That would be his son and grandson he could feel approaching the house, Seth Terevan decided, tasting the cookie dough thoughtfully. More reliable magic than any witchcraft, that: to make relatives visit, bake their favourite cookies. He dumped chocolate chips into the dough, and glanced over his shoulder as he heard motion behind him—more in acknowledgement than any need to confirm who it was.

“Cookies'll be done soon. Just like Grandma used to make.”

“Grandma was an awful cook,” Christian pointed out, dropping his khaki-green canvas backpack out of the way and straddling one of the stools at the long counter. “You've always been the one making the cookies.”

“Just like Grandma used to pretend she'd made,” Seth amended without missing a beat. He'd known when he'd married Cecilia that she had little aptitude for cooking and generally had things on her mind other than housekeeping. He'd still never regretted it.

Jacob simply nodded a greeting to his father, and kept going through the laundry room, then the back door opened; through the open windows, Seth heard the hose being uncoiled.

“I think the back yard's dry,” Christian said. “One of the earth elementals must have felt us coming, it popped up out of the front garden, and Dad got that distant look and said something about water.”

Tawny-skinned and fine-boned, his shoulder-length hair dark auburn, Christian was visibly the child of his largely-Scottish mother, and of a father whose family had roamed the Mediterranean and Near East for generations before Europe and then the New World, cheerfully intermarrying with all and sundry. The Terevan tendency towards poor physical vision had led inevitably to the antique-gold, oval-framed glasses that did nothing to help the impression that he was younger than his chronological age of twenty. Seth sighed to himself, knowing beyond any doubt what he needed to do for the sake of the long-term, but regretting the short-term.

“Not surprising. It's a shame there are no weather-witches in this family. We could use some rain. Just as well, though, it'll give me a minute to talk to you alone.” Seth took a couple of teaspoons from the drawer, and began to scoop dough onto the cookie sheet, neatly spaced.

“What about?”

“You're still sure you want to stay here, when your parents move to Scotland?”

Christian sighed, and crossed his arms on the counter. “Yeah. I love them, and I'd like to meet everyone on Mom's side of the family, not just Aunt Lilian visiting every couple of years. I understand why Mom wants to go home after a couple of decades living here. But this is where I belong.”

“Remember we were talking about your moving in here completely?”

One of the bedrooms upstairs was Christian's anyway, and always had been. Jacob's high-demand independent yard care and landscaping devoured great chunks of time for over half the year, which could have created serious complications when Rosa went back to work full-time as a nurse. Would have, without Seth and his wife Cecilia and his sister Ruth. Between his parents' work schedules and simply ensuring that Jacob and Rosa got some time alone together, Christian had grown up here nearly as much as in his own house. Not that it had ever been unusual for Jacob and Rosa to simply sleep here as well, in Jacob’s old room, for any of a multitude of reasons.

The pattern had continued as Christian needed less supervision and more independence: he stayed here when he needed time away from his parents, or was doing research in the family library. Since this house was in walking distance of downtown, it gave him the option of being out later than the last bus ran to the subdivision where they lived. No one had pushed him to make choices immediately after finishing high school: it was virtually a family tradition to need time to decide what one wanted to do, on multiple levels. When he'd found a part-time job in a New Age bookshop, he'd automatically begun to spend more time here, going back to his parents' house through the early part of the week when he wasn't working. The huge ancient oak table in the dining room, right inside the front door, was as ideal for doing private Tarot readings as it had once been as space for his Dungeons and Dragons group.

It had seemed a given for Christian to take up full-time residence here once his parents finished the sale of their house and left the country.

“Mmhmm.”

“I've decided to go with them.”

Christian sat bolt upright, eyes going wide, and stared at him. “What? But you've lived here forever! Why would you want to leave?”

Because no Terevan has ever reached full potential while parents and grandparents stand there protectively, Seth thought. Because I want to see you grow into that, even if I can only do it from across an ocean. Because you're an adult in years, and you need to learn to be one. Some twenty-five years ago, he and Cecilia and Ruth had sent Jacob to live with family friends in Scotland. That had been no less difficult than what he was doing now.

Which was another and equally genuine reason.

Seth shrugged, and sighed aloud. “Losing people you've built a life with changes a lot. After decades of your grandmother and great-aunt and I living here, I still see too many memories. They'll always be part of me, but maybe some distance and a new environment will give me a chance to, well, rebuild, I suppose. Not to start over, but to start something new.”

“But... your grandparents’ grandparents built this house! And the liminals and all that live here, what about them? The cats? And the library...?”

“I didn't say anything about selling the house. There's always been a Terevan living here, and there still will be.”

“I get the whole house to myself?” Christian said incredulously.

“Not exactly.”

His grandson's forehead furrowed. “Not exactly? You're going with Mom and Dad, I'm staying here, but it's not exactly to myself?”

“There's one condition, and I have my reasons. There's going to be someone else moving in here with you.”

“Wait a minute. You want me to share our house with a total stranger? I'm supposed to live with somebody I've never met? Please tell me you're kidding.”

“I'm completely serious,” Seth said. “I think you'll get along with him just fine. He's around your age.” At least, I think he is. Hard to be certain. “There've been several long conversations with him, between mostly Vadin and I and more recently your mother and Iambe as well. The deal is that he gets to live here as long as he helps you. The heat and electricity and water can get a little higher than you might expect, and this house is a lot for one person alone, even with liminal help. Plus he has to back you up if you find that, for example, you've run into something bigger and nastier than you can handle alone. Wait, please, let me finish. Doing Tarot readings is fairly safe on all levels. I know you're careful and discreet when you do demos at the shop. But I expect that the requests to investigate suspected ghosts and bad energy in homes are only going to increase, and I know you too well to think you'll stop doing it. Wanting to use your gifts to help those who lack them is the sort of thing I'd expect from you, and I'm certainly not going to try to discourage you from doing something I've done. But take it from someone with experience: sooner or later, it won't be a ghost that doesn't realize they've died, or leftover tainted energies you can cleanse, or the liminal equivalent of mice or termites. It will be something that bites back.”

“Which I suppose is why I've spotted Vadin lurking in the vicinity every time,” Christian said dryly.

“He worries about your safety. He's much older than I am and he's watched you grow up. Nagas guard what they value. Your strengths and interests put you in more potential danger than your dad's have ever led him into. You didn't need him, so he didn't interfere. If you had needed him, well... I'd rather be behind an irritated naga than facing one.”

“I know, I know. Always make concessions to the essential behaviour of any kind of liminal, because they are what they are and need to be accepted as such, without trying to project or force human values or perspectives onto them, and resenting anything they do is stupid and counterproductive and just makes for bad feelings.”

“Vadin won't be able to run back here easily from Scotland if you get into a bad situation. The domovikha and domovoi and our collection of brownies would be no help with something hostile.” Although he wouldn't put it past them to try. Long ago, his parents had offered the Russian house-spirits a haven when the couple they'd accompanied to North America had died, their thoroughly-modern children rejecting the old ways and leaving the loyal liminals resentfully adrift. The brownies largely wandered in alone, gathering in a spot where they were appreciated and safe and free to come and go as they pleased; the numbers fluctuated and were hard to pin down, but he thought there were currently about eight or ten. Though typically non-aggressive, their fondness for Christian might provoke behaviour that was unusual—and possibly suicidal.

He measured out a last blob of cookie dough to fill the sheet. “He isn't the only one concerned about leaving you alone with no backup. Your aunt Ruth's friend Margaret would be willing to help, I'm sure, but she's not in the immediate area, and we'd rather you had someone more accessible.” He scraped the spoons off on each other, thoughtfully. “She is someone you can trust, however. Not always a given with other witches any more than with anyone else. Anyway, Mark is rather introverted and values his privacy, so it's possible you won't even see all that much of him. I gather he doesn't have much experience in living with someone else, but I'm sure you can work out the details. Most importantly, if you do run into something bad or have any reason to think you're in danger, tell him.”

“He's a witch?” Seth watched Christian toy with that idea, watched the balance between interest and jealousy. Understandable, that. He and Ruth had devoted considerable energy, after the death of their own parents sadly young, to establishing that this city was theirs and that they did not recognize the so-called Fellowship as having any authority here. The Fellowship had been less than accommodating, which had finally led to the Terevan siblings making it clear that other witches were unwelcome here at all save by invitation. No one had challenged that since before Christian's birth. The Fellowship, finally, had given up on them.

Probably they should have made more of an effort to make certain Christian had the chance to interact with friendly witches, like the large and widespread family of which Ruth's long-time friend Margaret Lyndell was matriarch. With his parents' schedules, Christian's education mundane and magical, Ruth's long illness a decade ago, Cecilia's more abrupt passing in Christian's final year of high school, Christian's job... it seemed like there'd always been something more urgent or something delaying it. He could only hope it wouldn't have consequences.

“No, Mark's not a witch. But you don't need to hide anything from him, and I can't see that he'll interfere with your studies at all.”

“He's not a witch but I'm supposed to ask him for help with witchy stuff? That doesn't make sense!”

Seth sighed, and turned away to put the cookies in the oven. He hoped they weren't making an enormous mistake, allowing Mark to choose the timing. “He asked us to let him do his own explanations. That's a difficult request to argue with. Trust me, Chris, please.”

Silence for a moment, while Christian's faith in his grandfather warred with his indignation over having a mysterious housemate imposed on him. Seth pulled the other cookie sheet in reach, and resumed scooping cookies, waiting.

“I guess,” Christian said doubtfully. “The house is huge, we can probably keep from annoying each other too much. I get the library to myself, this way. And if I'm sharing with someone else... I can probably make enough if I keep working part-time, right? Which would leave me lots of time to study...” He trailed off, eyes unfocusing as he considered the possibilities of the situation.

“I would imagine so.” Terevans had done worse, for a library and the time and space to study, he reflected. And Christian was absolutely a Terevan. It had made it very easy to protect him, so he could learn to be himself without pressure, but they couldn't shelter him forever. No matter how Seth and Jacob and Rosa would have liked to do so.

“But if I don't like him...”

“Give it a fair chance first, then we'll discuss that if you have a problem.”

Christian hesitated, weighing that, then nodded. “All right. For you, I'll do my best.”

“Good,” Seth said briskly. And by all the gods, I hope we've done the right thing.

But he's going to need a strong and intelligent protector. This way, at least he'll have some help when things start to happen. And they always do.