“Pah!” Baba waved him off. “That is too easy. You will work for what you wish. I teach you magic to restore Abby, but it will not be free.”
He was almost relieved, except that this was Baba Nata, and he’d had good reason for leaving her mentorship. “You want me to become your apprentice again?”
“Aye.”
“For how long?” he asked.
“You had five years of our agreement left. You will finish.”
“You told Abigail you would end my training in four years if I came back to you willingly. I just did. Are you going to honor that?” His voice rose as he spoke. Anger flushed through him at his powerlessness. She held the upper hand in this bargain, and from the cunning in her eyes, she knew it.
Rage crackled under his skin. His magic awakened, hot and alive.
The blue-haired girl pressed herself up against the cupboards, nowhere else left to go. Baba reached out a hand and twisted her wrist through the air. Flickers of red lines woven around him became visible, the magic of a spell wavering before disappearing again. The heat of his affinity cooled and was snuffed out, though his anger remained.
Baba’s eyes twinkled. “For you, my favorite apprentice, I make special bargain.”
“I thought I was your favorite apprentice,” the girl at the table said.
Baba ignored her. “Four years.” Her lips drew back in a smile that revealed gums missing many teeth. “Three, if you mind me.”
Lucifer waited for the catch. When she added no more, he asked, “Is this three years in the Faerie Realm or the Morty Realm?” Time passed differently in Faerie, sometimes slower, sometimes faster. Baba managed to use time to her advantage to keep living far longer than many witches.
Baba waved him off. “Not important.”
“It is important,” Lucifer insisted. Abigail wouldn’t want to be back in Baba’s house for three years. She’d had good reason to run away.
“This coming from man who would commit murder to bring back another?” Baba raised a silver eyebrow. “You have no choice.”
Desperation burned in his chest. He wanted to agree right now, but he knew better. “You can definitely wake her, then? You’ll wake her now.”
“Nyet. I will not wake her now.” Baba stroked the amulet around her throat, shimmers of iridescent green catching his eye and momentarily mesmerizing him.
It wasn’t a stone at the end of the cord, but a small glass vial filled with magic.
“The longer I wait, the harder it’s going to be to return her to her body.” That was what Felix had said. Lucifer didn’t doubt it was true.
“You will wake her. After you have learned to control your magic,” Baba said.
Lucifer straightened, resolving to endure for Abigail’s sake. “When do I start?”
CHAPTER THREE
Rose Red’s Glass Coffin
The first task Baba made Lucifer perform was building a place to house Abigail as she slept. He chopped down slender trees, and he built her a bed made from the forest. He would have liked to give her a place to sleep made of live trees, but he didn’t have the knowledge for that kind of magic anymore.
Baba hobbled outside with the aid of her cane as he worked. “There is no room inside for another. Abby must remain outside where she will be in harmony with nature.” Baba pointed to the forest just outside the garden. “This is practical solution, nyet?”
Lucifer watched a racoon scramble through the brush. “Wild animals might attack her as she sleeps. Or she might get rained on and catch pneumonia.”
“You worry like old woman.” Baba cackled. “Abby needs sun and rain. She must gain strength from forest, or her body will die. We will cast protective wards afterward to keep wild animals away—beasts like you.”
The blue-haired girl snickered from the doorway at that.
Lucifer built the bed for Abigail, still not liking that she wouldn’t be inside the cottage. He wanted her where he could watch her and keep her safe. It took him hours to build her bed, and by the time he finished, his hands were blistered and raw.
He selected a place under an oak tree a few paces from the gate. That way she could be near her affinity. Baba told him he was being silly digging out cushions of moss from the forest to line the wood bed, but he wanted Abigail to be comfortable, even in sleep.
“Your dawdling wastes time,” Baba scolded.
She handed him a book and bade him to practice the ward he would need to use to create a glasslike case over the bed so that animals wouldn’t be able to harm her. In the dying light of dusk, he practiced building the ward over a moth that had settled on Baba’s lavender bush. He must have done something wrong because the bush caught on fire.
“Do you want help?” the blue-haired girl asked.
“No.” He stomped out the flames and turned away.
She stepped into his line of sight and gave him a disapproving look. “Baba said you’re stubborn, and you don’t listen. You make a poor apprentice. It makes me wonder why she’d bother with you.”
Lucifer knew why Baba bothered. It was his magic. He would make her own magic stronger, but the girl apparently didn’t know that.
“Kelsie, leave him be,” Baba called from inside. “Come inside and set table for supper.”
Lucifer scrutinized the words of the spell in the growing darkness. When Kelsie called him in for supper, he ignored her. He kept chanting, trying to fuel his magic into the spell. The directions in the book were clear, but he couldn’t remember how to work magic. Not on purpose anyway.
Instead of setting the bush on fire this time, he froze it.
Baba struck him in the arm with her cane. “Must you test your magic on my medicinal herbs?”
He scrambled back, taken by surprise. He’d been concentrating and hadn’t heard her approach.
“Upon morrow, you try again.” She squinted at the bush. “With my assistance. For now, come inside and eat your pottage. Empty bellies never helped any apprentice learn magic.”
Lucifer scooped Abigail up, intending to carry her inside where it was warm and safe.
“Nyet. Leave her be. She will do better near her affinity.” Baba nodded toward the oak tree.
“I don’t want to leave her. Something might happen to her when I’m inside.”
Baba shuffled into his path, blocking his entrance to the door. “You are not laying her in my bed again.” Baba tried to hit him with her cane.
He dodged out of the way, nearly dropping Abigail. “I’ll carry her up to the loft, and she can sleep there. Just for the night.”
“You are a stubborn fool.” Baba began to swear in Russian.
He hoped it was swearing anyway and not a curse. His Russian was as rusty as his magic.
“Wow, this is the most entertaining evening I’ve had in ages,” Kelsie said, peeking out the door at them.
Lucifer scowled at her. She had enough sense to duck back inside.
He shouldered past Baba and brought Abigail into the cottage. The ladder up to the loft was set at enough of an angle he could almost have walked up it, but carrying Abigail, it threw off his balance, and he had to restart. Lucifer shifted her to try to hold her with one arm, but her dead weight made it difficult.
Baba shook her head, muttering. “You will break your neck or hers, carrying her like that.”
“Is that your divination talking or pessimism?” he asked.
Baba snapped her fingers at the young woman. “Kelsie, you help him.”
“Here, let me go ahead of you.” Kelsie elbowed him out of the way. “You can hand her up to me.”
He eyed her doubtfully. “You aren’t strong enough.”
Kelsie rolled up the gray sleeve of her homespun dress and flexed a muscle. “Look at these bad boys. I work out.”
Lucifer snorted. She was almost as scrawny as he had been as a child. He didn’t like the idea of carrying Abigail over his shoulder. She was far too fragile, but he s
uspected it was the safest way. When he’d made it halfway up, Kelsie leaned over the edge of the loft and wrapped her arms around Abigail’s waist to ease the load off him.
Together they carried Abigail to her old bed. Lucifer covered her with the cape again. Abigail hadn’t grown much since she’d been sixteen. She fit just as well as she once had. He smoothed her hair out of her face. She might have been sixteen for how young she looked.
Only a couple of years ago she had been nearly fifty. Because he hadn’t aged as a cat, she’d been the older one out of the two of them. Now the tables were turned, and he feared if his body was eighteen or he was in his twenties, he might be too old for her.
The second bed was rumpled and hastily made. Kelsie sat down on it, watching him tuck the cape back around Abigail to preserve her modesty.
“She’s going to need a dress,” Kelsie said.
He glanced at the dresser, remembering how empty it had been when he’d been a boy. He used to have only two pairs of clothes. Abigail hadn’t owned much more. “Have you anything you can loan her?”
Kelsie crossed her arms and frowned.
“Abigail does not need clothes. She will need to be one with nature,” Baba called from downstairs. “You come down and eat. You will not make good magic on morrow with empty belly. Da?”
Kelsie made a face at Baba that the other woman couldn’t see before turning back to Lucifer. “I can get her dressed. You go on.”
He hesitated, uncertain whether he should leave Abigail in the care of this stranger.
Kelsie rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to bite off her fingers and toes when you aren’t looking. That’s more of Baba’s MO.”
Reluctantly he left her, to eat his cold vegetable stew. Kelsie wasn’t as good a cook as Abigail had been, but he made no comment on the quality of the meal.
Baba sat in her rocking chair, knitting as he ate. “Where do you plan to sleep?”
He glanced up at the loft. He’d barely been able to curl up in that bed as a boy.
“Nyet. You cannot sleep in Abigail’s bed. You are too big and will break frame.” Her eyes narrowed. “Unless you turn into cat.”
He only had just recently been able to leave that form. He didn’t relish the idea of returning to it, even if it meant he could snuggle up next to Abigail. Nor was he certain he remembered the celestial magic necessary to shift into another creature at will.
“I can sleep on the floor next to Abby’s bed,” he said.
Kelsie lifted her nose up at him. “You mean between her bed and mine? I’m not sharing my room with you.”
“You and Abigail would do better outside.” Baba snorted in disgust. “Tomorrow you make new bed for yourself. After you make spell work.”
Lucifer ignored their objections. He curled up next to Abigail’s bed and slept beside her. It was closer to her than he’d been in years.
* * *
Lucifer hated it when Baba was right.
Abigail’s complexion was sallow and waxy the next morning. Lucifer knew he would have to work harder to ensure she had a safe place to sleep outside. As soon as he was done fetching water, and breakfast dishes had been cleared, he rushed outside to complete his work.
Magic had always come easily to Lucifer—more so than to most Witchkin. It surprised him he wasn’t able to work the spell. How was he supposed to use advanced magic before her soul disintegrated, or whatever it was souls did, if he couldn’t even work a simple Elementia spell?
His voice sounded like a rough growl as he enunciated the Old High German of the spell. Baba clucked her tongue and corrected his pronunciation. She listened to him try again and shook her head. “You are speaking words, but you do not feel them. You must be elements. They must be music in soul.”
Lucifer couldn’t remember enough Old High German to understand the language. “What’s the translation of the spell?”
She shuffled away, muttering to herself as she returned to the cottage. He thought she meant to leave him to muddle through it and keep practicing on his own. She returned a moment later, his chant interrupted by the dull thud of a book on the ground before him. “You not remember? You translate. Then we begin again.”
The phrase was simple, though it took hours to translate.
“Wind, join me in my song.
Water, wash away impurities that would harm.
Fire, give warmth to fuel this spell.
Earth, give life to sustain what I hold dear.
With spirit, I bind you together as one to protect.
So mote it be.”
He spoke the words again, this time infusing meaning into the spell, calling on the elements now that he understood what kind of magic was needed. Water came forth from the dew and the stream running through the forest, wind whispered against his skin, and earth hummed under his feet. Within the cottage, fire crackled in the hearth. Before Lucifer, a dome of light enclosed the bush, the surface clear and subtle like a bubble of glass.
A bumblebee attempted to fly through the ward, but it bounced off and buzzed away. Lucifer tentatively touched the dome. His fingers passed through it.
“Da,” Baba said, drawing his attention. “Again. Now bigger.”
For hours, Lucifer worked at perfecting his technique until he was confident he could create the spell to protect Abigail from humans and wild beasts. A little thrill raced through him when he was done, to see that he had performed the spell by himself. If he could regain his prior knowledge and learn the new magic needed, he would cure Abigail in no time. He would be able to protect her from harm so that no one would ever hurt her again.
By the time he had sealed his spell over her in her bed outside the garden, he was so exhausted he slumped onto the ground against Baba’s fence made of bones. Lucifer didn’t want to move another muscle.
He stared at the green knit blanket covering Abigail that Baba had given him. Abigail looked like a wood nymph of the forest with the flowers in her hair and the green of the fabric keeping her warm. She was as lovely as a fairy-tale princess.
Baba nudged him with her foot and nodded to the buckets for collecting water. “Now it is time for chores.”
His work was only beginning.
* * *
Every day, Lucifer toiled. When he wasn’t performing menial tasks such as fetching pails of water or foraging for dinner, he studied magic, regaining what he had once known long ago. He helped Baba treat patients who came for healing tonics or simple spells.
His least favorite task was chopping wood. He only selected felled wood to use for the fire when he could help it. He hated the idea that he might be chopping some tree person apart. The one time during his youth that Baba had made him prune Abigail after his magic had made her grow out of control had been painful for her. She’d resented him for it, though it had been necessary. He didn’t want to do that to anyone again.
Lucifer’s favorite part of the day was when he worked in the garden because he was able to gaze upon Abigail’s fair face while she remained at rest. Wild strawberries had climbed up the posts of the bed and woven through her blanket, white blossoms covering her. It made him remember the time he had made a strawberry grow for her, and he’d fed it to her when she’d been starving for food.
He’d been starving for affection.
He wasn’t certain whether these strawberries grew here because of his magic. He wanted to think it was hers—that a small part of her soul was returning and remembering.
Baba threw a rock at him from the open window. “You spend too much time looking, not enough time working. She is distraction. We should move her.”
He lowered his gaze to the row of turnips and returned to weeding. “Don’t fret. I’ll get back to work.”
He was certain Abigail wasn’t a distraction. She was his motivation for learning magic. His reason for living. Nothing else would have made him return to apprentice with Baba. He only hoped she didn’t hate him for agreeing to
do so.
He’d been so resistant to coming back, but now that he was here, things weren’t as bad as he remembered.
Kelsie unlatched the gate, carrying a basket to collect herbs from the forest. She paused, watching him return to weeding. “Have you tried kissing her to see if that wakes her up?”
A low growl sounded in the back of his throat. “Yes.”
“And it didn’t work?” Her lips twisted up into a smirk. “I guess that means you aren’t her prince.”
His cat instincts awakened in him, making him want to lash out. He gouged the hoe into the earth with such force he stabbed a carrot. “Close your mouth before I close it for you.”
“It’s a wonder she didn’t want to wake up with your cheery disposition.”
He turned away from Kelsie, deciding it was safer not to answer.
His gaze fell upon Abigail again. With each passing day she grew more beautiful. He had tried to kiss her before, and it hadn’t worked, but he hadn’t been able to make the spell for the ward around her to work at first either. He leaned the hoe against the fence, thinking it was time to try again.
Baba threw another rock at him. “I read your mind. Get back to work or I make Kelsie garden and you grind herbs instead.”
Aside from Kelsie’s snide remarks and Baba’s nagging, being an apprentice wasn’t so bad.
Yet.
CHAPTER FOUR
Try This One Weird Trick That Worked for the Raven Queen
Lucifer headed out the door to fetch water at the stream as he did every morning. The notes of a song were carried on the breath of wind.
The first thing Lucifer did every morning was check on Abigail—just as it was the last thing he did at night before retiring to bed. As he walked around the side of the cottage, he halted. Four unicorns crowded around the bed where Abigail lay. They resembled mustangs with sable fur and manes of various shades of brown and black. Their majesty stole his breath away.
Unicorns were notoriously picky for whom they allowed to see them—and more picky whom they allowed to touch them. Lucifer had petted unicorns as a child. Abigail had never seen a unicorn except from afar. He wished she was awake to see how they gazed adoringly at her.
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