Nathan Marsh
“So what’s your secret?” Ivy asks as soon as she recognizes me.
“I, my dear, am a demon. I have known your grandmother since she was your age, and made a small mistake in a summoning, bringing me instead of the minor invocate she was intending to call.”
“Hello, Nathan the Demon. I am Ivy the Witch. Are you going to need to cast me aside now that you know that?”
“I have known you were a witch longer than you have, and my path is ever by your side.”
“Well, my path leads to my bedroom. Take me there.”
“Let me see if it is safe to take you there,” I say, reaching for my phone as I start the car.
“Why wouldn’t it be safe?” Ivy asks.
“The hunter has been watching your house and Carl’s.”
“Home. Ben apparently is going to make enough of some sort of vampire ruckus to get her running after him. She can have him. They deserve each other.”
“Home it is then?”
“Please,” Ivy says. I put the car in gear and pull onto the highway. “I’m assuming you followed Carl out tonight?”
“Yes. Until this evening, I did not know where you and Ben were hiding out. He is good. Carl would not have found you, except that fate intended it to happen. We were driving home from Denver one night, along this very road, as Ben was coming up from the cabin to make a run into town.”
“I’m really sorry that I vanished on you all like that. I’m sure I worried everybody sick.”
“It was the worst for Kate,” I say. “Emily, Carl, and I. Like you, we all have our secrets, we knew this was all part of the things that happen to us because of that. Kate has no idea that there are things like us in the world. When things calm down, you should tend to your friendship with her, for it is the one that is most damaged.”
Ivy just nods at that. “How has Grandma been?”
“Worried, obviously. She did not like the idea of you being with Ben. She would have preferred either Carl or I, by far, but she was willing to let you live your life, until it became clear that Ben is a renegade Negre. That put you in tremendous danger, as a means of leverage against him. Even after you were claimed, and they can now no longer cause you physical harm as long as he lives, they could still cause you great suffering if they felt there was advantage in it. Even now, with Ben drawing them, you are not completely safe, and Emily and I will need to be extremely vigilant about everything for quite some time.”
“Well, if I knew how things would end up with Ben, I’d have tamped down my feelings for him long ago. Like, we had sex, then immediately I have to run for my life with him, then I get used to living in hiding, we have sex again, and an hour later he’s shoving me right out of his life.”
“To be fair, he was wise to take you into hiding with him when he first saw the hunter, and he is making the right choice to separate and draw them away from you now. I believe he was always acting out of genuine affection for you.”
“Well. I guess somebody’s fate is incompatible with his affections. Though you mentioned fate and Carl as well. From what I know about fate, I suppose being his girlfriend wouldn’t have done me any better would it? Are there a ton of stupid packs out there fighting each other that would love to go all big bad wolf on me?”
“The lycanthropes do not have the clan problems the vampires do. They are territorial in their own way, but if they are going to fight, they do it quick and clean.”
“So, how many futures am I caught up in? I’m starting to feel like a pinball here.”
“How many futures is a witch ever not caught up in?” I ask her. “You were born into power, and power will take you where it wants to.”
“I’m really not in the mood for riddles or whatever right now. Straight answers would be lovely right about now.”
“Emily knows that you and Carl will remain part of each other’s lives, that there will be a reconciliation between you, and love.”
Ivy looks over at me, nods, smiles a little. “That makes me feel good. Knowing that. My biggest regret, up until very recently, was the fight I got into him with over Ben. Oddly, even Ben was starting to warm to Carl, make sure I knew he was a good man. I think Ben really respects him deep down.”
“He does,” I say. “It took him a while to do so, and not completely because of the Great War. I think Carl and Ben have clashing personalities. They may learn to respect each other, but they will never actually like each other.”
“Alright. Fate wants Carl and I to remain close. That’s good. What else?”
“Emily knows a lot that I will not let her tell me.” I spend some time explaining to her the danger we demons have when we hear the divinations and foretellings of witches. She seems to understand it quickly and deeply, steering well away from any attempt to ask me about what little I do know of Emily’s prophecy. She also mentions only once having done any divination, and tells me nothing about the information she sought. This is the one place where I have been unwisely curious. I know she is referring to the divination in her circle right before she started her relationship with Ben.
“So, is it safe for you to tell me how my fate is tied up with yours?” she asks.
“I have seen nothing myself of our future together. My only sense around you has been knowing that I need to leave the hunter alive and unharmed. She has some purpose yet to play.”
“Maybe getting Ben out of town and out of my life,” Ivy says.
“Perhaps so, perhaps not.”
“Do vampires ever. You know, with each other?” she asks.
“No. They only feel those desires for the warm.”
“I suppose somebody in the equation needs to have some body heat.”
Ivy turns to the window and watches the darkness as I drive into town. As we approach her home, I reach out with my senses to the little imp watching the trail above her house. It reports that the hunter has not been up there for the better part of two days. Unless she is surveilling the house from a different location, it should be safe to bring Ivy there. Realizing that taking the hunter’s motorcycle away from her has also freed her to approach the house from directions previously inaccessible.
She had been focused on Carl until I destroyed her bike. Feeling the push away from him also freed her up to pursue other avenues into finding Ben. I release the imp from its binding at the upper trail, with strict instructions to circle the property, very carefully, seeking any sign the vampire has been back. I tell it to be sure to search especially carefully around the ritual circles, for as much as it will be uncomfortable being so close to the protective spells around them. I need to know if the hunter has any inkling that Ivy is a witch. If that knowledge caused Ben to push her away so intensely, it may be very significant to the hunter as well.
“What are you doing?” Ivy asks. “Demonic magic of some sort?”
“You can pick that up?” I ask.
“Yes. Loud. You’re talking to something, another demon, aren’t you? A subordinate.”
“Impressive,” I say. “I am in touch with an imp your grandmother has summoned and bound to help watch your home while the hunter is in the area.”
“I’ve only realized it in the last few days, but ever since Ben and I had sex, I’ve been becoming increasingly sensitive to all sorts of power and magic around me, and my power has increased. Tonight, I completely resisted Ben’s attempts to use his compulsion on me. I didn’t even have to try to fight it. I had been practicing some defenses against vampires, simple ones that Grandma had taught me as a normal part of my lessons, focusing on keeping them subtle so Ben wouldn’t notice it. Well tonight, when he saw Carl on the property, he tried to compel me to stay in the cabin instead of helping him track Carl. It did nothing at all.”
I spend some time focusing on her. The amount of power she is showing seems to be the same as the last time I saw her, on the surface at least. As I feel around her more, I can tell that she is a lot stronger, but it is also held tighter to her, closer, and it is brighter.
Now I want to know what is in Emily’s prophecy. What is it about either Ben’s claiming her, or the act of coupling with him that has finally unleashed those immense reserves of power that Ivy was born with. She was a smart and perceptive young witch a couple of weeks ago, but restrained. Technically proficient, but without art behind it, without a lot of force behind it. I cannot wait until I get to see her work now. Take her prior fastidious study, and couple it with the potential she has access to now, and the intuitive grasp of what magic is that she is now developing. It will be a truly wondrous and awesome thing, I suspect.
“Is Grandma home right now?” Ivy asks. “I have no idea what her schedule is, what day it is, even.”
“She is home. She has put off her overnight runs until things with you are sorted out.”
“I’m pretty embarrassed to see her quite yet. I know she’s going to wake up as soon as I get near the house.”
“We can drive for a while longer if you would like. I never actually sleep, so I can keep us going until dawn, just stopping for gas.”
“Not that long. I eventually want to sleep in my own bed. I can take down the protections at my circle. I would like to spend some time there with you.”
“Certainly,” I say. “But Emily will still know you are back on the property.”
“Yes, but if I go straight to my circle, she will give me privacy and time.”
This is true. A witch’s circle is highly respected by all other witches, and they do not enter another’s without invitation. With this decision made, Ivy seems to relax significantly. “Which route would you like to take to your circle?” I ask.
“I’m up for a little more walking,” she says.
I park my car downhill from her home, which leaves us a little over a half mile of a walk through the woods to get up to the property line. As we start to trek up the hill, Ivy remains silent, deep in thought. The imp assures me that the hunter has been nowhere near this side of the property, which allows me to relax my vigilance for her.
We reach the edge of Ivy’s circle. The routine protections she leaves on it between uses is nowhere near strong enough to deter me from entering it, but I never have, and do not now, out of respect for her. She stops at the edge of the circle and turns to face me. She looks a little up and to the right, and I realize what had her concentrating so hard on the walk up the hill.
“I will allow you to enter this space now, only if you promise to cause me no harm, now or in the future, in body, mind, emotion, or spirit, either through your action or inaction, by your own choice or by enticement or provocation of others. Do you abide by these terms, demon I know and have known as Nathan Marsh?”
It is her own variation on the standard agreement the Esseriya line has created for dealing with us. It is a good set of terms, covering most of the ways I could act against her. “I abide by these terms, young mortal Ivy Sparks,” I say.
“Good. Come here.” She takes a step backwards across the boundary of her circle. She takes on a glamour in my eyes as she does so. If I cross that same boundary, I will be subject to our agreement. She has offered nothing in return for my agreement to not cause her any sort of harm, which is wise. The easiest way for a demon to sidestep such an agreement is for a mortal to break it first. We are inconstant and distractible creatures after all. I can see no reason why I would ever want to cause her any ill so it should be easy for me to walk into her circle and accept that obligation. But my kind do not like having our future actions restrained. Part of our great aversion to others’ foretellings and prophecies, of our ambiguity to our own senses of the future.
Besides, just because I feel a certain way about Ivy now does not mean that I will always feel that way. Mortals. Inconstant creatures, ever changing, because your lives are too short to allow yourselves to be static.
Still. At this moment I can find no good reason, other than unseen future events, to not agree to not act against her wellbeing. Since I have been hesitating, she offers her hand. “Do you still abide by the terms and wish to enter?” she asks.
I reach across the edge of the circle and feel the entanglements I have agreed to start to wrap around my wrist. As I take her hand, they tighten until they almost feel solid. I step up to her, and once my whole body is inside of her circle, the words she spoke imprint themselves across my thoughts and my spirit. I am now, in some sense, a servant to her. My promise to not cause her harm by my inaction obligates me to help if she is in peril and I am able to assist. Being as powerful as I am, I think there is almost no place in the world from which I could not answer a summons to aid her.
Ivy gives me a second to catch my composure, to absorb what she has laid upon me, and she wraps me in a strong hug, holding tight to me for a long time. I wrap my arms around her as well, stroking her hair reassuringly. The way she clings to me tells me that despite her newfound power, her wisdom in laying her obligations upon me, she is still a mortal of just eighteen years, and that in the past few weeks everything about her world has changed in very deep and profound ways. She thought she was just a short time from leaving Stokers Mill to go to college and start charting her own future, only to be caught up in events much greater than she is.
She finally breaks the hug and steps back from me.
“I brought you out here for a reason, Nathan. To this specific place.”
“Why is that?” I ask.
“What you have told me, that I’m supposed to end up with Carl somehow. Between some things Ben has said and the way you told me about Carl and I getting closer. We’re going to become lovers, aren’t we? The same way apparently Ben and I are fated to not be lovers.”
“I do not know your—”
“Stop,” Ivy says. “I don’t care what you see in my future or Ben’s or Carl’s right now. Just that I can tell that some entity has decided to tear me from Ben and throw me next into Carl’s bed for whatever reasons it has. And I’m not complaining about ending up with Carl. Once Ben lit that fire in me, I realized that Carl had always lit it for me, but I’d just been ignoring it, pretending he was more my brother than a rather attractive and beautiful man in his own right, who would do very well by me.”
“I should remain silent about that?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, very definitively. “Just listen, let me say this one thing, and hold your tongue about anything you know about anything until tomorrow, ok?”
I nod in agreement.
“I’m sick of feeling like fate’s plaything right now, and I know better than to fight any of it. I know. Grandma has always made sure I understood that any future I see is going to come to pass, and I should just woman up, face it on my feet with my eyes open, my middle finger out loud and proud if necessary.”
“I am sorry that your future with Carl feels tainted this way,” I say.
“It doesn’t,” Ivy says. “Like I said, I think I have always known that Carl and I could have been something good. Now I have confirmation.”
“But there is more you are feeling,” I say. “You are radiating defiance right now. Your middle finger is up and out.”
“I want to go to Carl with no regrets,” Ivy says.
I suddenly see where this is going. “That fire Ben lit in you. You realized you have always had feelings for another that you had suppressed as well.”
“Sate my curiosity, Nathan. Don’t send me off to Carl, always wondering what it might have been like with you.”
“No,” I say, backing away slightly, but not quite leaving her circle. She has no more authority over me within it or without, but I did enter into this space upon her invitation, and I would not be so rude to Ivy as to lightly leave it without her, or without her bidding me farewell. “Impregnating you would bring you great harm, and you just bound me to not do so.”
“You can’t get me pregnant, Nathan,” she says, stepping closer to me. “I already am.”
“That is not possible,” I say. “Vampires are sterile.”
“Turns out Ben isn’t. Trust me on this one, Nathan. A witch always knows.”
That last sentence is true. Witches learn a great deal about their own bodies as they learn their power.
“You have always wanted this, too, Nathan,” she whispers to me. “This is your chance. Take it.”