“Avereis, there are whole other planes out there that you can’t see. Anything is possible.”
“I take that as a yes, but I’d never spill any of the secrets of the afterlife."
“The spirit element comes with some interesting secrets, yes.”
“I'll see you in the morning,” I told him. I looked back to his altar. “Even if you can't see them, they'll always be with you, Stan. You'll always be where their souls met in this life.”
It was probably too sentimental for him, so on that note I turned and went back to my room, afraid that if I got through his mental walls that they'd collapse and bury me alive. I still didn't connect with him, but it didn't mean I had to ignore him being human or ignore my being an empath. We were naturally full of advice and sentiment.
My bigger concern was Moon—or the woman I thought was Moon. I just knew it somehow, but until I was sure, I couldn’t tell Stan, Gregory, or Maddi. I couldn’t help but think that she had been leading us away from danger to keep us safe. If she was still in London, that was brave, and dammit, Moon kicked ass before she was on the run.
The next morning, business returned as usual, and no one had any idea Helaine and I had snuck out. As long as we kept our thoughts clear, no one would have to know. If we could prove that Moon was alive some other way, they really didn’t have to know how we figured it out.
I still felt sorry for Stan, but if I said anything he’d get mad or more plausibly be confused by it. It was best I let it go before I got to my coffee and the conservatory where he was waiting.
“Today we are going to talk about why you need to stay here within the house.”
“I suppose it’s just for tradition,” I said, clearing my thoughts, seated comfortably on the wicker sofa.
“Wrong.”
“I haven’t been told any differently yet, Stan, and I suppose that would be the job of my mentor.”
Stan sighed out in a grumble.
“A witch can be turned if he or she leaves the protection of the Coven within the first three months of being chosen.”
“Turned? Turned into what?”
“Turned to the dark side.”
“The dark side?” I started laughing, but then I rethought that idea when Stan’s grimace stayed stuck on his face. “You’re serious.”
“The type of power you have is easily influenced by your surroundings, so that’s why you stay with us. The house is heavily guarded against evil, and it’s the best place for you.”
“And also why we aren’t allowed to do elemental magic?”
“No. That one’s pretty archaic.”
“Then can I?”
“Avereis. The Mages are also archaic, and they assigned you to me so that you can’t manipulate me into getting out of lessons.”
“I knew it!” I yelled. “So what happens to the witches on the dark side?”
“They’re always out there… but the ones who cause the most trouble are caught by us, which results in their powers being stripped before they get exiled.”
“What about witches who aren’t diabolical and but still use their powers against The Wiccan Reede?”
“Usually they are concerned with using their powers to advance their careers, and even though they are successful—sometimes—karma gets them. The most powerful witches are only a threat to themselves.”
“Are there always witches who do diabolical things?”
“Why yes, and it's quite natural. Crimes by witches have gone down since the rigid rules have been lifted. We don't like to tell the rest of the underground that the renegades are out there.”
“That's what they call them? Renegades?”
“Stop playing Styx in your head, Avereis.”
“Sorry.”
“It's a word the Mages gave them. They seldom work with others so we've never had groups name themselves. It's the easiest way to generalize them.”
“Will we meet any?”
“It's highly likely. Gregory met one in his first year and everything ended up okay. First years are sometimes tumultuous, and we call an event that happens during an initiate’s first year a ‘first-year problem.’”
Optimistic, I thought. “So you think I have a chance at turning to the dark side?”
“It's a precaution. There are many sources that you can pull magic from, and you might not know what energy you're tapping into. It's best to stay resolute.”
“I'm still reading emotions even if I can't practice fire. Is that evil?”
“No. This learning is beyond you right now.”
“Try me,” I said. “You get to decide what's too advanced for me, not the Mages.”
“Alright. You sense emotions that are traveling on the astral plane as energy. Ever heard of it before?”
“I've heard of astral projection,” I said innocently. “Maddi's power.”
“You can feel emotional energy but you can't see it. When you are officially initiated after the winter solstice, your powers will become stronger and might change.”
“Change? That can't possibly mean that I'd lose my Changeling powers by becoming a witch, would it?”
“No,” Stan explained. “But they might become different when integrated; when fire chooses you. We have no idea how the element of fire will affect you.”
I could think of a few ways I had already changed, and I wasn’t proud of them.
“Did your powers change?”
“As a matter-of-fact yes, and they’re about to change even more. Any questions?”
“No,” I said. “Bring on initiation. I can’t wait to meet everyone in the city.”
What Stan didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, but I did wonder if Moon would be labeled a renegade for not coming to the Coven. We could protect her inside the house, but she had reached out to Helaine instead of all five of us. I had no idea why, but the second I could leave the house I would be on the case, and after initiation, I would be feeling out who in the city could help me. A witch had strength with power and knowledge, but who we knew and could impress also meant a whole hell of a lot.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Hottest Person
Helaine
The month leading up to initiation flew by faster than a witch on a broomstick, and I was more ready than ever to begin grueling elemental training. Onyx warned me that it may zap my energy until I could control it better, but I reminded him of how I completed both the morning and evening black belt pretest and then conquered the actual test the next day with tennis elbow, brought on by two-hundred pushups. I could push my body past the limits it knew, and I’d have to do the same thing when I started with water. We’d begin practicing the more gentle aspects of water, and then we’d get into the more forceful, powerful side.
Was turning ornaments into ice in order to impale a girl I was jealous of powerful? I was willing to bet my life on it. I couldn’t have any more emotional upsets like the one I had at Dia. Ice was an advanced power I shouldn’t have been tapping into. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I prayed that karma would help me out of this, and I apologized to it at length for sneaking out.
I was finishing morning tea with Rose when Maddi came into the room and picked up the paper next to us on the kitchen table.
“Hiya,” she said, “You two ready for initiation tomorrow?”
“I’m not nervous at all,” I said. “Bring it on.”
“It’s more for formality and both of you made it,” Maddi said. “I’m glad you’ll finally get out of here. It’s torture.” Her eyes caught the front page news story.
“What?” Rose asked Maddi.
“Jared Sheffield is announced at the underground’s hottest person, for his second year.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not. You had to have known him, right?”
Helaine’s right hand went to her earrings.
“I was only in love with him since I was fifteen,” she stated. “It’s hopeless.”
“Maybe not,” Maddi s
aid. “Do you two want to learn a little bit of magic before you start your intense elemental training tomorrow?”
“Yes,” we said at once.
Maddi grabbed her favorite copper cauldron from the fireplace in the living room and put it on the kitchen table.
“Text Onyx and ask him if it’s okay. We’re going to do a spell to help you get over Jared. It shouldn’t be as debilitating to you as I sense it is.”
“No offense taken,” I promised her. “I need to rearrange my energy, and if I tell Onyx it’s girl stuff, he’ll let me.” I felt bad for manipulating Oynx like that, but having adopted boys, and never having been married, he might not know that women were often as scary as we sounded.
Rose and I were allowed to participate in spells under the guidance of a Coven member or mentor, even as initiates, and sure enough, Onyx agreed when I told him what it was for. Rose would help us and got her okay from Stan who was in the next room.
“These are them,” I said, putting the earrings Jared gave me for my birthday on the dining table.
“They are quite fancy,” Maddi said. “I hope you won’t miss them.”
“If I can move on, it’s worth it,” I told her. Impaling other girls with ice magic seemed to keep moving farther down my list.
“When I first came here, I was much like Avereis,” Maddi explained.
“Is that good or bad?” Rose asked.
“Good. I was confident. While I liked boys, I didn’t like any certain one in particular. I even abstained from relationships in my first two years to fulfill an attainment. That’s when I met Tomas. But before then, I knew unrequited love, like you do, Laurence.”
“Unrequited love and I are very intimate,” I said.
“There’s nothing else like it,” Rose agreed. “It’s a troubling combination, and you have to have experienced it to know exactly what it’s like.”
“Or you’re a freak of nature,” I reminded her.
“Also that.”
“Being the one who is unable to return the love is just as hard,” Maddi said. “I’ve been both, and I’ve preformed this spell on each account. Love can make a person go mad.”
There was a story behind that, and I desperately wanted it, but I had icier, sharper things to attend to.
“This is a fire spell from my book,” Maddi said, showing us her Book of Shadows. “I adopted it from one of the fire texts and it’s pretty much the same. There is not much to it, but I had some fun filling space with drawings.”
I glanced at her book, the only page I was permitted to see. She had drawn lavender over the bottom half of the spell. Her book was thin and looked like a diary. I wondered what Stan’s and Gregory’s looked like, and an amusing thought entered my mind concerning that pink book I was drawn to in the spell room.
I placed the earrings into the cauldron and we mixed the herbs and oils per the instructions in Maddi’s book. I think she threw more lavender in than was needed, but it wasn’t my place to say anything.
I wrote down the required symbol and his name and placed them in the cauldron. I lit the paper from a white candle, and it started to sweat from the heat.
As the paper burned around the earrings, I felt my disappointment and pining lift off of me. I felt better than when I had my sober moment at Dia (though I wouldn’t think that too clearly), and my thoughts of Jared waned, allowing me to accept the facts and realize how childish I had been concerning him.
“I think it worked.”
“Just like magic,” Maddi said.
Rose giggled, which made Stan look in from the living room, but when he noticed everything was fine, he turned back to whatever book he was reading.
“I see now,” I said to Maddi, “why you chose Gemini.”
“Gemini is my symbol because I’ve always been able to see the different sides of a story. My granny says it’s a gift because I’m wiser beyond my years, but it makes things harder for me. Sometimes, people think I’m manipulating them into fulfilling my wishes, and that there is no way I should be seeing their side. I don’t think wrong opinions exist. I like the Coven because here, they accept me and don’t jump to conclusions.”
“Don’t you think a misinformed opinion can be wrong?” I asked Maddi.
“What do you mean?”
“And opinion made based on incorrect or misrepresented information could very well be the definition of a wrong or stupid opinion,” I explained.
“Now you’re thinking like Air,” Maddi said, “and once you understand all five elements, amazing things will happen to your powers.”
“Why can’t you be my mentor, Maddi?” Rose asked her, not even minding that he was in the next room over.
“Stanley isn’t so bad. He’s my family, and you do realize I have to stick up for him, right?”
“Yes. It’s just… It’s like I learned way more about magic talking to you for thirty minutes than I have in three months with Stan.”
“No offense taken,” he said to Rose, still staring down the text in front of him. She bit her lip, but then stopped when she realized it.
“It will be different when you start using your elemental powers, I promise. Show me what you’ve picked out for tomorrow?”
At Maddi’s request, the three of us went upstairs so Rose and I could show her our outfits, and I found myself missing Brittany. I hadn’t a call or text from her since I had been here, but I knew she was okay. Dad and Mum were looking after her, and she had to have been doing better.
For the next decade, my life was here, and there was so much in front of me to be thankful for. I knew Rose would help me out of any trouble I could get into, whether I was the source of it or not, and I wanted to learn from Maddi so I could teach future witches just as she taught me. She was right, we were a family, and today, I felt like we were the unbreakable kind.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Winter Solstice
Rose
We made it to initiation. We both did, together.
As Coven initiates, Helaine and I would be able to do anything one of the Coven witches did, including elemental magic, spells, and possibly officiating ceremonies, as long as we had the permission of our mentors.
Our celebration was held in Block Thirteen’s party center on December twenty-first, and the second we walked through those doors we were no longer chosen candidates. We would be initiate witches, and would remain so for two years, and long as we didn’t do anything to get ourselves kicked out.
The Coven arrived together, and there would be no formal ceremony, just photographs. Helaine and I had already floored everyone at auditions, but it didn’t mean that everyone would automatically like us. We walked into the receiving area of the building to check our coats.
The party was designed for us to arrive fashionably late, and all five of us were dressed for the photos that would ensue. Helaine opted for a bright red knee-length dress with one shoulder, and pressed a wave into her hair. One side was pulled back; a style that Maddi often wore, but didn’t tonight. Maddi also had a dress on, dark red for Yule. Gregory wore a jacket over a t-shirt but paired the pieces with jeans instead of the dress pants Stan did. I wore a light blue dress with a keyhole cut to the front, fitted in the bodice, but flowy as it reached the floor. I pulled my blue hair back into a low bun, and a few curls cascaded from it.
“This party is a social for you,” Gregory said as we walked in towards the main doors of the building. Everything we ever wanted was behind the next set of doors. “Remember that, and try and meet as many people as you can and learn as many names as possible. You’ll be working with these people for quite some time.”
“Laurence!” a voice yelled. It was Onyx, who met us just before we started to go in.
We greeted him, and he wore what he always did, thin gloves, and a white t-shirt under a black suit jacket, but this time he had on black pants instead of jeans. I barely noticed a difference, and I loved the way earth witches didn’t really care to conform.
The
doors opened, and we were met with the flashes of cameras. Maddi said to keep a smile on our faces the whole time because someone would catch a photo in between poses. The lights subsided, and we stepped down the long stairs into the pit of a dance floor where tables were set up for dinner.
The crowd was well-dressed too, and I saw a few faces that I had been missing for the past three months. My mom and dad were two of them. I had no doubt that my mom was invited to this as the psychologist for The Hallowed Locus.
Helaine and I stayed near the entrance and greeted the Mages, and Stan and Onyx stood close to us. There were ten Mages here tonight. They looked like normal people as they had when we first met them at the pre-initiation social, all ages thirty and above.
“Congratulations on your new power,” one of them said to Stan.
Helaine and I turned to each other at once.
“New power?” she whispered to me.
I thought Stan and I were working on an open mentor to mentee relationship complete with a list of banned words. Why would he keep something so important from me? Why hadn’t I known that I was a trial?
“This way, Avereis,” he said before I could even ask. I swiftly snagged a glass of champagne from a tray. I’d fidget with my hair less while holding something.
Stan led me around to introduce me to people and I followed him around the bright room. Important social or structural officials were in attendance, but also witch families. There was no ritual or circle to be cast tonight, however, there was a Yule Tree, complete with paper ornaments for writing a hope on. At the end of the party, we took them back to the house and burned them as tradition.
I shook hands with everyone, but my mentor didn’t. I tried to remember the Mage’s names, but the only one I retained by the end of introductions was Agatha, the air element, whom I had met at the pre-initiation social.
“Why won’t you shake anyone’s hand?” I asked Stan.
“Germs,” Stan said. “These things are a cesspool of germs. At least two people here tonight will cough on their hands, and anti-bacterial door handles mean nothing in that case.”
Death's Primordial Kiss (The Silvered Moon Diaries Book 1) Page 19