Under the Harvest Moon

by Robin Hale

  Laurel’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Then how…?”

  I pulled my hand back and hid behind my mug, staring down into my tea. “Because of me.” It was the first time I had ever spoken those words aloud. “The fledge got in…because of me.”

  The other witch scooted across the mattress, coming close enough to press her legs against my side. I didn’t know how much longer she would be willing to touch me and I couldn’t bring myself to pull away an instant before I had to.

  “I was…fifteen at the time. Fifteen when I met Zora at the Harvest Moon.” If I closed my eyes I knew I would see her grinning face the way she looked that first night: teasing me into dancing with her, teaching me a few steps and letting me stumble over her feet. Letting me crash against her body over and over again until laughter turned into kisses and we snuck away together into the trees.

  I didn’t close my eyes.

  “She was young, both as a vampire and in body. She wasn’t much older than I was. Maybe nineteen? But she was the first person who approached me like I wasn’t a child and I — I wanted her.”

  Laurel’s fingers found a sliver of my skin where my shirt had ridden up my back and she stroked me in simple animal comfort. I leaned into the touch.

  “We met as frequently as I could get away with it, always somewhere that my mom wouldn’t find out. Always somewhere that we could keep it from everyone.” My fingers went white and I tried to relax my grip on the mug in my hands before I rained shards of ceramic and hot tea down onto Laurel’s bed. “I wasn’t —” a choked, humorless laugh erupting from my throat cut me off and I tried again. “I wasn’t allowed to date. Mom thought fifteen was too young and I probably — I probably should’ve listened to her. But Zora was my first love and I was completely intoxicated. And careful.”

  A slow, shuddering breath stopped the spasms in my forearms and I took a moment to consider that a victory. “I knew my mom would find out if I let Zora bite me. I knew she’d be able to read it on me, so I didn’t let her. Zora wanted to.” I frowned. “That didn’t seem like a red flag, at the time. I’d grown up hearing about how vampires loved the taste of witches and shapeshifters, and that it was an intimate thing to let someone feed from you. I was so…so damn eager to be in love. I thought feeding was a real…I thought it meant something. I’d built it up so much in my head that eventually I gave in to what we both wanted. If I hadn’t been hiding it from my mom, I would’ve let her sooner. Then, maybe, she would’ve lost control with just me and the rest of them would be alive.”

  “What happened, Rhea?” Laurel asked. Her voice was gentle, so gentle, but there wasn’t any way around cracking my chest open on that question.

  “I fell in love with her. That’s what happened. I was a stupid, horny teenager and I fell in love with someone who wanted to hurt me — and the wards let her through because I wanted her there. I wanted her in my home. So they let her through.” The words hung in the air in condemnation and I waited for Laurel to pull away.

  “A fledge can take out an entire coven?” A shiver of fear ran through Laurel’s voice.

  “Not usually.” The edges of every word were sharp enough to slice my mouth to pieces. “But it was the middle of the night. They were sleeping. The Council — they said she must’ve done it silently. One at a time. That, or she’d need some kind of charm to keep them under. They didn’t find one.” I shook my head to get rid of the barbed edges of that night through physical force.

  “You were a child, Rhea.” Laurel’s hand slipped around my waist and the sharp point of her chin settled onto my shoulder. “Most people get to be stupid teenagers without it hurting anyone else. I don’t…I don’t think it was your fault.”

  “It was,” I insisted. “Absalon — Absalon was her sire. He found her after she had — done what she did. He said that she was ranting about the blood of witches and he killed her. Tore out her throat. That’s what they’re supposed to do when a fledge loses control. But —”

  “But she didn’t kill you,” Laurel finished.

  And that was it. That was the weight of the whole thing. My whole family had died because I brought a dangerous, unstable fledge into our wards — but she hadn’t killed me. If she’d lost control because my blood was too compelling, shouldn’t she have killed me first, then moved on to the rest of them? How was it that she had left me there, alone in the woods, to wake up and find what she’d left for me?

  “But she didn’t kill me,” I agreed.

  “So that’s why Absalon can cause trouble for you? He can tell the Council that you’d been running around with Zora and it weakened the wards?” Laurel sounded confused and I couldn’t blame her.

  “Unfortunately, no. Nothing quite so simple.” I ran a hand over the scars on my arm and Laurel’s eyes followed the movement. “I woke up after Zora had taken too much of my blood. I was alone in the woods and confused. I started walking back toward the house. I thought — I thought something had happened to her. I was still…I didn’t stop being in love with her until I went home and felt death hanging over the house. I didn’t even have to go inside. I knew they were gone. I could tell. And then I…lost control.”

  “What do you mean?” Laurel rubbed her cheek against my shoulder, nuzzling closer.

  “That’s how I got my scars. I’m a storm witch. Not an herbalist or an enchanter or a healer.” Ancient grief and self-loathing hissed and spat from behind my teeth. “I realized they were gone and that Zora had killed them and I — I lost control.” I swallowed, fought my way through the vise on my throat. “Called a storm out of nowhere. Called so much lightning that the local news thought a power station had exploded. They had to do months of damage control — I’d exposed the entire community. I woke up in a Council healing ward with scars all over my body and a healer telling me that my entire coven had been wiped out.”

  Tears blurred my vision but I wouldn’t let them fall. I’d wallowed in my grief for too long. If I felt shame, it was mine to deal with. “They said I’d obliterated every scrap of magical evidence from the entire property. All they could tell was that a fledge had killed them and that I’d gone nuclear outside. Council debated for hours whether or not to bind my magic before they decided to put me on permanent probation. They’ve been waiting for me to fuck up again — and harassing their pet vampire would qualify.”

  Even the thought of having my magic bound sent a cold jolt of fear through my gut.

  “Why couldn’t they read what had happened there? Even I could pick things up and I’ve been doing magic for like two weeks.” Laurel pressed her forehead against my cheek and she kept moving closer, clinging so tightly even I couldn’t feel alone.

  “Your gift is rare. Almost no one can do what you can do. Olivia — your mother was already gone by the time this happened and she was the first Seer there’d been in…decades.” Laurel hummed against my neck. “Besides, what else was there to see? They’re right. Zora — Zora killed my family, and I lost control.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Rhea,” Laurel said again. She was adamant, unwilling to let me go on believing what I knew to be true.

  “If it weren’t for me they’d be alive.” It hurt but it was true. And I wouldn’t be doing Laurel any favors by letting her think better of me than that.

  “You were a kid. You couldn’t have known and even if you could — don’t you think you’ve punished yourself enough? You made a mistake. You’ve paid for it.” Laurel’s words were a soft, pleading litany against my ear and I shook my head.

  “I should’ve told her about Zora from the start.” The self-recriminations were familiar. Comfortable.

  And the feeling of Laurel’s mouth slotting into place over my own stopped them dead in their tracks.

  Her lips were as soft as I’d thought they would be, but that first touch still hit with the force of a truck. I sucked in a sharp, shocked breath — I’d go to my grave denying that it had been a whimper — and opened my mouth to the questing touch of Laurel�
�s tongue.

  Heat built low in my belly and my palms went damp and clumsy around my mug. Oh, the way she tasted. I sucked the gentle curve of her lip between my teeth and pressed down just hard enough for her to feel the sharp edge — and was rewarded with a startled groan for my efforts. That sound. I wanted more of that sound. I fumbled to the side of the bed, groping for the nightstand and a place to put my mug, spilling over the rim in my hurry.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Laurel whispered and her fingers were tangled in the short strands of my hair.

  I wrapped my arms around her waist and tugged her closer, lapping at the inside of her lip, stroking along her tongue. I didn’t have the words to describe how she tasted but it was rapidly becoming my favorite flavor.

  The air around us grew thick with heat and the feeling of anticipation. Magic flowed over my skin and I was dying to feel Laurel’s mingling with mine again, even without the full moon. The buzzing, the gnawing presence in the base of my skull, the one I’d felt since the first time I laid eyes on Laurel — darting into traffic to save something precious to her — grew more intense. It directed my hands, my mouth. My grip on my magic began to go slack and something was prompting me to open myself to the shining, golden witch I held in my arms.

  Golden. She was golden.

  Oh, no.

  The realization crashed over me in an icy wave and I went rigid. That — I couldn’t give in to that. I couldn’t let my magic slip, couldn’t let Laurel tie herself to me when she didn’t — there was no way that she knew what she was doing.

  I jerked back from the sweet, soft girl in my arms and drew in a ragged breath. “I — I can’t stay. This is too…too fast.” It wasn’t quite true, wasn’t quite honest, but it was as close as I could get with the three brain cells I still had to work with. I pressed a soft, chaste kiss to the corner of Laurel’s jaw and hoped that she could see the apology in my eyes.

  “I’ll call you.”

  Laurel’s cheeks were pink, her hazel eyes dark, and she smiled up at me like she believed me.

  I was an asshole.

  “I’ll be here,” she said.

  And I left her there.

  15

  Laurel

  “You’re doing it again.”

  I jerked upright and whipped my head around to find Jean leaning against the counter. She was laughing at me — again — amusement sparkling in her blue eyes. Aside from wincing, which I did, all I could do was join her in chuckling. “Sorry,” I said. “Getting stuck in my own head today, I guess.”

  “Seems like the Harvest Moon was a hit, huh?” Jean asked.

  “Yes!” Definitely a hit. Definitely a hit and then very much not a hit and then it came right back around at the end, but I wasn’t going to say any of that to Jean if I could help it. Some days it was impossible to keep any of my thoughts from her, but I felt good about my odds. “It was amazing.” Understatement. “I had no idea there were so many…star-born around. It was incredible.”

  Jean’s smile slid to soft rather than teasing. “I’m glad you had a good time. Sorry I didn’t see you there; I was mostly running one of the booths for Greenhollow.”

  A sudden pang of guilt gripped my chest. “Oh, was I supposed to be helping out?” I cringed. “I’m so sorry, it didn’t even occur to me to ask.”

  The blonde waved my concern away. “No way. It was your first Moon! I wanted you to have a relaxing time, let Rhea show you around some.”

  The mention of the storm witch’s name brought heat to the back of my neck and my thoughts started to drift off again. And they drifted predictably: to the quiet, private hint of a smile on Rhea’s face while she watched me taking in the spectacle of the festival — like seeing me enjoy the Harvest Moon was the best thing she’d seen in years. And maybe it was.

  “Would it be too cheesy if I described the whole thing as magical?” I asked.

  Jean rolled her eyes and chuckled. “Yes. Yes, it would.”

  “Ah, better not do it, then.” I looked back at the display that I’d been re-stocking and ran my fingers over the spines of the books shelved there. My lips quirked, fighting a smile while Jean laughed. I couldn’t keep it off my face. I was utterly smitten.

  “Just try to get that restocked before we close tonight. Okay, Pearson?” Jean teased, shaking her head and turning to head back into the office.

  Once Jean’s steps faded away beneath the strains of the local classic rock radio station, I stopped fighting. The grin pulled at my cheeks and I was sure I looked like an idiot staring into space, grinning at nothing.

  But it wasn’t ‘nothing’.

  That kiss…god, that kiss was the most amazing moment of my life and I had recently found out that I was a witch, my mother was a witch, and my father was a lion. Part time. A part-time lion.

  At any rate, if someone were to tell me that I had to give back either the feeling of Rhea holding me close and kissing me or the knowledge that I carried magic? I wouldn’t be able to give Rhea up. Even the thought of her had a warm glow building in me, a delicious tremble that stroked along my spine and through my chest and drew every lingering thought back to her. That kiss had awoken something. I didn’t know quite what it was but I was beyond thrilled to find out.

  I pulled a set of books from the shelf, stacking them carefully on the floor, and set about cleaning the space where they’d sat. My mom had always been serious about spring cleaning and I wasn’t capable of setting up a new display without cleaning the space left by the old one. Jean had laughed at me for that, too, pointing to the charms on the ends of the bookshelves that warded off dust and mold.

  It didn’t matter. I wiped the shelves anyway.

  It was the sort of ‘setting things in order’ that I found satisfying — one of the only productive aspects of my curiosity and compulsiveness.

  It was the same impulse that had me poring over every second that Rhea spent opening up to me. She’d trusted me. Handed me the truth about her past like she was handing me a loaded gun and trusting me not to use it. It was humbling, deeply emotional. And all I wanted to do was prove to her that she was right to trust me. I wanted to make sure that she knew that there was nothing in what she said that would make me think less of her.

  How could I? How could anyone? She’d been torturing herself since she was a teenager: locked away in a tomb of her own design, sure that she’d been the sole cause of her world tumbling down around her. And the rest of the community…they’d let her. They’d left her there — alone — with the ghosts of her coven, the work that they had done and that she still needed to do.

  The idea that she could’ve been left alone with all of her grief made my stomach turn.

  “Jean?” I called before I’d made the conscious decision to do it. I climbed to my feet and made my way back to the office. “Jean.” I tapped my knuckles on the door frame and took some satisfaction in being the one to jerk Jean out of what she’d been doing, rather than constantly being on the other end of that little exchange.

  “What’s up? Something wrong with the inventory?” Jean asked, pulling a pair of headphones from her ears.

  “No, I…Rhea told me what happened. With Barleywick.” I paused, unsure quite how to get from that simple truth to the thing I most wanted to know.

  “Wow, really?” Jean’s eyes went wide. She pushed away from her desk and leaned back in her desk chair. “What brought that up?”

  Suddenly, it was difficult to drag the words together in the right order. What had brought that up? I glanced around the cluttered office, not so much buying time to form my response as I was looking for something that would spark the right thing to say.

  But the office was just the office. Filing cabinets were shoved up against the walls, old bookshelves were crowded with ledgers and invoices, and the walls themselves were covered in framed photos of early years of the Book Wyrm. Including more than one photo of a tiny blonde child drooling on the cash register. It was a charming mess.

 
; In among the framed photos and drawings from a child’s hand, a silver-chained pendant hung from the wall. It looked familiar. Extremely familiar. Where had I seen it before? The question pressed on the backs of my eyes. After a moment of blank nothingness, I shook my head and tried to put my thoughts together.

  “At the festival, we ran into someone — I think Rhea called him Absalon? And she needed to leave after that.” I chewed on my lip.

  “Right,” Jean said with a nod. “Yeah, he sired the fledge who…lost control.”

  A pained grimace floated over her face and I was struck by how much Jean cared about everyone I’d ever seen her interact with. She would’ve been too young at the time to get Rhea out of that shrine to her grief, but surely Jean didn’t acquire that much empathy on her own? Harriet must have taught her.

  “Did you…I’m not sure what more I can tell you, other than what she’s already said. Rhea’s never talked to me about it. All I know is what the Council said happened.” Jean lifted her shoulder in a weak shrug.

  “No, I just…how is it possible that she could’ve lost everyone,” to my horror, my throat started tightening, closing up under the wave of the secondhand pain and indignation that swept through me. “That she could’ve been — what, sixteen? — And the whole, the whole community left her there. Let her stay by herself in the same place they’d all died. What the hell kind of people don’t make sure she’s taken care of?” I was furious by the end of it and my face had the heat of a fire engine flush, voice quivering, hands flexing uselessly at my sides.

  At once, Jean was out of her chair and crossing the room to me. She settled her hands on my shoulders and went through the same shushing, calming motions that she had when I’d been brought to her with a hole in my leg. “Breathe, Laurel. Just breathe. You’re okay,” Jean murmured.

  Her thumbs drew soothing strokes along the front of my shoulders and I felt her put enough pressure there to be reassuring. I didn’t want to be soothed. I wanted to be angry. Someone needed to be angry for Rhea, for the child she’d been. But despite myself, some of the tension drained from my body under her careful touch.