Page 23 of Wicching Hour (The Sea Wicche Chronicles #3)

TWENTY-THREE

Fae v Demon

W hen we stepped through the door, I felt a chill.

“I thought demons were hot,” Declan said. “I sat near Dave once and started sweating.”

I nodded. “Yeah, he runs even hotter than you. I think this cold has something to do with the way they’re trying to break the wards.”

Stepping out onto the drive, I looked back at the house. The problem was that Gran’s home was like a bag of holding, appearing much smaller on the outside than the reality of the inside. Gran’s home looked to be a derelict cottage clinging to a cliff. Really, it was a gorgeous three-bedroom, three-bath showplace. The problem was figuring out how to get on the roof when the roof wasn’t where our eyes told us it was.

“Any idea how we get up there?” I asked.

He turned his back to me and crouched. “You can be my backpack and I’ll climb. I can’t jump, since I can’t see where I’ll be landing, and I don’t want to take off your grandmother’s gutters.”

I got on and wrapped my arms and legs around him.

He tugged my arm from his neck. “Maybe try not to strangle me.” Reaching up, he tried to locate the actual edge of the roof. He followed it around the corner and then came back to the front door. “I have an idea, but be ready to save us if this doesn’t work.” He picked up Gran’s heavy bench with ease and moved it out from under the porch overhang.

“Don’t judge me,” he grumbled. “This is going to be awkward as hell. She has high, peaked ceilings inside, so I’m assuming this is a peaked roof. If my aim is off and we fall, we’ll need some kind of magical air mattress down here.”

I wiggled my fingers. “On it.”

He pulled me around so I was clinging to the front of him. “By the way, that was a really hot exit line about tainted blood you gave them.” He kissed me with a ferocity that made all thought dribble out my ears.

When we finally came up for air, he had one hand under my butt and the other on my face. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something but then closed it, gave me a soft kiss, and slid me back around.

Stepping up on the bench, he reached up, much higher than the edge of the roof we saw, and wrapped his fingers around the side of what I assumed was a gutter. He stepped up onto the back of the bench, his balance perfect.

He flexed his knees and jumped, landing on the steep incline of Gran’s slate tile roof—one we could now see. It had occurred to me earlier as I sat in her living room, watching that dark shadow circle the house, that the roof might be vulnerable. We’d never come up here to place a ward. Granted, our wards were for the entire building, extending onto her property, but if that dark shadow was getting to the windows and chilling the air inside, they were breaking down Gran’s wards.

“Apparently,” I said, “whoever created the original spell making Gran’s house look like a cottage didn’t extend the spell to the roof.”

“Thank goodness,” Declan grumbled, “or we’d be risking our necks with every step.”

He scrambled to the top, pausing in a valley between two peaks. He helped me down and held on until I had my balance. I did a quick cleaning spell and then found a stable spot to sit. Declan moved out of my way, close enough to grab me if I started to slide, but far enough away to give me room to work.

“The tree cover helps too,” I said. “Otherwise, satellite photos would show the roof of a very large house.”

Declan nodded, looking up into the undersides of the huge trees surrounding Gran’s home.

I took out the octopus bottle, slipped off my gloves, and squirted some ocean water into my hands. Closing my eyes, I placed my wet hands over my face and looked inside, trying to separate out that part of me that was fae.

I had no idea how long I was sitting there searching, but it was long enough to feel completely demoralized. I had no idea how to do this. I could have created a wicche ward, but at this point it felt like little more than a Band-Aid.

A large, cool hand pulled one of mine from my face and held it. I blinked my eyes open and found my father sitting beside me, his hair long and curly again. His bright aqua blue eyes watched me with humor.

“Tell me, daughter. Why are we sitting on a roof?”

I couldn’t stop the ear-to-ear grin. He was back. “Hi.”

He waited.

“Oh. My cousin and her demon are breaking down the wards on Gran’s house. I came up here to create a ward using fae magic, but I have no idea how to do it. Can you help me?”

He glanced around the roof, nodding at Declan. My butt all of a sudden hurt less. I looked down and saw that Dad and I were now sitting on cushions.

“Thanks,” I said.

He looked annoyed, but I wasn’t sure what I’d done to tick him off. “This is Mary’s house?”

I nodded.

“I’d like to help you, daughter, but I have no desire to help her. Perhaps we could just let the demon have her.” He shrugged one muscular shoulder. “I can’t imagine she’d be much missed.”

I gave him my best disappointed look, but he was unmoved.

“Please,” I said. “I know she’s not your favorite person. Sometimes she’s not mine either?—”

“That shows good sense,” he interrupted, patting my knee. “You get that from me.”

“ But she’s still my grandmother and the head of this family. I want her to be safe. Can you show me how to build a fae ward?”

He studied me like he was memorizing everything about me. “Had you been allowed to visit me growing up, you’d have a much better understanding of your fae side. Instead, they kept you from me, denying my hand in my own daughter’s education.”

He looked down at the roof as though he could see through it into the living room. “The arrogance of wicches is not to be borne.”

“I’m a wicche too,” I said.

He shook his head. “Nonsense. You’re far greater than any of them.” He blew out a breath and then looked back at me. I saw the moment he gave in. “All right. We’ll protect the sour old barracuda, whether she deserves it or not. This I do for you, daughter, and no one else.”

“Thank you.” I leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

“I’ll guide you through. Remember, we—the fae—don’t do spells. We are magic. There are no incantations or potions involved. We impose our will on the world—in this realm. In Faerie, the realm interacts with us. Faerie and the fae are—what’s the term?—symbiotic. We work in concert with each other. Faerie, through the queen, has its own magic.

“The queen allows us our freedom until she doesn’t and then she, as the source of all magic, reigns. Here, though, the realm itself is not magical. It adheres to Science. So in this realm, we impose our magic over the natural world.”

A wind kicked up and blew our hair into our faces. “Here,” he said. “This is a good example. We want the wind to blow in another direction, so our hair isn’t in our faces. This is a small magic.”

He took my hand again and I smelled the ocean, felt a wave capsize over me. “We use the source of our magic,” he explained. “For me—and you through me—that source is the immense power of the oceans. Do you feel it?”

I nodded. “I do.”

“Good. Think about how it feels to move through the water, the way you propel yourself through that ancient power. The ocean moves as it will and has since the beginning of time, but you are able to slide through it, to make it give way to you.”

“But...” I opened my eyes to catch a peek of him through my hair. “Humans can swim in the ocean too.”

“Yes. Science,” he explained. “Their bodies, being made of water, are buoyant. They can exert their muscles to force their way through. What happens, though, in a storm, when they are swamped by waves?”

“They drown,” I answered.

“Precisely. The water is not their home. They may visit for short periods in good conditions, but they cannot survive there. Do you drown?”

I shook my head. “No. If I go too long without breathing, I get a bad headache, but I don’t drown.”

He made a sound of annoyance in the back of his throat. “Wicche genes are giving you that headache. I’ll see later if I can fix that. So the ocean welcomes you. It is as much your home as the land. This is a source of power you can use.

“Back to this damned wind. Feel the ocean moving through your veins, the ancient magic that covers three-quarters of this realm. Feel the wind the ocean stirs up and move it—not all of it,” he said, his voice suddenly stern. “We can’t have you blowing ships off course all over the world because your hair has flown in your face.”

I laughed.

“Not a joke, little one. I could do that easily. We have yet to see what you can accomplish. As you are mine, you are quite powerful. So, no changing the tides or disturbing my creatures.” He tapped his broad finger on my knee. “We respect those that live in our realm. We mean life or death to them. We protect what is ours. Yes?”

“Of course,” I responded. He may have believed I could change the tides, but I knew that was far beyond my abilities.

“Don’t be too sure,” he said, responding to my thoughts. “Now, using just a small drop of that power, shift the winds right here, on your grandmother’s property, to head southwest so we can see.”

I thought about standing on my deck and the wind off the ocean blowing my hair back and then suddenly my hair was off my face.

“Good,” he said. “Can you gentle it?”

I wasn’t sure how I was doing it, let alone how to ease up on whatever I was doing. I pictured a warm summer afternoon with a little breeze off the ocean. The air warmed and my hair was no longer flying straight back in a gale.

My dad smiled at me with pride in his eyes. “Excellent. Now, as for securing the old bitty’s house, we’ll do something similar.”

He held my hand in one of his and placed his free hand on a slate tile. I mirrored him.

“Wicche wards are very complicated things,” he said. “Yes?”

I nodded.

“Again, we don’t cast spells,” he instructed. “We impose our will.”

We impose our will. How was the question. Okay, I’d do what I did with the wind. I imagined that huge wave my dad had sent to put out the gallery fire that one of Calliope’s minions had set a while ago. I pictured the force of that huge wave capsizing over Gran’s house, coating every inch of it in ocean water that had been touched by Dad and me. Our magic, like an electric eel and jellyfish, swam through the coating.

When I heard a hiss of pain, my eyes flew open. Declan stood on the crest of the roof, looking over the back toward Gran’s patio, where the sound had originated.

Dad threw his head back and laughed. “Yes! That did it. You stung him.” He put his hand back on the roof and said, “And now your mother, grandmother, and great-uncle can walk in and out of the house.”

“Oh. Good save. Thank you.” I pointed at Declan. “Can you fix it so Declan is safe too?”

Dad shook his head. “No need. You already accounted for him when you created this ward.”

I glanced up and found Declan grinning back at me.

Dad stood and pulled me up, the pillows disappearing. “Good,” he said and we were back on the ground near Gran’s front door again.

Declan went to move the bench back to where it belonged.

“I look forward to our next lesson,” Dad said, and he was gone.