31. Soul Meets Body
"Cecily, April, Maureen, Lily, Farrah..."
"Sebi," the one whose name I'd forgotten supplied, pointing to herself.
"Right, sorry. Everyone, this is Ana." I kind of nudged her forward and looked at Cecily. "Train her up for me."
Most of the group exchanged confused glances. "Why don't you train her?" Maureen (I think) finally asked.
"Well, I'd have to understand what in the hell I was doing first, wouldn't I?"
"E - ... Liz," Cecily corrected without needing another reminder, "is powerful beyond what we all are used to. She didn't have to work on her craft as we do. It comes to her naturally."
Sebi rolled her eyes and I glared at her. Glad I forgot your name, bitch.
Ana joined the other witches as Cecily walked me away from everyone. "Do you need training, Liz?"
I considered. "I don't see any need to. I can do whatever I want, magic-wise."
"You seem to be learning a lot on your own," she observed. "No raging thunderstorms as of late."
"The only thing I'm worried about is something happening while I'm performing. I need those emotions when I'm onstage. Controlling the magic while I let the feelings roll... it's going to be rough."
"When do you perform again?"
"I'll be on tour, June through August. I'm not booking anything in the meantime."
"I may be able to help you with this in that span of time." She stopped walking and looked at me. "I had expected you to come to me with questions. You haven't."
"It's kind of fun learning on my own," I shrugged.
"The girls have been waiting for you to reappear," she smiled. "They're very curious about you."
"Girls," I quipped. Everyone here looked close in age aside from Lily, but Cecily spoke as if she was their elder.
She smiled. "How old do you think I am?"
I wasn't good at this, but people always wanted a guess. "I don't know. Thirty, maybe?" I was being generous; I guess she looked a little closer to forty, but what the hell did I know?
"I'm three hundred and ninety... seven years old," she said, mentally calculating.
I gawked at her, surprised despite the fact that I seemed to be surrounded by people that had evaded aging. "Magic?"
"As many things are." She steered me back towards the group of women.
I sat down and they immediately started throwing questions at me.
"How did you realize you had power?" Sebi asked.
It took a moment to remember, and then I started to laugh. "Ana... remember that day we, uh... had the fungus among us?" That was a pretty classic reference to mushrooms.
"Yes!" she said happily. "Harmonic Convergence," she recalled. "You and I and the planets aligned."
"We had a fire going and I touched it... It didn't burn me. So I stuck my hand all the way in. I wasn't sure if it was real at that point. Before that, there was a day I spent out in the woods that a snake approached me. It slithered across my arms and just chilled with me."
Ana shot me a look.
"It was in WV. I'll tell you about it later." Another story that couldn't be told here because of the drug use.
"Ana says you can cast without speaking a word," Farrah said.
I nodded my head. "I can."
April looked at Cecily. "Is she our High Priestess now?"
"No," I said before Cecily had a chance to answer.
Cecily let her gaze rest on me evenly. "Technically..."
I was already shaking my head no. "I can't be in any type of leadership position with people." That's a sinking ship if I've ever seen one.
"Because you're a musician?" Lily asked, smiling kindly at me.
"Yeah," I said, adding that to the list of reasons that already formed in my head. "I bounce around a lot, touring and going home to visit."
"Where are you from?" Lily asked, intensely focused on me.
"West Virginia. I've been here for almost four years."
The other girls asked a few more questions before they broke off into groups. Ana was with Cecily, Maureen, and April; they were showing her some basic spells, helping her to pronounce the difficult Latin. Sebi and Farrah took up a corner to themselves, talking and giggling. Lily stepped to my side and hooked her arm around mine.
"Want to go have a smoke?"
"Sure," I answered as we easily fell into step with one another.
She cupped her hands around the flame of my lighter. "I wanted to thank you again," she said.
"Oh. It's really no problem," I assured her. "I'm glad you're okay."
"I've been better than okay since the last time I saw you." She leaned against the building and crossed her arms, but I could tell the nonchalance was anything but. "I think you left a part of you with me. I feel... like more than I was."
"That's cool, I guess."
"I feel connected to you, too. Can you feel it?"
I didn't but that felt kind of rude to say.
She laughed a little. "It's okay that you don't. It's understandable that it only works the one way. You breathed life into me, not the other way around."
"Makes sense," I shrugged.
"Being around you is cool, though." She took my free hand in hers and wove our fingers together, pressing her palm against mine. "Liz, have you ever been with a woman before?"
I giggled. "Yeah." And then I realized what she was actually getting at. "Oh, um... I'm with someone now."
My rejection didn't dampen her one bit. "I've heard some whispers about you and a wolf."
"Well, he's usually just a man when he's with me," I smiled. "A really tall, solidly built, gorgeous, chiseled, tan, fever-hot man." I shivered just thinking about him.
I realized then that she was in me, invading me through our joined hands. She wasn't drawing at my power... it didn't feel like anything sinister at all. But she was definitely taking from me.
"I'm just having a little peek inside," she said. "Nothing too private or personal. Just under the surface. I was doing it to to you earlier, too, but you didn't notice. I like the way your mind works."
I hit my smoke once more before flicking the butt away.
"Close your eyes," she urged, and I did. She took my other hand and suddenly I was in her mind as much as she was in mine. It was... I didn't really have words for it. It was totally different. It was like being swept to a different world.
"I think I like the way you think, too," I murmured, reaching into a memory in her head to touch the colors with my fingertips.
"Your power is like a whole universe inside of you. I've never felt anything even half this potent." She was picturing the others. "See if you can span our net wider."
I reached out with my mind, pulling hers with me to cast over everyone inside. It wasn't a flood like I expected, it was more like jumping into them for a moment before choosing to move onto the next. Magical leapfrog.
"A war is coming," Lily said in a strange voice. "Don't look into Cecily or she'll feel us," she whispered. "She wants to use your wolves."
"What?" I asked, instantly on guard.
Lily quickly dropped my hands, panting. "Wow, that was intense. And I said Cecily wants to use your wolves. For the war."
My eyebrows shot up.
"She's not trying to use you, she's just trying to come up with a strategy that guarantees we wipe out the problem with no losses. This is our whole coven, aside from three others," she gestured to the compound. "They have fifty or more."
"Why?"
She sighed. "Well, for one, because their leader offers up-and-coming witches their every hope and dream if they join with her. Lira is powerful and she's very manipulative. And for another... power goes to people's heads. We've lost sisters to her before."
"How do you switch over? From good to bad."
She smiled. "Just like anyone else does. The power inside of us is completely neutral. It's all in how you choose to use it."
I looked at my feet nervously, wondering if indulging in magic for my own personal amusement was tipping the scales to the dark side for me. "Are there like, rules or something?"
"Just one. Do no harm." I could feel her eyes on my face for a moment. "Taking their power isn't harming them, Liz. You're protecting a lot of people from them."
I breathed a sigh of relief.
"So... what are the wolves like?" she asked, her eyes shining.
Seth was asleep when I climbed into bed next to him. I wasn't ready to sleep yet - it was just a little after seven - but I couldn't resist the urge to be close to him. He woke after a bit and pulled me into a close embrace, hugging away anything I didn't want inside of me.
"I was dreaming about the day I met you," he said, his voice thick and deep. "Seeing you for the first time and it hitting me like a ton of bricks. Loving you before I knew you."
"Luckily you didn't realize the ride you were in for. You probably would have ran screaming."
He chuckled. "I feel stupid when I look back at who I was before you. I was so naive."
He was. Naive and happy... until he fell in love with a girl that was full of darkness.
"This is so much better." He rubbed his nose against mine.
"Is it?" I whispered.
He pulled back a bit and smiled. "After all this time, you still don't know? You're my world, Elizabeth. You're everything that matters to me. Who knows where I'd be without you..."
"Knee deep in flowers we'll stray," I sang, smiling at him. "We'll keep the showers away. And if I kiss you in the garden, in the moonlight, will you pardon me?"
"I've had this song stuck in my head today. You're the only song I want to hear, a melody softly soaring through my atmosphere..."
"Soul Meets Body, it's a Death Cab song."
He smiled a breathtaking smile for me. "There's my little musical encyclopedia. But yeah, we were talking about how much I love you." He wrapped his legs around me so that I was completely cocooned in him, wriggling around to break free to no avail. "What could be better than this?!" he yelled.
"Aaaaahhhhgggg!" I shrieked. He loosened up enough for me to roll him over with me on top of him. He even let me pin his hands down, only pretending to fight back.
"You got me," he declared.
"You're letting me win," I pointed out.
I was on my back in less than a second, my arms pinned neatly to my sides by his knees. "Is this better?"
I smirked. "Maybe if you kiss me, wolf man."
His lips touched mine, feather soft and still powerful. He placed his hand over my erratically pounding heart. "Breathe."
"Easier said than done around you."
He moved my hand to cover his own speeding heart. "I know the feeling."
"So... Cecily told me something earlier. She said that she's hundreds of years old."
His body went slack enough to switch our positions once again.
"I think I'm going to live for a really long time." And I wasn't sure how I felt about that.
He didn't appear to have the same trepidation. His lips covered mine for a moment before he looked at me, excitement fresh in his eyes. "I get more than one lifetime with you," he said.
That made it more appealing. "Sure you can handle me for that long?"
His pelvis raised, grinding against mine. "I can handle you every night for the rest of forever, babe."
That voice did things to me. Naughty, naughty things.
I smiled at him devilishly as I ground my hips back into him. "Let's test your theory."
He rose up and threw me onto the bed on my back. "You think I can't?" he challenged as he pulled his shirt over his head, making me drool. He finished stripping himself and then me, and just as he was about to enter me, I stopped him.
"I want to try something new," I whispered against his lips. I wrapped my arms and legs around him, my mouth met his and we closed our eyes.
I brought us to the edge of the stratosphere and we throttled closer to Earth as we made love.