OvidLemma

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Chapter Six: The Exile

Staying at Lily's wasn't so bad. Her house was basically a mansion, and beyond that she had nine and a half acres of mostly-wooded property - gentle hills, old growth wood of the sort you hardly ever saw anymore, and half-buried ruins from some previous age. I got the feeling that there was real history here beyond Lily's 'mere' 115 years.

I walked the woods and learned them well, stopping short of the standing stones whenever I approached them. Yes, I can be impulsive, but I knew well enough that taking a few steps past those might give anybody with a warlock's compass trained on me a bead on my location and lead them right to Lily's sanctuary. For that matter, I might not be able to find my way back. So I stayed within those twelve acres. I strolled through the woods, over mossy logs and through the little patch of ferns, at the center of which was a fairy circle. When I crouched down tried summoning a fairy there, a whole swarm of them burst forth from the little ring of mushrooms, whooshing about the nearby forest and setting everything to bloom (even trees that didn't normally sport flowers) and, afterward, they sat attentively as I described Lily's declension stones (I figured it was worth a shot), returning with two ancient, moss-covered things fitting the description from somewhere in the deep wood. How did a few score of numinous, Barbie-sized flying people manage that? Magic, I suppose. Two stones down, three to go! I was busy scrubbing the things down when Lily returned from her day at St. Circe's.

"Are those declension stones? Where in the world did you get those?"

"I accidentally summoned a whole swarm of fairies, and they tracked them down for me when I asked?"

Lily squatted in front of them - each stone was about twenty inches high and probably weighed two hundred pounds. I could roll them around with some difficulty, but it would take a Magnus or a Liam to actually lift them. She picked over the surface, examining the patterns etched into the surface.

"Huh… they're real," she said. "Good job… but don't summon the folk again. The only reason they help you is because they're after something."

"Maybe they just want to help?"

"They don't. Promise me you won't summon them again."

"I'm not stupid."

"It's not your smarts I'm worried about. It's your common sense," Lily said. She wandered into the house, returning with a medium-sized book embossed in intricate, silvery Celtic knots. "Before you summon anything else or go anywhere else, I want you to read this, and I want you to practice it."

I read the inside text. "Defensive Magicks for the Modern Witch," I said. "Dated 1823… not very modern."

"Modern enough. Humor me, will you?"

I sighed. "Yes, mother."

"I am your mother witch. Back in the bad old days, you'd have been indentured to me for thirteen years."

We weren't in the bad old days, but I humored Lily anyhow. I studied Defensive Magicks and found a lot of useful material there. Ways to block the effects of wards, ways to shield yourself from offensive magic (that would have been useful in San Francisco… not that I could have done them in my de-magicked body), ways to hide oneself from detection. They even had the little ritual that Ambrose Nicht had used to send the Gangling Men off my trail:

To mislead as to one's location, simply imbue a token with the symbols of false-essence, which I have detailed below. This shall serve as a false beacon for yourself, though it shall not last over-long unless you invest a token of value to yourself. You may use either three symbols or the seeker's knot, either of which I have herein provided, to hold the essence. Then place your false-self wheresoever you would be found. And, should you wish to send your foes upon a wild goose-chase, I have found mice and other vermin quite well-suited to this task, though other of my allies have also used birds and even certain of insects to great effect.

I practiced that ritual a few times along with animal summoning of the conventional variety. I crouched by the little pool near the edge of Lily's property, looking over the placid water, and held out my finger, doing the little ritual to summon a dragonfly to my spot - with plenty of practice, the ritual was unnecessary (such as when Ambrose had summoned the pigeon apropos of nothing), but I wasn't quite there yet. A pile of three stones: one with a speck of insect's wing (it need not be a dragonfly's), one with the symbol of summoning, and one to hold them firm. With a little traced symbol, smoke popped out from the bottom stone and then… nothing. Had I done it wrong? No… just then, a single dragonfly lit upon my finger. Carefully, so as to neither disturb nor injure it, I tied my little hair-knot about its abdomen… and then another dragonfly landed upon me. And another… and many, many more.

I shrieked and bolted for Lily's house, suddenly pursued by a cloud of dozens of dragonflies… probably every last one within a quarter mile (and that was, seemingly, quite a few). I slammed the door shut, a handful of the poor things getting crunched in the door, and another seven or eight still buzzing around me.

"Go! Shoo!" I said… and they did, dutifully zipping off to parts unknown. I hope they made it back outside.

I swept up the mess at the door, but must have missed a wing or two, because Lily stepped in after work holding one between her fingers, a wry smirk on her face. "You've been practicing your summoning?" she said.

"Not very well."

"Or too well," she said, plucking a dead dragonfly from my hair. "This is why focus is important for witches such as ourselves. If Arielle Posner never learns proper magical focus, she may make a habit of ruining her Twittering gizmos, but nobody else will be the worse for it. But a poorly-controlled spell with a thousand-horsepower witch behind it is bad news. My mother was near enough to myself in power and, to hear tale of it, when she was young and unseasoned, she accidentally brought down a whole flock of ten million passenger pigeons, shattering windows, bruising herself and her friends up, and killing many thousands of the poor birds."

"Jesus. Good thing I only went for dragonflies."

"Yes, good thing," Lily agreed. "If my mother and I are rare talents, Natalie, I do not know what to call whatever you are."

+++++

It wasn't so bad, being at Lily's place. I sent a message out to Magnus (who, you can be assured, told Liam) that I was back to normal, and he promised to come and visit me at Lily's as soon as he could - which might be a while, given the travel restrictions even the Upper boys (what they called Advanced students at St. Lovelock's) had to follow: only for official school functions and emergencies. And, despite my petition to Headmaster Hurt (yes, you read that right: Headmaster Horace Hurt) of the St. Lovelock's administration, no exception would be made for Magnus to visit his girlfriend witch. So it was just me, the St. Circe's girls, and my increasingly racy correspondence with Magnus.

My dalliances with Cassie were mostly restricted to the guest bedroom - we tried the shower and the bathtub, and none of the facilities in that old house were quite big enough… though I was looking into some magecraft that might rectify that. The upstairs tub could barely fit Cassie by her lonesome, and the one time we went to town in the big downstairs tub, we sloshed so much water everywhere that Lily forbade its future use for anything but bathing purposes.

"Plus," she added, "the acoustics in that room are very good. I could hear you from out on the patio. I am not a prude, but this is my household, and I insist that you restrict your amorous activity to the following locations."

To Lily's credit, ‘the following locations’ were pretty generous. They consisted of five rooms, including the downstairs parlor with its great big lounge couch. I got the feeling that it had been purposed for witch/warlock orgies in the past, and a little snooping in the magically-locked cabinets (I was getting quite good at working magical locks, ostensibly to practice my focus) revealed enough bondage and sex games gear to outfit a small coven. But I'd never use those things without permission - snooping in the common areas wasn't a breach of trust, but using personal possessions that had been locked away certainly was.

Not that we needed extra toys. Cassie had procured a backpack-sized travel kit for her favorite toys and was currently curating a collection. Dildos, vibrators, and light bondage gear… all of them very high-quality. I didn't ask her where she got the money.

"Vibrators? My tongue isn't enough for you?" I asked. We were curled on the couch after a study session - she was playing hookie from a social event with Occultus Imperial, our British Isles counterpart (a school which the very British Liam Langley did not attend, as it was 'second-rate and anti-Royalist', apparently).

"Your tongue is very cunning," Cassie allowed. "But have you ever tried a vibrator?"

I had to admit that, no, I had not. As sensitive and sex-primed as my body was, there was no particular need to chase orgasms. Should I ever feel neglected, I could reliably see to Miss Bryce's needs with about fifteen minutes of fingerplay, and Cassie's attentions had me moaning and thrashing even more quickly. So when Cassie pulled out a pink, rubberized, two-pronged thing and gave me a little buzz between my legs, I gasped and squirmed away. I was wearing comfy pajama shorts, a tee, and nothing else, and it didn't take much stimulation to get me all riled up.

"Oh no you don't, girl," Cassie tutted. She lunged for me, and I danced away giggling. "You're trying this out tonight, and I'm not taking 'no' for an answer."

"Make me!" I stuck out my tongue and danced away from another lunge. It was game on.

Admittedly, I didn't play very hard to get. As athletic as Cassie was, I was also quite agile and, even if I didn't have Michelle's absurd pinnacle of full-body gymnastic coordination, I was well above-average. So Cassie and I were about even in a contest of huntress vs. brat… and, if she didn't want to wreck half of the lounge furniture, that put the advantage firmly in my favor. I teased her for a few minutes before getting myself cornered under an end table and protesting, squirming and shrieking as Cassie pulled me out by the ankle. Our rough-housing almost knocked the lamp over, and only my quick reflexes saved it from the floor. We shared an instant of eye contact: phew! Then Cassie lifted me, kicking and shrieking (but not too loud, and being careful not to accidentally clock Cassie) and plopped me on the couch, where she proceeded to yank my shorts down and lube the two-headed beast.

"Ready?"

"Yes, goddamnit!" I moaned, already spreading my legs for proper access.

And, I'll admit it: I was converted to the Church of Vibratology on the spot. Getting myself off on my lonesome lacked the warm, fulfilled connectedness of mutually pleasuring somebody I cared about. But neither Cassie nor Magnus nor Liam has a part that can vibrate along my entire prime-time erogenous area at a hundred times a second. I don't think we had one of our eight orgasm sessions that evening (that was my current record for a single bout), but the one time lasted for about eight minutes, which made everything before pale in comparison.

As I regained my sanity, sighing happily and running my fingers through Cassie's glorious mane, I murmured: "I don’t think I'll be able to do magic for another two weeks."

That was hyperbole, of course - nothing like a good cum to clear the mind and focus the thoughts. However, such seismic paroxysms of pleasure had the effect of bursting light bulbs and making anything vaguely electronic in the room fritz out. We broke out the broom and dustpan and cleaned up the broken glass - this had been a five-bulber.

Afterward, we padded into the kitchen for a snack, summoning wine and cheese from the little enchanted serving set. The enchanted knife went to business, chopping cheese into perfectly even slices along the cutting block, and the enchanted iced bucket floated back to the wine cellar and returned for something suitably middle-tier for casual drinking by novice wine enthusiasts. Lily wandered out from her tea room, her fingers bookmarking an old tome, and helped herself to a bit of the Havarti.

"Well that sounded like fun," she said.

"Very fun," I blushed.

"Incidentally, that reminds me: I'll have some old friends by in a week's time… coven and St. Circe's business to discuss your situation, Natalie. There may be some loud noises, and I'd keep any electronics you have shut off."

I think we all smirked, though none of us expounded. Go Lily! Lily doesn’t often get to entertaining guests, but when she does, she isn't shy about pulling out all the stops. I'd try to work on my nocturnal rituals in the garden that night - trying to sleep in the house would be pointless.

+++++

Like I've said, there was a lot to do at Lily's, but a few weeks without major drama was enough to make me go stir-crazy. I'd never been that way before, but I was coming to terms with the fact that I was now a firecracker. Cassie has called me, on more than one occasion, her little 'drama mamma' - even when things were perfectly fine, if they were fine in the same way for too long, I got bored. And when I had the Bryce men, the Gangling Men, and Lily's sanctuary ring all out there, that was a lot to get me yearning for more. First order of business: finding Lily's ring.

I'd practiced the hell out of Defensive Magicks, and when I told Lily that I wanted more books on the topic, she balked that I couldn't have mastered the material in 'only' two and half weeks. So she put me to the test, setting out defensive wards in a little glade down the path from her house (there was too much magically going on in her house and garden to safely lay down more wards there) and then having me go through deflecting their little curse-charges (things that could make you go numb or silent or drowsy if you tripped them and absorbed the effect) while protecting myself against the little zaps of lightning, thorny vines, and angry birds that Lily threw my way. I got zapped once or twice, and I only partially deflected one of the wards, so my elbow went numb. I deflected a squawking blue jay right into one of Lily's lightning bolts, incinerating the poor thing.

"Careful with the birds," Lily snapped. "They didn't volunteer for this."

"That was your lightning bolt!"

"Fine. Continue - your magical foes won't stop for petty bickering."

I got through the wards in five minutes - which Lily, apparently, was timing. She wrote it down in a worn book, a smirk playing across her crimson lips. I paced back across the glade, rubbing the feeling back into my elbow.

"What's that?"

I butted in to see. The book, entitled Lily & Friends Training Record, was quite old - I'd later learn that it had belonged to Lily's mother as a young witch in the 1830s, which meant some of its records dated back nearly two centuries! In the time-yellowed pages were detailed records of different training regimens, some of them simply check-marked, and some of them annotated with greater detail. One of the entries, about half-way down the page entitled 'Defensive Gauntlet', read: Beth. Lily ~4:43. And the most recent entry, of course, read: Nat. Bryce ~5:02. A young Bethany Lily had beat my time through the wards by nineteen seconds.

"Still feel like hot shit?" Lily asked.

"How long did you practice defensive magic before you tried the gauntlet?"

"That's not important," Lily insisted. "You said you were ready, which means you were ready to test. Keep that in mind - if you're 'ready', then you're competing against every witch who ever said she was ready. When it's you against the world, you won't be competing against listless, mediocre classmates."

I didn't argue with her. Instead, I snatched the book and flipped through it. If my name was getting recorded in a book, I figured, I deserved to see what else was in it, and Lily didn't challenge me on that. My name had already been entered into a few of the checkmark areas… for instance, that I pretty clearly knew transformation magic and how to summon animals. I noticed that the most recent and second most-recent entries on some of the notes, including the entry for Defensive Gauntlet right before mine, read Hy. Lily ~5:53.

"Who's Hy Lily?" I asked.

Lily took a good while to reply, and I didn't press her. "My daughter," she said eventually.

"You have a daughter?"

"No," Lily said softly. She sat upon a log and looked down at her hands. When I handed her the training notebook she gripped it, her knuckles turning white. "Not any more."

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

Lily shook her head 'no', but she told me, anyway: "The Gangling Men took her. St. Circe's was bound, decades before my time, into a pact with them. Essentially, they let us retain our independence as a school, but they reserve the right to take one girl per year, should they choose to. But, for as long as I was aware, they'd never chosen to - it was simply a contract to dangle over our heads as a show of dominance. Or so I thought. Sixteen years ago, they came to make good on their claim, and we refused them."

"You broke a magical pact?"

Lily nodded. "St. Circe's did - I was assistant headmistress and Helen Appletree was headmistress, and we both agreed to break the pact, but it was ultimately her call. She broke it willfully, and boy was that pact powerful. But we weren't about to let them take one of our girls. I said to myself that we refused because it would be breaking the school's pact with the unlucky girl's parents. But, frankly, the contract with the Gangling Men was ten times as strong, and breaking it gave them complete and utter control over the school - and by that, I mean, all of the school's grounds, its magic, its artifices, all of it became theirs to alter or unmake. But they offered a compromise: in return for canceling the contract's magical debt, we would sign a new, essentially identical contract, Helen would step down as headmistress, and they would take a girl of their choosing that night."

"And they took your daughter?"

"Hyacinth," Lily nodded. A single tear rolled down her cheek. "She was so promising. Eleven years old and better than most of the Advanced girls. She reminded me of myself and her father both. Hyacinth Ambrosia Lily…"

Ah. That explained how Lily knew Ambrose Nicht - he was Hyacinth's father. I held Lily's hands, cool and taut against the book. "That's a beautiful name… I'm sorry I brought that up," I said. "I know a bit about dredging up painful memories. But, if you don't mind my asking, you said 'not any more'… what did they do with her?"

"Nobody knows," Lily said. She stood and we hugged, and I nestled my head right against her chin. "Nobody knows, but nobody's ever come back, and I gave my daughter to the fuckers to save St. Circe's."

"They took your mother and they took your daughter… you must really hate them."

"I do."

I pulled away from our hug and looked Lily in the eye. "I hate them, too, and I'm going to make them pay for what they've done."

Whatever she was feeling, Lily's voice betrayed no emotion. "I know."

+++++

The next afternoon, Simone stopped by, ostensibly to study. She and I were collaborating with one another on 'The Lesser & Intermediate Artifices', the only book around that went past beginner material and the only one that contained some nugget of forbidden knowledge. As per our pact with the Gangling Men, we were not permitted to have such knowledge… or, rather, the Sisterhood of the Starry Night was obligated to turn over any witch discovered to be in possession of such knowledge, along with said knowledge, over to Professor Scriven (of the Gangling Men).

The caveat was that Professor Scriven had vanished years before - presumably dead or whatever equivalent those fuckers suffered - and so the contract was now unenforceable. And the Gangling Men seemed to be unaware of this, and the sisterhood sure as shit wasn't going to tell them. Instead, we studied the material in secrecy, learning forbidden crafts and trying to deduce why various symbols were forbidden for us to use. For instance, witches weren't permitted to make any artifacts using specific forbidden symbols - Lily's self-serving tea set was certainly among that number, but since it dated from before the pact, it was grandfathered in. Simple things like a control collar or a warlock's compass didn't use any forbidden symbols. And more complex things? We might make them, but we couldn't let anybody see them, not even our sister witches, lest the word somehow get out.

While brainstorming on how to make an advanced compass to find the Black Lily, Simone and I concluded, around the same time, that there must be another symbol we were missing from our codex, but that we might be able to reconstruct it by figuring out, as precisely as possible, what the symbol ought to be able to do. We'd ended our group session to do our own independent study on the issue, and now she was back so we could try to fit our individual hunches together.

"Natalie," Lily whispered for some reason. We were in the upstairs hallway, and I was about to go down to meet Simone in the entryway. "Here… it's for Simone." Lily seemed uncharacteristically nervous for some reason… cautious over the white envelope she'd just handed me, simply labeled Simone Clayton in neat-ish script. I shrugged and took it down.

"'Sup, Simone," I said. "Ready to get to work?"

Simone frowned and looked to be mulling over a very complex problem (which, considering her intellect, must have been very complex). "I can't believe I'm doing this. Again," she said. She unzippered her backpack, reached inside, and handed me several envelopes.

I opened each of them, my excitement notching up as I read each.

Natalie Bryce: Cassandra Petersen cordially invites you to the St. Circe's & St. Lovelock's Harvest Formal

Natalie Bryce: Magnus Falstad cordially invites you to the St. Lovelock's & St. Circe's Harvest Formal

Natalie Bryce: Liam Langley cordially invites you to the St. Lovelock's & St. Circe's Harvest Formal

"Three invitations!" I blurted. This was exactly the sort of thing that had never, ever excited Martin Warner, but that I now found absolutely irresistible. Call it getting suplexed by a very sexual teenage girl's hormonal system, body slammed with sappy romantic sensibilities, and flying heel-hooked with a low key case of former dude insecurity. Part of me hated that I loved this stuff, but I couldn't deny what I felt. I'd wanted to feel loved and desired, and my quartet was really pouring it on; even Liam had sent me a invite. "Oh!" I remembered the envelope that Lily had handed me. I jumped up and down a few times and then stuffed it into Simone's hands, apparently unable to get words to work. "For you!"

Hands trembling, Simone cracked it open. "Wyatt Bowles-Smythe cordially invites you to the St. Lovelock's and St. Circe's Harvest Formal!" Now, you may thinking: they both would have been there anyway, and of course Wyatt invited Simone… but you, my friend, clearly don't understand the salience of this situation. Especially given that this was the very first time that anybody had formally asked Simone out on anything romantic. She started crying. "I can't believe I'm crying," she sobbed. "Why am I crying?"

"I'm so happy!" I said.

"Me, too!" Simone sniffed back her tears.

"Let's write our replies - I know where Lily keeps stationery!"

Thirty minutes later, we finally got around to our study session, periodically breaking out into giggles over our good fortune. I'd never considered how strangely empowering it was to have somebody so fixated upon you that they'd invite you and only you to their event… a whole world of people to choose from, and you're the one they invited. I knew that I sounded like a lovestruck teenage girl, and I knew that I should resist going with the flow like that… and I knew that line of thinking was bullshit, because when life gives you something or someone that feels good, you savor the shit out of it, because you never know when it's going to suddenly end. The next day, the Gangling Men could take you away, and nobody would ever see you again.

+++++

Our… The Harvest Formal was the next week [not 'our', since I no longer had any official connection with St. Circe's beyond its being my witch alma mater]. For the second year running, it was held at the Old Abbey, the castle-like remnants of an abbey in countryside of southern France, now updated to standards of 21st Century luxury (minus some of the complex electronics). For the first year ever, there was a moratorium on creepy rapey shit, with no littles for the more sociopathic boys to have their way with. The limo picked me up at Lily's with Cassie, Simone, and a few other girls already inside.

Since I was basically restricted to Lily's place, Cassie had gone to the school wardrobe and picked out a gown for me - its fashion a complete mystery to me until she'd presented it the day before. It was a gown that I never would have picked myself, daring, maroon, and sequined, but it accentuated my attributes nicely. A bit too nicely - Cassie could barely keep herself from getting handsy when I modeled it for her.

"I believe everybody knows my girlfriend, Natalie," Cassie said.

"Hi, Natalie," Eva said - she was a former Big, but she'd been reasonably nice among that cadre of bitches, so I was only slightly cool to her. She got a smile and a nod. She was still Emilia's roommate, but Emi and Helena were obviously riding to the formal together, so Eva and Cassie were the odd women out roommate-wise.

We drove straight from Lily's into the French countryside, where the glow of late afternoon immediately became nighttime and we coasted past vineyards and old aqueducts before driving up the winding ascent to the abbey. There, we debarked and formed up into little St. Circe's contingencies - which I still thought was absolutely stupid, even if I might be ecstatic about attending a gala with my friends. And, now that there was no little-Big nonsense, most of the girls were pretty ecstatic about it. If Helena had reservations about attending - she'd been raped last year, when us littles served as entertainment and not much else - she hid it under her newfound swagger. But Michelle, who'd been traumatized and nearly suffered the same fate as Helena, was visibly upset as she ascended the abbey steps. I shuffled over to her and pressed a card into her hand.

"If you run into trouble, rip that in half and I'll know," I whispered.

Michelle smiled weakly. "I know… Simone gave me one, too. Thanks…"

"Better keep them both. I'll ruin anybody who starts shit with you, okay?" And I meant it - Natalia Cadence Storm didn't exactly inspire trembling fear, but that was the bad fortune of whoever tried to mess with me or my friends.

We entered to all of the boys arrayed in the main hall - across the floor, up along the bannisters, all of them smiling and awaiting our entrance. And, after the last of us had filed in and we were all standing in the middle of the great hall, awkward as fuck, the boys said in unison:

"Welcome to the abbey, ladies!" and everybody cheered.

I waved to Magnus (who was rolling his eyes over the welcoming nonsense) and Liam, dashing in their tuxedos, and each wearing two sparkly pins, one red and one black, corresponding to the gowns that Cassie and I sported… though, unlike Cassie's gown, those black pins weren't partly see-through. For something that technically covered everything, her ensemble didn't leave much to the imagination.

"Magnus! Liam!" I sauntered over to them and gave all of my hosts deserving kisses.

Cassie I obviously had lots of kissing experience with one another, and with Magnus I only had a bit less. I could count on one hand the number of times I'd kissed Liam before, though we'd done plenty of fucking. But I kissed him, and it somehow wasn't weird, and he was a better kisser than Magnus (who, if I haven't been clear, is pretty good). And part of me said I ought to be jealous about that, jealous that Cassie got the better kisser. And a growing part of me said: Natalie, if you're going to commit to a four-person relationship there's no 'Cassie's Boy' or 'Natalie's Boy', and good kissing skills are an unambiguous bonus. So: don't look a gift royal in the mouth. Instead, try putting your tongue in there.

"Um… Natalie?" Cassie cleared her throat.

I pulled away from Liam with a wet smack. "What… oh…" I giggled. "Why didn't you tell me Liam was such a good kisser?"

"I did."

"Well why the hell didn't I believe you?"

We queued up for drinks in the clamoring, chandelier-lit 'lower ballroom' - later in the evening, it would get more a la carte, but this early on, everybody was lining up for their first intoxicant. We chatted, struggling to make one another out over the din, we got our wine, and we wandered right out the back of the abbey and into its gardens.

I'd never actually been in the gardens before. On my only other visit the previous year, I'd restricted my activities to the balcony and inside. But the garden was quite beautiful - well-lit paths paved with limestone gravel winding into the distance - there was a hedge maze somewhere back there, too. There were little curlicued topiaries, wrought iron urns with cherubs and satyrs sculpted into them, classical sculptures of nymphs and gods, some of them no doubt originals, and a thousand flowers and rare plants, all of them masterfully-curated with little labels telling you what was what. All the air was filled with their fragrant smell, wafting on the hazy night breeze.

"Oh! I need vercunia's lily!" I said, and I bent down to pluck one. I patted myself for something to put it in, having neither pockets nor a purse on me. I wound up slotting it into my cleavage.

"Natalie, you're more than just your tits!" Magnus chuckled. He plucked the flower out from my bosom and slid it into my hair. He was right: I could hold a thousand blossoms in my fiery and rose-gold tresses if I had a mind to.

"Oh yeah. Good idea."

Liam cleared his throat. "Ladies, I'd love nothing more than to wile the whole evening with you in this lovely garden, but Magnus and I have a little side-lounge booked and we've got to prepare it for our princesses. If you'd like to take a stroll and meet us on the veranda in, say, fifteen minutes… I promise I'll make it worth your while."

"You're a warlock," I said. "Word is bond."

"It is, indeed." Grinning, Liam bent to kiss the back of my hand and then did likewise to Cassie. Then he kissed Magnus on the cheek and, hand-in-hand, our Boys sauntered back into the abbey.

We continued down the path and toward the hedge maze, the gravel crunching beneath our feet. Other couples, as well as a few singletons and triplets, sauntered in the nighttime cool about us, some of them barely holding hands and some of them barely able to keep their clothes on. I spotted Simone and Wyatt making out on a bench and nudged Cassie to point it out.

"Fifteen minutes until play time," Cassie said. "I bet I can get you good and warmed up in the maze…"

"Then we'll be late," I said. "Once I'm in third gear, it's fifth gear or bust… you know I can't control myself."

"Oh, I'm well aware, Miss Bryce," Cassie giggled. "I just wanted to see if you knew that. I…"

"Hey! There she is!" A boy shouted.

And, as is often the case, the 'she' he was referring to was little moi. The boy was Lucian's goon - the big one, the one even bigger than Magnus. He and goons 2-3 lumbered over to us, the gravel crunching beneath their feet like a battalion of storm troopers. His fists were balled and a vein in his neck was pulsing up and down. I plucked a leaf off a nearby topiary and prepared myself for a very short and definitive confrontation. Had these assholes learned nothing from last time?

"What the fuck did you do with Lucian, you bitch?" big goon said. "Nobody knows where he is… what did you do?"

"If you don't remember, he electrocuted me. I'm surprised you don't remember mulling over pulling him off me as he shocked me to death and being too goddamn chickenshit to do it. No? That doesn't ring a bell?"

"Look, dude. We all saw you transform into… whatever you are now. We know who you are," small goon said (actually, he was pretty average-sized for a guy, but that's small by brawny St. Lovelock's standards). "Tell us where Lucian is and nobody gets hurt."

"Natalie, be cool," Cassie whispered. We'd attracted attention and people were gathering around us. Sorry, Cassie: Natalie wasn't cool with this.

"'And nobody gets hurt'?" I laughed. "How do you think this plays out, bub? You threaten the little girl, make her tremble and cry, and she coughs up the CIA black site where your best bro's being held? I don't know what the fuck happened to him… and you know what? I don't care. I hope he's fucking dead," I said. "Now get the fuck out of my face before I make you."

"Ooooh," somebody in the assembling crowd said.

That, apparently, broke the last threads holding big goon's restraint in check. With an angry grunt, he stepped forward and took a swing at me - and Cassie pulled me back and stepped into my spot to protect me. Fortunately, she didn't step forward, because I'd have conked her. The nearby topiary swung down like the limb of a huge beast and slammed into big goon with the rustle of leaves and the crack of small branches. He groaned and struggled to stand up, so I thumped him again. The whole time, I kept my eyes locked on the other two, lips pursed and brow knit in anger, as if to tell them: take one goddamn step and this will be you.

"What is the meaning of this?" a man snapped. He stormed through the gathered crowd and stood between me and big goon, dark eyes fixed upon me. Three-piece suit, pencil mustache, and a little gold pocketwatch chain… it was the same chaperon who'd broken up my little vase-smashing kerfuffle with Michelle's would-be-rapist last year.

"Oh good," I said, and I rolled my eyes. "It's you. You know the drill, then - your boy fucked with the St. Circe's girls and now he needs medical attention."

"Impudent girl! You'll respect your betters!"

"Let me know when they show up." I yawned and then rolled my eyes again for good measure.

The chaperon grabbed his golden pendant and twirled symbols with his other hand, casting a fairly powerful bit of transformative magic in my direction. I raised as strong a shield as I could as quickly as I could, and maybe with a bit too much spin. Rather than absorbing the attack, the shield reflected it right back at him and the chaperon disappeared with a wet pop.

"What did you do to him?" Lorelei Waters gasped.

"I… I think he tried to turn me into a slug…"

A moment later, Ms. Law pushed through the crowd, her expression alternating between anger and confusion. "What in the sweet stars is going on here?" She looked to the little slimy spot where the chaperon had been standing moments before. "Oh, for goodness sake. You can't just leave him on the limestone… that's really dangerous, girls."

With a look of mild disgust, Ms. Law lifted the chaperon-slug between French-tipped nails and placed him on a granite bench with a little plop. Then she summoned a pretty substantial push of magic to undo the transformation spell - it had been a pretty potent spell and I think it had picked up more power from my shield and amplified on the return flight (for those wondering, the speed of magic is about twice the speed of sound, except for when it's not, which is sometimes). Ms. Law wavered from the exertion and Cassie leapt in to keep her from collapsing to the ground. And, where a slug had been moments before, was the St. Lovelock's chaperon, pencil mustache, three-piece suit, gold chain, and now covered in slime. He wiped goo from his eyes and glowered at me.

"I take it you'll discipline your student?" he said.

"Miss Bryce is not a student," Miss Law stated. "But you're welcome to appeal your grievances to the coven. I'm sure they'd be interested to hear about how you tried to turn a young woman acting in self defense into a slug and how she, a witch with less than a year's worth of training, reflected your own spell back at you."

"Isn't that Magnus's girlfriend?" one of the boys whispered.

"I just might do that," the chaperon said half-heartedly.

Ms. Law put a slim arm around my shoulder. "Natalie, as a coven sister: I think you and I should go back to St. Circe's."

I nodded, pulling away briefly to kiss Cassie on the cheek. "You'll have to fuck for the both of us," I whispered. Our foursome was not to be.

+++++

My debacle at the old abbey had taken less than an hour and so, when we rolled out of the French countryside and into the St. Circe's campus, it was still late evening, the air crisp and the trees yellow, orange, and red in the throes of autumn. The sky was aflame on the western horizon, the rest fading to indigo, and the strange southern lights slowly grew to a wavering glow. If you really looked closely (as Simone and I had once done), those strange southern lights were a wispy cloud of millions upon millions of stars that ought not to have been there… the starry night biding its time for the winter solstice.

"Honestly, Natalie," Ms. Law sighed. "Why do you invite so much trouble?"

"I don't 'invite' trouble, Ms. Law. It finds me, and I'll be damned if I let trouble win."

We pulled into the little roundabout in front of the administration building and we got out. The car rolled away as soon as the doors closed, off to points unknown.

"I think you and I may have different definitions of 'trouble', but your point is taken. We'll let the headmistress sort this out."

I slowed my pace. "I'm not waiting in the closet until morning this time."

"I've messaged ahead to Lily. With any luck, she's in already."

Lily wasn't in yet, so we waited in the outer office, still attired in our formal garb. I picked some bits of topiary from my hair and Ms. Law got some wet wipes and dispensed of any remnant of slug slime from her fingers. We sat side by side on the little striped couch, the office dim in its subdued yellowy lighting, the last of the day's light finally disappearing outside.

"I like your dress," I said. Ms. Law, ever the fashion maven, wore a black and white pencil dress that looked equal parts Audrey Hepburn and Hamptons chic.

She smiled. "Thank you. Yours is very fetching, too… so… Natalie…"

"Hmm?"

"How are you with children?"

The question took me aback - where in the world had that come from? How was I with kids? Frankly, I wasn't sure. The last time I'd done anything around kids had been… when? Before my time at St. Circe's, I imagine. My brother's kids had been two and three at the time, and I suppose I'd been fine with them, if none too enthused about looking after them for more than an hour at a stretch.

"I'm not sure, Ms. Law… are we talking little kids? Because my experience is pretty limited."

"I mean eleven to fourteen. Young women… what are they calling them these days? Tweaks?"

"Tweens," I giggled. "Those aren't children. You can actually have a conversation with an eleven year-old. They're, like, real people. They just aren't grown-ups yet… and, frankly, quite a few 'grown-ups' never get more mature than that."

"Indeed." Ms. Law nodded - her hair was black and silky and, while I would have pegged her around thirty, she may well have been quite a bit older, as were some of the St. Circe's staff. "I wonder, specifically, how you might be with a group of eight to ten girls in that age range. Would you be able to keep trouble from finding you?"

I sighed. "Contrary to conventional wisdom, Natalie Bryce doesn't wander around getting into trouble all the time. It's just that people really remember the times I do. I had three perfectly uneventful weeks at Lily's house before I rolled into the abbey and had to teach the St. Lovelock's boys the hard way that if they don't learn to treat women with respect, they've got a hell of a lesson coming. Ms. Law, would you please tell me where you're going with this?"

"I'm curious as to…"

Lily chose that time to arrive, strutting in wearing her typical headmistress attire - dark gray and black, two parts business formal, one part leather and chrome. She'd forgotten to put her St. Circe's persona on, though, only remembering to adjust her appearance to headmistress age when Ms. Law made a little gesture toward her own face. She shot me a glance - worried or annoyed, maybe a bit of either, and then ushered us into her office.

She sat at her desk and steepled her fingers. "No need to sugarcoat it, Faye, how bad is it?"

Ms. Law shrugged. "You may be getting an official complaint from St. Lovelock's by way of Sigmund Asturas… that said, not so bad. A boy got walloped with a topiary - I cannot verify who did that…"

"It was me," I said.

"In that case, Natalie walloped a St. Lovelock's boy with a topiary and then turned Sigmund into a slug and I changed him back. Rather, she tossed his own spell back at him. No lasting harm."

Lily nodded carefully. "And they deserved it?"

"In my opinion? Richly deserved."

"And you've given some thought to the matter we discussed previously?"

"I have… as well as discussed it a bit with Natalie. I think we could do a lot worse. I'll sign off on it."

Lily reached into her little desk drawer and placed an item on the desk surface - a small and silvery ring, not unlike the sanctuary ring she'd once given me (and that the Gangling Men had stolen) - only, instead of a little onyx-dark gemstone, the face of the ring was emblazoned with the St. Circe's seal. I took the ring and turned it over in my hands, watching as it resized itself to fit my dainty finger.

"What is this?" I asked.

"Natalie," Lily said, "I'd like to offer you an adjunct spot at St. Circe's. How would you like to be our newest lecturer in beginning witchcraft?"

OvidLemma

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