Ben and I fell asleep in front of the fireplace at the B&B that morning, curled up together on a very comfortable love seat. Athena settled on a cushion beside the couch with her head in my lap, and Artemis sprawled out in front of the fireplace. I guess we were really out cold, because Athena woke us up in the early evening to eat. I did a creditable zombie impersonation through dinner and collapsed back into bed shortly thereafter.
If I dreamed, I didn’t remember them later. The next thing I knew, Athena was gently shaking me awake and sunlight was streaming in through the window.
“Time to wake up, sister,” Athena was saying gently. “Ben says he’s going to bring us some breakfast, to give you time to shower and get dressed, then drive us back to London himself.”
I sat up and stretched slowly. “Sounds like a plan,” I yawned.
Athena sat back, ending up kneeling on the big bed we’d shared. She was, I noticed, already dressed. “You slept well,” she said.
I nodded, covering my mouth as I yawned again. “Better than I have in months. I guess I wore myself out yesterday.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” she said, resting her hands on her knees. “You haven’t been pushing yourself like you used to.”
I grimaced. One thing I could always count on my familiars for was saying out loud the sort of self-assessments I didn’t want to face up to. She was right.
She smiled, a distinctly feline expression of smug self-satisfaction. “I know.”
I rubbed my face with both hands. “You don’t have to gloat.”
“I would never,” she said earnestly, but when I peeked through my fingers at her, that smug little smile was still there.
I groaned and flopped back, throwing my left arm across my eyes.
The bed shifted and creaked as she rose. “Come on. Ben’ll be back in a half-hour or so. Unless you want him to find you half-naked and sleep-tousled in bed, I suggest you rise and shine.”
That was worth a moment’s consideration. But no, the time didn’t feel right. Especially since I wasn’t feeling terribly confident about my current mental state, after yesterday’s slips and psychic assault. I’d know when I was ready to take that step in my relationship with Ben, but I wasn’t there yet.
So I got up, limping a little until my right knee finally popped and started moving normally, a common morning problem that Trish said that would fade as my recovery continued. She’d been right about everything else so far, so I had hope.
I shed the oversized t-shirt I’d slept in - Athena caught it deftly as I tossed it in the general direction of our bag - and headed for the shower.
Fifteen minutes later, feeling nearly ready to face the day after a hot shower, I wiped steam off the mirror and stared at my reflection.
I’ve always been introspective. Possibly too much for my own good, and working with Dr. MacMoran to assess (and reduce) the amount of damage Brenna had done to my psyche hadn’t helped matters. If anything, I was more introspective than I’d ever been. Finding myself in a position of having lost some control over my emotions and actions was deeply disturbing. But I felt pretty good after a decent night’s sleep and a hot shower, and really didn’t want to spend a day with Ben self-assessing.
I grimaced at myself, decided that I wasn’t going to worry about my state of mind today, stuck my tongue out at my reflection, and went to get dressed.
<
“Bah,” I said, taking it from her with a nod. “Maturity is overrated.” I stepped into it, and pulled it up over my hips. “Today is a rest day.”
<
Athena and I exchanged amused looks as I zipped up my bodysuit. “Not that kind of rest,” I said. “We still have a ride back to London ahead of us.”
Athena held up a pair of the lightly armored stirrup-footed stockings she wore. I considered them for a long moment, took a deep breath, then shook my head.
She was surprised. I felt it in her emotions, and saw it on her face. But then, I suppose she would be…I’d been wearing the things pretty much every time I went out since emerging from the hospital. Dr. MacMoran had suggested that doing so was a not entirely unreasonable reaction to how badly Brenna had injured my knee.
“Are you sure?” Athena asked.
“No,” I grabbed my jeans from where Athena had laid them on the bed. “But I do think it’s past time I stopped jumping at every shadow. The bodysuit is practical. The leggings are just paranoid, unless we know we’re going into action.” With that firm statement, and before I could think twice about it, I wriggled into my jeans and pulled on a forest green blouse over the bodysuit.
My knee felt a little achy, so rather than risk hurting it any more than I already had, I sat down and picked up my knee brace. Athena promptly took it from me, knelt down in front of me, and started carefully putting it on me.
“You know,” I said lightly, “if everybody keeps doing that for me, I’m going to forget how to do it for myself.”
Athena chuckled softly. “Isn’t it easier for me to do it from this position?”
“Not much point in me arguing that.”
She nodded firmly, and finished buckling the contraption on over my jeans.
<
I stomped into my ankle boots, then walked over and lightly swatted Artemis’s flank. “Get up, you lazy thing, or you’ll miss breakfast.”
Artemis yawned, displaying her exceptional fangs, then licked her chops. <
I chuckled. “Well, you have to get up anyway, my love. Athena and I still need to hunt up some breakfast, and it’s just about time for us to head for home.”
Artemis sighed and rose, hopping lightly down from the bed and rubbing against my leg in passing to let me know she wasn’t really upset.
Athena and I sat down to the light breakfast Ben provided while he and Artemis packed (which really meant he packed and she supervised). Then they brought the car around, and shortly we were on our way. Just before we were about to turn towards the London road, Athena leaned forward and tapped my shoulder. “Alys, that house back there had a for sale sign…should we take a look at it?”
I glanced over my shoulder at the big house we’d just passed, and considered as Ben slowed the car. My mother and Jonathan had mentioned wanting to move back to Britannia, as things has been getting a bit tense back in Dublin.
Which was, I winced a little at the thought, partly my fault. The tension had been caused by the damage Brenna and I had done to a Druid circle outside Dublin during our tussle. At least, the remaining members of the Eire Druid Circle were using that as an excuse to drive Hermetic wizards out of the country.
Since it was, at least nominally, somewhat my fault that they were looking at moving, I’d taken it on myself to keep an eye open for likely houses. This one looked right up Jonathan’s alley.
“Ben, would you mind?” I asked.
He smiled and started to turn the car around. “Of course not, don’t be silly. Let’s have a look.”
It was a beautiful old pseudo-Gothic house, three stories with several gables and large windows. It stood well back from the street with a long driveway and a three-car garage, set on what looked like at least four or five acres of open land, backed by woods. As we pulled into the driveway, I thought I caught a glimpse of a solarium extending off the back of the house.
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Plucking my cane from where it rested against the seat beside me, I climbed out of the car and looked around. The house was obviously in need of some love, but seemed to be in a state of decent repair, and I felt a faint prickle on the back of my neck that suggested old, fading protective magic. Wards, maybe.
Artemis wandered past me, heading around the right side of the house, her nose to the ground. <
I smiled. “Don’t go too far!”
“Eh?” Ben said as he came up beside me, then saw Artemis. “Oh. Smells something interesting, does she?”
“Overgrown plants,” I said. “You and Athena wanna go around the left side, while I follow Artemis?”
Ben nodded. “Sure. Come on, Athena!”
Athena slung her shieldblade’s harness over one shoulder and followed after him, giving me a wave as she passed. I, in turn, followed after Artemis to see what she’d found.
There was, as I’d thought, a solarium built off the back of the house. It was two stories tall and looked to have openings into both floors of the house that it touched upon. There were several broken panes of glass and no plants inside, leading me to believe that the house had been standing empty for quite some time.
We met Athena in the back, in the middle of an overgrown flagstone patio that lead out to a garden and the remnants of a small hedge maze. “Ben went back around to the front,” she said, thumbing over her shoulder with her free hand. “He said he wanted to take a look at the front porch.”
I nodded. “What do you think?”
“It looks pretty ideal,” Athena said, as we watched Artemis sniffing around what was left of the hedge maze. “Garden and solarium for Mom, but who knows what the inside is like.”
“The last owner,” Ben called, approaching and holding up a pamphlet, “was a Wizard. There was a stack of these in a container on the front porch.” He handed a second pamphlet to me.
I opened it up and browsed the contents. “Huh. Heavily renovated rooms for spellcasting and storage of enchanted items, solarium and full garden, two basements, attic…” I looked up at Ben. “This almost sounds too good to be true.”
Athena leaned over my shoulder and peered at the brochure. “No kidding. It sounds custom-built.”
Ben shrugged. “I think it’s high time you had a little good fortune, no? Wanna call your parents?”
I nodded. “Let’s go back around to the front first.” I raised my voice. “Artemis!”
Artemis materialized out of the remains of the hedge maze and padded over to us. <
I chuckled. “Artemis found a potential source of wild food.”
Ben grimaced a little. “Good?”
Athena and I laughed. “Yes,” I said, “it’s good. It’s good for her to hunt when she can, and it means the land is healthy.”
“If you say so.”
When we reached the driveway, I gathered Anima and quickly cast a Sending. The spectral snow leopard that was my usual Sending form appeared in front of me, sat down and waited patiently. “Hi Mom, hi Jonathan. Ben, Athena, Artemis and I think we might’ve found a good house for you. If you’re not busy right now and want to take a look at it, you can use my current location as a teleportation reference. We’ll stay where we are for a few minutes.”
With a gesture from me, the Sending rose, turned, and vanished in a blur of energy. Athena went to prop her shieldblade against the car, and I turned to Ben. “Well, on the whole, this has been a good trip, hasn’t it.”
Ben chuckled. “Killed a monster, got in a little cuddle time, maybe found a house for your parents…”
“One small slip of my control,” I added helpfully.
Ben shrugged. “As you said, it was a small one. And useful. If you can learn to harness your emotions at will the way you channeled your anger last night…” He whistled. “You really cooked that thing.”
“Mm. I’ll add it to my ‘to do’ list.”
There was a sudden sharp surge of Anima that made both of us - and Athena and Artemis - turn towards an empty section of the driveway a few feet away. Jonathan Tremane was better at teleportation than any other spellcaster I’d ever met, so I was expecting him to appear with the usual pop-swish of displaced air.
So when a door-sized segment of reality suddenly slid to the side, vanishing as it went - which might have been one of the most singularly disorienting sights I’d ever seen - to reveal a view of Jonathan’s back yard in Dublin…well, I hope that the little peep of surprise I made was understandable.
I felt a little bit better when I saw Athena’s wide, round eyes and limp tail displaying her shock, and Ben’s jaw dropping open. Only Artemis was unaffected by the sight. She inhaled deeply, seemed content with what her senses were telling her, and started grooming one of her forepaws.
Jonathan Tremane stood in the opening, dressed in earth-stained jeans, work boots, and a dirty sweatshirt. His hawk-headed staff was held in one hand, while the other was held as if just having finished a sliding motion. He smiled at us and lifted his hand in greeting. “Yo.”
Behind him, I saw Mom shaking her finger angrily at what appeared to be a man-sized Venus Fly Trap.
Apparently, they were having a more interesting day than we were.
“Um…” Ben pointed at Jonathan. “What…what am I seeing?”
“Folded space!” Jonathan said, stepping through the opening and giving us a better look at the giant Venus Fly Trap that Mom was…chastising. Or something. “I’ve been working on the theory for a while now. It’s spatial travel, rather than dimensional travel like teleportation, so it doesn’t have the inherent dangers of teleportation and you can carry dimensional pockets - like your bottomless bag, Alys - through it without anything blowing up!” He beamed. “Cool, right?”
“But…” Ben said. “But…”
“Yeah,” Jonathan said, “it would be really convenient for long-distance travel. The problem is that it’s not energy efficient. The energy requirements increase exponentially instead of incrementally. A door like the one I just created is actually less of a strain than teleporting the same distance. But opening one the size of an automobile would take three or four wizards working together. And forget opening one big enough to get an airship through without a major ritual and a dozen spellcasters. At least, at this point.”
“That is so cool!” I hurried past Jonathan and peered around the edge of the open portal. “It’s two dimensional?”
Yeah, I was gushing. Sad, right? Once a magic nerd, always a magic nerd.
“The plane of the opening is,” Jonathan nodded. “You can’t even see it from the other side.”
Indeed, when I stuck my head around the edge, all I saw was Jonathan, Ben, Athena and Artemis watching me. I leaned back, and saw Mom doing something that caused the Venus Fly Trap to start shrinking.
“We’ve been doing some gardening,” Jonathan said by way of explanation. “Someone cast a curse on my back yard. We’ve been rooting out dangerous plants for two days now.”
I turned to Jonathan. “You have got to teach me how to cast this spell! How long can you keep the portal open? How much Anima does it really take?”
He laughed and gave me a hug. “Nice to see you too, kiddo. I’ll teach you eventually. Right now, I’m still working out some of the bugs in the process. I’ll be able to keep the portal open for a few minutes, maybe five or six, before it becomes a real drain on me.”
“How many people can go through? Is it two way? What happens if someone walks through from the other side? Or from edge-on?” I walked a full circle around the portal, trying to feel it out with my magical senses. It was, I saw, an incredibly complicated piece of magic.
Ben and Athena were smiling as they watched me. Jonathan laughed again. “I’ll answer all your questions in time. But first, what’s this about a house?”
Ben handed him one of the pamphlets and pointed to the building in question.
“Ah!” Jonathan looked at the pamphlet, glancing up at the house as he read it.
“Someone cursed your back yard?” Ben asked.
Jonathan nodded absently. “Shameful, isn’t it? With the Eire Druid Circle broken and having trouble replacing its lost members, their community has gotten a bit out of hand. And since Deirdre and I were involved in the ‘incident’ that set them off…” He shrugged. “Of course, if some of the old stories about deals with the Sidhe are true, the Irish Druid Circle may have bigger problems on its hands than policing its members.”
Mom came through the portal and hugged me tightly. “Hello, dear.” She kissed my forehead. “You’re looking well.” Mom’s familiar, a snowy owl named Apollo, followed her through the portal and settled on the roof of Ben’s car.
I smiled. “Thanks, Mom.” I gestured to the house. “What do you think? There’s a garden and solarium around back.”
“Oh?” Mom immediately headed in that direction, Apollo taking off again and heading around the side of the house. After a moment, Artemis padded off after them.
Jonathan had been looking at me closely, and now turned to Ben. “If you don’t mind, I’d like a word with Alys.”
Ben smiled. “Alone?”
Jonathan shrugged. “Athena doesn’t count.”
Athena smirked and leaned against the car, folding her arms.
Ben chuckled. “I’ll just go take a look at the utility hookups.” He struck off around the other side of the house.
Jonathan turned to me. “All right, what happened?”
Always able to see right through me. I suppose that’s part of what made him such a good teacher.
I sighed, and told him all about losing control of my temper and my magic, and how I’d cast the ridiculously overpowered fire spell.
“It wasn’t really overpowered,” Athena interjected at that point. “Not considering the way it regenerated from the mauling and decapitation Artemis and I delivered to it before that.”
“True, but - “ I began.
“But you felt like you’d lost control because your emotions were running high,” Jonathan said. “Which isn’t all that unexpected, especially considering the damage Brenna did up here.” He tapped my forehead pointedly.
I shook my head a little. “I know that! I was just…Ben floated the idea of how much I could affect my spellcasting if I knew how to harness my emotions that way all the time.”
Jonathan made a non-committal noise and leaned on his staff. “It’s true that strong emotions, especially logic-clouding emotions like anger and love, can enhance the power of spells. But it’s not wise to count on being able to apply that to casting spells under normal circumstances. It’s also a good way to miss physiological cues that you’re getting tired. Adrenaline has a way of masking exhaustion, then leaving you dead on your feet and unable to cast a single spell.”
“So I shouldn’t try to learn to harness them?”
“I didn’t say that,” Jonathan said. “You should, of course, learn to harness the extra power that emotions can give you. However, especially in light of your current recovery, be very careful about harnessing and not losing control.” He held up one warning finger. “And don’t ever come to rely on that extra boost of energy. You never know when it might not be available…or might even be harmful. You had a small and relatively contained loss of control. You’ve read the stories about Mages and Wizards who lost control of their magic.”
“Well, sure,” I said, surprised. “But I thought they were cautionary. Not real stories.”
Jonathan smiled lopsidedly. “Most of them are. Some…not so much. I’m not going to say which. Just be cautious.”
“Always,” I said firmly.
“And she has Artemis and me looking out for her,” Athena added.
Jonathan’s smile became warmer and more natural. “That’s right. I’m sure you both called Alys back to control last night, almost as quickly as it started.”
Athena nodded. “Moments, at most.”
“Well then,” Jonathan said. “There’s no problem at all. Not really.”
“None we can’t overcome,” Athena and I said together, then grinned at one another.
An hour later, Mom and Jonathan were talking to the real estate agent, and Ben, Artemis, Athena and I were back on the road to London.