“He did,” I admit. “I owe Carl quite a bit, actually.”
“I owe him a lot. Starting with a huge apology for having blown up at him. I could have handled all of that much differently. I know I’m not the first girl in the world with two guy friends that were interested in her that managed to keep both of them.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” I tell her. “Emotions are tricky things. Unpredictable, even to ourselves. We can have all the best intentions in the world, but when it comes right down to it, we’ll feel what we feel in the moment. We can’t control that.”
“Yes, but we can control how we deal with those feelings. I was way too harsh on someone that has been right there for me, by my side, for years. All the nights he’s been at the house while Grandma’s been on the road, or making sure I get home all right on those roads in winter. I can’t believe that I was willing to just throw it all away all at once just a few days ago.”
“Let us focus on survival now,” I tell her. “Live long enough for you to make things right with him.”
She seems to accept that. Ivy stands up, keeping the blanket wrapped around her, and goes to the bedroom to start putting on clothes.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“We are going to walk the property together,” she says. “Let’s both get a good sense for what the place feels like right now, so we’ll both have a better feel if something changes. If you’re right, now that Carl has found us, that hunter may not be far behind.”
“You should stay inside,” I say, leaning a little bit of compulsion on her.
“No. We should go together,” Ivy says, pulling on her pants.
“It’s safer if I go on my own. It’s after dark, so I and any vampire that might be on the land can see way better than you can. Just wait for me.” This time, I put my full will into compelling her to obey.
Ivy quirks an eyebrow at me while she puts her bra on. “I’m going,” she says. “You can come with me or stay. I don’t care.”
“What are you doing, Ivy?”
“You taught me how to resist your compulsion.”
“It shouldn’t be working this quickly,” I say.
“I’m a very fast learner. Come on,” she says, pulling on her hoodie and walking toward the door.
I am tempted to stand in her way, but I don’t know that I really want to see what she does next. I had always known that Ivy was a very determined woman when she set her mind to something. It seems like today she has set her mind to being very active in the defense and care of our little piece of land here. I had noticed over the past few days as she was settling more into the routine of life out here that she has been becoming more herself. Right now, Ivy is really aglow with life. The assertiveness in flirting with me today, and in the love making we have just shared, her courage and willingness to step out and face whatever is out there. This is the Ivy I think I had truly fallen in love with, the large personality inside that body, capable, assured, confident.
If that hunter is out there, I know it will be a hard fight, and I’m going to have to keep Ivy safe. But I also find myself welcoming the idea of having her at my back. “Alright,” I say. “Let’s do this.” I go to the bedroom window and open up the false panel, handing her the short rifle inside. She takes it with a nod, and slings it over her shoulder, leaving her hands free.
When we step out onto the porch, she reaches beneath the edge of the deck, and pulls out what looks like one of our kitchen knives. Why she has it stashed there, I do now know, unless she felt at some point that she needed to have a weapon hidden somewhere outside of the house. But she knows about the need to use silvered weapons against vampires or thropes. What was she hoping to defend herself against with a simple kitchen knife, especially when there are several guns hidden inside?
I can’t waste too much concentration on that right now. I want to track Carl’s movements, make sure he is off the land, and make damn certain the hunter is not following him. The other thing perplexing me is that Carl kept himself leashed when he saw Ivy and I naked on the floor together. It must have taken an amazing amount of self-control for him to do that.
As if she can read my thoughts, Ivy asks, “If Carl had attacked you. Which one of you would win?”
“Today, I don’t know,” I say, without hesitation. “If the Great War were still happening, Carl, without question.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Once the war ended, we both stopped training to fight each other. Carl is formidable, but I have simply been fighting longer. I’ve learned over time how to keep my skills sharp instead of letting them go dormant. So if we were to face each other right now, today, after many years of tenuous peace between us, who knows. His natural talent and the fact that he was trained since birth specifically to fight my kind would make it a hard fight. But there is the old saw that youth and skill are no match for old age and experience.”
“And if the war were still happening?” Ivy asks.
“Remember what I told you about my kind having a hard time learning and adapting. The unfortunate side effect of immortality? Carl, son of two werewolves, from a powerful bloodline, trained since birth, and having a lifespan barely longer than yours. He would keep learning, keep adapting, keep his style ever evolving. Plus, he knows he is going to die someday, whether by violence or not. That makes him, makes you, much less afraid of death than I am. That frees him up to fight with a boldness and courage that I don’t possess. Without the Truce, Carl would far be the superior warrior to me.”
“Either way,” Ivy says, very sadly, “if he had changed when he had seen us, I would have lost one of you tonight, wouldn’t I?”
“I would have done everything I could to avoid killing him, out of respect for your love for him, but not at the expense of my own life. All three of us are very fortunate that he did not transform.”
Ivy reaches a hand out to me. “Thank you for understanding what he still means to me.”
“You have recently realized just how much you have loved him, haven’t you?” I say. “Every time you’ve mentioned him over the past few days, there’s something about the way you talk about him.”
“Busted,” she says quietly.
“I am not offended,” I tell her. “Right up until I outed him just now, you may have been realizing that Carl could give you a relationship that I never could.”
“We should focus on what we’re out here for,” Ivy says.
I nod in agreement, and go to where I saw him run away, looking for footprints. Fortunately, since he was shocked by what he’d seen, and apparently wanted to go in a hurry, they are easy to find.
I point out the trail to Ivy. She crouches down beside me to look closer, picking carefully at the plants. She pulls a fresh shoot of something and puts it in her mouth, thoughtfully chewing on it.
“Let’s keep going,” she says, scanning slowly around her.
Slowly, we climb the slope of the mountain, toward the highway that runs above the cabin. She does a remarkable job of following Carl’s trail, even though I’m sure she can’t make it out with her eyes. Does she simply know Carl well enough to know how he would move through a wooded area? Or is she demonstrating some particular skill in moving around these mountains that she can tell the best route to take naturally?
No. Her ability to follow his trail is too uncanny, and she is using some sense, not intuition or experience in this environment to navigate. Soon, I simply let her take the lead up the slope, while I keep my eyes open for the hunter, if she is here. Every time I look down at where Ivy is walking, she is still following Carl’s flight from the cabin.
She is still holding the kitchen knife in her hand, point forward, but not in some naïve attempt to use it as a weapon or to intimidate with it. Her grasp on it is extremely light, so much so that the blade swings slowly, but freely, from side to side. She has carved symbols into the handle, and has wrapped cord around it in an elaborate braid. I had wondered what had happened to
the necklace she usually wore, a reddish stone on a leather thong. Now I know where the cord went.
“I see Carl and I aren’t the only ones with secrets,” I tell her.
She glances over at me. I imagine her eyes have adjusted enough to the dark that she can see me looking at the knife.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says, but she makes no attempt to hide the knife, or otherwise change her behavior.
“You’re a witch, Ivy.” It is very hard for me to get those words out. I don’t want to have to admit what that means.
“Yes. Esseriya line. Only daughter of an only daughter, thirty-eight generations back.”
“I had no idea,” I say.
“Of course you didn’t,” Ivy says. “I had even forgotten the first few days we were out here. Everything had changed so fast on me, and the emotional whiplash of going from pure elation to utter panic within a couple of hours. It had me way outside of myself for longer than I would like to admit. When you started sleeping through the days is when I realized that I come from a very long line of women who survive and thrive, and I started practicing even harder than I did when I was at home. I guess that fear of death lit a fire under me that youth hadn’t.”
“This changes everything,” I say.
“It changes nothing,” Ivy says. She stops walking and stands up straight, squaring her shoulders at me. “I still love you after finding out what you are. Yes, I had to get used to it, but I chose to keep loving you while I figured it out. Me being a witch should be no different for you. There is no war between us, no conflict that we are caught up in.”
I shake my head. I don’t even know where to start trying to explain to her what her being a witch means for us, what it means for the sensing I’ve had about her. I now know exactly why she’s going to beg me to turn her. It is a horrible thing she’ll have to endure, and it is unknown whether or not I’ll be alive the following morning.
Of course, Ivy may not be the witch that Sonia Vătafu had foreseen, a vision she had right in front of me, just before I got sent back to France in 1942. The one that scared her so much that she took her own life shortly afterwards. Ivy may be just a witch that is in love with a vampire. But considering how few witches there are in the world, and how few vampires that have rebelled against their clan, and the timing is right, with the Negre not fighting the thropes at the moment.
“Ben!” Ivy snaps.
“Huh?”
“Why does this change everything?”
“Because it would be best for you to forget you know me. Go back to the cabin, and get anything you want to take home with you. I’ll confirm the hunter has not followed Carl, and we need to get away from each other.”
“Does me being a witch really require this much drama?” she asks. “Can’t you just accept that I am more than just a regular girl, like I have learned to accept that you’re not just another really cute and interesting guy?”
“It’s not that you’re a witch. Well, it is, actually. It is very dangerous for me to get involved with a witch. Both of us will suffer greatly for it unless we break things off here and now, and we get far away from each other.”
Ivy tucks the knife into her belt, and reaches out for me. I back away from her touch.
“You’re terrified, aren’t you?”
“I am not playing a game with you, Ivy. I’m not being dramatic. We have the potential to create something truly terrible, your lineage and my blood. Get what you need from the cabin, and let’s get you out of here.”
“Is this really it, Ben? One word, and that’s the end of us?”
I don’t know what else to say to her. I wish I could tell her all of what Sonia Vătafu had told me, but I don’t want to consider that I might be the vampire she spoke of. I could tell Ivy what will happen to her if Sonia Vătafu’s vision comes to pass, but it would be cruel to do so. Less cruel to color myself a coward and a cad in her eyes, and leave her weeping and ignorant of the fate she has narrowly avoided.
Ivy slaps me, snapping me back out of the dark thoughts I’ve lost myself in. “Is this it, Ben?”
“This is it,” I tell her. “I have learned to not ignore the future when I get glimpses of it. And knowing what I do about you, I can see a future I want no part of.”
“I can’t believe any of this,” Ivy says. “But if it’s what you want, I don’t need anything from the cabin. I came out here with just the clothes on my back, and I’ll leave with the same. You can even have this back,” she says, pulling out her makeshift ritual blade and throwing it on the ground between us. She unslings the rifle and tosses that down the hill. “Let’s go. Where’s your car?”
“I can compel someone to drive you home without harming you.”
“I can take care of myself,” she says, and starts stomping toward the highway. I start to follow her, but she turns and shoots me a fierce and hot glare. I wait for a moment, until she is too far away to see me with her warm eyes in the darkness, and I follow silently. I at least owe it to her to make sure she gets somewhere safe before I leave.
As she steps out of the treeline, I see a car parked by the side of the road. It’s Nathan.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nathan Marsh
“So what’s your secret?” Ivy asks as soon as she recognizes me.
“I, my dear, am a demon. I have known your grandmother since she was your age, and made a small mistake in a summoning, bringing me instead of the minor invocate she was intending to call.”
“Hello, Nathan the Demon. I am Ivy the Witch. Are you going to need to cast me aside now that you know that?”
“I have known you were a witch longer than you have, and my path is ever by your side.”
“Well, my path leads to my bedroom. Take me there.”
“Let me see if it is safe to take you there,” I say, reaching for my phone as I start the car.
“Why wouldn’t it be safe?” Ivy asks.
“The hunter has been watching your house and Carl’s.”
“Home. Ben apparently is going to make enough of some sort of vampire ruckus to get her running after him. She can have him. They deserve each other.”
“Home it is then?”
“Please,” Ivy says. I put the car in gear and pull onto the highway. “I’m assuming you followed Carl out tonight?”
“Yes. Until this evening, I did not know where you and Ben were hiding out. He is good. Carl would not have found you, except that fate intended it to happen. We were driving home from Denver one night, along this very road, as Ben was coming up from the cabin to make a run into town.”
“I’m really sorry that I vanished on you all like that. I’m sure I worried everybody sick.”
“It was the worst for Kate,” I say. “Emily, Carl, and I. Like you, we all have our secrets, we knew this was all part of the things that happen to us because of that. Kate has no idea that there are things like us in the world. When things calm down, you should tend to your friendship with her, for it is the one that is most damaged.”
Ivy just nods at that. “How has Grandma been?”
“Worried, obviously. She did not like the idea of you being with Ben. She would have preferred either Carl or I, by far, but she was willing to let you live your life, until it became clear that Ben is a renegade Negre. That put you in tremendous danger, as a means of leverage against him. Even after you were claimed, and they can now no longer cause you physical harm as long as he lives, they could still cause you great suffering if they felt there was advantage in it. Even now, with Ben drawing them, you are not completely safe, and Emily and I will need to be extremely vigilant about everything for quite some time.”
“Well, if I knew how things would end up with Ben, I’d have tamped down my feelings for him long ago. Like, we had sex, then immediately I have to run for my life with him, then I get used to living in hiding, we have sex again, and an hour later he’s shoving me right out of his life.”
“To be fair, he wa
s wise to take you into hiding with him when he first saw the hunter, and he is making the right choice to separate and draw them away from you now. I believe he was always acting out of genuine affection for you.”
“Well. I guess somebody’s fate is incompatible with his affections. Though you mentioned fate and Carl as well. From what I know about fate, I suppose being his girlfriend wouldn’t have done me any better would it? Are there a ton of stupid packs out there fighting each other that would love to go all big bad wolf on me?”
“The lycanthropes do not have the clan problems the vampires do. They are territorial in their own way, but if they are going to fight, they do it quick and clean.”
“So, how many futures am I caught up in? I’m starting to feel like a pinball here.”
“How many futures is a witch ever not caught up in?” I ask her. “You were born into power, and power will take you where it wants to.”
“I’m really not in the mood for riddles or whatever right now. Straight answers would be lovely right about now.”
“Emily knows that you and Carl will remain part of each other’s lives, that there will be a reconciliation between you, and love.”
Ivy looks over at me, nods, smiles a little. “That makes me feel good. Knowing that. My biggest regret, up until very recently, was the fight I got into him with over Ben. Oddly, even Ben was starting to warm to Carl, make sure I knew he was a good man. I think Ben really respects him deep down.”
“He does,” I say. “It took him a while to do so, and not completely because of the Great War. I think Carl and Ben have clashing personalities. They may learn to respect each other, but they will never actually like each other.”
“Alright. Fate wants Carl and I to remain close. That’s good. What else?”
“Emily knows a lot that I will not let her tell me.” I spend some time explaining to her the danger we demons have when we hear the divinations and foretellings of witches. She seems to understand it quickly and deeply, steering well away from any attempt to ask me about what little I do know of Emily’s prophecy. She also mentions only once having done any divination, and tells me nothing about the information she sought. This is the one place where I have been unwisely curious. I know she is referring to the divination in her circle right before she started her relationship with Ben.
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