by J. K Harper
He thought about it as he pushed through the front door of the diner. A bell tingled above his head as he stepped inside. Carved pumpkins lined the back counter and a bowl of candy corn sat beside the cash register.
As he waited for the hostess to seat him, he looked back on the day he had realized he really wanted a family. He’d been riding his motorcycle through New Mexico one night and had just barely missed a coyote that had ran out in front of him. He’d swerved to miss the creature, causing him to almost lose control of his bike. In that moment, his entire life had flashed before his eyes. He knew then that he needed to find his people. That’s when he learned about Fate Mountain.
He pulled off his aviator sunglasses just as a pretty blonde waitress approached him and pulled a menu out of a box near the cash register. He could see that her name tag said Lily.
Rowan could tell that the waitress was a bear shifter by her scent. He’d have to remember her name since she was the first shifter he’d met in town. If he was going to become part of the shifter community on Fate Mountain, he would need connections.
“Just one today?” Lily asked.
The natural born female shifters were particularly rare, which was why it was often so hard for men like Rowan to find mates. But he could tell she’d been turned by her own man.
“Just one,” he responded.
“Would you like a booth or would you like to sit at the bar?” Lily asked.
“I wouldn’t mind sitting at the bar,” he said.
She led him over to the long counter that faced the window into the kitchen. Lily set his menu on the bar and Rowan took his seat on a stool.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“Yes please,” he said, setting his sunglasses down on the bar.
Lily walked behind the bar and lifted a coffee pot from the machine. She flipped over his white porcelain cup and filled it with deep, brown liquid. Without asking, she slid a bowl of creamer and a sugar dispenser down the bar to his spot.
“I’ll let you take a look at the menu,” she said.
Rowan opened the menu and considered his options. It was all the typical diner fare, but it seemed to have been elevated to diner gourmet. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a plaque detailing all of the awards Fate Mountain Diner had won over the last two years since being taken over by a famous shifter chef.
In Rowan’s opinion, that was just one of the many reasons in favor of moving to this town. The inventor of the dating site Mate.com lived on Fate Mountain. A whole group of local shifters had found mates through the website. When he’d found out about that, he had to check the place out for himself.
Rowan had just made himself a profile on Mate.com a few days ago. The dating site matched male shifters with their human females. Mate.com could actually predict a shifters fated mate with a hundred percent accuracy.
It was through some kind of computer magic algorithm invented by Corey Bright, the creator of the website. Rowan still didn’t have any hundred percent matches on Mate.com, but he was hopeful. He figured he might as well come to the center of the action if he was really committed to finding a mate and starting a family.
Twenty years ago, when the Great Shifter Council had decided to reveal the existence of shifters to the human world, it had created a violent backlash against his kind. But now things were changing, and he lived in a world where shifters and humans could openly mate with each other and were protected by the law.
When the Great War started, shifters had been drafted to fight for their country. During the height of the war, shifters had contributed to a peaceful revolution of what could have been World War III. After that, the government passed the Shifter Equality Act and gave the drafted shifters a generous bonus package for their service. Rowan still had most of his and he planned to use it to start a family and live the good life.
Chapter 3
Geneva pulled herself out of bed, ready for the day. As she went through her morning routine, she practiced the ritual inside her mind. Tonight was the night and there was no turning back. Not if she wanted the answers she sought from her mother.
It had been a year since her mother had passed away. Since then, Geneva had felt completely lost. With the majority of the coven telling her that she had to become the matriarch, she had no idea where to turn. If she didn’t feel prepared to be the matriarch of the coven, how could she possibly take on that role?
It was a role meant for a powerful mage like her mother, not a hedge witch like herself. Nevertheless, that didn’t keep the other magic users of Fate Mountain from bringing it up every time she ran into one.
It was as if they didn’t have anyone else to take her mother’s place. Geneva could think of at least three other elder witches who would serve the role as matriarch far better than she. Tonight after the ritual, she would suggest that the elders decide amongst themselves who would be there next leader.
Geneva did not feel as if she was the one to make that decision. Why would she be? She was a twenty-nine-year-old woman on her first conscious lifetime.
Her mother had decades of experience, had lived multiple conscious lifetimes, and was incredibly powerful. The three elder women Geneva considered better suited for the role of matriarch had all of those qualities as well. Geneva knew that tonight her mother’s spirit would tell the entire coven that it was time to stop pressuring her daughter and to choose somebody else to lead them.
That’s what Geneva was counting on anyway.
She wanted to be left alone to practice her herbal arts and spend her time meditating in the forest. She had a peaceful life, even though she was lonely and missed her mother. She still had everything that she wanted and needed.
Although, sometimes in the darkness of night, when she lay alone in bed, she wondered what it would be like to have a man in her life. There were no male magic users on Fate Mountain. At least none who were of the same generation as Geneva. Unfortunately for her, the last generation of magic users born on Fate Mountain had been mostly women. She had several female friends her own age, but they had all dated and married humans.
Geneva didn’t have anything against human men. For the most part they were just as good as male magic users. But she also knew that being with a human would create a lot of problems. Humans didn’t know that magic users existed. The women who mated with humans had to reveal their own natures carefully and bring their husbands into complete agreement that they would never reveal their wives’ identities. Either that or just lie to the man. It was a lot of trouble to go through, and Geneva didn’t know if it was worth it. Especially since she liked spending most of her time alone.
There was a new concentration of shifters on Fate Mountain, which Geneva found incredibly interesting. As she went down to the kitchen to make herself a pot of coffee, she considered all of the shifters moving into her town. As far as she knew, there had always been a fairly healthy shifter community in Fate Mountain. But ever since the war ended, shifters had been settling around the mountain in greater numbers, creating a shifter friendly community.
For the most part, this had had a positive effect on her town. Unlike magic users, shifters had come out to the human population twenty years ago. Part of her wished that the Council of Mages would agree to reveal themselves to the human public as the shifters had. But if the magic users had learned anything from watching the shifters reveal themselves, was that humans could be incredibly unpredictable in their reactions. Shifters had suffered a great deal after they had initially come out to the public. The Council of Mages didn’t want to subject their people to the same backlash.
Unlike shifters, magic users tended towards the feminine. There were more female witches and mages than there were males. It wasn’t quite as skewed as it was with shifters, but there was a distinct lack of males. As Geneva made her pot of coffee, she considered what it would be like to have a shifter boyfriend. Shifters were said to be pretty good men, all things considered. Most of them just wanted to find their fated mate a
nd have a peaceful family life.
She had to hand it to them. For guys who had such a strong animal nature, shifters were, for the most part, essentially good at heart. For a white witch who revered nature, this was very important to her. She finished pouring her coffee and turned off the pot.
All of the things she had to do that day swirled inside her mind as she drank her first cup of coffee. She forgot all about shifters and boyfriends as she went about preparing for the day.
The first item on her to do list was carving the pumpkins. For this ritual, she needed three perfect pumpkins to make jack-o’-lanterns. For humans, most of this stuff would seem kind of comical and cliché. The truth was that the Halloween traditions humans practiced had origins in her own magical culture.
While most humans had no idea, it still made magic users like Geneva giggle a little bit every time she saw humans using these things.
As soon as she had all three pumpkins carved to look like scary goblins from the other side, she went outside and began preparing the ritual space.
The jack-o’-lanterns were meant to scare off evil spirits, only allowing good spirits through the open portal. Her mother would be available to speak to her for only a brief instant before the magic went out. It was critical that she get things right the first time.
Geneva added logs to the central fire pit. Then she dusted off the stone rings that formed the outer circle of the pentagram that was her mother’s ritual space. The coven had been coming to her property for years and continued to come to her land for their monthly meetings.
Each month the coven celebrated the full moon, asked for blessings and sent out healing spells to those who needed it. While Geneva knew that there were magic practitioners who were not on the side of the light, her own coven was dedicated to peace, love, and healing.
Speaking to the spirit of her dead mother may seem like dark witchcraft to some. In reality it was completely neutral and harmless. Speaking to those on the other side was not evil or demonic. It was simply a communication device. Geneva only hoped that her mother had not moved on into the higher dimensions of the light where she could no longer be communicated with.
As soon as the thought had occurred to Geneva, she realized that it was a selfish thing to want. If her mother had moved on to higher dimensions of light, that meant that she had evolved beyond the cycles of life and death. If anything, Geneva should be happy for her mother, not sad.
She let out a deep sigh, feeling hypocritical and vulnerable at the same time. Life was hard and confusing, especially for an orphaned white witch with the weight of the world on her shoulders.
She spent the rest of the day carefully preparing her ingredients for the ritual. Just before dusk, the cars started to arrive.
The women of her coven emerged from their cars and walked up the front steps of her porch. Geneva opened the front door and invited them inside.
The three elders, Barbara, Trixie, and Dora greeted her with smiles, kisses and hugs. The younger witches, Dominique and Shayna, arrived together a few minutes later. Dominique’s long black braids hung down her back and Shayna flashed her bright blue eyes at Geneva when she smiled.
The one man in her coven, Marcos, who was as old as the elder female witches, arrived in his beat-up pickup truck. He had cropped white hair and a manicured white beard. He greeted Geneva with a bouquet of autumnal wildflowers that he handed to her with a kiss on the cheek.
“These are an offering to your mother,” Marcos said.
“These are perfect. I’m sure she’ll love them.”
With her heart thumping nervously, Geneva led her coven to the ritual circle in the back yard between the house and the garden. The jack-o’-lanterns had been set at the exact right angles from the center of the circle around the circumference. They would keep the evil spirits out of the circle as the witches opened the portal to the other side.
On the back porch, everyone slipped into their white ritual robes and pulled their hoods up over their heads.
Marcos, who had taken over the tentative position of leader, had also brought Geneva’s mother’s sword. It was used to call on the elements and the cardinal directions.
The seven members of the coven stood equidistantly around the circumference of the circle. Marcos stood at the center. As the full moon rose in the night sky, the coven began the ritual that would open the veil between worlds. Marcos lit the central fire and walked around it as he called on the cardinal directions.
He evoked the gods and goddesses of the elements for protection and guidance as the fire flickered in the eyes of the coven. Geneva spoke the words of the ritual in time with the rest of the coven. Power rose in the circle and focused into the blazing hot fire.
Each time Marcos spoke a line of the spell, the other witches echoed in response. The moon rose above the sacred circle, casting its bright silver light over the white witches’ pentagram. Geneva’s heart pounded as she focused her magic toward the fire.
The fire would act as a portal, allowing her mother’s spirit to speak from the other side
“We call upon you, Tisha Zales. Are you with us?” Marcos intoned as he pointed the sword at the fire.
The flickering image of a white witch in a white robe rose from the flames. The wavering hologram manifested out of the smoke. Geneva could see her mother’s face under her white hood.
“What is it you seek?” Tisha Zales said.
Geneva stepped forward, her heart aching from how much she missed her mother.
“Mother. It is I, your daughter Geneva. I have come here today with the agreement of our coven to ask you a question.”
“Ask it,” her mother intoned.
“Since you passed to the other side, the coven has been left leaderless. My question is this. Who should take over leadership of the coven? Without your guidance I am lost, mother,” she said these words with a quiver in her voice.
She had wanted to speak them more strongly. But she had allowed herself to be vulnerable in the magic circle.
“My dearest daughter. The leadership of the coven is a small thing compared to your destiny. I cannot tell the living how to run their lives. The leadership of the coven should be left to the coven. But as far as your destiny is concerned, my sweet girl, I do have something to say.”
“What is it mother?” Geneva asked, knowing that the portal would only stay open for a few seconds longer.
“You must find a mate. You must find someone to love and to love you. I do not wish to see you alone, my darling. There is much more sweetness and life that you have not yet experienced. Go now, tonight, sign up for Mate.com and find your true love. It is time to go, my daughter. After you have found your love, I will see you again. Soon.”
Her mother’s image began to flicker away and Geneva felt a sense of panic and dread as she disappeared.
“Mother wait,” she shouted.
Marcos slowly walked around the circle and gave Geneva a look that told her she must continue closing the circle. Her mother was gone; the summoning was done.
Geneva stepped back into her place and her coven continued with their monthly ritual of asking for blessings, prayers, and healing for the people of Fate Mountain. When they were done, they closed the circle, cleansed the ritual space, and themselves to ensure that no evil spirits had come through.
When they were finally done, the witches all pushed back their hoods, smiled, and chatted with each other as they walked up the back steps of Geneva’s porch and into her kitchen.
There were traditional fall treats sitting on the kitchen table. Geneva had prepared them for her group. The rest of the coven had also brought food and treats for the after ritual party. The group took their plates into the dining room and everyone sat around the big oak dining table for the potluck dinner.
“So what do you think she meant?” Marcos asked.
“About the leadership of the coven or about Geneva’s love life?” Dominique teased.
“Considering Geneva’s love
life is none of my business; I was talking about leadership of the coven.”
“Tisha was clear that the role should be left up to us,” said Trixie, the eldest woman among them.
Her long white hair flowed around her shoulders, but her bright blue eyes still twinkled with magic and mirth.
“Perhaps we should vote on it,” Barbara said.
“Now is as good a time as any,” said Dora.
“Let’s cast our votes then,” said Shayla. “I nominate Geneva to be the matriarch of our coven.”
Geneva shot Shayla a dirty look and dropped her mouth open before meeting the eyes of each and every one of her coven members.
“Guys, come on, you know how I feel about this,” Geneva protested.
“All those in favor of appointing Geneva as the new matriarch of our coven, raise your hand,” Marco said, raising his hand.
Geneva rolled her eyes and groaned, but that didn’t stop every single one of her fellow witches from raising their hands.
“Why can’t Marcos continue to lead us?”
“Marcos has served as an excellent leader for the last year, Geneva. But a woman must be the matriarch of our coven,” Trixie said.
“And why not you, Trixie?” Geneva asked.
“Didn’t you hear what your mother just said?”
The rest of the coven started to giggle behind their hands, but Geneva didn’t think it was funny. Not only had her mother told her that she needed to sign up for some shifter mating website, her coven was now teasing her about it. And what had her mother meant by seeing Geneva very soon? How was that even possible? The veil between worlds wouldn’t be thin enough to communicate with the dead again for another year.
“And what if I don’t accept the position?” Geneva asked.
“You must,” Dora said, her dark eyes fixed on Geneva.
“I will tentatively agree to take the position, but it won’t be official until I understand fully what my mother was talking about.”
“Then you should probably sign up for that dating website now,” Dominique said, handing Geneva her cell phone.