A Match Made in Spell (Fate Weaver Book 1) Read online

  Most witches only have one faerie godmother--they're sort of like guardian angels for witches--but my sordid past has left me with three, and trust me, that's two too many. What's more, they're sisters, and they don't always get along.

  Witches don't usually live with their faerie godmothers, and since the house we all occupy belonged to my grandmother, technically they live with me. The four of us make an odd family, but it's the only family I've ever known. Hinting that I'm old enough to be on my own makes them laugh. Compared to the thousand or so years they each have under their belts, my paltry twenty-four seem about a minute long to them. Of course, I'm still a child as far as they're concerned, and they rarely let an opportunity to point it out pass by unnoticed.

  Flix handed me a glass and I swirled it around for a moment before taking a longer sip than necessary. "With Vaeta back in their lives, it's been a little on the cray-cray side at my place. They've crammed a hundred years worth of fighting into the span of six months, and they have no consideration for the fact that some of us need sleep. I finally forced them to put a quiet charm on my bedroom, but they told me I was whining like a ten-year-old and made it so I can't hear anything at all when I'm in there; not my alarm, or my phone, or even my mp3 player. It's just completely silent now, which is even more annoying than the racket, and they won't lift it. But I'm the one acting childish?" I ranted on while Flix nodded sympathetically. "Not to mention, business has picked up exponentially lately. I'm even getting walk-ins these days."

  "It's just a phase. In another month you'll go through a dry spell and be crying on my shoulder that no one needs you. So, this Vaeta, what's her story?" Flix tried not to sound too interested while refusing to meet my gaze, and forgetting that I could recognize his tell from across the room. We didn't talk much about his fae heritage, and I've never tried to pry too hard; he was considered a halfling and was looked down upon for not having as much power as a full faerie. I felt he didn't realize how lucky he was, and he thought I was naive for thinking so. I had let the subject drop long ago.

  "She's the fourth sister." That statement earned a raised eyebrow. "Yeah, there are four of them. Well, in a nutshell, she's been in the underworld, I guess, for almost a hundred years. Lured by some demon with romance on his mind and poetry on his tongue, if Evian is to be believed. Vaeta is the romantic of the family."

  Flix nodded in understanding. "I've heard my mother talk about that type of thing. Demons have a taste for fae and once on the hook, it's hard to get back out of the underworld. So how did Vaeta manage it?"

  "She made her way into a nexus and then staged a losing battle with her sisters and some friends. She says she's been trapped. All this time, Terra, Soleil, and Evian thought she had chosen to turn her back on them. Which, I guess she kind of did, but she didn't realize how deep she had gotten until it was too late. They've taken care of me for my entire life, and have literally never mentioned her. It's beyond strange that they could just pretend like she never existed. I mean, she's their sister, and I know it was painful, but...it seems cold."

  Flix was silent for a long moment. "I imagine that kind of betrayal seems unthinkable to someone who has never experienced the way families can hurt one another." I knew Flix's family wasn't the most loving, and if I could I'd take all that pain away. For now, all I could do was be a friend--and in this case, that meant not dwelling on the subject. I probably had more to be thankful for than I knew, and I wasn't about to start acting like a spoiled brat about it. It was time to go home and face the music.

  Chapter Two

  Falling dusk verged on snuffing out the last pretty pink light of a spectacular sunset as I rounded the final turn toward home. All thoughts of raiding the fridge for leftovers--Soleil was a spectacular cook--and the hope of a quiet evening evaporated in a hot second. Flashes of light bright enough to rival any dance club shot out of the downstairs windows. Quite festive in a bizarre way that boded no good.

  From the front, my house looks like a regular northeastern colonial. Clapboard siding, six-pane windows with shutters. Nothing fancy, and not nearly big enough for three larger-than-life faeries, so they added a little. Okay, a lot. The new addition is bigger than the original house and, being in the back, not visible from the street. Somehow, the yard is still larger than any of the others in our neighborhood. I suspect that's Terra's doing.

  Half of me wanted to go inside and assess the situation, the other half wanted to grab a flight to someplace far, far away. Aruba. Cozumel. Antarctica might not be far enough.

  The sound of a throat clearing behind me broke my reverie. "Looks like quite the party." The voice was male and deeply resonant. Above my head, a streetlight flickered to life just as I turned toward a man who stood with my cat in his arms. Salem blinked back at me defiantly. What's more, the little traitor was purring up a storm. Odd, considering the fact that up until now, my cat had always hated the mere sight of any male who ventured onto the property.

  "Do you live here?" The question drew my attention away from the cat and to the man holding him. The streetlight highlighted a shock of curly blond hair that just brushed the top of his collar. In the subdued lighting, I got the impression of warm, brown eyes and a quirky smile. Cute. The fingers of one hand stroked and soothed Salem's head.

  "Salem." I juggled my purse and the bag I was carrying to reach for him. "That's my cat, where did you find him?" I eyed the feline with suspicion. In all of Catdom there couldn't have been a lazier example than Salem, who rarely ventured past the sunny flagstones of the back patio. The furball returned my gaze with a blink I swear was deliberate enough to qualify as a wink.

  "Sitting in the middle of my dining room table. He must have slipped in when I came home. I'm Kin, by the way. Mackintosh Clark. I just moved into the gray house at the end of the block."

  "Lexi Balefire." I smiled up at him. "I'm sorry for the cat invasion. He's...really, Salem? Are you wearing catnip cologne?" Salem knocked my purse to the ground when he squirmed away from me in an effort to get closer to Kin.

  Kin treated me to another lopsided grin. "What can I say, I'm irresistible."

  The comment earned him a raised eyebrow from me. "Well, welcome to the neighborhood." An ominous booming noise issued from the house. "Really, you'll love it here. If you'll excuse me, I need to uh..." How was I supposed to end that sentence? Play referee to four fighting faeries? Get inside and stop my house from blowing up?

  "Should I call someone? I could go in with you to make sure it's safe." His concern was touching, but taking him inside was number three with a bullet of the worst things I could do right now. Numbers one and two involved initiating a level of bodily contact that was premature, given I had only met him five minutes ago. Tempting, though.

  "No, it's fine. One of my...er...roommates is...um..." Nothing, and I mean nothing came to mind as a plausible explanation, so I went for the crazy option. "A lighting designer. She's probably just experimenting with some new strobe effects or something." It sounded lame, but Kin swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. And then he threw me a twist.

  "I'm a musician. Do you have her card? I might ask her to design something for me." That explained the calluses I'd felt when his fingertips brushed against my hand.

  "Not on me. I'm sure I'll see you around, though." He retrieved my purse and hung it awkwardly over my shoulder.

  "Count on it." I got a warm smile while Salem received another chin scratch. Kin did the gentlemanly thing and waited to see me safely inside. Exactly what I wished to avoid. I managed to squeeze through the door without giving him a look at whatever fresh hell waited for me on the other side.

  Speaking of the inside...well, I'm not exactly sure how to describe it. I put Salem on the floor, then picked my way around a swamp in the middle of the foyer. Muddy water oozed across the tiles until a border of spiky grasses contained the fetid sludge--compliments, I was certain, of a clash between Terra and Evian, whose elements were earth and water.

  Four fighting fa
eries. Sounds like a kick-ass name for a girl band, right?

  The bwarping voice of a bullfrog lifted me half off my feet. I shot a dirty look at the swamp denizen squatting on a rock. He glared back at me malevolently, flicked out his tongue, and snatched a buzzing fly from the air. I hoped neither of them would turn out to be one of my faerie godmothers, and continued on into the family room to check out the light show.

  I had to admit, this was a new one--probably Vaeta's influence. At least a dozen bubbles floated around up near the ceiling; some filled with water, some with tiny flashes of lightning, some with both. The faerie version of disco balls. My nostrils flared at the ozone scent of scorched air. Magic hung over everything like a wool curtain, itchy and suffocating. No wonder Salem had run for the hills.

  The house was quiet except for the occasional outburst from the warty frog in the entryway. I was starting to feel that scene-of-the-crime hush that comes right before the forensic team swarms in. As I headed for the kitchen, I worried at what I might find.

  Before I got that far, though, I had to pass through an obstacle course of fallout. Icicles stretching down from the hall ceiling like stalactites dripped to create ever-widening puddles that made for treacherous walking on slick tiles. I ventured past the downstairs bath and noticed everything in it was entirely covered with moss.

  It was too much to take in all at once. Weird things were happening all around me.

  I found the four of them in the kitchen amid the shambles they had created. The range, covered in dripping ash, looked like a post-apocalyptic movie prop. The kitchen counter had sprouted daisies. Half of them were still cheerfully intact; the rest had been flash-charred, and when I touched a gentle finger to one blackened petal, the tiny flower collapsed in a pile of dust.

  The table hovering near the ceiling with its chairs circling around it conjured the image of a demented game of Ring Around the Rosie. A flour devil erupted from the canister and flew out the window. Everything else turned to background noise as I took in the tableau before me.

  Four women stood as though frozen in various states of disarray. Even wet and covered in a mixture of mud and powdery ash, they were impossibly beautiful. Fae to the bone.

  Evian, faerie of the water, drew my eye first. Hair the color of a Caribbean sea flowed with liquid grace around a face set in concentration. One hand, tipped with mirrored nails, gripped a swirling ball of water that was aimed at her sister, Soleil. Water and fire, a volatile mix, and the most likely reason why the entire house felt like a sauna. Evian's other hand gripped Vaeta's arm just below the elbow.

  A study in shades of gray, Vaeta appeared to be in the throes of whipping up a miniature tornado. Probably not the first of the day, given the chaos in the kitchen. The little whirlwind had picked up some soil, undoubtedly deposited there by Terra, whose affinity was with earth. The dirty cloud spinning around Vaeta's feet made me think of Pigpen from the Peanuts.

  Growing up around women who fell out of bed looking like warrior princesses had forced me to develop a healthy self-image. I learned early on not to compare myself to anyone. Right now, though, I would have won a beauty contest against the lot of them. Hands down.

  The surprise of my entrance seemed to have put a crimp in the battle, and I found myself staring at four shame-filled faces. Half of me wanted to rail at them for the havoc they had created, the other half to laugh because they reminded me of children caught stealing goodies from the cookie jar. And I was the one considered a baby in this house. Right.

  Sometimes less is more. I let my steely stare and raised eyebrow indicate my opinion of what they'd been doing. Deliberately surveying the room, I took in the enormity of the disaster, made eye contact with each of them in turn, shook my head in disgust, and headed for my section of the house. On my way out of the kitchen, I heard one of them mutter, She started it, followed by a vehemently hissed, Shut up.

  Out of curiosity, I paused to see if I could overhear what had caused the battle. Half the time it was nothing more than a stray comment from one sister to another and taken as a grave offense. Nothing ever stayed just between the injured parties, though. Sides were taken, and the whole thing escalated until no one was even sure who said what, or why they were fighting in the first place.

  "No, you started it," I heard Vaeta hiss. "You called me an airhead again."

  "That was Soleil, not me," Evian retorted as the negative energy started to ramp up again.

  "Stop acting like children."

  "Shut up, Terra. Nobody died and put you in charge."

  A crash drew me back to the kitchen. In the six months since Terra's return from the underworld, I had refereed this same argument more times than I wanted to count. You'd think beings who have lived for centuries would have a better handle on methods for dealing with their emotions. You'd be wrong.

  This time I combined the glare with a wagging finger. "That's enough for one day. Apologize to your sisters." I included each one in the command. "And then clean up your mess. If you leave it for me again, I'm going to start rethinking our living arrangements."

  These were the only mothers I'd ever known, but lately, it felt like opposite day had taken a turn for the weird.

  ***

  Lost in thought, I didn't realize my feet had carried me beyond my own suite of rooms until I was standing in front of my grandmother's bedroom door. Equal parts fascination and dread fought for supremacy as they did every time my hand touched the knob. My wildest imagination failed to produce a scenario where the woman who had slept in this room might have resorted to killing her own daughter.

  A deep breath, a twist of the knob, and a shudder as I passed the threshold were familiar experiences. I'd come in here hundreds of times over the years, hoping to find something that might provide insight into my family's sordid past.

  I trailed a finger across the dust-free dresser--one perk of living with an earth elemental, no dirt dared mar any surface Terra deemed a clean zone. Of course, the opposite was also true. If I annoyed her enough, she took great pleasure in recalling her vast array of faerie cleaning benefits from my rooms, or worse, sending all the dust in the house to coat everything in my bedroom.

  Not exactly a shrine, this room remained as it had on the day my family fell apart because I couldn't bring myself to change anything that might eventually provide me with answers. The only two people who know what really happened that day are gone. One turned to stone, the other presumed dead.

  The frantic cries of an abandoned witch baby carry a potent message to the Fealands. Terra and her sisters, hearing mine, rushed to fulfill their duty in taking care of me. None of them had any idea how long-term that care would become. No one has ever told me differently, but I assume it has taken all three of them to amplify my latent magic enough to sustain the Balefire.

  To their credit, while the sister's child-raising methods have been unorthodox, they have done their level best never to make me feel like a burden. My adopted family, wonky as it is, is a loving one, even if faerie love isn't exactly the same as human. Their maternal instincts took a while to kick in, and by the time the faeries figured out what to do with me, it was a couple of weeks before anyone went looking for clues to what happened to my family.

  All that was left in the clearing was a lifelike statue depicting a witch gone over to the wicked side, and a blackened scar on the ground in the shape of a body. It is assumed that my grandmother and mother got into some kind of fight, started tossing magic around, and ultimately escalated into mortal combat. Mother killed daughter and paid the price for her sin.

  With no other definitive proof of her death, though, I spent years hoping Sylvana might someday return. That never happened, and with each passing birthday, I began to realize the sad truth: that it never would. And still, here I was again, looking for something--anything--that might bring knowledge or power.

  Of the two, power was the thing I most wanted to find. Ever since my fourteenth birthday had come and gone without bringing
on my Awakening--the term we use for when a witch comes into her full magic--members of the east coast covens began treating me differently.

  The whispers and sympathetic looks increased each year as they trooped past me on their pilgrimage to secure a bit of the Balefire to light their fires at Beltane. You'd think one of the nicer witches would have at least tried to help, but they avoided me like my lack of magic was contagious.

  I pulled my wandering mind back to the task at hand and opened the trunk at the foot of Grandmother's elaborately carved, four-poster bed. As many times as I'd done this, I should have stopped expecting to find anything new, yet here I was again, searching futilely.

  A layer of blankets came out first to reveal several neatly-stored boxes. I pulled them out one by one. The topmost one contained a selection of baby clothes that looked ancient. I handled them gingerly as I pulled each piece from between layers of folded tissue paper and laid it aside, then ran my hands through the box to check for anything I might have missed.

  Next was a carved box with exquisitely wrought hinges and clasp, stuffed to the brim with love letters from wannabe suitors. Despite my grandmother's wicked ending, scanning through the desperate pleas of numerous men made me wish I had known her. She must have been something in her day. I hastily, and none too neatly, shoved the contents back inside and moved on to her dresser drawers which, save one, held nothing but clothes.

  The bottom drawer was where Clara kept her photograph albums. I leafed through them, hoping as I always did to find just one picture of my mother where her face had not been burned or cut out. Someone had taken out their vengeance on Sylvana's image in a big way. It was the same throughout the house--evidence that someone wanted to erase her memory. Did she take after her father? Or was her face as uncannily similar to my grandmother's as my own? Who would I ask? The witches who barely acknowledged me on the one day a year I couldn't be completely ignored? I had no one to talk to about my past, and not even the love of faeries could overcome that kind of loss.