The Demon's Revenge (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 4) (2 page)

BOOK: The Demon's Revenge (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 4)
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“Wow. Really? Yeah I’m totally going to take my death-spell-throwing friend to visit her sweet wizard boyfriend. You do remember that
my
boyfriend, the awesome werewolf Adam, lives with Merlin, right? And that I don’t want him to get hurt? Anyway, they’re both out of town. Adam wouldn’t say why, but I’m fairly certain Merlin got tired of waiting around for you to shake it off. Merlin’s my friend, you know. He’s a really good guy, you know?”

“I know,” I said softly. Not that it mattered. I took another bite of sandwich. It tasted damn good.

“I’m going to go out and investigate it today, whether you help me or not.” She stood straighter and jutted her chin out.

“Stay,” I said. “Evil will still be there tomorrow. Take the day off. Stay with me and I will teach you things.”
I will watch you and be there when you transform.

Lila crossed her arms over her chest and got a stubborn look to her that I knew well. “No. I do not take the day off when people are in trouble. When something isn’t right with the unders of my city. Someone really smart taught me that.”

She leveled her gaze at me. I sighed and decided not to argue. Accompanying her on this quest seemed the only way to keep her in sight.

“Fine. I will shower and then we will be off to discern what is turning our unders evil, or perhaps just have a nice walk in the sun.”

“Really? You’re coming with me? Really?”

I nodded.

Lila gave me a strange look. “And look at you, smiling. You do realize it’s not fun that so many unders are going wonk-a-doo, right? You seem almost giddy, Morgan.”

The fact that my death day was finally here filled me with an odd happiness. “You have been complaining about my depression for months, dear girl.”

“Woman,” she called out to me as I walked to the bathroom. “And get all the stink off you, please.”

I showered for a good while, running soap along every inch of myself until I felt sleek and clean.

I toweled off and stood before my closet. So much life had passed before me. Too many years. Too many decisions. I felt overwhelmed, standing there one last time. Lila peeked in on me.

“Here,” she said, bounding in. She grabbed black leather pants that hugged my legs and a short-sleeved shirt that I’d sewn with plenty of hidden pockets for spells.

I had lived for too long in sweat pants and thin t-shirts, and it felt good to pull on the clothes Lila lay out for me.

She went to the top drawer of my dresser next and grabbed handfuls of spells for me. An amethyst truth-telling ring, a soapstone of befuddlement, along with a handful of exploding ball bearings, a smoke and mirrors crystal, and a beguiling mirror. All good spells to have on my person today.

I added a small chunk of peridot that I slipped into my hip pocket. It would let me and another teleport anywhere within the city. Lila and I could instantly go to her place of power: her studio, if needed. That was where she should transform.

Lila wordlessly left my room, and I turned to my floor length mirror and combed out my long, wet hair, before tying it back into a practical bun.

Then I pulled open my window shade and stared outside. It was an early summer’s day. I was fairly certain of that.

I zipped on the knee high boots that Lila had placed at the base of my bed and emerged from my room.

Lila looked me up and down. Relief flooded her face. “It’s so good to see the real Morgan again.” She gave me a long hug.

If tears filled my eyes, they did not fall. For today would be a death day, glorious and bright.

“So what now, Morgan le Fay?”

“Let us travel the witch’s road together,” I said.

 

 

 

 

 

3

The Witch’s Road

“The witch’s road? Is that some kind of secret hidden path that only witches can use that makes it so you can go somewhere really quick?” Lila asked as she pulled on her black fleece Patagonia and we stepped outside. “Or maybe the road is in some other witchy dimension full of chanting women and full moons? Or maybe, oh, this is totally it, it’s some road out on the peninsula that leads to a secret place for witches?”

“If you will breathe for a second and listen, I will tell you,” I said. The air outside was lovely: crisp and rich with the flowering scents of plants that battled each other for sunshine.

“Okay, but maybe it’s a

” She glanced at me and smiled. “Listening now. I’ve really missed you, Morgan.” Her hand slipped into mine and squeezed my fingers for a moment. She gave me a look like… like I mattered to her far more than she could say. I walked with long strides, and she fell in step beside me.

“The witch’s road,” I said, “Is not a place or a particular geography, but a witch’s way to spend the day wandering through forests and fields, roads and cities. All creatures of magic should take time to walk and see the world. We should let it envelop us to truly commune with the deep and subtle magic all around us. And so the witch’s road is a day of roaming and collecting, seeing and feeling wherever we go.”

“Okay, if you think this is the best way to get things done,” she said skeptically.

We walked away from the tangled garden of my front yard full of old wisteria and honeysuckle. The sidewalk was buckled from the roots of the old trees that grew down this block. When I’d first bought my house, they had been saplings. Now they were some of the oldest in the city.

“I’ve always liked going on long walks by myself,” Lila said. “I’ve always liked noticing the small changes all around me.”

I nodded. “You are a natural with magic. Continue walking, all your days. In particular, whenever things get hard.”

“Sure thing, boss.” She grinned.

I looked her up and down. She’d grown so much in the last seven years.

So much had changed since the day her mother had first found me and begged me to help her.

The door to Morgan’s Ephemera opened to the sound of chimes I had placed on the door. I looked up from where I was tying together bundles of Russian sage. The woman who walked in was not the average confused tourist nor the disaffected gothic teenager. She was a Middle Eastern woman with her hair tied up in a bun and striking eyes. She looked around the room furtively as she walked toward me. There was no one else in the store.

“I need your help,” she said.

“What are you looking for? Herbs? Charms?” I asked mildly, though I sensed she needed something more urgent.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” With a shaking hand, she handed me a ripped-open envelope. On the outside it read, Do not open until

.” The envelope was marked with today’s date. Inside was a slip of paper with one line on it, reading: Take this vial to Morgan le Fay. She will help you with Lila.

“You are her, aren’t you? You are Morgan le Fay? I have some friends… some, unders? That’s how you say it here, yes? They helped me find you. The message in the envelope says you will help? It’s written in my own handwriting, but I don’t remember writing it and I don’t know what it means.” She took a deep breath and stood up straighter. “You will help me.”

I put down the sage and studied this fearful woman who tried to command me. “Where would you like me to start?” I asked, committing to nothing.

She shook her head. “I have no idea.” Her mouth, lined with deep wrinkles of worry, opened a couple of times. No sound came out, as though there was some barrier within her that kept her from talking and perhaps from even knowing what she had to say. Interesting. I guessed there lay some sort of confusion or silencing spell upon her.

“This vial? You brought it with you?” I asked.

“Yes. I have no idea where it came from, or what it’s for, but I’ve taken it with me every time I’ve moved. My daughter, my husband, and I move often. I get these urges, these itches, that it’s time for us to leave, every year or two. It’s not fair on Lila, my daughter. Why am I telling you all this? Only, the note says you will help. I don’t know why I need help, but I feel like I do. Desperately.” She stopped talking as I took the vial from her outstretched hand.

I held the stoppered bottle of liquid up to the light. A viscous amber liquid lay within, flecked with bits of gold. Ever more interesting. I made two quick spells to probe its magical properties, and learned it was a time-limited counter-spell.

It was a slow day in the shop, inside of a slow decade and century. So even though the woman before me wore layers of trouble wrapped around her well-dressed body, I decided to see what this was about. Pandora and I have always liked boxes.

I locked the door and took some time to make and activate an impenetrable spell around us. Next I ordered her to drink the liquid in the vial.

Her hands shook as she scratched off the wax seal and held the edge of the vial to her lips. She drank it down in one long sip.

I watched her as the veil parted and knowing fell across her person. Her shoulders tensed. Her mouth became a flat line cutting across her face.

“No one and nothing will be able to hear whatever it is you have to tell me,” I said.

She nodded and spoke quickly. “I have thirty minutes to tell you everything you need to know. The spell on me, it keeps me from thinking, from even knowing, what my Lila is. From thinking about it….” She shook her head. “Where should I start?”

I waited.

“The beginning. I was a young and foolish girl. No one could tell me what to do or dissuade me from following my own passions. I was drawn to a man I met at a discotheque in Tehran. He was older and full of swagger and power. So much power. Being near him was like being near the sun. Warm yet blinding. Once I said yes to him, just one time. He would not ever allow me to say no. I was his, to do with as he pleased, and soon I was isolated and removed from my family or friends. From anyone I could confide in or get help from. He liked it like that. He had centuries of knowing how to break a girl like me down. How to own me. By the time he showed me the truth of his inner nature, I was dependent upon him in all ways and I could hardly think inside the palace of my own mind. I could hardly imagine a life or a day without him. He was cruel and kind, randomly via his own whims and moods and I was not his only girl, but I was his newest and so I was the one given lavish gifts for a time. Or beatings.” She paused and stared at me, searching for whether I was judging her.

I stared back at her. I was no stranger to men with power who used it poorly. I had once been caught beneath a cruel thumb. My own father had been a monster. Not literally, but true enough in its own right.

She nodded at me and continued. “The other girls

he always called us girls, even though some of us were in our sixties

we all avoided each other. He didn’t like us talking. Of having friends or communications with anyone but him. And so, three years into my life of living with him, when I found out I was pregnant, I had no one to speak to except him, and my belly clenched with the thought of him knowing. He was not anyone who should ever be around a baby. My instinct to protect the growing child was greater than my own self-preservation, and so, while he was gone, I went to the quarters of the oldest of my master’s girls and whispered to her what had happened. She did not believe me, and interrogated me heavily, sure that I had had dalliances with the help.”

“You hadn’t,” I said.

She nodded. “Yes. The fetus was his, even though no pregnancy between him and a woman had ever been known to occur. His kind are extremely rare and ancient. None of the women had ever heard of another of his kind being born.” She shook her head. “I wonder at that, at my ill fortune, or perhaps my luck, because my daughter, she is a wonder.” The woman’s face lit up for a moment, but then the clouds gathered back around her. “It was a lucky choice to go to the elder girl, for she had secret and clever ways of communicating with all the other girls and the outside world. They quickly came up with a plan for how I should flee. They knew, as well as I, that he should never be allowed to rear another creature such as he was, and if my child had any chance of not becoming a monster

” The woman’s voice cracked and she took in a deep breath. “Then I must flee.”

“And so you left,” I said, glancing at the clock. This was my one chance to get any information out of the woman. I was not at all committed to helping her child, but at the very least I wanted to hear the whole story.

“Yes, with the great sacrifices of those women, for I am sure none of them escaped his wrath, I was smuggled away and taken out of Iran. I traveled with a magician for a time, and he placed a binding spell upon me that would allow me to sense danger and flee it, never knowing why. This spell would also make it so that I would have no idea what Lila was, but that when she came of age, I would seek out the help necessary to continue to protect and prepare her for her future in ways I would not be able to do. The magician gave me the vial, and made me write the instructions upon the envelope. Then all of that troubled past disappeared and I was a single mother in a new country, not knowing English or having any family to help me out.” She paused and smiled inwardly. “You would think I would have been desperate and dreadfully unhappy, but I always felt, ever since Lila was born, boundlessly lucky. For all that a monster lies within her, she is good, Morgan. You will see that.”

BOOK: The Demon's Revenge (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 4)
12.95Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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