7 June

 

Okay.

It’s safe to say all hell has broken loose.

I mean, hanging with the vamps was all kinds of good.

Prolonged sexcapades with Ash were always good.

But maybe I should have kept my head in the game.

First up, faeries let loose maybe wasn’t a good thing.

Okay, obviously it was a good thing seeing as they were free to be.

Though, considering the fact news outlets were reporting that all over England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, new and alarming sex cults were springing up claiming young women and men who were abandoning their homes and jobs and explaining to their families they had no intention to return…

Uh…

Not so much.

 

Onward from that, I couldn’t get hold of Trae or Sar to find out how BecBec was doing and I knew why even before I called Mom to ask.

They were forming their own Fae sex cult in my mother’s Carriage House.

Huh.

Second, Fane was more of a rapscallion than I thought.

I knew this because, while he was entertaining Ash and me in his castle, he was also communicating to Cystien in the Realm.

Something he did not share with me.

And through these communications, they’d joined forces to track down Agatha, Endora, Bligh and Scary Faerie.

I knew this because, once Ash and I left Castle Noapte, I heard “through the grapevine,” (that being Su’s grapevine, which was actually Gabe’s grapevine since he was the one who told Su) that Cystien had tracked down Scary Faerie, currently had him in the Realm and was torturing him to learn the whereabouts of the rest.

 

Now, one could say I didn’t like Scary Faerie for a variety of reasons, top of which he’d been floating at Bligh’s side when Bligh shot Ash.

But seeing as I’d now been involved in a number of unfun episodes involving torture—being the focus of it, as well as watching it happen to someone else (albeit briefly)—one could also say I wasn’t down with the concept.

Like…

Way not down.

The problem with this was, even if I’d gotten in touch with both Fane and Cystien and shared my thoughts, one was a centuries-old, uber-powerful vampire and one was a millennia-old, uber-duber-extra-powerful faerie, so they weren’t inclined to listen to me.

So they didn’t.

Third, apparently the Modernists and Traditionalists were tired of waiting for me to pull my finger out because there’d been an escalation of skirmishes.

Humans were witnessing these skirmishes.

And those humans were beginning to connect the dots of what happened Hallowe’en night on Glastonbury Tor, young men and women going missing in sex cults all over Great Britain, and the increase of odd (what they didn’t know were magical, what they did know was that they were weird and alarming) scuffles.

This had the result of Dad phoning to share that the peace talks that hadn’t even really started had completely broken down.

The powers that be no longer wanted to sit down and chat.

Now, they were demanding answers, explanations, assurances, and a bunch of other stuff which boiled down to them stating plain we were all to go right back into our closets…

And stay there.

 

Considering all this, the League of Werewolves told me to piss off.

Like, right to my face.

Obviously, Ash wasn’t a huge fan of this.

And since he was sitting at my side when they did it, he did something about it.

And okay, it’s hot, watching your boyfriend single-handedly beat the crap out of a band of werewolves who weren’t real nice to you.

But during the Great Sir Sebastian Wilding Werewolf Smackdown, they tore his shirt, it was another one I’d given to him, and that totally sucked.

 

After this, the Banshee Nation called off our meeting, saying they needed to talk among themselves some more, something they’d been doing since the Gathering.

Now, these bitches screamed laments of people who were soon going to turn up dead.

This was their gig.

In total.

They’d never really hid doing it. They’d been scaring the crap out of people for centuries.

So how much could they have to talk about?

 

Now, Prunella was demanding another Gathering in the UK (special guest star, me).

The Federal Witches Agency wanted much the same thing in the US (again with me as special guest).

The Russian supernatural authority (I’d tell you their name, but I couldn’t pronounce it) was demanding my attendance at their meeting in Moscow.

There were rumors that wizards were going missing in China and the Fellowship of Wizards wanted me to do something about it.

And there was some weird shit going down with voodoo priestesses in Haiti.

All of this, of course, led me to a crisis of my Savior of the World conscience which resulted in me throwing a drama in Ash’s Indiana-Jones-at-home living room in London.

 

This led me to wondering (again) what kind of unknown Boyfriend Superpowers Ash had, because through this drama, he listened. He nodded. He hmm’ed and mm’ed. He kept eye contact. He never once looked bored, or like he thought I’d lost my mind, or like he thought he’d lost his in being with me.

And then when I’d petered out with my ass in one of his posh, masculine brown leather armchairs, my head resting on the back, my hand wrapped around a bottle of wine I was drinking straight from the neck (when I wasn’t babbling about how rubbish I was at saving the world), Ash’s face obscured my view of his ceiling when he bent over me.

Whereupon, he asked, “Are you done, darling?”

“Yup,” I answered.

“Do you want Indian or Chinese for dinner?”

“Totally Indian.”

He then brushed his mouth on mine and muttered, “I’ll be back.”

After that, he took off and got us dinner.

Not only got us dinner, he brought home all my favorites.

 

See?

I mean, what kind of superpowers were those?

Wait, I can’t endeavor to answer this now because Ash just asked me if I wanted to go to bed.

And the answer was (seeing as he’d be in it with me)…

Duh.

Hell yeah.

 

8 June

 

So, this just happened.

 

Ash woke me up so we could get up to a little somethin’-somethin’.

(Ash liked his morning somethin’somethin’.)

(I liked it more.)

(Ahem.)

After that, I got out of bed, deciding to carry on with my sex-induced peace of mind during a time I couldn’t carry on with the sex-induced part because Ash had to recover (at least for a bit) and thus doing it by doing my second most favorite thing that brought peace of mind.

That being baking.

And that meant making Ash some homemade cheese Danish (I had to go rough puff, I needed to feed my man and I didn’t want to take all day to do it).

While I was shredding butter and kneading, Ash strolls into the kitchen, grabs a notepad and pen, sits on the counter, puts pen to paper, turns his eyes to me and asks, “So, break it down. What’s first?”

“Say what?” I asked back, still kneading.

“First priority.”

Uh…

“First what?”

“Sweetheart, you can’t do it all at once. So, what’s first? I’d say BecBec. It’s concerning we don’t know how she’s coping as it’s been some time and we’ve had no word. And if we go to her we could kill two birds with one stone, talking her into going to the Realm to have a chat with Cystien and then you can have a chat with Cystien.”

So yeah.

A novel idea.

Assess priorities.

Form a plan.

But…

I mean…

This was getting freaky.

This was Ash’s suggestion. It was wise. Logical. Sane.

Which meant something very scary was becoming clear.

Ash was perfect all around.

“That said,” he kept at me, “while we’re seeing to BecBec, it might be good to get Mavis or Viv on planning an international Gathering. You can’t be fifty places all at once. And they all need to talk to each other. So instead of you going to them, they can all go to one place, and you can go there.”

“Priorities,” I said.

“Priorities,” he affirmed, stared at me a beat and noted this concept wasn’t computing. He then scooched off the counter, tossed aside the pen and paper and came to me, taking me in his arms, doing it ignoring my dough-and-flour-encrusted hands and everything. “You see mountains,” he murmured, then grinned. “Or walls filled with Post-it notes. But, darling, every climb begins with the first step.”

My response to this piece of wisdom?

“You’re a freak.”

His brows shot up. “Pardon?”

I squinted my eyes at him. “Have you been spelled?”

“Mathilda—”

“Like by Viv. Or Su. I wouldn’t put it past Gran or Mom or Mavis either.”

“I haven’t been spelled.”

“Okay then, how are you this perfect?” I asked. “I mean, you’re the most perfect boyfriend in the history of all boyfriends who ever existed. And I thought that all the way back to you not throwing your towel on the bathroom floor. Now I get guaranteed orgasms. You keeping your shit during shared incarceration. Kicking werewolf ass for me. Imparting sage wisdom. I can go on. It’s unreal.”

His grin got cocky.

“It’s also freaking me out,” I declared.

“I’m just a man.”

“You’re not just a man. You’re unnatural. And how do I handle that? I get pimples. I have dramas while brandishing wine bottles. My sister wears socks with Birkenstocks in the winter and you’ve seen her do that more than once. How do I live under the cloud of you eventually clueing into the fact I’m certifiable and then taking off to find some together woman who’s never considered the idea of a princess fortress, and if she knew about it, she’d think it was weird.”

“That woman probably wouldn’t know how to make Danish from scratch,” he muttered.

I slapped his arm and left a flour and dough print on his long-sleeved tee, all while crying, “I’m being serious, Ash!”

He got serious too.

“Sweetheart, I’m destined for you.”

“Yeah, destined to give me three kids and then what? Do prophesies include the ugly divorce you have when you’re forty-eight and he figures out you’re a lunatic? Or do they leave that out to make sure you have those three divined kids?”

“How about we not talk about divorce before we’re even engaged?” he suggested.

That didn’t make me feel any better.

As such, my voice could almost shatter glass when I asked, “So you think it’s a possibility they left the divorce part out?”

He gave me a firm squeeze along with a shake and said, also firm (very firm), “Mathilda, get yourself together.”

“I’m totally and completely in love with you!” I shouted. “I might survive saving the world, but I wouldn’t survive losing you!”

At that, he let me go so he could capture my head in both hands.

He then got so close, he was my world (physically, not just the usual—emotionally) and growled, “Matty, you were made for me.”

I blinked in his face.

“And I was made for you,” he carried on.

“I know, but—”

“Do you know how boring it would be, being a man who has it together, if I had a together woman? I am as I am so I can be what you need me to be because you are as you are, and vice versa. I do not like boring. I do not like staid. I do not want every day of my life with the same woman to be the same day. No surprises. No twists or turns. No adventure. I would listen to you rant about saving the world a million times before I’d sit in front of the telly in companionable silence just once with a woman who wasn’t interesting, wasn’t amusing and didn’t challenge me. For God’s sake, even when you’re annoying, you’re endearing.”

He then did the impossible.

His face got even closer.

And he finished, “In other words, darling, I’m totally and completely in love with you too. We will not get divorced. We’ll get married, make three beautiful children and live happily ever after. The prophesy didn’t say that last bit either, but I know it’s so because I’m going to make it so because I couldn’t survive either, if I lost you.”

 

Yup.

He said all that.

 

So of course, instead of bursting into tears, I told him, “I could have done without the ‘even when you’re annoying’ part.”

Fortunately, his response was to burst out laughing, let go of my head and give me a big hug.

 

I may not have mentioned this, but Ash hugs are the best.

The…freaking…best.

(Yes, more proof he’s perfect.)

 

So, in the end, we decided to go with Ash’s plan.

I would focus on BecBec and we’d get Viv on planning an International Gathering of the Supernatural World.

And we got on all that.

After Danish.

 

11 June

 

Right, so, Ash chartered another plane to take us home, and without a bunch of company with us, we’ll just say I’m now a very proud member of the Mile-High Club.

X3

(What can I say? It’s a long flight.)

 

Though the high from belonging to that club waned when, upon arriving at The Acre, finding my cat to try to give her snuggles (she was having none of it, and I knew from experience the length of my absence meant at least a week of her only allowing me to touch her when she woke me up in the dead of night and made me do it by kneading my thigh in a position where she was almost out of reach) and climbing up to the Turret Room to find BecBec’s door was still a wall.

And it remained a wall even after I called through it for her to let me in, then called through it begging her to let me in, all of which she ignored…

I then stomped down to the Carriage House and pounded on the door.

And pounded.

Then pounded some more.

After more pounding, Sar opened it, full-body-shimmered, and that was full-bodied, since he was stark naked.

And proudly erect.

 

(And yes, to answer your question, what he had under his loincloth was precisely what sex cults were made of.)

 

I averted my eyes and he growled, “I’m in the middle of something important.”

“More important than BecBec maybe starving herself to death in the Turret Room?”

“She cannot starve. She’s immortal,” he pointed out.

Huh.

I dodged that.

“Has anyone seen or heard from her since I left?” I demanded.

He had the good grace to look a little ashamed at that.

“Fine,” I snapped. “Carry on with your orgy. It’s not like I have anything else to do. Spellbounds to look after. Supernatural wars to circumvent. Politicians to assuage. Cats to earn back their love. Worlds to save. I’ll go look after your faerie sister who you have been yards away from for weeks and who knows what state she’s in?”

After delivering that load of guilt, I did more stomping and then spent fifteen minutes with my wand trying to break the disappearing spell BecBec had on the door.

As mentioned, elfin magic was some serious shit, so I might be the SuperWitch, but I was failing.

Ash came up in the middle of me doing this.

He watched me fail for another ten minutes before he circled my wand wrist with his fingers.

“Allow me,” he murmured.

I stepped aside, curious at what I was allowing.

He stepped back, turned a shoulder to the wall…

And then slammed through it!

Holy Dust Flying, Batman!

I didn’t have a chance to marvel at Ash busting through a wall.

BecBec was flinging magic at him and I had to fling a protective shield in front of him so whatever she was flinging didn’t hit.

This I did.

I then took her in.

It was worse than I imagined.

She might be immortal, but she was still thin, wan, her hair lank, her eyes sunken, dark circles under them.

In other words, a total mess.

Man, I was going to kick Sar’s and Trae’s asses!

(Or get Ash to do it.)

“Honey,” I whispered to her.

“You were not invited in here,” she declared.

I moved cautiously toward her, assuring. “All’s well in the Fae world. Fae are free to be who they are in the human realm. Maithieliel has been, uh…” How to share? “Neutralized. Cystien had it all under control. He just didn’t, well, um…share the fullness of his plan with you.”

“You were not invited in here!” she shouted.

“BecBec—”

She suddenly got stiff, her eyes going beyond me and a dust-covered, still-hot Ash toward the Ash-sized hole in the wall.

Both Sar and Trae were squeezing through (both now clothed, fortunately (I guess)).

“And you are not invited in here either!” she shrieked.

Then suddenly Ash’s shoulder that went into the wall went into my belly and I landed with a thud on my back on the floor with my man on top of me.

He curled protectively around me, most specifically my head, but even if my eyes were closed and Ash was blocking it with his body, I could still see the blinding flashes of Fae-on-Fae magic.

“What’s happening?” I cried.

“They’re Guardians. They’ll subdue her. Just don’t open your eyes,” Ash replied.

It was then I smelled something burning.

“Oh, my Goddess! She’s burning down The Acre!” I shouted. “Get off me! I need to do something!”

I heard a sizzle, the flashes stopped, and Trae said, “All is well. She is restrained. You can get up now.”

Ash got off me and pulled me up.

The room was a state.

And the bedspread was smoldering.

Last, BecBec was indeed restrained. Golden ropes wound all around her body so you could see nothing of it but the outline from ankles to shoulders. A golden gag in her mouth.

“Undo her,” I demanded.

“Uh…pardon?” Sar asked.

I pointed at BecBec and screeched, “Let her go!”

“We are immortal, you are not, beautiful Mathilda,” Trae stated. “She is using very angry magic and she is uncontrolled. We cannot free her. It is not safe for you, this home, anyone in it or anyone for about five furlongs.”

Furlongs?

“I think Mathilda’s concerned about the restraints considering she’s concerned Bellabeccabec’s state has to do with the fact she was confined in the Realm,” Ash explained.

“Oh,” Sar mumbled, then turned to study BecBec.

“Well?” I pushed.

BecBec was staring daggers at Sar and Trae.

“Okay, at least ungag her and let me talk to her,” I suggested.

Sar looked at Trae.

Trae looked at Sar.

They both looked at BecBec and the gag disappeared.

“They must leave,” she stated immediately to me, snapping her head Trae and Sar’s way.

It hit me then that I could understand her.

“Hey! I can understand you!”

She glared at me. “If this is so, you must make them leave.”

I began an approach but didn’t get very far before Ash’s arm snaked around my stomach and he pulled my back into his front.

“They—” I started.

She lifted her chin and declared, “I denounce being Fae.”

Sar and Trae sucked in so much breath, I felt lightheaded.

“Shit,” Ash muttered in my ear.

Okay then.

I had a feeling this was bad.

“BecBec, honey, listen to me for a bit,” I urged.

“I was betrayed by my king,” she stated.

Well, yeah…sort of.

“That’s what I want to explain,” I told her.

“And after I was rescued, my own left me to rot.” She again jerked her head at Sar and Trae. She then turned her attention to them. “I see the shimmer, including the sheer amount of it. It would seem you’ve been taking keen advantage of being freed among human females.”

Hmm.

Okay, maybe leaving her to rot was a bit dramatic.

But I felt her seeing as one could say it was not cool the dudes were having a sexathon while I was out trying to find peace and understanding and BecBec was up here, dealing alone with some Fae PTSD.

That said, I wonder what that shimmer was about. The boys had had it since the first time I saw them.

“King Cystiennien would like you to come home,” I shared. “He wants to—”

“I will never go home,” she spat at me. “I have no home.”

“BecBec—”

Again, I could say no more.

“No. I am wrong. I have a home. You freed me. You came to the Realm and freed me. You spoke for me at my trial. They may have helped you free me,” another jerk of the head to Sar and Trae, “but only because they want to lay with you. I have been forsaken. By my king. By my people. By everyone. But you. So my only home is with you.”

“Although in a way, you’re right, you always have a home with me, the rest isn’t exactly true,” I said quietly.

“I have not sensed you in this house,” she returned. “Thus, I suspect you have been busy doing what you must in regard to the Prophesies. The moment I sensed you here, you came to me. I have sensed them all this time. And they didn’t even so much as knock on my wall.”

I aimed narrowed eyes at Sar and Trae.

Trae was studying the ceiling.

Sar was studying BecBec broodingly.

I kept my eyes narrowed on them.

Trae looked at me and said, “Well, we did not know we could break through the wall.”

“Lame,” I retorted.

He looked back to the ceiling.

He knew it was lame.

Since we weren’t getting very far, and BecBec was clearly in no mood for us to get much further, I decided to try to get what I could get.

“Right, promise not to burn down the house or accidentally annihilate anyone in this furlong or the next,” I began, “and also promise to eat something and not lock yourself away again. And if you promise all of that, they’ll let you go, they’ll leave, and you can nurse your snit for as long as you like. When you’re done, you can let me know and we’ll have a good gab. With wine. Or other beverage of your choice. Or beverages plural, which I would recommend.”

She glared at Sar and Trae.

We all waited.

She glared more.

We waited that more.

Finally, she said to me, “I will make these promises to you, Mathilda.”

I turned to Sar and Trae. “Okay. You heard her. Let her go and then you boys have to vamoose.”

“We have not been free for centuries,” Trae said to BecBec.

“I served my king and did not like what it got me. You serve your cocks, and your shimmer declares quite well you like what it got you.”

More brooding from Sar, more eye avoidance from Trae.

Whatever.

“Boys,” I prompted.

The golden ropes disappeared and so did the male Fae.

“Now I will eat,” BecBec stated.

Then she was gone.

I got that.

If I didn’t eat for months, I’d take up residence in the fridge.

I turned to Ash.

“What’s the shimmer thing?”

“No idea, though if I had to guess, I’d say it has something to do with sex.”

That’d be my guess too.

“Have you ever busted through a wall?” I asked.

“No,” he answered.

“You think that might be a Fae thing?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Pre-turning-Fae, could you kick a bunch of werewolves’ asses?” I asked.

“No,” he answered. “But I’d like to think I could hold my own.”

I grinned at him. “I’m looking forward to ending up shimmery.”

He grinned back.

Then I gave him a peck and went to the kitchen.

By the by, when I got there, BecBec was deep into a gallon of ice cream, and as ice cream was wont to do, she was a lot calmer because of it.

I broached the shimmer subject and she confirmed it had to do with sex, in a way.

Shimmer was the gossamer from their wings. It often just got on them if they were flying, and from their motion, it was dripping.

Or, say, they were flying by another faerie, and the other faerie’s dust hit them.

But during sex, the wings got involved, and shimmer went overdrive.

 

Totally could not wait until Ash got his wings.

Just sayin’.

 

13 June

 

Okay, well…

Shit.

Completely forgot I had a cookbook deadline and totally have not finished writing said cookbook.

As am contractually bound (which means legally bound, or I’d lose a shit-ton of money) to produce this cookbook, saving the world had to wait for recipes.

Lucy and I were going to take over the kitchen and not rest until we hammered it all out.

Bad news: I could not save the world while making up recipes or perfecting recipes I’d already made up.

Good news: Ash proved he was human and not superhuman when he refused to be a taste-tester because, “If I spend days eating your food, I’ll grow a paunch and you won’t think I’m perfect anymore.”

“The perfect boyfriend would risk that for his girlfriend’s cookbook.” (Me.)

“Then I suppose I’m not perfect.” (Ash)

“Not getting a paunch is more important than my World Cookery Domination?” (Me)

“Yes.” (Ash)

“Okay, you’re no longer the most perfect boyfriend in the history of all boyfriends who ever existed. You’re just the most perfect boyfriend I’ve ever had.” (Me)

“I can live with that.” (Ash)

Huh.

 

16 June

 

If…

I never…

Bake…

Again…

I…

Will…

Be…

Ecstatic.

 

17 June

 

I hate baking.

 

19 June

 

Fell asleep with head on the kitchen counter next to my rendition of a prinzrengententorte.

Dreamed a monster made of flour and Crisco took over Denver.

And ate me.

Then he vomited me out covered in crust, egg washed me with his spit and shoved me in an oven.

Yes, I had this dream.

Ack!

This cookbook needs to be done yesterday!

 

21 June

 

It’s done!

It’s off to our publisher!

We beat the deadline by two whole days!

Glory, glory hallelujah!

 

22 June

 

Ash has chartered another plane.

Why, you ask?

Because Fane has Endora Eccles.

And Fane might have a killer protective streak when it came to females with vampire blood and got his life philosophy about the gender divide deal two centuries ago.

But chicks who hurt females with vampire blood?

He was totes equal opportunity with that.

And get this.

Dad and Gabe were already in Transylvania (okay, Romania, but I prefer calling it Transylvania, because, obvs, that’s way cooler).

And they were all in for the make-her-pay, get-info-from-her-at-all-costs gig.

Prunella was beside herself.

She was not down with Endora going rogue, but she also didn’t want her brutalized by vampires.

And guess who she expects to do something about it?

Yeah.

You got it.

Me.

 

25 June

 

Back in Castle Noapte and we’ll just say I’m not enjoying this stay as much as I did the last one.

I’ll catch you up:

Cystien is here.

Scary Faerie is here.

As evidenced by Maithieliel, and now Scary Faerie, faeries make a very disturbing (and loud) noise when they experience extreme pain.

In this instance (thankfully), I have not seen it, just heard it, as I’ve not been allowed downstairs.

Ash has and he came back up not looking happy.

I’ve demanded an audience with Fane and Cystien.

I’ve been denied.

I’ve demanded an audience with Asa, Dimitri, Constantin, Wadim and/or Bill.

I’ve been denied.

I demanded to see my father and brother.

They came up.

But only to share that I should turn my attention to something else, they were on a mission, and nothing was going to stop that mission.

I threw a hissy fit.

They ignored my hissy fit and returned below the earth.

Now I was in my room with my wand, some makeshift magickal implements and a lot of determination and I was either going to astral project myself down there or open up a window to see what was going on.

Wish me luck.

 

27 June

 

All right.

Well.

First, we can just say I have still not mastered astral projection.

We’ll leave out the details of that and the psychological scars I left on some unsuspecting Romanians in a local town.

I had a lot more success with opening up a magickal portal to look in on the action.

I will preface this by saying, I’m still not a fan in the slightest of torture.

So it pains me to share that shit works.

 

We now know what Agatha Darling, Endora Eccles and Scary Faerie are up to.

They’re making Jeremy Bligh into a Dark Lord.

 

28 June

 

Just got done with powwow that included Ash, Fane, Cystien, Dad, Gabe, Marcus, Ambrose Bennett, Prunella Craddock and Aidan.

Newsflash: You can make a mortal, non-magical man into a Dark Lord.

 

Another Newsflash: Everyone thought their last attempt to do this (making Dad a Dark Lord that night on the Tor) was a joke because actually doing it is just straight-up psycho.

 

Yet Another Newsflash: Because of that, this has not been done in centuries.

The last time it was done was in the year 1347.

And yes, for you history buffs, I can confirm that was the year the Black Death started and let me just share that not all the deaths caused by that sitch were because of the bubonic plague.

Like, a whole lot of them.

You hear what I’m saying to you?

The dude some baddie witches gave these powers was finally defeated after five years of hunting this guy and attempting to take his ass out.

Le Société almost went out of existence, so many fell to this Dark Lord, this was how serious this asshole was.

 

And Another Newsflash: The journey to this is a seriously icky one.

So icky, and long, and involved, and expensive, and dangerous, and illegal (and not just in the magical world, for the sake of not letting too much out so anyone will get any ideas, we’ll just say a still-beating human heart and consumption of said heart is part of the process—like I said, ick), even if it’s been attempted in the intervening time since the last Dark Lord was created, it never came to fruition.

This was also partly due to the fact that it was stopped in mid-process.

Like we had to do now.

 

Last Newsflash: Marcus and Dr. Bennett shared that now they’re thinking it wasn’t so much Josie I was meant to keep safe who was going to save the world.

Nope.

Although that was going to happen, Josie was going to do some pretty epic shit, and they reckoned I was going to keep her safe so she could do it, this being because I already did.

But upon some further study of the Mathilda Prophesies, they thought it was me who had to go up against this guy and take him out.

This is how that news went down:

“Say what?” (me, shouting)

“Matty.” (Aidan murmuring)

Sexy buzzing noise (Ash growling, we’ll just say my man was more unhappy than me that I was up against a frigging Dark Lord.)

“So the last guy who had these powers took out sixty percent of the world’s population, and this time, I’m supposed to stop him?” (me, totally hysterical, totally not caring, because I was totally freaking out)

“At this time, at least we can be assured that he hasn’t yet assumed his full powers.” (Fane)

“Because the hottest fall fashions don’t include Hazmat, even though Hazmat isn’t going to save anyone from this asshole?” (Me)

“Yes.” (Fane)

Gah!

“Uh, did we not get the gist that she was going to go for something like this the last time she tried to make a Dark Lord?” (me, to Prunella and Dad)

“We thought she was just acting out.” (Prunella)

“No one took that seriously.” (Dad)

“Except, apparently, Agatha!” (me, shouting again)

No response. (Dad and Prunella)

“Okay, at this juncture, can I just point out you all are wrong about the Prophesies, like a lot.” (Me)

Total silence. (Everyone else)

“And at this juncture, I think maybe I should finally be able to read these Prophesies so we can get my take on them.” (Me)

“Matty, we discussed this.” (Aidan)

“Yes, and I didn’t agree back then that I should be kept from the Prophesies, and I really do not agree right now.” (Me)

More total silence. (Everyone)

“I can assume they don’t say I succeed.” (Me)

Another sexy buzzing sound. (Ash)

They didn’t say I succeeded.

“The result is not prophesied, no.” (Ambrose, confirming my deduction)

“Ack!” (Me) Then to Ash. “This means we so could be destined to get divorced.”

“Mathilda, we are not going to get divorced.” (Ash, in a rumbly way that even in the circumstances made my nipples get hard)

“Are they married?” (Prunella, whispering)

“I would hope my son didn’t get married without inviting me.” (Marcus, not whispering)

“You will have the Fae.” (Cystien, ignoring Marcus and Prunella)

Well, that was something.

“And you’ll have the vampires.” (Dad)

“Absolutely.” (Fane)

Well, that was something too.

“I think this will unite everybody.” (Prunella) “For you will have my wand, Mathilda.”

Well, smack me with a stick.

“Seriously?” (Me to Prunella)

“My wand and, when they know this is Agatha’s plan, and she’s not just registering her protest at change in the wiccan world, I cannot imagine a single witch who has a shred of courage and decency would not offer her own.” (Prunella)

It was at that, it hit me.

“So, one can deduce that I save the world and unite the world by going up against this douchebag.” (Me)

A lot of nodding. (Everyone else)

Gluh.

Great.

Later:

Got a call from Sar.

BecBec’s disappeared.

Brilliant.

Just what I needed.

Another problem.