Magic In My Blood

by Kellie Sheridan

  The woman considered. I could practically feel the weight of every person in the room waiting for her to speak. And by the vein pulling at her temple, I guessed she was feeling the pressure as well. “I suppose it might be nice not to have to put so much work into hiding.” She cast a quick glance to the younger witch. “I’ll admit, we have spent quite a bit of time cleaning up other people’s messes. But the risks seem to outweigh any benefits.”

  The third witch in the room, one of the few males I’d seen, spoke up. “We’ve all seen what happens when humans learn to fear something. Witches died at the hands of humans until we learned to hide what we are. And quite a few people from other factions have lost their lives as well, some just because people thought they were witches. Others still for merely being different.”

  By then, I was dying to jump into the conversation. But I was starting to realize that maybe this was exactly the direction things had needed to go, for these people at this time. Everyone who had come to the summit hadn’t come with the same point of view, or come from the same background. And here they were, sharing their perspectives, and discussing every possible angle of the question we’d posed to them.

  “We have more tools at our disposal now than we used to,” a dark-skinned fae woman said. “We can utilize the media, get them on our side. Most of us live in countries where just up and murdering your neighbors isn’t exactly the norm. If we can make sure that the humans still see us as people, we can avoid having history repeat itself.”

  I’d been inclined to jump in and shut things down because I didn’t like the direction things were going, but it would have been a mistake.

  I didn’t know what had happened in the room before I’d arrived. But Ethan had been there, and he knew how to lead people, to guide them, and also how to get them to fall in line. He wasn’t the only wolf in the room, but he seemed to have control of the conversation.

  A bell sounded from outside the door, as loud as a gong and echoing into every room of the castle with magickal efficiency. The conversation cut off all around me, there one second, gone the next. We’d all been warned that the noise would be our signal to head back downstairs, but the reality of it was still jarring.

  People filed out quickly after that, but I hung back, waiting for Ethan.

  “How’d that go?” I asked, eyes wide and hopefully innocent. Like I hadn’t just been about ready to wrap him over the head with a heavy object.

  “Good,” he said, his eyes thinning to near slits as he studied me. “It started out really well, but that one witch was rather outspoken and against anything that could lead to real change. She was starting to get defensive, and her attitude was infecting everyone around her.”

  “So you...” I hesitated, trying to put the pieces together. “You joined her side, to try to let her feel like she had an ally.”

  “Something like that. I’m not sure if we made any real progress. If she finds a room full of people inclined to think the way she does in her next session, she'll probably close right up all over again."

  Reaching down, I linked my fingers through Ethan's, tugging him toward the door and the coffee waiting for us in the hall. "Either way, I think we can call this a very good start."

  The next two nights passed quietly, with much of the same. We talked, we cycled through different rooms, we shared and sometimes discarded ideas. After the awkwardness of our first few sessions, the conversations started to bleed through to the break periods, the discussions getting people excited enough that they weren’t always ready to hit pause when the time came.

  It was encouraging on some levels, but too often devolved into shouting or violence. The longer the discussions went on, the more convinced some people became that their way was the only way. At least with having so much power and muscle in anyone room, we could generally count on fights being broken up nearly as quickly as they started. But there was no denying that tempers were running hot, leaving me and the moderators on guard for any spark that might set our entire operation aflame.

  By the third evening, everyone had settled into our new routine. And after visiting three different sessions, I hadn’t heard a single person arguing in favour of no changes at all. If nothing else, the community seemed to be united in the idea that change was coming for us, one way or another.

  From what I was seeing by the fourth night, there seemed to be three major camps still standing. First was the one I had championed when we’d first opened the initial summit: relaxing the faction’s grips on their members, allowing for a broader sharing of the supernatural world with the people in our lives we could already trust. But no one, myself included, thought it was a perfect system. Who would decide which humans could be trusted? It would only take one person trusting the wrong boyfriend, neighbor, extended family member for things to snowball faster than we could control.

  Second was the camp lobbying for an option similar to Aoife’s fears: we’d send up a test balloon to the human world, showing them magick and gauging their reaction before we acted again. But to everyone's surprise, it was rarely our faction brought up as potential guinea pigs. We were too unpredictable as a whole and showing the world one of us wouldn’t prepare them for the rest. In that debate, witches were the topic of the hour. They looked and even were—mostly—human. We could find someone who looked good on camera, and have them share their abilities with the world, then branch out to a larger group.

  The third prominent perspective, and one I’d in no way considered until the fae had brought it up, almost felt like a combination of the first two. Rather than focusing on the humans in our lives who didn’t know their loved ones’ darkest secrets, we’d start with the people who already believed in magick, even if they didn’t quite have all the details right. True believers were everywhere if not exactly mainstream. While the communities might have been smaller in various cities, superstitions lived on everywhere, and the internet was making it easier for those who wanted to believe in something more to find each other online.

  Again, witchcraft would play a major role since the new age community was as strong as ever, witches and Wicca playing a part in the lives of humans who wanted to connect to something more powerful than they could possibly understand. I’d always suspected that there were practicing Wiccans who maybe even sensed magick as a force of nature. Something that could be manipulated and controlled, but they just didn’t have the ability to do so themselves. At least as far as I understood it, which admittedly was not all that well.

  And here in Ireland, there were more than a handful of people left from our oldest generation who had grown up believing in fairy folk and little people. Their myths were a far cry from the fae I knew, but it was still a place to start.

  I wasn’t sure which path was the right one. And I think we all felt like any option we chose would be a risk. But still, the fact that the ideas were coming in, and people genuinely seemed to want to work together to find an option...it felt like a win. Maybe even like the biggest thing I’d ever played a hand in accomplishing.

  By the time the sun started to rise, it felt like we were truly on the verge of something. Like within the next day or so, we might really get somewhere, and be in a position to start making decisions, or even better, a plan.

  I was still in the foyer, talking to Otto and a few others when I first heard the shouting from upstairs. Nothing too loud, too panicked, but enough to set me on edge.

  My first thought was of course that we were under attack, my body tensing as I search for danger.

  I was halfway up the stairs when I intercepted a woman running down toward me. “What’s happening?” I asked, sure she was about to tell me that Aoife had made it inside the castle.

  “Probably nothing,” the woman responded, stopping a couple of stairs ahead of me. “We’re just having trouble getting the rabbit hole door to work. We’re probably doing something wrong, so I was just coming to get help.”

  “That’s strange,” I said, starting up the stairs ag
ain. “Who’s working the door right now?”

  “Uh, a witch, not sure I got her name. The same girl who was there yesterday.”

  Taya. Taya who had already used the door both ways at least five times. “Let’s see if we can find Tilly. She’s the fae who first got it working for us again. I’m sure she’ll know what went wrong.” I was sure of no such thing, especially when I found both Tilly and Taya already waiting for me outside our transport room, a crowd of worried faces forming around them.

  “The door won't open?” I asked, trying to sound calm.

  “It will open,” Taya corrected me, “but when it does, it’s just a closet. We can’t make a connection to Galway.”

  “Weird.” I looked over to Tilly, raising my voice to make sure the people around me could hear as well. “Are there any fae here who are good with this kind of thing? Maybe someone else that can make the connection for us?”

  “There should be. I’ll see who I can track down. Maybe in the meantime we can...” with a pointed look, she glanced around the room.

  So this was serious then? If Tilly was that worried about getting people out of the way, she had to know there was at least a chance that something had gone very wrong. The kind of very wrong that could lead to a panic if left unattended.

  “Alright, everyone. Looks like we’re having some technical difficulties here. If everyone could head back downstairs so we have some room to work, that would be much appreciated. I’m sure this will just be a short delay. Nothing to worry about.”

  As I ushered people away from the room, a persistent banging had started up downstairs, leaving me very sure that there was something to worry about. I just hadn’t figure out what it was.

  Mumbling complaints, a few people started toward the stairs right away. Not happy, but not arguing. As they did, an elegantly dressed vampire, androgynous in face and attire, walked toward me. They waited until most of the crowd had dispersed before leaning in close to whisper in my ear.

  "I do not mean to pester you, but it is probably worth mentioning that my kind and I, we are on something of a tight schedule." I smiled as politely as I could. "The sun," they said. “She rises outside. We will not be able to get to safety in the time remaining, not unless we are on our way shortly."

  Yes. That. The vampires were the entire reason we'd needed to host the summit at night time, and now we were inching toward sunrise. Getting any of our guests killed probably wouldn’t have reflected well on the event as a whole.

  Ethan found me upstairs as Tilly returned, worry-lines etched into his brow. Tilly was leading her group toward the rabbit hole when Ethan called out to them. “Don’t bother. It’s not a problem with the rabbit hole. The front door won’t open either? It’s completely sealed shut. We’ve thrown eight different wolves at prying it open, thrown ourselves at it, nothing.”

  The front door wasn’t the only one that wasn’t cooperating. In a matter of minutes, we’d tried every door, every window and the fae had attempted to access every rabbit hole. Not one of them was playing nice, and absolutely everyone knew it. Panic hadn’t set in yet, but it wasn’t far off as the reality of what had happened started to set in.

  This was no mistake. Nothing had gone wrong on our end. Something very deliberate had been done to Castle Elgan, and I couldn’t begin to guess at how to undo it.

  We were trapped.

  Chapter 22

  I couldn't have been the only person remembering the terror of the first summit as we gathered in the front hall of Castle Elgan to weigh our options.

  The last time we'd all been gathered in one place, some of us had lost our lives in one terrible event. The rest of us would remember that night for the remainder of our—in some cases, extremely long—lives.

  This was Aoife's big move. It had to be. If she'd known where we were and watched our movements for the past few days, she'd have known exactly when to strike. I'd been expecting her to show up with a small army of her own, barging in on the proceedings with some big move and more likely than not, something violent.

  She could still act at any second. But until she made her move or we found a way out, we were stuck. Even Simon and Leda, usually free to go anywhere they wanted in any moment, were bound by magick to the castle. It had to be a strange experience for both of them, but that wasn't anywhere near the top of my list of things to worry about.

  It had been less than a half hour since we’d first realized we couldn’t leave the castle. So far, things were about as calm as could be expected, but there was a near equal mix of fear and anger in the crowd standing below me. It would have been a volatile mixture on a good day, but every minute we waited for answers was a minute closer to this whole situation going up like a powder keg.

  Even if Aoife wasn’t planning to blow up her own castle in order to put an end to everything that was happening within its walls, we could only last for so long. With this many people in one place, food was going to be a problem. But I was less worried about the eighty percent of us that needed food and water to survive, and more concerned with the vampires who would happily eat the rest of us if things went further south.

  From the other side of the upstairs landing, I watched as Ethan talked into his phone, his voice low and urgent. Despite our own inability to get out of the building, our cell phones weren’t having the same problem. We could communicate with the outside world, we just couldn’t get there ourselves. And thanks to his pack, he was the one with the most people nearby who could be of any use to us.

  As soon as the call finished, he looked up, his eyes searching for my own. As soon as he found me, he nodded. They had something.

  I knew if I started running over to meet him, I’d only stir up more panic, so forced my steps to be slow and deliberate, as though they alone had the power to keep people calm and rational.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “They checked the rabbit hole, but it’s the same issue at the pub as it is here.” No surprise there. “I’ve also got a car load of people headed out here the old fashioned way. Cooper and then a handful of others who had been in town with those who had been invited to the summit, including a witch. The plan was to have them try to break in from the outside.”

  Had been. So something had changed. “But?” I asked, needing to skip ahead to the part where I already knew everything Ethan did.

  “They’ve been on the road for about fifteen minutes already, and they’re noticing an unusual amount of activity on the road. Maybe it’s nothing, but they were wondering if you could access past data from a map app or something like that, something that keeps track of traffic patterns.”

  “What is it they’re thinking?”

  “That they aren’t the only people headed for the castle. If Aoife couldn’t get back in, it’s possible she’s planning to come around the long way as well, now that she knows she was able to lock the rest of us inside. We’re not sure how we can tell for sure, at least not until the motorcade he’s seeing is practically at the castle anyway.”

  It was still just a theory, but Cooper’s idea felt like a very real possibility to me. Either I’d overestimated Aoife’s ability to get into the castle through some other means, or she’d known there would be no way for her to gain the upper hand, even if she had gotten herself and some of her people in.

  If that was the case, we wouldn’t have long at all until they arrived.

  “We’re all set,” a young witch approached me from the landing. “Just put your hand on the bell, and they’ll be able to hear you.” The witches had spent the last few minutes reworking our magickal gong with a variation of the spell that had been used on the cathedral’s podium.

  I turned back to Ethan. “Whether or not Cooper’s on the right track, it’s a probably smart to assume Aoife’s coming here at some point.” Either that, or she planned to leave us in here to destroy ourselves then rot. But there was no point bringing that particular reality up.

  I’d hoped one of the moderators might step up to
take care of this next part, but at the first sign of trouble, they had each moved on from concerns of the summit to helping to keep their people both safe and in line.

  “Attention,” I called out, not sure how else to start. “Can I have your attention?” Bah. I hadn’t wanted to kick things off with a question, knowing something more definitive would go over better, but I hadn’t been able to stop myself from aiming for good manners over good sense. Still, the crowd seemed to appreciate the fact that my question was rhetorical, and simmered down.

  “As most of you are already aware, we are having some difficulties in getting out of this castle on schedule today. Due to the nature of our impediments, we have every reason to believe that the same group who orchestrated the attack on the cathedral is responsible for what is happening now.”

  A few people nodded, having come to the same conclusion but most waited, needing more. “We don’t know exactly what their plans are from here, but we have to assume that shutting us in wasn’t meant as a friendly gesture. And while I can’t speak for everyone here, I have absolutely no intention of hanging around and waiting to see what comes next. We came here to work a problem, and so far we’ve made good progress. Now I ask you to turn your minds and your abilities to this new problem.”

  I paused, hoping to build a little anticipation. “I know you’re tired and that it has been a long day after an even longer week. But there is a reason that each of you were asked to join this summit in the first place.” I had to assume that was true, I didn’t actually know how the guest list had been chosen. “If we want to see this through to the end, we’re going to need to work our way out of this problem. Right now, we’ve got two working theories. Either we’re stuck here indefinitely or we’re going to be under attack sometime soon.”