Page 36 of Encore
“Ripley and Ravyn have been bugging me about tickets to your show. The kids love watching you dance, and they want to take them on vacation. I’d give them an update because they are encouraging my fierier tendencies if you get hurt.
“Will do. Bye, Kaine.”
I had to switch gears for this next call. There were girl things I couldn’t talk about with Kaine. He had no problem with ballet and fight stuff, but he didn’t do tampons, witch stuff, and guys. When I moved in with him, the first thing he did was set me up a bank account and give me a debit card. He made Ripley and Ravyn tell me there was money on there for period stuff.
You just didn’t talk to a dragon about boys. That was how people got eaten. I dialed the twins on three-way. I never knew what kind of chaos would be going on at their place. Ripley was literally married to the God of Chaos, and Ravyn was married to Loki. Things hadn’t gotten less crazy with them when they started having kids.
“Girl,” Ravyn yelled when she answered. “You cannot just drop on us you have a gryphon mate the last time we spoke and wait this long to call us back with the details.”
“Please tell me you hit that,” Ravyn said. “We saw the video they tagged you in. Those boys are totally devoted to you. Our guys are more about severed heads and destroying anyone who has wronged us. It’s so romantic they made a whole dance for you.”
“Kaine won’t stop bragging that you have the lead now. We’re going to be there. We love watching you dance, and the kids miss you.”
“That’s actually why I was calling. I’m a descendent of the witch who cursed this ballet. I didn’t know because she gave the child up for adoption, and they changed her name. Marsden didn’t even know it until he promised Unseelie secrets for information.”
“Yeah, but can you even call yourself a witch if one of your ancestors didn’t do something stupid hundreds of years ago and now it’s biting you in the ass, even though you had nothing to do with it?” Ravyn said.
“It’s true. Gabriel had to kill a revenant with magic and help us stop Dorian Gray before people forgave his family for something that happened five hundred years ago. He’s a well-respected professor at the Academy of the Profane now, but they wouldn’t have given him the time of day when he was eighteen, and his magic had awakened. Comes with the territory, kid. Since no one knows you’re related to her, it probably saved you from a good old-fashioned supernatural shunning.”
“All these bitches know they have someone shitty in their family line, but they love their shunning.”
“It’s still a lot of expectations on my shoulder on top of a lead role with a famous ballet company.”
“You’re looking at this all wrong,” Ravyn said. “I don’t know shit about ballet, but I know what I feel when I watch you. You’re terrific, and I can tell how much you love it. I break curses for a living. That’s what I love doing. But sometimes, it gets gross. Some of the potion ingredients are vile, and sometimes, I have to bleed for it.
“If the theory is right, you get to break a curse by dancing with four guys who totally adore you and what you’ve trained your entire life to do. I know you wanted to find out what happened to Derek, but fate has other ideas.”
“Kaine suggested it, but I’m pretty sure when Marsden was spying on me when I was a teenager, he got rid of him.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Ripley said. “I’m all about punishing abusers and rapists, and the hex you chose is one I would personally use for that, but Derek is human. You’d be exposing yourself if you ever removed it, and trying to get a memory potion in him after he’s seen you do magic and realizes all the shit that happened to him was because of you is going to be literally impossible. It’s different hexing and cursing supernaturals.”
“It totally is. Take it from experience. If you cursed a supernatural, they eventually, figure out what they did wrong after they’ve suffered enough. They’ll come groveling for you to remove it, and then they want to be as far away from you as possible. You don’t have to wipe memories like you do with humans. Everyone expects you to get revenge if a human hurts you; and no one really cares how you do itunlessyou expose the supernatural community and don’t deal with it,” Ripley said.
They were right, as usual. That was such a big rule. It was the first thing Kaine taught me when he informed me I was a witch. I was the only person in my high school after I changed schools who had their magic awakened, but they still gave me the same lessons as everyone else.
They told us repeatedly in our magical ethics and history classes that things never ended well for us when humans found out about the supernatural. There was a time we openly lived side by side with each other, and no one blinked twice if they saw someone shift or do magic.
One god changed all of that. Creating humans had been a team effort. They were different than we were. We worshipped the God who created us. Humans used to worship many different gods or one they particularly liked, and everyone was okay with this. No one was getting mass murdered or burned alive.
One god bullied Lilith into taking some of her creations into an entirely different realm. He convinced his followers that anything supernatural was evil and dangerous. It caught on, and they started hunting us. So supernaturals had to hide their nature around humans.
Historically speaking, every time we were exposed, and it wasn’t dealt with, many innocent people died. I wanted Derek to pay. I wanted him to feel what I felt when I was alone in that park in pain and couldn’t call for help.
I wouldn’t have left him hexed forever. I’d have to be with him to remove it. Derek and his family weretotallythe type to stroke fear and try to round us up if they found out about the supernatural. My supernatural high school principal had to legally get something in writing that they had to stay fifty feet away from the school because they kept showing up to harass me, and no one wanted them to see something they shouldn’t.
I hated it sometimes because I wanted something different, but the twins were generally correct when it came to answers about magic. Kaine gave me a ton of sound life advice, but the twins were my go-to for witch stuff.
They probably taught me that curse and supported me using it on Derek because they knew he’d never be found. Deep-down, I probably did, too. I just didn’t want to admit it. Derek probably felt way worse than I felt that night if Marsden was the one who killed him. I knew a little about Unseelie revenge killings. Derek didn’t go gently or quickly.
“You’re totally right,” I sighed.
“It’s not what you wanted, but it’s closure,” Ripley said.
“You thought you were meant to stay here and figure out what happened to him. You owe his parents nothing. They were terrible to you, and that stupid boy wouldn’t have tried to end your career because you were leaving him if they hadn’t raised him to think that was okay. They would have blamed you even when you gave them facts.
“It’s time to leave Derek behind. He would have taken everything from you if Reyson hadn’t been able to heal your feet. Even if Marsden didn’t do it, does it really matter now? You have everything he tried to take from you. You’re dancing the lead at the company he tried to keep you from, and you’re sharing the stage with your coven. Literally, fuck him. It’s time to start doing you.”
“Ripley is right,” Ravyn. “Unfortunately, no one killed Valentine, so I had to deal with him when he came back to my museum. You know how that ended, but it was amassiverelief when I decided I wasn’t going to let him dictate my life anymore.”
