by Gabi Moore
She was sort of expecting anger from him, but Lucien just smiled a small smile and asked, “Bit? Like, howling at the moon, bit?”
Aurora reddened. “I didn’t—I mean, I thought that’s how… Sorry.”
He laughed. “Don’t be. You’re not completely wrong. There are those sorts of shapeshifters out there. Legends and myths always have some seeds of truth. But I was born this way. It’s genetic, for me, although no one in my family’s had it for a long, long time.”
Aurora’s eyes were wide. “Do you turn into a tiger?”
“My most natural shape is a big wolf,” Lucien replied, taking another sip of coffee. “I’m learning to adopt others, though. Cheng can turn into quite a few, but he’s had a long, long time to practice.”
“How old is he? Like, seventy?”
Lucien shook his head. “Try two hundred fifty.”
Aurora stared. “That’s… not possible.”
Lucien snorted into his coffee. “After all you’ve seen, you’re still going to think about what’s possible and not possible?”
Aurora couldn’t argue that. She sat and sipped her coffee for a while instead; everything had happened in a whirlwind. This time yesterday she had been handling the store, thinking with a little nervousness about the future, whether she’d still have a job at Moreau’s, and how she would pay rent if not.
A horrible though occurred. How on earth was she going to afford to fix the apartment? She had never been able to afford renter’s insurance.
Her heart began palpating. Perhaps it seems odd, after all she’d been through, to be so terrified over such a simple thing, but to explain, Aurora had lived all her adult life with the threat of the money running out just over her head. There had been late fees that she had had to crawl out from under. Short term loans that had nearly set them on the streets. It had taken years to reach a level of security in their finances, and that sort of long-lived stress is not forgotten in one night of extraordinary events.
The figures were piling furiously in Aurora’s head, and her grip on the coffee mug had gotten very tight. And this—when she was going to miss work from both her jobs for the foreseeable future!
Meanwhile, her face had gone sickly pale, and Lucien was watching her, worried.
“Hey,” he tried to soothe her. He set a hand on her shoulder gently. Aurora jumped and looked at him with wide eyes. “Hey, don’t be afraid. I know it’s a lot to be dumped on you at once, but we’re here to protect you.”
Aurora, who had forgotten all about the supernatural events of the previous night, looked at him in anxious confusion.
“What?”
He repeated himself, slower. Aurora shook her head. “No, that’s not it. I just… oh God, I don’t know how I’m going to pay for the apartment. I’ll never be able to rent again if I don’t pay for the repairs… and next month’s rent is due in a couple weeks. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
She rubbed her face, and her heart continued to thrum out of time in her ribcage like a discordant song.
Carefully, Lucien took both her hands. “Aurora. Look this way.”
She shook her head, too full of anxiety.
“Aurora.”
She glanced one hazel eye up at his face. Lucien took a deep breath and squeezed her hands. “Aurora, that’s gone, now. Your bills are gone. Your apartment—gone. We’ll get it cleaned and taken care of. You’re not going to be living there anymore. It’s not safe. You’re in this now, and we’re going to take care of everything.”
Aurora hardly dared to breathe. “What?” she whispered.
Lucien let her hands go. “This coven has existed for centuries, ever since humans settled here permanently. Moreau and Cheng have had guardianship for a hundred years—and we have accounts set up for this sort of thing. We had to be hands-off before, to keep secret. But you’re one of us, now. You don’t have to worry about money again.”
Dazed, she stared at him, not really comprehending. Aurora could not imagine a life without worrying about money, not at all. It had been on her mind constantly for five years, and often enough before that. They would take care of it? She’d never had anyone say that to her.
“What do I have to do?” she said finally. That was the only possibility. What on earth could they want of her to make such an offer?
Lucien shook his head. “Only what you had to do, anyway. Ian—your father—wants to see you, one way or another. We’re going to be with you constantly, from now on. Lester managed to rebuild some lesser wards around you; it will take him some time to sort through Moreau’s magic and make sense of what she gave him.
“But all you have to do now is stay alive,” Lucien told her. “If your father manages to kill you, we will have lost our chance to get rid of him, and another one might not come around for a while.”
“Get rid of him?”
Lucien nodded. “Our circle is incomplete. Not only is Ian refusing to cooperate, he’s taken Ylessa. She’s the fifth member, and very fragile. He managed it when Moreau first started getting weak.”
“Ylessa is… what did she say… a fairy?”
“You would call her that. She’s life, and earth. Opposite to Ian’s death. He was only able to capture her because she’s frail, but without her, we’re only three.”
“Three? But… you, Milo, Cheng, Lester… and you want me to join—”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Lucien reminded her patiently. “There are five openings, and Lester just took Moreau’s. I will take Cheng’s place when the time comes. Like you have to take your father’s place. That’s what you have to do, whether we help you or not. We might not get another chance like this to take him down.”
“So you want me to kill him?”
“Yes,” Lucien agreed flatly. “He’s too dangerous to be running around loose, and we can’t have a fifth until he chooses one. Thankfully, he already chose you, whether he meant to or not.”
And that was that; Aurora gazed into her coffee mug, disquieted.
They expected her to do to her father what Lester had done to Moreau? When her father was some sort of… vampire? Probably not like in the movies, but surely it wasn’t an easy thing, what they were asking. How did they think she was going to get near him?
And then… was she going to kill the only parent she had left? She had waited all her life to meet him, angrily, resentfully, but always hopefully. And now, suddenly, it was upon her to end him.
“Why five?” Finally Aurora had to ask. This whole business was so mysterious, and so outrageous. Maybe if she could just start to figure out what the hell was going on…
Lucien was mid-way through a sip of coffee, and thought about his answer before giving it. It wasn’t lost on Aurora that over on the couch, Milo had ceased snoring. Almost as soon as she realized, the snoring began again, but she didn’t comment. “There are five points of the pentacle,” Lucien began, intoning, with the sound of a story many times told. “And there are five guardians in a circle. We aren’t the only ones; these circles are all over the world.”
“For what?”
“Protection.”
“Protect who? From what?”
Lucien rotated his huge shoulders, stretching. “To protect humanity, from itself.”
Aurora’s face must have given away her bafflement, because Lucien smiled and nodded his head. “To be more specific, to protect what it good of humanity from its own evil. Evil has a natural advantage: it’s easy. Usually wicked things lead to personal gain, or at least personal enjoyment. As a result, entire religions have been constructed, laws written, governments raised, just to the purpose of keeping humankind from devolving into a mass of semi-civilized martial chaos.”
“You take a dim view of things,” Aurora pointed out coolly.
“You get that way after a few years of this,” Lucien answered with raised eyebrows. “That’s where we come in. You see, there’s a balance of energy—magic, electricity, energy, feng-shui, whatever—an
d it has the capability of influencing humankind one way or another. A long time ago—like, biblical times—it was discovered that between some, special people, a sort of… well, they call it a center, but it’s like a filter, a place where energy is drawn in and purified, and then sent back out again.”
For this speech, Aurora had sat with her mouth hanging open, her eyebrows drawn together. She was still sitting this way now as Lucien looked her over, examining her face for signs of skepticism or maybe even belief. He saw neither, so he continued.
“But the human population has multiplied since this system first began, and industrialization clogs the energy paths further. We have more to do and a harder time doing it, and for the last twenty years, here in New York, we haven’t even been able to do our job right. Ian ran off when he realized he’d screwed up royally, and until we get our numbers back, we’re basically just sitting around.”
Aurora closed her mouth. “So New York is like it is because you haven’t been able to… clean the energy paths?”
Lucien waved his hands in the air and rolled his eyes. “New York is gonna be New York no matter what we do. But unless we’re able to filter the energy like usual, negative auras will collect here. It’s inevitable as hair going down a shower drain.”
“Nice analogy.”
“I try.”
Hesitant, Aurora tried again. “So it’ll get… worse?”
Lucien leveled a steady stare at her and took a long drink of his coffee. “Worse and worse. And bigger, too. It will spread like a hurricane, over New York state, over New England. Over North America. That would take hundreds of years, but for every filter that fails, it gets easier, and the world gets darker.”
“Don’t let Lucien scare you too bad,” Milo said from the couch.
“We should all be scared,” Lucien replied gravely. “Humanity invented pollution, nuclear war, mustard gas, torture. What else will we come up with if the energy paths are left unchecked?”
This was all sounding too freaky for Aurora’s liking. She’d heard a lot so far, and not much of it had made her very hopeful. If she hadn’t seen so much with her own eyes, she’d think they were all crazy. Not too late for that, she thought wryly. Maybe I’m crazy, too.
“So what are we doing today?” she asked. Might as well find out, before another panic attack hit. Or worse… she could sink back into the pleasant, molasses-slow numbness of last night… feeling nothing… Aurora shook that thought off quickly and waited for someone to answer.
When Milo said nothing, Lucien sighed. “Mr. Cheng would have come here by now if he could, so I’m going to go look for him. And I’m thinking if Lester wants to try and put a ward on me and get some practice, that couldn’t hurt.”
Lester was still sleeping soundly on the loveseat.
“Where did he come from?” Aurora asked, genuinely curious.
Lucien smiled sadly. “He used to work on the delivery truck for Moreau’s. The year before last. He lied and told them he was eighteen and had been working under the table—it turns out, he’d ‘helped’ himself look a little older when he applied, so the company didn’t ask questions. Moreau caught whiff of his magic right away. I guess he’s strong, but he… he really needed more time.”
Lucien shook his head. “Moreau was a hard-headed woman,” he muttered. “She wouldn’t hear of taking a successor on for the longest time. She should have picked someone years ago. But it’s been hard, without Ian… without Ylessa… harder to do what he have to. It took its toll on her, all right.”
“You mean this… filter thing… killed her?”
“It kills all of us,” Lucien replied, as if it meant nothing. “So does life. She held on too long, and she put us all in a terrible position, when we were already weak.”
“One more knock and we’ll fall apart,” Milo sighed. “We can’t keep this up without five. If you don’t off your old man soon, we’re done.”
“That’s putting it bluntly,” Lucien murmured around his coffee. He looked grim as he spoke. “But that’s pretty much how it is. He made his choice, and we’ve got to make ours. And there’s a job to get done.”
Chapter 9
“All right. Let’s try this.”
Lucien rolled his eyes. “You’ve been saying let’s try this for twenty minutes. Time to actually try it.”
They four of them were standing in Lucien’s living room amongst his thousand warding charms. Aurora was still uncomfortably aware of her Witching Hour attire, but none of the boys had said anything—not that she expected them to. There weren’t a lot of men who would complain about a woman in tight black leather.
“Okay,” Lester said for the hundredth time. “Just… Just stand really still. Here goes…”
Aurora took an involuntary step back. She wasn’t really sure what it was going to be like, but this whole magic being real scenario was still surprising to her, whatever form it took. She circled around the back of the couch in three smooth steps. Of course, Milo (who was standing without a care just beside Lucien) still noticed her move.
“It won’t harm you. It’s not even aimed at you.”
“It’s just crowded over there, all right?” Aurora snapped.
Lucien had pitched the idea of casting a ward to Lester after the teen woke up, which was sometime after one in the afternoon. At first, Lester had been rather eager. As Aurora watched, she guessed he was eager to prove that he was able to fill Madame Moreau’s shoes, though, perhaps not her literal black stilettos. Now that the time came to actually perform the spell, however, he was nervous and uncertain as a snake in a shoe store.
The teen closed his brown eyes. He held his hands out, palm up, as if catching rain, and stood there for what seemed like a very long time. Aurora was watching intensely for some glow or shine or glimmer—or anything really. She had already seen a little of the magic last night. After all they’d claimed, she was in a hurry to see more.
Through it all Lucien stood there calmly, hands out at his sides. This, too, was something Aurora was eager to see. Lucien’s change. Her concern for Mr. Cheng and grief over her mother and Moreau were sharp, but her damn curiosity was eating her up.
Finally, something happened, although it wasn’t something to be seen. The air in the room began to thicken with static, tight like cord, as if it might snap. Aurora held her breath.
“Careful of the existing wards,” Lucien murmured, not unkindly. Lester nodded and moved his hands in an arc over Lucien, as if throwing a blanket over his head. The sensation of the air in the room being a little too tight began to ease, and then to disappear.
Lucien clapped Lester on the shoulder. “There. You did good.”
Lester grinned and nodded, and took a deep breath.
“So I’m just going to go back to the hospital,” Lucien repeated, one last time. “I’m going to go as a dog—no one will notice me that way.”
To Aurora’s disappointment, he stepped out the door as a human and shut it behind him. Milo chuckled.
“That eager to see him naked?”
Aurora blushed. “No! That’s vile. You should be ashamed.”
Milo rolled his eyes. “Please. But that’s not really important, not right now. Miss, I think it’s time we start showing you what your father really gave you.”
Aurora stepped back involuntarily. “What are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
Why bother denying it? Milo could read minds. Aurora exhaled the breath she had been holding and looked down at her hands. Magic.
“What do you want me to do? Levitate the table? Light some candles with my thoughts?” These suggestions came out sharply and without sincerity—and even Aurora found them a little spiteful. Denial was a form of survival for humankind, and in this situation, even that little respite had been taken from her. She flexed her fingers and sighed. “Look, I… I don’t know if we should.”
Milo sat down on one end of the couch and gestured at the other,
his meaning crystal clear. “We won’t know what we should do until we’ve crossed over into what we shouldn’t.”
“That’s a terrible saying. I hope you don’t live by that kind of logic.”
“Of course I do,” Milo replied, smiling a little. Lester had quietly, half-unnoticed, taken a place across from the couch on the loveseat. Milo’s smile widened wickedly. “That’s the only way to really live, when you think about it.”
“That doesn’t make much sense,” Aurora retorted, but she was already sitting on the end of the couch that Milo had indicated. Against the leather couch, her pants grated and made an obnoxious creaking sound. “I have got to get some new clothes.”
This time, Milo didn’t argue, but nodded in agreement. “Absolutely. Any preferences?”
Aurora thought about what Lucien had said this morning. You’re one of us, now. You don’t have to worry about money again. A shiver went down her spine. It sounded too good to be true. She’d never been free of debt, free of bills before. She believed in witches and shapeshifters and magic before she truly believed that she would never worry about her bank account again.
“Jeans,” she said finally.
“Skinny jeans? Boot cut?”
“I… I like skinny jeans.”
“And a warm coat—”
“Two lighter ones would be better,” Aurora admitted quietly. “And sneakers. Something without a heel. Please.”
Milo nodded, leaning back a little into the couch; it was a soft piece of furniture, and the cushions molded around his body. “I’ve told Lucien what you need.”
Aurora stared. “Just like that?”
Milo shrugged. “He might not be able to get it just now—when they transform, they lose their clothes, and he’ll have to stay in dog form until he gets back, but he might be able to arrange something sooner. He’ll probably want to look for Cheng first—”
“Of course,” Aurora blurted. “There’s no rush. Whenever it’s… convenient. I suppose. Thank you.”