by Harry Nix
“I don't want Alex to be able to get a moment’s rest,” Knox said by way of dismissing his request.
Eric spat on the ground, which was something Prince hadn't seen a golem do before. The wet clay splashed to the floor and even Prince, who enjoyed such games, was shocked that Eric had done it.
“I am embedded with the werewolves so we may know our enemy, and I tell you this: those four packs that have taken the Ignis compound and are now holding it are only doing so because of Alex's power. It is only slight at the moment but still he pulled Wind, who is a psychotic werewolf, into line. You give Alex even another month, and he may become unstoppable. If you fail, Titus, we mages should abandon Baxter entirely,” Eric said. Then he canceled the spell. His golem broke into pieces.
Prince managed to keep a straight face. He wasn't sure himself whether Eric was simply laying it on thick, but it appeared the performance had its desired result. Knox had crossed his arms as though he were hugging himself.
“Perhaps he’s right and a thousand mages aren’t enough,” he muttered to himself.
“I said we'll handle it, and we will handle it,” Titus said. He canceled the spell too, his golem disintegrating, leaving Knox and Prince alone. Although Knox was still furious, his anger was cooling.
“I hear your mansion burned down, and Alex and his pack were involved, but I believe there were some witches too,” he said.
“Half my mansion, and yes, possibly. The witches are off at the moment, playing one of their vanishing games, so I haven't been able to uncover any more,” Prince said.
He was still keeping the single frame from the security images to himself. The black runes torn free from the tapestry. Although he could not read them and had no clue to their origin, sometimes they felt familiar to him, reminding him of home.
“It has been nearly a decade since the witches last went to war,” Knox said.
“This may be the same. After all, Ignis did take a witch, Alex's mate, and she has some powerful family.”
“Witches,” Knox muttered. Although he was a master at the various games the mages and vampires had played over the decades, the witches always stuck in his craw. They were sometimes organized, but also wild and chaotic, prone to absurd things, like every witch in the world vanishing for six months straight only to return and to never breathe a word of where they'd gone. Such disappearances in the past had preceded war but other times they had preceded nothing, the witches seeming to delight in confounding others.
“What will happen if Titus fails?” Knox asked.
“The werewolf mage rises and, just like last time, mages and vampires will be driven to the brink of extinction,” Prince said. Although much of what had happened was lost to the mists of time, the story now broken into fragments of mythology, the threat of a werewolf who could control magic was extreme. Tradinium had barely survived the last one and other enclaves like Lucrete had been wiped out entirely.
“Can you please send some vampires too?” Knox said. Although powerful, he knew better than to command Prince.
“I live to serve,” Prince said with that same mocking tone in his voice. Then he canceled the spell, his golem disintegrating, leaving Knox alone, staring into nothing, lost in his own thoughts.
16
“It's important that you blind bake your pie crust. That means it goes in the oven without any filling plus some pie weights to partially bake it to remove some of the moisture. Then later, when you put the filling in and finish the baking it will cook to perfection. Cooking has so many things in common with potion making,” April said as she clattered around the kitchen.
Alex was sitting at the newly bought table, his spell screen open, willing various sections of spells to compress down into a symbol but so far none had.
“Oh, I see,” he murmured.
“What, are you on some kind of automatic response thing right now? Oh, I see. Hmm, what a pickle. Yes, how interesting,” April mocked but then focused back on her lemon meringue pie.
“You're right, I'm sorry. I’m just trying to get more symbols to appear,” Alex said. It was now late in the day and they were in one of the abandoned homes. They were outside of the range of the house ward, but Alex figured between himself, April and Nia they'd be okay. Plus, the pack was within two houses anyway.
Today was the first time he'd been to this particular abandoned house. What he had learned was that when he delegated power and responsibility, it meant things happened that he was unaware of, which was excellent but sometimes a little disconcerting. For example, this house had been scrubbed back to its bare bones, a second-hand table purchased, and the kitchen stocked, including with a refrigerator that looked newish. The rooms had beds in them with fresh sheets, and although the house still looked rundown outside, on the inside it was livable, if not approaching comfortable.
A pleasant surprise but sometimes Alex felt like he was running an empire and already losing touch with the smaller details.
“Well, good, because I have a lot to say about the lemon filling next,” April said.
After Alex had helped heal injured werewolves, they'd gotten away from the Ignis compound as fast as they could, eager to get home.
It’d been an odd sort of reunion. No time for talking and kissing and reconnection. Although he directly witnessed it, Alex was surprised at how successfully the Great Barrier prevented normals from approaching the mass death scene. Even as they were waiting to leave, the occasional police car arrived but then departed quickly at a twang of the Great Barrier. Alex had shoved that into the list of things to think about later, which had about a million items on it now. The complexity of how exactly the Great Barrier decided when to push and to what degree and how that could possibly be encoded in spells was a mystery to him.
After returning home, they’d gone to the clean abandoned house where they'd showered, washing themselves clean of the mages’ blood, and then Nia had taken Juno to bed, carrying the little witch in her arms, sound asleep before she was even half dry. Alex checked in on them a few times, Juno dead asleep and Nia pressed up against her, her arm protectively across her. Alex had felt the same desire but forced himself to return to study and also to keep April company, who’d entered some kind of breathless mania in her decision to bake a lemon meringue pie. It was thus far four and a half hours and counting in progress. Alex had listened to her describe how to make the dough, the secret to the perfect meringue, what oven temperatures to set, and how important it was to chill your dough.
“Will there be a moment in this pie making when you can share a spell with me? I want you to see something,” Alex asked.
April looked up at the clock on the wall.
“I’m going to have ten minutes in about ten minutes,” she said. She kept rushing about the kitchen, focused on what she was doing, which allowed Alex to turn back to his spells. With the appearance of two new symbols, the small flame and the lightning bolt, his spells had shortened in size, freeing up space. Alex knew this wasn't quite how Juno described it working for everyone else. The way she told it, you practiced the spells until they took less energy to cast, then your capacity slowly grew over time, allowing you to control more complex spells.
Alex had briefly discussed it with April on the way home and even shared with her a single page was just the symbol of the flame on it, which April had heard as a song. She described it as a roaring wild music that invoked crackling flames with floating sparks. It was like the idea of a fire, shrunk down and abstracted.
Alex was currently working on conceal, willing any part of it to compress, but it remained stubbornly the same. With ten minutes to kill he swiped it away and turned to purify. The moment he turned his attention to it, the entire spell vanished, replaced by a single image which appeared as an animated glass of muddy water that turned clear before repeating again. As it shrank, there was a ripple in the magic and April turned around.
“What was that? Are you doing something dangerous?” she asked.
“No.”
“Because I'm baking here. I don't have the time to heal you. I'm not sacrificing this pie,” she said.
“Nothing dangerous, I promise,” Alex said, but April had already returned to her cooking. Purify wasn't the longest of the spells but now that it had shrunk down to a single image, it had freed up quite a lot of space. Alex focused on the small animated image and saw a smaller screen open up. Using his fingers and waving them in the air, he enlarged it and saw it contained all of the code for the original purify spell. Somehow with a simple exertion of will he’d compressed the entire thing down to a single image and yet it was holding code somewhere else, so he could dig into the granularity of it at any time.
“This is madness,” he whispered to himself.
Alex didn't pause to study it for any longer. He kept going through the spells, willing the entirety of them to compress, or any part of them, until he got to the end. The final spell still had question marks in the title as he hadn’t named it yet.
It was the ball of electricity that he’d made on impulse to scare Wind. Alex mentally selected it and titled it shockball, figuring that would make remembering what it was easy. Now he had the ability to throw a ball of electricity and also a fireball, although he didn't yet have the ability to cancel such spells like Juno did. She could make a fireball and then snap it away. His, however, once made, had to be thrown or dumped into water.
Alex was thankful for the extra space. Now he could get back to experimenting and writing new spells, and now that he had this new offensive spell, he could make some more rings and pass them out amongst his pack. He could also fulfill his pledge to the werewolves who’d taken over the Ignis compound.
“Remember how I said it was important to temper the egg yolks? I mean, look at this lemon mixture now, glossy and beautiful,” April said.
“Looks really delicious,” Alex said, forcing himself to focus on what she was saying and actually provide a meaningful response. She glanced at him and winked before returning to her cooking.
Alex forgot his spell writing for a moment and watched April as she bustled about. He could see what was happening. Nia had her own way of expressing love. For her it was to help Juno, to stay within arm’s reach, to help shower and clean her and to sleep by her side to protect her. April had gone into action, cooking this ridiculously complicated lemon meringue pie, an act of service and love, something that she could feed to Juno to express how she felt. As Alex watched her move about the kitchen, a few loose strands of pink hair brushing her shoulders, he wondered about his own reaction, which seemed to have been to dive into creating new spells. He supposed it was protection, to make the promise that nothing like this would happen again, or if it did, that they would be prepared and strong.
Time passed, April continuing her cooking and the pie going into the oven. Alex eventually went back to the main house to check on the pack, who had all by now run themselves through the showers and reasonably recovered from injury. The mood of the pack was jubilant with only a slight somber note. Esme was laughing away, gulping down whiskey like there was no tomorrow along with her co-conspirator Lydia. The children were playing, running about with toys, a cacophony of noise going from room to room. Pearl was off sleeping in a bedroom with her friend Dana close beside her and Alex discovered that Jacob and Yvonne were together, sitting in the grassy garden that Nia had built doing what Lydia described as canoodling.
Alex had only checked on them briefly, interrupting their privacy, before making himself scarce. From the look on Yvonne's face she had decided to Carpe Diem or perhaps Carpe Jacob.
River was in the kitchen, cooking up a storm, doing his best with only two working hotplates. Thanks to Alex’s magic, he was alive and well. So were the rest of his pack, having gotten through the battle unscathed.
Alex eventually finished making his rounds and returned to April.
“Here’s a coffee and if you set foot anywhere in this kitchen area I’m going to murder you six ways from Sunday,” the nymph threatened, placing the cup on the table.
Alex was taking a sip when Nia came strolling into the kitchen, her hair messed up, stretching her arms, wearing just a t-shirt and underwear. Juno came following her. Now that Alex could get a proper look he saw that she was definitely thinner. She still had marks around her wrists from the mage cuffs, but apart from that appeared physically unharmed. Nia sat down at the kitchen table to watch April as Juno planted herself in Alex's lap, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck, and stealing his coffee.
At the comforting weight of her, the clean scent of her skin, the smell of her hair, Alex felt a lurch inside of him that had nothing to do with sex. He’d told Nia he loved her but abruptly realized he hadn't said the same to April or Juno. He did, though, deeply so, a bond that was partly the werewolf side of him, and due to them being his mates, but also the other half, the human part or perhaps intellectual. These were good women and he was a very fortunate man indeed.
“So, I see my grandmother came through with the money and you used it to buy a variety of rundown homes,” Juno said with a teasing smile. She finished his coffee with a loud gulp and put the cup down on the table.
“Speaking of your grandma, she came to visit me, splattered in blood, carrying a huge bag of cash before mysteriously vanishing,” Alex said.
“Splattered in blood… yes, must've been a Thursday, right?” Juno said.
“Where are the witches anyway?”
“Acapulco beach. Windsurfing, drinks, it’s wonderful.”
“You witches need to get new material because that's what Ruby said too.”
“No, she needs to get new material because that's what I say; she stole it from me,” Juno said.
“She gave me something else of yours, actually,” Alex said, opening his spell screen and bringing up Juno’s Cantrip. With her sitting in his lap, it was easy to connect.
“Oh… I knew that sneaky old witch had stolen that from me. Well, that's fine, you need to learn how to make small spells anyway,” she said.
“Can we have some lemon meringue pie before we have dinner?” Nia said, rubbing her eyes, seeming to be having trouble shaking off the sleepiness.
“No deal, werewolf,” April said. Alex realized most of the rushing around April was doing was cleaning up, shifting all the countless bowls and spoons and mixing things into the sink. Now she was leaned up against the counter, looking like she was wearing half of her ingredients.
“I missed you, nature girl,” Juno said.
April's cheeks went red, and she burst into tears. Juno immediately jumped from Alex's lap and came to hug April, heedless of the fact she was covered with sticky bits of dried pastry and lemon filling.
“It's okay. It wasn't your fault, not your fault,” Juno repeated.
Alex realized she was talking about when Juno had been taken. In the rush of it all, the deaths and the escape, and trying to keep his pack together as they'd fled their territory, Alex had occasionally blamed himself. He’d had stupid ideas about somehow simultaneously staying behind and saving his pack.
Somehow, he’d let it slip out of his mind that April might have blamed herself, despite the fact she'd been grievously wounded in the attack fighting off the mages.
Eventually, the girls broke apart, then the oven timer dinged, and April smiled. Juno stepped back from her as April crouched down, looking through the front window of the oven.
“Oh, it's perfect. This is so good. I made this just for you, Juno,” April said. She grabbed a pair of oven mitts, opened the oven, and carefully removed the pie. There was a metal cooling rack sitting on the counter waiting for it.
April took a step but unfortunately it was onto a piece of slightly damp pastry that appeared to have fallen off her clothing while hugging Juno. She slipped, but that was enough, as she suddenly toppled forward, flinging the entire pie at an angle. It smashed onto the counter. Most of it stayed on the counter and hit the wall but some of it poured down th
e front of the cupboards and onto the floor, steam rising from it.
There was a moment of shocked silence after April finally managed to right herself as the four of them just stared at the busted-up pie. For a moment Alex felt the magic tug, unsure whether it was April or Juno.
“I… I made…” April stammered. Juno snapped everyone out of the daze they were in, jumping forward and pulling open drawers until she found the newly purchased cutlery. She grabbed a spoon, which she dug into some of the pie that was on the counter and stuffed it into her mouth.
“Oh, it’s so good,” she trilled. She held the spoons out to Nia and Alex who were still sitting there quite stunned. Nia got up and then pulled Alex with her.
“What do you call this? Counter pie or floor pie?” Juno said, poking April in the stomach before taking another spoonful of the hot pie on the counter.
“I think having it served at high velocity really gives it an edge,” Alex said, joining in. Although some of the pie was a wreck, it still tasted incredible, a delicious base, the sweet taste of the lemon, and the fluffy but toasted meringue on top.
“This is the only way I prefer to eat my pies,” Nia said, scraping a bit of it off the countertop.
April giggled and wiped away tears before accepting the spoon from Juno.
“Hours of baking just to make counter and floor lemon meringue pie,” she said before taking a bite herself.
“You know I love you too,” Juno said. She took a mouthful of the lemon mixture and then kissed April, wrapping her arms around her before they finally pulled apart.
The atmosphere in the kitchen changed immediately. Sex, honestly, had been the last thing on Alex's mind, especially after a battle of that magnitude. April's ears were turning pink and he knew it wasn't from distress at what had happened to her pie. Very deliberately, Juno stepped away from April, took another spoonful of the lemon mixture, and put it in her mouth before coming over to kiss Nia. She then did the same and approached Alex, wrapping her hands around him. Her mouth tasted of sweet lemon, and by the time she pulled away from him, Alex's heart was thudding.