Authors: Camilla Chafer
“That’s nice of him. It seems like forever...”
Kitty cut in, “Well, it doesn’t seem like nearly long enough ago for me. Oh, don’t get me wrong, not seeing you has been far too long, and I think we have a lot of catching up to do, but the less I think about what happened that day the better.”
I nodded in agreement, and then remembering she couldn’t see me, said, “When can you get here?”
“Sometime in the next couple of days I think. I have everything packed and all I need to do is turn on the engine. My leg aches a little so I’ll be taking it easy.”
“Great. Étoile is here, but there’s more than enough space for the four of us. Evan is staying too.”
“I can hardly wait to catch up. I want a blow-by-blow account of everything and, as a special bonus, for you, I’m going to bring some good weather with me. See you soon, honey.” Kitty was a weather witch. She had been learning how to control the elements when I first met her and I was certain she was responsible for the perfect weather where ever she went, not to mention the orchard that she once had enabled to grow despite the salty climes of ocean-side living.
“See you soon.” I hung up. Kitty’s imminent visit was the cherry on the icing on the cake. I felt the need to be surrounded by friends. I had Étoile, I had Annalise across the street. Kitty would be here within days. Seren and David may have gone, but I knew I would see them again. There was Evan who was here for me. And Gage; he would be my friend even if what I felt for him otherwise had to be tempered. I was surrounded by people I adored and people who wanted to be with me. Happy was a good feeling.
Even better, the happy vibes were waylaying the angst that had been sitting heavily on my shoulders since Georgia Thomas’ inauspicious visit. True to his word, Gage had kept up the offer of keeping watch and his wolves had been prowling the area for the last few days, except now they were less reticent about being seen by me. Much as I wanted to sit by the window and observe their wild behaviour, it felt strange doing so knowing that they were my neighbours and townsfolk. Evan and Étoile barely gave them a second glance at all, as if such beings were completely natural in their world. Thinking about it, they probably were.
Now the wolves were out in the open they had taken to howling in the woods all night and for a while they had kept me awake with them. I’d thought about stomping onto the porch as dawn broke, yelling ‘shut up!’ but it seemed arrogant to try and break them out of their natural state, especially when they were serving as protectors for me as well as being generally on the lookout for anything unusual in the area, anything that could be a threat to us. I’d just have to live with it.
When I finally went outdoors, there were still a few wolves, in their animal forms, milling around the porch of Gage and Annalise’s house. I was watching them when Gage came across, and they parted to allow him a path, then trotted on his heels to my porch before wheeling away again to the woods that bordered my land. I lost sight of them as they leaped through the scrub before bursting playfully back through in another spot, nipping at each other’s tails.
“How come they’re still like that?” I asked him. “You’re not.”
“We don’t just change at the full moon. Many of us can change whenever we want.”
“Ahh.”
Gage leant against the railings and watched them with me. “Besides it’s the weekend and they can just be themselves out here, especially now they don’t have to worry about you seeing them.”
“I’m sorry for disrupting the pack.”
“Don’t be. We have to hide from everyone so they understand. With your house stood empty for so long they had a free run of the land around here, but when you came we took a motion and agreed to stay off your property. It’s no problem at all that you’re here. If anything, a witch is more welcome than not.” Gage took a deep breath. “Though it has to be said they’re all anxious at the moment. All those witches created a huge surge of energy in the area. We hear rumours.”
“What kind of rumours?”
“That energy like that brings trouble, one way or another. You should be on your guard.”
I felt a chill travel through me. “On my guard against what?”
“Georgia Thomas, for one. Other witches, too. I’ve put feelers out to other packs to see what they report and what I hear isn’t good. Her coming here is bad news. You getting her attention is bad news, and there’s no telling if or when she’ll come back. She’s a powerful witch and she had rings run around her last night. I doubt she’ll have taken that well, at all. And, of course, there could be any number of other supernatural creatures... and those that want to harm us for just being us.”
“Like the Brotherhood?” I asked.
Gage nodded. “They’ll be attracted to the power, just as much as anything else, and just because they target witches, doesn’t mean they won’t come after the rest of us. You need to be prepared for that, you need to understand what it is to be part of this world, not just someone who got sucked in to it. You need to learn to defend yourself.”
“I have been learning,” I protested.
“Not enough. You need to demand to learn. You need to know how to protect yourself against werewolves – yes, even us – vampires, daemons and witches. You need to know what will work and what won’t. You need to know how to run, if you can’t fight.”
“I need to learn a lot, huh?” My shoulders fell a little. Everything he said was true of course. So far I’d been flying by the seat of my pants, performing magic – like Dina’s banishing – that I didn’t understand, rubbing shoulders with creatures I couldn’t even recognise. He was right. It had to stop. I had to accept that the protection extended to me could only go so far, and it wasn’t fair to take theirs – Gage’s, Evan’s, Étoile’s – without offering anything in return. “I don’t know how to do all that,” I said.
Gage’s jaw locked and I stabled myself for a furious answer at my apparent ineptitude but instead he said, “You’ve got teachers, make them teach you properly, and faster, and more intensively. You can train with the wolves here, but you’ll need to meet other supes to learn about them.”
“Won’t that just expose me?” It didn’t escape me that I had been hidden my whole life and that all that was now for nothing.
“The way I hear it, and I’ve been asking around, is that business with the witches council already exposed you. People know who you are, even if they don’t know where you are, but soon enough they’ll know that too. Georgia Thomas is pissed at you; other witches will see you as standing against her and possibly with them so they will want your power. Rumours will start about Chyler and Dina and there will be nothing you can do to stop them. Other supes will want to know want you can do for them, and you won’t know if they’re friend or foe.” I didn’t need to look at him to know how serious he was.
I let it sink in, before saying more to myself than to Gage, “Basically I’m in a world of shit.”
“Something like that.”
“Will we be safe here?” I liked Wilding. I liked the town and I liked my home. I’d done my absolute best to keep any magic I used to a minimum here, and my control was now in great condition, but I doubted that I was up to protecting myself against a legion. Not that Georgia Thomas had turned up with a legion, but my imagination was allowed a minor freak out. That she, or the Brotherhood, could force me into leaving, into running again, was something that didn’t sit well with me, and that was before I even factored in the danger that the town and its inhabitants could be in. I felt a brief moment of shame when I wondered if I should have helped Chyler at all. She seemed to have brought a lot of problems with her, and it was likely we would be left with the fallout. A daemon, a witch, two novice witches and a town of werewolves might not be enough to defeat a very angry, very powerful witch, or the sinister Brotherhood. I sincerely doubted we could deal with both, or more.
Gage shrugged. “We’re all on the lookout. If anything comes this way, we’ll know about it,” Gage said, which didn’t exactly answer my question. I wondered: if I pressed the point, would I like what I heard? He added, “You’re safer here than anywhere else.”
He turned back to me, ignoring the wolves sniffing around his house and chasing each other, nipping at tails. He nodded towards my house. “Is the daemon staying?”
“Yes,” I replied simply. We had some stuff to work through, but Evan was staying. We’d see what happened later. “Étoile is staying too, and my friend Kitty is coming.”
Gage frowned. “Is she a werecat?”
“A Katherine,” I clarified, in case he was thinking of eating her. “She’s a witch.”
Gage drew a lungful of air and rested his hands on my shoulders. “It’ll help that they’re here.” He moved closer to stand by me, so close my shoulders rubbed just above his elbows, so close I could feel his heat and draw in a lungful of that earthy scent of his. He looked down at me, and for a moment I thought I saw a flicker of sadness in his eyes. “I’m still your friend... even if I don’t want to be.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“You know what I mean. You know I don’t want to be just your friend.” He bent down and kissed my cheek and his head lingered there for a moment, his stubble brushing my cheek, while part of me wanted to turn my jaw that that extra inch to kiss him properly, firmly. But I didn’t and he drew back hesitantly. I couldn’t say anything else. I’d hurt him enough already by rejecting him and I couldn’t justify why I’d picked one fine man over another equally fine man. More to the point, it wouldn’t be fair, and Gage wouldn’t want to hear it. I rested my head against his chest for the briefest of moments and he wrapped his arms around me, sighing as he hugged me to him.
“See you around, Stella.” Gage untangled himself and loped off the porch. I couldn’t stand there and watch him go while my heart ached, so I turned my back and went inside. Just as I closed the door, I heard the sound of his motorbike’s engine roar into life and he thundered away.
For a moment my house seemed empty then I saw Evan had set up his laptop on the table in the small dining area off the living room. I’d uncovered it under a pile of dust covers in the unused sun room and he had carried it into the dining room and made it his makeshift desk. It was scrubbed pine and old and there had been a stack of matching chairs laid underneath it, like my parents had planned on getting rid of them but not gotten around to it. Evan had offered to help me sand it down and oil it so it would achieve a rustic sort of perfection. Until then, it was serving as a sort of office for him. He hadn’t told me much about his business, but it seemed he was able to coordinate things remotely and he’d mentioned having a loyal assistant whom was at his beck and call, for want of a better phrase. I was just grateful that he was able to be with me for now, especially with threats hanging over our heads like pointed swords.
“You okay?” he asked, taking in my thoughtful expression.
“I’m fine.”
“What did he want?” Evan nodded at the front door. I didn’t know if he and Gage would ever get to the point where they could have any kind of friendly relationship, or even a vaguely polite one, and I had to take some responsibility for that. But I wasn’t going to get in to that now, not when there were more important things at stake.
“He thinks all the witches being here has started something.”
Evan hesitated before he said, “I hate agreeing with him but he’s probably right.”
“So we should be worried?”
“No point worrying until something happens.”
I thought about what Gage had said. “You know the easiest way for me to protect myself is for you to teach me how to control what I can do. No more flukes. I need to be able to protect myself and if it comes down to it, I need to be able to stand up and fight, not be a hindrance to you or anyone else. Plus, I can’t make decisions when I don’t understand this world properly. If Gage is right, if something is coming here, I don’t want to run into something that I can’t recognise, and can’t fight.” I took a deep breath before I added, “I know you all want to protect me and I know I’m lucky, and I’m so grateful, but I need to be the best I can be. I need to be prepared for whatever is coming.”
Evan leant back in his chair, legs crossed. A moment later and I could feel the air behind me bristle as it was suddenly parted. I could feel the sudden heat of his body behind me as the chair in front of me still wobbled from his abrupt departure. He brushed a lock of hair back from my face with his hand as he whispered in my ear, “I’ll teach you everything I can.”
I let a broad, happy smile blossom on my face as I twisted to look at him. I still had to pinch myself that he was really staying. As I gazed into his delicious eyes, a familiar trickle of magic lit my skin, playful, at my command.
“You’ll have to catch me first,” I teased, and then I disappeared, the sound of Evan’s laughter swept along in my wake.
Stella Mayweather will be back in December 2011.
Sneak preview...
Witch hunters who will stop at nothing.
A deadly foe who wants revenge.
A secret supernatural world that is on the verge of revealing itself.
When a powerful surge of magic lures the supernatural community to Wilding, a town with a secret, Stella is caught in the middle between witch hunters who inexplicably want her, and a power-hungry witch who will do anything for revenge.
When her friend is kidnapped and used to lure her home to her birthplace, Stella’s powers are tested to the limit as she battles magic and trickery. But flight across the world brings as many questions as it does answers, and Stella can never be sure who is on her side and who will come out of the fight alive.
About the author
Camilla Chafer is an author and journalist who writes for newspapers, magazines and websites throughout the world. She is also the author/ editor of several non-fiction books and lives in London, UK.