would have learned a lot more." She chuckled at her own joke. I blushed six shades of crimson.
"So, what have you been working on?"
"That." She pointed a finger at the furthest wall. Nailed to the wall were sheets of parchment all overlapped until it looked a solid sheet, diagrammed with Tartarus and the adjacent planes. Seeing it on paper gave me a bit more understanding of what Dar had been trying to explain.
"Oh. I already know all that. Cania was inhabited by Mephistopheles who got offed by the angels so they're the only ones who can enter Tartarus, essentially making it an escape proof prison."
"Very good. If you're thinking in positive and negative planes of existence. That doesn't take into account the lateral planes."
"Lateral planes?"
"Did you pay attention to nothing I said in your studies?"
"Musta been sick that day."
"Snogging. You were such a horn dog once you found out the miraculous uses of the penis."
Yuki snickered behind us.
"You were saying?"
"About the penises or the planes?" Nana cocked an eyebrow.
"Planes."
"Well, travel to the planes is like taking a subway from one to another." She moved to the beautifully drawn circular diagram and touched the disk representing the mortal realm. It flared for an instant, gold light looking like embers as the brown ink blossomed to life and the disk pulled away from the others and started spinning.
"That's fucking cool," Yuki said in awe.
"So, what are lateral planes?"
"Just as there is the mortal realm, there are others on the same plane."
"The multiverse?" I had seen the Marvel movies.
Nana shook her head in disappointment. "That, I'm sorry to say, is bullshit. But there are three for each. Think of all of these as the primary planes of existence. They are neutral." She waved her hand and the disk split into three, all overlapping each other. "Then there are the positive primary planes and the negative primary planes. They make up the lateral."
"That's the two kinds? So, Mephistopheles might be alive in one of them?"
She shook her head. "No. If you die in one, you die in all. They're that interconnected."
"So, how does that help us then?"
"It doesn't. I said there were two different kinds. I was explaining the first in hopes that you might actually retain some knowledge for a change."
"Yes. Two. Positive and negative."
"No, those are one kind. Laterals of the first."
"What's the second?"
"What do you think connects everything?" She motioned at the whole board.
"Subways?"
Her face fell in utter annoyance.
"Love?"
She smacked me in the back of the head.
"Just tell me!"
She motioned toward the board with both arms outstretched. A globe encircled all of the planes, glittering like stars.
"Space?"
"In a way, you are correct, Child."
I made a pumping motion with my arm. "Score."
"But if you think it's the space that a rocket can get you to, you are sorely mistaken."
"Drugs?"
"Nope."
"She is referring to Ethereum." My mother answered solemnly from the doorway behind us.
"So good of you to join us, Moth–"
Her hair was disheveled, her silk robe askew, and her usually pristine lipstick smeared across half her face. Seven guys were milling in the living room by the front door in various stages of undress, all of them putting on their shoes with dazed looks on their faces.
"Seven?" I hadn't meant to say the word aloud, but I hiss-whispered in disbelief. I was surprised she could walk from the bedroom to the workroom. But then again, the seven guys might have carried her. "They all on the same team?"
"Yes, actually. Thank the lady for softball!"
"Aren't there nine people on a team?" I vaguely recalled nine being the number, but I wasn't sure.
"Two of them were married and didn't feel like playing…" Mother wiggled her eyebrows.
Nana cackled and Yuki reverted to gagging noises. I was just in shock. Shaking my head, I turned back to Nana. "So, what's Ethereum? Like the digital currency?"
"No, Granddaughter. Ethereum is the space, energy, force, whatever, that connects all the planes. Theoretically, you could travel from the mortal realm to any of the other planes by cutting across Ethereum."
Something wasn't adding up. "If that is true, and travel to the planes is limited to the adjacent planes, how do the angels get to our realm, how did Dar get to our realm, and how did a portal to hell open up in the middle of town?"
"Magic."
"Ex-squeeze me?"
"She means conduits, dear." Mother strode into the room adjusting her robe.
"Conduits? Like subways?"
"Kind of. But, more like inside you."
She pulled out a stool from under the work bench and sat. "You think the blood inside you is human?"
"No? I'm a witch."
"And what do you think makes a witch a witch?" She crossed her arms and stared at me.
"Magic?"
"Precisely. And how do you think we got the power to use said magic?"
"Stole it? Bought it at Walmart? Gift from the gods?"
"Some is stolen, some was a gift from the gods, but some of it came from our ancestors. Humans that bred with demons, elves, dragons, you name it. Most non-magical humans have some fey or demon blood running through their veins, but it is so diluted they can't touch, see, or harness that power. Some of us have more than others and it keeps us young and it gives us magic. A few have too much, and you get the fey blooded, who are hunted for the liquid gold that flows through their veins."
"Do I want to know our family tree?"
"Your mother did the horizontal mambo with a god, and you're going to act shocked now?" Nana laughed.
"What about you, Nana? You never mentioned Mother's father. Was he human?"
Nana got a dreamy look on her face. "That was a time long ago. I have forgotten who sired her."
Nana was a fucking liar. That was a story I wanted to hear, and I would get it out of her sooner or later. The Blackwells were powerful. It had to have come from somewhere. It made me wonder about Nana's parents… She had never mentioned them either.
"So, what do family trees have to do with conduits and planes?"
"If you have the right bl
ood in your veins, you can travel to those planes."
"So, when I summoned Dar, that means we have demon ancestors?"
"You can look at your mother and seriously ask that question?"
I looked at my mother. "Never mind. I believe you."
"Just as your Grandmother can open a portal to the Jurassic plane, dear."
"Again, with the dinosaur jokes, Madeline?"
"If the foo shits, Mother."
I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. "So, how does all of this help us to get to Tartarus?" I wanted the Cliff's Notes version.
"By sailing the seas of Ethereum, straight into the bowels of Hell."
"Do we have a boat?"
"It's not the vessel you should be worried about, it's the captain." Nana sighed.
"Color me confused?"
"The only people who can safely traverse Ethereum are the gods."
"Okay? So, that rules this little current plan of attack out, right?"
"Did you forget that you are a god, Child?" Nana narrowed her eyes.
"No. But I've been trying to. So? What? I can go to Tartarus?"
"Not without a guide. You would be lost in Ethereum for eternity."
"So, who did you have in mind?"
Nana looked at Mother. Mother stared back. "Belenus."
"Who?" I asked out of shock, I knew who Belenus was. The god who hated my father and done everything she could to destroy him. The god I had fought in Underhill. The god of Light and the overworld. His ex-wife.
Chapter 6
"You want to take my car?"
Chief was holding open the passenger door of his police Jeep like it was a limo. I'd ridden in it several times, and between all of the communications equipment, laptops, shotgun, and other law enforcement themed paraphernalia, I had never gotten out of said vehicle without bruised knees or shins. Sure, I was a witch and healed shortly thereafter, but a bruise was a bruise. "Nah. We get better parking in the cop car."
"Okay," I acquiesced. "But you're rubbing my poor knees and shins later."
Seventh Seal: A Reverse Harem Tale (Lovin' the Coven Book 7) Page 5