16. Chapter 16

Boredom.

Despite my newfound motivation a few days ago, I was currently convinced that it wasn"t all the challenges that would kill me in the end; it was the damned boredom.

Sure, I had all kinds of ideas for things to do kicking around in my head, ready to rise up and fill the empty space when I wasn"t musing over how to solve the whole SA thing, but there were just a lot of boring everyday things that needed to be attended to, and that was going to slowly drive me mad. I was tired of being cooped up. Of having nowhere to roam except the inside the walls of the cursed Lovell mansion or the couple of small courtyards I had brought along with us to the pocket world.

Currently, I was standing in the kitchen shelling beans and preparing them, getting them either drying or soaking so we could cook them up and make veggie burgers.

The magic-powered generator was still working here, somehow, as was the plumbing. I spared a moment to wonder where the plumbing actually went now. But I suspected I didn"t really want to know the answer. I suspected that somewhere back in Magea, where the Lovell estate used to be, there was a pile of magically appearing waste. Either that, or it was somehow still being shunted into the sewer system back there… I had literally no clue how that worked. I had simply cast out my spell and let the magic do its thing. All I knew was that we had running water here, and the sinks and toilets worked….

I chuckled to myself at the thought of a bunch of SA agents standing around, scratching their heads as they tried to figure out where we went and where the shower of sewage was coming from. I seriously hoped that was a thing they had to deal with.

Regardless of the hows, the important part was that though the fridge and freezer still worked, we were burning through our last bit of meat. Vegetables we could grow, even if they didn"t grow quite the same way they did back home. But protein sources… that took some creativity. Niamh and I had found some beans, lentils, and peas to plant, and we had allotted a good deal of space in one of the courtyards, and a good chunk of our magic to encourage the plants to grow and mature at record speed. Combined with the other vegetables we grew, we weren"t in any danger of starving. But I could see the meat eaters among us getting tired of black bean burgers and lentil soup pretty quickly.

Bis chittered at me when I got lost my mental tangent, bringing me back to the present with his chivvying. Right, task at hand and all that.

I pushed another bowl of freshly picked beans his way so he could continue shelling them with his clever little fingers. "Sorry," I told him with a sigh.

Bis huffed at me, but reached out a hand to pat my arm, as if to say he understood that my brain was overburdened at the moment. I stroked his striped head in response. Bis was more than an animal. He had an uncanny way of communicating like a human, and I was sure my family probably did something nasty to incorporate something human into his makeup. I usually got the gist of what he conveyed, and Niamh could actually understand him. But it would be awesome if he could speak. Man, the things this little guy had seen. I bet he had a lot of things he"d like to say.

I eyed him speculatively as I worked. When I was done here, I decided, we"d experiment with a communication board. Maybe I could really test out my theory about his intelligence and desire to communicate…. If I could get Elijah a body–which I would do, damn it–then surely I could get Bis a voice.

Dyre walked in, interrupting my train of thought. He wore a distant look on his thin, angular face, as if he was mostly lost in thought himself. The bluish shadows under his eyes were deeper than usual, looking almost like fresh bruises against his deathly pale skin.

"Do we have any vervain left?" he asked without really looking at me. His deep voice trailed off as he shook his head, clearly having a silent conversation with Sunny. "And valerian root? Black cohosh?"

I arched a brow. "Sleeping potion?"

He finally seemed to come back to the here and now, his violet eyes finding mine. "Yes."

His voice was wary, expression guarded, but I gave him a sympathetic look as I went to the cabinet where I stored my stock of dried herbs. "I know the feeling."

I handed him the bottles he requested, eyeing the low quantities in each one. "I"ll get more going. I think we have space in the north corner of the back courtyard."

He stared at me for a moment, brow furrowed, as if he was thinking furiously. I waited patiently, half expecting the necromancer to simply turn and walk away, avoiding things as usual. He surprised me when he clutched the bottles I"d given him to his chest, over the band logo on his black emo t-shirt. "It"s not because of you," he finally said, deep voice soft and awkward, and full of aching vulnerability.

I knew he wasn"t talking about the lack of sleep…or maybe he was, in a roundabout way. He was talking about us. About his refusal to consider a relationship with me.

"I need you to know that," he said, still standing there tall and rigid with his vials of sleeping herbs clutched in his long, elegant fingers.

I snorted. "It"s not you, it"s me, right? Gee, haven"t heard that one before."

He sighed. I thought for sure this time he really would leave, but apparently, he was making a colossal effort to not be a complete asshole today. "I had a child," he murmured, his heart bleeding out into his deep, sad voice. "I… never knew. I thought I would never have a family of my own. It was one of the pointless things I mourned, back when I was first turned into a necromancer."

I turned to face him, wanting to go over and hug the idiot, but afraid that really would send him running. Gleaming violet eyes met mine in the face of an abomination, the thing witchy nightmares were made of. "I wish I would have known. So I could say I watched her from afar. I wish I knew her. What she looked like. If she had my ridiculous red hair. Or Maureen"s eyes." His voice cracked on that last bit, and I squeezed my hands into fists to keep from reaching for him.

"She was yours," I told him with a watery smile. "I bet she was perfect. And a little arrogant. And the absolute envy of every witch who met her."

He just stared at me, looking lost. "Is my blood cursed? Was she a horrible person who continued a horrible legacy that caused all sorts of untold suffering? I can"t think of that little girl—my little girl, though I never knew her—and reconcile that with the monster who started yet another an evil coven and carried on the Blaisdell legacy in the Lovells."

I drew in a deep breath. This was why he was talking to me. He needed me to tell him about the first witch of the Lovell coven. About the daughter he never knew existed. The last bit of his mortal life. He needed me to tell him he wasn"t a monster.

And if he was desperate enough to come here and actually ask, then Dyre was hurting more than I could ever know. He was probably bleeding out inside from all these self-inflicted wounds.

"I can find out for you," I told him softly. "There are histories around here. Journals. Grimoires. We can find out. But Dyre, even if she was a horrible person, that isn"t because of you. Everyone is innocent when they are born. It"s the world that twists and warps them. And…" I drew in a deep breath and let it out, my face twisting into a grimace as I admitted something I never wanted to admit to myself. "Not all of my family were evil monsters. I think I turned out fine, mostly. And my sister did everything she could to get us away. I don"t think she"s evil. There were others. They were pushed aside and vilified by the rest of our the coven for their supposed weaknesses and their mushy hearts, but…there were good people in the family along the way. Did you know one of my great-great aunts invented the cure to several terminal human illnesses?" The rest of the family saw her as an embarrassment who wasted her talents. But she had been one of the good ones.

He blinked at me, as if he wasn"t sure whether I was telling the truth. "She was murdered, of course," I said dryly. "By her sister. Jealous bitch lobbed an inside-out curse her way." I waved my hand to dismiss that lovely mental image. "But… the evil? It wasn"t ingrained in them, not really. It was a product of their environment. Of greed and lust for power, and of that power being placed in the hands of a few bad eggs, allowing the rot to grow. You are not responsible for any of that."

He licked his lips and gave me a curt nod, then he finally did what I had been expecting him to do all along; he put up his indifferent walls and straightened his spine to his full, looming height. "Thank you for the herbs."

"Anytime," I told him.

I shook my head as the wounded, confused necromancer turned and strode out of the room, once more hiding his pain.

A heartbeat later, the shadows in the corner stirred, and Ambrose stepped out. "I"ll go keep an eye on him," the boogeyman told me, pressing a kiss to my temple before disappearing once more.

I huffed. Seriously, zero privacy around here.

But I was glad for it at the moment. Dyre needed someone right now. And if he wasn"t ready to turn to me for comfort, then I was glad he still had Ambrose.

There was a strange little shift in the air, a sensation like a bubble popping as magic equalized, making my ears pop along with it. In its wake, a newspaper appeared on the kitchen table.

It had been happening every day now. Headlines were always highlighted or circled. And it all showed the same terrifying trend. Things were falling apart in the outside world. There was ongoing strife between the Supernatural Alliance and the people they were supposed to protect. Yesterday"s paper highlighted the militant bent that the Alliance was taking in response. They were abusing power, doling it out to only those they deemed worthy. Pockets of resistance were forming. And I could see where this was all heading, either from some latent witchy foresight, or from simple plain-old common sense and lack of faith in the world. There were rumblings of war.

The question was, did I give a fuck?

And if I did, what the hell was I supposed to do about it? I was one person, with seven powerful friends and one skunk-hedgehog-rat hybrid against the governing body of the entire Magea realm… and probably some Planus nuts, too.

"Figure it out," I muttered to myself as I took out a few seed packets and headed to the courtyard to plant more herbs.

I wasn"t sure whether I was talking to myself or the rest of the world, but either way, someone was just going to have to fucking figure it out.