Yeah, I had lots of things to thank Chi Wen for. So blaming the far seer for my needing to grow up seemed to fit onto that list just fine.
The only time I ever drank tea was when it was served in fine china and paired with crisp layers of pastry and buttercream — specifically, the impossibly delicious offerings of Notte’s Bon Ton. And that was exactly what my mother had arrayed across the sleek cherry-wood table that bisected the dining room portion of her open living room. Tiers upon tiers of pastries, plus the most heavenly scented teas.
Based on the sheer volume of pastry, I wasn’t certain how many guests my mother had anticipated hosting. Though it was a safe guess that the three werewolves alone could have cleared the table given a solid hour or so.
After greeting Gran, who was already deep in conversation with Audrey, I chatted briefly with the group of witches who’d commandeered the green velvet love seat and twin recliners. Those included Burgundy, Mory’s friend; Olive, whose hair was twisted up in a gaudy orange scarf; and Kelly, who was knitting something large — possibly a lace blanket — with a thick, natural red-brown yarn that I assumed was from her alpacas.
I winked at Rochelle, who had wedged herself in the front window seat with Mory as a buffer between her and everyone else. Then I made a beeline for the treats.
The junior necromancer was also knitting, but her thin yarn matched her purple-and-red-streaked hair. She was working on another tube — meaning probably more arm warmers, or maybe socks. She never seemed to have enough of either. According to Gran, knitting was a way for some witches — and apparently at least one necromancer — to visualize how their magic worked when they didn’t see magic, as I did.
The oracle had opted for a baggy, loose-knit black sweater that hung off her petite frame and likely fell to her knees when she was standing. It also covered her increasingly rounded belly. Yep, Rochelle was six months pregnant. That was the news she’d wanted to share at my engagement party. Kandy had been teasing her endlessly about having tiger twins, suggesting with much mirth that not even her oracle powers would be able to help her raise two shifters.
The oracle’s white-framed tinted glasses might have hidden the magic simmering in her eyes from sight, but I could still taste her tart apple power as it intermingled with the grassy base of the witches. I hoped it was just the situation — being surrounded by Adepts — rather than an oncoming vision that had Rochelle’s oracle magic percolating. I was already unnerved by the appearance of a rapier in my mother’s umbrella stand, meaning I’d likely overreact to anything else. And I didn’t want to ruin the afternoon for everyone.
Okay, to be fully honest, I didn’t want anything to occur that might cause the treats to go to waste.
I set up camp by the dining table, waffling over pouring a cup of Chocolate Rocket from DavidsTea — which I honestly would have carried with me everywhere for its scent of chocolate, almonds, and raspberries — or the Forever Nuts, which paired perfectly with any and all desserts, especially with its undertone of sweet apple.
My mother had commissioned the cherry-wood table, matching chairs, and sideboard from a local woodworker who displayed his work on Granville Island. She’d taken delivery of the set just in time for the bridal shower. The linen napkins and the handblown glass vase, currently holding a white orchid and sitting in the center of the table, were also from local artisans, but the sterling silverware and the china were antique.
Kandy sidled up to me, pilfering one of the three Florentines I had already perfectly balanced on my plate, so as to keep enough space for at least two more selections. The decadent petit four boasted two layers of dark-chocolate buttercream sandwiched between three caramelized almond-and-candied-fruit cookies, with the bottom layer dipped in chocolate. The green-haired werewolf could have easily grabbed a Florentine from the dozen plus still adorning the china platter. But for her, stealing my food was much, much more satisfying.
I flashed her a grin, content to play werewolf dominance games if she so desired. Despite her easy manner during brunch and pedicures, I was still a little concerned with how my BFF had been affected by the elf’s illusion of the injured wolf. Plus, I knew that having Audrey around was always tension inducing. Kandy could have been the beta of any shapeshifter pack she’d desired. But she had chosen Vancouver instead, and a pack of magical misfits that happily included me. So despite all of that, I was pleased she was still feeling playful.
Also, there were more than enough treats to go around, or I might have had to fight her for it. Best friend or not.
“Politics,” Kandy muttered, her narrow-eyed gaze fixed over my shoulder.
I glanced back to see that she was eyeing Gran and Audrey, standing close together, framed in the pocket door that stood open to the kitchen. They were having some sort of intense discussion. Lara stood politely just off to the side of her beta’s shoulder, but she looked bored. I picked up enough of their softly exchanged words — Whistler … snow … wolf … elf — to get the gist.
“I’m sure the pack is simply filling the coven in on last night’s encounter,” I said, not particularly interested in eavesdropping further. “As per protocol.”
“Sure, sure,” Kandy said, deceptively agreeable. “Except, of course, you were the senior Adept on site, so doing any sort of so-called report to the head of the Convocation is technically your call. Especially since you exposed the plot and all by unearthing the elves in the first place.”
I laughed under my breath, taking a deeply satisfying sniff of my tea. I had opted for Chocolate Rocket. “I’m sure Audrey is offering a detailed accounting. And that Gran is pleased to be kept informed.”
“Right …” Kandy shrugged her shoulder, snarling sarcastically. “Including how she knew that something was off from the moment she saw the hurt wolf. And that the entire incident didn’t smell right.”
I gave her a look, nibbling around the edges of a two-tiered, powdered-sugared almond cookie with a chocolate buttercream center — aka a Japanese pastry. “Why did you invite Audrey in the first place? Lara would have come alone.” I had put the purple-loving enforcer werewolf on my personal guest list — as one of the twelve people I’d wanted to invite to my wedding, including my parents and my grandmother. Warner’s list had consisted of five names. Two of those had doubled mine — Drake and Kett. Two, he considered friends of some sort — Haoxin and Qiuniu. The last was pure obligation — Jiaotu.
The guardian of Northern Europe held the power that the sentinel’s mother had once wielded, and controlled the territory in which Warner maintained his ancestral home. Thankfully, all three guardians had declined attending the actual ceremony. Their schedules were difficult to predict. But Haoxin and the healer had both expressed a desire to drop by the dinner afterward, if possible.
“Lara would have gladly come by herself.” Kandy curled her lip. “But Pearl requested the beta’s presence.”
“Oh, yeah?” I’d assumed that the addition of Audrey’s name — along with Desmond’s, who’d also declined — had come from Kandy. I mulled this new information over, eyeing my grandmother. She was looking rather stately in dark-charcoal wool crepe pants and a wide-collared, off-white silk blouse. Her gray hair was tightly braided and coiled around her head. “And why is that?”
“You tell me.” Kandy turned her attention away from Audrey and Gran, casting her gaze across the table.
I paused my pastry indulgence to contemplate why Gran would feel it necessary to shore up the coven’s relationship with the West Coast North American Pack.
“Because … you’re my wolf?” I asked quietly.
Kandy’s lip curled. She had taken to declaring herself the ‘wielder’s wolf’ in recent months. “You know it, babe.”
“That doesn’t change your position within the pack structure, does it? Like, badly?”
“Nope. But it also doesn’t give Pearl any in to the pack through me.”
A realization hit me hard. “You’re mad at Gran. Over tying me to th
e grid.”
“Yeah, I’m mad as hell.”
I watched my grandmother again as I finished up my almond cookie pastry. Then I dug into a slice of Dobos, which consisted of three thin layers of dense cake and chocolate buttercream, all enrobed in a hard chocolate shell. And yes, I had filled my plate — first pass, at least — with all the chocolate-buttercream-filled petit fours. “You hide your anger well.”
Kandy snorted. “Not well enough, obviously.”
“Gran’s never been particularly concerned about building relationships with other Adepts before. Not that I know of, at least. Witches usually keep to themselves, shoring up power in their covens.”
“Most Adept sects do, except the smaller, rarer subsets. Like your necromancer and your oracle, who need to make strategic alliances.” Kandy nodded toward Mory and Rochelle, still seated separately from the witches, but who now appeared to be nibbling on tea sandwiches.
Ignoring Kandy’s use of ‘your’ when referring to the two of them, I turned my attention back to the table — where I spotted sandwiches and other delicacies I hadn’t noticed before, nestled among all the pastries. I was hoping for peanut butter and banana.
“Rumor has it that the Gulf Coast Pack has a telepath and an amplifier among their membership.”
“Well, so do we,” I murmured, distracted by a fillet of smoked salmon and a mound of cream cheese — both just out of my reach.
“Yep. Which should make the Godfrey coven one of the most powerful Adept sects in the world, with no need for other alliances.”
That got my attention off the food. “Except …”
“Except there’s you. Pearl never had one of the most powerful Adepts in existence living in her territory before. An Adept who’s about to marry another powerful person with unshakable loyalties. And ties outside of the coven. Vancouver … hell, the entire West Coast is no longer witch territory with your grandmother as its undisputed leader.”
I set down my teacup and plate on the edge of the table, freeing my hands so I could pull the crispy caramelized cookie sections of a Florentine apart and lick the chocolate buttercream unabashedly.
Kandy watched me, letting the conversation lapse. “Sorry I’m upsetting you.” She hooked her fingers through my bent elbow. “I know you just want to bake and laugh and be … you. And we all want that too. There’s just going to be an adjustment period. Right?”
I shook my head, but more in denial of my need to shove my head in the sand regarding the power I carried than about Kandy’s assessment. “You hate this political stuff. You don’t want to be involved.”
Kandy shrugged, popping an entire Canadian Cheese in her mouth — a maple-buttercream-filled meringue pastry with a hazelnut crust. “I’m not involved. I’m the wielder’s wolf. I’m above it all.”
I shrugged off my uneasiness over her tying herself to me with an official title once again. “So you think that Gran is … what? Fortifying her territory from the outside? Why would the pack be interested?”
Kandy snorted. Still chewing, she downed her entire cup of tea. “Witches are useful. And when all else fails, who doesn’t want to be able to call up the wielder of the instruments of assassination? You’re big league, babe.”
“The pack has my friendship, my loyalty, without the games.”
“Sure. But Pearl can’t bank on things like friendship.”
I sighed. “Can we worry about my gran’s potentially nefarious intentions later? Or, like … never?”
“There ain’t nothing nefarious about it, Jade. She simply wants to protect you from all the things she can’t imagine that might be gunning for you. Problem is, what’s more powerful than you? And how could she possibly be a help in that fight? Or even shield the coven from it? Hence, the relationship building and the tinkering with the grid. She’s shoring up allies, drawing battle lines, in case she has to back you.”
I groaned quietly. The last thing I wanted was for Vancouver to become some sort of war zone, with me in the middle of the chaos and my family protecting my back … just like they’d done on the beach in Tofino …
Kandy dropped another Florentine into my hand. “Nothing to fret about now, my pretty. Now you get the delightful experience of playing stupid games and wearing a paper hat.”
“What?”
“Or maybe it’s supposed to be a paper bouquet? I really wasn’t listening when Scarlett was planning it all. Though I did find those wooden clothespins she asked for …”
“Clothespins?” Dread crept into my tone. Yeah, I was all Zen when the possibilities included battle lines being drawn, but party games freaked me out. “For what?”
“Don’t worry, dowser. You’ll get through it. And the bachelorette party is going to be off the hook.”
“No weird hats … or games?”
“Nope. Well, T-shirts. You know.”
I laughed. Of course there were going to be T-shirts.
6
In the end, my mother limited the so-called bridal shower ‘games’ to three. Though I felt certain that at least one of them had been rigged, because I lost my clothespin almost immediately as punishment for saying the word ‘chocolate.’ Apparently, I couldn’t go five minutes without doing so. But after that, relieved of the pressure of having to watch what I was saying, I enjoyed being surrounded by feminine chatter that had nothing to do with cupcakes, sales figures, or elves.
At one point, the witches got a little rambunctious over the idea of conducting tests with the magical grid, since half the coven — the main part of Gran’s whittled-down guest list — was going to be in town for my upcoming nuptials. Then two latecomers showed up — Teresa Garrick, Benjamin’s mother, and Danica Novak, Mory’s mother. To Mory’s utter chagrin, the two necromancers immediately settled down in a corner of the dining room with their tea and pastries, then started cackling about a rare skeleton one of them was adding to her bone collection.
I ignored both conversations, choosing to hang out with Rochelle and Kandy until Beau showed up promptly at 4:00 p.m. That seemed a perfectly acceptable time for a planned retreat, since it had been noted as the end of the gathering on the invitations. The werecat’s appearance — literally, how delectably gorgeous he was — shocked the assembled females into appreciative but polite murmurs. Beau, being rather smart about these sorts of things — and head over heels for his pregnant wife — stuck around only long enough to rescue Rochelle from our clutches. Along with a Tupperware container filled with leftover petit fours, of course.
Leaving the witches to chat and sip freshly brewed tea, the necromancers, the werewolves, and I all made hasty retreats as well. And Kandy was happily laden with two more pastry-filled containers, thanks to my mother’s excellent forethought and planning. Mory, looking really put out, climbed into the back seat of an older silver Mercedes driven by her mother. Teresa Garrick took the passenger seat. Other than her daughter, Danica had been the only necromancer in Vancouver before the Garricks arrived. But apparently the two elder necromancers had a lot to bond over and had become fast friends.
Adepts usually stuck to cultivating relationships among their own kind. It must have been nice to be able to share your magic with someone, chat about tips and tricks, and cast spells together. I wouldn’t know. But I didn’t feel particularly put out for being the only dowser and alchemist around.
Kandy, Audrey, Lara, and I wandered back along West Fifth Avenue toward the bakery as the sun began to set. It was only slightly chilly, the weather in Vancouver being a sharp contrast to what we’d left behind in the mountains. Musing about the weather made me think of the Talbots and their skiing weekend, so I checked my phone for text messages while the wolves dug into the leftover pastries and chattered among themselves.
I had no new messages, from the Talbots or anyone else. And that made me realize that I was hoping Warner and Kett were on their way home. Not because I was worried about the elves, but because I missed them. Yes, even though we hadn’t even been separated for twe
nty-four hours. I might occasionally chafe when my very set routine didn’t contain enough knife fighting, but I was a homebody at heart. Whether it was feasible or not, I wanted all my loved ones in the same place at the same time. Didn’t everyone?
“Did you check in with the Talbots?” I asked Kandy during a break in the conversation.
“You know I did.”
I opened my mouth to continue grilling her, but she raised her hand.
“And Kett. And everyone else who was supposed to check in. Everyone who should be accounted for is accounted for.”
“Fine. You don’t have to be so bossy about it.”
“Apparently I do.”
Momentarily satisfied, I stuffed my phone into my sweater pocket, hampered by the handmade bouquet I was still carrying. As one of the so-called games, the guests had constructed the bouquet for me out of the paper and ribbons the shower gifts had been wrapped in. Kandy had gathered the gifts themselves into a large tote bag that was now slung over her shoulder. Though the invitations had indicated that gifts weren’t requested, most of the guests had brought a little something, including handmade chocolate-scented soap, lip balm, and body cream from the witches.
Opening the lip balm from Olive — and then gushing over it — was why I’d lost my clothespin so early on. I had a feeling that giving me that particular gift first had been a strategic move on the part of the witches, who liked to win any and all games. Burgundy had come away with the bulk of the clothespins in the end, gleefully winning a gift certificate for a manicure.
I raised the bouquet before me. “And what exactly am I supposed to do with this?”
“Oh!” Lara gushed. “You use it during the wedding rehearsal.”
I glanced at Kandy disconcertedly. “We’re supposed to have a rehearsal?”
“Don’t look at me. I ain’t never planned a wedding either.”
Misfits, Gemstones, and Other Shattered Magic Page 8