by Annie Bellet
RIP Tessa Margaret Haller. She is remembered.
I’d looked up her last words online. They were from the Last Supper, part of the ritual of Communion. She had chosen her sacrifice, believing that I was stronger, that I had a better chance to win against Samir.
She had, in essence, placed her faith in me. Wholly. Irrevocably.
I was going to do my best not to fuck that up. No pressure, right?
After days of neglect and a couple of hexes, my shop was cold and dusty-feeling when I opened it back up two days later. My morning was surprisingly busy for a weekday as regulars came by, asking after my grandmother in a way that had me confused—until Harper showed up and explained she’d spread the story that I’d been out of town most of last week caring for a sick granny. A little cliché of an excuse, but it seemed to work.
Brie showed up with cupcakes and coffee in the early afternoon. I had changed out all the light bulbs and gotten my computer to boot up finally, wondering just how full my work email was now, and dreading finding out.
She looked her normal self, her hair in two braids coiled on her head, her apron dusted with flour. Crow’s-feet once against graced her face and her body was stouter than it had been when she wielded a sword.
“Ciaran and Iollan send their goodwill and greetings,” she said.
Ciaran, his hair more silver than copper now, had dropped by the Henhouse the day before and told me he and the druid were going to go check and make sure Balor’s Eye was shut. They promised to be back within a week. I told Ciaran I’d keep an eye on his shop, but him being out of town for periods of time was normal. Everyone would assume he was on a buying trip somewhere.
“So,” I said. Lamest opening ever, but how exactly did one go about asking what I wanted to ask? “You look, well, better. Older again.” I could add two and two. Or one and three. I wasn’t so ignorant of mythology that I hadn’t heard of the Morrigan. I mean, she’s all over videogame lore, too. Goddess of war. Threefold goddess.
“I am not what you think,” Brie said, opening the lid of her coffee cup and blowing on it.
“So you aren’t the Morrigan?”
She laughed, the sound rich and multilayered.
“All right,” she admitted. “I’m sort of what you think.”
“Iollan called you Brigit, though,” I said.
“I was three goddesses once, long before, in a time when we walked among men, spoke with them, were revered. But the old ways are lost. We have dwindled. Brigit, Airmid, and Macha, who you call Morrigan, made a pact, we three. We tied ourselves, our memory, our knowledge, to a young druid, one of the last of his kind, and a young fey, one of the few who remained in this world.”
She held up her hand, palm toward me, and a glyph glowed on it briefly.
“A triqueta,” I said. The knot was common—an embellishment all over manuscripts, a common piece of tattoo work, too. Yosemite had one right over his heart. Remembering that, I leaned back on my stool and smiled. “Three and one.”
“My power is nearly gone. Only our bond holds us together. When I have to use power, I lose myself. I am immortal, in a way, and cannot die, but I become less—we become less.”
“A child,” I said.
“Ciaran and Iollan guard my memories. They restore me, give me back what I spend, bring me back to life with their belief. There is enough knowledge of the truth of what we were in them to sustain us. For now.”
“But people worship old gods, too,” I said, still wrapping my head around the idea that I was talking to a freaking goddess. After everything I’d seen this week, it wasn’t that tough a stretch, weirdly enough.
“They worship what they think we were. Without knowledge, without truth. The time of gods has come and gone.” She shook her head and smiled sadly. Then, rising, she capped her coffee and sighed. “I am sorry I judged you so poorly. It is difficult to hang on to my memories, and the ones that stay are often the most painful. They cloud my judgment sometimes.”
“Pretty sure that’s normal,” I said.
“Perhaps. Well, if you need anything, my door is open to you.” She turned to leave but I hopped off my stool and came around the counter.
“Actually,” I said, “there is something I need from you.”
Peggy Olsen held book group, which was code for coven meetings, in the basement of the library on Wednesday nights. Brie had been reluctant to tell me, but I swore up and down on all the honor I still hoped I had that I wouldn’t kill anyone.
Of course, Peggy Olsen and the twelve women of her coven hadn’t heard me make that promise.
I had to wait a week longer than I wanted because what I needed was on special order and totally out of season, but I slammed my way into book group in spectacular, showy fashion. Purple light danced along my skin and I’d left my hair loose, expending power so that it floated around me as I kicked in the door and stomped right into the center of the coven meeting, a duffle bag in each hand.
“Stand where you are,” I cried out, using more magic to enhance my voice.
The witches froze. Some had been getting coffee from a thermos. There was a long wooden table down the center of the room. On it was a dull ceremonial knife carved from wood. Incense and candles were lit around the room. The witches mostly sat at folding chairs around the table. One looked like she had been taking notes. There wasn’t a book in sight. Clearly they hadn’t expected anyone to interrupt them or question their cover story. I felt the hum of warding magic, weak but present, as I crossed the threshold. Whatever they’d warded against hadn’t included pissed-off sorceresses, apparently.
I memorized each face, recognizing a few. We lived in a small town, after all.
“What do you want?” Peggy said in a shaking voice, finally summoning the courage to rise to her feet.
“I want to talk to you about magic,” I said. “I’ve been reading up, you see. And you all have been terrible witches.”
Gasps ran around the room, the fear and tension rising.
“I’m tired of you hexing me, sending bugs and rats and whatever into my business. Harassing my friends. Basically, being annoying little bitches. You know I could squash you like bugs, bring this whole building down, or burn you all to ash where you stand.”
I stopped and looked around at them again, meeting each gaze. Only Peggy looked me in the eye.
“But I won’t. Because I’m not evil. If you think I am, you need your prescriptions amended, because you have no fucking clue what evil really is. You are dabbling idiots, mistaking a match flame’s worth of power for the sun. But you have laws, rules you have to follow. Rules you’ve apparently forgotten.”
I put down the bags and unzipped them. No one made a move to stop me, which showed serious smarts on their side. I wouldn’t have hurt anyone, but I’d practiced holding someone in place with magic all week long. Levi, Ezee, Max, and Harper were pretty sick of it. Alek had just raised a pale eyebrow when I’d asked if he would let me practice on him. He was the only one I’d failed to pin for any length of time.
Ladybugs started to flood out of the bag. I prodded them gently with magic, waking them up. I had gone with those because I figured that if any made it out of the building, they wouldn’t infest anyone’s kitchen or hurt the landscaping. Wylde was going to be free of aphids next spring, for sure.
“I am invoking the threefold law,” I said as the little red and black bodies took flight, streaming toward the shocked women. “You want to keep being assholes to me? Fine. Everything you do will come back on you threefold. All of you, since I know without a full coven, there is no way you could raise the power Peggy wields. So think about it before you hex.”
Everyone was still frozen in place, staring at me and then at the bugs with shock. Peggy looked like her head was about to implode, her skin turning scarlet.
“Oh yeah,” I said, as I turned to leave. I clicked my fingers, sending a low wave of electricity around the room. Witches started cursing as cell phones in purses made te
rrible squealing noises and died. Acrid green smoke leaked out of Peggy’s sweatshirt pocket. “Hexen,” I added.
I used my magic to dramatically slam the door behind me as the women unfroze and angry, scared voices started pestering Peggy with questions. I grinned. That had felt way too good. Hopefully it would solve my witch problem. I had a feeling it would. Praise Harper and her clever mind.
“Samir will come for me this time,” I whispered to Alek as we lay on the blankets piled across my floor that night. “Tess is sure of it.”
“Tess is dead,” Alek murmured.
“Not in here,” I said, tapping my forehead. “I knew him long ago. She knew him lately. He’s grown bored, more bored. Without his apprentices to distract him, and with the lure of Clyde’s heart, he’ll come himself this time.”
“Good,” Alek said. “We will face him. You are strong, kitten. And you have many allies.”
Great. More people to get killed. I shoved the bleak thought away.
“I just hope it is enough.”
“We fight with what we have,” he murmured. “Not what we wish to have.”
“Okay, Obi-Wan.” I nipped his chin and settled into his arms.
“I am not quoting Star Wars,” he said, glaring down at me in mock annoyance.
“No, but you sound wise for your years.”
“Protect you, I will,” he said. “Love you, I do.”
We fell asleep, laughter still on our lips.
Alek knew it was not a dream, because in his dreams the world still had smells and tastes. The empty street outside Jade’s store was quiet, wind blowing but without bringing scent with it, without sound. He couldn’t smell the bakery, though its front door was steps away from him.
A figure walked down the empty street toward him, her shape vaguely female, but shifting, always shifting. Ears of various shapes and sizes came and went in her white hair, her face grew whiskers which were then replaced by soft black fur that shifted to an eagle’s beak. The Council had come to speak to him. Carlos had told him once of a visit from the Emissary, but Alek had thought such a thing was far beyond any attention he himself merited.
Once, he would have dropped to his knees in awe. Those days felt far away. Instead he stood and watched the Emissary approach. He had expected this, though he could not guess what the Council would want to show him.
Alek turned his eyes away from the shifting figure and looked up at the dark window above Pwned Comics and Games. In reality, he was up there, his tiger-self curled around Jade’s little body, watching over her. His impatience surprised him. This vision might be important. Its timing was no coincidence, not after such a long silence from the Council. He had started to wonder if he were still a Justice, but had pushed away those thoughts, fighting off the dark wave of despair such thinking brought with it.
He could not fight himself forever, he knew. Hard questions would have to be asked, and soon.
Perhaps now.
“Aleksei Kirov,” the Emissary said. Her voice was neither male nor no female, a blend of tones and pitch. It had the same chill as night winds on the steppe.
Once, he might have shivered. But he was tiger and had been born to the cold. Here, his heart was colder still, wrapped in a blanket of doubt.
“What do you want?” he said, trying to keep his impatience out of his voice.
“The Hearteater comes for the woman,” the Emissary said. “You will give her to him.”
He took a physical step back, his tiger rising within, his lips peeling back into a snarl. “No,” he said, his voice almost inhuman.
“Look around you.”
Alek tore his eyes away from the shifting figure. The buildings now burned, smoke rising, untouched by the odd, steady wind. Bodies littered the street, their blood red like paint, unreal without scent to back it up. Harper lay to his right, her face a beaten mess. She stretched a broken, twisted hand out to him, the look in her eyes one of utter and complete betrayal. Her lips formed words he couldn’t make out, the wind taking away any sound she might have made, the vision still silent.
“No,” Alek said again. “I will not betray my mate.”
“Then they will all die. You will die. Is one life worth so much? You vowed to protect and serve our kind. Would you throw that oath away, throw your life away for a non-shifter? She is not of our kind. She and her battles are not ours to fight.”
Alek felt a tightness in his chest. He looked down and watched as a gaping wound opened. There was no pain, just thick spurts of cold ruby blood and a hint of gritty white bone beneath the carved-up flesh. Embedded in his chest just above where the wound gaped, beneath a translucent layer of skin, his silver feather gleamed, infused with power.
He had told Jade once, not so long ago, that he strove for balance. He wanted that feather to weigh more than his soul, when the time came.
“When the time comes,” he said softly, speaking mostly to himself, “it will balance.”
“You must choose,” the Emissary said. “Give up the woman to her kind, and you will save many lives. You are at the crossroads, Aleksei Kirov. You must choose.”
Alek willed his fingers to be claws. He sliced his own flesh, digging the feather free. It came out clean and light as down, cool like a snowflake in his palm.
He raised his gaze to the Emissary and met her yellow, cat-slit eyes.
“I have chosen,” he said.
Then he opened his palm, and let the feather fall.
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Also by Annie Bellet:
The Gryphonpike Chronicles:
Witch Hunt
Twice Drowned Dragon
A Stone’s Throw
Dead of Knight
The Barrows (Omnibus Vol.1)
Chwedl Duology:
A Heart in Sun and Shadow
The Raven King
Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division Series:
Avarice
Short Story Collections:
Till Human Voices Wake Us
Dusk and Shiver
Forgotten Tigers and Other Stories
About the Author:
Annie Bellet lives and writes in the Pacific NW. She is the author of the Gryphonpike Chronicles and the Twenty-Sided Sorceress series, and her short stories have appeared in over two dozen magazines and anthologies. Follow her at her website at “A Little Imagination” (http://overactive.wordpress.com/)
Table of Contents
The Twenty-Sided Sorceress series in reading order:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Also by Annie Bellet:
About the Author:
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