A Wild Conversion Read online

  Shifting further away from her on the bench, he began his confession, knowing she should have the opportunity to tell him the depths of her disgust. “I wanted to . . .” But it was too sickening, his fists clenching the boulder, almost tearing at his palms. “Dear God.” He barely got out the next thought, so low it was nearly inaudible. “What kind of man does that make me?”

  Letting out a long, tired sigh, her head leaned back against the rock. Strangely, he didn’t feel any sort of shock from her. “It makes you human, Frederick.”

  He wanted to look at her but still didn’t dare.

  “What you felt . . .” Pausing, she seemed to be finding the right words. “. . . it’s the first calling of your power, of the magic inside you.”

  Ready to run now, he only stayed in place with her hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s your first knowledge of what you can become, if you aren’t careful.”

  Never having imagined this degraded side of himself, he was shivering. Of course, he had always known his many flaws, but he had never thought . . .

  As much as it hurt him to admit his own evil, he couldn’t let her misunderstand or accept her excuses for him. “I wanted to tear you down, to rip through all your defenses. I knew I could see everything, know everything.” He shivered heavily, and her hand squeezed his shoulder. “I wanted to destroy you to make you mine.”

  For no explicable reason, she didn’t move away, didn’t run, her hand smoothing back over his hair. He wasn’t certain whether she were brave or foolish. “Don’t you think I understand?”

  When he gazed at her at last, he saw her weary smile, and she pulled back her hand, staring out at the woods.

  “Part of it’s just the pull of being a sorcerer, you know. It’s that first temptation of knowing what you can do, if you let yourself.”

  She gave an undignified snort, which he found achingly adorable.

  “Mine was when I was 10, and I realized that, if I wanted to make this one, really annoying boy disappear, I could have. In fact, if I had desired it, he could simply have never existed.” Her voice became softer, the fear there evident. “When I reached further, I saw that I could have destroyed him in all of time.”

  Her eyes glowed for just a moment, before she shuddered.

  “It scared me so badly I went and hid under my bed for two days. My grandfather had to travel into the mundane world to get me donuts to finally tempt me out.”

  At last there was a small smile from him, but the ache of what he had wanted to do was still terrifying.

  Her voice was soft. “There’s another side to what you felt, though.” Opening her hand, she stared at her palm. “But I’m not certain either of us is ready to face it.”

  “I’m not,” he admitted. Only half-aware of what she wanted to say, he still wasn’t prepared. He had just met her. Why did he feel like this?

  She went on, and he wasn’t entirely certain whether she had ignored him or not. “I told you about partnering earlier, but I didn’t tell you all of it. I’ve been told some partners are predestined. It’s not just their magic which is in sync but their souls.” A small laugh emerging, she chanced a glance at him. “It’s all a little embarrassing. It’s not something you see around here very often.”

  It certainly hadn’t been something he had witnessed much in his life, either.

  But they weren’t allowed to ponder it further. Looking up, he let out a gasp. His sister was coming down the road.

  “Jenny,” he whispered, aching with missing her. She had been about the only one who had ever fully understood him, and she was heading straight for them.

  His alarm grew. “Can she see us?”

  Emma’s look reflected his feelings. “She shouldn’t be able to unless she’s a ridiculously-powerful, converted sorcerer. She might be able to see the general magic, but . . .”

  So far, she appeared as she always had—delicately-boned, sweet-natured, and simply dressed with her light red hair up in a neat bun. They both watched, nearly holding their breaths—and he wondered whether he were going to have to change his opinion about everyone in his family today.

  Still, as she grew closer, she was looking everywhere but at him—or, if she did, it was like a blind person, aiming her head toward a sound. “Frederick?” she asked uncertainly. “Please, I know you’re nearby.” She glanced blindly around again. “I always know when you’re near.”

  He heard Emma let out their shared breath. “She’s just tuned to you,” she murmured. A moment later, she erased the various spells, and his sister’s eyes met his at last.

  The change on her face was immediate—and joyful. “Frederick!” She leaped at him as though she were still a little girl, demanded to be caught in his arms. “They brought me over here. They wouldn’t let me see you!” Her hug was ferocious, her sincerity undoubtable. “Oh, Frederick, I’ve missed you!”

  It was this sisterly affection which undid much of the hurt. True, most of his family had lied and betrayed, but his little sister still loved him. Perhaps that alone was enough.

  Holding her tightly, he felt healed by her giggling happiness. Perhaps he was lost in every other way, but at least there was one person he still knew. In time, he might be fortunate enough to understand himself again, too.

  Chapter 5

  Emma

  The day proved to be tumultuous—and that said nothing of how flattening it must have been for Emma’s unexpected guest. When it had started, Frederick had simply set out to see his aunt. Now, he was being forced to realize that he and his entire extended family were members of another world.

  Still tangled in a million emotions, Emma watched the man worriedly. They had returned to her house along with Frederick’s sister, were now eating the meal which Gentry had provided. As always, it was just the right size. While Frederick—and she—had been a bit worried over leaving his baby niece to the den of fools which appeared to be the greater part of his family, Jenny had assured them that the child would be all right.

  Emma hoped so. She wasn’t certain that Frederick would survive finding out that yet another member of his family was a callous, thoughtless jerk.

  Jenny didn’t appear to be this, though, just seemed very young and constantly chatty. The fact that she was 19 and had a child already seemed rather appalling to Emma, was certainly unusual for the magical world, but was more acceptable in the mundane one—especially of Frederick’s time.

  Still, there were a few questions they had yet to get answers to, and Emma prayed that she was just being possessive and paranoid to worry about the girl as a spy. Given her encounter with other members of the Everly clan today, she wasn’t feeling immediately accepting, but she tried not to show her suspicions, wondering how the girl could manage to talk so much about, seemingly, nothing.

  A look passed between herself and Natalie, and she knew that her friend understood her uncertainty too well. She might have reestablished their mindspeech but not necessarily the deeper levels of it, and they had yet to actually talk, uncertain how much Frederick could hear if they didn’t mean him to. His powers were still much too unknown.

  Right now, that might be a good thing, as they didn’t need him tested anymore. She sent him a quiet mental question, as he’d thankfully accepted her mindspeech again, too. Is she always this scattered?

  Frederick was smiling at the girl, but Emma knew he heard her—and felt his fear. Not usually, no. There was a moment when that anxiety seemed to deepen. Only when she’s very upset.

  Emma almost hated to interrupt the girl’s chatter, as it seemed to comfort the child. Somehow, Jenny had been talking nonstop for about an hour while revealing very little. That in itself might be a magical ability.

  She could feel Frederick’s confusion, worried there was more at work here.

  “Jenny,” Emma stopped her.

  A series of looks passed over the girl’s face, showing that she had yet to grow used to the informality of this magical world but was trying. She was a slig
ht, attractive young thing, with long strawberry blonde hair which she wore up in a slightly-unraveling bun and in a cream and gold gown which set off her peaches and cream complexion perfectly. Emma assumed that Jenny and Frederick must each take after a different parent, although there was a slightly reddish tint to his dark hair when in the right light, too.

  “You say your family brought you over here.”

  The girl nodded, still sweet and perky.

  “And you have a baby?”

  Jenny’s eyes were all innocence. “Livy, yes.” She smiled. “Mostly, everyone else takes care of her. She flicks her tiny fingers, and there’s these little balls of light.”

  This made both Emma and Natalie’s eyes widen, even as Frederick asked her silently. Normal?

  Powerful, she responded. To have that kind of control near birth . . .

  Emma’s mouth opened, but she wasn’t certain where to go next, her knowledge of her visitors’ time period only academic.

  Fortunately, Frederick broke in. “What about William?” She heard the clarification in her mind: Her husband.

  This, though, finally brought an end to the girl’s buoyant talk. Her gaze trailed along the table for several long moments, before the answer crept out, almost too soft to hear. “I don’t know.”

  This wasn’t the truth any of them had hoped for. The young girl’s hands started to twine around each other slightly, and Emma wasn’t certain whether it were caused by their fearful reactions or her own worries.

  “We were together for two months after the wedding, did go to Maine, but . . .” Her look drifted further down the room. “I don’t remember much after that.”

  Well, that doesn’t sound good. Emma was suddenly very glad she had thought to keep up her privacy spells.

  She let Frederick lead the girl gently along. “What is the next thing you remember?”

  Jenny’s lips trembled, and he reached out to her, softly stroking her hand—and Emma had to tamp down a sudden, irrational stab of jealousy. That sort of ridiculous attitude would get them nowhere. Frederick and she would either get to be together or they wouldn’t. No amount of Mine! Mine! posturing was going to change it any more than his temptations to claim her would.

  “You’re safe, Jane,” Frederick assured her. “We’ll protect you.”

  Jane? Nat wondered.

  Maybe “Jenny” is the nineteenth-century nickname for that? She couldn’t really remember any historical Jennifers, now that she thought about it.

  This was only a momentary distraction, though, as Emma thought she felt Frederick wondering just how he would manage to keep his promise against a bunch of witches and sorcerers, but she hoped he knew she would help.

  “Tell us what you can,” he said kindly.

  All the girl’s former, supposed happiness had already dissipated, leaving only the clear terror beneath.

  “I don’t . . .” She stuttered into nothing, the tears beginning soon thereafter. When she finally looked back to her brother, her horror was clear. “Frederick, I don’t know anymore. It’s all images, like bits of dreams.”

  Her breathing was shaky, and her brother held her hands more securely. He looked fatherly and tender, and Emma, even without knowing the details of their lives, realized that he had probably always been the child’s real paternal figure.

  The image caught at her heart, brought out an even greater desire to protect and soothe this man. She suspected that it wasn’t just his time period which had made him so serious.

  However, the situation itself was too grave to allow her mind to wander for long, her youngest guest’s terror all the more evident by the second.

  “I remember . . . William and I . . .”

  She broke her hands away from her brother, caught her head, as though, wherever that thought went, it was far too painful.

  “Then, I was brought . . .” Her eyes were suddenly wide, staring at the wall. “I remember that road we took to walk back here . . . and then the baby . . .”

  Openly weeping now, she pulled at her hair, as she looked back to him.

  “Frederick, how can I not remember giving birth? How can I not remember . . .?” She trailed off again, seemed to be biting her finger to keep from screaming. “Livy . . .”

  The girl seemed to be heading for an imminent nervous collapse. Emma flicked her finger subtly and sent a quick message to her grandfather. The girl would need something to calm her, and Benjamin’s domestic magic was the best for creating just the right thing.

  There was a flashing thought about the man not eating with them, about his waiting on them, and she started to see why Frederick had believed him to be a servant. She would have to explain to him some other time that her grandfather had five best friends, and they were all cats and took up most of his non-domestic time. Unless forced, he would eat with nobody else—but this wasn’t a discussion for right now.

  Reality pressed back in on her fully a second later, as Frederick rose to kneel by his sister. Hands trailing along her arms, he looked into her face nervously, and Emma asked him a silent question.

  Do you think the child is hers? Or was the baby even real or just a figment of her imagination?

  But no—Reginald had mentioned her, too. Emma’s head shook. What on earth is going on here?

  Lost in mysteries, she rose with Nat to see what they could do, as Frederick broached the subject quietly.

  “Jenny, the baby. Is she . . .?”

  He didn’t get it out, but she seemed to know what he wanted. “No! She’s mine! I know she is! I feel her.”

  Benjamin was arriving with a soothing beverage, just as the girl’s voice dropped.

  “Even when Hester . . .”

  Unfortunately, this was as far as she got, the name apparently an invocation. With a crash which sounded as though space and time were momentarily shrieking, the great-aunt of Emma’s guests was stalking toward them all.

  The moment was made somewhat less threatening—or, at least, slightly more surreal—by the fact that the sorcerer was wearing only a tiger-striped bikini, with a pair of sunglasses perched on her head. In mundane years, she would have looked to be an unbelievably well-preserved 65-70, her long gray hair flowing down her back.

  Emma could feel Frederick’s shock, even as he stood in front of his sister. “Hester!” His gaze goggled, as he looked her over. “Good God! What are you wearing?”

  Bikini, both Emma and Natalie answered together.

  The woman’s outfit broke into the terrified mood his sister’s confusion had created. She either wasn’t aware of her great-nephew’s bemusement or didn’t care, her approach unstopped.

  Passing Natalie, Hester’s appearance made her amend their earlier assessment. And it’s a thong, too!

  Emma could nearly hear Frederick frantically looking up words in his mental dictionary. Is that normal? He was still goggling.

  At the beach, Emma admitted.

  He glanced at her for a moment. Your time period has a lot to answer for.

  She didn’t get the chance to respond, all of this passing in a moment. Besides, Hester’s intent was only too evident in her gaze—bringing them all back to just how serious this was. The fact that she had apported into someone else’s house uninvited was a breach of common decency almost too great to forgive—but what she demanded made her conduct even worse.

  “Give me back the child. Her daughter frets when she’s not there.”

  Her approach continued, unstoppable.

  “I’ll return for Frederick later.”

  Emma saw Frederick’s intent but knew immediately that he was no match for the woman, not untrained as he was. Instead, Emma dashed to the other side of the table to block both the man and Jenny from their intruder. When she sent a mental message to Natalie, her friend also took refuge behind her, along with her grandfather. As the most powerful one here, it would fall to her to protect them all, as any Distaff or Spear would.

  For all the typical clashes of the magical world, this s
tandoff was unusual. Suddenly, Emma understood all her society’s formality and the dangers it was circumventing.

  Trying the more polite tack first, as little as she suspected it would help, she stared Hester down. “They are my guests, Everly Distaff.”

  Of course, the woman’s home invasion brought on a thousand other questions. Emma hadn’t known that much of the woman, but what she was learning was disturbing. Had Hester somehow been responsible for the earlier lume-noirs? Had she attacked her brother’s grandson on the train?

  If so, Emma would claim her guests to protect them. Hospitality was important in the magical world, had many different rules. She held up her hand, gaze flaring. “I won’t see them harmed.”

  The home invader’s disgust was evidenced by a snort. “Do you really think you can stop me, girl?”

  Emma bristled, not so much at her attitude as at her dismissal of her title. She hadn’t thought that she was all that protective of being either a Distaff or a Maitre, but she was suddenly changing her mind.

  The woman came closer. “Do you think I’ll let you take what’s mine?”

  It was with this challenge that the intruder held up her hand, sending off a sudden, powerful compulsion at her great-niece. Emma hissed just seeing it, heard Natalie’s gasp. It was like a leash for a person—a leash which would give tormenting shocks throughout body and soul if not followed. It could easily override both memory and emotion, leaving its recipient a blank slate, unable to do or believe anything but what its inflictor willed.

  It was a disgusting piece of magic, one no decent witch—or sorcerer—would ever use. It was also the last bit of patience Emma had with the entire, benighted Everly clan.

  Her guests were different, of course, and she realized that she had already claimed Jenny as one of her own. She had no idea what she would do about that woman’s child, but it was only one of a million questions she would have to face later.

  “You dare—in my house?”

  Emma’s hand reached out, catching Hester’s evil magic as soon as it started, pinching it off and holding it tightly in her fist. She dimly registered the older sorcerer’s surprise but was too caught up in her rage.