Chapter Five

CAM ROLLED HIS eyes as he studied the giant tome in front of him.

“I have never been so bored in my life,” he griped as he glanced over his shoulder. Sen sat in a chair on the opposite side of the room, heavily engrossed in texts and scrolls of his own, making copious notes.

“Quit talking and keep studying. Your test is at the end of this week. You need to master the history of your species,” Sen grumbled while jotting something else in his massive moon book.

Apparently, all fae kept a moon book. The tome was the equivalent of a witches’ book of shadows. A collection of spells, incantations, herbal concoctions, and other assorted magical things that would help hone Cam’s abilities.

“I just don’t see the point.”

“The point is it’s required. The sharper your mind, the better your skill in all things fae. And let’s face it, you suck at being fae. Lady Aine is going to tan your hide once she skins your furry body. You’ll make a nice throw.”

“Ha-ha.” Cam scoffed, sending a sneer toward his tutor and manservant. It’s not that he didn’t appreciate Sen’s efforts, but Cam’s brain kept refocusing on Everton, worried more about what he had done and why the wolf had run off. However, Lady Aine terrified him. The Queen had made fae societal expectations crystal clear: learn how to be fae. If not, it was entirely possible Cam would be on the receiving end of her ability to inflict enormous amounts of pain and ensure Cam’s complete destruction. He needed to learn and master all the fae ways, and those responsibilities should have taken precedence. A certain monster kept interrupting everything.

Clearly, Ev had feelings for him. The wet wolfy kiss planted on Cam before Ev had leaped into the dense forest surrounding the Ancestral Lands had been legendary. The tingles and furry feelings the lip lock had summoned cancelled out any kiss Cam had received from anyone else. And that was saying a lot. Cam had had lots of boyfriends, and he’d tasted his fair share of bearded men. All of them of the bear persuasion. Preferably big, burly, and brawny men. The wider the shoulders, the better. And Ev exemplified his infatuation with beastly boys.

Cam’s wings fluttered. He spied Sen out of the corner of his eye. His involuntary wing action had made the tree sprite glance up. Cam received a side-eye stare, with a raised eyebrow. He didn’t think the man cared much for him, but then, he hadn’t given Sen any reason to like him.

Pursing his lips and feigning studying, Cam stuck his nose back in his book, but instead of reading, he started contemplating his escape. How possible would it be to slip out of the Ancestral Lands and go hunt down his wolf?

He had no car. He had no idea where to find Ev. It’s not like he’d ever been to Everton’s house.

But if he managed to figure out how to slip in and out of shadows, he would be able to run the Yellowhead highway back to Edmonton at dusk without being seen. The more shadows, the better. After studying Sen’s demonstrations—and yes, he had in fact paid attention to the act of slipping meant bending light and shadow, and time as well. The ability allowed the fae to travel at ultra-fast speeds. He’d be approaching city limits within an hour.

A quick visit to Dev, his bestie, who had been granted from the horned God Cernunnos himself the ability to track down anything, would be in order. Finding Everton’s den shouldn’t be a problem.

It was a plan.

Maybe a good plan.

He just had to get out of Sen’s sight for a moment—

“Cam!” Sen’s face popped up directly in front of him. His eyes were saucers. His pupils thin slits, and the toothy beaming smile stretched from pointed ear to pointed ear. Sen’s unruly bright-red hair reminded Cam of those ridiculous troll dolls old women would bring to bingo in hopes of bringing them luck. Silly women. Trolls don’t bring luck. They eat you.

“What?” Cam shrunk away from the violation of his personal bubble.

“You’re doing it!”

“I’m doing what?” Cam furrowed his brows in disgust as he cringed. Spit had flown out of Sen’s mouth.

“You’re human!”

“What?”

Sen bounced over to the side table where a handheld mirror lay with an assortment of other personal hygiene accessories. In the blink of an eye, Sen had returned and held up the mirror.

Cam, transfixed by the face looking back at him, forgot about everything else around him.

His old face.

Human light-brown eyes and scruffy cheeks. Not the cat-eye green with gold flecks and stretched pupils. His perky ski-lift nose had returned; long gone was the flattened nose with nasal planes and a philtrum.

Cam ran a hand through his thick, long hair. His fingers grazed the bony protrusions of his horns, but the reflection showed no such idiosyncrasies. The image casted back at Cam sent sharp pains through his heart. He studied his previous incarnation, a body he had inhabited a mere six months ago. Beautiful, unshaven, boyfriend material, and most importantly, human.

He bit his lip and a corner of his mouth twitched, gradually turning into a bit of a frown.

“What’s the matter? This is a miracle! Cam, you figured out how to maintain the illusion. It’s solid! All of you. Your wings are gone.” Sen dropped the mirror and rushed around to Cam’s back. He lifted the loincloth Cam had finally conceded to wearing. “Yes! The tail is even gone.” Sen joyously yanked on his now invisible tail. Cam had impressed his tutor.

Cam swatted Sen away and glared at the sprite. He huffed as he glanced sternly at the floor.

“What’s the matter? I don’t get it. You should be thrilled! How did you do it? What was the trigger?”

Sen had never been human. He couldn’t comprehend Cam’s loneliness or understand he’d lost the most important thing in the world. Something Cam would never be again. Something he’d never placed any value on before.

His humanity.

He was the only one in the village who had “turned” fae. Everyone else here had been born that way.

Cam grabbed the mirror Sen had brought over, and as he studied his reflection, he involuntarily stroked the face in the glass looking back at him.

“Oh, this is such a great achievement!” Giddy with excitement, Sen clapped his hands together. “Lady Aine will be pleased, Cam. Trust me. This is a good thing.” Sen grabbed the mirror out of Cam’s hands. He bopped over to the dresser and replaced the hand mirror to its resting place, all while sporting a toothy grin, as Cam returned a half-hearted smile. Sen hadn’t picked up the hurt in Cam’s soul or the pain at seeing his former self. “I think it best I go tell her straight away!”

The sprite disappeared.

As soon as Sen had left, Cam retrieved the mirror and continued studying his human visage. How he had missed his old self! Cam’s mood withered, and his scheming and plotting morphed into nostalgia and longing. And as his mind shifted to different emotions, so did the vision in the glass. In a heartbeat and a ripple of the air, his fae self returned. The man in the mirror once again reflected an Eldritch fae, complete with horns, wings, and—as he glanced at his backside—a tail.

He let out a sigh.

Looking over to the side table where the mirror had come from, Cam spotted Lady Aine’s glass vessel, glinting in the sunbeams that sparkled through his bedroom window. The vessel required his seed, and the container had to be filled and given to the queen before the entire village travelled underground for the winter.

After staring at the vial for a few minutes, and still clutching the handheld mirror, Cam made up his mind. His brows furrowed and lips pursed; his tail twitched to and fro, annoyed, and determined.

He’d find a way out of this hellish study hall. Fuck the spells and the history. He wanted his wolf—and his old life—back. He needed Dev too.

The decision had been made. Cam would flee the Ancestral Lands and to hell with Lady Aine and her expectations.

 

SPARKS HAD AN incredibly busy afternoon. After stumbling into Byron, he had been summoned for not one but two biological clean-ups, a half-dozen patient transports, and one uncomfortable and awkward security situation where Mr. Patterson had decided hospital bed gowns were the devil’s clothing and he would leave the hospital. Nude.

The last situation required an unending supply of patience and carefully chosen words in order to calm Mr. Patterson and convince him some clothing may be a better option than none, and staying in the hospital and getting better was probably smarter than trying to “just rest up” at home, as the old man had put it.

After all, he had already done that after his hip replacement surgery and had been readmitted as he hadn’t kept his wound clean, leading to an infection. The man needed antibiotics and to be supervised to ensure the stitches from his surgery stayed intact and his dressing changes happened regularly.

Arriving home, Sparks closed the front door and stripped off his scrubs. Unlike Mr. Patterson, he no longer required clothing, and as much as he loved his job of assisting patients and loved where he worked, the hospital had a certain smell that clung to the scrubs. When his shifts ended, Sparks preferred to not think about it, or smell it, until he had to arrive for his next shift.

He opened his fridge and stood naked in front of it, spying the various containers of leftovers. An old box of Thai food, partially hidden behind an even older bottle of pop someone had left behind from a party long past, caught his eye, but when he flipped open the top flaps of the takeout container, the assaulting foul smell suggested an immediate case of food poisoning.

“Oof. Well, that’s not for dinner.” He opened the door to the cabinet under the sink, where his garbage can resided, and pitched the outdated food into the bin.

The rest of the fridge didn’t hold anything appetizing, unless you counted a jar of mayonnaise and three packets of hot sauce.

“Going out for dinner it is.” Except Sparks hated eating alone—especially out in public. He reached for his cell, sitting on the kitchen counter by his keys, and punched a few buttons.

“Hey!” He was genuinely surprised to get an answer.

“Hey, yourself, what’s up?” Tully said from the other end of the phone connection. Sparks heard his smile through the cellular technology.

“Well, I’m freshly stripped from my hospital shift, and I’m starved. Anything left in my fridge is inedible. You guys wanna go hit Yousef’s?” Yousef’s Shawarma was a small, hole-in-the-wall, mom-and-pop-type restaurant near the university that everyone went to. Notoriously busy any given day of the week and their falafel had won yearly awards for being the best in all of Edmonton.

“Dev’s out. Work thing. He never gives me too many details, which is fine with me, but he muttered something about a family’s house boggle going missing, and he had been ‘guided’ to go find it. After that, he had an eight o’clock appointment about a child exhibiting unusual behaviour. I imagine he’s going to be late tonight. Poor guy will be exhausted when he gets home. I should pick something up for him and stash it in the fridge. He’ll be jealous we went without him.”

“Late night appointments and house boggles do not sound like fun.”

“No, those boggles can be little buggers.” Tully snickered.

“Tell me about it. My aunt had one. She couldn’t keep anything gold in the house. Damn thing always took the metal and hid the items in a pile like a dragon hoard. She lost a family heirloom to the monster. Why on earth would this family want to go find a boggle? Good riddance I say.”

“No idea. Again, I don’t get the details. And frankly most days I’d care to not know. Our supernatural community is rather…uh…fucked up.”

Sparks laughed. “True dat. Well, you wanna come? I swear I’m so hungry right now I could eat a skunk. Besides, I have gossip.”

“Sparks, bad boy. Gossip?” Tully’s voice indicated he was more interested than his words let on.

“You know you want it.”

“Yes, yes I do.”

“Well, yes, actually you do. I inadvertently stumbled overtop of Bryon today. I do mean that literally. I almost fell into his wheelchair while he sat in it.”

“Ouch, on several levels.” Tully went silent for a minute. “So, how was he?”

“He’s a mess, Tully. Honestly, I felt bad.”

“This is why I love ya, bro. You have the biggest heart I’ve ever known. Dev still would like nothing more than to string him up and eviscerate him.”

“I get it, but he cried in front of me. When was the last time you remember ever seeing Byron so emotionally distraught, he shed tears in front of you?”

“Ah, never.”

“Exactly. I’ve known the man for half my life, and he’s always been a paragon of masculinity, strength, knowledge, and power. Today he was none of that.”

“Damn.”

“Come with me to dinner. I’ll tell you more.” Sparks’s tummy rumbled.

“You’re a tease. You know that, right?”

“Yup. As long as you’re getting a boner, then I’m doing it right.”

“I’m as hard as lumber right now.” Tully laughed loudly. Sparks chuckled. This is what he missed. The banter and play with his male buddies in the coven. Mabon promised to be a reconnection to his community where the remnants of the Guardian of the Night Grove would reassemble and once again be a brotherhood—if only for the night. “I’ll come get you. Be there in ten. Gotta put some clothes on and text Dev to let him know we’re going out.”

“Sure thing. Hurry! I’m starving.” As Sparks clicked his phone off, he glanced down at his naked body. “What is with witches and their propensity for nudity?”

Shrugging, he placed his phone on the counter and went to go find some clothes to wear for his dinner date with Tully.