Battle of the Hexes Read online

  On the other hand, I felt like I couldn’t hold anyone’s hand because I felt watched. In the magical world, we had been discreet, but both vampires and demons were often polyamorous so it didn’t seem that strange either.

  We’re never going to be able to be honest in the real world. Like, never. If we ran a business and we ever let it slip that I was involved with all these guys, people would probably ban our business or something.

  My stomach plunged.

  We walked around for a little while, Mom and Dad ahead of us holding hands, eventually vanishing into a shop that sold jewelry and artwork, after reminding us to meet for our reservation at 7.

  “Does anyone else feel like we’re being watched?” Montague asked.

  “Yes,” Harris said. “And I expect we are.”

  “Oh?” I tensed. I felt like losing my magic had also put blinders on me; now they sensed something I didn’t.

  “Do you think the council would let us go without observation?” Harris said.

  “Are we in trouble?” I asked.

  “We killed that demon for them,” Montague said. “Maybe they’ll leave us alone if we don’t cause any trouble.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  I was relieved when we made it to dinner.

  “Your dad bought me earrings,” Mom whispered to me, showing me silver skulls in her ears. “I told him not to. He’s still broke as ever, isn’t he? But they’re pretty. I can’t believe that I forgot how much I missed him.”

  “I can hear you,” Dad said, shaking his head. “I’m not actually as broke ‘as ever’, I’m just dipping into Charlotte’s college fund.”

  The restaurant seemed like it was probably trash to Harris, while Dad’s budget was probably reaching. The tablecloths were white, and topped with candles, while he usually considered Cracker Barrel to be a hot ticket.

  “We have the private room reserved,” Dad told the hostess.

  “Of course! Come on,” the hostess said. “The rest of your party is already here.”

  Mom shot me a smile. I couldn’t tell if she was nervous.

  “Who?” I demanded. “Who?”

  The hostess led us past some couples and ordinary little families enjoying their super normal dinners, and opened a curtained French door into a private room, where we were immediately met with screams of joy.

  “Emily!”

  “Mum…!” Mom was immediately swarmed by a neatly dressed older woman and four men whom I could tell at first inhale actually smelled like werewolves, even though I barely knew what that smelled like, while Adia and Richard stood just a step back waiting their turn, but beaming at me.

  It’s real, I thought. It’s really real. I have a family.

  Chapter Two

  Charlotte

  All of a sudden, I had arms around me from all directions as Mom and my grandmother pulled me into an embrace and then I was piled on by my wolf grandfathers with their strangely familiar wolfish smell. It was like something I knew from my dreams, a woodsy, homelike scent.

  “My own granddaughter!”

  “Look at her—fucking look at her—she’s big. I keep thinking of her as a baby.”

  “She is an adult,” my grandfather Rhys said. He was the one I’d met before. The rest I didn’t know.

  “I know, but my brain can’t take it. And who’s this lot, eh?” The one who seemed to be the most loud-mouthed of the group sniffed around Montague and Alec, a little less so around Firian, and he finished with Harris. “Who’s this private school prick? You’re with them?”

  “I’m Harrison von Hapsburg Nicolescu, if you want to start a pissing match. I’m sorry I didn’t dress for the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “Harris, that’s my—grandpa…ish.” I didn’t know how to handle this.

  My grandfather laughed loudly, pointing at his ripped plaid suit like he appreciated the burn. “I like this one, he’s got a little mouth on ‘im.” Adia giggled nervously in the background while Mom wiped tears.

  “I missed you all so much,” she choked.

  “So these are your grandfathers,” my grandmother said. “Or your uncles, in a sense. It’s always been complicated. We spent a lot of time among the humans, so your mother called them her uncles, even Rhys, who is her blood father.”

  “We used to say we had a brother who died, who was the father,” said the fairest grandfather, who had an enigmatic smile. “No one ever seemed to think it strange that the rest of us were competing for the widow’s attention…”

  “At home I called them all ‘Dad’,” Mom said, smiling. “And they are.”

  “That seems like it still must have been hard to keep up,” I said, even as I thought there was no way I could pass my group off as brothers anyway, unless I said two of them were adopted. Tawny Firian and blonde Harris, both of them tall and thin, could have maybe been brothers despite very different facial features, but Montague looked so classically Spanish that sometimes just looking at him made me crave paella, and Alec’s darker skin and facial features reflected his (blackish?) mom more than his (whitish?) dad. Alec didn’t talk about his background anywhere near as much as Harris and Monty, so I wasn’t truly sure.

  “It was a lot easier to keep up back then,” Grandmother said. I had to think of her as ‘Grandmother’ because I already had a grandma, but she didn’t seem like the Nana type or any other variant. “Before the internet. It was also a very swinging lifestyle we were leading.”

  “I heard you guys were kinda…crazy,” I said.

  “Oh, were we ever. My god, the stories we could tell you would burn your ears off, wouldn’t they, Dick? So I’m your Great-Uncle Malcolm, then, I reckon—“ Grandpa Loudmouth took my hand in his and shook it.

  “Claude,” the blonde one said. “And this is Guy.”

  “We’ve met,” Rhys said, through a pen cap in his teeth. He was already sitting at the table writing things down.

  “It’s good to see you again too, Evan,” Claude said, everyone finally getting around to my dad, but he had always been a good background player, which I think is why he enjoyed a longer career as a roadie than as a musician.

  “Thanks, man, I hope you had a good flight,” Dad said. “I guess you’re used to it.”

  “We hate flying,” Rhys said. “Never get used to it. Wolves on a plane; defiance of nature. Hmm.” I saw him write ‘wolves on a plane, ain’t it insane? horses on ships, ain’t it a trip?’. Then he scratched that out and whispered, “No.”

  “David Bowie wouldn’t fly,” Dad said. “For years.”

  “Right, right, that’s true. Well, he was a changeling or something, no one ever said for sure, but just look at ‘im.”

  The mundane direction this was turning was both comforting and bizarre to me.

  “So…why are you here now?” I asked. “Is it because we defeated the Withered Lord?”

  “Yes,” Grandmother said. “You should never have done something so dangerous, but you were also wonderful. We knew that if we ever came to visit you, we would put a target on your back. I would much rather you had a long and happy life without us than a short and tragic one with us. But your mother’s friends, well, they did get you involved. Maybe I shouldn’t have protected you because you handled it so well, but that still just isn’t something parents and grandparents could do. Now that the demon is dead, we can all relax!”

  A waitress came in, but no one had even sat down, much less looked at menus. We settled in and quickly ordered, except Montague, of course. He just had a drink.

  My grandparents regaled us with stories of their rock star life and my parents reminisced about their early days, and I felt so happy just hearing this whole chunk of my history I’d never known.

  “We were so excited when you were born,” my grandmother said. “We had no idea it was all about to turn to hell…but there is still time to make up for it all.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And you probably have a lot of question
s about how to navigate life as a witch, or…not a witch anymore? Well, we do have a lot in common. Too much, really. I don’t envy you,” Grandmother said. “It’s a difficult adjustment.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes. What now? That’s my whole brain at this moment, to be honest. I don’t know if anyone can answer that, because y’all were rock stars hanging out with David Bowie and—”

  “We didn’t actually hang out with him,” Claude said. “To be honest. He was pretty weird. We hung out with a lot of guys named Mick, it seems like, who was somebody’s bassist.”

  “We weren’t famous enough for the coolest parties,” Rhys said. “But we were pretty big in Japan for a moment or two.”

  “Anyway,” Grandmother said. “We all have to figure it out in our own way, but I always felt lucky because I had the support of all of these dear men.”

  “Aw,” Guy said. I think it was about the only thing he said all night.

  “Someone always had a solution or a comforting word. When your mother had her close-knit group of friends I thought she might have that same net to rely on. I didn’t realize how much danger they were in. My advice would be just to…enjoy yourself. This is a good life. Just enjoy yourself.”

  Mom was poking at the bread course a little. “Well, Mum,” she said, “we were trying to do something pretty important.”

  “I know, I just think you’ve all done enough now. You’ve been through more than enough. And Charlotte lost her magic, so that’s the end of the matter, really.”

  There’s a letter from the faery queen in my desk… ‘One more chance to redeem yourself’… Does the faery queen know I lost my powers? Does she have a way to return them to me?

  No. I wasn’t going to think about that letter. Like I needed to redeem myself anyway. I had my family. I was safe, and the second I went to the faery queen, I would stop being safe, and so would my guys.

  “Should I try to go to college after all?” I felt pretty lost. I used to have other dreams, but learning to be a witch had sucked up all my energy and I couldn’t help but feel like I wanted my life to mean something. “Or was this dinner my whole college fund, Dad?”

  He laughed. “It’s going to take time to figure it out,” he said. “Don’t stress about it too much.”

  “I agree with your dad,” Montague said. “Let us take care of you for a while.

  We’re adults. We can do other things besides magic. A vampire can get any job he wants.”

  “So can an incubus,” Alec said, cracking his knuckles.

  “You are going to work in a lonely cubicle in a basement,” I whispered. “In a box that only I have the key to.”

  “Of course, you should also be an independent woman,” Mom said.

  You mean like abandoning your family and going to work for a demon? some evil voice inside me said. “Of course I will be an independent woman.”

  “It’s all right to just be taken care of now and then,” Grandmother said. “You might want to have babies.”

  “Let’s not get her going on that yet,” Dad said, waving his hands.

  “She’s twenty-two, isn’t she?”

  “Almost…,” I said.

  “Twenty-two was a perfectly good age to have babies for all of human history.”

  “I don’t think she’s ready for babies,” Dad said, looking panicked.

  “Mum, I think she has her own life to lead,” my mom said.

  “I can figure it out for myself!” I snapped. “What is going on here?”

  “I’m sorry,” Mom said. “We haven’t seen each other in a while. Your grandmother can be a little old-fashioned.”

  “I’m not old-fashioned,” Grandmother said. “I was considered a complete radical in my day which is why I was banished from the family! I just wanted you to have a normal life.”

  “Like I could have a normal life when I was a witch with four dads, so I don’t want to lie to Charlotte!”

  “Mom, I thought you were okay with this arrangement? Like, proud of me, even?”

  “Yes, I am okay with you making your own decisions, but if you try to have a ‘normal’ life, you are going to fail and be miserable.”

  “Stop it,” Montague said, in a soft voice that shut everyone up. “I don’t think your opinions are helping anyone. We will protect and take care of Charlotte, no matter what. If she wants to have babies, or if she wants to run for senate, or if she wants to work at the mall. We will do whatever needs to be done to make her happy.” He looked at Harris, who I guess was the only member of our team he worried might not agree.

  “Yes,” Harris said. “Our parents tried to tell us to be fine, upstanding warlocks and it didn’t work out very well. Let Charlotte be Charlotte.”

  “He’s right,” Malcolm said. “I told you so, back in the day. The little prince of Austria is right.”

  Harris gave a small for-fuck’s-sake shrug. I suppressed a laugh. I guess making fun of his royal airs ran in the family.

  “Well, maybe we have some other crossroads to discuss,” Dad said. “We have something to talk about. Emily and I, well, we’ve only had a short reunion, but two things were clear to me from the first instant. One is that I love this woman as much as ever.”

  Mom grabbed his hand and kissed it, looking charmed. I was trying to decide if this was all cute or just like, too much.

  “Two is that, well, the land I bought back in my twenties, and the life I’ve been living…it ended up being a great place to raise Charlotte. But it’s not going to be a great place for the kind of family we have now. We’re going to look for a place in Atlanta.”

  “You’re not selling the house, are you?” I asked.

  “I am,” Dad said. “It’s paid off, so that will be a great down payment on a new place.”

  “Are you kidding me right now!?”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “You never made many friends there.”

  “You built that house! That was like—our life! We know everyone there. It’s—it’s home. What if someone buys it and tears down the trees? You just decided this in less than a week?”

  “This is for you too,” he said. “You know you can’t come home and take all these guys to the diner. You’re not going to buy a house there. It’s pretty far from an airport. Plus, I don’t know if I want to retire there. I haven’t had anyone to play music with since Greg moved to Raleigh.”

  “Everything’s changing really fast,” I said, twisting my fingers.

  I guess life is just funny that way. You finally get what you’ve always dreamed of—in my case, my mom and family—and it doesn’t look exactly how you thought it would. Maybe you lose something else instead. I understood Dad’s reasons for wanting to move to a big city, but…

  That was the forest where I really started to learn magic, I thought later, and that pushed me over the edge. I had this memory of a day where Firian made me stare at a dead branch with lichens and tiny bugs, and really focus on it. First I was annoyed at him because it was boring, and then a switch flipped and I could sense the circular nature of life, the dead tree and the tiny creatures making life from its death, drinking in the very spirit of the tree as it lingered in the forest like a memory. Little moments like that were what helped my magic grow stronger, as I started to gain a real understanding of the mysterious forces that govern life and death, time and space, plants and animals, water and fire, and everything that goes into magic.

  At this point, me and Firian were sitting on the porch of a rental cabin. The family had the run of a whole campground. My grandfathers had disappeared into the night, and so had Montague. He had to get blood from somewhere, poor guy.

  “I’m sure I could get a job as a dog walker,” Firian said. “Just to start. Dogs are just like stupid ugly foxes. I know their deal.”

  I sniffed. “Dogs are cute.”

  “Ehh, I guess, to your human eye. I mean, I guess I’d date a shiba inu or a klee kai. Maybe a corgi if they had a great personality. Of course, I’d still date you eve
n if you were a possum.”

  “Why do I have to keep being a possum?”

  “I like possums a lot, actually. They eat ticks and I hate ticks.” He rested a hand on my head. “You okay?”

  “Mm.”

  “Just thinking about the house?”

  “Our time studying magic in the forest.” I shrugged.

  “Yeah,” he said, more raggedly.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, a little worriedly.

  “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Adia…you know…she always seems a little lost. She seems really happy with Richard, but…her eyes are a little sad like…”

  “Do you want me to tell you that I miss being a fox?”

  “If you do, then yes. I want you tell me everything.”

  He squeezed my hand, his touch light and soothing, but he was a little different, I thought. I didn’t want him to look hollowed out and sad as he got older. I didn’t want him to miss things. I didn’t want him to lie to me.

  “Stop worrying so much,” he said.

  Chapter Three

  Charlotte

  “Let’s see how far we can get,” Mom said, clapping her hands. “There is magic here. Feel that? It might be enough. I’ll test it first.” She looked at me. “This won’t frighten you, will it? You must be used to it by now.”

  “You mean—you—turning into a wolf?”

  “Yes.”

  “Uh, no. I’m used to it. Firian was always…turning.”

  I didn’t know what to expect, but I guess I still managed to not expect the one thing I had been told would happen. My stylish, gorgeous mom dropped to her hands and like…just turned into a wolf.

  “Where did your clothes go?”

  “To the magical realm,” she said. “Somewhere, I expect, there is a magical wardrobe where they poof in and out! I hope so. That’s what Uncle Claude used to say. Try it!”