Stuart smiled wryly. “You’re right. The battle between good and evil isn’t going anywhere. But Wyrd is a safe place for those who don’t fit within the ancient laws of Etherium and Sinistral.”
“So how are we supposed to do this, Stu?” I asked. “I assume you already went to the faeries and were like, hey, y’all are dying, and I know some nice warlocks and familiars who need a crash pad, and they were like, nah.”
“Yeah. That about sums it up.” Stuart sighed a little as he gracefully sat back down in his chair and wrapped one elegant hand around the arm while sipping his tea. Which, by the way, was delicious, like a mind-blowing Earl Grey with floral honey notes. “But I’m not giving up easily. I’ve been considering you kids and your crazy quest to take out the Withered Lord…”
“Oh dear,” Auntie Adia said. “I don’t like this at all. He’s a very, very evil demon.”
“He is, but his head would be quite a prize to bring to Wyrd.”
I threw up my hand. “Wait—a literal head?”
“Yes.”
“We have to bring them a head now? I’m not sure I signed up for this.”
“We’ll let the older vampires handle the head part,” Montague said. “I am sure Rayner wouldn’t blink.”
“Wyrd is unsettled when demons become too old and powerful,” Stuart said. “It’s part of their job to maintain the balance.”
“This sounds…ambitious, bordering on absurd,” Harris said. “My friends are much too young to be beheading demons. I still maintain that Charlotte and Alec should be nowhere near this endeavor.”
“Why do you get to do it and not me, Harris? Because your ancestors did shit?” I asked.
“Oh, so you do want to do it?” he retorted. “You want to behead a demon, Charlotte?”
“You don’t want to behead a demon either!” I said. “Come on!”
Firian nudged me. Oh, right. I said ‘come on’ too much. I should have joined the debate team in high school, if I’d known how deep my life was going to get.
“I don’t want to hear another word about being excluded,” Alec said. “I broke the spell that bound me. I’m not denying my demon side any more. And if I have to behead another demon to keep Charlotte safe, I would do it.”
Harris gave Alec an I don’t even know who you are anymore look. Then his face steeled. There was a certain competitiveness to HAM, for sure, and Harris was the only one who wasn’t quite competing in the same arena. He wasn’t with me. “All right,” he said. “So we’re all in. We’re going to fight the Withered Lord, bring his head to the king of the faeries, and earn our place in the realm of Wyrd. Sounds solid.” He was a little sarcastic, but I think he also meant it.
Auntie Adia stood up, wringing her hands. “Stuart, I—I am very concerned about your willingness to put these children in danger!”
“I’ll fight with them,” Stuart said. “When the time comes.”
“I will too,” Professor MacGuinness said. “I’ve lost too many friends.”
“But they aren’t children, and even so, children will soon be adults,” Stuart said. “They have a right to fight when they have already dealt with adult pain. Sally put herself at great risk when she was a little younger still, didn’t she?”
“Yes, but she doesn’t want this for Charlotte! Neither do I!”
“Protecting Emily didn’t go very well,” Stuart said.
Adia sat back down and put her head in her hands. “No…”
I felt bad for her. She seemed like a very timid person, which matched most of the familiars I had encountered. Firian was an anomaly. It was probably hard for Adia to speak up. Firian was leaning against my leg, and then he walked over to Adia.
“Charlotte’s strength will be in having so many allies,” he said. “She wasn’t so alone as Emily was when she tried to save Ina.”
She nodded as Richard handed her a handkerchief.
“Maybe you’d all like a moment alone,” Richard suggested. “Just to be a family again.”
“I would. Thank you, darling. Would you care to take a walk, Charlotte?”
“Yes.” I whispered to Stuart, “Do you…have a bathroom? Caffeine.”
“I’ll show you the bathroom,” Harris said. “Such as it is.”
Oh, great. I just needed to pee. Now I was following Harris into the depths of the cave, after he had picked up a lantern. It was more extensive than I expected, with rooms that were surprisingly neat and dry, although very…earthen.
“That’ll be your bedroom,” Harris said, pointing at a room with two surprisingly elegant beds that seemed shaped from tree roots growing into a headboard and canopy shape. “There’s a toilet here. No plumbing, but there’s a basin of water and some soap. Take the lantern in with you.”
“When did you get here?”
His eyes leveled with mine, betraying some emotion, before he answered. “Two months ago.”
“Two months? You’ve been living here without plumbing for two months?”
“Yeah. I went home—briefly. It was rough. Let’s just say, if my parents had other sons I think I would’ve already been disowned.”
“Because…of this?”
“Let’s just say, nothing I’ve done has won me any points,” he said. “And I was losing these guys. They always had my back.” He waved vaguely toward the other room. “So I just left.”
“You can’t drive, right? Is one of your drivers on your side?”
“I didn’t dare get them in trouble. I took Amtrak and then used a compel spell on a local man with a truck, if you must know the details. I’m not sure why you care how I got around.”
“I don’t know why I just enjoy the thought of you enduring a long train ride. Coach?”
“Unfortunately, they didn’t have a royal car,” he said.
“Well…I’m glad Stuart let you crash here,” I said, taking the lantern from him.
“You do realize you just agreed to behead a demon, Chosen One?”
“Do you realize you did, Exiled One?” I ducked into the bathroom, feeling nervous about being alone with Harris. And, admittedly, also a little nervous about beheading a demon. I mean, really? Maybe we could just deliver the faeries a hand or something.
The bathroom was rustic but very clean with flowers in a vase, blooming in the dark. The toilet was a bench with a hole in it, but I could hear some sort of underground river flowing under it and there was no smell although I hoped the stream flowed to the magical world and not our mountain. When I came out, Harris was gone and a petite red-haired woman was standing outside the door, waiting, with some flowers in one hand and a cloth in the other.
“Oh! You startled me.”
“I’m sorry, miss. I’m Penny, the house silkie. I’ll just clean up after you…” She looked anxious to get in behind me and replace the flowers with fresher flowers and wipe everything off.
“I didn’t really do anything,” I said.
She looked up at me twitchily, then went back to work wiping off every surface like a little magical embodiment of OCD.
I returned to the main room. Harris had returned to the group and Auntie Adia and Firian were by the door, waiting for me.
“I’m ready.”
Auntie Adia smiled apologetically at me as we walked back into daylight. “I am so sorry we were never there for you, Charlotte.”
You know that feeling when you’re being all tough, and you don’t even realize how much you’re denying your real emotions until someone gives you the okay to express them? And then suddenly you’re a mess?
I mean, maybe that’s just me. But I wanted to say, oh, it’s totally cool, I know you were trying to protect me and I had my dad!
Instead, I suddenly felt like I was about to sob. “I’ve really…been wondering…why my grandparents haven’t…contacted me.”
Her brows furrowed. “They want to. They truly do. They were…trying to protect you. I know it’s an awful excuse. I told your grandmother that protecting people never does
any good, and she said, I know. And then…we looked at each other and agreed we had to do it anyway, because we know what our enemies of capable of.” She looked really distressed, but I saw her shake it off. “And I know how happy a normal life can be. I married Richard and never looked back, to be honest. Well…I do miss being a bird, that’s all.”
“I miss being a human,” Firian said. “I don’t suppose you have any idea how to fix that problem.”
“Catherine is the one who fixed you in this form, isn’t that so?” Auntie Adia asked. “Your great-aunt?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“It will be hard to break one of her spells.”
“We already know it will be hard,” I said. “That isn’t what Firian needs to hear right now. He’s already depressed.”
“I’m not depressed. I’m extremely…vexed,” he said. I think he was actually thinking of a string of four letter words, but was being polite to Auntie Adia.
“She was always a better witch than your grandmother,” Adia said. “She earned her place on the council. And losing both her children to forbidden magic has done nothing for her mood from what I hear. Still, I think the easiest way to break the spell would be to find a way to bargain with her, because it will be some time before you’re a match for her.”
“Bargain…” I groaned. “So many bargains in the magical world, gawwwd. What am I supposed to offer?”
“You give nice shoulder rubs,” Firian said dryly.
“She’s not going to want anything I have.”
“That may be true. But…if you see her…I would consider that she is a woman who lost her only daughter and has no grandchildren. Deep down, I know she doesn’t want to hate you.”
“But she still hates my grandmother. You said that’s why my grandparents won’t come here.”
“I didn’t say I had any easy answers,” Auntie Adia said, looking at the ground nervously. “I do have something for you, however. It will help you understand the situation.” She was carrying a big ol’ dowdy pink leather purse, that I instinctively felt was probably expensive despite its ugliness, although it wasn’t a label I knew. She drew out a stuffed envelope with what looked like twenty pages of photocopied pages of an old letter inside.
“This is the letter your grandmother wrote to the council when they tried to get your mother to attend a witch academy,” she said. “Sally had been written out of the books and was being whispered about in the cruelest terms. They said she was a whore, corrupted and sinful. No one in her family or the entire magical world would even speak to her, but they still had the nerve to try and pluck Emily away to boarding school, where Sally knew full well they would have turned her against her own parents.”
I clutched the papers in my hand and saw my grandmother’s cursive for the first time. Luckily she wasn’t old enough that it was really fancy and hard to read. Unluckily, I was absolutely terrible at reading any cursive. My throat still welled up, just seeing this new piece of my family history.
“Thanks, I…I’m really…really glad you came,” I said. “I always thought my dad was enough. And he—he is, mostly. But he’s not magical. And—”
She put her arms around me. “You were never abandoned, Charlotte. Now that we can’t protect you anymore…the good thing is that we can finally know you. All in good time. You’ll meet your grandmother…and all of your grandfathers.” She gave me a mischievous little smile. “I hear it runs in the family.”
“Erm.”
“It’s all right, I know you don’t want to talk about it to an old lady, but I was a little bit wild once, you know. Richard and I once made love backstage at a concert.”
“Depends what the concert was,” Firian said.
She frowned. “Well, I must say I prefer my music to be sweet like the birds singing out my window. Sally liked it darker.”
“It must have been bad,” Firian said.
“It was ABBA.”
“What? Holy crap, you ignored an ABBA concert? You are very cool, Auntie Adia,” I said. “Although I would have waited until the concert was over.”
“Well, we knew when they were going to do Thank You for the Music. Richard had the set list and I’m afraid we just don’t care for that one,” she said. “Terribly sorry if that was anyone else’s favorite.”
“I’ll try to tamp down my indignation,” Firian said.
“Anyway, I wish you all happiness with your own four boys.”
“Three,” I said, blushing.
“Oh,” she said. “Just three?”
“Just three.”
“Well, then,” she said.
Yeah, she knew what was up.
Chapter Seven
Charlotte
“My grandma was awesome.” I was reading the papers by candlelight. “She wrote this letter to the council and she’s like, fuck you, you forced me out and I had sex with hot wolves and it was awesome, so I’m not giving you my daughter. We are in the middle of a full on rebellion, you know?”
“I bet if things continue like this, I wouldn’t be the only familiar who wants more freedom,” Firian said.
“It’s a nice thought, but it won’t be easy—at all—to bring the faeries a demon’s head,” Montague said. “And they are faeries, so if they don’t see an advantage in the long run, they can still say no and they won’t care how crestfallen you look.”
“It will work out, or it won’t,” Alec said. “I think that’s the lesson. All we have is right now.” He walked over to me. “And right now…” He took the paper from my hand and put it down, and then he kissed me, his hot breath brushing my cheek before his lips claimed mine, his tongue slipping in for a deep thrust.
“No patience anymore,” I gasped.
“I sat through a lot of talk to get to this moment. I was very patient. But I’ve been craving you all summer and you’re right, I can’t wait another moment. I warned you about me, Charlotte.”
His words drove me nuts. I twisted out of my chair and kissed him again. “You did.”
I still didn’t expect what happened next, which was that he spun me around so I was facing away from him and unbuttoned my shorts, yanking them off me. My skin temperature must have risen about a hundred degrees.
“I warned you that I would need you…a lot,” he breathed in my ear. “But I was apart from you all summer. Even the dreams couldn’t be fulfilled. So now I have countless warm, lazy summer days of dreaming of you. Of those dreams, all pent up inside me, just waiting to come out.”
“I’m up to date with the birth control spell,” I said. “So let them come.”
“Even better,” he groaned, grinding against my underwear.
“But—um—Firian,” I said reluctantly. “I don’t want to leave you out.”
“You know I won’t make you put your life on hold for me,” he said. “But I am going to watch like an awkwardly staring pet.”
“Oh—um—okay—”
“I’m kidding,” he said. “It would be torture. I’ll go on a frustrated hunt. The small animals of Etherium better stay out of my way tonight.” He vanished.
“I feel bad for that dude,” Montague said.
“Maybe it’s…for the best right now,” I said. “I’ve never been with all three of you.”
“Don’t tell me two is your limit,” Alec said. “I know when to move fast and when to take my sweet time building you up again. It’s written in my very bones to know what you want. And I definitely know right now…”
Montague peeled himself off the bed where he’d been looking through a book, and came up to me from the front as Alec slid my panties down enough to slip his hard cock in between my folds from behind. He was so big he had no trouble reaching. Just thinking about that length of his, and how much I ached after taking it…in the best kind of way…
Alec pulled up my shirt. Montague admired me with a small, knowing smile. “Thankfully, I am a little more patient than Alec.”
“Because you have plenty of porn on your phone,�
�� Alec said.
Montague shot him a dirty look. They always hassled each other a little. I think this was what helped them get comfortable about being with me together. “It’s…not the same anymore,” Montague said.
“But you still looked at it,” I said, with a little smirk.
“It was a long summer,” he said.
“It was,” I said. “So get your clothes off and show me how much you missed me, already.”
Alec was already naked, at this point, having almost magically divested of his clothing. He took my ponytail in his hand and walked me backwards to the bed, where he flung me down and grinned. “Be careful what you ask for.”
He thrust into me as far as one stroke would take him, which definitely wasn’t all the way. I had to work my way up to Alec. There was a little more sheer pleasure with Montague or Firian because they weren’t quite so big, but there was also an intense pride and satisfaction in knowing I could handle an incubus.
“Oh…”
“My girl,” Alec said. “You give me everything I want and more.”
“Ahh…” Those were the words I had to choose from right now, oh or ahh. I was really turned on by the way he had just gone for it, even though… “Um…so you know what I want?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Because I like…a little more…finger picking and not so bass heavy.”
“I’ll get to that,” he said. “But I’ll take my pleasure from you first.”
The answer satisfied me. My inner walls burned hot as he fucked me hard, sliding in and out easily with my increasing wetness. I knew he wouldn’t leave me unsatisfied. With every stroke, I could feel how much he needed me, wanted me, demanded me.
Montague leaned over me, studying my face for just a second—I must have looked plastered already. Then he leaned over my chest, licking his lips as his teeth sharpened. He took one nipple in his mouth and sucked on it.
“Don’t bite me,” I pleaded, terrified at the sight of my tender nipple inside that fanged mouth, but it also made me even hotter. That little edge of fear stoked me to even greater heights.
Alec came hard inside me, pumping me full of his essence, while Montague was still teasing at my tender nipples, and I felt like a woman.
A Witch Among Warlocks: The Complete Series Box Set Page 54