Chapter Eleven
Greginald
Vincenzo bustled about the kitchen, hovering around from pot to pan lightly frying fish fillets. With my aid, Esmeray could enjoy meat and wine with some frequency and control Ausmius’s little quirks.
I sat at my front desk, leafing through an inventory log with a frown. Always running low on chamomile and garnet sand.
Esmeray muddled about in one of my storage closets, the interior of which had been enchanted to hold more of our stuff. “Gre, have you seen where we put my hell-borne and thaumaturgy books?”
“You told me to put your books on their own shelves separate from mine but I didn’t have room, so I cleared one of my fantasy bookshelves, packed it up, and made it your grimoire shelf.
It’s in the back of my study, where I put your desk.
I’ll get around to the spellwork to make a new office for you.
” I smiled over my shoulder and earned a polite nod.
“I can make do with my books there and a desk in the bedroom or to the side somewhere. I understand you need privacy, but I’m not concerned.” He waved me off as he strode by me purposefully toward my office.
Truth told, the only time I needed privacy was with a client.
“Besides, I don’t think all this spatial magic in one place is a good thing, necessarily.” He squinted about.
“Only if I accidentally overlap spaces.” My skin tingled as something in the dim evening light outside my window flickered, a presence invading my space. “Esmeray. I feel like we may have company.”
“I’ll make myself scarce.” He stepped into the kitchen, exchanging quiet words with Vincenzo as the cooking continued. Looked like it’d be another forty-five minutes at least.
The door opened, and I glanced toward the door, adjusting my gaze because I was so accustomed to staying in my giraffid form. I adjusted my gaze farther down.
A hybrid strode into my office, followed closely in tow by another, two creatures I was very familiar with. And despite their petite size and soft features, they were much, much older than they appeared. “Mage of Gray.”
A velvet-eared rabbit hybrid, hair a pale white with equally fuzzy pink ears, stared up at me, eyes just as red as any leucistic wild counterpart. The petit omega male sauntered in, full hips rolling sensually with every step, squeezed into tight pants that left little to the imagination.
Behind the rabbit slinked in a dark-skinned male, skin a rich umber hailing from desert climes. Black, silken hair spilled over shoulders as sleek and flat as the ears atop his head, black tail swishing behind him. Kohl-lined green eyes stared me down.
“Lune,” I cooed, greeting the rabbit before bowing and smiling at his companion.
The waifish cat hybrid, sporting his ears and tail, gave me an unimpressed stare that was probably catlike affection.
Still, he approached and hopped onto my counter with a purr while purposefully ignoring me.
I stroked his head to earn a hum of affection. “And Lionel.”
“It is good to see you, mage.” Lune circled my counter and hopped onto one of my stools to sit, legs crossed. He batted lovely white lashes at me and smiled, lips curved upward almost slightly harelike. A flaw and a mark of beauty in one.
“And it is wonderful to see you. I needed to make time to come visit you and the mistresses soon, anyway!” I cleared my throat as Lionel scoffed.
The black cat stretched out across my counter, idly knocking a few papers to the floor with a careless hum. “Mistress is annoyed with you, mage.”
“I know, she must be. I swear I had intentions on coming sooner.” I held up my hands, but his gaze locked onto me with an intensity I’d not seen before.
“You stole someone from her path.” He flicked me an annoyed glance and let his gaze wander to the doorway to my kitchen, a sleek brow raising at Esmeray as he approached. “Ahhh. I see it.”
Lionel curved his body and assumed a seductive pose as Esmeray glanced from guest to guest and gave me a curious stare.
“Esmeray, these are avatars of Bastet and Diana,” I said, gesturing from Lionel to Lune.
“Charmed.” Lune held out a hand and Esmeray took it for a gentle shake, offering the same to Lionel, who sniffed, stared at it, and then summarily ignored it.
“I apologize for being taken from your mistress’s hold. I cannot remember what happened after…” Esmeray gestured about, as the memories were obscured and traumatic. “It was my father’s demand.”
Lune looked Esmeray up and down with calculations rolling in his eyes for a long moment before smiling. “You are a good fit for our mage.”
“Fit or not, Mistress wants to meet them to see what would possess our Mage of Gray to meddle.”
“It wasn’t my impression that Bastet had dominion over demons.” I raised my hands in defense.
“She doesn’t, which was why it was odd that he cropped up in the eye of Ra.” Lionel made an eye shape with his fingers in the air, mimicking Bastet’s scrying mirror made from one of her father’s eyes.
“I don’t remember that. My apologies to your mistress, once more.” Esmeray offered a slight bow of his head, his posture stiffening as I drew him to my side.
“You wouldn’t. He would.” Lionel pointed to Ausmius lurking up a wall, staring down at us with creepy intent.
I’d come after him with a broom a few times in the past two weeks and had earned a mote of respect from the demon. I glared up at him, and he hissed before sinking into the shadow of my bookshelf. Hopefully, he’d read something while he was in there.
“My shadow has no soul.”
“Your shadow is a soul. Something’s corrupted it, though. Odd thing, daevas. You know what they originally were in this plane, right?” Lune slid from the seat and turned, little curved bunny tail flicking curiously as he studied the shadow.
“A greater demon slain and cast into service of a family line?” Esmeray shrugged.
“No. They’re an attempt to preserve a half-demon child’s soul.
The child gets sick, they go to pass, and a long time ago, no gods would take those souls.
Thus, they were bound to a sibling.” Lune rubbed a finger against the shadow of the bookshelf and earned a tendril of darkness reaching across the wall to slap his hand’s shadow. “Rude.”
“He is quite the scamp,” I said. Lune gave me a soft nod in agreement.
“Which is why he stays here.” Lune snapped his fingers, and the world around me shattered, pieces falling away like chipping paint off a surface, and my stomach flipped.
I clutched to Esmeray to hold him steady, and he tolerated the flip worse than I could have anticipated, lurching forward, eyes watering.
He covered his mouth and swallowed hard, fighting the urge to gag.
Lune, for his part, came up with a solution in the form of a wastebasket that he snatched from beside my counter before the rest of my store melted away.
We all did our best to ignore Esmeray’s state until he breathed freely and groaned. “Never. Do that. Again.”
“I don’t get a say in it.” I patted his back and allowed him to hug the receptacle. “Maybe you’ll feel better once we’re back home and Vincenzo finishes our lovely fish dinner. Can’t have been comfortable on an empty stomach.”
His face paled, and he buried his face in the trash can once more. “Don’t mention fish. Please.”
As I patted his back and the world fully chipped away, the deic realm came fully into view, a bright landscape of space that hosted a city of palaces and beings striding around with familiars, servants, vassals, and avatars alike.
In this plane, I held a light glow to me, one that specified I held a god’s protection. In my case, two gods, their glows on my skin the same as Esmeray’s, a fluorescent violet and a soft green apparent only when I focused.
We shuffled along a pleasantly paved street, strangers in a strange land while the two avatars of vastly different goddesses led us toward a sort of park, the center of the extravagant place of which held a pond with an arching bridge leading to a small island topped with a gazebo.
And from that gazebo radiated powerful energy of two friendly goddesses in their good-natured human forms.
Diana had the form of a rather maternal-looking Roman woman, hair a soft reddish brown as was idolized in her day.
She had the plush hips of a woman who birthed easily, full chest of a mother who’d nursed well but not spoiled her form, and a face with full kissable cheeks rosy with brightness. “Mage of Gray.”
Beside her sat a woman of mixed heritage, pale of skin for her origin.
Soft brown tones bore ample gold over thin arms and a graceful, angular face adorned with silken black hair and a headpiece of beads and enamel.
“My child,” she said, her voice smoky and full, like I imagined a mother cat’s voice would sound like whispering stories of old to her children that she would soon turn loose into the world.
And like that ephemeral kitten, I’d be cast to the eternal one day, too.
“Mistresses. It is lovely to see you. It is definitively time that I introduce you to my mate.” I welcomed Esmeray to my side as Lune stole away with the trash can and offered him a tissue.
“I had to meet my precious mage’s mate. Strange circumstances, and all that. What was Draevus thinking?” Diana peered at Esmeray and then myself, tapping on her lower lip as something shrewd danced in her fanciful green eyes. “Ohhhh. I approve.”
Esmeray nodded in quiet unease, hand traveling to the mark on his hand to rub at it subconsciously. As a creature with no soul of his own, he’d inherently reject the marking, but it worked well.
“I don’t know if I approve just yet. Come, child of sin.” Bastet gestured with long, graceful fingers, drawing Esmeray to her with golden eyes hooded with interest. She patted the bench beside herself and Esmeray sat, hands folded politely in his lap. “You are afraid.”