Chapter 5

When the wind comes from the South, love will kiss you on the mouth

- The Wiccan Rede

"We'll prepare some charms for you to wear," Fennel opened a jewellery box onto the kitchen table. "Something to ward off the lingering darkness of that place." She held up a pair of earrings. "Something like this perhaps?"

"Lay them out on the table and let the girl pick for herself," Callista looked up from marking the list of appointments into her diary. "There is an orientation day next Monday, Nxy," she told me. "I will, of course, accompany you. The uniform shop will be open, and you can get fitted whilst we are there."

"Lovely," I pulled a face although the uniforms weren't terrible. Grey slacks or skirts, a matching blazer with red details on the pocket and trim, a red jumper, a white shirt, and a red tie, cravat, or scarf. The local school had not had a uniform so having to wear the same thing every day would be a new experience for me.

"Uniforms exist to oppress the wearer," Fennel agreed. "To teach conformity, and to suffocate creativity. Here," she had spread the jewellery over the tabletop. "Select what speaks to you."

I closed my eyes and hovered my palms over the tangle of trinkets, the relics of many generations of Vossen witches. Almost immediately I could feel the heat of one item pulling my hand towards it. I picked it up, opening my eyes to examine what I had chosen.

It was a brass locket, the edges still gold toned but tarnish darkening around the skull that grinned from within weaving filigree. A clear stone was set above and to either side of it. I opened the locket with my thumbnail. A yellowing image of a man, the details faded with age, was pinned beneath a fragile layer of glass on one side, whilst another held a swirl of dark blonde hair.

"It's a memento mori," Fennel said quietly. "A reminder of your own mortality, but also a way to remember the dead. This one is from the Victorian era from the design. We would have to look up in the family Grimoire whose it was."

"Someone's lover?" I guessed touched by the sentimentality behind that little lock of hair.

"Most likely," Fennel agreed, her voice wistful. "Vossen women have never been lucky in love."

"Or someone's son," Callista said more crisply peering over the rims of her glasses.

Whatever else might have been said wasn't, as Nova chose that moment to return home, the front door snicking shut quietly, but heard in the kitchen clearly none-the-less - which made me wonder if the Aunts had cast some sort of spell to make it so, as I had no memory of the sound ever having travelled so well through the house before

The Aunts exchanged a look.

"Don't," Fennel said in a soft warning to Callista.

Callista made a sound of displeasure at the back of her throat, but she did not get up in pursuit of my sister. We three remained silent as the stairs creaked, and then Nova's door closed – something I knew was impossible to hear from below.

"You have an echo spell on Nova," I accused them.

"Why would we do such a thing?" Callista arched one elegant eyebrow.

"Because of the boy."

"Ah," Fennel nodded and dropped the locket into her pocket as she turned to put the kettle onto the stove. "The boy," she said meaningfully to Callista.

"Mhm," Callista nodded. "You have seen this boy, Nyx?"

"Not really," I regretted immediately saying as much as I had.

"Hmm," Fennel and Callista's expressions made it clear that they did not believe me.

"I am not lying," I said defensively. "I saw him from a distance, but he was leaning down, and Nova was in the way…"

"Ah," Fennel poured us tea.

"Surely you don't believe…" That we can never be happy in love went unsaid but might as well have been spoken.

I had been raised on the stories about how Vossen women were destined to have unhappy love lives. There was a reason, our aunts often said, that the Vossen Homestead had been run by women since it had been built. Men came into our lives and left as swiftly. Whilst the Vossen women might leave Vossen Homestead, eventually we always came back.

Our father had died whilst Nova and I were very young. He was half-remembered and that memory was accentuated by stories and photos. He had been a giant of a man, with a dark full beard and laughing eyes, a playful father, one of warm hugs and gentle hands, who had always captured the spiders rather than killing them, setting them free into the garden.

It had been cancer that had taken him, just before his thirty-fifth birthday.

My mother had tried for several years to raise us alone, but then a new man had entered her life… And she had brought us to Vossen Homestead. It had been time to train us as witches, she had said, but in truth, she knew that the new man would come and go as swiftly as our father had, and she wanted to spend as much time with him as she could.

"Never?" I looked from one aunt to the other.

"There is always a balance in life," Aunt Fennel gestured for my teacup. I finished the last mouthful, swirled it in my right hand, and surrendered it to her. For a long moment, she stared frowning. "Great power for great sacrifice. A major transformation and symbolic death," she said gravely. "A reading that makes a great deal of sense for a young woman at your stage of life. The symbolic death would be the death of your childhood, as you transform into a woman with the beginning of the new academic year into higher education."

"I'm not sure what I will do once I complete the three years at Pinegrove," I was intrigued as to what the leaves would say. "I'm not sure that I will want to continue my education if it means leaving Mortensby."

"I cannot see," Fennel confessed, lifting her eyes to mine. Her hair had fallen back, and the light caught on her scar, the redness cunningly hid beneath layers of makeup, but the base and foundation were unable to disguise the ripples and pits upon her cheekbone near her ear. "I am sorry, Nyx. It is likely that you are at the precipice of such a major change and your future is dependent on so many small decisions that I cannot forecast ahead. In time, I am sure that it will become clearer."

"Well," I stood. "I should go to bed, anyway…" I hesitated.

"Yes, dear?" Callista tilted her glasses down her nose.

"I…" I hesitated. It was a half-formed thought, one that I had not explored myself yet, but… "Is it possible for a ghost to be… almost real?"

"A poltergeist?" Fennel suggested. "Capable of moving physical items?"

"Maybe… No," I blew out a breath. "No. I mean… So almost real so that you're not actually sure if they're a ghost or alive?"

"Well, you would know more than most," Fennel tilted her head to the side as she scrutinized me. "Your vision of the departed is always so astonishingly clear. Why do you ask? Have you seen such a spirit?"

I paused and chewed my bottom lip, fidgeting with my clothing as I considered what to say. "The other night…" When I had snuck out with Nova - but I could not say that. "I met someone in the dark. And I'm not sure… I'm not sure that he's alive. He appeared out of nowhere, without explanation, and I couldn't really see him clearly, he seemed part of the shadows… I guess… I guess I wondered if I was seeing a ghost?"

"You met someone?" Callista set down her pen giving me her complete attention.

"Never mind," I felt my cheeks heat. "Never mind."

"We just need to know more," Fennel added soothingly. "What happened precisely?"

"I don't know," I shrugged. "We talked and…"

"Ghosts don't generally interact with the living," Callista pointed out. "Unless they are delivering the message that has been holding them to this world, or it is the very point of their death."

I remembered the little girl talking as her spirit rose from her body. "I've spoken to him twice now."

"Well, in that case…" She tapped her finger against her lips as she thought it through. "If you held multiple discussions with this man, it seems unlikely that he is a ghost. What makes you think that he isn't a human?"

"Just… I don't know. My intuition, I guess." I confessed.

"A witch should always trust her intuition. Well… If he isn't human, then perhaps he is of demon-kind?" Callista decided. "It is unusual for demon-kind to visit a witch, unless… You have not cast any invocations, Nyx?"

"Oh, no," I said. "I have been reading on them… But, no, I haven't cast one."

"It doesn't take much," she told me. "Just a few words spoken aloud with intention. And if you invoke a demon familiar, that one is with you for your life, or theirs. There is no ending that contract. So be wary and don't invoke anything carelessly…"

"I know," I assured her. "I have been reading up on it."

"As for this… man," Fennel continued. "If your intuition is warning you - "

"He isn't dangerous to me," I said hastily. "It's not that sort of intuition."

"What sort is it dear?" Callista lifted an eyebrow.

"Nothing," I was blushing and knew it, feeling the heat burning on my cheeks. "Good night." I made for the door.

"You will have to work out whether he's human or not dear," Callista called out after me.

"And let us know," Fennel added sweetly.

"Not that any man is ever totally human," Callista commented under her breath.

Their giggles pursued me out into the hallway. For a moment I hesitated between the old grandfather clock that insisted on striking the hour fifteen minutes late and a collection of gilt-framed miniatures of disapproving-looking children. I should go upstairs and prepare for bed, maybe spend an hour reading about invocations and demons, just in case… But I was too restless to study.

On impulse, I turned and went instead through Callista's office, the dark-wood shelves containing relics of generations of witches, from crystal balls and tarot cards to wax-sealed spell jars whose labels had long peeled off leaving their contents unknown. Behind her desk with its neatly stacked paperwork and ledger, the French doors opened onto the veranda.

The night air was warm and heavy with the night-blooming jasmine that grew along the garden beds at the edge of the veranda. I followed the footpath until I could look out over the ocean below, with the salty wind tossing back my hair and pulling at my clothing.

Perhaps Ender was just a man, I argued with myself. Just a man who liked to lurk in the shadows. The first night, meeting him between the bonfire and the ruins might have been coincidental. But his appearance at the post office…

I was almost certain that Ender was a ghost.

But then, he had untangled my dress from the spiny saltbush, held the envelope, and his shoulder had rested against my own… Ghosts did not possess a body for such things. A poltergeist could manifest enough energy to throw things about, but not with the level of control that Ender had demonstrated.

I had been reading invocations recently, trying to decide if I wished to summon a demon. Summoning a demon was a tricky thing – not in the action itself, oh no, as Aunt Callista had said, that was very easy, even too easy. But once the demon answered...

I was certain that I hadn't invoked a demon. Sometimes, however, it was possible to accidentally attract the attention of one. Perhaps that was what I had done that first night when my dress had become caught onto the saltbush.

"It is a beautiful view," Ender said softly as he stepped out of the shadows to stand at my side.

"It is," I agreed turning to find him looking down at me.

I reached up and stroked back the fall of his hair, both proving to myself that he was solid and real and revealing his face under the moonlight. He turned his head, and his lips brushed the heel of my palm, sending an icy frisson of sensation that seemed to rush from my wrist to my breasts, tightening my nipples against the fabric of my dress.

My inhalation was ragged.

His hand closed on my hip. The fabric of my dress suddenly seeming as fine as a spiderweb as if there were nothing parting my skin from his at all. I stepped into him as his grip tightened so that as he drew me towards him, I went willingly into his arms. His chest beneath my palms was solid and strong, rising and falling with each breath, but he was cold. No heat warmed the fabric of his top, no heat rose to meet that of my palms against him.

He inhaled as he nuzzled up along the slope of my shoulder to my neck, and the satisfied exhale as his cold cheek rested against my own carried no body heat within it. The coolness of his skin did not matter whatsoever. A sort of madness overtook me, a rush of pheromones as heady and rich as the jasmine that scented the night. I turned my face into his, cheek and lips brushing against his until lip met lip, and my body swayed, bowing into him so that his hand against my back and the other that threaded its fingers into the depths of my hair to cradle my skull held me upright.

Our lips feasted greedily. I had never experienced a rush of such need and ferocious desire. I wanted to take him into me, to consume him, to make him mine. The taste of him on my tongue was like the forbidden nectar of sin, and I drank it down rapturously.

Our bodies collided, chest to chest, legs tangling, neither of us skilled at this coming together, both of us over-eager for it. Hands gripped into hair, mouths ravaged, and bone pressed against bone. He bowed me beneath him, lowering me to the grass, and I had a moment of sanity.

"I can't…"

He stilled, holding me half suspended effortlessly, his breath panted in chills that rose goosebumps over my skin.

"I'm sorry," I whispered the words dragged heavily through me. "I want to… But…"

He eased back straightening, and cupped my skull between his hands, sifting my hair through his fingers as he stroked it back from my face, his expression tender. "It is too soon," he agreed. "I will wait… Time is infinite." His lips brushed mine, and then he stepped back with a sweet smile.

As before, he seemed to fade off into the shadows, his eyes glowing with flame for a moment before he vanished completely.

I stood breathless, the heel of my hand pressed against my heart, trying to stop it from beating its way free of the ribs that held it captured. Ender might or might not be a ghost, but he was not human – that much was certain.