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AVERY

“S o you’re going to try and break a curse that no other witch in the entire Western Province of the Sky Lands was able to touch?” Kaitlyn raised her eyebrows skeptically. “And how exactly are you going to do that?”

“It does seem like kind of a tall order,” Emma admitted, biting her lower lip.

“Certainly doesn’t sound like little magic,” Megan remarked.

“Gee, thanks for that vote of confidence, girls,” I said snarkily. “It’s almost like you don’t think I can accomplish the impossible task I’ve set for myself.”

We were sitting in the Norm Dorm after everyone else had gone to bed. I had to catch my Coven mates up on what had been happening that day and I needed some help working out my next steps. But so far, they weren’t being much help.

“Don’t take it like that, Avery!” Kaitlyn exclaimed. “You know we have faith in you!”

“Yes, you can do it!” Emma said earnestly.

“Do you want some help? Blood Magic kind of help?” Megan asked.

“No, this curse is for me to break,” I said firmly. “And besides, Princess Latimer, you know you’re forbidden to do Blood Magic on pain of expulsion.”

“I know.” She sighed. “But you’re my friend, Avery—my Coven mate. And Coven mates help each other.”

“What I need right now from all of you is just moral support,” I said. “I know where I can find help…I just hate to go there.”

“And where is it that you hate to go?” Kaitlyn asked.

“Home.” I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. “I’m going to have to ask my father for help with this and he’s just going to love seeing me with another male’s Mark on my forehead and hearing that I need his help to break the curse on my new boyfriend.”

“Oh, no!” Emma put a hand to her mouth and all three girls exchanged glances.

“It’s not going to be easy,” I told them. “I thought maybe I could ask you three to come with me?” I raised my eyebrows hopefully. “My dad is supposed to be home this weekend—at least that’s what my mom says.”

“Of course we’ll come, Avery!” Megan exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted to meet your parents. After all, you guys have come over to my Aunt Delli’s house before.”

“And you’ve all met my mom, too. My human mom, I mean,” Emma put in. Her biological mother had been the Princess of the Summer Court in the Realm of the Fae, but she’d been raised by a human woman who she still loved dearly.

Kaitlyn was silent—she had lost her parents in a house fire some years before, so we couldn’t meet them. It made me glad that she was Blood-Bonded to Ari, who loved her to distraction.

“Thank you—I knew I could count on my Coven,” I said, grinning at all of them.

“But Avery, don’t you think your dad might unbend just a little once he sees how happy you and Saint are together?” Megan asked.

“Oh, I doubt that very much,” I said dryly. “Look, you were raised in the human world and only came to the magical world recently. You don’t understand how deeply ingrained the hatred of LGBTQ people is, especially in old-school warlocks like my dad.”

“Come on, Avery—surely your dad doesn’t really hate you,” Emma objected. “I mean, he buys you nice things, doesn’t he? Not that gifts equal love, but still…”

“Yeah, it doesn’t seem like you’d buy someone you hate a new car,” Kaitlyn pointed out.

I raked a hand through my hair again. They knew the relationship between me and dear old dad was something less than ideal, but I hadn’t even told my Coven mates how bad it was. However, in the interest of coming clean, I thought I might have to share a little more than I had previously.

“All right,” I said. “Let me tell you a little story about me and my dad which might shed a little light on our relationship for the three of you…”

The three of them sat forward eagerly and I took a deep breath, trying to think how to begin.

“One night, about a week after I first flamed up and sewed patterns all over my mom’s dress with my magic needle, I was in bed when I heard raised voices in my parents’ bedroom.

Now, this was not usual for my mom and dad—they weren’t loud fighters.

In fact, for the most part, they didn’t fight at all.

We had a very quiet, calm household so this was unusual for us,” I told them.

“I snuck out of bed and crept down the hallway, my ears perked to hear what was going on. The door to my parents’ bedroom was cracked, so the conversation was easy to hear—though not so easy to understand. At least not for six-year-old me.”

“Oh—what were they talking about?” Megan asked, her green eyes wide with curiosity.

“I wasn’t sure at first,” I told her. “I’ll tell you what I heard and you see if you can figure it out…”

“It’s a very safe place,” my father was saying. “They have almost a ninety-five percent success rate.”

“You’re not mentioning the other five percent,” my mother said, her voice flat. “The five percent who kill themselves when the conversion spell goes wrong. Like Jamie.”

“Oh for God’s sake!” my father snarled. “Why does it always come back to your brother?”

“You know why, Harold,” my mother snapped. “Because that’s what happened to him. My parents thought like you do—they decided it was worth the risk so they could have a ‘normal’ son. And look what happened—now they have no son at all. And I…I’ll never see my wonderful big brother again!”

There was a sob in her voice as though she was crying. I could almost see the tears standing in those big, blue eyes, which I had inherited from her.

“That’s very rare, Claire,” my father protested. “And the younger you send them to the camp, the higher the success rate! It only takes a few weeks to?—”

“No!” my mother shouted. “Will you listen to yourself? What if everyone wanted their son to have black hair but your son didn’t?

Then some people came up to you and said—‘Hey, we’ve got this foolproof dye that will turn your son’s hair black ninety-five percent of the time.

Of course, there’s a five percent chance it will make him hate himself so much he kills himself, but hey—at least he’ll die with black hair, just like all the other boys. And that’s really what counts, right?”

“Claire, be serious,” my father growled. “We are not talking about the color of his hair!”

“No, but what we are talking about is every bit as much a part of him as his hair color or his eye color or anything else he was born with,” my mother said firmly.

“Our son is perfect and beautiful just the way he is. And I’ll be damned if I’ll let you send him to one of those horrible magical orientation-conversion camps! ”

“If you’d just see reason!” my father exclaimed. “Think of what kind of life he’s going to have! You know how people in the magical community feel about…about kids with the wrong orientation.”

“It’s the right orientation for him,” my mother said. “He was born this way, Harold and we don’t have the right to change him—or to shame him,” she added fiercely. “It’s not a choice .”

“It could be, though.” My father’s voice was low and angry. “He’s so young—he wouldn’t even remember showing any tendencies the other way. He could have a normal life, Clair?—”

“You sound just like the people who came and talked my parents into sending Jamie away,” my mother said softly. “They were so persuasive and my mom and dad wanted to believe them so much—they wanted a ‘normal’ son so much…”

“And they had one,” my father interjected. “Jamie was fine.”

“Until he turned eighteen and the magic they used to change him went bad,” my mother said.

“You don’t understand, Harold— it tore him up inside.

When his true nature leaked out from under that magical shell they put over it—like they were trying to hide some kind of toxic waste,” she added bitterly.

“That was when the schizophrenia started—when he started feeling like two people in one body. When he started going crazy…”

“You don’t know that the conversion magic did that,” my father protested. “He might have been predisposed to that kind of condition.”

“That only holds up if it never happened to anyone else,” my mother said flatly.

“And it does—to five percent of the kids they see there. I will not risk our son’s life like that.

And you should be ashamed for wanting to risk it.

Avery is precious and perfect just like he is and you’re not sending him to that horrible place. And that’s final.”

“And that was the last of that,” I said, sitting back a little in the ratty old couch. “I mean, if they had the argument again, I never heard it but my mom definitely won because here I am, in all my natural splendor.” I spread my hands, giving them a little smirk.

All three girls’ eyes had gotten wide as they looked at each other and then back at me.

“Oh my God, Avery!” Megan breathed. “Your dad wanted to send you to a magical gay-away camp?”

I nodded.

“Yup, he did.”

“So he was willing to risk you killing yourself just to make you straight?” Kaitlyn’s eyes were suddenly filled with tears. “Oh, Avery, how horrible!”

“Thank God your mom didn’t let him do it!” Emma exclaimed.

“My mother has always been my biggest advocate,” I said, smiling fondly. “She gets me. If she had the power to help me break the curse on Saint, you’d better believe she’d do it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, she’s a Null.” I sighed.

“And you’re sure there’s no one else to ask besides your father?” Megan asked, frowning.

I shook my head.

“He’s pretty much the most powerful Warlock I know. If anyone can break the curse on Saint, it will be him. I’m just hoping he’ll be willing to help once I explain that breaking the curse might…” I coughed. “Might turn him and his Drake straight.”

“That’s so awful, though,” Emma objected. “If you break the curse, you’ll lose him!”

“Pretty sure I will,” I said. I was trying to sound nonchalant but maybe not doing such a good job of it, considering the melting looks of sympathy my three Coven mates were giving me.

“Avery, I think you need a hug,” Kaitlyn said softly.

I shrugged, but I had never been very good at being macho.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I could.”

The three of them gathered around me and I felt the power flowing between us as their arms enfolded me. The power of friendship—the power of love. That power is more magical than any spell you could cast or any enchantment you could conjure and it made me feel better, as it always did.

“Thanks, girls,” I said at last, sitting back and sniffing, while I blotted at my eyes with the sleeve of my robe. “It’s good to know you’ve all got my back.”

“Always,” Megan swore loyally.

“We’ll be right behind you.” Kaitlyn’s eyes flashed. “And your dad had better behave himself!”

“Tell him you’ve got a Fairy Princess who commands the warriors of both Fae realms, a huge, scary Drake, and the Witch Queen at your back,” Emma advised, smiling a little. “Maybe that will make him behave a little better.”

“Thanks, but I don’t want to threaten him—it would be nice if he’d just help me on his own,” I said. Actually, I would be happy if my dad was just civil instead of being so cold and distant, which was his usual MO, but I didn’t tell them that.

“So when are we going to talk to him?” Megan asked.

“I’ll ask my mom to make us all lunch on Saturday,” I said. “I’m going to have to bring Saint too, so my dad can feel his curse—that is, if he’ll agree to help me.”

Emma shivered.

“You don’t need any extra magical perception to feel that. Just being near him when his Drake is anywhere near the surface is like standing at the gates of Hell.” She shot me a glance. “Sorry, Avery, but it’s true.”

“I know. I know it better than anybody—I’m the one who has to keep talking him down, remember?” I said. “But think of poor Saint—he tells me it’s like having a crazy person inside him, screaming at him all the time.” I shook my head. “I don’t know how he lives with it without going insane.”

“Poor guy,” Megan said sympathetically. “And it isn’t even his fault he was cursed, is it?”

I shook my head.

“He was cursed for something his father did,” I told them, and saw Kaitlyn nodding. She’d had the whole story from Saint before I had, back when she had visited the Sky Lands with Ari.

“Well, hopefully your father will be willing to help you out,” Megan said briskly. “And if he won’t, we’ll figure something out.”

I knew she was thinking of using her Blood Magic again, but to be honest, I wasn’t sure even that would work—( if she’d been allowed to use it, which she most certainly wasn’t.) But my father had some experience with curse-breaking.

He had worked in that field before going into Climate Change, so it should be right up his alley.

I just hoped he’d consent to listen to me—hoped he could see past his hatred of what I was long enough to help Saint.