She still looked slightly nervous.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “This is what Etherium will show you today. It’s better not to resist.”
The path came to an abrupt stop at a bluff overlooking a winding river. I could feel the high ethereals even before I saw them; they had that effect. My skin prickled with goosebumps as I caught their scent on the wind. Seeing high ethereals was like coming to a meadow of flowers you have never seen before, but also feeling that they must be natives, that you have come to some secret place where old things, and old magic, still exist.
Charlotte’s eyes widened, and she started creeping closer to them. She wasn’t scared anymore. Of course not. Ethereals were beautiful, and as expected, they didn’t even look up, even when Charlotte snapped a twig.
They were all tall and graceful, with skin and hair of every natural color, and a few that weren’t natural—lilac hair, faintly greenish skin. They all seemed to be women. Although humans sometimes mistook them for the fae, they weren’t icy like the faeries. They were playful and laughing, and just watching them made the world seem brighter. They were skipping barefoot in the grass. It sounds silly, but that was what made it so enjoyable to watch—the utter lack of self-consciousness, or any worry or anger, the complete opposite of a high demon.
“So these are…ethereals,” Charlotte whispered. “Why are the witches and warlocks so uptight, then?”
“High ethereals are the purest expression of Etherium,” I said. “But humans and other low spirits have free will and they tend to mess things up. On the other hand, that’s the same reason most sinistrals spirits aren’t completely evil. It’s just impossible for creatures like us to commit.”
“True. I feel like I have a reset button where if I get too happy, I’ll freak out about something stupid, but if I get too sad, I’ll laugh at something simple. But…they’re mesmerizing. Why don’t you like being here? It seems like a really gorgeous place. Not so different from your cabin in Georgia, but way better.”
“No,” I said. “Georgia was better.”
She snorted. “You’re nuts.”
“Etherium doesn’t have you.”
“That’s cheesy.” But she looked pleased.
“It’s so cheesy, but it’s also true. This doesn’t feel like my home.”
She bit her lip. “I want to kiss you so badly right now. I’ll lose my mind if—”
“No, you won’t,” I said. “You’ll find a way to hit that reset button.”
“No…no, I won’t.” The ethereals finally glanced up at us as she started crying.
“Time to go,” I said, pulling her back to her familiar living room.
“Oh—huh? We had to leave?” She unfurled her limbs with a wince, as her crouched position in Etherium had translated badly to the couch. I was back in my fox form again, the illusion of anything else too exhausting to create in the Fixed Plane.
“You can’t crash an angel dance and start crying. Really bad form. But I’d rather watch you cry over me than ethereals any day.”
Chapter Five
Charlotte
When it was time to return to Merlin College, Montague picked me up on his way, driving up from Florida. I was overjoyed to see him. Montague and Alec were both cut off from me during the summer. Letters flew back and forth between us. Letters. On paper. Ohmigod. It sounded so romantic, to write letters, but it was actually just slow and tedious. I missed them so much but actually sitting down to write a letter was unsatisfying and weird, so I only wrote them two each.
“Let’s not do that again,” I said. “It was hell.”
“Summer with our family?”
“Yes. I missed you so much.”
“Fine by me,” he said. “It was hell. My friends won’t even talk to me since they heard that not only am I a vampire, but I made contact with my sire. They’ve already written me off as lost.”
“Yeah. That sounds awful. I mean, I just missed you, and other than that it was like, barbecue and movies. But still.”
“Oh, the inhumanity,” he said.
“Oh, the inhumanity, indeed,” Firian said from the back seat.
“I don’t see any rings on your fingers,” Montague said. “Didn’t Alec visit you in your dreams?”
“Heh,” Firian said.
“He tried,” I said. “It didn’t really work out. I’m not a quiet sleeper, I guess, at least not when an incubus is paying me a visit.”
“Ah…so our Charlotte is extremely frustrated.” Montague shot me an aggressive sideways expression. He reached for my hand and trailed his fingers from my wrist to my fingertips. “I’m looking forward to taking care of that for you.”
“Get a fucking room,” Firian said.
Montague grimaced. “This is no fun. Maybe Stuart will have some ideas to fix you.”
“Don’t drive off a mountain,” I said, brushing the steering wheel as we were driving on a twisty, one-and-a-half lane road with no guard rail.
We were taking a back way up the mountain range, arriving in North Carolina early to meet up with Stuart, aka, our former teacher and lord of the faeries. I had started calling him Sturond in my head, because when I last saw him in his true form he had flowing hair and robes and great eyebrows. It was very jarring after a year of thinking Stuart was just a dorky old warlock who grew up in the 50s in Kansas.
He said he would be giving me secret training this year so I could continue the secret mission to tap into the magic of the world of Wyrd and break away from the rigid control of the witch and warlock councils.
The road was getting increasingly disconcerting. It looked like a part of it had actually washed away and when we looked down there was a steep dropoff toward a rushing, rocky creek.
“We’re close. Maybe we should just park the car and walk from here,” Montague said, backing up from the scary road and parking. He grabbed his hat out of the back seat and jumped down. “Get you breaking a sweat so that incubus can lose his mind smelling your pheromones.” He gave my bottom a little smack as he walked up behind me when I got out of the car.
“Sounds like he’s not the only one losing his mind.” I wrapped my hands around Montague’s waist and gave him a kiss. Then I looked at the car and saw Firian’s face staring out the back window waiting for someone with hands to open the door.
“Would it help if you went back to Etherium for a little while?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “I want to hear every word Sturond has to say so I know everything I can know about breaking this spell and kissing the council goodbye. The last place I want to be is Etherium. The world where they tricked me.”
“Right. Right. I’m sorry.”
“His real name is Sturond!?” Montague asked.
“No. We’re just nerds.” We trekked up the hill through the mud. My legs were stronger than last year, I noticed, because I had spent a lot of the summer outside training. Although it was a warm summer day, there was a lot of shade and wind up here at a high elevation and it felt wonderful. I used my wand like a walking stick to help me climb the steep spots.
I could feel when we passed into the spot where the veil was thin between the real world and the magical world. We were getting close to the tree. But first, we came to a dark cave mouth along the path, the gap as tall as I was and about five feet wide, somewhat hidden by brush. Alec was standing outside with his easel, painting the cave, but when he saw us he dropped everything and ran to me.
He grabbed me, pressed me into the rocks, and gave me a deep kiss, his hands pouring into my hair like he was going to consume me.
Whoa.
There wasn’t much sense of propriety with Alec these days. His tongue thrust in my mouth like a preview of what was to come, as he lifted up my legs to rub his cock against my already soaked underwear through his pants. Having preheated my oven, he put me back down without sticking anything in it. I grabbed his shirt.
“Hey,” he said, a little breathlessly. “Hey, Monty. Firian. Good to see
you.”
“I didn’t get that kind of greeting,” Montague said.
“You’re a gentleman,” I said. “Alec’s turned into a caveman. Complete with the cave art. So how private is that cave?”
“Not very,” Harris said, walking out of the cave’s dark maw so he could lean sexily in it and cross his arms.
I jabbed a finger at him. “You did that on purpose. Stop lurking. Alec, warn me next time.”
“I meant to. I just couldn’t even seem to speak until I had a little taste of you. You wanted an incubus? This is what you get.”
“Well, you might all want to tone it down,” Harris said. “Stuart is waiting to see you and you have some other visitors as well. There’s tea, so bottle up your emotions and put on your best tea face.”
“Other visitors? Who? Bad visitors?”
“Nah,” Alec said. “It’s an old friend of your grandmother’s.”
“Oh? Maybe I should change. I dressed for tromping in the woods.”
“Here.” Firian looked up at me and with a golden blink of his eyes, he glamoured my short shorts and exclusive Fortune’s Favor t-shirt (it came with a preorder of the art book) into a simple, flowy cotton dress with similar proportions, and my ratty sneakers into flats.
“That’s better,” Harris said. He was wearing black dress pants and dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, which I guess was Harris-casual.
Still, he looked…off, the more I looked at him. His clothes had a few wrinkles, and his hair was a little longer and disheveled. This seemed very unlike him. I hadn’t heard from him at all this summer. Maybe it was a rough time. I still gave him the finger as I walked into the cave.
Chapter Six
Charlotte
As we walked into the dark, moist, somewhat creepy entrance of the cave, I trusted that it was going to turn magical, and I was proven right as my eyes adjusted to the cozy, lantern-lit room inside. Sturond was sitting elegantly on a carved wooden chair while an older couple was sitting on the matching bench across from him, all of them sipping tea. Professor MacGuinness was there too, which I didn’t expect, but it made sense—he was kicked out of Merlin College. A few more chairs were gathered around, waiting for us, while a tall, dark-haired man stood in the shadows by a side table. I guess he was the butler or something. Sturond stood up to greet us, his blue silk robes brushing the worn rug on the floor.
“Glad you made it safely, Charlotte,” he said. “I have some people to introduce to you.”
But the woman was already on her feet, patting her fingertips together excitedly. “Charlotte! Oh, Charlotte! Can I hug you? I see your mum in you!” She had a sweet, high voice and a gentle face, her grey hair in a chignon.
“Sure—”
She was already hugging me as soon as I opened my mouth. She smelled like roses. She patted my cheeks. “You look like Sally, too. I’m her familiar. Your grandmother’s familiar.” She looked at Firian. “I suppose I’m your grandmother, in a way.”
Firian looked a little astonished. “I mean—in a way.”
“Oh, I know familiars aren’t considered to have family, but that’s how I think of it, anyway.”
My mouth fell open. “My grandmother’s familiar? You became human when she gave up her magic, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “I became human, and I married this dear old thing.” She patted the man on the head as he was trying to stand up to shake our heads.
“Good afternoon, lovely to meet you,” he said. He had a thick British accent while she had a faint one, since she must have grown up in America with my grandmother. He looked older than her, white haired, with thick glasses, and the charm of an old English actor. “I’m Richard de Witt.”
“And I’m Adia, but just—call me auntie.”
Mum? Auntie? My family sounded so much more adorable now.
She squeezed my hand and then clutched Richard’s arm as he shook hands with my guys, even offering a hand to Firian’s paw. Firian’s lip curled slightly, since I’m sure he felt like a dog doing a trick more than he was included, but he accepted the handshake.
“Your grandmother really wanted to be here,” Aunt Adia said. “But the council just hates her, and Stuart told me her sister was here. Catherine.” She shivered.
I was so relieved that someone from the family was here to explain this to me, and gave Stuart a grateful look. The butler poured some tea and handed a cup to me. It was delicate painted china with a pattern of purple and yellow pansies.
“Thank you, Orson,” Stuart said.
“I met Catherine. Samuel’s mother, right?” I said. “She turned Firian into a fox permanently.”
“Catherine will never forgive your grandmother,” Aunt Adia said. “She feels it was her fault for being a bad witch, taking up with the werewolves, and corrupting your mother, who in turn corrupted her own children and ruined the family name. As she sees it. She thinks it is all your grandmother’s fault that Ina lost her mind and now Samuel is dead.”
“Well, besides that they couldn’t really afford the plane tickets from Australia just now,” Richard said.
“I thought my grandparents were rock stars.”
“Oh, my dear, they blew it all on parties, clothes, cars, and drugs,” Richard said.
“Oh.” I was disappointed.
“Don’t be sad, that’s what you do when you’re a bloody rock star,” Richard said. “They saved enough for the house and land and I think they’re quite happy apart from all this mess and worrying over you kids.”
“Well, they should have Samuel’s money now, and so should you, Charlotte,” Adia said. “He wanted it split between his aunt and his niece, but the council seized his assets. They are trying to ruin your family and erase them from the magical world! It’s a disgrace! But—well, I’ll let Stuart talk. He has a plan.”
“I’m sorry,” Montague said. “Can I interrupt for a second and just ask—Stuart, what the hell is your real name? I can’t call you Stuart looking like that.”
“I prefer Stuart,” he said. “I really did grow up in Kansas. I was swapped with a human child.”
“A changeling? That’s real?”
“Yes. It’s long been the custom with the thirteenth child in any faery family. Not that too many families make it to thirteen children. My mother was busy. The thirteenth child is an odd bird, not unlucky, maybe even blessed, but the tradition was always to send them out. By being swapped I learned about the human world before I learned about my own. On my eighteenth birthday my parents came to me and told me the truth. I was packing up to go to college myself. It was certainly a surprise. My other identity wasn’t all a lie. I just played it up to keep the council off my trail. As long as I seemed like a nice nobody, they didn’t question where I came from.”
“You grew up thinking you were human? Did you fit in in the human world?”
“I mean, I was considered a little ‘bohemian’ for Topeka, but it was the 60s and radical views were in the air. My faery parents felt that I fit in the human world. They let me continue on with my plans, but I got very depressed that year and dropped out of Washburn. I got on a bus and went to Chicago, then I kept going. Ended up in New York trying to find myself. I met Ignatius and Samuel there, a little later, and that put me on course to become a warlock. I wasn’t quite a faery, after all, and I wasn’t quite a human, so it made sense to me to study that magic, and I had absorbed enough human that I pulled it off. Normally faery and human magic would be too different. I think only a changeling could.”
“So…you didn’t really know your parents?”
“I knew my human parents,” he said, and it hit me that of course faeries and even warlocks lived longer than ordinary humans so his human parents must have passed away. “It’s complicated. But that’s okay. Anyway, we have all had unconventional childhoods and I think fate brought us all together. Ignatius, Samuel, and me. Your grandmother and her wolves before us. And now—all of you.”
“If we can find a way for wizard
s and their familiars to go to Wyrd instead of Etherium or Sinistral, the council will lose their hold on all of us,” Professor MacGuinness said.
“So you are in on this too, Professor MacGuinness?” I asked.
“Oh, Samuel told me about this idea of Wyrd when we were in school together, and I was very skeptical. But since I was implicated in the arrest of Ignatius, I’m angry. I spent my whole life being a good, rule-abiding necromancer just to get tossed out like dishwater?”
“We can trust him,” Stuart said.
“If all goes as planned, Sally might even be able to get her magic back,” Auntie Adia said. “And I could turn into a bird again!”
She was the cutest frickin’ old lady I’d ever seen.
“You said the faeries control Wyrd,” Harris said. “But you’re a faery lord. So what is in our way?”
“Other faeries,” Stuart said. “The faery queen, particularly. The faeries seized control of Wyrd in ancient times and they are dead set on never allowing a witch or warlock to cross its doors, unless they swear servitude, which does us no good.”
“I can hardly blame them,” Harris said. “Humans tend to fuck up everything they touch, acting on an impulse. Faeries take the long view. What would we say to convince them that they should let us on their land?”
“Because we are all slowly dying,” Stuart said. “And Wyrd most of all. They do take the long view, but what they see on the horizon is the end of the magical world. They have become weak by hiding. And if the human world stops believing in Wyrd, it will be their loss as well. Etherium and Sinistral are adversaries. Wyrd is the power of acceptance and neutrality. It is sorely needed.”
“I might be too Catholic for this,” Montague said. “We’re really into the good and evil stuff…”
“I like it,” Alec said. “There isn’t enough acceptance in the magical world. I can see why the faeries were able to claim it. It fits with a naturalist world view. No good or evil in the forest. Humans are the ones who decide that stuff.”
A Witch Among Warlocks: The Complete Series Box Set Page 53