A Fine Necromance: A Paranormal Academy Series (A Witch Among Warlocks Book 3) Read online

  A Fine Necromance

  A Witch Among Warlocks Book Three

  Lidiya Foxglove

  Copyright © 2019 by Lidiya Foxglove

  Cover art © 2019 by https://www.deviantart.com/moonchild-ljilja

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  More Romantic Fantasy from Lidiya!

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Charlotte

  “Dad? Can I ask you something?”

  “You have some follow up questions about the birds and the bees? And the…foxes and the demons?”

  “Thanks for not making it weird.” I kicked him under the table.

  “Oh, I made it weird?” He finished off his beer, kicking me back.

  This was the proper ritual for making each other relax before we had some kind of Deep Talk. And I knew we needed to have one. We were finishing up one of the mediocre meat lovers pizza from the best pizza place in town, which wasn’t saying much, as we settled back into life together for the summer. It was hard for me, and he could tell. I just wasn’t the same person anymore, even though nothing at home had changed.

  Which was partly why I was pondering this question.

  I realized how much a person could change, how badly an old life could fit, no matter how much you loved it.

  “If I saved Mom from the demons, like…I mean…what would happen? Would you guys just get back to normal?”

  He smoothed his hand over his face. “I don’t know. How can I know? She’s the one who would have to…adjust.”

  “Yeah, I just wondered if you think she would.”

  He sighed. “I don’t know who she is anymore.”

  “Okay,” I said, a little tense.

  “I wonder sometimes if I ever knew,” he continued. “I’m a pretty simple guy. I knew there was a lot going on in her head. She was angry at her parents for denying her her magical background, and she was also scared of it. She knew there was a lot of danger in being a witch. So she was always—you know—running back and forth. Switching on and off. But when we got together, I didn’t know about all that yet. And she seemed happy. I thought she’d made up her mind. I thought she chose.”

  “You’re angry at her, aren’t you?” I asked.

  He never said so. Dad always gave Mom a pass. I knew he loved her and missed her. He made it sound like she was gone, but I always imagined that if she ever came back, he would welcome her. As a kid I used to envision her just showing up one day, and they would kiss and she would just move back in. But I was a kid, and kids have no sense of what is actually possible. I used to imagine I would be a movie star veterinarian Olympic skater.

  Of course, I turned out to be a witch, and maybe that was no less probable. But I also got a big wakeup call about how complicated life could be.

  “You don’t want to hear that stuff,” he said.

  “What? Dad, I’m old enough to understand that you’d be mad.”

  “I forgive her,” he said. “A part of me could never believe that she was mine in the first place.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like I said, I’m a normal guy. And nothing that special. Your mom was special.”

  I bristled. “You are too special!”

  “I don’t need to be.”

  “Are you glamorizing her?”

  “She was glamorous!” he said. “You’ve worn her dress. What kind of woman wears a dress like that? She fucking blew my mind, Charlotte. She was gorgeous and well-traveled. She’d hung out with famous rock bands. She was utterly fearless. I’d never met a woman who would walk alone downtown in cities I wouldn’t even dare be caught dead in after dark. When I found out she was a witch it made more sense, but that didn’t change what I thought about her. You know that your grandpa told me she was too good for me?”

  “No!” I smacked my hand on the table. “I never knew any of this, but it’s stupid. You’re a cool guy! You were a roadie for Angry Shirt!” I laughed a little, teasing him.

  He laughed at that. “I’ve never really talked about her much, I know. I was protecting you from the truth, and now it’s just habit, but…I glamorized her a little, yeah. I loved her more. It was love at first sight, if something like that exists.”

  “Aw. You met her at a Nine Inch Nails concert, right?”

  “Yeah, but she was there for the Jesus and Mary Chain. They were the opening act, I guess. I drove down for the concert and I don’t remember any of it because I got to talking to her out front beforehand, and I was just—stupid over her. She had a faint English accent, and she had this sort of French beatnik style going on. She always looked good, your mom. She was the kid of rock stars, so…” He shrugged. “I could just tell she was somebody. But it was also February and she was shivering.”

  “Did you offer her a coat?”

  “Oh yeah. Oldest trick in the book.” He raised his brows. “She had to stick close to me so she could give it back later.”

  “It’s weird,” I said. “I have such a hard time imagining her as glamorous. I’m not glamorous.”

  “You could be,” he said. “If she’d been around to show you that stuff.” He waved a hand. “That’s my fault. Sometimes I’d think about buying you a makeup kit or her favorite perfume for Christmas, but then I thought, am I sending you a bad message? You’re not her. I just got you video games instead.”

  Poor Dad. He was so cute. I could just imagine him wandering into the wilds of the makeup and perfume at the mall, picking up stuff up and putting it down. I liked that, in the end, he didn’t try to fill her shoes.

  “When did she tell you she was a witch? And how?”

  “She was really into this hippie stuff,” he said. “That’s what I thought at first. Yoga and crystals, stuff no one I knew was into back then, not in the south anyway. She was superstitious. She talked to birds and plants when we were out. I could tell she was feeling me out to see if I thought anything she said was strange. Actually, I sensed right away that there was something that really bothered her. She was in some kind of pain. For one thing, she was just traveling around—not in school. She seemed lost. She told me her family had ju
st moved to Australia and she wouldn’t say much more about them. It felt to me like she was looking for this place that didn’t exist.” He frowned. “But she didn’t tell me about magic until I said I wanted to have a kid.”

  “When was that?”

  “Just before we got married.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t expect that. They dated for six years before they got married. They were young when they met, and Dad was broke, and I knew my grandparents were a little weird about it. “So long?”

  “Well, I know how it is now. It’s not that hard a secret to keep. She rarely used magic. She let the whole magical world slip away from her. But when she got pregnant, she knew her child would have a familiar. She had to tell me. I still remember her hands shaking, and her voice shaking…it came pouring out of her. The magic, the family feuding, how she had four ‘dads’ and they were all werewolves…I thought she took some bad drugs at first.”

  I was quiet. I could imagine how hard it was. Mom must have felt so alone, I thought. I couldn’t blame Dad for thinking she was on something, but for her to bury all that for six years knowing she would alter his entire perspective of the world when she told him… And where were her parents during all this? I wondered. One of her werewolf dads appeared to me when I tried to summon her, and blurted out the truth about my family, but then she appeared instead, and he vanished.

  Even in that brief moment, I could tell he loved his daughter.

  If Master Blair was right, what destroyed her was the rules of the magical world, that banished my grandmother when she fell in love with the werewolves and led to a chain reaction that affected my mother and then me.

  Can I blame it all on that? But despite everything, I don’t want to team up with a demon…

  “It was so complicated,” Dad said, seeing the expression on my face. “I never wanted to tell you how difficult and confusing she could be, because I loved her anyway. I wanted you to love her like I did, more than I wanted you to be angry at her.”

  “Maybe I wanted to be angry at her.”

  “Yeah…” He shook his head. “Parenting is hard.”

  “I know.”

  “Really hard,” he added. “Don’t get pregnant.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not ready to be pregnant yet, don’t worry.”

  “Yet? Don’t scare me like that…”

  “You don’t want incubus grandbabies?” Now I squeezed his hand. “Don’t worry,” I repeated. “Anyway…I’ve just been thinking about it. Like, if I was able to save her, would you be overjoyed, or would it mess up your life?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But when you love someone, you don’t really care. I just want to know my Emily is safe even if it messes up my life. But—at the same time—you’re even more important to me. There is nothing more important to me than you, kid. You know that, right?”

  “We’ve always been there for each other,” I said. “I’ve made it halfway through school, at least.”

  But man, had I left a lot out. Like…I was honest with Dad about the fact that I was dating two guys at once, and I even didn’t deny that I was dating a third. But that seemed like more than enough to dump on him, so I hadn’t mentioned that we also agreed to defeat the Withered Lord with the help of a crew of vampires, nor had I even told him that the warlock and witches’ councils stormed the school and trapped Firian in fox form. Or that Master Blair had been born a woman and was removed from the school for covering that up, which didn’t seem to bode well for my future prospects there.

  Dad suddenly got up from his chair. “I’ll be right back. Feel free to start in on the ice cream.”

  I opened the freezer. Ooh, sweet. He didn’t just go store brand. He bought us pints with a fudge core.

  “You know, I lost seven pounds at school this year,” I yelled. “And now it’s going out the window!” I grabbed a spoon.

  He walked back in holding something small between his fingers. He held it out to me, but I already knew what it was.

  Mom’s silver ring, engraved with ‘Fares Wyrd as she must’ in teeny-tiny script.

  “I noticed you’ve been wearing rings,” he said. “Maybe you should have this one.”

  I flushed. Yeah, I definitely wasn’t going to mention those rings were how my guys communicated with each other about how often they’d had sex with me. When we said goodbye for the summer, I kept all that week’s ‘activity’ on my fingers, along with the ring Firian gave me the last time I saw him in his human form.

  I slid it on my finger. It fit better on my pointing finger than the ring finger.

  “I think her hands were a little bigger than yours,” he said. “She was taller.” He wrapped his hand around mine. “I know she would want you to have it. But I also know that my Emily wanted her daughter to be safe. She wouldn’t ask you to join up with a demon. So just…enjoy school and learn…whatever stuff peaceful witches learn.”

  “I’ll try.” I gave him a hug and we ate our ice cream while watching a standup special on Netflix, then I walked upstairs to my room, still staring at the ring. It was way too late to be safe, but I couldn’t tell Dad that. This was going to be a difficult summer. I wanted to be honest with him but I knew I couldn’t. He’d be so nervous for me. It was much better for him to think school was getting easier.

  “Firian,” I whispered.

  Firian materialized on my bed, looking downright cross as usual these days, golden eyes slitted as he rested his head down on his paws and glared at me. Who knew a fox could have so many facial expressions?

  “Can I cuddle you?”

  “No.”

  I did it anyway. I wrapped my hands around his neck and buried my face in his fur. He smelled like woodsmoke and forest. “Dad gave me Mom’s ring.” I showed him. “He talked about her more than he ever has before…”

  “Are you okay?” Firian asked.

  “No. Not really. Even if I save her from the Withered Lord, it’ll never be like it should be. I can’t even imagine what it would be like. Is she just going to…like…find a normal job and vacuum? Sleep in Dad’s bed? Talk to Grandma during holidays? How can things ever work out? And I might put myself in terrible danger working with these vampires and trying to take down a demon. But I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  Firian looked up at me and gave my cheek a small, comforting lick. I grinned at him, even as my heart shattered to look at him. I wanted his arms around me instead of my arms around him. I wanted more than that, too. But definitely not as a fox.

  “Well, first things first,” I said.

  “You need to train,” Firian said. “Didn’t Stuart give you a list?”

  “Yeah…” I was supposed to meditate outside for an hour every day, gather and analyze forest specimens, and Firian was going to help me work my way through a book he’d given me called “Training Wards for Defense” so we could practice tapping into Wyrd magic later. Both of us were born into using Ethereal magic, so it wouldn’t be easy. We would have to sneak by the wards put up by the faery kingdom who controlled Wyrd. This was getting into some deep stuff.

  Also, I was not supposed to turn on my computer or use any more electricity than necessary. And with Firian trapped as a fox, I wasn’t getting any action either.

  I sighed. “This is going to suck,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me how much your summer is going to suck,” Firian said. “I don’t even have thumbs.”

  Chapter Two

  Alec

  I couldn’t have been more different than my father, and I’d spent my whole life being ashamed of it.

  My dad was known world-wide as a maker of potions and tinctures. He was the last guy you would ever imagine to be seduced by a succubus, but those were exactly the sort of people who always did get seduced: the kind of person who buried themselves in their work and bottled up their sex drive, leaving them vulnerable to a weak moment when a gorgeous woman suddenly paid attention to them and offered to give them the night of their lives.

 
My poor dad was one of the unlucky ones, in that my mom decided he would be a good father for a child. While most wizards could keep their indiscretions private, my dad got a knock on his door in the middle of the night and opened it to find a bassinet with me in it and a note. I’m sure his reaction must have been something like, Oh shit.

  I’d always known that, too. I didn’t doubt that he loved me, but he was proud of me when I was a good student, and he was extremely embarrassed when I was sent home from school for ‘inappropriate behavior’. It was an all-boys school, of course, and that probably tempered the worst of it, but I was already putting out incubus charm and some of the boys were vulnerable to it.

  As I got old enough to understand, well, I was embarrassed too. The kids in my school were way too young for an incubus classmate. I didn’t understand my sex drive and neither did they. It was even worse if he tried to bring me to family gatherings or social events where girls were present.

  My familiar was the only thing that saved me at first. She was so shy she never appeared in human form or talked to anyone but me, but if I lost control, she would give me a spider bite. She wasn’t venomous to me, but it still hurt. At the same time, I kind of liked it. It turned me on that a girl was biting me. Yes. That is true. Even though she rarely even let me see her girl form. That’s how bad it was to be a damn incubus. I would have a sexual fantasy about anything.

  So my dad did some research into pattern magic and that was when I got my first tattoo. If I started feeling aroused I just had to trace my finger along the pattern inked on my arm and it calmed everything down. That got me through school without too much incident. I wanted so much for my dad not to regret that I’d been born, and for him to be proud of me. Over the years, I managed to get much better about repressing and hiding my incubus side.