“Charlotte,” Daisy said, in a soft but deadly serious voice. “Do you think I mean tomorrow? This is a lifelong quest. I already know that my purpose in life is to defeat this demon and avenge my parents. If you feel the same, then we might as well join forces. And yes, of course the elders are going to try and stop us—if they know about it.”
“I am determined to save my mom,” I said. “If you mean to be patient too, then sure. We can join forces. I’m just warning you that right now I don’t have any force to give.”
“That’s fine,” Daisy said. “Cool. Okay. So you know how to buy things on Ebay? I’m looking at this Versace jumpsuit and it’s a steal. It’s from two years ago but you know what, I still like it, so who gives a fuck, right?”
“Yeah, you be you,” I said dryly.
“You tell me how to buy it, kay? Um…let’s see…like if I add it to my cart…I think I put the link in the chat. Cute, right?”
It was not something I could ever aspire to, a black belted garment modeled by someone on a runway, but I could see a sexy witch rocking it. “That is cute!”
“How do I send it to you?”
“I have it here in the Facebook chat.”
“No, I mean, I’ll send you one too for helping me.”
“Oh.” I laughed. “No. I’m not…Versace jumpsuit material. Plus there’s only one for sale.”
“Nah, you would be so cute in this. I’m sending it to you just because you need to know that you are Versace jumpsuit material.”
“I’m practically bedridden! And really. How do you pee in this?”
She laughed her weird rich girl ‘hm hm hm!” laugh. “I’m serious. You wear it and if you hate it, send it to me. If you don’t know how to take off a jumpsuit ask Robin Hood to do it for you.”
Eventually I got her off the phone and looked at Firian with some embarrassment.
“Sounds like someone has a new friend and demon fighting partner,” he said, with arched brows. “And a jumpsuit with a plunging neckline, so…we all win.”
“Shut up,” I said. “But…you know…I have this feeling she might actually be pretty good at battling demons.”
Chapter Three
Charlotte
By the time summer rolled around, I was starting to feel a little better. I was still wearing sweaters in June, but at least my own body heat was working. The school year was over, and I had to face the crushing realization that Montague and Alec were heading back home for the summer so they wouldn’t be driving down to see me.
At least I made it through the spring without Dad realizing that they were more than friends.
But my fate at Merlin College was still in total limbo. I kept trying to get ahold of Master Blair and plead my case to return, but he held firm.
“Charlotte, I have to do what’s best for you and your father,” he said.
“Can I at least come to the library or something? Can you help me find where my grandparents live now?”
“They’ve been out of your life for a reason. It’s to protect you,” he said. “I’m going to try and figure this out, but I want you to stay safe.”
“You can’t just kick me out of the magical world! Can I attend Morgaine College, then?”
“No,” he said. “You hardly know any magic. This was a mistake on my part to throw you into this world unprepared. You came to Merlin because of my nefarious plan and now I need to think of a new and less nefarious plan.”
“But I’ve been studying all spring even when I wasn’t in school!”
“Did your friends bring you books from the library?” he said. “They shouldn’t have done that.”
“Master Blair, come on.”
“You’ve taught me an important lesson,” Master Blair said. “Young people really are too impulsive. I should have listened to my mother more often. Have a good afternoon.”
“Oh, come on!” I cried as he hung up.
“I think you need to work on your argumentative skills,” Firian said. “Besides saying ‘come on’.”
“I need to bargain with him,” I said. “I need some leverage. You know how Mr. McGuinness said all that stuff about bargaining with spirits? Well, it’s true for everyone, right? Maybe I could approach some witch colleges on my own and get a competing offer.”
“That isn’t a bad idea. You don’t really want to go to a witch college, do you? You want to be with your warlock sidepieces,” he said, with a faint, teasing smile.
I snorted. “Yes, Firian, that’s why the idea is to get a witch college to want me so that Ignatius Blair will consider that he was grooming me to be the voice of his rebellion and maybe he doesn’t want me to go to another school. So where are the witch colleges?”
“We probably should have done this earlier,” Firian said unhelpfully.
“I have just the idea,” Montague told me later.
We were sitting on the back deck of my house, one of the last times I would see Montague and Alec before they went home for the summer. I was already going insane with wanting to kiss them, touch them, sit on their laps or basically do anything except sit here in my two layers of sweaters at a chaste distance. Dad was at the grill just below the deck, just Daddin’ it up, flipping chicken quarters over and occasionally waving to us and saying, “Okay, I’m getting it going!” “Fifteen minutes! Firian, can you put out the sides?” “Almost done!” “It’s done!” “Wait, never mind, guys. Back to your seats. It’s still pink in the middle.”
It was hard to have a serious conversation, but we had managed it somehow.
“You have an idea? Oh, thank god.”
“You could come with me to St. Augustine,” he said. “It’s the home of the Southern Ladies’ Finishing College of Magic. Mrs. Tyler is the headmistress and she lives there even during the summer.”
“Well, I do declare,” I said, with a hint of sarcasm. “What the hell is a ‘finishing’ college?”
“Probably exactly what you think it is,” he said.
“Isn’t that school for bad girls?” Alec asked.
“Who is a bad girl, if not our Charlotte?” Montague replied. “But the idea is just to get a competing offer, right? That will drive Master Blair nuts, to think of her going there.”
“How do I convince Dad? And what about your family, Montague?”
“You are always welcome at the Xarra house,” he said. “You don’t think he would let you go? He lets you sleep with Firian.”
“He doesn’t realize Firian counts. And Firian stays in fox form at night. As you know.” I squirmed as we edged closer to the question of who got to be my first, and when? I needed to figure it out. I would be turning twenty this year and I wanted all of them. Staying a virgin was starting to seem…overdue. It couldn’t be Alec because he still couldn’t touch me. Montague had implied he could lose control. But then if I only had sex with Firian, I feared it would ruin our careful balance.
I’m sure Firian would disagree…
“He wants you to be happy as much as anyone,” Montague said. “Why don’t you just tell him honestly that you want to attend a witch college? That Firian can come with you and my family will welcome you, and you’ll be as safe as you would be anywhere?”
“Okay,” Alec said. “I’m in.”
Montague glanced at him. “Did I invite you?”
“I have to be in. Otherwise this summer is torture. You three are going to be boating, at the beach, grilling. Dad will probably enlist me to make lust potions all summer.”
“Is your dad a potion maker, Alec?” Alec was fairly quiet, so there was a lot I didn’t know about him, but it seemed like he had a very low-key life. The only secret those sexy red-tinged eyes and perfect forearms were hiding was just what naughty things was he thinking about doing to me? I knew that incubi were thinking about sex all the time. He must be so tortured. Poor guy, I thought, without much sympathy at all. I had a lot of fantasies about Alec being tortured.
“Yes,” he said.
“You must b
e really good at lust potions,” I said.
He nodded, glancing me over like I was wearing a bikini, despite how bundled up I was. My eyes roamed shamelessly over the way his shirt was strained by his powerful shoulders to his equally toned legs, clad in shorts.
“So it’s decided,” Montague said, and I had to break the news to Dad, because lets face it, he couldn’t really stop me.
Chapter Four
Charlotte
She had no idea what was getting into.
That would be written on my tombstone, at this point.
My sweet summer break in Florida kicked off after the 4th of July so the guys had a little time with their families first and I reached the point where I only had to wear one sweater. Montague and Alec picked me up in Montague’s bargain basement green Kia SUV. Harris had bought him this car with cash after the warlock council confiscated his old car as punishment for becoming a vampire. Montague’s utter disdain for the car was so obvious that I was sure Harris did this on purpose. He surely could have found something his friend hated slightly less.
Still, Montague looked good behind the wheel of anything. Or not behind the wheel. Anywhere, really. He was wearing a Panama hat—vampires needed sun protection—a navy jacket, a cotton shirt with thin blue stripes, and red pants with short black boots. I felt like he had a sort of “Hamptons chic” look that only a vampire could pull off in the summer. Because we were in the south, not the Hamptons. Alec was sweating in a black tee and flip-flops. Even in the mountains it was a solid ninety degrees. As we were talking in the front yard, he lifted the corner of his shirt to wipe off his face and Dad looked like it had just hit him that he was sending his daughter off to a summer of beaches, boats, and warlocks with washboard abs.
“Be good, sweetie. Be careful,” he said. “And responsible. I know you are…an adult. Remember all the things I’ve ever told you, and all the things…any authority figure has ever told you.”
“Oh, Dad.”
I knew he was resisting the urge to freak out when he called me ‘sweetie’. And he still had no idea Montague was a vampire and Alec was an incubus.
Should I feel guilty for withholding information?
Nah.
I had never been so excited for summer.
“You can ride shotgun,” Alec said, opening the door for me.
“Sweet. Bye, Dad! I’ll call as often as I can!”
“Take good care of her,” Dad said, giving Montague his best attempt at a stare down.
“I assure you we will, Mr. Byrne,” Montague said. He rolled up the window and gave me a hooded look. “Oh, we will.”
“I damn sure will,” Alec said. “I still can’t touch her, so don’t get too excited. I’m going to keep you in line, Monty.”
“We’ll see.”
“Ahem,” Firian said.
I looked at them all with some alarm. Alec was lounging in the back seat trying to fan the air conditioning to his face. Firian was trying to figure out where to put his long legs without knee bumping Alec. A manspreading battle seemed imminent. My brain glazed, overwhelmed with the thought of being alone with the three of them so much.
“So…let me just clear the air,” I said. “You have all made no secret of the fact that you want to do more than kiss me. It’s very flattering. And I, too, would like to do more than kiss you,” I said, trying to awkwardly set some boundaries.
“Damnit, why do the people who don’t need to be cold get the best vents?” Alec said.
“You have some back there, don’t you?” Montague asked. “I don’t even know. Piece of shit.”
“Don’t anger the machine spirit,” Firian said.
“I mean Harris! What a troll. He knows I like to go fast.”
“Guys, I’m trying to have an important conversation!”
“It sounded to me like we’re all on the same page,” Montague said, shooting me a quick grin before he wrestled the steering wheel down the twisting mountain road I lived on. Not that this was hard for him, what with vampire strength and all, but it still took some concentration.
“I just don’t want to do anything that will make you get mad at each other.”
“Montague and agreed,” Alec said. “He’ll do things to you, and I get to watch—”
Firian growled like he’d forgotten he was human.
“Hey,” Alec said, lifting a hand. “So, we talked about all this on the way. St. Augustine is an especially tough city for a familiar, and we know Firian is your best and most loyal companion who knows you better than anyone, so we both agree that whenever you’re ready, he should be your first.”
“It’s Charlotte’s decision,” Firian said, but he was suddenly giving me this look like he wanted to pull over.
He already knew what I wanted.
“St. Augustine is very romantic,” Montague said. “It’s a good place to make a night special.”
“I…want to,” I said. “I just don’t know how to decide when.”
“I could surprise you,” Firian said. “If you trust me.”
My skin flamed. “I do.”
“There. All settled,” Alec said.
“You guys are okay with this too?” I asked.
“Not really but I’ll deal with it.” Montague said.
“I’ve been working on him since he picked me up from the airport,” Alec said.
Montague brushed my knee on the way to grab a map. “Now that that’s out of the way…you want to navigate? I can’t remember how we got here.”
“No GPS?”
“We’re trying to keep it as low-tech as we can.”
“Uhhh…maps. Okay. Wow.” I unfolded the paper. “Where are we?”
“Don’t you live here?” Montague asked.
“Um…yes. But we have a GPS.”
“Kids these days,” Alec said.
“We’re in Georgia,” Montague said unhelpfully, brushing my knee again before he went back to the steering wheel. I shivered from head to toe. Of course, part of that was probably the air conditioning.
I had never been to St. Augustine, but I knew the town on the northeastern Florida coast touted itself as “The Oldest City in America”, and it had a 17th century fort and some old houses, and a lot of tourist trap stuff. When my grandpa was still alive, my grandparents loved going there when they weren’t going to Savannah. A bridge crossed the intracoastal waterway to Anastasia Island where Montague said there were some nice beaches.
“We might not be rich,” he said, “but we do have a house right in the old city, and I can take us out on my uncle’s boat.”
I was already full of dreams of sea-scented air, grilled seafood and doing absolutely nothing except frolicking, reading, and basking in the attention of three hot guys.
As we drove into the city, tourist buses made up to look like old timey trolleys came by, the parking was packed, people clogged the sidewalks, and there were shops selling t-shirts and taffy and junk. The streets were lined with old houses with overhanging balconies, and one of the main roads faced the water and the island, where a black-and-white striped lighthouse stood sentry in the distance. The architecture had this distinctly old Spanish feel, which had some romantic potential, but it was super busy and fairly tacky.
Montague parked at the visitor center.
“We’ll leave this here,” he said. “Xavier will park it at the outpost later.” He left the keys on the seat and waved his hand over the handle, whispering a spell.
“What is the outpost?”
“Where all the magical folk keep their cars,” he said. “No cars allowed in my town.”
I could see that the main street of the town was blocked off, through the old stone gates. They were big square pillars made of a grayish, porous stone, with little old guard stations, their barred doors obviously made for smaller humans.
“You live on this main street?” I asked. “Over a t-shirt shop? Or a shop that sells hot sauce?”
“Ha ha. Wait and see.” He took my hand as he l
ed the way to the gates.
Firian looked at his arms, which had broken into goosebumps. “The magic here is so strong.”
“Oh my god. Is this a King’s Cross situation?” I asked. “Are we going to Platform 9 3/4?”
“Damnit, I wanted to surprise you. Books ruin everything,” Montague said. “Yes. Shut your eyes. Firian, you feel the rift?”
“I see it,” Firian said. “The gates.”
“Do I have to shut my eyes?”
“It’s a good idea until you get your magic back,” Montague said. “There’s a trick to it. Wait until those people go through.” He looked around, apparently waiting for the right moment when all the humans had shifted their attention away from us.
Firian took my other hand, and I shut my eyes, walking along between them toward the old gates. On the fifth step I felt something shift and all the sounds of people and cars seemed to fade away behind me and the sounded of them warped before disappearing. The air got a little cooler and scented more strongly of flowers.
“You can look,” Montague said, with pride.
It was like I had traveled in time. The cars were gone, every single one. I even spun around behind me and saw nothing but some Victorian houses. Instead of engines and the speakers of the tourist buses, all the people on the streets were dressed in a timeless way. A girl with her hair in a long black braid, wearing a linen dress and shoes fastened with buckles walked by with a basket of small glass bottles. She looked at us a little nervously.
A horse-drawn carriage was coming up the path with cages of chickens in the back. The old man in the back tipped a battered hat to Montague. “Afternoon, Monty. The sun treating you all right?”
“Fine,” Montague said.
“What is happening?” I screeched. “What is this place?”
“It’s a parallel,” he said. “One of the very few in America. We’re in the fabric between the mortal world and Etherium. Most witches and warlocks used to live in towns like these, but fewer exist now. Electricity barely works here. But stay in the gates. The city is shrinking and it’s getting easier to fall back into the mortal world all the time. If you go out the gates you’ll make it about as far as Castle Warden before you fall out.” He pointed at a big gray castle-styled building that I’m pretty sure was the Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum in the real world, but here looked like a private residence.
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