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Chapter

“Are you certain?” Mel asked.

I nodded.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” she said.

“Mrowr!”

“I know, dear,” Mel told Felicity, “but we must take into account what Noah says he saw.” She turned to me. “Felicity’s glamour is well-practiced and her power is not minor — I can’t imagine any mundane being able to see through it.”

We were all gathered in Mel’s living room, except for Hannah and Brittany, who’d caught a ride back to the train station with a load of packages.

“Then he’s not a mundane,” I said, “because he was looking right at Felicity.”

“He’s a mundane,” Sam said. “I’ve seen him twice now — no shields, no resonants, only a little mana production, but more than a warlock. There’s nothing else he could be.”

All the witches nodded agreement.

“Glamour?” I asked, even though we’d been over this before.

“Pfft!”

Mel shook her head. “It would take a great deal of power to create a glamour capable of surpassing Felicity’s will. What would a creature with that much power be doing for a year in a mundane foster home?”

“He’s after Morgan,” I said.

“Why, though?” Morgan asked. “I mean, yeah, I’m a witch, I guess, but there are a lot of witches, right?”

“Maybe you’re a trinitara, too,” I suggested, then turned to Mel. “That would make her valuable, right?”

“Something with enough power to disguise it so well and see through Felicity’s glamour would be unlikely to have an interest in a witch so young as Morgan, even a trinitara.”

“Well, he’s clearly after more than the ass he was staring at.”

Morgan narrowed her eyes. “Something wrong with my ass?”

“What? No! It’s —” I sighed and closed my eyes. “This isn’t about your ass.”

“What is this Gabriel like?” Mel asked, saving me. “How does he behave?”

“He’s … creepy,” Morgan said. “Not scary, just icky. It’s not like he does things — it’s just a creepy vibe — he hasn’t really done anything. He even stopped listening to everybody’s phone conversations.”

“When?”

“Um, around the time we saw him following us.”

“That’s not suspicious at all,” I said.

“What else?”

“He … licks the peanut butter knife and then scoops more out of the jar with it?” Morgan shrugged. “He’s annoying as fuck, he seems to always be in the fucking hallway when I’m done with my showers, he stinks, he’s a stuck-up asshole — but he’s not some kind of supernatural creature. He’s a typical kid — he gets up, goes to school, he’s failing Algebra, for fuck’s sake.”

“Does he have any unusual habits?” Mel asked.

“He’s a high school boy,” Morgan said. “Everything’s unusual.”

“You said he stinks,” Mel said. “Of what?”

“Sometimes he’s just rank,” Morgan said. “It’s not like I hang around sniffing him. His roommate says it comes and goes — sometimes it’s hardly noticeable and sometimes Ken has to go downstairs and sleep on the couch.” She shrugged. “Ken said it smells like something crawled up his ass, died, then got stuck halfway being shit out.” She looked around at us. “It’s not my description, it’s Ken’s.” She frowned. “And he sleeps weird.”

“Weird how?”

“Ken says he just lays there and doesn’t move, and it’s a bitch to wake him up. He just closes his eyes and doesn’t move again until morning. Creeps Ken out.”

“Vampire?” I asked. They did the whole coffin-sleep thing, maybe? Can’t move much in a coffin — maybe it was a habit. “Jennifer said they were good at glamour.”

“Not that good,” Rachel said.

“And he goes out during the day all the time,” Morgan added, then shrugged. “I was sitting right there when Felicity hopped in the van, maybe the creep was looking at my feet or something.”

“You wear boots,” I said.

“Maybe he wants me to stomp on him or something,” Morgan said. “I just don’t believe he’s some super-magic guy who decided to secretly enter foster care to fuck with me. Sure, I can accept that I’m a witch — you all proved that to me — but I’m not some character in a fantasy novel. I’m just a kid whose parents didn’t want her and dropped her in a box.”

“But —”

“No, I’m not some fucking long-lost princess or some shit. It’s only a few weeks until my birthday, I’ve got finals at school to worry about, and I know you’ve all told me ‘mundane’ high school doesn’t matter to witches, but I want to graduate. I worked hard for that and I’m not going to let that little creep take it from me. And I’m not going to let him drive me out of there and get Alex and Karen in trouble.”

“Morgan —”

“No.”

Shit. That Morgan was just saying “no” and not arguing meant she’d made up her mind and it could take weeks of argument to get her off a stand she’d made that clear. This wasn’t something I could force as easily as French toast, and she made some good points — I thought I had, too, but without any proof I knew where Morgan was going at the end of the day.

I looked at Felicity.

“Can you do anything?”

“Something less than fatal for the mundane boy, Felicity,” Mel said, shaking her head.

“Mrowr.”

“She says she has to agree with Morgan — the boy is odd, disturbing even, but she’s seen no sign of him being anything other than a mundane.”

“Mrowr.”

“And she thinks he should see a doctor, as he does stink and it could be a sign of some cancers.”

“Silver linings,” Sam muttered.

“Could it be a sign of some freaky magic thing?”

Mel pursed her lips. At least she was taking this seriously enough to think about it.

“Of the things which would give off an odor like that, all would be very obvious.”

“Glamour?” I suggested again.

“None of those things would be able to cast such a glamour — not one that could deceive Felicity. One of you would likely have the strength of will to overcome it, in fact.” She frowned. “I’ll do some research, however. There are some odd traditions that might relate to the smell, but it would have to be a very powerful witch or warlock to make use of them and maintain a glamour that strong.”

At least Mel wasn’t blowing it off completely like Morgan was.

“Noah,” Morgan said, “I know how you worry, but this isn’t a thing. Gabriel’s a creep, but he’s never really done anything.”

“He followed us — and what about the guy he was with?”

Morgan shrugged. “Maybe he’s a male prostitute.”

“What?”

“He’s a creep — maybe he’s picking up money that way and the guy lived in that area. Coincidences happen.”

Chapter

“I was sort of expecting a Maypole or something,” I said, looking at the Willowmere Beltane festival setup.

I realized I was suddenly walking along the spellstick field’s sideline alone, so turned to see where the girls had gone. They’d stopped.

“We don’t do Maypoles,” Cassandra said.

“Nothing to do with Beltane,” Rachel added.

“Patriarchy plot,” Sam said.

“Patriarchy? Really?” I asked.

“Can you think of any other group who so obviously has the inadequacies necessary to try getting a bunch of young girls to run around a twenty-foot-tall dick? It’s clearly compensating for something.”

I shrugged. I didn’t know anything about Beltane, just that it was the beginning of May, and I’d seen a Maypole on TV once. “Okay — what are the giant piles of wood compensating for? Giant flaming boobs?”

On either side of the field, right at the center line, there were two huge piles of wood with about twenty feet between them. They separated the two ends of the field where there were tables being loaded with food and drinks at one end and a third, smaller, pile of wood at the other end.

Also, it wasn’t May first, it was April thirtieth, and the celebration was going to run from sunset today until sunset tomorrow. As Sam said, witches like to party.

“Flaming boobs would be —” Sam frowned, then shook her head. “The bonfires are about assholes.”

I started to ask what that meant, but the school announcement system pinged.

“Five minutes.”

Teachers, with either tablets or their phones in hand, were rushing around supervising last minute preparations. The sun was already behind the branches of the huge willow tree framed by the far end of the field.

“I’ll get the mead,” Sam said.

I nodded. Of course there was going to be mead.

“I’ll help you carry,” Hannah said, heading off with Sam for the drink tables.

“I hate Beltane,” Brittany grumbled as we stood around waiting, but she didn’t elaborate and there was too much going on for me to ask.

“Why?” Priscilla asked, then something seemed to happen, because it seemed like the whole school was coming to the food and drink end of the field, including all the teachers and support staff. Only a few were at the other end or moving around the sidelines, sometimes only straightening one of the unlit torches that lined the field’s sides, then hurrying to our end of the field with anxious glances over their shoulders at the sun behind the willow.

Sam and Hannah returned with mugs of mead and began passing them out, something it seemed like everybody was doing, because mugs were being taken from the tables as fast as they were filled, then passed from hand to hand until everybody had one.

Cassandra got one as well. When I’d questioned her weeks ago about wine with dinner at Mel’s, she’d just put a hand on her belly and said, “Witch.”

I don’t know if that meant, as a witch, she could keep the alcohol from getting to the baby, or, since the baby was a warlock, he needed to start building up his mead-tolerance early. I just know none of the witches were concerned about that.

“Okay,” Sam said. “Get ready.”

“Ready for what?” I asked.

“To drink.”

I nodded. “Ah, sip along with that whole blessing thing like at Samhain? Got it.”

“Nope,” Cassandra said. She was watching the willow tree, too — in fact, I think every eye but mine was on that tree and the sun behind it.

“That was Samhain,” Sam said. “Entering the end of the year — dark, old, somber. This is Spring.”

“Then what —”

“Just do what I say and you’ll be fine. Beltane’s fun.”

“Beltane sucks,” Brittany muttered.

Several things happened at once.

The last bits of the sun slipped under the horizon, the bonfires and torches roared to life, and every witch on the field chugged a mug of mead like they were frat guys at a kegger.

“Drink!” Sam ordered as her own mug hit her lips and her head went back.

I obeyed, not understanding why, and poured mead down my throat, trying to swallow fast enough, but some mead still ran out of the corners of my mouth and down my chin. I didn’t have time to wipe at it, though, because as soon as the last of the mead hit my mouth, Sam and Rachel grabbed my hands and started dragging me towards the bonfires along with everyone else.

“Shields up!” Cassandra yelled as we neared them, and it was clear why — those fires were hot, and the space between them was like the inside of an oven.

I strengthened my shields as we ran, trying to block the heat, but enough still made it through that my exposed skin went dry and tight.

Witches bumped into us and elbowed their way past others as they ran, some spinning or stumbling terrifyingly close to the flames, but it seemed like everyone’s shields were holding up okay.

We stumbled to a stop at the other end of the field where the others who’d made it through before us had turned to watch the rest of the school funnel through the gap.

Brittany was slapping at her clothes where a few spots were smoldering and I caught the scent of burning hair.

“I hate Beltane,” she repeated.

“What the hell?”

“Brit sucks at countering Fire,” Hannah said. “This is her first Beltane having to go between the fires.”

I wanted to ask more, but Sam grabbed my arm.

“Okay,” Sam panted, “you’ve had more important things to learn than Gaelic, so when the last of them come through the gap, flip off one of the bonfires and yell, ‘Go fuck yourselves, you ignorant assholes,’ okay?”

“No, that’s not okay,” I said, smart enough not to do something like that on Sam’s say-so.

“Do it!” Cassandra, Rachel, Priscilla, and … well it seemed like every witch within hearing distance yelled at me.

Just then, the last of the witches, it looked like the kitchen crew who’d been frantically filling mead mugs right up until the bonfires exploded, crossed over to our side of the field and hundreds of upraised fingers pointed at the bonfires.

“Go fuck yourselves, you ignorant assholes!” I obediently yelled.

It was drowned out by the girls’ shouts of: “Imeacht agus gabh sibh féin, a amadáin aineolacha!”

Then the party got rowdy.

*

After the shouting of insults and flipping of birds, came the dancing.

Music came from somewhere, and the whole school started dancing around the smaller bonfire at our current end of the field.

“What … the fuck … was that?” I asked, trying to keep up with the girls, because this dancing was going wild. Lots of jumping up and down and head twirling to send braids, pony tails, and loose hair snapping like whips. I was certain someone was going to lose an eye tonight.

“Beltane is about renewal and fertility,” Cassandra explained, bouncing up and down as feverishly as the rest of the witches.

Have I mentioned Cassandra’s breasts?

It was a magnificent sight.

So was Priscilla hopping around us grinning like a maniac — she looked like she really might just keep dancing all night and never want to stop.

“Do they bounce as good out of her shirt?” Sam asked.

“He’s never seen my boobs!” Priscilla paused long enough to look around at the witches staring at her. “Fuck!” she yelled, then resumed dancing and disappeared into the crowd.

I laughed along with everyone, because, before she turned away, Priscilla’s face had gone redder than any of the fires.

“So, Beltane?” I asked Sam. “About renewal and fertility and flipping off fires?”

“Was about renewal and fertility,” Sam corrected. “Then some asshole drove a herd of cattle between the bonfires and said it would protect from disease.” Sam whipped her head around so that her loose hair covered her face. “Pfft! Pfft! Fuck.” She stopped dancing long enough to part the veil of hair and pull random strands from her mouth. “Guess what came next?”

“Something about witches?” I guessed.

“Damn right, something about witches. They started saying the bonfires would protect against witches, which, given our history, is pretty fucking culturally insensitive, don’t you think?”

“So … you show them the bonfires won’t keep you away and tell them to go fuck themselves?”

Sam nodded and smiled. “You’re starting to get witchy. I’m proud of you.”

“It doesn’t really mean that,” Rachel said. “It’s more like ‘Be off and take yourselves with you, you ignorant fools.’”

“Close enough,” Sam said.

“I’m thirsty,” Brittany said, as she and Hannah bounced within range of us. “Anyone want to go get me a cup?”

“I’m thirsty, too,” I said. “Why don’t we all go get one?”

Hannah laughed, while Brittany pursed her lips. “It’s not funny.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Have you noticed where people are moving?” Hannah asked, nodding toward the food tables at the other side of the field.

Several witches were moving back and forth — some heading for the food, others returning to dancing — but they were all going between the bonfires. No one was taking the other routes, along the sidelines or even up into the bleachers, to avoid the heat.

“We have to go back between the fires?” I asked.

“Every time,” Brittany said, “and Curiosity sucks at Fire. We always get burned.”

“Insulting hundreds of years of ignorant villagers on each trip is optional,” Sam said, “but strongly encouraged.”

I chuckled. “I’ll get you some mead, Brittany — anybody else want anything?”

“A sandwich, too?” Brittany asked.

“No,” Hannah said. “No food in the dance area — Kim Carnegie brought a bunch of girls cake two years ago, and three witches nearly bit their tongues off trying to chew and dance at the same time. They spit blood on everybody. The senior girls will throw you into the fire if they see you with food over here.”

“I’m hungry and thirsty,” Brittany said, pouting. “Beltane sucks.”

“Why don’t you do your shield thing?” Cassandra asked me.

“What shield thing?” Brittany asked.

“The layering thing?” Sam asked. “I’m not traipsing back and forth every time Brittany wants a drink. Sorry, Brittany, but the bathrooms are that way, too, and I’ve seen you when you drink.”

“Not that,” Cassandra said. “The other shield thing.”

“What shield thing?” Brittany asked.

“Yeah,” I asked Cassandra. “What shield thing?”

Cassandra put a hand around her throat. “The shield thing? With the vampire?”

“Oh,” I said.

“What shield thing?” Brittany asked again.

“He can make a shield away from his body,” Cassandra said.

“Really?” Brittany asked. “How?”

“It’s a thing I can do.” I shrugged. “But I don’t think it would work. The vampire thing was, like, this big, but Brittany’s —”

Warning! Shouted my lizard-brain.

“Brittany’s an appropriately-sized and attractive witch.”

“You think I’m attractive?” Brittany asked.

“Uh … I…”

One day I’ll get used to being stared at by witches.

Not today.

I ignored Hannah’s look, because she was clearly begging me not to say anything particularly special, but was I supposed to lie? Go with something like, “All witches are beautiful?”

Fuck that. I liked Brittany. She deserved to hear what I actually thought.

“You’re gorgeous,” I told her.

“None of this is getting Brittany a sandwich,” Hannah said. “Brit, if you’re that hungry, just walk around on the sidelines, no one will say anything about it — a few other girls suck countering Fire, too.”

“But —”

“What about the dough man?” Sam asked.

“What?” Brittany asked.

“It’s his other shield-thing,” Sam explained.

“How many shield things do you have?” Brittany asked.

“Felicity told me he used to have trouble keeping his shields close to his body — he’d puff them out way away from him like the thing in those commercials.” Sam shrugged. “So inflate yourself and carry her.”

*

So that’s how I wound up princess-carrying Brittany between two bonfires so she could eat a sandwich.

Then back to resume dancing.

Repeating every time she felt the need for another mead, or to unload the previous mead, which was often — and I spent those trips stoically looking straight ahead, as not to meet Brittany’s eyes, because I could tell in my peripheral vision that she was giving me a “let’s stop here between two big fires and stare at each other for a while” look.

Hannah would kill me if I gave in to that look, no matter how much I wanted to. I thought Hannah had to be wrong about whether we could make some sort of deal with her Family, but she was right about Brittany being impulsive, and I wanted to have a decent handle on how to make it happen without things blowing up before I talked to her about it.

Oh, and there were four other witches at the party who also sucked at shielding from Fire and eventually got drunk enough to think, warlock or not, Brittany was on to something.

I went along with it because if they wanted me to carry them, then they weren’t afraid of me anymore, and none of them seemed to be trying to get me into a marking situation. They just giggled a lot.

It was a fun night, even if Sam and Cassandra did start insisting on chaperoning every non-Brittany trip to ensure I didn’t come out of the fire with a new sister for them.

Chapter

About a quarter of the witches didn’t make it to dawn.

They were in various heaps along the sidelines, with some laid out in the bleachers.

They weren’t tired … they were blackout drunk.

Just because witches could regulate their alcohol levels, didn’t mean they always did.

Especially not on Beltane, which was dedicated to The Maiden, after all.

It was still dark when the music started to fade and the witches’ frenzied dancing began to slow. Yeah, we’d been going all night, just taking breaks to eat and drink.

Rachel had been carefully tracking her mana production, trying to estimate what her numbers would be if she only had the one resonant still. Even with a conservative estimate, she managed about one Heartfire on all of us every forty-five minutes, which got us a lot of jealous looks from some of the sweating, exhausted witches. Even with the mead, I think her calculations were safe, because Coach Briarfield gave her a thumbs up as she was bouncing by us.

All the witches bounced well, but Coach Briarfield was probably the tallest witch on campus and did so with a particular presence that rivaled Cassandra’s.

The witches started walking back to the other end of the field for … yeah, mead.

Even with multiple Heartfires, I was so tired and full of mead that I stumbled carrying Brittany past the bonfires and almost fell. Those other Fire-deficient witches were on their own now, because no way was I going to do any more carrying than I needed to.

The bonfires were still going strong, even after all those hours, so I assumed magic was involved. Back at the mead tables, Prima Rosethorn handed me a full cup and I realized all the staff, including the teachers, had been trading off serving the food and mead all night so that all of them got equal time to celebrate — I had a hard time believing the night had gone that way at most of the Family celebrations.

What I saw now bore a very strong resemblance to the way the witches had prepared for sunset the night before — there was a scramble to get a full cup of mead into everyone’s hands, and the witches who had mead weren’t drinking more than a sip or two.

“Time to insult the villagers again?” I asked Sam.

“Ignorant villagers,” Sam said. “Not the nice ones — and, no, this one’s different.”

“So what do I do?”

“When everybody else does, hold your mead up and shout ‘Áthas!’ then drink!”

“Awus?”

“AW hus!” Sam yelled, which really wasn’t necessary, since the music had stopped, but was probably understandable, since that’s how we’d had to communicate all night.

“Áthas?”

“Yeah!”

I nodded and Sam grinned, then we were all staring to the east, back toward the administration building, which I assumed was to see the dawn, but the building was in the way — far in the distance, a soft glow of the coming dawn lit the horizon. Which I could see, because the administration building wasn’t there.

“What the —”

Sam elbowed me in the ribs. “Get ready!”

“But —”

Maybe it was an illusion? Sure, it could be, but it really did look as though the administration building really just wasn’t there — as though we were looking right through it, across the quad, and down the long, Willowmere driveway.

“Ready!”

A pinprick of something more than a glow showed and I was surrounded by drunk, sweaty witches raising their cups to the dawn and shouting, “Áthas!” at the top of their lungs.

I yelled and drained my cup along with them, a bit better at keeping it off my face now, after a few hours of practice.

“So what’s —”

I was trying to ask Rachel what I’d just yelled — for all I knew, I’d just called the Sun God an asshole or something like that — when the spellstick field exploded in purple flames ten feet high. Columns of swirling purple rose from everyone, including me, and a vibration ran through me that made me worried I was going to get shaken apart, no matter how good it felt. It was like Rachel’s Heartfire … trebled — no, more than that, much, much, more.

It was the most incredible thing I’d ever felt — and I was fucking three incredibly sexy witches on a daily basis. Well, sort of with Cassandra’s issues, but you get the point.

Everybody swayed and staggered, some fell, some stumbled into each other, grasping and swaying in a, not always successful, attempt to stay on their feet.

I caught Cassandra and staggered back a couple steps keeping us from falling, but Cassandra didn’t seem to care that she’d been one step away from falling on her still-bruised ass, and just laughed.

“Damn!” she yelled, shivering. “The Maiden’s in a good mood this year!”

Cassandra laughed again and spun away from me toward the mead tables, leaving me staring at Rachel.

“Rachel!” I called, spreading my hands. “Explain!”

And can you cast that spell? Because … damn.

I was still tingling and felt like I could dance until dusk again — which a lot of the witches seemed to agree with, because many of them were dashing back between the bonfires to where the music had restarted.

Rachel grinned, took a couple steps and launched herself into my arms, wrapping her legs around my waist and smushing her lips to mine. The taste of her lips was almost enough to distract me from the mead she’d just spilled down my back.

“We dance all night to honor The Maiden!” she yelled into my ear. “Áthas means Joy! We greet the dawn with joy and The Maiden blesses us — that was a strong one! She must be happy about something!”

“But what about the building —” I broke off as I pointed to the east, where the light of dawn was now shining around the completely visible administrative building.

“She who dances with the dawn,” Rachel said. “Nothing made by mortal hands can block The Maiden’s light from us on Beltane morn.” Rachel kissed me again, then dropped to the ground and dashed off for the food tables where Magistra Cassian was handing out breakfast sandwiches and even coffee.

I licked my lips, turning slowly in place to take in the scene of hundreds of witches, reenergized by their — our — Goddess, and now ready for hours more of celebration. Of joy.

Chapter

The day went much as the night — mead, dancing, food, with the addition of a bunch of other activities. Witches were playing tag, hide-and-seek, throwing water balloons — or balls of water without the balloons for those with enough water magic — and nearly everything else I could think of to do on a beautiful Spring day. It was more than fun, it was a celebration of pure, unadulterated joy.

The bonfires remained lit, but they’d been toned down, and the school staff was handing out metal sticks with hot dogs and marshmallows for the witches to roast around the fires — I wondered if that was something we’d missed all night.

We joined in some of the games and it was probably the most fun I’d had at Willowmere outside of bed. The witches were all drunk enough — either on mead or the Maiden’s Joy — to loosen up even around me. There was flirting, but it was playful, not serious, and none of my girls chased the others away, so it seemed I was right about that.

Not everyone was happy and friendly — Cassandra’s former cohort were taking their joy in stupid pranks, but the presence of teachers and staff, a lot of them joining in the games themselves, kept it to minor shit.

Lunch was a cookout, with hamburgers, hot dogs, and all the sides.

We ate sitting in a tight circle to one side of the field, then stretched out to relax.

Sam sat behind me and pulled my head into her lap to stroke my forehead, which was a great way to spend an early afternoon, and the others used me as a pillow — yeah, more than just Rachel and Cassandra — which made it even better.

Once we were all rested, we joined in the games again, which seemed to have morphed into some kind of combined game of hide-and-tag-and-dump-water — which I thought was a fine idea, given the number of witches wearing t-shirts. Once I joined though, the game changed once more, turning into one where the warlock was always “it” and the runners’ job was to lead him past the hiders who’d leap out and splash him from behind.

It was a blast and the only thing that could’ve made it better would have been for Morgan and Felicity to be there. I wondered if Felicity would be freaked out by the amount of water being thrown around.

Things slowed down as the day went on and I actually found myself alone for a while. Everyone had run off to do things and I guess they’d lost who was supposed to be keeping track of me and making sure I didn’t add any sisters — yeah, I had no doubt they were doing that.

I found some shade under the bleachers — I wasn’t the only one to be doing that, the place was pretty crowded — and leaned back against the flat side of one of the metal pieces holding up the benches above me.

“Hi!”

I jumped, having just barely closed my eyes, as Brittany plopped down beside me.

“Hi,” I chuckled.

“Where is everybody?”

I shrugged. “I’m sure they’ll show up.”

“Yeah, they will — so we’d better hurry.”

“Hurry?”

What would we need to hurry and finish before the other’s got back?

Hello, my dick said.

“To talk,” Brittany said, then frowned. “Why are you grinning like that?”

“Um, nothing. What do we have to talk about?”

Brittany rolled her eyes. “Hello?” She waved a hand at her head. “Precog?”

Oh, shit, Hannah’s gonna kill me.

“You’ve, ah … I thought yours wasn’t very strong.”

“It’s not nonexistent — and it works best for things close to me.”

I nodded. Great. Hannah was going to kill me twice.

I sighed. “So you know…?”

“How about you assume I know everything and we start talking from there?”

I shook my head. “Great.”

“If it makes you feel better, I haven’t seen any futures where Hannah kills you.”

“That’s comforting.”

“But she’s been talking to Sam a lot, so if she finds out we talked about this, you should probably start checking your underwear before you put it on.” She grinned. “Ribbit!”

I laughed. It also occurred to me that she might be playing me — saying she knew everything, when she just suspected something might be up, then waiting for me to spill details.

“So what’s your answer?”

Brittany’s jaw dropped. “You … just like that?”

I laughed again. “If you already know everything, then nothing I say will be new, right?”

Now Brittany laughed. “Clever.” She sobered and sighed. “Yes — but I can’t.”

I felt my heart leap, then fall off a bridge.

“Precog is huge for my Family, Noah. They’d sooner give up Hannah than me — and if it ever comes to where they do agree to give up one of us, I want you to promise you’ll make it be Hannah.”

That surprised me. “Why?”

“Onesies have less power to draw on, so we’re going to be told to grow our resonants fast. I’ve got it lucky — all they have to do is give me puzzles and stuff to take apart and Curiosity’s happy. Hannah’s not so lucky.”

“Oh,” I said, though it made me more determined than ever to find some way around this.

“At least she’ll have a lot of material to work with before they need to start generating more.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hello?” She waved a hand at me. “Hannah’s got more than one picture of you she’ll be staring at late into the night.”

“Really?” I didn’t even know Hannah had any pictures of me.

Brittany laughed. “Don’t tell her I told you that.”

“Sure.” I sighed. “So you haven’t seen any way?”

She shook her head. “No good ones.”

“There are bad ones?” I could see the futures where Hannah and Brittany didn’t join us being bad, but how could those where they did be bad?

Brittany nodded. “Not many, but some.”

“Like what?”

That got me a raised eyebrow. “You really want to know? How about the one where Felicity starts with the Family Head and works her way down?”

“Yeah, let’s avoid that one.”

“It’s past.”

“That’s a relief.”

This really sucked. I was still determined, but not hopeful.

“This sucks,” I said.

Brittany nodded. “Do you promise?”

“To pick Hannah if it ever comes to that?”

“Yeah.”

I wondered if Brittany had already seen some future where that choice was possible, but I didn’t ask.

“Yes, I promise.”

“Thank you.” Brittany sighed. “It’s not set in stone, you know.”

“That’s nice to know, but wouldn’t you have seen it if there was a way to change it?”

She shook her head. “It’s not like watching a movie or something — it’s more like feelings and still pictures. One after another and all mixed up, but I can sort of feel which ones are related. But it can change. Like when you and Cassandra got kidnapped — everything I saw was her getting hurt. Bad. No details, but really bad.” She paused and frowned. “I didn’t see you in any of them.”

“None?”

“Nope, not a single one. I was really worried when you went after her, because I thought — well, I thought it meant you were hurt before you got to her or something.” She bit her lip. “That’s not normal.”

“Me getting hurt?”

She snorted. “Not seeing someone who’s … central. This time, I saw Felicity getting really mad, and Sam calling every day, and even Melaina trying to talk to our Family — but not you.” She frowned again. “That’s weird.”

“Is it?”

“More than weird — in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a vision.” She shrugged. “I mean, it’s not like I get them that often, about one a month, and they’re usually small and simple, not like Cassandra getting attacked.”

“Small and simple like what?” I was pretty curious about how it worked — and not sure if it would be a good thing to have or not, depending on how easy it was to change things.

“Well, back in first semester I knew to check all our chairs for ketchup packets one lunch time.”

“Cassandra?”

Brittany nodded.

“So there could be something I can do, but you just haven’t seen it?”

“Yeah, maybe, but don’t go trying anything stupid, okay? And remember your promise.”

“Okay.”

That gave me some things to think about.

We sat in silence for a while, watching the remnants of what the games had evolved into through the bleachers, then I chuckled.

“That’s the Brittany I know — quiet.”

She tapped her head. “Curiosity.”

“I’d think that would make you ask even more questions.”

Brittany grinned. “I learned a long time ago that people like to talk — usually one question fills a lot of time. Any time I spend talking is time I can’t learn something. So it’s one question to get them started talking and not another one until they stop.”

I nodded. That made sense.

“Plus I have another thing.”

“Yeah?”

 “Yeah, not really a full Affinity, just something I’m good at. It’s called Willing Ear — it usually comes with the more empathic resonants, but sometimes with Curiosity. It sort of makes the people around me talk more. Sometimes I can focus it, but I only do that for silly stuff or if someone’s really upset and won’t talk about it.”

I kind of wished I’d known that a month ago and had Brittany use it on Cassandra.

Then something occurred to me.

“Yeah? You ever use it on me?”

Brittany stood suddenly, brushing dust off her butt. “I need another hamburger.”

She started walking away.

“Hey! Have you?”

She grinned back over her shoulder.

“Got you to tell me I’m gorgeous, didn’t I?”

Chapter

After sunset, the party was over and weary witches dragged their way back to the residence building, collecting leftovers from the food tables to take back to eat in peace. We stopped at the cottage to pick up some things and hit the gym showers. I wondered if we’d ever get the cottage done or if the girls would still be arguing about tile colors when we graduated.

I finished mine first and headed back — the girls were all standing with their heads bowed, letting the hot water stream over them, but I wanted to lay down and get the weight off my feet.

I did just that as soon as the door closed behind me, kicking off my shoes and crawling onto the couch-bed. I grabbed the remote from the shelf, really just the slightly elevated lip of the massive piece of furniture only a couple inches above the main floor of the room, and turned on the TV.

That was still running off an extension cord, as the girls were trying to decide where to put the electrical outlet for it. Sam, Brittany, and Priscilla were lobbying for midway up the wall so we could mount the TV there and not have any wires showing on the wall, while Cassandra, Rachel, and Hannah thought we should put it at the same height as other outlets, since future covens might not want their TV there and would wind up with an electrical outlet in the middle of the space.

We weren’t just setting up the cottage for ourselves for our time at Willowmere, but making design decisions for future covens, as well, and the girls were taking that seriously, especially since things like plumbing and electrical meant we were going to have to bring lines through the cottage’s stone foundation and walls.

Luckily, wifi had been easier, with Peter just extending a cable to the cottage and plugging in a router.

I watched about twenty minutes of mindless videos while I thought back on the events of the day. I might not have seen all the witches’ holidays yet, but Beltane was a strong contender for my favorite.

I looked up as the door clicked and Sam and Cassandra came in.

“Where’s Rachel?” I asked as they closed the door behind them.

“I sent her to one of the rec rooms for a while,” Sam said.

“Sent?”

“Yeah, she doesn’t need to be here for this.”

“This?” I asked, suddenly wary.

Both Sam and Cassandra were producing a lot of mana — primarily something I took for Determination, along with a whole variety of stuff that made me even more wary.

“I’m tired of being second,” Cassandra said.

“What? You’re not —”

“I am. We don’t have a high priestess, that’s fine, but I’m not First Witch either. I’m the second witch you bound and … is it true? Did you really not have sex before Samantha?”

It was true, but I thought the last four months had more than made up for it. I nodded.

“How? Just, how? How did you make it through high school without fucking half the school? I’ve seen the shows — mundane high school is a sexfest.”

“It really isn’t,” I told her, but I’d noticed the witches had a bit of a blind spot when it came to the difference between real mundane life and the TV shows and movies. So I probably wasn’t going to convince her of that, but I didn’t want her thinking I regretted it, either. “Honestly, I’m kind of glad I didn’t — I like the idea you all will be the only ones I do that with.”

“That’s exactly what I mean — how? How could you walk around saying stuff like that and not get your pants ripped off?”

“I honestly didn’t say things like that until I met you guys, so —”

“Dominus?”

“What?”

“You’re just confusing her more.”

I shut up and let Cassandra glare at me, which seemed a little unfair — I thought the things I’d just said would make her feel better.

“I’m not high priestess,” Cassandra said. “I’m not even First Witch, but I’m having the first baby, so that evens things up — but now I find out I’m just the second girl you’ve fucked — better to be two-hundredth, or something. At least then I wouldn’t be living with the first.”

Cassandra glared at Sam, who just shrugged — at least she wasn’t whistling and buffing her fingernails or something.

“I want to give you something she hasn’t. I want to be first at something so Samantha and I are even — shush! You don’t get to decide if we’re even or not, so I want to do this.” Cassandra looked at Sam. “And I want her to see it — know she had the chance to be first at that, too, but didn’t have the courage.”

That didn’t sound good — I looked closer at their mana production and my heart sank at the green threads growing in Cassandra and streaming toward her Malice resonant.

“Cassandra —”

“Dominus!”

“What?”

Sam looked at me for a long moment. “Cassandra and I talked it over. It’s okay.”

I still didn’t even know what “it” was. I trusted Sam, though I was also a little concerned because we’d just finished twenty-four hours of mead-fueled revelry.

“Are you two still drunk?”

“Of course we are,” Sam said. “I’m not giving up a good buzz when we don’t have classes tomorrow.”

I sighed. “Maybe we should —”

Sam groaned and Cassandra rolled her eyes.

“Dominus, we can sober up in twenty seconds if we want to — this is not an issue.”

Cassandra glared at me. “You do not want to turn this down.”

I looked at them for a moment.

“Okay, what are we doing?”

Cassandra smiled.

“Undress and lay down,” Cassandra whispered.

That instruction, in these circumstances, was something I think no man would ignore.

I undressed and laid down.

Cassandra crawled across the cushions, slid my legs apart, kneeling between them, and Sam knelt a few feet away.

Both girls had come back to the cottage in their pajamas — Cassandra in her usual nightgown, and Sam in a tank top and the wide-legged pajama shorts I liked because I could slide both hands up the legs easily.

With Cassandra between my legs, I was starting to get my hopes up, but still wasn’t sure what this had to do with Sam, then I looked closer at her mana production.

Sam kept surprising me. It was like every time I thought I understood her, another layer got peeled back to show even more complexity.

I could tell she hated the whole idea of this.

She was jealous of Cassandra for being the one to do this.

She was furious with herself for not doing it when she had the chance.

She was humiliated by the idea of watching it — being made to watch it.

Yet all of that was binding with her Lust and filling her resonant rather than being shed. It was as though all of those feelings were not only turning her on, but satisfying something even deeper.

“Are you sure?” I asked Cassandra, worried about whatever it was that was keeping us from having sex. “It won’t —”

“Just keep our resonants out of play and enjoy yourself. Maybe it’ll even help with other things — I do want to. Not just to be even, but because I — I just want to, okay? This is not something I should have to explain my reasoning on, believe me. Now shut up.”

Cassandra ran her palms up my thighs, sending shivers through me and giving me goose bumps.

I saw Cassandra look over at Sam and chuckle, so I looked too.

Sam had her eyes locked on my cock, pretty much ignoring everything else around her, but she did manage to get one hand into her panties to begin probing herself.

Aaaannndddd … I’m a sadistic bastard.

“Wait,” I said.

Cassandra’s eyes narrowed — she’d bent over and was holding the base of my dick to make it stand straight up, so I couldn’t see her nose, just the two narrowed eyes on either side of my shaft.

“You’re looking at me like this, and you say ‘wait?’”

I ignored her and studied Sam, making absolutely certain of everything I was seeing in her.

“Samantha.”

“Yes, Dominus?”

“Spread your legs.”

A slow smile spread across Sam’s face as her thighs spread, giving both Cassandra and I a much better view of her knuckles rubbing against the inside of her pajama shorts.

“Yes, Dominus.”

“Good girl.” I waited a beat for her smile to widen. “Now put your palms on your knees.”

Sam’s smile fell a little and her brow furrowed.

“Y—yes, Dominus,” she whispered, sliding her palms down her thighs in the reverse of what Cassandra had just done to me.

“Good girl.” I gathered a bit of mana and infused it with my intent. It wouldn’t take much, not between Sam and I, but Command always seemed to intensify things for her. “Now don’t move your hands or legs from that spot until I release you. And don’t look away.”

“Ooohhh, Dominus — fuck!”

I turned my gaze back to Cassandra, whose eyes were now wide.

She nodded to me, then whispered, “Respect,” before the world disappeared as she ran her tongue up my shaft and the warm, soft tunnel of her mouth engulfed me.

*

My eyes rolled so far back I was convinced the sparks I was seeing were my brain.

When I say “engulfed,” I mean engulfed. All of it. Every single fraction of an inch was inside her. Cassandra’s lips surrounded the base of my cock and her nose pressed into the soft flesh above it.

I had just a moment to try and process the sensation before it was gone and my groan of pleasure turned to one of yearning as the sensation withdrew, exposing my now wet cock to the chiller air. Cassandra exhaled and gulped in a deep breath.

Then the warmth was back, and I retained just enough sense to wonder where Cassandra was putting all of it, because I was pretty sure my dick was longer than her head was deep — but it didn’t matter anymore as the mystery was solved. Half my cock was suddenly squeezed then squeezed again in a rippling sensation running from midway up my cock to the tip.

Oh, Goddess, I’m past her mouth — that’s her swallowing around me. How does —

Ssshhhutttt uuuupppp! my dick yelled at me.

For once, I agreed with it.

I abandoned thought for the sensation as Cassandra tried to, and nearly did, drive me unconscious.

The sensations went on and on, with Cassandra using her mouth and hands to drive me right to the edge before changing her rhythm. I spared an occasional glance at Sam to be sure she was taking this okay, and … she was. In that very odd way I still wasn’t completely used to.

Cassandra’s movements became faster, alternating between the shallow, bobbing of her mouth on my cock’s head while one hand pumped the shaft and the other played with my balls, then taking me deep again.

I groaned, knowing I couldn’t take much more and reluctantly decided to give her some warning instead of surprising her — she hadn’t said how I should finish.

“Ca — Cassandra, I’m — going to —”

Her mouth disappeared from me and I opened my eyes to find her staring at me.

“So do it,” she said, then engulfed my cock again.

I threw my head back so far I thought I could probably see my own ass if I had the concentration left to open my eyes.

I reached down to put my hands on Cassandra’s head, because … Cassandra. I could see her pulling away as soon as I started coming or something. Maybe it was unfair, but there was a lot of history there, it would be the perfect mean thing to do right now, and she was filling Malice. My fingers on her hair seemed to drive her faster, as though she wanted to make it clear that she was doing this at her own direction, and my hands fell to my sides as I groaned.

As my spasms began, Cassandra’s tongue stroked my shaft and she stopped bobbing, taking me deep and swallowing over and over again, almost in time with the spurts of come I was filling her throat with.

My orgasm eventually ended, but Cassandra kept going, changing her pace and pressure to something gentler, sending shiver after shiver running through me from head to toe.

By the time she pulled her lips from me with an audible pop, I was gone, hardly able to move.

Cassandra took several deep breaths, then licked her lips. “I told you I was trained to keep a warlock compliant, didn’t I?”

“I … remember you saying something like that,” I mumbled.

Wait … if “trained” was that with…

“Oh, don’t you start shedding Jealousy at me,” Cassandra snapped. “We didn’t train with real … um, you know. And I certainly never did that for some stupid frat-asshole. Don’t worry, I’ll get better with practice.”

I didn’t get a chance to comment, because Cassandra’s mouth returned.

Slowly, softly, teasingly, she kept me hard through the very brief time I needed to recover and start shifting my hips with her movements to move things along again — then she stopped.

Cassandra turned her head to Sam. “That’s how you please a warlock.”

Sam whined, but Cassandra was already trailing kisses up my stomach, chest, and neck before whispering in my ear. “Be nice to her.”

Then she kissed my cheek and stood, walking to the door and leaving the cottage.

“Please, Dominus, please fuck me. I need you.”

I blinked away the pleasant fog Cassandra had left me in and got to my knees beside Sam.

Her whole body was trembling, eyes wide and pleading, shining with tears.

“Not yet,” I said, ignoring her whine. I reached my hand inside her panties — into soft, warm, sodden flesh, sliding my whole palm over the little nub at the top and drawing a long, low groan from Sam.

I leaned close and whispered, “I said you couldn’t move until I released you.” I started working my fingers faster. “Be sure to ask —”

“Please, Dominus, may I come, please!”

*

I pulled Sam closer to me and she mumbled something.

I’d been worried we wouldn’t have enough time for me to be properly nice to her, but once she started, Sam exhausted herself pretty quickly.

I tucked a bit of sweat-damp hair behind her ear. “I wasn’t really expecting you to ask for mercy after, what, six?”

Sam shivered. “It wasn’t … the number, it was the … intensity.”

“So why that?” I asked.

Sam sighed. “Another quiz?”

I chuckled. “Call it a debrief.”

“It’s … I’m mad at myself … for not.”

“So some kind of punishment?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah? Maybe? Then you had to go and add in some denial, which is just —” She shivered again. “Yeah. And before you ask, that’s probably because nobody gave a shit what I did when I was a kid, so it lets me know you care.”

“Really?”

“How the fuck should I know? You tell me — you think about why I do things more than I do.”

I chuckled. Maybe someday I’d understand it — or, maybe, understand my own satisfaction at the evening, at least.

Sam shivered again. “Is that … something you want from me?”

At first, I considered saying something like if Cassandra did it then it was okay if Sam didn’t like it, but that didn’t feel right — for me or Sam.

And, yeah, the idea of Sam, my first love, sucking on my cock, even if — especially if she didn’t want to, but was doing it anyway just to please me? Or, maybe, even to please herself, in that part of herself that longed to please me.

“Yes,” I said. “I want that from you.”

“At least you didn’t try to lie about it — that would have been fucking stupid. I want to, Dominus, I want to — it’s just … yuck.”

I chuckled.

“Dominus?”

“Yes?”

“I want to give you … everything. Everything. But there are some things, I just can’t on my own.” She turned her face to kiss my neck. “I need to know you want it enough, love me enough, to make me.”

I thought it wasn’t just the blowjob — without a doubt, I did want my first love’s, my first witch’s, lips around the shaft of my cock and to feel the pressure as I bottomed out against the back of her throat, just as I did in her pussy. But it was also despite … or, maybe, because of her not liking it, not wanting to. The knowledge that she really was just doing it to please me — or, that what pleasure she did get from it came from pleasing me.

“I need to think about that,” I told her.

Sam sighed. “Figures.”