It was Ash, stalking me up the stairs.
Holy crap.
I’d forgotten I was caught in their war.
And I’d forgotten Ash’s promise.
Clearly he’d seen Aidan drop me off after our date and the episode at the door.
Ack!
I didn’t say anything, just backed away slowly going up the stairs backward with one arm out to ward him off.
My shoulders slammed into the heavy wooden door at the top.
“Ash…” I whispered and there he was.
He didn’t utter a word, hardly made a sound. I don’t even know how he got there but, within moments, I was lifted up, pressed against the door by his hard torso, both of my legs straddling his hips, one of his hands on my ass, his other hand up my shirt, the cup of my bra pushed aside, his fingers at my breast doing things to my nipple that caused my hoo-hah to woo hoo! and his mouth, there is no other word for it, devouring mine.
I had one hand in his hair, the other yanking the shirt out of his jeans and I have to admit I was moaning and whimpering (just a bit).
(Okay, a lot.)
Holy Sexual Prowess Batman!
Everything flew out of my head.
Agatha Darling herself could have opened the door behind us and I would have said, “Just a sec,” shut it again and carried on with Ash.
All I could focus on was him, his mouth, his body, his hips (oh me), his fingers (oh my) and how it all felt.
Then I said it, (or moaned it, against his lips, no less), “Please, Ash,” all hungry, wanting, semi-begging, my nails digging into the sleek skin of his back under his shirt.
He growled into my mouth.
I felt that in my hoo-hah too.
I dropped my head, nibbled his neck then kissed him there, worried that I’d hurt him then I licked him…
Oh, you get the picture!
I’m a slut.
I admit it.
At that point, I didn’t care.
Who knows how I would have humiliated myself if it had gone on one second longer.
But then his fingers stopped, righted my bra and his hand slid down and around my waist. I lifted my head and he just held me, his forehead against mine, his breathing heavy.
“This can’t go on much longer,” he growled in a tone that scared the bejeezus out of me.
He was right, it couldn’t.
“This happens again, you’re mine,” he declared.
Holy crap.
My stomach plummeted.
In a good way and in a bad way.
Yikes!
He lowered me to the ground but I held on to his biceps. I wasn’t recovered yet.
“Ash,” I whispered.
He made another rumbly growl and kissed me again, laid a big, huge, deep one on me, just when I thought it was over.
“Quiet,” he muttered when he was done, resting his chin on top of my head and there we stood for the longest time.
Then finally he let me go and backed down a step, hooked his fist in my waistband and pulled me forward until I was eye-to-eye with him.
“I don’t know what you’re up to but I don’t like it,” he decreed (again growling).
Great.
He was getting all threatening again and there I was, standing there panting.
He kept growling (and being threatening). “If you carry on and I figure out what you’re doing and it’s the mess I think it is then I’m putting a stop to it and taking matters into my own hands.”
“Why are you always threatening me?” I asked, losing my sexy, making out with Ash vibe. “It isn’t necessary to threaten me. I think I’ve made it clear I’m quite capable of taking care of myself,” I reminded him.
“These aren’t threats, Mathilda; I’m saying it like it is. You have a couple of days to wrap up whatever it is your cooking up or I intervene, got me?”
I felt, at the look on his face and tone of his voice, that even though he was a big, arrogant, domineering, traitorous bastard, the best thing to do was give up on the bravado and agree.
So I nodded.
He gave me that clotted cream look again.
Man, I hated it when he did that.
Just as much as I loved it.
“And you best not let Seymour redeem any more of your vouchers or I’m ending this détente. Is that clear?”
Ack!
Détente?
This was détente?
I was screwed when it came down to war.
As in, literally.
Er, hmm.
And, mm.
I shook myself.
“Crystal.” I nodded again so he’d understand that I definitely understood and wasn’t actually thinking what I was thinking or what I couldn’t quit thinking.
Yikes!
“Fuck,” he swore, obviously the mind-meld letting him know where my thoughts had wandered and he wrapped his hand around my neck and pulled my head toward him for another shorter but no-less-hotter kiss.
Then he was gone.
I needed to get cracking or I was in some serious trouble.
Or, should I say, more serious trouble.
Ack!
Concentrate:
End the mind-meld.
Get Althea’s magic back.
And then home.
Or I “suffer” the consequences.
Ack!
6 October
Found it!
Of course, it was in the black magic books.
“Appropriating Magic”
Icky, dark, horrible magic that was, in practice, actually slicing the magic away from the soul of a witch.
Not nice.
You would not believe some of the bits that went into the ceremony.
I mean, exactly how would one go about gathering “excrement of yale”?
I mean, what the fuck is a “yale”?
Here goes:
Origins: from the Burning Times.
Covens would perform a ceremony to shroud an accused witch’s powers in hopes of saving her from the trials that she faced which, most of the time, led to death anyway. The trials were nonsense, the witch hunters wouldn’t have known what they were looking for if it bit them on the ass.
Which it could do if some magic leaked out of a witch under torture.
Once known as “black”, but now referred to with the politically correct, “dark” witches took the shrouding ceremony a bit further. After lots of not-so-nice experimentation, they’d hit on the formula.
By the way, this dark ceremony was borne from witches besotted by men who wished to be warlocks. The witches turned to the darkness in order to hold these men and empower them. Together, they’d trap a witch, usually a young, frail or old one and strip her magic to convey it onto the new warlock.
This magic was eventually absorbed back into nature as men couldn’t hold magic very long.
The same ceremony, with a few more icky components that included the blood drawn from live animals and more excrement and some bits of organs and the like, could be used to strip an oracle of her sight.
It was unheard of for a coven to carve the magic from one of their members.
So, Agatha Darling’s vile act was unprecedented.
There, I found it.
Now, I had to counteract it.
10 October
It was all planned.
I think I knew what I was doing.
Althea had to take us to Agatha’s alter and we would have to perform the antidote ceremony there.
Ack!
I was scared shitless.
It took a powerful coven to pull Althea’s power and sight away. We were having a hard time gathering all the ingredients and implements. How we were going to muster the power, I had no earthly clue.
Thank the goddess that Lucy had begun Wicca instruction under Fay. The Honeycutt Coven hadn’t taken on the training of a pure adult Tenderfoot since Fay’s mother talked Mavis’s mother into taking her in over 150 years ago (both were now retired in S
pain).
But for Fay’s Mama, there was a catch, all Irish people had a little bit of magic so you kinda weren’t allowed to turn them away.
Lucy was super lucky to be taken on.
(Yay! Glad she asked. Glad Mavis agreed.)
As tradition dictated, as Fay’s magic was the youngest, she started Lucy’s training.
Even at Tenderfoot, when she didn’t have a wand or a spark, we were still gonna have to use Lucy, feminine power was better than nothing at all.
So that meant we needed Josie too.
And Gabriel, for protection.
(Who, by the way, was expensive. Dratted mercenary vampire was sucking the lifeblood (read: savings for those Me&Ro earrings) out of me, no pun intended.)
We’d needed the whole posse if we had the slightest chance to succeed.
29 October
The time was right and we finally had our shit together.
We had all the ingredients and the implements for the antidote ceremony. Not to get back Althea’s sight (too gross to even contemplate and some of the items were illegal to own, even by Wiccan Law) but to get back her magic.
But even more importantly we had Josie’s fiancée visa.
Su, Viv, Josie and Lucy had also managed to send about a dozen boxes of Josie, Rory and my stuff to The States without being caught.
The protection spell on the house in Baker was mature and they were expanding it in a nice square from Broadway to Alameda to Santa Fe to Eighth.
The plane tickets were purchased (I could kiss Me&Ro good-bye).
And Viv had conjured cloaking spells for us from Somerset to Dover, across the channel and up to the outskirts of Orly Airport in Paris.
We figured Bristol, Gatwick and Heathrow would all be staked out so best to leave the country in order to flee the continent.
We were ostensibly having Girl’s Night In at Lucy’s house.
I knew both Aidan and Ash checked in on us during Girl’s Night In.
I considered giving them a sleeping draught but figured I’d rather not suffer the consequences if a) it didn’t work or b) it did and I was anywhere near either of them when they woke up.
Viv, Su and I worked together in the bathroom to create the cloaking spell that got us out the backdoor and into the waiting car that Gabriel was driving.
(Get this: a new, sleek, black Bentley. Yikes! Where did these boys find their cars?)
Althea met us on Castle Road, standing alone in her cloak next to The Corners (a fabulous old house where I would live if I didn’t already live in the oldest most fabulous house in town).
“All set?” I asked her when she shoved her way in with the rest of us.
“You know, girl, you could kill me if this doesn’t work.”
Ack!
“I know, don’t worry Althea, have a little faith,” I assured her.
Yeesh!
She grumbled but shut up and thus began the most sinister and alluring night of my life.
Dark Magic is seductive, everyone knows that.
It is warm and enthralling.
And it’s powerful.
And it’s dangerous.
White or Light Magic is from nature, from the earth and seas, the trees and flowers, the winds and rains, the sun and moon. It is night and day. It is a soft summer shower and a fierce hurricane. It is the gazelle and the lion. It comes from the pureness deep within you, your head, heart and womb. It is always good. But it can be perilous if used by those who are foolhardy or unschooled.
Dark Magic is also natural but human-bound.
Dark Magic is made of the things not of the earth or its precious populace. It is made from the weakness of woman and man.
Take Light Magic and twist it with the power of murder, the power of deception, the power of pain, the power of oppression, the power of fanaticism, the power of corruption, the power of greed, the power of decadence, the power of lust, the power of fear – all of which is all around us, all the time and one can succumb to it and let it overwhelm them or one can absorb it into oneself – then harness it and control it.
That is Dark Magic.
And that is what we used to get Althea’s magic back.
When we completed the ceremony, we were naked, sweating, panting and spent.
And can I say, a little grossed out yet turned on at the same time.
Ack!
And we watched in fascinated horror as Althea’s body regressed in age to that of a little, wee, innocent, weak babe and then she grew again, in mere moments and she became Althea again.
Then she exploded, or at least her aura did (which is kinda the same thing), shooting violent sparks of lime green and robin’s egg blue so brutally we all dove for cover.
Then it was over.
And we pulled ourselves up out of the grass, weakly circling her, depleted of energy and magic while she calmly took out her wand, zapped my cloak which lay several feet behind me so that it danced through the chill night air and wrapped itself around me, snug and warm. She did that for Viv then Su and with Lucy’s fleece and Josie’s trench coat.
She helped us to dress, gently, even lovingly. With swift blue and green flashes from her wand, she obliterated our tools and ingredients, our potions and vials, sending them, I’ve no doubt, to a plane where they will never be used again.
She then led us to the car where Gabriel was waiting (he’d given us privacy to perform the ceremony).
Gabriel and Althea helped us into the car.
When Althea got in last and buckled her belt, she said quietly, “Go gently, lad, you’ve got some delicate magic in this vehicle.”
And we went home.
* * * * *
I led the group to the house as Gabriel left us on Old Church Road for fear Ash or Aidan would see us. He was to take Lucy home.
Viv and Su split from us toward the footpath to come into The Gables from the greenhouse side. Josie and I took the driveway but split so she went in the front door and I headed to the back by the conservatory.
We were trying to divide attention so Ash and Aidan might find one or the other of us, but not all and most importantly not me.
But, as my luck would have it, Aidan was waiting for me in the conservatory.
Not… good… news.
I was exhausted, shattered, spent, drained and just plain old worn out.
I was dead on my feet, physically and emotionally and I didn’t have enough magic in me to extinguish a candle.
“Jesus,” was Aidan’s word when he saw me.
I was pretty sure my makeup had worn off too but that just proved it.
I offered a weak wave.
“Hey.”
But there he was, stalking me again. I couldn’t be bothered to back away so I didn’t. He grabbed me by my upper arms and it looked a lot like he was trying to stop himself from shaking me or something worse.
“I could just about –” he started, anger in his voice but stopped himself. “Matty,” he whispered crossly, “you’ve no idea what kind of fool you’ve been.”
Nice.
“We need to get you to bed and you need to stay in bed,” he ordered in a terse voice. “And get your mother to give you some of her healing brews.”
I nodded, too weak to talk.
He watched me do this then clipped, “Jesus, Matty.”
He walked me into the house taking a great deal of my weight most of the time and then eventually all of it as he slid an arm behind my knees and around my back and lifted me up. I draped my arm around his neck and let my head rest on his shoulder as he carried me into my rooms were both Su and Viv were already conked, sleeping the sleep of the dead.
He carefully lowered me to the floor, set me slightly to the side and then he opened the door to my bedroom.
And there stood Ash.
There was a little, kinda “zing” sound with a flash.
Followed very closely by this muted, revolting thud noise.
And then Aidan was falling and Ash moved forw
ard quickly, pushing the smoking gun into the back waistband of his jeans.
He bent low as he approached me and, with nothing left in me, I couldn’t avoid it when his shoulder hit my belly and he picked me up in a fireman’s hold.
And as he walked away, I had just enough energy to lift my head and watch the blood seep out of Aidan and all over the floor.
* * * * *
Note on above entry: Derived from residue of aura of Mathilda Guinevere Honeycutt. Aura read and recorded by Mavis Lillian Honeycutt, 30 October.
31 October
This entry written by Josephine McShane.
We’ve been contacted by High Priestess, Agatha Darling and the Edwards Coven.
This evening at “The Witching Hour” they’re performing “The Ceremony” on Mathilda to slice away her power.
After which they will give her, alive, to the Honeycutt Family in exchange for me.
If the Honeycutts do not turn me over, the Edwards Coven will sacrifice her life in a further Dark Ceremony to cement the powers they are transferring to a new Dark Lord.
I’ve demanded that this exchange go forward.
I’ve legally transferred custody of Rory to Mathilda.
No one will die for me.
I couldn’t raise my son knowing that they did.
My hope is that your next entry will be made by your mistress.
Please, God, answer that prayer.
Chapter Thirteen
Hallowe’en
Hallowe’en
(Witches’ New Year)
The Night the Veil between the Worlds is Weakest
* * * * *
I didn’t cry.
At least I can say I was proud of that.
But that wasn’t a lot to hold onto when visions of Aidan’s dead body kept popping into my brain.
* * * * *
I don’t know where they kept me. It didn’t have windows or furniture. The floor was wood. The walls were stone. There was an air mattress and a blanket.
Get this: at one point, they gave me half a French stick cut down the middle, smothered in margarine (euw) and tucked with too-cold brie and grapes and a bottle of Cranberry pressè.
What kind of prison food was that?
I ate it.
I needed my strength.
Twice, two men (with guns) and two women (with wands) took me from the room down an equally dark hall to a bathroom.