SEVEN
On the plus side, I woke up the next morning in my own clothes and in the same place that I had fallen asleep. Someone had even pulled a blanket over my legs so that I stayed warm after the fireplace had gone cold. On the bad side, I hadn't moved all night, so my neck felt like someone was shoving a chisel into it. I sat up and tilted my head from one side to the other in the hopes of alleviating some of the pain.
A book clattered to the floor, and I recognized it as the one that Dmitri had been reading to me when I had zonked out next to him. A piece of paper fluttered to the ground. I picked it up and my cheeks went instantly pink.
It was a quick sketch of me done with a bit of charcoal. Expert fingers had captured my unconscious face as if I were some kind of sleeping beauty.
There was a quote down at the bottom of it. “I had seen the princess and let her lie there unawakened, because the happily ever after was damnably much work.”
I laughed and I wasn't even sure why, but it made me deliriously happy. A happy tingling started in my stomach, and warmed me all the way down to my toes. Oh no, I thought, I was totally crushing on Dmitri. Jeez. What the heck was wrong with me? One nice evening and already I was having squishy feelings about an immortal vampire.
Wait, I realized, they were totally immortal. Every last one of them. What the heck was I supposed to do? Fall in love and then grow old and die, while they remained perpetually perfect? That popped a hole in my balloon, and this time, I didn't have a grumpy vampire to blame for ruining my happy feelings. Great.
There was a very polite knock at the door and I blinked. “Uhh...yes?”
The door opened, and there stood Peter with a silver tray in one hand, and what looked like a fancy notecard in the other.
“Good morning, Miss.”
“Hey,” I said, drawing my legs up, feeling a little self-conscious. “Sorry, I didn't mean to fall asleep here. It just got...late.”
He smiled gently down at me. It was the kind of smile I had always imagined a good father ought to have. That sort of quirk of the lips that managed to say, without words, that everything was alright. “Do not fret. You are not the first of the house’s denizens to find comfort in front of the library fire. I have fixed you breakfast, or rather lunch.”
I winced. “Jeez, is it that late?”
“In fifteen minutes it will officially be after noon.”
It wasn't the latest that I had slept. I had worked closing shifts at the restaurant, but it was pretty close. “Wow, I'm sorry.”
He smiled again and placed the tray at the end of the couch. It was a cheese omelet , served with some kind of hash browns.
“I hope this is acceptable. I still am not well versed in your dietary requirements.”
“Oh,” I said, picking up the fancy fork, “I'm pretty easy. As long as it's not loaded with onions or nuts, I'll be happy. I don't like onions, unless it's French Onion Soup. God, I can never get enough of that. But I'm allergic to tree-nuts.”
“Understood.”
“But seriously, you don't have to wait on me. I'm not really...used to it.”
He shook his head. “I am more than happy to, Miss. It's been many years since I had anyone but vampires to wait upon, and they don't much appreciate my cooking.”
I frowned and took a bite of eggs so light and fluffy they were basically air, and perfectly melted cheese. This was something I could get accustomed to quickly. “I thought vampires could eat?”
“They can, but many choose not to. Master Wei still enjoys his teas, and Master Alan will eat any sweet I create, but I enjoy having someone actually depend upon my food. That is the way of Brownies, I'm afraid. It's our nature.”
There was a name I was familiar with. “The Fae?”
His eyes glittered. “You know of my kind?”
“Disney and I were buddies growing up. I know a little bit about that kind of thing. I know that Brownies are good fairies, and that they like to make things?”
“It is as good a definition of my people as any other I have seen. We like to care for the people that we enjoy the company of. We grow easily attached.”
“Are you attached to the guys?” I asked.
He bowed his head. “They have their own charms. Speaking of the Masters...” he passed the notecard to me.
The handwriting on it was fancy, with loops and swishes that would have been right at home in the font section of an invitation maker. Turned out that I was right on the mark, because it was definitely an invitation to dinner that night with Alan.
“Lovely Lorena,
Would you do me the great honor of attending dinner with me tonight? I promise that it will be a night beyond compare, worthy of your dreams.
Yours, Alan”
Wow, I thought, he certainly was full of himself. I wasn't a fan of empty arrogance. If someone could live up to their boasting, I could appreciate it, but most guys who promised the world could only be counted on to give a square mile of swamp.
I raised my brow. “Is he for real?” I muttered, taking another bite.
“Master Alan is most serious in his desire to impress.”
“I bet.” I wasn't sure that anything could match Dmitri's quiet flirtation, but whatever. I had made a promise to let them both try, and I was going to do my best to live up to that. In the meantime, I was going to practice magic. An idea struck me. “Hey, Peter? Is there a place that I could work on my witchy-ness? Somewhere that I won’t be a bother and that I won’t be bothered by accident?”
He thought about it for a moment. “I think I have just the place.”
I hurried up the rest of my breakfast and stood up. “Will you show me?”
He bowed his bald head again. “Absolutely.”
He let me gather up my shoes and the book and then lead me up some stairs and to a room on the furthest side of the house. The moment I saw it, I was in love. Unlike the rest of the house, there were big windows, big arching ones that were taller than I was. They flooded the entire room with warm natural light that brought out the warm tones in the wooden floor. The room was surprisingly empty, with only a chandelier in the very center of the ceiling.
“It's perfect. What was it?”
“It was a music room at one point in time, back when Master Zane was still in residence.”
“Who?” I asked.
“The fourth brother of the boys.”
“There's another one?” I asked. “Why hadn't I been told before?”
“He has been missing for quite some time. It is assumed that were he able to come back, he would have.”
It was the nicest way that I had ever heard “we think he's dead.” It made me feel a little sorry for the group. It had to be hard enough living forever, but losing someone you thought was always going to be there had to be even worse.
“That sucks.”
“Succinctly put, Miss. Will this do?”
“It's perfect.”
He left me alone to work on my magic. I went back down to my bedroom to shower and change, grab the books that Jenny had picked out for me, and my phone. I had a few texts from her, and one from my father. I responded to hers, but didn't bother with Dad's. What was there to say? I forgive you for lying to me my entire life? Nope. Not gonna happen.
I plopped myself down on the floor, opened my grandmother’s grimoire, and started to read.
“A witch,” it said, “can see into the world of magic. The name for this realm varies depending on the place and language of the practitioner, but I have always called it The Weave. The first task for any witch is to learn how to see it and become always aware of its presence.”
“Yeah,” I snorted, “that sounds easy enough.”
I folded my legs beneath me and scooted across the floor until I could rest my back against the wall. The book described relaxing one’s eyes until they were open, but asleep. This might have sounded strange to other people, but I had pretty much mastered that ability during math classes. I despised math.
“Okay, let's do this.”
I plopped my hands down on my knees and started to breathe deeply, pushing it all the way to the very bottom of my lungs, and then blowing it out as slowly as I was able. I did it again and again until I wasn't thinking about it anymore. I rested my head back on the wall and looked out the massive windows to what lay beyond.
They were gardens, I realized, massive ones. There was a small brick courtyard in the very center with a large fountain at its most northern point. The fountain fed into what looked to be a pond. Around all of that was a series of perfect circles with what must have been thirty different kinds of plants all snuggled up with one another. A breeze teased the leaves, making them dance and sway in the afternoon sunlight. I let my entire body rest, relaxing one part of me after another until I wasn't aware of anything but my mind.
I thought it was some trick of the light at first, a line of color across my vision. It was the softest shade of blue I had ever seen, almost silvery. It ran through the glass like a spider’s web, perfect, and yet pliant. I wanted to reach out for it. The moment that I thought it, it bent towards me, harkening to my unspoken command.
Suddenly, I could see a hundred other beams of light; not all of them were silvery. The ones that slipped through the wood were a lush brown, the ones in the leaves of the plants were verdant and thick. I knew that a squirrel was curling its gray body around one of the trees, even though I couldn't see him with my eyes. I could see the lines of deep brown magic coursing through him.
I looked down at myself and nearly gasped. My whole body was a series of spirals of what I assumed was The Weave. The cords of magic extended throughout my entire person, all in shades of copper and gold. Where the silver thread that extended from the window touched me, the spirals unfurled, jumping to touch the line of magic, sort of like those tesla ball things you saw in tech-shops. They combined, one line wrapping over the other until I couldn't tell where one started and one ended. Energy that I could almost taste built in that connection, and I was sure I could do something with it. What? I didn't know, but something.
I gave it a tug, using my hands to pull at something only I could see. At first nothing happened, just a hum along the skin, and then it shattered. Not the connection; I still held that in my hands, but the window exploded inwards as if someone had thrown a big rock through it. The thought was so real in my head that I immediately looked around for a slab of stone.
All I saw was glass.
It took me a full minute to realize that it had been me. I had broken the glass from all the way across the room.
A second later, Peter knocked on the door. I don't know how I knew it was Peter. It wasn't just that it was daytime, and I was pretty sure that he was the only one awake in the house besides myself, but I could...feel him. His magic was as rich as earth. I could almost smell herbs and spring dirt on the air as I turned towards the door.
“Yeah?” I called.
“Are you alright, Miss?” he pushed open the door, real concern coloring his face.
“Uhhh...I'm okay. The window? Not so much.”
He glanced at the pile of glass that decorated the wooden floor like shattered diamonds. An outside breeze pumped through the room, carrying with it the scent of autumn. I was surprised that the sunlight, which had been high in the sky when I had started this, was touching the horizon. How long had I been sitting there?
“I see.”
“I'm sorry,” I said suddenly, and the Weave faded from my vision. Peter looked like Peter, and there were no threads of magic everywhere. “Holy crap, I didn't mean to do that.”
He chuckled. “There is no use crying over spilt magic, Miss. I can clean this up.”
I blinked in surprise. “You can?”
“I am a Brownie. Tending the home is my gift.”
He held his hands out and the glass rose off of the floor. Another wave of his fingers and the shards all flew back into place, settling into the framework of the window. The pieces melted together as if they had never been broken in the first place.
“Holy crap,” I repeated.
“You will be able to do similar things...unless your magic is inherently destructive.”
I shrugged. I didn't know what my magic was other than unwieldy. “I...think that's enough for today.”
“As you wish, Miss.”