Page 38 of Adepts and Alchemists
If we were using a fertility ritual, it stood to reason I’d have to mimic birth. Pain came with that package. I’d never had achild in real life. The war had been too real, too close for me to feel comfortable bringing a fresh witch into the bloody conflict. Even safeguarding my nieces had bored anxious holes into my psyche. I hadn’t been good, smart, or fast enough to drag them out of harm’s way. I’d gotten Lydia killed merely because of my proximity. So, no, kids never had been in my forecast and never would be.
I didn’t like pain, but in this case, it served a purpose. I nodded tightly at her. “I understand and I can accept that. I suppose there’s no way to get an epidural beforehand?”
GG’s eyes sparkled for the first time since we’d met. “Afraid not. We’re doing this the natural way.”
“In a lipid bath with an incubus and a blood warlock, as God intended it,” I said dryly.
“Something like that.”
***
The lipid bath looked and smelled closer to the brown stuff they suspended beans in than chocolate pudding. At least that might have had a little titillation factor. Sitting across from a shirtless incubus in a kiddie pool full of goo wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Sure, he looked pretty lickable, even in castoff gym shorts RJ had dug out of his truck at the last moment. My libido couldn’t leap high though while stuck in the baked bean quagmire. There was something sludgy in my cleavage. It was hard to feel randy when Isquelchedevery time I moved.
We’d set up GG’s patio. Most of the stones were broken, with grass or weeds poking through the jutting edges. Hanging baskets hung off the end of the eaves, casting long shadows over Angelo’s face. Most of his profile was lost to shadow, except for the glimmer of red at the very center of his eyes. His demon was close to the surface, a predator prowling close enough to raise the hairs on the back of my neck.
“Relax,” he said in a low voice that was probably meant to be soothing. It just made me think of erotic audio dramatizations. The incubus had a nice voice.
“Easy for you to say. The Blood Warlock won’t be using you as a vessel to bring a full-grown woman back into the world, will he?”
Angelo inclined his head, conceding the point. The evidence of his inner darkness still remained near his pupils, the only hint I had that he had any qualms about the experiment we were about to conduct. So much could go wrong. We could fail. Lydia could go fullPet Cemeteryand come back wrong on us. The only hands we could place our hope in belonged to a dangerously unstable warlock. So, no pressure.
Poppy was on her hands and knees, inking the stones all around us with magical formulae in a language I was only vaguely familiar with. She seemed to be able to breeze through each page from her grandmother’s book because it took only a few minutes to establish each set. By the time she was done, each block of text would glow a subtle white-gold in time and pulse in time with my heartbeat. If anyone had the stones to glance over the fence to see what we were up to, it would have looked like some kind of new-age orgy was taking place around a kiddie pool.
“You’re doing well,” GG remarked from a lawn chair as she watched her granddaughter work. She’d sunk into it gratefully when Poppy and Finn snatched her supplies from her hands, insisting on setting things up in her stead. “I wasn’t this intuitive at your age. Have you been doing any studying and simply didn’t realize it?”
Poppy shrugged, finishing up the most recent chipped flagstone before glancing up at her. “I mean, I’ve been around witches for ages. I probably picked up a lot of general knowledge. One skill set tends to overlap with another, right?”
GG’s eyes softened, and she spared an indulgent smile for her grandchild. “I suppose it does. I knew going to a Hollow would do you some good.”
Poppy’s lips twitched into a small, satisfied smile. “It did. Thanks, GG. It changed my life.”
“Are we about done?” I interjected before the conversation could turn maudlin. If Poppy managed to smudge the lines with grateful tears, we’d have to start all over. The bare minimum was already stretching my tolerance to its breaking point.
“Just about,” Finn said, without any rancor. I couldn’t tell if he’d heard the irritation in my voice and chose to ignore it, or if he was as impervious to bad vibes as was his mother. “Does this look right, GG?”
Finn scooted sideways a few inches, letting her lean over the arm of her chair to examine his work. It wasn’t as sure-fingered and strongly magical as Poppy’s, but he was young. The fact he could charge any spellcraft at all was nothing short of a miracle. Magic, especially strong magic, tended to skip males in a line.
“It looks great, Monkey,” GG said fondly, reaching over to ruffle his hair.
Finn frowned but stayed put, letting his great grandmother fuss over him tolerantly. “GG, we’ve talked about that. Only Mom calls me that, and I really wish she wouldn’t.”
“And only in private,” Poppy said in a whisper that nonetheless carried. “He’s a high schooler and high schoolers are supposed to be cool, remember?”
“Mom!”
Wanda let out a chuckle, approaching the staging area with a glass in one hand. Sparkling water shone in the porch lights. She looked like she wanted to be guzzling something stronger. So did I.
“Let your mother give you nicknames, kid,” she said. “Pretty soon you’ll be too old, and that will be a damned shame.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Finn replied, waving her away.
A trickle of wind poured through the yard, snapping the book he’d been copying shut. “We’re overdoing it now,” Wanda said. “I don’t think we need a straight mile of this spellwork. The patio is enough.”
Finally, someone I could find common ground with. The written spellwork was a pain, but theoretically necessary. The chatting and over preparation were something else entirely.
Maverick chose that moment to saunter into view. He was moving with the ease and confidence of a man who knew what he was doing, but I knew better. I could almost taste the unease in the air. Everyone present knew how dangerous and unstable blood magic could be. So much could go wrong with this ritual. He opened his mouth, looking like he might be sick, closed it, and then shot me a dirty look.
“Nice swimsuit,” he sneered.