Vega stepped out of his way as he passed. “Knock yourself out.”
Lucifer stomped through the brush, careful to keep Abigail wrapped and warm in the cloak.
Now that he was alone with Abigail, he found a place in the brush clear of blackberry brambles and nettles. He laid her down on a bed of moss and touched his lips to hers. He had tried this before, but there had been a crowd of spectators watching.
Lucifer cradled her in his arms, gazing at the peaceful expression on her face. He could have believed she’d just gone to sleep. Her auburn hair was long and silky against his arm, softer than a newborn babe’s. She resembled the girl he’d grown up with more than the woman she’d been before she’d been cursed into the form of a tree for the last year and a half. Looking upon the beauty of her face was torment, but he couldn’t stop torturing himself. He kept on looking.
A twig snapped behind Lucifer. His brother Felix stood there. In his gray suit he looked like a shadow against the lush green of the ferns.
Lucifer’s voice came out a guttural growl. “Leave us be.”
“I have no intention of stopping you.” The other man’s face remained expressionless, giving no hint he might have been offended by the dismissal—nor that he intended to heed Lucifer’s command. “I thought I might confide a secret in you; I haven’t yet told anyone how we restored Clarissa after she was in a coma.”
Lucifer studied his brother’s eyes, so similar to his own it was like looking into a mirror. “I didn’t know Clarissa was ever in a coma,” Lucifer said. He hadn’t seen her and had simply thought she was sick.
Felix tugged at the bottom of his tweed jacket. “We used touch magic. It might not work for Abigail. Her affinity isn’t touch or pleasure.”
“No, but it’s mine.”
A flicker of a gentle smile flashed over Felix’s lips before disappearing. “Indeed.”
Lucifer had overheard gossip while he’d been in the form of a cat, no one suspecting he was capable of intelligent thought. He knew touch magic could be used to heal. Felix had done so himself.
“I will be able to awaken her. I’ll use touch magic,” Lucifer said.
Felix inclined his head in affirmation. “You might be able to awaken Abigail with your affinity. But the true problem isn’t her slumber. It’s her lack of soul.”
Lucifer stared at his brother dumbfounded. His brother couldn’t be serious. “Why would you think she doesn’t have a soul?”
“I have practiced projecting my awareness. I can sense this body is an empty shell. Clarissa confirmed it. This is not the Abigail Lawrence you once knew.” He ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair, so immaculate compared to Lucifer’s own wild mane. “Clarissa’s soul was still attached to her body when I revived her. Have a care to think about the consequences of awakening a body without a soul. It will be like a zombie unless you find the soul, and if you do, there are repercussions for removing a soul from its new home after it has been separated this long.”
Lucifer was aware of how lacking his education in magic had been for the last thirty years, but he suspected the physics of souls was something most Witchkin didn’t study. “What do you mean by ‘home’? The body?”
“Indeed. Should you manage to find Abigail Lawrence’s soul, and persuade her back into her original home, you must consider where you are stealing it from. A soul that has purged itself from the host has moved on to a new location, and it will not take kindly to being moved.”
“Do you mean she’s in heaven?” Lucifer didn’t believe in heaven, but perhaps that was his stubbornness and reticence after being named after a fallen angel.
“I cannot fathom the nuances of the afterlife, nor the levels of ascendance, though Clarissa and Vega have both caught glimpses of another dimension while using the Ruby of Divine Wisdom. I do not know whether Abigail’s soul has dissolved into a kind of soul collective or she has been born into another body. If you should manage to appropriate her soul after pieces of her have passed into other bodies, you will be depriving others of their souls. It will be . . . painful for those children to grow with a piece of them missing. If too much is removed, such children might become sociopaths. Or it might result in death. Necromancy is dark magic, and much can go wrong.”
Even powerful Fae didn’t meddle with necromancy and the business of souls. The only person Lucifer knew of who had successfully raised the dead was Vega Bloodmire, and her magic hadn’t helped Abigail.
Lucifer had never attempted black magic like necromancy, nor had he wanted to after he had seen the madness it had caused in his mother after his father died. The closest Lucifer had come to forbidden magic was that of his affinity for touch, but he’d never mastered it. Had he finished his training as Baba Nata’s apprentice, he might have.
A great weight burdened his resolve. Lucifer didn’t like his brother here, trying to convince him of the folly of his ways. From the first moment he’d met his brother as an adult, he hadn’t liked him. He was too proper and superior. Too cold and unreadable. He was opposite from Lucifer in every way.
“I suppose you’re going to try to stop me, then.” Lucifer arched an eyebrow, ready to pounce if Felix offered up a challenge.
“No. I simply came to warn you. Should you use your affinity, or another means to bring Abigail’s soul back, you don’t know whether she wants to return. Furthermore, when I awakened Clarissa, she was conscious long enough to give her consent to use touch magic. Abigail is not.”
Irritation needled under Lucifer’s resolve to behave civilly around his brother. Felix spoke as if he thought Lucifer was a degenerate deviant who intended to take advantage of Abigail while she was unconscious.
“Are you done?” Lucifer asked. “If so, go. I have nothing more to say to you.”
Felix nodded once. The slight downward curve of his lips belied his dissatisfaction, though he said nothing. He silently slipped away, leaving Lucifer in peace.
Lucifer turned his attention back to Abigail. He hated the way his brother managed to chip at his resolve with logic. Abigail had told him she loved him many times while he’d been a cat. She had confided all her secrets in him, though he hadn’t been able to answer her with more than gestures or occasionally spelling out words using her alphabet board. For years she had protected him and hidden him from Baba Nata.
Lucifer had sacrificed his humanity to be with her. He would do anything to restore her—even if she detested him later. So long as she existed in the world, he would be happy.
This time as he kissed her, he allowed the cape to fall back. He massaged her arms, trying to send feeling into her limbs. He kissed his way down her neck to her breasts. She inhaled and sighed. He thought the touch magic must be working.
“Abby? Are you returning to me?” he asked.
Her eyes remained closed. He kissed her more deeply and pressed her to his body, keeping her warm. She tasted like dewdrops and nectar. Her skin was soft as a newly born baby’s.
He remembered the one time they’d been together intimately. She had told him how much she had loved him. The memory of her arms wrapped around him stoked the fires of his passion.
After several more minutes of caressing her, he noticed the change. She smelled of roses and damp wood after rainfall. The air tasted more strongly of spring and the forest. Leaves tickled along his neck, and he found shoots had crept out of her hair and wrapped around him. This had happened once before—when they were both teenagers—but the growth had frightened them at the time. His magic caused hers to react more strongly than usual.
He’d had to prune her after she’d rooted into the earth and been unable to free herself. His affinity had been able to feel every sting of pain as he’d cut her free, and he hated knowing his magic had done that to her.
His magic was drawing out hers again, but it wasn’t reviving her. It was making her body transform back into a plant. He considered what it would be like to be wrapped in the embrace of her v
ines, smothered in springtime as he willingly gave his life so that he would be able to be with her forever, body and soul. The despair in him was almost deep enough he was willing to succumb to it.
But not yet. There was still one other option.
Carefully, he uncoiled the vines that had wrapped around him and peeled them away.
Clarissa Lawrence, Abigail’s daughter, had brought souls back into their bodies in the past through accidental necromancy—though temporarily. Vega Bloodmire had anchored souls back inside permanently—though the souls had to be close by and still tethered to the body they had just vacated. Yet neither witch’s magic had brought Abigail back, even temporarily. Neither were willing to use true black magic to reach the results they wanted.
Lucifer trusted they were both powerful witches, but they weren’t the most powerful witch he knew. It would take Baba Nata, the Witch of Nightmares, to bring back Abigail’s soul.
Lucifer Thatch would do anything to cure the woman he loved, even trade his soul to a witch—and he feared that was what he would have to do. He had to go to Baba Nata, the Witch of Nightmares, for her cure.
CHAPTER TWO
The Witch of Nightmares
Lucifer could have found Baba Nata’s cottage from anywhere in the Unseen Realm, Morty Realm, or the Faerie Realm. All one needed to do was find oneself lost and then in need of a magical cure.
Leaving Baba’s cottage wasn’t going to be as easy. Once Baba had Lucifer, she wouldn’t allow him to escape. Not after he’d lied last time and run away with Abigail. Baba would use him for his magic, to make herself stronger as she once had long ago.
Lucifer’s arms were tired from carrying Abigail by the time he felt the trees shift around him. One could never see the trees move as the enchantment worked, but they wavered in his peripheral vision, and when he glanced over his shoulder, there was no longer any path behind him.
Magic tingled against his skin, signaling enchantments had been at work to transport him to a different region of the Faerie Realm. The path wound through the forest, sunlight dancing through the verdant leaves above. When he came to the cottage, it looked just as he’d seen it last, a gingerbread house with peppermint sticks and lollipops on the fenced-in yard surrounding it. The candy façade wavered like a mirage, the glamour of magic shimmering and translucent. It was more like a ghostly image overlaid on top of what the cottage truly looked like. As he walked up the path to the gate, the bones that made up the fence became tangible. The lollipops at the posts more clearly resembled skulls.
How many children had been tricked over the years into nibbling on the walls of the cottage instead of stealing the carrots and onions from the gardens Lucifer didn’t know. The familiar sound of chickens clucked from the coop out back. A goat bleated, probably Fredricka, the same goat he’d been friends with while Baba had raised him.
Lucifer felt an eerie sense of coming home, though this had been a cruel home, only slightly better than his own. Baba hadn’t beaten him like his own mother had. She hadn’t stolen his magic, though she had used him all the same. She had punished him when he hadn’t minded her, though the consequences she had doled out were worse than physical pain.
He stared at the open doorway, considering whether it was safe for Abigail here. She might hate him for bringing her, but he didn’t know what else he could try.
He worked to hold Abigail securely as he unlatched the gate. His heart pounded as he strode through the door. The interior was three times larger than the exterior hinted, but he still had to stoop to fit through the doorway. Sunlight filtered in through lace curtains, illuminating the shelves of books and herbs that dominated the kitchen. Baba’s bed was hidden behind a curtain, and the loft above where he’d once slept was almost invisible in the shadows.
Lucifer found Baba Nata standing at the kitchen table, leaned against her cane made of gnarled wood. She wore a red kerchief over snowy-white hair and a matching red skirt that clashed with the bright colors of her blouse. A young woman with a vibrant shock of short blue hair ground dried plants with a pestle. She was tall enough she might have passed for sixteen or seventeen, but with her baby face, she could have been younger.
Bottles of herbs were lined up on the table and one of the cupboards on the wall was still open, revealing more. The savory aroma of potatoes, onions, and tomatoes came from the cauldron boiling over the fire. Lucifer couldn’t tell if they were making dinner or preparing a potion while dinner was cooking.
At least there were no children in the cage in the corner.
“Ah, new apprentice has arrived, da?” Baba said in her thick Russian accent before turning to see him. She looked as ancient as she always had, but she moved more stiffly than he remembered. Her face was no more weathered than the last time he’d seen her. Baba’s long nose and the wart on her pointed chin weren’t so different from a child’s drawing of a witch.
Lucifer could sense the aching of her bones and joints without trying to use his magic. If only he knew how to use his magic for more than sensing, he could use it for curing ailments like Abigail’s.
The girl with blue hair made a squeak of noise, appearing to take in his unruly beard and untamed hair as though he were a wild man. She stepped back.
“Not new apprentice. Old apprentice. Welcome home, Lucy.” Baba’s gaze flickered from his face to Abigail in his arms. “I knew you would return sooner or later . . . when you desired to learn magic again.”
The teenager with short blue hair squealed. “Lucy? As in Lucifer? This is the devil you told me about?”
Lucifer sighed in exasperation. “I was named after a fallen angel. That doesn’t make me a devil.” He looked for a place to lay Abigail.
Baba cackled. “Nyet. You are devil for other reasons.”
Lucifer didn’t want to lay Abigail on the hard floor near the hearth, nor did he think it safe when sparks might fly out. Her flesh was so soft and smooth, he wasn’t sure if it was more like wood or baby skin. Seeing no other option, Lucifer pushed the curtain hiding Baba’s bed aside and laid Abigail down on the quilt.
“Nyet. That is my personal space. I do not share bed with apprentices—or former apprentices.” Baba whacked him in the leg with her cane, but not very hard.
Either she was weaker than she had been thirty years ago, or she wasn’t truly vexed.
He tucked the cape around Abigail more securely. “Abby isn’t dirty, and she doesn’t have fleas. I need somewhere you can examine her to figure out how to cure her. You can’t do that if I bring her up to the loft.”
Baba clucked her tongue. “You come to me to fix Abby. What will you offer me?”
He had known it would come to this sooner or later, he had just hoped it would be later. “Nothing if you can’t cure her.”
The young woman with wild blue hair watched inquisitively from the table. “What’s wrong with her? Does she have a Sleeping Beauty Curse?”
Lucifer wished Abigail’s slumber had only been a curse.
Baba leaned in closer. “Nyet. She has no soul.”
That confirmed Felix’s diagnosis.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Can you fix her?”
Baba’s lips curled up into a crafty smile. “Da, of course. What are you willing to pay for her soul to be returned?”
He had a feeling she was talking about more than what he was willing to pay her. He remembered Felix’s warning. To give Abigail her soul might mean it would be taken from another.
Lucifer smoothed Abigail’s red hair out of her face. “She won’t wake up. My brother said her soul has moved on. He thinks someone else might be . . .using it. Can you find it and put it back inside her?”
Baba’s arthritic fingers smoothed over a green amulet she wore around her throat. “Da. I can.”
Lucifer hated thinking about the price this would cost not just him, but someone else.
If Lucifer stole Abigail’s soul from a baby born in the last year and a
half since she’d been turned into a tree, it would cause a child suffering—and probably the parents too. Abigail hated for children to be hurt. She’d always been the one to release children from Baba’s cages.
He remembered the first time Abigail had held Clarissa as a baby. She’d later told him she suspected whose child Clarissa was and why it was so dangerous to keep her. Alouette Loraline, the wickedest witch of all time, was no secret, nor were her crimes, even to those who had given up witchcraft to live in the Morty Realm. Despite the risk of Clarissa turning out the same as her biological mother, Abigail had been a goner the moment she’d gazed at the baby’s face. Her maternal instincts had kicked in, and all she’d wanted to do was protect the newborn.
Even now, Lucifer wasn’t certain how much of Abigail’s love had been Clarissa’s touch magic bewitching her and how much of it had been Abigail’s unconditional love. There were times he also wondered whether his own magic had influenced Abigail’s free will.
Abigail wouldn’t forgive Lucifer if she knew what her soul had cost others. He had to take that risk anyway.
Baba frowned. “I ask again. What will you pay for me to cure your beloved?”
He swallowed the lump in his throat. “I will pay with my own blood and flesh.” Pain magic was horrible, but he was willing to do it for Abigail.
“Not enough. Nor is it you who will give me the sacrifice.” From the way she raised an eyebrow, he suspected she knew giving Abigail her soul back would cost someone else a soul—or part of a soul.
He knew the price would be high.
His insides felt as though they were shriveling up as he admitted the truth. “I would murder for her.” Abigail would hate him if she found out, but he didn’t know what else might cure her.
A gasp came from the blue-haired girl who edged back from him. Surely she thought he was the devil now. He didn’t care what she thought.
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