Lucifer sensed the joy radiating through her, expanding from her heart, wanting to explode out of her chest. It was simultaneously pleasurable and uncomfortable, the pressure of so much happiness aching for relief.
Lucifer opened his arms to her. “Yes. Hug me.”
She flung her arms around him and kissed him with abandon.
He murmured against her mouth, “Sorry, that was a hug and a kiss. That is going to cost you.”
“Hopefully it isn’t too expensive.”
“Very expensive.” He lifted her to her feet and nearly tripped over the picnic basket as he carried her back into the cottage where they would have privacy.
“Are you going to ask me about my soul first?” she asked as he set her on the bed.
He removed her shoes and kissed every inch of her leg as he slid her stocking down. “No. It’s not important to me what you did with your soul.” He wiggled the other stocking off and kissed her feet. “Unless it’s important to you. Then I’m happy to listen.”
She touched the empty bottle. “I need you to listen.”
The seriousness of her tone caught him off guard. He set her shoes aside and sat beside her on the bed. He took her hand to remind her he was there for her.
She swallowed, her eyes not meeting his. Nervousness trembled through her into his fingers. “Clarissa told me for my homework I had to read the translations of Baba’s books on soul magic before she gave them back to you so I would know what the consequences were for not having a complete soul. And Felix told me what it was like for him after the Raven Queen removed his soul, how uncaring he was and how his soul had started to become twisted and cruel. Vega told me I would turn out like Odette if I didn’t hurry up and figure things out soon. As scary as that was, I still didn’t want to.” She untied the string of the bottle and set it on her lap. “I know you wanted me to accept this soul after all the work you put into finding it.”
He started to protest. “That isn’t why—”
She put a hand up to stop him. “Just let me finish. Please.”
He sealed his lips into a line and nodded.
“I know you wanted me to remember what she remembered. You shared a past together. Thirty years that I sometimes caught glimpses of but I didn’t really know. The problem for me was that I didn’t like what I’d seen. There was so much guilt and regret and sorrow. I didn’t want all of that. I wanted to start over fresh and be me.”
He squeezed her hand to show he was listening.
“I couldn’t decide what I wanted, the soul that would make you happy or the one that would make me happy. I kept looking for a third option, something neither you nor Clarissa had thought of, something that was my own solution. But I couldn’t find one.”
Lucifer could see now it wasn’t that she’d been resistant to curing herself and completing her soul but his attempt to rescue her that had paralyzed her with indecision. His good intentions had done worse than he’d known.
“I chose to regrow my current soul with Clarissa and Felix’s help.” She swallowed. “Not the old one in the vial.”
The lump in her throat was hard and painful. It took all his willpower to keep his healing magic to himself so that he didn’t try to help her without being asked.
She quickly rushed on. “The soul you had caught had been in the bottle for too long. Felix worried it might have gotten stale, or spoiled, or however he put it. It just seemed too risky, and I felt bad, but it just wasn’t what I wanted.”
“That’s fine. I understand. You don’t need to explain yourself to me.” He placed an arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. She smelled of strawberries and roses.
“If you can love me after this, I’ll know it’s because you love me for being me, not because you think I’m going to be someone else.” She stared into his eyes imploringly.
He stroked her cheek. “I’m glad you found a path that worked for you.” She had found a solution that wouldn’t cause her to resent him later.
“Would you like to . . . ? What I mean is I know how your affinity works.” She squeezed his fingers, anxiety a knot in her body, transferring to his. “Do you want to . . . ?”
“Make love?” He wasn’t sure why she was so nervous. Perhaps she thought he would refuse her after her confession. “Is that what you’re asking?”
“No!” She laughed. “Feel my new soul. I know that’s one of your gifts.”
He laughed too now, for his presumptuousness. He was such an incubus with a one-track mind sometimes.
“Yes, I would love to feel your soul.” He pulled her close against him and closed his eyes.
He’d practiced enough astral projection and healing with his affinity for it to be easy to slip in to the intangible realm between body, soul, and magic. He had examined her before, the solid layer of her body and green gossamer of her Amni Plandai magic strong, whereas the spirit dwelling within those other parts had been stunted and spread thin.
That no longer was the case. Her soul was fully grown, existing in the same space as her magic and body, fully meshed together. Her soul tasted of wild strawberries and sounded like the lullaby of forest and herbs. The dance of roses and oak wove together, confusing his senses. Shimmering viridian washed over him. She was perfect and complete.
He leaned into the embrace of plant magic. She had made the right choice for herself. Her body and magic had accepted the regrowth of her soul. He reached out with his mind and caressed her spirit with his. She responded by enfolding him in soft tendrils of ethereal plants, the blanket of her soul filled with affection and love.
If he had been a cat, he would have been purring. Stroking her soul was more intimate than physical pleasure.
He savored the contentment of the spirit for as long as his magic would allow him to remain like that. When he started to feel the tug on his physical body, reminding him he was more than a soul, he reluctantly drew back into himself. He blinked his eyes open.
Brilliant orange rays of light streaming in from the window fell across Abigail’s face.
She gazed up at him, hopeful and expectant. “How do I look?”
He stretched and leaned back against the bed. “Beautiful.”
She laughed and shook her head. “No, I mean my soul.”
“Even more beautiful.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re a tease.”
“I’m being serious.” He opened his arms to her.
She draped herself across him, kissing her way from his jaw to his lips.
He closed his arms around her, loving the feel of her body pressed against his. He drank tenderness and desire from her lips.
“Now that I’ve had a chance to see you naked down to your soul and touch your pure essence, are you going to ask me if I want to feel your body next?”
“It depends.” She kissed his brow. “Is tonight’s lovemaking going to be for love or for magic?”
“With you, it can be both.”
She laughed at that.
Lucifer thought he could have died happy at that moment. Abigail was restored, and they both had found a way for each of them to follow the right path for themselves while staying together. He kissed her deeply, his entire being ready to show her how much he adored her.
Outside the house, something scratched the wall below his window. He tried to ignore it, to pretend it was just the wind brushing a plant against the cottage. It was easy to pretend it was a chicken that had gotten out of the coop or the goat eating all the produce from the garden.
A giggle came from outside, and he couldn’t ignore the scratching any longer. He knew what that sound was.
“Pardon me,” he said to Abigail, rolling away from her toward the window.
Lucifer lifted the window, finding not one but three children licking the wall.
An infestation, just as MacCoinneach had said. It had already begun.
Lucifer was ready to start his new life as a mentor h
edge witch. For better or for worse. Though he suspected with Abigail at his side, it would be for the better.
Everything was always better with her.
THE END
A Sneak Preview
Talented and Goblin
The Hex Files with Felix Thatch
CHAPTER ONE
A Day in the Life of a Magical Boarding School Recruiting Agent
Magic swirled in the air, resembling a haze of green smoke in the junior high school classroom—not that the eyes of a mortal would be able to see it. Using magic was dangerous enough in the Morty Realm, but in the hands of twelve-year-olds, magic might result in someone’s death.
As a former professor and a current recruiting agent, Felix Thatch had seen such things before.
For years it had been his full-time job to scout the Morty Realm and intervene before children who didn’t know they were Witchkin caused an accident. More importantly, he had to arrive before any Fae found them and dragged them away to be punished for using magic outside the Faerie Realm. When he was successful, he was able to bring these students to Womby’s School for Wayward Witches.
The moment Felix Thatch stepped into the math class at Ogden Middle School, he knew exactly which teenager was the goblin. The boy stood out among the human children with a guilty hunch in his posture, as if he hid a secret. His diminutive frame and overly large eyes and ears made him stand out from the other children quietly working on math worksheets or whispering about preteen crushes to each other.
The children in the math class wore brown corduroy pants that clashed with tie-dye shirts, T-shirts displaying trendy cinemas like Jaws, striped polo shirts that somehow mismatched their own colors, or hideous flower-print dresses that would only be in fashion in the Morty Realm. The seventies were not Felix’s favorite era.
The goblin child was the only sensibly dressed youth in the room. He wore a suit and bow tie, as though he longed to go to a private school.
A private magical school. Felix sensed an easy recruitment, and that wasn’t his Merlin-class Celestor skill of prophecy talking. If he was lucky, this would be a quick observation that would leave him time to collect a commission and pay his overdue bills and rent. He was always forgetting this realm required such things of its residents.
The boy was sullen and quiet compared to his peers, probably feeling out of place among these humans, aware he was different, but not knowing what he was. Often this was the case for Witchkin, the half-breed offspring of Fae and mortals.
Felix couldn’t let on that he was there because of this particular student and the accidental magic the boy had released, as that would alert the Morties of the existence of Fae.
Instead, Felix forced a smile as he greeted the math teacher, Mrs. Sprouse. She left the papers she was grading at her desk and stood to greet him, her wrinkled brows furrowing in confusion. He handed her a form stating his supposed purpose.
“Good day to you.” He greeted her formally, and he inclined his head in a gesture that probably gave away his origin from an earlier era and another realm, to anyone who should be truly observant. Not that most Morties were. “Pardon me for the interruption. I’m the school district psychologist. I’ll just be here for a bit to observe.”
The older woman gazed up at him, entranced, probably because his otherworldly beauty shone through the simple glamour he’d used to tone it down and make himself appear more human. His lean build and long limbs only stood out slightly among the smaller Morties, like this ancient woman, but he was still within the range of what was considered normal.
The goblin child, on the other hand, probably was teased mercilessly by his peers.
“You have such lovely eyes, young man.” Mrs. Sprouse’s American accent was drawling, from somewhere in the South, rather than the crisp, clipped precision of his own accent. Humans always took him to be British, which was close enough to the Faerie Realm where he’d been raised.
Mrs. Sprouse blushed. “The eyes of someone far more mature and wiser than most your age.”
“So I’ve been told.” Possibly because he was several decades older than he looked. Decades older than she looked.
“You know what they say. Eyes are the reflection of the soul. I bet in a past life—”
Ugh. Not a chatty teacher. He had a job to do. The last thing he needed was to get caught up in a conversation about some nonsense.
He infused the honey of lullabies mixed with hints of mesmerism into his tone. “I will be out of the way as I observe the students. You won’t even know I’m here.”
The teacher smiled dreamily as he worked a subtle spell on her. “Yes, of course. I won’t know you’re here. . . .”
Felix walked up and down the aisles as students worked, making observations in his notebook. He pretended to study their papers and examine the classroom, but the entire time he kept on eye on the goblin.
Mrs. Sprouse walked into Felix’s path, craning her neck to see up into his face. “I have a folder of IEPs.” Mrs. Sprouse held out a thick stack of papers to him. “You might be interested in seeing their independent education programs. I have twice as many students with special needs and learning disabilities as last year.”
“That’s unnecessary. I don’t need to look at your files,” he said firmly.
She pressed the folder into his hands. There was so much electricity, plastic, and Morty-crafted toxins in this place, it weakened the traditional magic used in Witchkin spells. Felix deemed he would need more power to keep this teacher at bay. His affinity was able to resist the drain of electricity—and more than that—to take energy from it or produce it when necessary. Though it was risky calling upon it when he might be observed and reported for using a kind of energy outlawed by Fae and Witchkin and deemed as a perversion.
Felix was careful, subtle, as he called upon his affinity. He raked a hand through his shoulder-length hair, giving the midnight locks a tug as he did so. He used the motion of touch to charge himself and give his spell strength, small as the movement was. “Attend to your class and ignore me.”
Mrs. Sprouse left him to transition their warm-up activity into the math lesson. Felix found a child-sized chair in the back, wiping a combination of glitter and crumbs off the seat so they wouldn’t stick to his gray slacks or matching suit jacket.
Mrs. Sprouse walked up and down the aisles of her classroom, making remarks about students’ math and reminding those not working to do so. The teacher tripped over an errant shoe a student had removed and left in the aisle. A blond girl in a Wonder Woman T-shirt slouched over her desk, sleeping.
Mrs. Sprouse placed a hand on the girl’s arm, her voice firm. “Victoria, I need you to wake up. It’s time to do math.”
She blocked Felix’s view of the goblin child he’d been sent to recruit.
“I’m so tired,” the girl whined.
Felix rose and found a new vantage point for observing. As he strode across the room to get a better look at the goblin boy, he noticed the girl’s leather Oxford shoes were worn and falling apart, unlike the rest of her ensemble. One of her socks was removed and showed off blisters on her heel.
Mrs. Sprouse spoke quietly, but her hushed tone was no match for Felix’s adept ears. “If you don’t do this work now, I’m going to give you a study hall during today’s dance lesson with the visiting artist in your elective class. Is that what you want?”
The girl slouched lower.
Felix noted the goblin child finished his assignment in half the time his peers completed theirs, but instead of reading a book, playing with a handheld games like Electric Touchdown, or goofing off as some of his peers were doing, the child made origami animals at his desk. Magic that tasted of wood and earth wafted through the air. The child was probably an Amni Plandai, someone with an affinity for plant and animal magic, but he couldn’t be certain yet.
Woodland goblins were far more pleasant than the hobgoblins he’d encountered. Some of them thirsted f
or blood and drained humans of their souls. He hoped this child wasn’t a hob.
Worse yet were the shadow goblins from his youth. He doubted this child was one of those or anything like them. Still, he knew to be cautious.
Felix crouched down behind the boy to examine the origami animals, now running back and forth on the wooden desk between the child’s hands where he attempted to hide what he’d done.
He lowered his voice so that others wouldn’t hear. “Do your animals have names?”
The boy snatched the animals up and crumpled them, staring at Felix with wide eyes.
“You’re quite skilled. Who taught you that trick?” Felix attempted a smile, trying to appear friendly rather than formidable. It wasn’t a talent he had ever acquired. He often wondered how many Witchkin children he scared away with his looming frame and his features that weren’t quite human.
“Will you show me how you make one of your origami animals?” Felix asked.
The boy’s gaze flickered to the badge on Felix’s breast pocket that read: school district psychologist.
The child ducked his face down and balled his paper magic up in his fists. Felix could see the child wasn’t going to voluntarily talk about his magic.
Felix returned to the teacher. “What is the name of that student?” He nodded to the goblin.
“That’s Mark Fernandez. He’s in our TAG program,” Mrs. Sprouse said. “He doesn’t have a learning disability.”
“Tag?” Felix asked, writing that down in his notebook.
“The talented and gifted program.” She smiled proudly. “I have two of them this period. Mark Fernandez and Victoria Saeturn.” Her smile faded as her gaze fell on the blond girl in the corner sleeping at her desk.
“Oh, yes, indeed. TAG.” Felix always forgot the latest Morty educational acronyms, especially when they were so different regionally. Many were fleeting terms. He didn’t know whether this one would stick.
Mrs. Sprouse started toward Victoria.
Felix stepped into her path, blocking the teacher’s exit. “I have a self-assessment for this student to fill out. I suspect he will be more receptive to you than me.” He handed her the folded-up form. “Give this to him for me.”
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