“And how did you do that?” Abraham asked. He wasn’t in awe—he knew how to do it himself. He just wanted her to articulate her abilities out loud.
“I tell the pieces to go back to where they were, where they were intended to be,” Kelly said.
“What they were made for,” Abraham said pointedly.
“An incomplete analogy,” Kelly said. “The components that make glass once had other purposes. I’m sure the sand that went into it would have been just as content to stay sand. Or perhaps sand would prefer to be the rock it once was, and the rock would prefer to return to the mountain it came from. But it was given another purpose. It was transformed. I could have reduced the glass to its original components, but instead I coaxed it only into its most recent purpose, and it didn’t fight me.”
“Because it’s glass,” Abraham replied. “It cannot make up its mind. It doesn’t know if it’s better as glass or sand or a mountain. It simply becomes whatever it is made. But you are a woman, certainly not glass. You can choose—you can choose what is better for you.”
“I have,” Kelly said. “The problem here is that you don’t agree. And honey, that is not my problem. If you thought you could convince me to change what I am by your superior sexual prowess alone, I’m afraid it didn’t work.”
She rolled over, preparing to climb out of the bed and find her clothes, but Abraham wrapped his arm around her waist and pressed himself against her from behind.
“Don’t go,” he murmured from deep in his chest, low and resonant through her.
Kelly lay stiffly in his arms, confused.
“If you aren’t prepared to rid yourself of the wolf, stay until you are ready,” Abraham said. “Help with the organisation. You can teach them magic with me, even if they can never really be like us. You don’t have to decide to rid yourself of it right away.”
Kelly turned around to face him again, encircled by his insistent embrace. “I won’t ever be ready. I’ve made peace with what I am and what it lets me do. I like what I am. I’m not going to change my mind.”
“You don’t know that,” he said, caressing her cheek. “You’re young. You have time. You can still stay.”
“We’re still talking about magic, right?”
Abraham smiled.
“What is this really about, Abraham?”
The green glow of her eyes flared in the reflection of his just before she sank into another vision, a gentle transition this time instead of it hitting her with the force of a blow.
A blissful, naked body of a human woman with mussed ringlets was talking to him, but Kelly couldn’t hear what the girl said, perhaps because Abraham wasn’t paying attention. He pulled his trousers back on and buttoned everything back together, resuming his role as leader, as Father Abraham in his regal robes and his benevolently patronizing countenance. He was gentle but firm, convincing the girl that she needed to leave in such a way that she took no offence to the request. In fact, she kissed his cheek and thanked him, rapture still gleaming in her eyes.
“Look at me,” Abraham said.
Kelly blinked and saw him in the present, naked and open to her.
“My entire life I have had this gift. I have devoted my life to using it for the good of this sad little world, evil and impure as it is.”
“Sleeping with your congregation doesn’t sound very pure to me,” Kelly said.
The curve of his lips became a little hard. “You mistake my philosophy. I can think of nothing purer than the merging of two bodies to create one, one that was meant to be, as natural and right as birth and death.”
That effectively silenced her, at least on that subject.
“Even the way you do it,” he added, softening his gaze again and stroking her lower lip with his thumb.
“What do you mean ‘even’?”
“You are so defensive, my dear,” Abraham said. “I merely mean that I’ve never had a lover quite so enthusiastic, nor quite so enamoured of pain, nor so filled with magic she doesn’t even realise what she is.”
“I never said I wasn’t a witch,” Kelly said.
“I gave you a chance to experience a mere fraction of what you are capable of, and even now you try to push yourself back down again. It is nothing short of degradation, even blasphemy.”
“ Excuse me for not wanting to hurt anyone else,” Kelly replied. “What if one of the members of your congregation out there got hurt? What if I killed them?”
“You didn’t,” he said.
“Even if I didn’t, Abraham,” Kelly said, speaking over his reply although she trusted his certainty, “what if I had?”
Abraham leaned in and tenderly kissed her, gentle pressure, warm. “But you didn’t,” he murmured against her lips.
She pressed her hands against his chest to push him back a fraction, just enough that he was not kissing her anymore. For a moment, she could see herself as he did—not the wild woman that Malcolm saw or the hardcore pin-up that the pizza guy saw, but a fierce girl with eyes as bright green and smoothly addictive as absinthe, a woman young enough to have a world of untapped potential—and for now, her imperfections were hidden under a human skin. He wanted her. His body was more than satisfied, but he couldn’t stop staring at her, and not just because he could see his reflection in those cat eyes.
“W-what do you want from me?” Her voice caught, which hurt her pride, but there was something awesomely, terribly intense in his regard, in the burning coals of his eyes, in the way he could not stop touching her.
“Your whole life you have been alone,” he said quietly, brushing her hair away from her face. “You tried to fit yourself in an office, in a werewolf pack, in a coven, but you never found anyone like you. It is a lonely life, isn’t it? Even when you surround yourself with others or contort yourself to try to belong, you never do.”
Kelly bit her lip, and he could not keep away. He kissed her again. Their tongues slid over each other. He drank her in and she sank down into the mattress as he leaned over her.
He kissed down to her sternum. “Did it never occur to you that I have been searching as well?”
Tears prickled her eyes. Kelly willed them dry. She wouldn’t allow him to do this to her. She wouldn’t allow him to make her believe him, trust him. Fuck him, yes, maybe even make love to him, show him what he perceived as submission, she could do all that. But she wouldn’t for a second believe that his honesty and rare vulnerability made him trustworthy or even a good man. But it was hard to tell that to herself when the loneliness of his words reopened wounds—the less enjoyable kinds of wounds—that she’d hoped had scarred over a long time ago.
“Do you want to know what this is?” he asked, tracing the filigree tattoo again.
Kelly nodded. She didn’t want him to hear how he had affected her.
“Within the beauty hides the Latin phrase, ‘Illa habet potestatem’,” he said.
“I never took Latin,” she said.
“It means, ‘This one has power’.”
He rested back against the coverlet, not minding that it was torn or stained. She didn’t mind either as she laid her head against his chest again. He stroked her hair. She sensed sleep sinking over him, but she kept staring out of the ghost-web glass.
This one has power.
That was what her magic had wanted to tell her. No, what her magic had wanted him to tell her.
“I have searched all my life for someone like you,” Abraham murmured. His chest rose and fell like calm waters. “Stay with me.”
Chapter Eleven
It was hard to say when she had finally closed her eyes and fallen asleep. The next thing she knew, though, she was completely awake. She sensed the urgent need to remember what she had just been dreaming. She couldn’t afford to forget a prophetic dream, but she couldn’t quite reach the memory.
The room was dark, the world outside just as dark. Although the rain had stopped, the sky was still cloudy, blocking the light of the moon. Even so, there was enough li
ght for her wolf eyes to see every monochromatic detail.
Underneath the even rise and fall of his chest thrummed the steady rhythm of Abraham’s heartbeat. He was asleep, but not dreaming. When she pulled away, he didn’t stir. Kelly summoned an accent blanket from the sofa and covered Abraham with it in case the loss of her body heat woke him.
Her feet made no sound as she crossed the room.
Kelly let instinct guide her, since her thinking mind wasn’t the one running the show when her prophecies forced their hand. She trailed her fingers over the back of the sofa and the side table next to it then brushed the cold glass of a lampshade. She circled around Malcolm and gazed down at him. He had shifted position and had somehow managed to smash his face into the wing of the armchair. He wasn’t an attractive sleeper, with his mouth open and his limbs an ungainly sprawl, but that only made him more endearing.
She couldn’t stay there observing him, so she directed her attention to the covered side tables. She didn’t know what the magic wanted her to do until she lifted the first draped sheet to peek underneath. Her magic suddenly flared up like the candle flames of earlier that evening. She trusted its urging.
She lifted all the blankets off all the tables at once. They flew through the air and collapsed on top of the sofa, exposing to her the things he wanted hidden.
Kelly understood why a witch would want to hide his magical tools and ingredients. It was easy for people to come to the wrong conclusion. Magical implements were a bit like the Roman Rituals for Catholics—a necessity, but sometimes an embarrassment. So when she’d seen that he covered his work area, Kelly hadn’t been too alarmed or suspicious.
Even the books, the chalices, the knives and the bottles of herbs which were revealed were normal enough for a witch that they weren’t suspicious on their own. But the fact that her magic drew her forward—that it had waited until Abraham was fast asleep to wake her—caused an icy chill of warning to return in a cold wax drip down her spine.
She approached the table with the most well-used book, the only one not shelved between bookends. There was a place in it where the oils from his hands had stained the paper, and a few pages were looser in the binding. Next to it stood a quartz crystal chalice and a plain athame, not like the more elaborate one with which he had cut himself. It, too, was well used, the wooden handle smooth from Abraham’s palm.
Kelly held her hand over the book. She whispered, “Show me what your master wants.”
The book’s leather cover opened. Then the pages rustled, rapidly flipping through.
It was a Book of Shadows. The book itself was old, but the writing inside it was not. The spells were of Abraham’s own making. Abraham had had more life to build such a repertoire. Kelly was less disciplined with her own Book of Shadows, preferring a more organic approach to her magic. Hers was mostly for prophecies and potions. She rarely needed spoken spells. She either called to an object or a creature’s magic, or she silently let her wishes be known and the magic exacted her will in whatever form necessary.
Abraham might have left himself room for improvisation as an elemental witch, but she was not surprised to find that he was also a more methodical witch than she and preferred to keep a ledger of his spells. Abraham would want to see the words inscribed in black ink in such a way that they might as well have been carved in stone. His power made the spells, but the book made the spells important.
The pages stopped, fluttering where they rested as though disturbed by a draught.
At the top of the page, Kelly read, TRANSFERENCE.
The picture to the right of the spell showed a dripping athame. The spell itself read, To purge the subject’s magic of impurities, drain its blood with athame and drip into clear quartz chalice. When chalice is filled to the brim, the subject can be laid to rest, purified.
As chalice cleanses the magic in the subject’s blood, prepare your vessel through meditation to receive transference. After the level of liquid shows a quarter drop, drink deep from the chalice.
Give thanks to the subject for its sacrifice.
“Holy shit,” Kelly breathed. She turned around, half expecting Abraham to be right behind her with another athame in his hand. Perhaps in some noir mystery or horror novel, he would have been there, but reality was less exciting. He was still sleeping, his arm outstretched as though beckoning to her. To stay.
The book flipped its pages again without her asking it anything. It opened to another spell, the newest spell in the book.
Kelly didn’t know whether Abraham had seen her coming. He had a crystal ball on another table, but she had discerned no familiarity in his expression when he’d first seen her. He had recognised her magic, not her. But even though he had claimed that he was not as prophetic as she, that didn’t mean he had no prophecies under his sleeve. Perhaps he’d known that someone was coming, someone with the power he had been searching for, but someone he would have to fix. That would make his new spell make sense.
TRANSCENDENCE, subtitled To remove impurities while leaving subject intact.
The room shook, its contents rattling and rumbling. Kelly clenched her teeth and blinked back the burn of angry tears.
Abraham had waited until his magic had told him she was coming to finally figure out how to do what he had promised so many magical beings before her. At the same time that he’d practically begged her to stay with him, he had been planning to bleed Malcolm and take his magic in exchange for a pittance of posthumous gratitude. And he’d never considered she might be a little miffed about it when she found out.
Before she had come along, he had been perfectly comfortable killing every single part-human who came to him for help just so that they could augment his magic. And he’d thought nothing of it because they were only part-human, which might as well not be human at all.
She called her clothes back onto her body. They swirled around her, attaching and detaching as though they had no seams, then settled on her as though they had never been compromised. Malcolm’s clothing had been shredded after his initial transformation, and some of it had disintegrated entirely when Abraham had cast his wolf skin back, so she didn’t think she could reconstitute it. Now was no time for that kind of experimentation. Besides, they would be under cover of darkness.
Kelly went up to the bed. Abraham was a more attractive sleeper than Malcolm, as dignified in his rest as in his waking hours. Untroubled by the blood on his hands. She’d thought the blood on her hands was bad, but he had wrought a red flood with his.
She stroked his forehead without tenderness, the way one might touch the surface of water in order to reach beneath it.
He had not been born into a coven. Like her, he’d discovered what he was and found other people like him in his twenties. They’d found his way of doing magic chaotic, undisciplined and a little frightening. He’d quickly abandoned them, believing that they held him back.
But he’d also recognised his own limitations and sought a way to expand his power. In one of his rare prophecies, he’d seen that he would one day be a great man with great power. The magic hadn’t shown him how—he’d come to his solution all on his own. Through the repeated use of his transference spell, he had become the man he’d seen himself becoming, the one who wanted her to stay not because of what her power could give him but because he could be with someone with power comparable to his own.
She sensed no remorse. He had feelings—he wasn’t a sociopath. He had never lied to his ‘subjects’, simply let them assume ‘cleanse’ and ‘purge’ meant that he could remove the darkness like a tumour, that he could cut it away and leave the rest of the flesh unmarked and alive. People rarely came searching for the ones he took—they were loners, strays and rogues estranged from their clans, their packs and their covens. They were people who were often not missed, and if anyone came looking, he charmed them with next to no effort. He’d had one police officer come after him, an irritable sceptic. That officer now resided in the Salvation dormitories.
&nb
sp; This was a man who fervently believed in his message. He had been born Jason Abraham Kinkaid, but he was Father to Many, to his congregation, to his subjects and their magic that now resided within him. And one day, perhaps he would expand Salvation and spread his influence. After all, he was a very important man, a man who had been called to a sacred duty from which he could not flinch, no matter what anyone else told him.
Kelly stumbled away. That was more information than she was used to receiving from a mind-trip. Usually, she pushed her way through nothing bigger than the mental equivalent of a small photo album—pictures and phrases. This time, all that information had come to her in a nanosecond, as clearly as if she had lived that life, as if she had always known it to be so.
“Stay asleep, you bastard,” she said. She didn’t bother to whisper. The soporific spell weighed like lead in her hand before she turned it over above his head. There was a brief emerald glow behind his eyes. Again, she had never felt it come on that strong before, but if it made him sleep for three weeks, she didn’t think she would lose any sleep over it.
She wished that she had scratched him with her real claws. And while the thought crossed her mind, she still couldn’t manage to actually want to bite him just so that he would have to purge himself. She had principles, too. Unlike Abraham, her principles weren’t usually homicidal. Well, once. And now that she thought about it…
“What’s going on?” Malcolm asked from the chair. He unfurled, stretched then stood up.
Kelly jumped back as though she had been caught doing something wrong.
“We’re leaving,” Kelly said. Even if she thought Abraham needed to be stopped, she had to get Malcolm out. Abraham had already proven that he was not above using Malcolm against her.
“What?” He still sounded half asleep, so she had to forgive him for not being quick on the uptake.
“We need to leave now.”
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