Chapter Eight
“You have won the day,” I whisper, fading beside her. I was in power over her for long, sumptuous moments, and now my strength is gone.
Agatha doesn’t care. She curls up against my side and shudders with post-climactic aftershocks. “It was amazing.”
“I’ll get better each time.”
“You were already incredible. No one has ever... No one has ever made love to me like that.”
“Then we’re equals, because no one has ever made love to me like that in this form, or even in my human one.
No one has been your match, Agatha.” I hesitate as a horrible thought comes to me.
The thought that I deserved my thousand years of suffering so I had the chance to meet her and be her lover.
I refuse to believe that my punishment was justified... but I will gratefully accept that our stars have aligned now.
“You give a purpose to my suffering,” I whisper.
“You end mine,” she whispers back.
My heart cracks from all the emotion she suddenly unleashes inside of it. I hold her close and find myself believing that yes, my torment was worth it.
Would I go through it again to have this night with her?
Maybe not.
To have a life with her?
I lick my lips and swallow, lungs struggling again to digest this world’s air after so much exertion. “I want to be with you every night—at least part of every night. I know you have a world to travel and things to see and do.”
“I’m actually pretty much a homebody. I like the idea of having someone to come home to every night,” she whispers back.
“PEOPLE WILL THINK I’M crazy. But you’re here.
You’re holding my cat. This is real.” I pace as I get ready on Tuesday morning.
Lucius looks pale, and there are dark lines and creases across his handsome face.
He’s more shadow than solid below the waist, but his eyes follow me with hungry passion as Berry rests in the crook of his arm.
“Must you tell people?”
“No... I guess not. I’m just afraid that if I did, they would.”
Lucius’ voice drags off, soft and seductive. “Would you like to know a little secret about your new hometown, my empress?”
When he calls me that, my spine straightens, I feel every inch of the single black seam that runs up my stockings, every frill of my ruffly bow and lacy cuffs. To Lucius, I am a ruler. A powerhouse. A sexy queen. “What, my legion?” I whisper, sliding over to him.
I perch on the edge of the wingback chair that he languishes in, bending my head to kiss him. His hand latches onto the back of my neck, firm and unyielding, while kisses of smoke and shadow spread from the peep-toe of my shoe to the back of my thigh.
“I love when you call me that. It makes me feel less like a weak and trapped animal and more than the evil madman I've become.”
My finger presses to his lips. “A thousand years alone, and you’re still so articulate, so intelligent?
You are every inch a warrior.” I smile and remember “every inch” he gave me last night and again in the wee hours of this morning.
It aches to sit down, and I’m so soaked that I packed a spare skirt and underwear in my work bag.
“Thank you, Agatha. That means a lot to me, coming from you. You fight these demons every day,” he whispers, patting my temple with his forefinger before smoothing my hair and tucking it behind my ear.
His words make me swell with pride. “No one has told me that before.”
“Humans are silly. They don’t understand as much as my kind—which brings me back to this town.
There are magical creatures here. Not just me.
I’ve heard this town is built on three intersecting ley lines, providing the energy magical beings need to thrive.
Good and evil beings are attracted to this place.
I imagine there are some people you can trust not to mock you when you say you’ve seen something otherworldly. ”
“Like who?”
“I don’t know... In my limited experience, once a person crosses the threshold of magic, their perception of the world changes. Go out and about today. See what you see. Does that big book you were reading offer any advice on magical spots or haunted places in town?”
“Well, it did say the library was rumored to be haunted by the author’s great-great uncle.”
“Perhaps the library, then. Or perhaps at book club?”
“Maybe. What will you do all day?”
“Rest inside my mirror. It’s the object I’m bound to. I can leave, but I must return. Don’t worry, Berry keeps me company.”
“You don’t take her in there with you, do you?” I ask, aghast.
“No, no. Watch.”
It’s mind-bending to watch Lucius drag himself to the mirror in my bedroom and for the gray slate surface to become silvery and reflective at the touch of his hand. I pull his free arm away for a second, kissing him hard. In case.
Just in case this is all a dream, and I never see him again.
With a shining silver burst that hurts my eyes, he’s gone, into the mirror, and yet all I see is my own room. My rumpled bed. Berry, sitting on the edge with stalking hindquarters wriggling.
But there’s no Berry in the mirror now, just a pretty yellow and brown butterfly. Then a ladybug. Then a little green inchworm. Berry’s eyes are wide, and she mews excitedly before pouncing and batting lightly at each creature in turn, winning the battle over all of them.
I see how the mirror sways, and I decide that’s too risky. I move my recently-retrieved basket of just-dried laundry under the mirror—just in case. “You keep Berry entertained like this all day?”
“Mostly. She naps a lot,” Lucius says, springing back on the other side of the glass.
“I like this. It’s like a video call, but you’re closer. Can I ever come—” I raise my hand to the glass, but Lucius’ barking “No!” stops me mid-way.
“I could pull you into this realm, and you would never come out. You’d become trapped in here like me, Agatha.
Touching the surface is fine. Going inside?
No. When I breach the surface,” Lucius’ hand slowly emerges, like a swimmer’s hand clawing for air as they break the surface of the water, “you stay back. The veil divides. It’s ruled by the most basic, ancient magic.
The giving of the name. I can call you in.
You can call me out. The power of the name is very simple, but it’s a basic ingredient of the magical law of exchanges. ”
“The what?”
“You learn a lot of things when you’re bequeathed to a sorcerer’s apprentice,” he groans.
“Oh. You must have had a lot of... owners? Is owners the word?”
“I suppose.”
“You must have had a lot of owners over the years. Learned a lot.”
Lucius looks indifferent, shrugging his rippling, muscular shoulders. “I did and I didn’t. I squandered a lot of time trying to punish people who possessed me. In the end, my trickery possessed them.”
“What do you mean?” I’m afraid I already know.
“How did you feel when you saw something in the mirror that wasn’t supposed to be there?”
“Panicked. Like I was getting worse again. Like I would be heading back to an institution. I mean, that’s catastrophizing, but that’s part of my anxiety issue,” I explain, twisting my hands together nervously.
I wish he’d call me his empress again. I feel so much braver and stronger with that name instead of “Poor, sick Agatha. She has issues. She’s a little fragile just now,” which is how my parents used to introduce me.
“Oh, my empress. If I tell you, I beg you to forgive me straightaway. I cannot live with your displeasure,” Lucius murmurs, eyes lazily drinking me in as his fingers trace my face on his side of the silvery prison.
“I’ll forgive you,” I promise, knowing it’s rash.
“I drove my captors insane. Some quickly, some slowly, but the end result was always the same—except with dear old Jane, my last owner. She was already quite senile when her son gave her my mirror as a gift. She was hard of hearing and also had cataracts, I think, so even if I did try to torment her, it would have failed.”
“Would you have tried to torment her?” I gasp. “She was a harmless old lady!”
“I would have. I did. I believed that was my right, to make others suffer as I’ve suffered. Perhaps there is madness in me, darling.”
Perhaps there was. I shake my head to clear it. Can I forgive him for willingly inflicting pain on others? Pain that I’ve battled for years?
“I... There was one person I tried to speak to. That sorcerer’s apprentice had a young son, also learning magic,” Lucius confesses, all sexy smugness gone from his manner now.
“The boy... A little boy, maybe eight or nine years of age... I hoped he could help me break free. Instead, his father caught him looking at his scrolls and beat him for it. The boy was forbidden from coming into his father’s chambers again.
When the father died, the boy had become a man.
He discarded the mirror at a local market and never looked back.
I lost the only hope and only friend I’d had in decades when I tried a different tactic.
So... to madness. Better theirs than mine.
” Lucius raises an imaginary glass and starts to fade from view.
“I don’t condone. But I’ll forgive!” I blurt.
I remember days of thinking I would do anything not to have one more panic attack, one more time of wondering if my racing heart would suddenly give out, or if my crushing migraines and other thousands of side effects would ever stop.
After only a few hours or days, I was weak enough to wish the pain away.
If I’d had means of actively fighting it, I would have taken them.
“You fought with the weapons you had,” I whisper, my palm coming to rest flat on the surface.
Lucius’ hand meets mine. “Thank you for your pardon, empress. It means the world to me.” He bows low—and ripples away.
“HE WAS RIGHT,” I GASP when I get to work on Tuesday morning—just on time, not late, thank God.
There’s a giant green dude with long blonde hair in a braid standing next to Claire—Claire, from book club! They’re holding hands and talking away with Alban.
“Oh, morning, Aggie. Claire, Georgie, you know Aggie, right? She gets our lunch order almost every day. Aggie, you probably never see Georgie. He’s in the kitchen all the time,” Alban explains with a cheerful smile.
“Hi, Aggie!” Claire beams. “We’re delivering.”
“Yep!” Alban gestures to a huge tray of blue cupcakes with orange fish on the top. “It’s my day to be the parent reader at preschool. I’m bringing bribes.”
“Twenty-four three-year-olds with sugar highs? You’re going to be banned from ever volunteering again, Alban,” Georgie says in a voice like a bass drum, a voice that penetrates right down to your bones.
I nod politely, make a few minutes of small talk, and then drop all professional etiquette the second they leave. “He’s green! Green, Alban!” I hiss, shaking my boss by the elbows.
Please don’t say I’m mental, I pray.
Alban just looks relieved. “Cool. You know about Orcs then?”
“What?” I screech.
“Orcs. Green guys like Georgie? Huge, hunky, and sporting tusks.”
“Georgie didn’t have tusks,” I yelp, picturing huge boar-like protrusions.
“Oh, he does, but he’s half-Orc, half-human. His tusks are tiny and hide under his lip. That’s probably one reason he never smiles. Anyway... Damn good baker. I ordered an extra half-dozen. Cupcake?” He offers me one blue and orange concoction, but I push it away.
“There are paranormal, supernatural creatures around here!” I inform him in a quivering voice.
“I know that. I just didn’t know that you knew that,” he explains calmly, licking icing off his thumb.
“Well, I do now!”
“Good. Is there a problem?”
“I... No. I guess not.” I stand by my desk, watching my boss’s tongue slowly turn blue as he licks the icing off a cupcake and eats the hard sugar orange fish off the top.
“Ooh, can you make sure we filed a motion to settle on the property damage case that came in on...” Alban looks at the Pine Ridge Fire Department Calendar that hangs on the wall above the glass-fronted legal bookcases. “When was that full moon?” he mutters.
“Full moon? Why is it specific that it was a full moon? Do you have werewolves out here, too?” I hiss, clutching the nearest file folder to my chest.
“I mean... Yes, but they’re some of the most responsible citizens we have. Leo Roscommon, a computer coder, Jasper Wainwright, the new reporter, almost the entire Silverman family—”
“Of Silverman First Fiduciary? The bankers? The bankers are werewolves? The werewolves are bankers?” I feel faint. “This really means I am crazy, doesn’t it? Did I eat a cupcake? Is it an acid cupcake?” I drop the folder onto the desk and sit on the edge, hands covering my face.
Can you make sure the notice of the amicus brief has been sent to the lower appellate court for Broome County?”
Alban sighs. “You were handling this so well, too... No one is crazy—well, not because of seeing other races and species of people. Most people cannot see things like Orcs or ghosts. Suddenly, you can. Why?”
I peep through my fingers. “Well. There’s this guy... In my house...”
“A ghost?” Alban prods, rolling his wrists in the international sign for “keep going, keep going.”
“Phantasm?”
“Ooh. Very rare.”
“How do you know all this?” I break down and scream a little. “What, are you secretly some kind of magical creature, too?”
In answer, Alban smiles widely and levitates a cupcake onto the desk beside me. “Have a cupcake, and let me tell you all about my family. Ever heard of the Wymark Warlocks? Anglo-French warlocks dating back to the time of the Crusades?”
I bite savagely into the cupcake. “This might be a doughnut-worthy conversation, just saying.”
My boss pulls his phone from his pocket. “Let me tell Alain to stop by The Pine Loft on the way in. A dozen maple-glazed?”
“That should cover it.”