The Witch's Hunger (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 3) (6 page)

Someone yelped behind me.

I swung around, ready for anything.

Lila stood behind the register, staring at me wide-eyed. “Hi. Again.”

Two women stood near her, staring at me just as shocked. “She used magic to get here,” one said.

“That’s Morgan le Fay,” whispered the other.

“It’s the middle of the night. What are you doing in my store?” I asked loudly.

“Um, these are some friends of mine. Some witchy friends who also work in tech and they were helping me with—”

“She was teaching us some healing spells,” one said with a squeak of a voice. Nice to meet you Ms. Le Fay. Or is it just Ms. Fay. Or Morgan? Hi.”

“You were doing magic in my store in the middle of the night?” I asked.

“Well.” Lila looked miserable. “You always say that once you have magical powers, you should help people?”

“Get out,” I ordered.

The two young women obeyed.

I turned to Lila. “And you are still here because?”

“I’m leaving already, but are you okay, Morgan? You’re shaking. Did something happen with Merlin? Or with the hunter of the immortal people?” She stepped closer to me. “If something is going on, I’m your girl. You know that, right?”

I straightened myself and nodded, fighting an urge to fling lightning and fire at her to make her flee. “I’m fine. I need some of my stronger spells for the hunt. I would prefer to be alone while I survey my spells and make my plans. A witch needs a clear mind for that sort of work.”

“Sure. Okay.” She placed a… teddy bear? A teddy bear next to the register and turned to fetch her coat.

I spotted two others. One sat perched on a bookshelf, another nestled into a basket full of dried astragalus and foxglove. “Why are you placing teddy bears across my store? Is there some new Wicca fad that entails making spells with children’s toys? That seems a bit dark.”

Lila blushed to the tips of her ears. “Uh, well, no I thought, you’ve been gone and I’ve been thinking about marketing, and you know how women come in here all the time with their bored kids and I thought we should have something for them to play with.”

I stared at her for a long moment, wishing her gone and wishing this conversation to be long over. “Very well. Perhaps you are right. I’ll see if they seem useful when I return to Seattle. Keep them for now.”

“Thanks.” She headed for the door.

“I may be stopping back here from time to time as our quest to stop this hunter continues.”

“That sounds really reasonable,” she said with a high voice. “And I miss you. We could talk. I mean about more than just how the store is doing. We could talk about anything.”

I leveled my gaze at her. I might be in a panicked lust for my water, but I was still me and Lila was all that had mattered to me, before the spell around my wrist had started to break. “Aye. Begone, lass. I miss you as well.”

It took my Lila forty-seven seconds to collect her bag and then leave.

I was alone. I made sure the doors were locked and then walked quickly to my door, undoing the sturdy spells that guarded all that lay within. I went to my cup, drank the small amount of the day’s water, and fell into a glorious void.

10

Find Me

I came back to myself in an odd position, wedged on the ground of the small room, cramped and exhausted. I stood, shook out my cloak, and stomped the mud from my boots. It took me a while to locate my crystal ball. It lay on the ground, rolled into a corner. I grabbed it and ordered it to take me back to London. A moment later I stood inside Ada’s apartment. The dry air full of the whir of computers air surrounded me, itching and strange. My first thought was that it had not been wise leaving Merlin without a sleep spell last night. He was a clever man, and it was unwise to give him time alone to ponder things. The moment he had a passing thought that I might be hiding the Grail would be the same moment that the long truce between us fell away.

I felt an odd echo inside me as I thought those thoughts. It wasn’t a memory coming back, but something more primal. I had felt these feelings before, this strange mix of rage and sadness, of loneliness and paranoia. Because surely, before I lost my own history to the forgetting spell, surely back then I had wrestled with keeping the Grail away from Merlin and any others who might seek it.

Any who might seek it. There were more feelings there that I chose not to think about too deeply. It was day now and many hours before the true grip of the Grail’s thirst would come to claim me again. “Merlin?” I called out, loud enough to wake him. I walked toward the guest room where I would find him.

Where I didn’t find him. The bed was made with the pillows fluffed and the duvet carefully spread across it. On top of the pillow sat a cream-colored envelope with
Morgan
written across it in Merlin’s eloquent writing. I opened it.

My love. I am gone. Come and find me, if you can.

There was no scent of bitter magic in the room. Wherever he had gone, he had done so of his own volition. My first thoughts were of the pub, or any number of nearby bakeries, but those were the simple thoughts of a simple woman who was not an immortal witch dating the most treacherous wizard the world had ever known. I took out my crystal ball and told it to take me to my heart. A blocking spell rose up around me, wrapped in the distinct smell of Merlin’s magic.

Yesterday, every finding spell had gone nowhere. Because… because Merlin was the hunter? The spell had malingered not because it failed, but because it found him there in the same flat I conjured my spells? I swallowed. My mouth went dry. Merlin. Hunting down every immortal who had drank from the sweetest of the Grail.

And I understood, exactly, why he would do it.

Because he longed for it and the lack of it, over a thousand years, had made him mad for it. Perhaps he’d searched for it and come up with no leads, so the only leads were the immortals. A part of me could understand that, but I could not let it persist. And if he had been hunting Grail-made immortals, why hadn’t he come for me?

The answer was obvious. He loved me and in all the world, there was one match for his magical powers. He wouldn’t come after me until I was the last immortal standing, or he had some hint that I had the Grail. Perhaps I had given him the hint yesterday afternoon during our walk.

What would he do to trap me? I knew the answer as soon as I thought the question. He would come for my weakness.

My Lila. She was the only being I cared for enough to do whatever Merlin bid.

I held aloft my crystal ball and ordered it to take me to her house.

11

My Truest Home

I appeared outside her apartment, startling a couple of sleepy-eyed men strolling down the street. Lila rented a small studio in the last part of Capitol Hill that hadn’t yet been done over in sleek condos.

“Lila. Open your door,” I commanded and rapped against her door.

Nothing.

I spelled the door open, never mind that it broke her lock, and ran inside. No one was there. I looked through every room, and found nothing. She could be at my store. I appeared there a half second later, teleporting right in and looking frantically around. I found nothing, until I smelled magic in one corner of the store. It was a green and spicy magic. Merlin’s. He’d been here, and he didn’t both to disguise his true scent this time.

Where had he taken Lila? The same place he’d taken everyone else, I guessed, but where? I didn’t think he was killing them, unless he was more far gone than I guessed. No, he would be taking them somewhere they could be contained. And then he would come back here for the Grail. My Grail.

Even though I'd just seen it, I unlocked the spells and locks to my secret room and checked to make sure it was still there. The humble cup sat on my shelves, one magical object against many. I drank the scant couple of drops that had already formed at the bottom. The water flared and flamed within me and made me want to never put it down. But it was far safer here than on my person. I put the Grail down carefully.

I left the room and spelled the door shut behind me. He wouldn’t get in. There was no way he would be able to discern the spells I’d place on this door. Besides, before this day was through, I would destroy him.

But I had to find him first.

My eyes roved across the room as I considered what spell I should make, and stopped at the row of globes on the back shelf. I stared at them, trying to see what had caught my eye. There was nothing wrong with the globes. In fact, the opposite. They were aligned so that the continents and longitudes were all exactly matched.

I went to them and saw they all sat tilted so that the British Isles were facing up. Gods he was a cocky man. Giving me broad hints, as though he welcomed his own demise.

Since I knew Merlin's magic well enough, and I knew the general location of where he was, I didn't have to put much energy into making a finding spell. I weaved together strands of love, desire, and cunning from the deep wells within me, and then pulled a couple of my hairs out and fed the magic into it. My hair was much admired by Merlin, and he spent time every day brushing it out with an antique baleen comb. I took the hairs and grabbed the nearest globe. "Hyd iddo."
Find him.

The hairs squiggled across the land masses and ocean until they stopped and made a small, hairy circle around a spot off the coast of Wales. It was only blue ocean on the globe, because it happened to be an island that had never been mapped or known. An island that was a place of secrets and wild magic.

Avalon.

Merlin mocked me further. What trap did he set for me on my Isle of Apples? Whatever he planned, it was pure foolishness. I may not have traveled to Avalon in ages, but it was the island of my birth, of my legendary ancestors, and all the magic that ran in the crossroads and ley lines of that small island would always and ever favor me.

Perhaps this was Merlin’s way of taunting me and saying even there, he would be the better mage.

Enough thinking. The time for thoughts was over. I held out my crystal ball and ordered it to take me to my truest home.

12

Avalon

I arrived on a gray and rocky coast, full of bleached stones and angry waves. Time had changed the specific contours of this shore, but I knew it still in the depths of my bones. Avalon. Once full of pagans and witches, it had long since been deserted after a spell had gone wrong and salted and cursed the soil. Avalon had been a free place once, as much as any place can claim freedom when it sits not far from a mainland full of kings and knights, wars and enclosures. I breathed in and felt the curl of rocks beneath my boots and the bitterness of the curse below, still there yet muted by the slow passage of centuries.

I closed my eyes and saw my long-dead mother, bent over and collecting strands of different seaweeds along the shore. Some to make soap with, others for salads and spells. I saw her laughing as long wisps of her hair came loose from her braid and whipped about in the wind. In my mind’s eyes she looked at me and her strength reached through time and held me.

I opened my eyes and smiled. Merlin was a true fool to come here.

The wetness of sea spray filled my lungs as I breathed in and let my senses unfurl. I sought the scent and direction of Merlin and his magic. I turned in a slow circle, taking in the sight of the wide and choppy sea, the rocky hills that led up to a stand of withered apple trees, and the bone-like edifices on the hill we’d once called Crow’s Keep.

I gathered the strands of raw green magic that seeped up between the rocks beneath my feet. I held it and readied for an attack from Merlin. He would be here swiftly, once he sensed my magic, and he would have sensed it as soon as I arrived.

Come to me, wizard, I thought, as the wind blew my hair about, as more of my island’s magic seeped into me. For a moment the thought came to me of whether the Grail was worth this battle. Whether it was worth my Merlin. Of course it was. My Grail was more important than anything.

I turned again in a slow circle. There was still no one in sight, but I sensed people here. The missing immortals, I hoped. This was an excellent island to exile them to. Far from any external influences. Any wizard worth his salt could bind them and keep them here. Interrogate them, most likely, to try to find the Grail. I would set them free once I was done with Merlin. I would let them go even though they had drank of my Grail. Even though they might become just as hungry for it as Merlin had. Perhaps, to protect the Grail, setting them free was a bad idea? I didn’t know what to do with that thought, so I cast that decision away for later.

A whistling came from the other side of the small, rocky hill near the beach. I stood and faced the sound, broad-legged with my feet touching my island. A hurricane of a spell lay on my lips, ready to be loosed as soon as I saw him.

A girl with a wide Persian face, black hair in ponytails, and kohl outlines around her eyes came into view.

Lila, my Lila, intact and whole, walking and alive. She was here as some kind of bait or trick, sent to distract me. She carried a plate, held out toward me.