8. Lorin

Chapter eight

Lorin

M agic room?

Or bedroom?

Magic room?

Bedroom?

Lorin stood at the bottom of the winding flight of stairs. The door to his parents' room stood very close to him too. Calling him. Taunting him almost.

He didn't really know which way would cause him less heartache and confusion. On one hand, his parents' old bedroom surely held many memories of them, traces of them both would be scattered everywhere. On the other, the magic room was the core of a witch's life. It would have the signature of his mother's power. The very essence of her would be lingering in every corner of the room. It would surely pull Lorin in and unlock bits of his own currently unused powers.

Was he ready for that?

"What do you think?" He turned to look at Kit, who stood frozen about three feet from Lorin. He huffed a little and turned his head away.

Apparently Lorin still wasn't completely forgiven for the whole vet visit. Kit had taken a melodramatic approach to letting Lorin know that once they were back in the cabin. He sprawled on the sofa on his back, huffing and whining. He walked as slowly as he could whenever Lorin would look his way, and as many times as Lorin caught him just being his regular self, the moment Kit realized he was being watched, he'd go back to his Victorian boy dying of influenza reenactment.

It was quite amusing, if completely unhelpful.

Realizing he wouldn't be getting much input from his familiar, Lorin sighed and was trying to force himself to make a decision on his own when a flash of white brushed against him and disappeared up the stairs.

"Kit?" Lorin called after him, but got nothing in return except claws clicking on the wooden floor above Lorin's head.

Magic room, it seemed.

He gripped the thin railing and climbed the first few steps, his legs feeling like lead as he dragged them up. The upper floor to the cabin had no door to truly separate it from the rest of the house, just a thin dark green curtain at the top of the stairs. It was still swaying from Kit's barging in there, and Lorin caught it mid-movement when he reached the top.

He gripped the fabric, taking a few deep breaths before pulling it to the side and stepping into his mother's magic room.

It felt like he could breathe the magic in. Like it was sticking to his skin. After all the years of being empty and unused, the room still thrummed with it. The slanted roof made the room look cramped but cozy, the narrowest spaces under it housing built-in cabinets and low shelves filled with books and boxes of things Lorin couldn't even begin to imagine.

The middle of the room held a large desk, again stacked to the brim with books, scattered papers, and artifacts his mother had clearly used when accessing her magic. The glass of the cathedral-style window at the opposite end of the curtain where Lorin was standing was dusty and covered in grime accumulated over time. It let very little light in to allow Lorin to see much detail in the room.

Where his grandmother had clearly done things to make the bottom floor of the cabin suitable for him to live, the magic room just looked like his mother would return at any moment to fiddle with spells and use her things. It looked like she had just left to grab some missing ingredients before delving back into her work.

Lorin could almost sense her there.

He walked farther into the room, surprisingly feeling more curious than debilitatingly sad about where he was and what was missing from the room. Being this close to her magic felt like the next best thing to knowing her, so he allowed himself to dive in.

Naturally, the first thing he felt drawn to was the countless books she seemed to have had. They were everywhere. Piled on the shelves, stacked on the floor and the couple of mismatched chairs around the room. Lorin knew she'd loved reading just as much as he did. It was one of the things he felt proud to share with her.

He approached the table and ran his fingers over the spines of some books that seemed more well used than others. All of them had something to do with magic affecting water, and using water as a medium. He had known the broad scope of what his mother could do, but his grandma found it difficult to talk about too much, and as he grew older, Lorin had found it difficult to ask.

So he just never did.

There were notebooks with her handwriting scattered between the books, and as he touched them and studied them more carefully he realized the spines were numbered. He shifted them around until he found the first one and tucked it under his arm.

He didn't know if he'd be able to bring himself to actually read it, but something told him he'd want to have it close.

He turned around and startled at the sight of himself reflected in a tall, ornately framed mirror tucked into one corner of the room. It was as dusty as everything else, making his reflection wobbly and distorted like one of those amusement park mirror attractions you went into so you could see yourself look like someone had tried to assemble a human without instructions.

He snorted and was about to leave when he caught sight of someone else's face right next to his in the mirror. It was just slightly off, slightly more shifty than Lorin's own solid reflection. Distorted almost. But there. Staring at him.

He gasped, whipping around only to find the room completely empty except for himself and the sound of Kit's paws rushing toward him as his heart beat loudly. He turned back to the mirror and found the spot where the face had been empty.

There was nobody there anymore.

"Kit, have you seen anyone in here?" Lorin whispered urgently, tiptoeing around the small space as if whoever he'd seen in the mirror could be hiding behind one of the few pieces of furniture scattered around the room.

Kit looked baffled. Confused. He paced around, whining and pawing at Lorin, shaking his fur out. His eyes were wider than usual.

"Have you?" Lorin repeated the question when he found nobody in the room with them. He crouched down next to Kit, allowing him to wiggle his way into Lorin's arms. He was shaking, Lorin could feel the trembles against his chest. He was pushing his nose into Lorin's neck and whimpering softly. Lorin kissed him between the ears.

He knew where Kit was coming from with his reaction. It was unnerving, and no amount of telling himself the face he'd seen was just a figment of his imagination would help. "How about we get out of here and try again another time?"

He stood up with Kit in his arms, heading for the stairs, but the fox started squirming like crazy. Lorin tried to hold him up, tried to get back down to shorten the drop, but Kit was having absolutely none of it. He clawed and squirmed until he was released, landing on the floor with a soft thud before scurrying away behind the mirror.

"Kit?" Lorin called after him, panicked. "Come on."

He walked closer, still eyeing the mirror warily, but the fox had tucked himself too far behind it for Lorin to be able to reach him anyway. He didn't seem to be hurt, just spooked by something.

"Will you please come down with me?"

He heard a soft whine, but Kit never emerged. He was an animal, after all, and not beholden to instructions, or even the understanding of them in the first place. Lorin kept forgetting that.

Still bewildered and confused, Lorin decided he'd let him settle and calm down on his own. Hopefully Kit would come back down when he was ready. Lorin grabbed his mother's journal and headed for the stairs.

"I'll be downstairs," he said softly, looking around himself one more time, unable to shake the uncomfortable feeling pressing down on him. "Come down whenever you're ready, okay?"

He waited for a moment, but Kit didn't come out, so he took the stairs down, letting the curtain separate him from whatever was happening in the magic room.

He needed to speak to his grandma—

His phone rang before he even finished the thought. He settled onto the sofa and answered the call, the journal on his knees.

"Bike working well?" his grandmother asked before he even had the chance to greet her properly.

"Yeah it worked okay. I'll be suffering with muscle inflammation for the next decade, but it works. Once the snow hits, we'll see."

He heard the soft tap of claws on the floor, and then Kit hopped up onto the sofa next to him, looking slightly out of it still but present. Lorin felt relief immediately at having him within reach and sight again, reaching out and scratching his back just for an excuse to touch him.

"Exercise is good for you," his grandma said, zero sympathy for his pain detected. "And when the snow hits, you'll have to figure out something else, won't you?"

"Yes, Grandma," he said, not really wanting to get into a discussion with her about permanent solutions to problems he still had trouble accepting were his to handle now.

"Good. Everything okay with Kit?"

"He was given a clean bill of health, yes." He eyed the fox, who huffed and turned his back on Lorin at the mere mention of the vet. Lorin had thought they were over being prickly about it, but apparently, he was very wrong.

"Wonderful," his grandmother said, then surprised him by continuing the conversation. "And what did you do with the rest of your day?"

"I went into Mom's magic room," he said, letting the silence settle over them for a long moment before she spoke again.

"That was quicker than I expected," she said, honest as ever.

"Yeah. I wasn't there long. And I haven't even seen everything, just…"

"You just being in there is enough of a step, Lorin," she said quietly. "Nobody said you had to dive headfirst into any of this."

"Yet you prepped this place with the intention that I do just that," Lorin found himself saying, uncomfortable with her compassion after all this time and falling back into old habits.

"With the hope," she said. "I hoped for you. I didn't prepare it as a shackle, Lorin, whatever you may think of me. It was always your choice. I never forced you. Not when you left, and not when you came back. That cabin is your birthright. It's yours to do as you please with."

Lorin wanted to argue with her, but couldn't. He still felt so lost in it. Rocking on a raft in a stormy sea and trying to find which direction was land.

"How do I even… Where do I start, Grandma?"

"Looking for your calling?" she asked, addressing the easier part of it and leaving the more complicated tangle be for now. He hummed in agreement. "You have to let it find you. Your mother's, or my magic for that matter, clearly never held any significance to you, so you can safely rule it out."

"But there's so much out there."

"That's the beauty of it, isn't it? You can find your own little niche you'll feel right in."

"So I just…meander?" He frowned.

"It's more dabbling than it is meandering," she said. "Look, the Magic Shop will be in town in two days, and it will be staying for a few days so everyone can grab what they need. Go. Get some books, look at things, see if anything calls out to you."

"Anything?"

"That shop knows more than any of us would want it to, and The Owner is always happy to give some advice. Get different things. Get information. That's the only way to find what really speaks to you."

"Two days from now?"

"Have you got rocks in your ears?" she sniped, back to her usual self.

"Okay." He sighed, knowing it was probably the best option he had. "Okay, I'll go. See what happens."

"That's the spirit," she said, and the word brought back the memory of the face in the dusty mirror.

"Grandma? Are spirits real?"

"Spirits like…ghosts?" she asked, and he hummed in confirmation. "Why wouldn't they be real?"

"Oh." He wasn't sure that was the response he'd been expecting, if he was being honest. Especially not in that matter-of-fact voice she'd just used. "But…"

"But people don't just disappear after they die either, Lorin," she said, and he held his breath again.

"They don't?"

"Their magic lingers. In the things they touched, the things they loved the most, the things that meant the most, the places they considered their own. Sometimes, that means they just stay in those places. Surrounded by those things."

"Like a magic room?" he asked, and she fell silent for a moment.

"That is an oddly specific question. Is everything okay?"

Her worry was soothing. He wanted to tell her what he'd seen, but what had he seen exactly? A shadow of a face in a barely lit room, through a mirror barely functioning because of the layers of dirt on it? A face that wasn't there when he turned back around?

"It's fine," he said in the end. "I think I'm just tired and all of this is a lot to take in."

"I understand. Get some sleep. And stop by tomorrow for lunch," she instructed.

She hung up before he could say anything else.

Lorin let the phone drop from his hands, frowning as he felt goose bumps prickle along his spine. He looked around as if someone would be there when he turned. As if that unfamiliar face would be staring back at him again if he just looked in the right direction. The cabin was empty though, except for himself and Kit settled next to him, ears twitching and back straight.

He tried to push it away. Tried to think of happier things. Like a lunch invitation to his grandma's that a week ago he hadn't been sure he would ever get again. It felt like an olive branch extended between them, and Lorin wanted to hold on with both hands.

"How about we grab something to eat, hm?" Lorin asked, smiling when Kit perked up at the words.

He stood up and, followed by the forever-hungry fox, went into the kitchen to make them dinner.

He'd handle the man in the mirror another time. Hopefully.

Kit

Kit was restless for the rest of the day and into the night. He couldn't settle for a moment. Not with Lorin's soft voice asking him what was wrong, not with a double helping of dinner, not with the absent pets behind his ears or secret kisses Lorin didn't think he noticed, and not with Lorin's sleepy breathing on the sofa.

Kit was going out of his mind.

He'd shifted .

For the first time in years he'd felt the stretch and morph of skin and bone, the vibration of his innate magic that had been blocked and stifled trickling through for just a few moments, like a cooling stream.

He'd stood at his full height, shorter than Lorin at just under his chin. His legs had barely been able to hold him upright, his spine naturally wanting to curl, his hands flexing to hit the floor. But he'd resisted it because HE WAS STANDING.

He'd forgotten what depth and color were like in that form. Forgotten his own face even.

He'd stared at himself in the dirty mirror and seen the same amber eyes blown wide with shock. Instead of a snout, he had a sharp nose, and his muzzle was two pink lips and a pointy chin.

Then he'd glanced to the side and locked eyes with Lorin.

That was all he'd had time for before he was shifting back completely involuntarily. It had hurt. Like a rubber band being snapped. His whole body had smarted from the impact and it left him dizzy for a few moments, completely reeling.

Lorin had seemed uneasy too, looking around himself like he'd seen a ghost.

Kit had wanted to groan. Wanted to shout at him that he was right here! It wasn't to be, however. Lorin still thought he was just a familiar, and Kit didn't know how IT had come to be in the first place.

What had triggered the shift?

It wasn't unusual for Kit to think about shifting multiple times throughout the day. His willingness to shift wasn't a part of the problem, the wall he met inside him that separated him from his human half was. So yes, he'd thought about shifting at the time. He'd wanted to explore the magic room with his hands and not just his nose and paws.

That his body had actually responded?

Kit had no idea what had changed.

He'd mated Lorin days ago and it hadn't seemed to affect anything about his situation. So maybe it was the room itself?

He stopped his pacing around the darkened house and paused by the staircase, looking up the crooked steps. Power resonated from there, like it was the center of the house itself. The beating heart.

Maybe the answer lay inside.

Mind made up, he slunk up on quiet paws, glancing around himself, trying to remember step by step what he had been doing before he shifted. He walked in his own steps, touched the same things, tried to think the same thoughts with the moonlight spilling through the window.

He wasted an hour like that. Redoing. Remembering.

It was useless.

He stayed completely vulpine.

He tried battering against the wall inside him harder, slamming and slamming and slamming, like the first days after he'd been taken and altered. It did nothing but exhaust him until he lay in a heap on the floor.

He curled up and tucked his nose under his tail in defeat.

He couldn't cry in this form, which was its own kind of torture.

He stared up at the lonely moon and wished for guidance. Comfort. He could crawl back into Lorin's chest, but self-pity kept him stationary.

It had happened once…for some reason…in some way. Surely he could make it happen again? He didn't want to give up. He'd never been a quitter.

Whether it was the house that was the key, or Lorin, Kit would work it out.

He'd be whole again.

But for now he'd lick his wounds under the moon.

Just for tonight.