Chapter 17

Live you must and let to live, fairly take, and fairly give

– The Wiccan Rede

There are no words sufficient to describe the agony of the fires of Hell. They burnt me from the inside out, blood boiling, organs crisping, skin blackening, and hair falling away into ash. The flames danced with faces twisted into anguished screams, and the smoke crawled like fingers.

This was how Charity Vossen had died, in a fire so ferocious that she did not have a chance to scream before she was rendered into ash. Was I to share her fate? Mal had promised to save me. Had he failed? But, no… I did not believe I had done so much wrong in my life that I would be sent to Hell, and I did not believe that Ender would peacefully escort me there. Ender loved me…

Ender had been prepared to watch me die. He had been angry at Mal for interfering and had pleaded with me not to invoke him.

And, just like that, the fires went out.

I opened my eyes. I was in my room, on my bed. It was morning, and the sun streamed in through the window. Birds chirped in the branches, the flutter of their wings casting shadows across the floor. I was dressed in my pajamas and lay beneath the covers. I could smell the lavender that my aunts used to scent the linen rising faintly from the sheets and the pillowcase beneath my head. One of the aunts had changed my bed recently, and the sheets were still smooth and uncreased beneath me.

Every breath was agony. My body felt heavy, my muscles ached, and my skin screamed. My heart throbbed in my ears, through my head, and behind my eyes. I lifted my arms slowly, expecting to see charred skin and blood but they were clean, as if I were freshly showered, and unmarred.

The light caught on the ring I wore on my finger. The same finger where Ender had put his first ring woven of hair. That ring was gone, and instead, this band of gold, set with an opal, the red flame within shifting as my hand shook. Ender's bracelet was also gone. I mourned the loss of those dark, soft reminders of my grim reaper, the sob trembling my lips.

"You should be happy." The mattress compressed as Mal lay out beside me, propping his head up on the palm of his hand and his elbow. He grinned down at me and reached out to adjust the ring on my finger. "I saved you."

"Ender…" I managed to whimper. "Ender's ring…"

"I'm the possessive and jealous type, Elenyx," he told me. "I could not have you wearing his claim on you now that you are mine. Diamonds and opals, instead," he took my hand in his, weaving his fingers between mine. "I will cover you in gold and precious stones. You are my first witch," he added brightly. "I normally don't accept the familiar bond. That is for weaker demons. Sentimental or ambitious fools. But for you, I made an exception."

"Thank you," I was weeping, the seep of tears almost unnoticed down my cheeks. "I did not want to die."

"You did though. Very almost," he told me. "I had to bend some rules, and do some tweaking… You'll work it out. This is going to be great," he decided and rolled off the bed and onto his feet, crossing to my closet and flicking through its contents. "Unlike your clothing choices. What is this?" He pulled out a maxi dress and sneered. "A tent? A family of four could live beneath this fabric, and never meet each other."

"What is wrong with me?" I was so weak and shaky as I sat up. "What happened?"

"You almost died," he held a dress up against himself and considered the effect in the mirror. "This will do, I suppose, but your wardrobe needs some serious attention. A shopping trip this afternoon, I think, after our date."

"Our date," I repeated.

"Well, yes, Nyx. We're meeting the blonde fool and his friends, remember? You'd better get showered and dressed." He dove into my underwear drawer and made a sound of dismay. "By all that's unholy, your underwear, Nyx, it's so…" He held a pair of plain black cotton briefs up. "Nun-like and unadorned."

"They're comfortable," I told him defensively. "Get out of my underwear drawer, Mal."

"Our underwear drawer,' he corrected flicking the underwear at me. "I am your familiar now, Nyx. You invoked me and I accepted. We are bonded for all of eternity, a relationship far more permanent and intimate than marriage. You are mine, and I am yours," he selected a bra. "Aren't you lucky?"

I held the clothing that he had been casting my way on my lap and stared at him, unsure what to make of our new relationship and his presence in my bedroom and wardrobe. There was a nervous energy behind his flippancy, and I was the cause, I realized. He was as nervous as a bride on her wedding day. He had wanted me to invoke him, and it meant a lot to him that I had, whereas I had only done it as there had only been two choices before me – invoke him or die.

"Thank you," I told him. He paused in inspecting where my jewellery hung on a hook on the wall by my desk and slid his eyes my way. "For saving my life. I appreciate it. I will do my best to be a good witch to you, Mal. The books don't say a lot about the demon familiar and witch relationship and how they work, but I know the demon is family."

"For some," he selected from the hook, holding the chains on his finger. "For some, it is more, for some less. It depends on the demon and the witch." He held out his hand so that I could reach out to take the chains from him. "These will go with your charmed memento mori nicely. I left that on," he added. "As it was yours and not his."

"We did not negotiate the terms," I realized, trailing behind in the conversation. In the Grimoires it had been recommended that the witch cast the invocation from within a spell circle in order to negotiate the terms from a position of safety and power, but I had not had that luxury, bleeding out upon the road as I had been.

"What other terms would you have negotiated with me?" He wondered, and there was a subtle tightening of his mouth and a shadow in his eyes. It was a baited question. He liked that we had not negotiated and that he had answered a need, as it changed the dynamic of our relationship.

"I don't know," I admitted carefully. I did not want to make him angry. It would be a bad start to whatever it was between us. "I just… don't know what you want out of this, Mal."

"I want you," he replied, his eyes intense as they searched my face. "And I have you," he concluded as he turned away. "Go and shower, Nyx. I don't want to be late."

I nodded and slid from the bed. Every muscle complained and groaned as I padded across the floor to the door. I paused with my hand on the doorknob. Mal had saved me, and he had not needed to do that. I owed him my gratitude. "We'll make this work, Mal," I told him. "Thank you."

The bathroom was empty, although the mirrors were still fogged from Nova's shower, and the water took time to reheat. Whilst I waited, I stripped bare and examined myself in the mirror. Although my body felt every injury that I had suffered, and my nerves still screamed from the memory of the touch of flame, there was not a single mark on my skin.

I crept closer to the mirror and examined my face. My face was the same, but also different. My skin smoother and more luminous, my eyes brighter and wider, my teeth whiter, my lips fuller, my eyelashes thicker and longer… Even my hair seemed lusher. The scar on the back of my hand where I had slipped with a knife whilst preparing spell ingredients was no longer there, nor was the one on my knee from falling off my bike. All old scars and blemishes had vanished, in fact.

It made sense that Mal had used his magic to heal me – I had been injured to the point of dying, after all. It would be in character for him to take it too far and polish me up to his idea of the perfect Elenyx.

I wasn't angry, I told myself, although it was a liberty taken and Mal and I definitely had a lot to discuss about the new arrangement as he couldn't just make changes to me to suit his liking like this… Even though, I admitted, they were good changes. Damn the man. Demon… Man.

And what of Ender? Would I never see him again? Had he abandoned me, disgusted with my choice to invoke Mal and live? Did I even want to see him again? He had to have known, one way or another, that I was going to die soon, and he had not warned me. So many of the things he had spoken of, in hindsight, revealed that he had known. How could it have been love between us if he was prepared to let me die? What sort of lover stood by whilst the person they loved bled out on the road?

I stood beneath the tepid shower water and wept until it returned to cold.

There was also another question that needed answering, I told myself as I dressed and did my make-up in the mirror, and that was just who had been driving the car that had run me off the road. Who was the man that I had only seen as a black silhouette against the sky, who had looked down at me bleeding and broken, and gotten back into his car and driven off, leaving me to die slowly alone – as far as he had known.

I had a theory about that. One that bore the name of Warren.

I dragged in a deep breath as I resolved that the man who had tried to murder me would not get away with it. You did not mess with a witch, after all, without repercussion.

Mal was leaning against the doorframe when I opened the bathroom door and raised his eyebrows. "You took forever. Next time I'm coming in," he warned me. "Come on, let's go."

"Mal…" I started and then saw Nova, wide-eyed, in the doorway of her room. "Oh. Shit."

"Hi," Mal inclined his head to her, his grin widening. "I'm Nyx's demon familiar, Mal. You'll be seeing a lot of me."

"Oh my god," Nova's jaw dropped. "You did it."

"Long story," I felt the blush heat my cheeks. "A really long story."

"And we don't have time as we're meeting people," Mal glanced at the expensive watch on his wrist. "And need to pop by the shop on our way. Excuse us." He grabbed my hand and pulled me along with him, down the stairs to the front hall, where Fennel froze in surprise, her hand going to her cheek instinctively as she had not yet applied her morning makeup.

"Hi," Mal waved cheerfully as he tugged me past her. "We'll be back this evening. Maybe."

"Mal…" I pulled back against his hold as we stepped outside. "We need to talk."

"Absolutely," he released me and crossed to where his car was parked, opening the door. "But as we drive, Nyx," he coaxed from where he stood, gesturing to the seat.

I sighed and crossed to slide into the car. "I don't even remember making this date," I told him resentfully.

"Well, perhaps I made it on your behalf," he replied as he closed the door and circled the car. "Regardless, we have a date, and we're bringing the picnic," he said as he started the engine.

I slid him a frown. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Well, making dates and catering isn't exactly demonish, Mal," I pointed out.

"Why not? Maybe I'm planning on stealing their souls, or leading them down the paths of Hell? It won't be the first time a bit of wine and some cheese has led to people doing some stupid things," he replied lightly. "You have a very one-dimensional concept of my job, Nyx."

"Sorry," I got the idea that I had ruffled his feathers. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"You didn't upset me," he said although his driving as he swung out on the road said otherwise. "Pinegrove Academy is a cesspool of sinners. They are born of sinners, suckle on the teats of them, absorb the sin like language, and then come here to be educated in how to do it in a civilized manner without being caught. A smart demon can meet his quota of souls very easily walking the hallowed halls of the school. I'm just being smart and multi-tasking." The grin he sent me was vulpine. "A holiday by the sea, a beautiful witch, and a cauldron full of souls ripe for the plucking - what more could a demon ask for?"

"Mal… Did Ender know?" I asked him the question that above all others my heart needed to know. "Did he know that I was going to die?"

"Of course, he knew," Mal replied disdainfully, unhappy with the change of topic. "He is Death, after all."

I had known that Ender had been waiting for me to die like a patient spider on a web, I told myself, and yet it was no less painful to hear.

"Stop," I reached out and grabbed Mal's arm. He braked, slowing until the front of the car rested almost at the same point that my bike had been struck by the other car, at the start of the stretch of road where the little girl had died. Where I would have died if Mal had not answered my call.

There was no debris and no blood. "There's no sign of the accident." I found that somehow shocking, the erasure of my suffering, the invisibility of my broken heart. Evidence of the little girl's accident remained - the line of rubber visible on the tarmac. But not even a drop of blood or fragment of the bike showed that I too had almost died.

"Of course not," Mal's eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, keeping an eye on the road behind us, our position perilous if another car approached at speed. "If I left blood, gore, and broken bike behind on the road, people would ask questions about how it is that you're in one piece, Nyx, and there's nothing that quite screams ‘witch' like surviving certain death."

"Someone tried to kill me," I felt nauseous as the horror of it swept over me. "He was waiting for me, up the road, and came up behind me on purpose. He could have gone around, but he meant to hit me."

"Curious," Mal commented. "But this is hardly a place to linger and chat. A bit morbid, in fact, Nyx," he put the car back in gear and continued down the road, driving over where I had lain dying. "It hardly matters anyway. No one can kill you now."

"Because you're my demon?" I frowned at him puzzled.

"Mhm, and… Well," he pulled into a car space. "Here we are. To be continued, hmm?" He had turned the engine off and was out of the car before I could protest, rounding the bonnet to open my door.

"It could have been Nova," I realized as I let him help me out. "I need to warn her and the aunts…" That conversation would go down like a tonne of bricks, I realized. Would Aunt Callista insist on bringing the police in as she had done with the attack on the house? How would we explain that I had been hit by a car and didn't have a scratch on me?

"Here we are," Mal took a picnic basket out of the back of the car and carried it over his arm as he led me to the grocery store. "Let's get what we need and go meet our sinners." He held open the door and waited for me to pass him.

"We can't warn my aunts," I told him quietly as we began to weave our way down the aisles. People stared at us, but then, people always stared, so I did my best to ignore them whilst staying close to Mal's side and keeping my voice low so that we would not be overheard. "They will want to go to the police, and I really can't explain what happened without explaining what happened." I widened my eyes at him meaningfully.

"Camembert or brie?" He debated two rounds. "I can never decide."

"But I can't let this man hurt my family," I continued. All the food around us was making me hungry though, and I grimaced as I pressed my hand to my grumbling stomach.

"You're right," he said lightly. "Both." He added them to the picnic basket. "Is Pate a little tacky? Should we take sliced meats instead?" He continued to add items to the basket.

"You're not listening to me, Mal," I scolded him as I trailed along behind him to the fruit and vegetable aisle.

"Grapes," a woman said from beside me.

I looked at her in surprise to find her smiling at me as if enraptured by my presence.

"You really should try one," she told me plucking one from the bunch. "They're the sweetest things." Before I could protest, she'd popped it and half her finger into my mouth, and then brought her finger back to her lips and sucked it. "Hmm. No, I was wrong. You're the sweetest thing."

My jaw hit the floor, and I dribbled grape juice before I managed to close my mouth. She wiped her thumb under my bottom lip, capturing the juice whilst holding my eyes, hers intense and her lips curled into a smile that could only be described as predatory.

"Hey," a man scowled at the woman. "Hands off. I'm sorry about that," he added stepping between the woman and me and cupping my elbow. "That was really inappropriate." He breathed in closing his eyes. "Hmm. You smell so good. Vanilla, and…"

"Lavender. Ah," Mal interceded, pulling me a little away. "Off with you. Off-off," he gestured with his hand as if shooing flies. "We should probably go," he said to me, tucking me in against his side. "Before you start an orgy."

"What the fuck, Mal?" I hissed at him as he threw notes at the wide-eyed cash register clerk and hustled me out onto the street. "What is wrong with these people?"

"Hey," a man on the pavement stopped dead and turned back towards us. "I know you, don't I?" He said to me. "From the coffee shop."

Mal dropped the picnic basket into the car, and took me by the elbow, propelling me to the passenger side. "Into the car Nyx, and for all that's hot in Hell, here," he shoved a block of chocolate at me. "Have something to eat. It won't help completely, but it will take the edge off. I'll take care of the rest soon."

"What…?" I stared at the chocolate in my hands, and then at Mal who snapped at the man to back off, before getting into the driver's seat and starting the engine. He pulled out into the street with a squeal of tires.

"Eat up," he said cheerfully. "And don't worry about them. They're just a little hyped up on your pheromones."

"My pheromones?" I gaped at him.

"Just eat the chocolate, Nxy, and trust me. It's not a big deal. A minor side effect."

"What did you do to me, Mal?" I asked suspiciously. He had done more than smooth away some scars and blemishes when he'd saved my life, and that was the reason that I'd been all but sexually assaulted in the grocery store.

"Hmm," he hummed his grimace. "Let's talk about that later. Right now, we have to find somewhere… Ah," his voice brightened, and he took a turn down a dirt road. "Somewhere down here perhaps… Good enough," he pulled over in the shade of a tree and turned off the engine.

"Family, you called it earlier," he said as he got out of the car and approached my door. "The demon familiar is family," he opened the door and pulled me out of the seat in a display of strength that left me breathless and brought our bodies tightly together. "Family takes many forms, Elenyx," his voice turned smoky, and his eyes burned. "And we both know our relationship isn't the chaste kind."

"Mal," I barely breathed the word. I shouldn't want him, I told myself. My body should not have heated the moment he'd pulled me from the car, and yet my skin ached to have his hands upon it, and my cunt begged to feel his cock within it.

His smirk was crooked. "No, definitely not the chaste kind," he whispered leaning forward until his lips were almost touching mine. "We burn together, my sexy, little witch."