by Faith Hunter
“Thanks. Later, Big-cat.” I ended the call and set the phone down. I held up one finger so the vamps would understand that I needed a moment, and went to my living room, where I prepared three defensive workings and one offensive working. The defensive ones would turn an attacker into fried vamp, which would take a long, painful time to heal, even with access to healing, master vamp blood. The offensive one would kill them true-dead.
I checked on the children, who were playing together now in Little Evan’s room, bear and toy soldiers in some form of Godzilla bear versus the U.S. Army. I closed the door and opened the front door. Night air breezed through, still warm from the day, but holding the bite of deepening night. I took another breath and let it out, thinking, Bite. Ha-ha. Nerves. I prepared the easiest defensive wyrd spell, dropped the ward with a thought, and waited.
The vamps walked slowly up the drive, not moving with vamp speed, but like humans, which should have put me at ease but didn’t. Nothing a vamp could do could put me at ease, not with Big Evan gone and me with the kids to protect. The vamps stopped a polite three feet from the open doorway and I looked them over. One was wearing jeans, his red hair in a shaggy, mid-eighties style, his hands clasped behind his back. The other had dark brown hair cut short, wore a suit and tie, and looked like a lawyer at first glance. Until I looked down at his hands. They were callused (strange among vamps) and stained with dye or ink—a working man’s hands, not the smooth hands of most dilettante vamps, letting humans do everything for them. Something about the man’s hands set me at ease, and I nodded once.
The suited one bowed slightly again, something military in the action, and offered me his full titles, in the formal way of vampires who want to parley. “Jerel D. Heritage, at your services, ma’am. Of Clan Dufresnee, turned in 1785 by Charles Dufresnee, in Providence, and brought south when Dufresnee acquired the Raleigh/Durham area. Currently stationed with Clan Shaddock of Asheville.”
The other vamp said, “Holly, turned by the love of my life in 1982, and now serving with my mistress, Amy, under Clan Shaddock.” Unassuming history, no last name, making him very young as vampires went. More interesting, he was ordinary-looking, until he smiled, a fangless, human smile, but one that transformed him into a beautiful man. I knew why Amy, whoever she was, had turned him. It was that smile. He tilted his head in a less formal bow than Jerel’s and yet somehow turned it into a graceful gesture. “We come in peace,” he said, the smile of greeting morphing into true humor.
Jerel looked like a fighter and a gentleman from his own age, a bit stiff, too formal for modern custom, yet the kind of man who stood by his word. Holly looked like a dancer and a poet. Yet, possibly, Holly might be the more dangerous of the two because he looked so unvampily kind. Looks can be deceiving.
Reluctantly I said, “Molly Everhart Trueblood, earth witch of the Everhart witches. I grant safety in my home to guests who come in peace.”
The two seemed to think about my words before they carefully stepped in. They took chairs in my great room, the space and furniture sized for Big Evan, oversized leather couches and recliners and lots of wood. The smaller vamps looked like Angie Baby’s dolls in the chairs. The one in the suit—Jerel—said, “We come at the request of the Master of the City of Asheville, to ask if you recently came into possession of a teapot.”
My brows went up, and I barely managed not to laugh. This visit by vampires was about a teapot? I said, “I drink black China tea when Jane Yellowrock, my friend,” I enunciated carefully, to remind them that I had friends in high vamp places, “is here to visit. I prepare herbal teas as needed for health. I have several teapots. None recently acquired.”
“We received a call from the Enforcer’s partner Alex Younger, while we awaited your response to our visit,” Jerel said. “No insult was intended in our unannounced arrival. Please allow me to explain.
“The Master of the City, Lincoln Shaddock, was turned in 1864. When he was freed from the devoveo—the madness that assaults our minds after we are turned—the first thing he did was visit his wife, though this was strongly opposed by his master. The year was 1874, and his wife had remarried. The meeting was . . . unfortunate.”
“I’ll bet,” I said.
Holly smiled and Jerel frowned before going on. “The teapot we seek was his wife’s. It is a redware, hand-thrown, English-styled piece, salt-glazed in the local tradition, and painted with a yellow daisy.”
“I see,” I said, not seeing at all. My powers, my death magics, had begun to roil as he spoke. I held on to them with effort, trying to balance my waning earth magic with my growing death magic. “Again. I have acquired no teapot in the last few months and certainly not one like you described.”
“May we”—Jerel took a breath and his face twisted in what I might have assumed was human distaste, had I not known he drank blood for substance—“inspect your kitchen?” he asked.
I stood in surprise and said, “No. You may not.”
Angie Baby burst from behind the door opening and down the two steps into the great room, shouting, “You can’t have him! You can’t!” Child fast, she whirled, strawberry blond hair streaming behind her, and ran through the house. The door to her room slammed.
My mouth slowly closed; I hadn’t been aware that it hung open. Everything—every single thing—had just changed. “Will you do me the kindness of waiting here while I speak with my eldest?” I asked carefully. When they both nodded, as unsure as I was, I added, “There is a kettle of hot water on the stove. Tea is in the tin beside it. Please make yourselves at home in my kitchen. And if you take the opportunity to search for the teapot you desire, I assure you, it isn’t there.”
Jerel said, just as carefully, “As I recall, children are . . . difficult, at times.”
“Yes. I’ll return as soon as I know what’s going on.” They nodded and I followed my daughter to her room. When I was still several feet away, I heard the sound of furniture moving and realized that Angelina was barricading her door. My eldest, possibly the only preadolescent witch with two witch genes on the face of the earth, was hiding something. Something important. Something dangerous. Something that could hurt her? Had bespelled her?
I didn’t bother with simple responses. I unleashed the spell I had prepared for the vampires and blew her door off the hinges. It was a restricted spell, releasing and containing any debris, intended to toss vamps off my property but not injure them. Much. Angie’s door shuddered, tilted in from the top, and fell forward to rest upright against my daughter’s bed.
Big Evan would have some new things in his honey-do jar when he got home.
Angie was standing at the foot of the bed, fists on her hips, and shouted, “You broke my door!”
“Yes. I did,” I said as I crawled over the mess of the door, the bed, and the toy box, and into the room. Except for tears and an outpoked bottom lip, Angie Baby looked all right—no streams of black magic wafting off her, no dark manacles. Standing with my hands on my hips I demanded, “Young lady, what is going on?”
“George is mine. He came to me,” she shouted, arms out wide, her face red, tears streaking her cheeks. “They can’t have him!” She was positively furious. I struggled not to smile at the picture she presented; she needed only a sword and blue paint to look like a Celtic warrior princess, and something about her stance made me feel inordinately proud. My baby was defending something, not bespelled.
I sat on the foot of the bed and laced my fingers together. From behind me, my familiar—not that I had a familiar; no witches have familiars—leaped into the room and stalked across the bed, purring. I said, “Tell me about George.”
Angie’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, but when I didn’t do anything more frightening, she opened her toy box and removed a teapot. It was redware, made from local red-brown clay and glazed in red-brown, except for the yellow daisy on the front. Angie cuddled the teapot like a doll in both arms. An
d I had never seen it before, which pricked all my protective instincts again. “How did you get it?” I asked. “Did you buy it with your allowance? Did someone give it to you?”
“No,” Angie said crossly. “It showed up in my toy box this morning. Like poof.” Like poof meant like a spell. Like magic. “Its name is George. It loves me.”
“May I hold it for a moment? Please?”
Angle scowled but passed the teapot to me. It tingled in my hands like an active working, a spell still strong. Worse, it felt . . . alive somehow. As if it quivered in terror. I handed it back to my daughter, who petted the teapot and said, “It’s okay, Georgie. I got you now. It’s okay.”
“Angie Baby, do you remember the time KitKit disappeared? We looked and looked and then we found her at Mrs. Simpson’s place, down the hill?” Angie’s scowl was back and, if possible, was meaner. “She was lapping up milk from a bowl and Mrs. Simpson was mincing salmon for her. KitKit had no interest in coming home, but she belonged here, with us. Remember? Mrs. Simpson gave her back to us.”
Angie looked down at the teapot, her hair falling forward over it, a tear splashing on the top handle. “But . . .” She stopped, sniffling. “Okay. But I wanna give George to them myself.”
“Okay. Can you be nice?”
“I don’t wanna be nice. But”—she sniffled—“I can be nice.”
I stood and grabbed up KitKit in one hand and helped Angie over the mess of her broken door with the other. In the great room, Angie, with huge tears racing down her cheeks, walked slowly over to the two vampires. They watched her come with strange lights in their eyes, and I realized that human parents didn’t allow their children anywhere near vamps. Human children, and especially witch children, were surely rarities in their lives. Angie stopped about six feet away, inspecting them. To Jerel, she said, “You’re not wearing a sword. You got one?”
“Yes, little witch child. I have a sword.”
“Can you use it good? Well?” she corrected before I could. “Can you use it well?”
“I can. I am a swords master as well as a master cabinetmaker.”
“You get to protect George and fight off the bad guys.” To Holly, she said. “Here. George is scared. It needs you to hold it close and pet it. Like this.” Angie demonstrated, one hand stroking the pot.
Holly knelt on one knee and extended his hands. Grudgingly Angie placed the teapot in his hands. Holly gathered it close, holding it as Angie had, and petted it. Angie let out a sob and raced to me, burying her face against my capri-clad thighs.
I pointed to the door and the vampires both bowed, so vampy formal, and departed, closing the door quietly. I watched and as soon as they reached the end of the drive, I raised the protective wards and pulled Angie to me on the couch. At the door to the hallway, Little Evan was hugging the jamb, crying in sympathy with his big sister. I held out a hand to him too, and we all four snuggled on the couch, my children, my unfortunate not-familiar, and me.
An hour later, as I was tucking a sleeping Angie back into bed, I heard another ward ding. I had a very bad feeling when I looked out and saw the same two forms at the end of the drive, illuminated by the security light. With trepidation, I went to the toy box and looked inside. The teapot was nestled into a corner.
I knew my daughter was strongly gifted with power, and she was probably capable of calling the pot back to her, but I hadn’t felt any kind of magical working in the house or on the grounds. Which meant the teapot had come back on its own or under another’s working. It might be a danger to us all. As if it were made of dynamite instead of fired clay, I lifted it from the box and carried it out onto the front lawn, to within four feet of the ward and within six feet of the vamps. Who now looked like what they were—dangerous predators; unhappy, dangerous predators.
“Do you taunt us with the return of our master’s teapot?” Jerel asked.
“No. It came back on its own.” Both vamps blinked, the twin gestures too human for the bloodsuckers. “It’s heavily spelled and seems to have a will of its own. I’d like to try an experiment. I’d like to drop the ward, hand you the teapot, and see what happens.”
“You did not call the teapot back to you?” Jerel asked.
“No. My word is my bond.”
Jerel nodded once, the gesture curt.
I dropped the ward, stepped to the vampires, placed the teapot in Jerel’s hands this time, and stepped back. The ward snapped back into place. Within thirty seconds, the teapot disappeared. “Not me. Not my magic. Certainly not my daughter’s magic.” I let derision enter my tone, because no witch’s gifts came upon them before they reached puberty. Except Angie’s. And that was a secret. A dangerous secret, to be protected as much as my children themselves.
The vamps looked from me to each other, and back. “What do we do now?” Holly asked.
“You will break this spell,” Jerel demanded.
“Tell me the tale of the teapot. And how the Master of the City knew it had appeared at my house. I’d be very interested in that one.”
Holly’s eyes went wide—human wide, not vamped-out. “That never occurred to me. Where did it come from and how did it get here, and how did our master know of it?”
“Right,” I said. “You go back to the vamp master and ask him those questions, because if he wants his teapot—or whatever it really is—back, I’ll need to know everything to break whatever spell is on it.”
“We will be back by midnight,” Holly said, excitement in the words.
“Wrong. I have a family and you two have intruded enough on family time tonight. You go back and chat with your master. I’ll see you an hour after dusk at Seven Sassy Sisters’ Herb Shop and Café.”
“Your family business,” Jerel said, letting me know that my entire extended family could be in danger because of the blasted teapot.
“Tomorrow,” I said, and turned my back on the vamps. Secure behind the strongest wards that Big Evan and I could create, I walked slowly back to my house and shut the door on the bloodsuckers. And leaned against it, trembling. I was in so much trouble. I had less than twenty-four hours to break a spell on a weird teapot that was clearly far more than a teapot. No wonder Lincoln Shaddock wanted it, whatever it really was.
• • •
I got the children off to school in the morning, without letting Angie discover that the teapot had returned to her toy box, and texted my sisters: 911 my house. Hurry soonest after breakfast crowd. They’d all get here as fast as possible. The 911 call was used only for extreme emergencies. Meanwhile I set four loaves to rise and made salad enough for all of us, all my sisters. There were seven of us, or had been until our eldest had died after turning to the black arts. We were still grieving over that one. Four of us were witches, and the remaining two were human. Four of the youngest were taking classes at various universities and colleges in the area, but they’d get here any way they could after the 911 text. Family always came first.
• • •
Carmen Miranda Everhart Newton, my air witch sister, set her toddler Iseabeal Roisin—pronounced Ish-bale Rosh-een—down at the door. Ishy ran, shouting for the cat—“Kekekeke”—her arms raised. The witch twins, Boadacia and Elizabeth, had called in sick for their morning classes and closed the herb shop. Our wholly human sisters, Regan and Amelia, were the last to arrive, having cleaned up the café after the last of the breakfast crowd.
When we were all sitting in my kitchen, the toddlers happily talking to each other in incomprehensible kid language, I realized how long it had been since we’d sat like this, working on a magical problem. Since our eldest, Evangelina, had died as a result of consorting with demons. Well, at the hand of my BFF, but that was another story. We were all red-haired, some more blond, some more brown, some of us flaming scarlet. All of us with pale skin that simply couldn’t tan. All of us rowdy and chattering and happy to be together again. We had to
do this more often. Not the teapot part, just the playing-hooky-and-visiting part.
To capture their attention, I centered the teapot atop the old farmhouse table, then caught them up on the teapot problem, the vamp problem, and the time limit problem. I had been studying the teapot for hours, so I already had some new things to share. “It isn’t, strictly speaking, just a teapot. It’s both a teapot and not a teapot, the result of a spell, and is magical, in some way, on its own. I can’t tell why it keeps coming back here and I can’t make it stay away.”
“Yeah,” the human Regan said. “That whole not having a magic wand really sucks.”
“Ha-ha,” Liz said, sounding bored with the oft-used banter.
“What I want to do is to raise the wards on the house, make a magic circle, and study it together.” I looked at the human sisters. “You two will have to babysit and keep watch. Pull us out if anything strange happens.”
“We always get stuck with babysitting duty,” Regan complained.
“Word,” Amelia said, sighing her agreement. “Fine. I’ll go play with the kiddies.” To her sister she said, “If you need help hitting them with a broomstick to break a circle, lemme know. I want in on some of that.”
I raised the house wards and my witch sisters made a protective circle around my kitchen table by joining hands. It wasn’t as formal as the circle in my herb garden, but it was enough to study the current situation. The combined magical power of the Everhart sisters is weighty, intense, and deep. It tingles on the skin, it whispers in the air, and in this case, it made a teapot spill its secrets.
Half an hour after staring, we broke for tea and slices of fresh bread with my homemade peach hot, untraditional peach preserves with chili peppers. While I put the snack together, Liz said, “His name is George.”
“Not he, as in a human he,” Cia said, “but a male something.”