Chapter 6

Heed the North winds mighty gale, lock the door and trim the sail

– The Wiccan Rede

The weather was of the kind that kept people at home, with the wind blowing off the water and howling between the hills, picking up dust and debris, and hurling it at you with enough force to sting the skin. I fought my way down the hill and through the town, bitterly regretting not having taken the Ford. As I locked my bike up, in the distance a dog began to howl, and I paused, trying to write its melancholy off as just a lonely dog and not an ill omen.

The customers who did brave the vicious wind were short-tempered and impatient, making my time manning the coffee machine unpleasant. When I switched to clearing tables towards the end of the shift, one of the saltshakers had been left with the lid loose, and I spilled salt over the table and floor.

Cursing my clumsiness, I fetched the broom to sweep it up, only for it to fall to the floor as I reached for it, the rap of the wood against the concrete causing me to jump like a skittish horse.

I finished my shift by taking out the trash and saw Kristine Sawyer exchanging lingering kisses with her married lover by his car. They both looked at me as the bag crashed into the bin, and I looked away hastily, unlocking my bike and riding out as Kristine made her way in, giving her no opportunity to say whatever cutting barbs she had prepared.

A few streets down, the married man's car drove slowly past me. I told myself that he was just being courteous around a cyclist, but it felt intimidating. I was so distracted in watching him continue down the road and round the corner that I did not see the black cat step off the curb and sit down before me. In avoiding the cat, my wheel hit the curb, tossing me onto the grassy verge.

"Fuck!" I picked myself up. The cat blinked at me with feline-disdain before swaggering off to sit on the wall, from which it watched me as I dusted myself off and inspected my injuries. I had grazed a knee and elbow in the tumble, and the chain had come off my bike.

I sat on the curb whilst I made my repairs. A magpie landed on the grass next to me. I looked up at the flutter of more wings and the warbling of many throats exchanging greetings. "One for sorrow," I murmured to myself. "Two for joy. Three for a girl, and four for a boy. Five for silver, six for gold. Seven for a secret that must never be told. Eight for a wish and…" Nine. There were nine magpies. "Nine for a kiss."

I could almost feel the cool of Ender's lips against mine and taste him on my tongue. What if I had not stopped him? What if I had let him lay me down on the grass? Of course, I had to stop him, I scolded myself. I knew nothing of him, not even whether he was alive or a ghost. It was madness to do otherwise…

And yet, what if I had not stopped him? Vossen women were unlucky in love, but we were made for it. We were passionate, sensual beings, after all. Our power as witches was linked to our femininity, and to the power of being women, givers of life. I was eighteen, and at my age, my mother had been already pregnant with me.

Was Nova having sex with her boy? Probably, I decided as I rose and mounted the bike, testing the pedals to ensure everything was working. Part of me resented that my younger sister had preceded me to that rite of passage, but sibling rivalry was not reason enough to have sex with someone who was all but a stranger.

I barely braked in time for the car that roared along the main road from the beach and my eyes went automatically up the hill to where the little girl had ended her life and the grim reaper had been. I had dreamed of him again, sensual dreams that had left me aching when I woke from them. With the shadows of the tree outside my window traveling across my room in time with the shifting light of the lighthouse, I had brought myself to orgasm with my fingers, my mind shifting between half-remembered images from my dream, and the memory of Ender's hands in my hair as he had kissed me.

As I puffed and panted my way up the hill it occurred to me that a grim reaper might be a ghost with a physical form. My dreams certainly wanted to believe that he had one. And I had caught that grim reaper's attention, not long before meeting Ender… Maybe Ender was not a demon and not a ghost, but a grim reaper?

Was such a thing possible?

I was sweating by the time I reached the top of our driveway. A wink of light caught my attention over near the graveyard, and I paused, wiping sweat from my forehead, and pulling my top away from my damp skin as I squinted across the field and between the hedges and wild cottage garden that generations of Vossen women had cultivated. A man stood in the shadows of the trees, with a pair of binoculars pointed toward our house.

"Hey!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. "Hey!"

I saw him start, and then he ran, heading towards the stairs down the cliff.

There was no way that giving chase would help, there was too much distance between us. I pedalled up to the house, leaving my bike leaning against a rear wall, before bursting into the kitchen, startling Aunt Fennel who was doing a tarot reading at the kitchen table for the butcher's wife, Mia Johnson.

"Elenyx, really! Some decorum please." Callista scolded as she stepped out of the pantry holding a jar of her miracle face cream. "What is the meaning of bursting in like this? Here you are Mia, dear. Apply sparingly by the moonlight right before bed, and you will look five years younger by morning."

"A man," I panted. "There was a man in the pines by the graveyard with binoculars pointed at the house!"

"Fucking Robert," Mia said to Fennel. "I told you that he was being stupid about me coming here to have my cards read."

"Did you fall off your bike?" Callista had noticed my bleeding knee.

"Oh, poor dear," Mia tut-tutted. "Seeing Robert must have given you a fright."

"Ah, yeah," I looked down. The wound had been exacerbated by the effort of pedalling up the hill and blood oozed in a line down my shin. "Something like that."

"Well, off to the shower for you, Nyx," Callista wanted me to leave Fennel to her reading. "And put a bandage on that knee."

"Yeah, sorry," I edged around the table and into the hallway before taking the back stairs.

In my bedroom, I flicked through my book, past invocations, to the one page of information on grim reapers, tracing the outline of the sketch of a hooded figure. There really wasn't much in the book about them, other than their roles as pyschopomps, guiding the dead into the afterlife. The scythe, of course, was merely symbolic of the harvest of life.

"The grim reapers, like Death him or herself, are impartial. They are neither good nor evil. They serve as guides for spirits, escorting them from life to the afterlife.

Those spirits who have done evil presumably then are claimed by Hell, whilst those that have done good, presumably go to Heaven. Although there is evidence that some of both are reborn which throws that theory into some debate.

We who are living cannot know the ways of the afterlife and cannot question how this division is made, however.

Grim reapers, who walk the veil between life and death, have never been known to interact with the living.

Their sightings have only been made by those balanced on the edge of life and death and miraculously survive the experience, or those who are extraordinarily sensitive and have witnessed a death."

That would be me, I thought as I closed the book and went in search of a change of clothing.

Grim reapers were not like a werewolf or a vampire, who were humans infected or cursed by magic. Nor was a grim reaper like the Fae or Mer, who were born as they were, but rarely interacted with humanity. And they were not like someone of demon or fairy-kind, who regularly did interact with humanity, not always to humanity's benefit. I was not exactly sure how a grim reaper came to be or what they did other than escorting the dead to the afterlife.

Perhaps he was a demon, I debated with myself as I showered and applied the medicinal herbal salves and bandages that the aunts kept in the bathroom cupboard to my elbow and knee.

A demon would be simpler.

Demons could be good or could be bad news, depending on their nature. Many minor demons would accept the role of witch-familiar and would grant the witch they served (or who served them, depending on who was telling the story) accentuated power, as well as advice, and company. What they received in return varied – it was said that for some it gave status, for others fulfilled some requirement of their master, the Devil. And that depended on the witch herself, and her destiny and role to play amongst humanity.

Callista and Fennel had never summoned a demon, but they were oddities in the Vossen family. Most of my ancestors had a familiar without whom they were never seen. In one of the family Grimoires, it was speculated that perhaps not every child born to a Vossen was conceived with a mortal man and that there had been ancestors who had been lovers with their demon. One ancestor even went so far as to suggest that the witch's sexual relationship with their demon-familiar might be what strengthened the power in the family line.

When I had asked Callista her reason for not summoning a demon she had told me that if she had wished to be tied to a man for life, she would have married one. I had never dared to ask Fennel. I think I had always suspected that her reasons related to the scars that she wore, and that asking would be traumatic for her.

Grim reaper, corporeal ghost, or demon? An unusual selection of options for a lover if one was anything other than a witch.

Did it matter what Ender was? I asked myself as I did my hair and makeup in the mirror. If he were a ghost, or a grim reaper, or a demon, would whatever existed between us change? No. There I was, after all, instead of preparing for bed, applying a full face of makeup in the hope that if I went into the garden after dusk, he would be there, as he had been the night before…

I went down to the kitchen, to find that Mia Johnson had left with several jars of potions and creams that my aunts had cunningly exchanged for the notes that kept us afloat.

Nova frowned at me. "Why are you wearing makeup?"

The aunts both paused in setting the table and I felt my cheeks heat. I grabbed a plate and a glass and sat at the table. "No reason."

"The act of dressing for dinner is one very under-esteemed," Fennel said smoothly. "Perhaps something we should all adopt in the future, hmm, Callista?"

"Perhaps," Callista raised an eyebrow at me as she took her seat. "What do you think, Elenyx?"

"I think that everyone should stop wondering why I'm wearing makeup and wonder where Nova got her hickeys instead."

"Sneak," Nova kicked my ankle. "That's a bitchy thing to say."

"But a true one," Callista observed.

"And one that everyone knows the answer to," Nova replied sharply. "Unless we're all stupid, which none of us are. Where do you think I got a hickey from? And what's the problem with that? So, what if I have a boyfriend? It's normal to have a boyfriend." She flicked me a look, targeting me with that comment.

"We are only concerned because of our family history," Fennel said soothingly. "Our romances do not always have a good outcome."

"I'm not stupid," Nova grumbled as she poured sauce over her meat. "But that doesn't mean that I won't get twenty or so years of happiness."

"Of course, it doesn't dear," Callista sliced her meat efficiently. "We all hope for such a blessing." But rarely get it was unsaid but was audible in the silence that was only broken by the clank of silverware on the plates.

"I know," Nova said softly. "Believe me, I know."

"Mia says that the funeral is tomorrow, Nyx," Fennel changed the subject. "It is open to everyone from the town. Would you like to go?"

I knew that the funeral was scheduled for the next day. It was one of those things that in a town the size of Mortensby, working in the coffee shop, it was unavoidable not to know about. I suspected that my aunts had also known for longer than the afternoon.

I picked at my plate. "I don't think the parents will want me there," I said. "You know they held me responsible."

"Grieving people are not always rational, Elenyx," Callista took a sip of her wine glass. "They know deep down that you were in no way responsible for what happened to that poor little girl. In time, they will be grateful to know that you were there with her in those final moments and that because of you, she did not die alone and lie for hours without being found."

I nodded, swallowing back tears heavily. "Maybe the burial, but not the funeral."

"Who wants to step into that stuffy church anyway?" Callista nodded. "We will come with you, won't we Fennel?"

"Of course," Fennel agreed. "Nova?"

"Do I have to?" She wondered and then blushed. "I'm sorry. I know it was a horrible thing that happened Nyx," she said to me. "But…"

"It's okay, you don't have to come," I pushed away from the table. "I might go to bed."

"Leave your plate," Fennel told me. "Nova will clear the table."

I did not go to bed, however. Instead, I went through Callista's office and stepped out into the cool of the night. I wandered along the paths, out of the fall of the light, towards the delicately filigreed rotunda.

His fingers wrapped around mine as I passed under the southern magnolia trees, their blooms lost to the summer. We climbed the stairs together and sat on one of the pretty wrought iron benches, looking out into the garden. His thumb stroked over the back of my hand, a gently soothing caress.

I looked up at him and found him looking down at me, his expression solemn.

"You are sad tonight," he said softly.

"I am…" A lot of things, I thought. I sighed heavily and looked away out over the garden, seeking an answer in the darkness. "I saw a little girl die recently," I wondered what he would say. If he were the grim reaper that I had seen that day, would he admit it? Was it even permitted for them to speak of what they were? "I was there when she died."

"I am sorry. Your presence would have been of great comfort to her."

I slid a look sideways at him, wondering if he spoke in platitude or from knowledge. His expression was of attentive caring, giving nothing else away. "Her funeral is tomorrow," I told him, wondering if it mattered to a grim reaper.

"Will you be attending?"

"I don't know if I should," I admitted. "My family is not often welcome to these things."

He lifted his hand to cup my cheek, trailing his fingers along its curve. "I am sorry," he told me. "I am sorry that people are so blind."

"Ender…" It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him.

He leaned over and rubbed his cheek against mine. "Yes, Elenyx?" He murmured into my ear, and I felt a shiver of desire pass through me.

"Kiss me…" I turned my head so that my lips brushed against the corner of his mouth. "Like you did last night."

I felt the curl of his lips against my skin before he lifted me so that I straddled his hips, my skirts gathering high on my thighs and my hands resting on his shoulders. The fabric of his top was soft and slightly felted and embroidered in black thread. My fingers traced the stitches, encountering small stones sewn into the pattern as I inclined towards him, closing the distance between our mouths.

Feeling him between my thighs as I gazed into his eyes was intensely intimate. Tasting him on my tongue as my hands explored the textures of his shirt and the muscle and bone of the man beneath it with my fingers and palms was a kind of madness.

I could feel the hard throb of his cock beneath me inviting me to rub wantonly against it. His groan as I squirmed fighting the urge to do so broke me, and my fingers threaded into his hair and cradled his skull as I tightened my body to his and ground down, pressing my aching cunt against his hard cock, following the patterns of instinct into a rhythm, finding just where it felt the best for me as I explored his mouth with my tongue.

His hands gripped my arse, angling my rock into him, and he arched his hips to meet me, his cold breath panted against my lips, and his eyes aglow with red highlights within their darkness. I could see bone through the translucence of his skin as his gaze intensified, his jaw tightened, and his moans changed pitch.

My ache reached a point that was almost painful and then broke, and I cried out raggedly as my cunt clenched empty, seeking that which had brought it such pleasure, and I panted out against his skin as his groan was caught on an exhalation and I felt his cock jerk between us.

Our eyes met, our foreheads resting against each other, nose tip to nose tip as we recovered, our breaths panted between us, mine warming his whilst his cooled mine. "Will I see you again?" I asked him, as I had before, knowing that I needed to return inside and to my room before this madness between us led us to more than what we had done. "Soon?"

"If you wish it…"

"I do."