FIVE
Marquessa Green was beautiful in the way that only older women could be. You just didn't get that kind of elegance and confidence before you hit the mid-thirties. Her mahogany face with its honey highlights stared down at me with all the warmth and compassion that a woman with multitudinous grandchildren could have. The last time I had seen her, she had her salt and pepper hair, more pepper than salt, in the natural tight curls of a woman of African descent. Some capable fingers had coiled those into a series of complicated braids that formed a woven crown around her head. Someone had stuck some flowers in the crown too. I thought that was neat. More older women ought to wear flower crowns.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
I still couldn't answer. I managed, just barely, to let my head fall to the left and the right in a slow yet exaggerated 'no'.
“That bad, huh?” she asked. Her Appalachian voice was twice as thick as her granddaughter’s. “Seems 'bout right. Nearly got your soul ripped out of your body. Can't much think of anything that will hurt like that.”
My soul? If my body, still feeling like a hundred and thirty pounds of half-melted putty, had been capable, I would have shivered. As it was, I just sank a few more centimeters into the net of blankets and quilts that Jenny had tucked me into. I was grateful for it. I had been pretty cold.
“Alright,” Marquessa said, pulling up a large bag. The scent of herbs swarmed me, and I felt all the better for it. “Well then, let’s see what we can do.”
She began to hum a soft song with the tempo of a lullaby. Her hands, covered in an herbal cream, touched my brow.
“Jenny,” she said.
My best friend (and savior as far as I could tell) leaned over me. She placed a stone on my forehead. Magic radiated through me. Jenny started to hum too. Her song was different, but it seemed to mesh with Marquessa's. They placed another bit of cream and a stone on my lips, my throat, on my chest, solar plexus, belly, and over that place where period cramps happen. With each stone, I felt a little better.
I wasn't sure if this went on for minutes or hours. Time didn't seem to have a whole lot of meaning right then. I was just a body that felt half-formed and barely there, boneless and exhausted. I let them work their magic. I think, at some point, I slept. Because when I woke up, the stones were gone and I was feeling a whole lot better.
I sat up, which was definitely a step in the right direction. My head spun, and I felt weak, but I could move.
“Well, now,” Marquessa said. “There you are.”
I was in my grandmother's room, the big comfortable bed nested high with pillows and blankets. Marquessa, wearing a pair of comfortable pants and a loose shirt, looked me over. It was either really early or really late. I wasn't sure which I would have preferred.
“Mostly,” I said. “Thanks for...what you did.”
She waved a hand. “It was my pleasure. I'm sure you'll return the favor one day.”
I wasn't sure that I could, but if I could, I knew that I would. “Here's hoping I never have to. What the heck happened?”
“Your mother must have held on to a piece of you when you left. A hair or something similar. She bound herself to your dreams and, in so doing, tried to pull your soul from your body.”
I don't know why I was expecting a more complicated response, but there it was. “Oh.”
“I can assume she was going to pass your prophecy on to her other daughter.”
Yeah, I thought, that sounded about right. “Well, what can we do to stop that from happening again?”
Marquessa seemed to think that over. “Dream magic is not something I know very well. I will have to call a few people, see what I can do. Perhaps I should have been doing that, anyway. It was prideful, mayhap even foolish of me, to think that I and my granddaughter, would be enough to handle this. Foolish to think that a child would be born fast enough that the Order would never know until it was too late.”
If I had had it in me to be angry, I would have been, but I was too tired for that. “You know about the Order? What they wanted?”
She nodded. “I knew. That first night...when your mother appeared...I suspected, later...I knew.”
A tinge of anger flickered through me. “Maybe next time don't keep it a secret.”
She nodded. “You're right. I should have told you. For that, I am sorry.”
See, I thought to my mom. That's how you apologize. No excuses, no crap. Just a flat out 'I'm wrong.'
“Who will you call?”
Marquessa sighed. “Whoever will listen. There are only so many witches, but I will call the ones I know, and they will call the ones they know.”
“It sounds like an army.” I meant it as a joke, but the solemn face she gave me told me this was probably not a laughing matter. “That's a fun expression.”
“She attacked you, Lorena. That's an act of war if I ever heard one.”
She swung suddenly to standing. “The first thing you can do is revitalize the wards in this place. Its occupant has been gone too long.”
“Here I thought that you were going to send me back to the vampire house.”
She gave me a knowing smile. “If I thought you would stay there, I jus' might.”
She had a point there. I had absolutely no desire to stay at that place. While it had the kind of opulence that a lot of people might like to revel in, I couldn't help but feel a little overwhelmed there, though that might have more to do with the men than it had to do with my feelings on wealth. “Why do I get the feeling that you are leaving?”
She reached over and patted my cheek. “Many witches do not live where technology can touch. I'll have to travel a while. Be safe. Learn to protect yourself.”
She stood up slowly and looked back over her shoulder. “Dreams are a scary place, Lorena, even without magic involved.”
Her words made my skin tingle, and I wasn't sure why.
~~
Jenny had left me a note saying she'd be over when she got off of work. That I needed to rest. To stay indoors. I smirked. Was this what having a family was about? Not the trying to kill me so that a big fancy prophecy could work out how they wanted, but the caring about each other part? I hoped so. I liked that.
Rest, I thought. I could do that. I was a gamer and a nerd. Resting was something I knew how to do. I plopped myself down on the couch and pulled out some comics, re-read some DC to get into the mindset of being all powerful, and then decided it was time for video games. A couple hours later, I had died seven times and decided I might not be as great at this resting thing as I thought.
Marquessa was gathering a miniature army of witches. I had nearly had my soul sucked out. My dreams were no longer a safe place. And I was pretty sure I had seen Wei's eyes in my dreams. Ugh. Coming to my grandmother's was supposed to have made my life less complicated, not more so.
When it got dark, I made myself a sandwich. Someone, Jenny probably, had stocked my fridge with easy-to-make meals. I appreciated that. Complicated anything was just not what I wanted right now.
I had just taken my first bite of ham and swiss when I heard a cat meow. I blinked, suddenly remembering the sound of the cat in my dream. It had come right after the flash of eyes. I frowned at that. The feeling in the dream had been a good one, an empowering one. Besides, cats were cool. I set the sandwich down and did the most cliché thing in the world.
“Here, kitty kitty.”
I felt a tiny tug of magic. Not much. No more than a spider web’s worth of a tug. But when I looked up, a cat was sitting by my sandwich. At first glance, he (I was only guessing on the gender part) was sitting by my sandwich, sniffing regally at the bread. He was a gray tabby with a slender and long body and a tuft of white at his neck.
“Hello there.”
He turned his eyes on mine, and I went still. That cat wasn't real. Okay, I felt like it was there, but it wasn't really real. It was, if I was guessing right, a ghost. It flickered just a little as I focused on it. Like a gif that didn't quite match its loop.
It meowed at me again and sniffed at my sandwich.
“Ghost cat,” I said with a nod. “My life just gets weirder and weirder by the minute.”
In the grand scheme of things, a ghost cat eyeing my dinner was not the weirdest thing that had happened to me recently. Then again, I thought, if I was supposed to be a necromancer, maybe ghosts just showing up in my kitchen was a thing that was going to happen. That was possible. Here's hoping they all looked like this cat.
It decided that it didn't want my dinner and flopped over on the counter between the piece of dividing paper from the cheese and the knife that I had used to spread the mayo on the bread. Its tail flicked, and it stretched out, offering me a surprisingly plump belly to touch. I wondered if I could. I reached out, and my fingers met fur, soft and full but a little cold to the touch.
It purred, and I felt a little better for it.
“Well, kitty,” I said, plucking up my sandwich. “I'm gonna go read. Do you wanna join me?”
It eyed me for a moment. I shrugged, deciding that if it wanted to follow me, it would. I kinda liked the idea of having a ghost cat friend.
When I got back to my grandmother's room, it was already there.
“I guess that's a yes. You gonna guard me as I get better? Because I'm down for that.”
I plopped down, and it curled up on the pillow next to me, closing its eyes and stretching out its toes. I watched the ghost for a moment. Okay, right that moment, I wasn't positive that it was a ghost, but I was pretty sure, at least ninety-eight percent. The colors weren't quite right. I mean, he, and I were pretty sure he was a he, had the gray, white, and black colors of a tabby. The colors, however, were muted, as if the intensity had been turned down.
The feline seemed to breathe too. As I ate the first few bites of my sandwich, I watched the steady rise and fall of its middle, but I was almost positive that it wasn't alive. Not just because it had managed to teleport from the kitchen to the bedroom, but because of my own magical skill. The presence of the cat was a weight in my mind, and a comforting one at that. It stretched again, and the collar around its neck twinkled.
I reached out and turned the little name tag until I could read what was written there. Maahes, the letters spelled. I frowned. That was an odd name. But the address below was familiar. It was my grandmother's address. Had this, once upon a time, been my grandmother's cat? Maybe. It would explain why it was hanging around here. I gave the feline's chin a scratch. It purred in response, and I decided I now had a ghost friend. I queued up a novel on an app on my smart phone. I was just getting to the good part when I heard a knock on my grandmother's door.
My heart hammered inside of my chest. The cat didn't budge. So much for a guard pet. There was a part of me that wanted nothing more than to pull the blankets up to my chin and pretend like I wasn't there. I shook, and sweat appeared on my skin. I went from being relaxed to being afraid for my life in two point three seconds.
“Lorena?”
It was Wei's voice. I didn't relax exactly, but I felt a little less afraid for my life.
“Wei?” I asked. I had to ask it twice because the first time it came out as a choked whisper. “What are you doing here?”
“I. wanted to speak with you.”
It was quite nearly a speech as far as Wei was concerned, no matter how bluntly he said it. I opened the door, and there he stood.
Wei was never going to have Alan's elegance, or Dmitri's fiery charisma, but he had his own kind of beauty, and I had to admit that I was drawn to it. His long sheet of pitch black hair was pulled into a thick braid. It hung over one shoulder, making a line of black over the sapphire blue of the shirt he wore. I was almost positive it was made of silk; it had that particular sheen. His dark slacks had a quality to them, the kind that whispered wealth rather than screamed it the way some wealthy people's clothes did. Not that I had a lot of experience with the high class, but, thanks to Jenny, I was learning more about fashion.
"What did you want to talk about?" I asked, leaning against the door frame. I should have told him to go away, but I couldn't. In the time that I had known Wei, he had never come to me for anything, and I was curious about what he had to say.
"May I come in?" he asked.
I shrugged and stepped back. "Sure. Come on in. Meet the ghost cat?"
He frowned. "Ghost cat?"
Maahes was sitting on the arm of my grandmother's floral easy chair. His bright eyes blinked solemnly as Wei walked into the living room. For a moment, I wondered whether or not Wei could even see the cat, and then he held out one hand towards the feline. The cat sniffed and then bumped his head against Wei's fingers.
"You make interesting friends."
I smirked. "More and more every day." I sat down on the couch. Maahes jumped down and sauntered over to me. "What did you want to talk about?"
He stood there quietly for a moment. The sun, just barely set, was still letting off just enough sunlight that shadows played across his handsome features. He was looking down, rather than at me.
"I wanted to apologize."
Wow, I thought to myself, everyone just wanted to apologize to me today: my mother, Marquessa, and now Wei. Must be some kind of planetary alignment thing. "Take a number."
"What?"
I shook my head. "Bad joke, never mind. What did you want to apologize for?"
"For...what happened...between us."
Jeez. If this was how Wei said he was sorry for something, it was going to take forever to get through.
"For which part?" I asked. "For the wild make out session? For you eyeballing my throat like it was a tasty, tasty treat? Or for running away from me and leaving me with a throbbing case of blue-ovaries?"
He jerked his head up. "Blue...ovaries?"
I shrugged. "I figure if guys can say they get blue balls without there being any scientific evidence to back it up, I can claim blue ovaries. I mean, I don't know if you have a clear memory of what happened in that big old bed, but it was getting pretty hot and heavy. Then, you left me high and dry. Well...okay...not exactly dry, but-"
He made a sound that was somewhere between a snort of surprise and a choked laugh. It was an impressive sound.
"You baffle me."
I shrugged. "I bet you say that to all the girls."
He sighed and finally took a seat. "I want to explain my actions."
"I could handle an explanation."
Rather than launch into that, he sat there in the ever-growing darkness. His hands were flat on the arm rests; I could see bits of the flower design through his broad fingers. For a moment, just a moment, all I could do was remember how good his hands had felt. The way he had kissed. The way I had arched to his hand. I shivered.
"Lorena."
"Yes?"
"Whatever you are thinking about...please stop."
I blushed. Well, that answered the question about how good a vampire's senses were. I didn't bother to reach for a light. I had no desire to show him the depth of the blush on my cheeks.
"Sorry."
"It's...fine."
Another long lapse of silence.
"So, before I begin to think lecherous thoughts and embarrass us any further, how about you tell me what happened?"
He blew out a long breath. "I was married once."
I blinked. I wasn't sure what I had expected to hear from him, but that certainly hadn't been it. "Oh." I fought a tinge of unexpected jealousy that cropped up inside me. "What happened?"
He splayed his fingers further apart, revealing more of the pattern. "Marriages were different when I was alive. My bride was chosen for me."
"An arranged marriage?" I asked. I didn't know that they had done that in China. Then again, I was assuming he was Chinese. Shame on me.
He shook his head. "Not exactly. It was not as if I would have no say in who I married. But our parents were very involved in the match. After all, this woman would be the vessel of their legacy, their continued honor. It was very important that she be everything that they desired for me."
"What about love?" I asked, knowing how naive it sounded.
His smile was bitter. "Love was...not important. But the process was complicated: who her parents were, who mine were, when we were born, what skills we both had, whether or not the relationship might bear a son. I do not wish to bore you with the details, but my parents chose a girl that I... did not enjoy."
I drew Maahes into my lap, desperate for something to do with my hands. "I'm sorry." I said it quietly. I don't think he heard me.
"Her name was Jiaya. She was pretty enough, I suppose, and polite enough. But she had no mind of her own. I have always been partial to a woman who speaks her mind." His eyes glanced up to meet mine. I didn't need to say the obvious, but I found myself smiling at him anyway.
"Yes. But she was very quiet. Very meek. It was not some great fault, but I made it into one. I slowly began to hate everything that she said. We would sit for long hours, and she would do her best to try to please me with conversation, but...but I did not like her very much. I am ashamed to admit that I did not treat her well. She tried. She tried very hard to win my affection, even my attention, and I had already decided that she could never have it. My own stubbornness trapped us in an unhappy union."
I could see it, I realized. I could see this little bride with a shy smile and bright eyes looking at Wei, so handsome and proud, and thinking that she had won the bridal lottery, only to be very disappointed because her handsome husband was also cold. I could also see Wei becoming more and more stubborn about her. Their parents had not chosen well.
"Then what?"
"She asked me to give her a child."
I didn't hold my breath, but it was a near thing. "Oh."
"She begged. She said if I could not bring myself to care for her, she would not seek it, but would I please give her a son to love and who might love her in return. She would even settle for a daughter, which, in those feudal days, was a great sacrifice. Just something to give her heart to. I hated her for asking me, but I could not bring myself to deny her. I... did my best..." he said. His own blush turned his cheeks a rosy bronze. "It was not a comfortable thing for either of us, but there was a child. A son. She was so proud. To be honest, I was proud too. We named him Gui and, like all parents, had great expectations of him."
"It sounds like everything was happy."
His hand clenched. "It should have been. It might have been. I don't know. Her happiness did not last. She became very...sad. Very distant. She did not want to feed the child. She alternated between wanting to love him and hating herself for being a terrible mother. I was, I admit, confused."
I swallowed. Postpartum depression was not a new thing, and it wasn't just something that happened in America. I knew that, logically, but imagining some ancient girl in feudal China going through it boggled my mind. "It happens."
He nodded. "I know. At least, I know that now. I didn't then. I just...I hated her more. Here was this child we created, and she wanted less and less to do with him every day. I got mad at her. I made things worse."
I wasn't sure that I wanted to hear the end of this story. It could not be going anywhere good. I continued to pet the cat, though it wasn't really doing any good for my growing anxiety.
"I had to leave the home for several days in order to take an examination. I had hoped to do well in order to make sure that my son might have a better life. It felt so good to be out of the home, away from Jaiya. I lingered. I met a widow who liked to speak her mind. I enjoyed her company. I should have gone back immediately. I never took the widow to bed, but I wished to. Then, I received a letter. It was from my mother. She told me that I must return home immediately. I knew; even before I returned, I knew what had happened. My bride had drowned our son."
"Oh my god."
He went very quiet. "She was so angry at me. So wild. She blamed me. She snapped at me and yelled at me and snarled at me. She was like some great tiger lashing out. It was the first time I had ever heard her speak her mind. She asked me how I could have expected her to love something that had come from a man as cold and angry as I was."
My heart sank all the way to my knees. I didn't like that Jaiya had said that. It left a bad taste in my mouth. You didn't have to love a father to love the kid...though it did help some things. "I'm so sorry, Wei."
"She waited just long enough to know that I had heard her words, and then she took a blade to her own throat."
"Oh my god."
He nodded. "Yes. I left my home after that. My parents had another son, young but warmer of heart. I traveled a great deal. Eventually, I met Vlad," he said with a note of finality.
"Wei, I'm so sorry that you went through that. It's...well, it sucks."
"It did. But I hope it explains some things to you."
I blinked at that. "Explains...what?"
He turned those liquid dark eyes on me, and they were filled with that cool superiority that I had grown to know so well. "Lorena, laying with you might...is expected...to create a child. How can I give another woman who does not love me that burden?"
Jesus. I took a deep breath and set the purring cat aside. Rather than just flop over or give me a sneer like a normal cat might have done, it disappeared. I hoped it wouldn't stay gone, but it was not my biggest concern now. I walked over to Wei, and then knelt in front of him, using a leftover pillow to cushion my knees.
"Wei, let's be honest here."
He eyed me warily. "About?"
"You care about me."
I wasn't willing to say that he loved me, but I was pretty sure that he did. Wei was a vampire. I was a necromancer. He might be able to sense when I was feeling all needy for his body, but I could sense what he was feeling too. He liked me a lot more than he was willing to admit.
"Lorena-"
"You care about me," I said, cutting him neatly off, "and I care about you. I won’t call what I feel love. It's not that. Not yet. But I care about you. I like your stubbornness. I like your rare smiles. And, dear god, I really liked how it felt when you put your hands all over me." I ran my hands up his thighs.
He made a sound. "Lorena!" He grabbed my wrists hard between his own.
"What?" I demanded as he pulled me back from his body.
"Do not pretend to feel what you don't."
"Who the heck says I'm pretending?" I demanded.
He gave me an angry look. If it had been Dmitri, I might have been afraid to see that simmering anger, but it wasn't. Wei I trusted to keep control of his emotions, even when those emotions raged. That was a pretty big thing as far as I was concerned.
"What of Alan?"
"Alan is in love with Dmitri, and even if he weren't, he's a little flamboyant for my personal tastes."
"Dmitri?"
I shook my head once. "Weirdly enough, the fear of him one day losing control and beasting out on me does not endear him to me."
"Zane?"
"Mr. Enigma?" I asked. "We've barely exchanged three words to one another. Why would I have feelings for him?"
Wei snarled at me. I jerked my hands out of his grasp. "I get that you have baggage because your first wife didn't handle you well, but that doesn't mean that you aren't able to be loved."
He frowned at me. "You don't love me. You said so."
I glared at him. "You haven't actually given me a chance. But even with that being said...everything that I have learned, I have loved. Even knowing about your son and your ex. Even knowing how stupidly stubborn you can be. How you like to hide all of your feelings behind this mask of cool distance. If you gave me half a chance, Wei, I would absolutely love you, but you are too damn afraid to accept that.”
I felt angry, and I didn't even know why. I hadn't realized just how deep my feelings for the taciturn vampire went until right this moment. Was I crazy for feeling this way? Probably a little. But here I was.
He tried to step away, but I grabbed his wrist. He used some fancy martial arts move to pull away from me, but I was better than that. Up until this week, I had been training with Wei three nights a week; I knew how to read his movements. I stepped up with him, and the next thing I knew, we were sparring. His heart wasn't in it though. I might be a good learner, but I only had a month under my belt. He had a few centuries and super human speed, but my magic gave me insight into his motions.
It still wasn't enough. I stumbled back and plopped down on the floor, but I grabbed his silken shirt and carried him with me. We rolled on the ground, and I straddled his hips. I felt him beneath me and reveled in the fact that he was, at the very least, half interested in being pinned beneath me. I ground myself against him, and he made a bestial sound in response.
“Lorena!”
“Wei,” I groaned, lowering my mouth to his. There was nothing light or gentle about this kiss. This was full of tongue and teeth and fire. I wanted him; I wanted him so badly that I burned for it.
His hands were quick as they tugged at my clothes, and all I wanted him to do was take me back to the bedroom. Heck, I was pretty much okay with just making it back to the couch. The floor, with its numerous scattered pillows, would have been a pretty good choice too, as far as my quickly waking libido was concerned.
His hands folded over my hips and hauled me closer to him. I could feel how much he wanted me. I was drowning in it, and I was so totally okay with that. I was ready, oh so ready.
And then Wei froze.
I think I said "no," but it might have been more of a growl. Scratch that. It was definitely more of a growl. He gripped my hands and held them still, and it was then that I heard it: the sound of a car pulling into the drive way. I blinked, wondering who or what could possibly be interrupting this moment. Then, I heard the sound of Jenny's laugh and remembered that she was supposed to be coming over.
"Jenny," I told him.
He put a full foot of distance between us, readjusting his silk shirt so that it didn't look like I had yanked it out of his pants.
"You should choose Zane," he said flatly.
I blinked. "Wait, what?"
"Zane will be a good father to your child, and a good partner to you. He is strong and he is capable."
I wanted to argue with him, but then he turned into smoke. One moment, he was there, beautiful and haughty and closed off from me. The next, he was a wisp of gray mist fleeing from my grandmother's house.
"Now, wait a minute!" I shouted, just as Jenny walked through the door, a wide-eyed Reikah in her wake.
"What's wrong?" Jenny asked, holding up several grease-laden bags of burgers and fries. "What happened?"
Reikah looked over her shoulder, her nose wrinkling prettily. "Vampire."
Jenny raised her brow and took stock of my appearance. I could only imagine what she saw. My hair was mussed, and not just from sleep. My pajamas weren't quite sitting right on my hips, and there was a clear flush on my cheeks.
"Did you mate the vampire?" Reikah wanted to know.
"Rude," Jenny said over her shoulder, "but did you?"
I slapped my palms over my face and flopped down into the chair that Wei had been sitting in before everything had gotten all handsy. "No... looks like it's blue ovaries again."
Jenny made a sound of sympathy and patted my shoulder. "Would some burgers and milkshakes help?"
I thought it over. While I would definitely prefer sinking my teeth into Wei right this moment, a burger was a close second.
"Alright."
“I do not eat meat,” Reikah said.
Jenny shot her a look. “Why didn't you tell me before now?”
"I did not know that I was going to be invited to dine with you. I believed I was here to teach wizardry. We should practice first," Reikah said. "It is the cusp of the later darkness, a good time to do magic."
Jenny rolled her eyes. "Any time is a good time for magic, but these fries, which aren't meat, will get cold, and weirdos are the only ones who like cold fries."
Reikah lifted her nose into the air. "Simply because you choose to practice magic with no sense of discipline does not mean that any time is a good time for magic. The day is separated into four parts. Dawn, noon, dusk, and midnight. The time between dusk and midnight is when you should begin casting spells for understanding and wisdom. I believe that our mutual friend could benefit from wisdom, do you not agree?"
I thought ‘friend’ was pushing it. I didn't dislike Reikah, and I was very aware that I probably owed her my life, which was a bond all on its own. But friend was someone that you could call whenever you needed to vent about life, and I'd never had the itch to tell Reikah about the deeper inner workings of being me.
"That's bull," Jenny said, plopping the bags onto the small kitchen table. "The whole idea that the time of day and the day of the week influence your magic is a bunch of superstition."
Reikah lifted one black brow. "It amuses me that a mountain witch attempts to lecture me on superstition."
Jenny's eyes took on a fire I had never seen before. "Sweetie, this mountain witch could kick your butt no matter the time of the day or the day of the week."
"Burgers," I said, reaching for the bags. "We are going to have burgers now. Then, you are going to explain what it is I am supposed to be getting wise about. Okay?"
The two women eyed one another for a long moment.
"Buuurgers," I coaxed. I really hoped it worked. "Come on. I can tell you about my new ghost friend while we are at it."
That got their attention. Jenny looked intrigued. Reikah looked suspicious.
"What ghost friend?"
"He's a cat. A gray tabby. The collar around his neck says Maahes."
Jenny's lips, painted a bright rosy bronze, spread into a big smile. "Awww, I had hoped he was around. Where is he?"
I shrugged and plopped down in one of the dining chairs. The other two girls followed suit, and I began to dish out burgers and fries to everyone. "I dunno. He decided to be discrete and disappeared not too long before Wei got to second base with me."
"Who is Maahes?" Reikah asked, offering a large chocolate shake to each of us.
I opened three ketchup packets and made a mountain to dip my fries in. "Well, after a quick look on Google, I can tell you that Maahes is an Egyptian god of war and protection, often depicted as a cat or a lion."
"He was Miz Loretta's cat, Lorena's grandma. He was around for forever, it seemed like. Long-bodied, great markings around the eyes. Good cat."
I felt a little twinge in my chest. "He was my grandmother's?" I had known that, or rather, I had guessed it. But hearing it come out of Jenny's mouth was a shock to my system.
I had never met my grandmother, but everywhere I turned, she had affected my life. When I was born, she had been the one to speak the prophecy, saying that the child that I gave birth to, via the blood of a son of Vlad, would bring magic back into the world. Magic, as I had learned, had slowly been dying away.
There were a lot of theories about why, but the most popular was that the ley lines, invisible highways of magic that wrapped around the world, were broken. How my offspring was supposed to go about fixing that, I hadn't the foggiest idea, but I was pretty cool with the idea of magic being a thing. Apparently, dragons might come back. I like dragons...well, in theory, I like dragons.
My grandmother, prophetess and witch of the Virginia Appalachians, had wanted to raise me. My father, whose exact reasons for taking me away were still a mystery to me, had decided to get me as far away from my grandmother as he could. Then again, I thought as I dipped one fry into a blob of ketchup, maybe he had just been trying to get me away from my creepy cultist mother. Jeez. I still don't know how those two had hooked up. Then again, does anyone ever really know why their parents are, or were, an item?
"All witches should have a companion," Reikah said, interrupting my thoughts.
"Do you?" I asked.
She pushed her nose into the air, a neat trick since she was already looking down her nose at us. "I am not a witch. I am an adept of the Order of-"
I rolled my eyes. "Yes, yes, I know, sacred hermit or whatever. So, what, adepts don't have animal companions?"
She sniffed as if I had said something bad. "It is...not our way."
"What is your way?" Jenny asked.
"We are practitioners of sorcery, not witchcraft. Ours is a finely-honed talent."
I sighed; I could already see Jenny's eyes flickering with emotion. I did not have it in me to referee a fight about the ins and outs of magic, especially since I really didn't see a huge difference between the two schools of thought here. "Okay, so, why are you here? I mean, I don't mean to sound crabby, but I wasn't expecting you."
Reikah lifted her brow again. "Indeed. Considering the state we found you in, you were not expecting anyone."
Jenny snorted a laugh, and I felt my cheeks go from their natural pink to candy apple red. I attempted several explanations before I gave up and took a bite from my burger. "I don't know if I am in love with the vampire, but I am in serious and deep lust."
Jenny shrugged, doing her best to look unruffled. "There ain't nothing wrong with some good old-fashioned lust."
Reikah responded, saying "Lust will distract. It is better to choose a male whom you trust to protect you."