Chapter 18
Elric stood behind the coven as they surveyed Elissa’s home.
Obviously, a coven stuck together. Witches were stronger when they were capable of sharing magic and knowledge easily without having to sneak under the cover of night.
It was a difficult thing to do when they were hiding from so many eyes.
But now they had a lady in their mix. A woman who was used to much more than what she had been given, and at the twisted expression on Agnes’s face, he didn’t think she was going to stay in this birdhouse.
Her grandson even looked a little… distraught.
Elric leaned over to mutter to the man, “I never caught your name.”
“Hugo.”
“Hugo,” he repeated with a nod, before looking at the expressions on the women’s faces.
Sybil was far too gleeful, and he could already tell she’d make all of this worse, given the chance.
Of course, Elissa just wanted to go home.
She looked at the others with far too much confusion, because she didn’t understand why the others weren’t as excited as she was.
Jessamine just looked apathetic, while Agnes looked as though she had just stepped in horse shit.
“Hugo,” he said with a sigh. “I don’t think we’ll be staying here very long.”
“I don’t think we’ll be staying here at all.”
He didn’t suppose they would, not with Agnes looking like that.
“This simply won’t do!” Agnes said.
“My home is very safe. The only people who ever come here are the ones looking for a bird.” Elissa twisted her hands together and gestured toward it.
“I have very few clients these days. The new king doesn’t fancy birds, so it’s unlikely that anyone will be coming to see me for a while yet. Bird buying has a season, you know.”
Jessamine crossed her arms over her chest. “Didn’t you think we were a client when we first came here only a week ago?”
The witch went pale. “Well, that was a rare lapse in judgment.”
Elric had never been more entertained. The other witches lit into Elissa like sharks scenting blood in the water.
All of a sudden, they wanted to know everything about the house.
What spells protected it? Her mother had been the one to build it, but how good of a witch had the old bat been?
Far more questions than Elissa knew how to answer. Of that much, he was certain.
He watched it all with a bemused smile on his face before shaking his head and looking at Hugo. “I don’t suppose you know of a home that would be discreet for all of them?”
“There aren’t many abandoned buildings in the Pleasure District. A few, yes, but not many. And they’re all old.”
“That doesn’t matter to me. I’m a god, Hugo. I can conjure whatever I want.” Elric flexed his hands, savoring the new power from the two witches who had joined his coven.
The stronger the coven, the stronger he was. As a god, he had control over shadows and the realm of the dead. He could conjure spirits to do his bidding, and he could stop a soul from ending up in the realm beyond. But with a coven? Especially a strong one? Ah, he had many more skills than that.
“Where is one of these homes you speak of?”
“One is at the corner of First and Seventh.” Hugo shrugged. “Lots of people walk past that house often, but it’s the largest one.”
“We don’t need large. There’s only six of us.” But there might be more soon. With the way Jessamine was building her coven, he wouldn’t be surprised if there were six more in less than a week. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he shook his head. “We’ll need more than that, though.”
“There is another house. Still large and fairly falling apart. No one goes near it, but that’s at the very end of Rose Street.” Hugo shrugged. “If you’re powerful enough to turn that into a home? No one ever looks twice at it. Said to be real haunted.”
“Haunted, you say?” He snorted. “That’s the place we should be, then. No one will go into the building, and I have a soft spot for wandering spirits.”
“Whatever you say, mate.” Hugo looked at the witches and then back at him. “You know where Rose Street is?”
“I think that’s fairly easy to find.”
“I’ll manage the ladies until then.”
Elric watched as Hugo approached his grandmother and laid a hand on her back.
With a few words, he cajoled the old woman into Elissa’s home, even though they all knew she wasn’t going to like it any more from the inside.
It would start an argument that would last a few hours, though, and that was all Elric needed to get their new home set up.
“Rose Street,” he muttered.
He strode away before any of them noticed he’d left. The streets were filled with people, so if Jessamine came stomping after him, she would lose him eventually.
In the meantime, it let him feel out his powers so he could get an idea of what he could do.
The new sacrifices had done more than he’d expected.
Elric was used to an entire coven being required to get his power back to godly levels.
But these women had been heartfelt in their need, and their magic ran through his veins with more strength than he’d expected.
If the haunted home was in shambles, he was quite certain he could fix it.
Rose Street didn’t take very long to find.
And as he strode down the sidewalk, seeing the stream of people ebb into little more than a trickle, he felt the tug in his stomach that was Jessamine.
She wanted him to come back, likely because the argument was getting out of control.
But he had never lived with his coven. They were always the ones to figure out their own arguments.
Besides, she’d always said she was going to be their queen. She would need to live up to that legacy soon enough.
Finally he was at the end of Rose Street, staring at the building Hugo had remarked would be perfect.
From the outside, he had to agree. The wooden exterior had likely once been vibrant and waxy, but time had aged it.
The wood grayed and pieces were tearing off from all ends that he could see.
Nearly every window was broken, although not many were still on the house.
The rest were boarded up. But it had lovely turrets on either side, and a shape that looked like it was out of a horror novel.
The grounds were hardly cared for, little more than yellowed dead grass surrounded by a wrought iron fence that tilted forward slightly after the ground had shifted during their long winters.
As he stared, he heard the distinct sound of a wail. The haunting sound echoed, perhaps just the wind, or perhaps more than that. All the hairs on his arms rose as another cry whipped through the home, and he swore he saw a figure standing in one of those shattered windows.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better house,” he murmured before striding toward the building.
He felt his power already boiling. The shadows inside of him wanted to stretch. It was almost like a living being inside of him that he’d consumed from only two sacrifices. Such power for such little things, and yet, he couldn’t stop himself from using it.
The door screeched as he yanked it off its hinges, and already the shadows were pouring from his form.
They dripped from his hands like ink, covering the worn floor with holes throughout.
With every step he took, the holes were fixed.
The wood gleamed with new life and the faded, peeling wallpaper regained its vibrant floral pattern.
Its swirling labyrinth of deep colors led him through the halls.
It was a large home with easily fifteen bedrooms, more if he gave some thought to where he would put them. A large kitchen that his magic soon cleaned entirely until it looked more like a working kitchen. Already he could imagine Sybil in the corner, hanging bundles of herbs from the exposed beams.
There was a comfortable library, and a room that might have once been an attached greenhouse for Elissa to keep all her birds in. And still more that his magic found, healing every single nook and cranny until the inside of the house was finally befitting a coven.
He heard the softest moan from overhead, from the attic, where his magic had not yet reached. He pulled the shadows back, making sure they didn’t invade the home of that ghost.
“I won’t change everything,” he called out, certain that the ghost was listening to him. “There is much we will use this home for, though.”
A cold gust of wind trailed down his spine, as though someone had tried to grab on to him and then realized he was not someone they could simply grab.
“I am a god.” Elric narrowed his eyes, following the path of a small silver orb of light that moved just out of reach.
“You will not banish me from this home, nor will you banish the coven of witches who will join me. If you stay out of our way, I will not usher you into the realm of the dead that you have been so adamantly avoiding. Do we have a deal?”
Again, a hesitation from the spirit before it rushed up the stairs and back into the attic. He’d leave it alone up there. The spirit had been here much longer than him, after all.
Turning, he surveyed the work he had done. Everything was nearly perfect. If anyone walked into this dark home with the warm wooden floors and deep-colored wallpaper, they would know it was a home for witches.
One final touch. He allowed his shadows to stretch into the basement and raise up an altar where his witches could all worship.
An altar covered in runes of power. His shadows transformed the stone into black obsidian that gleamed in the meager light.
And because he was their benevolent god, he also added indentations in the floor where they would kneel before it for their sacrifices, just so that they would be more comfortable instead of kneeling on sharp stones.
“There,” he muttered before he tugged hard on his connection with Jessamine.
It was no longer a thread of darkness between them, but a rope that he could see with his mind’s eye if he looked hard enough. Thick as his wrist, it connected them no matter how far away he was.
And then Elric waited. Because he knew his gravesinger well. Jessamine had never been able to deny him when he called for her.
In a mere half hour, he met the four witches and Hugo at the end of the dirt path leading into the house. Jessamine had her arms crossed over her chest, and those pretty dark eyes were flashing with curiosity.
“What have you done, Deathless One?” she asked.
He gestured toward the entire coven and then bowed long and low. “My coven could not stay in such a small home. Elissa’s home is too well-known, and besides, there are certain places that are more safe than hiding in plain sight.”
“This looks like a crumbling hovel.”
“I assure you, I have prepared everything inside for you, my gravesinger. You deserve the world, and I am only here to lay it at your feet.”
He could hear the sharp intake of breath from Agnes, and knew that he had won points with those words. Perhaps she didn’t know their connection yet, but Agnes would soon see that he was more tied to his gravesinger than he had ever been to any other witch.
Jessamine was everything to him. His reason for being started and ended with her.
Shaking her head with a wry grin, Jessamine strolled past him and hooked her fingers in the front of his shirt, practically dragging him to the front door as she advanced up the steps.
“Come on, Nyx, let’s see what decorating skills a god has.”
Her black cat suddenly appeared, twining around his legs and almost tripping him before the familiar slipped into the house ahead of them. He could almost hear the excitement as Nyx let out a meow that sounded like a battle cry and thundered up the steps to the attic.
“A creature that small shouldn’t be able to make so much noise,” he muttered.
“A cat is a cat.”
“It’s a familiar.”
“A familiar that is a cat,” she corrected before releasing his shirt.
Elric smoothed it down as they both walked into the house, and he anxiously studied her features to see if she liked what he had done. At the smile on her face, it appeared he’d done well.
“Look at you,” she said quietly, turning in a circle and then stepping into the first room. “First you build a coven, and then you build us a home.”
He caught Sybil’s gaze as the dark witch walked into the house with them. And for once, all he saw in her gaze was approval.
“It’s long past time that I respected the coven who worships me,” he murmured, before tugging Jessamine into his arms. “Now, no one will be able to touch us.”