Convergence (Winter Solstice Book 1) Read online

  They hold hands and nod to each other.

  “Yes, sweetie,” says Dad. “Your mother and I took you in as an infant. I don’t think you were two weeks old at the time. December 22nd, 1983 is the day we found you. It seemed like a good choice for your legal birthdate since we had no way to know the real one.”

  Mom looks down. “We were trying to protect you, so please forgive us for withholding the truth. I do have pictures of you as a baby and a little toddler.”

  That’s news. Guess that ‘candle accident’ never happened. All my old baby pictures didn’t really burn in a fire. “Okay. So where did I come from?”

  “Your father and I were visiting friends in the UK. Special friends.” Mom’s term for other users of magic. “We had a lovely celebration planned for the solstice.”

  “It was a lovely celebration. Even more so since we found you.” Dad smiles at me. “One of the three best days of our lives.”

  This, I’ve heard before. My ‘birth,’ my sister’s birth, and the day my parents met. They really are cute.

  “One of my little feelings pulled me into the woods. Oh, I had quite a few of them when I was eighteen,” says Mom, adding a chuckle. “I wandered after it and found you lying there in a little rocky alcove under vines and flowers. It looked like a shrine, only instead of a statue, I saw a beautiful baby girl.”

  “We knew right away that someone or something wanted us to find you.” Dad gets up and crosses the room to a bookshelf. He removes a few books, setting them in a pile on a small table nearby. Once he’s cleared the way, he extracts a metal lockbox from behind them and thumbs at the dials of a combination lock. The envelope he takes from it, he puts in front of me on his way back to his chair.

  I blink at my folks, who up until this moment, I’ve never imagined capable of doing anything even remotely close to illegal. “You forged my birth certificate?!”

  Mom’s giving me the same adoring expression she must’ve had on when they found me. “Our friend Clive has some influence over there. He arranged things like you’d been born to us, your American parents, while on holiday. All we had to do when we returned was a little paperwork.”

  Dad wags his eyebrows. “The forms might’ve had a touch of ‘believability’ charm on them.”

  Wow. Okay. I pull open the envelope he set in front of me.

  Polaroid photos show a thin infant girl with ruby red eyes, pointed ears, and a wisp of white-silver hair. Either Mom or Dad appears to have taken a new picture every few months until about when I look three years old. Evidently, my opinion of ‘comfortable attire’ (nothing but my skin) is a deep-seated, genetic trait. A few of the pictures stir flashes of memory of the surroundings, but who really remembers being three or younger? In the oldest picture, which had to be from the night they found me, there’s a red smear on my right shoulder.

  “What’s that?” I show the photo to my parents, pointing at the mark.

  “Uhh.” Dad bows his head. “I suppose you’re old enough now. When we found you, you had a bloody handprint on your back. That’s where a finger wrapped over your shoulder. Whoever carried you to that place had blood all over their hands.”

  “We don’t know who or why,” says Mom. “For years, we worried that something may have happened to your birth parents and that darkness might try to follow you here, but it seems that if anything of the sort existed, it was unable to emerge from The Echo.”

  Oh great. Now that the dimensions are French kissing again, I might have something else chasing me. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  Mom and Dad exchange looks.

  “You seemed so happy and focused, we didn’t want to throw your life off course.” Dad squeezes my hand.

  “I could’ve handled it!” My voice goes up, not quite yelling, but not a tone I’ve ever used with my parents before. Except maybe as a teenager. “I can’t believe you never told me.” I lose steam fast, the hurt in their eyes is like a fist to the gut. “What do you know about… whatever it is that I am?”

  Mr. Moody pokes his head over the table.

  “And what’s he?” I hold the cat up.

  “A cat,” says Dad.

  “A pretty cat,” adds Mom.

  I perch him in my left arm and scratch under his chin. “He’s more than that now. He’s talking.”

  “Talking?” asks Mom.

  “Yeah,” I say, and explain waking up that morning and the conversations I’ve had with my cat since. “Go on, say something.”

  He meows.

  “Oh, don’t be like that.” I stop scratching under his chin and stare at him. He’s giving me that look. “He’s mad at me for thinking of putting him in a carrier to come down here.”

  “You’re frightened and stressed out.” Mom stands. “Let me put on some licorice tea.”

  “All right, all right,” says Mr. Moody. “Only having a bit of fun. I like your mother. She thinks I’m pretty.”

  Mom blinks.

  “Oh.” Dad waves about like it’s no big deal. “He’s your familiar, then.”

  “I’m not a witch… am I?”

  Mom laughs and hurries over to make tea.

  “No, dear. You’re an elf. Or, from what we’ve been able to discern over the years, a Val’nathiri. As far as any of my associates know, you’re the only one of your kind to set foot in this world in three thousand years.” Dad brushes his fingers over my cheek. “You look wonderful.”

  “Anyone who uses magic can have a familiar,” adds Mom from the stove. “The ritual isn’t complex.”

  Except… I didn’t do any rituals on my cat. Did I?

  “Thanks. So… I didn’t turn into an elf overnight. If I’ve always been one of these things, why did I look human until three days ago?”

  “Your mother and I, with the help of several associates, placed a glamour on you when you turned four. A multifaceted illusion―sight, touch, radiance―that should’ve been permanent, though we kept the crystal focus in case we had to break the enchantment.”

  Radiance… so I’d see clothes that would fit me as bigger than their actual size. “Crystal focus?” I ask. That’s new.

  My father takes a deep breath. “You’ve only worked minor glamours, hon. Strong ones can be bound to a focus object, usually a power crystal. It’s an anchor point for the magic.”

  “It’s also a tradeoff,” says Mom. “The crystal amplifies the power of the spell, but it also introduces a weakness. If the crystal breaks, the enchantment is destroyed.”

  “Did you break my crystal?”

  He stands. “Not on purpose. One moment.” Dad scurries off to the narrow door leading to the stairwell. His footsteps tromp over our heads, and a few minutes later, tromp back. The door opens with a squeak and he slides out holding a small, wooden jewelry box. I watch with rapt attention as he sits, pulls a key from his pocket, and opens the lid.

  In a cushion of purple velvet sits a fat amethyst crystal, a hexagonal cylinder the size of a C-cell battery. Clearly, not smashed.

  “It’s not glowing anymore,” says Mom, the tone in her voice part sad, part mystified.

  “Nope.” Dad’s expression is ‘well, how about that?’

  I lean back in the chair, clinging to my cat. “You didn’t break the crystal, but the magic is gone.”

  Well that explains why I always mashed my knuckles if I tried to reach blind. I’d been seeing the world from the height of a five-foot person and I’m really four-eleven.

  We chat for a while about Fenton’s Convergence theory. Over licorice tea, my parents shock me by agreeing with him. They also claim to have noticed their magical abilities are much stronger than they had been, though both feel my elven blood gives me advantages they can’t hope to match.

  “Tell me everything. What am I?”

  “You’re the only one we’ve ever seen in person, but Nigel helped us gather what little information we do have. You’ve proven one part we had in theory already. You grew up from childhood at about the same
rate a human would, but slowed down in your teens. I’m sure you don’t remember spending most of your high school days looking like a thirteen-year-old.”

  I shake my head “Oh, I remember.” I frown. “How could I forget being the smallest kid in the whole school. Shortest senior in my class.”

  “The way you appear now, you’ll probably stay for a while. Elves plateau, and spend most of their life beautiful and young.” Mom sighs wistfully. “Yes, I am a touch jealous.”

  Both of my parents chuckle.

  “What’s ‘a while?’”

  “We’re not sure exactly, but my friends across the ocean think you’re looking probably at a significant amount of time.” Dad breaks eye contact.

  “Earth to Dad…”

  “Maybe two thousand years,” he mutters into his fist.

  I blink. I did not just hear that.

  “Close your mouth, dear, it’s rather unladylike to gawk,” says Mr. Moody.

  “Umm. Okay. I’m not sure I’m going to believe that but… anything else?”

  Dad blushes.

  “Oh, I’ll tell her.” Mom waves him off. “The stories we’ve heard claim the elves are somewhat free with their love.” She winks suggestively. “They tend to regard, umm, sex, with no more significance than most people attribute to an intimate hug.”

  “What about… wow, awkward.” I squirm in the chair. “Uhh, girls?”

  Dad looks like he wants to shrink in on himself and implode out of reality. Mom’s scarlet, but she keeps going.

  “We’re not sure about that, though it wouldn’t surprise me if you had little care either way. Men or women. What we did hear is that Val’nathiri eventually stumble across someone they consider a lifemate. It’s a magical connection that transcends anything a human would be capable of understanding. All I can say is that you will definitely know if it happens.”

  “At that point.” Dad clears his throat. “At that point, they become fiercely monogamous and so loyal to each other that they may die of pure sorrow if their lifemate is killed.”

  “Wow, that’s both romantic and horrifyingly sad.” I fidget at the teacup. It’s terrifying to think about having so little control over something like that. One day I’m walking along and whammo―there’s this stranger that I’d pull a Juliet over if they die. Almost makes me want to hide in my apartment and never come out.

  “I knew it!” shouts Eva, behind me.

  My kid sister storms in from the store, her bright blue eyes wide as they’ve ever been. She kinda tries for the goth thing. Her black skirt looks like she stole the curtains from a haunted vampire’s house. She’s still got her backpack on over her denim jacket. Fishnets and combat boots round out her ‘rebel’ persona. Her hair’s longer than I remember, a little past her shoulders. Jet-black like Dad’s before he went grey.

  Eva stares at me. I can’t tell if she’s about to burst into tears or bite my head off. She drops her bag and runs over, wraps her arms around me, and sniffles. I give our parents an ‘I have no idea either’ look.

  “Hon?” asks Mom. “What’s wrong?”

  Eva pulls back, staring into my eyes. She’s crying but smiling at the same time. “I knew it. I always saw you like this… but you’re not blurry anymore.”

  “Blurry?” I ask.

  Eva plops in the next chair, still holding my hand. “You always had this hazy aura. It made me dizzy to look at you before, but I could always see you had white hair and pointy ears. I thought something was trying to trick me and the elf part was fake, but… that’s so cool. You’re really an elf.” She gushes for the next few minutes about how pretty she thinks my eyes are.

  Meanwhile, Mom and Dad stare at her as if she randomly decided to start speaking German.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I think she’s said more in the past ten minutes than all year so far.” Mom’s surprise melts to worry. “Is something wrong, honey?”

  Eva looks down. “I see stuff crawling through the house sometimes. Things watch me at night. I heard a horse clomping around outside last night, and when I peeked out my window, I saw a centaur. I never said anything because I didn’t want you to think I’m crazy. Everyone at school already thinks I’m nuts. Plus, you know, weird parents who own a magic shop.” She sighs. “I see random crap all the time. More since the sky turned purple.”

  “You saw that too?” I squeeze her hand.

  She nods, tossing her hair around. “Yeah. I don’t sleep well. Every little noise wakes me up. Mom said you were afraid of storms too. Used to crawl under your bed as a little kid and hide whenever it thundered.”

  I laugh―now. Used to be terrifying. “Yeah. They still make me nervous, but I stopped hiding from them in like eighth grade.”

  “And Sunday was the weirdest.” Eva shakes her head. “Mom and Dad were frozen in bed, and I think I was too… only I was still walking around somehow, but nobody could see me.”

  I explain the theory that anyone who can use magic lost Sunday, stuck in a time burp or something. That Eva had somehow experienced the day as a ghost is freaky, but our parents think she may have been dreaming or astrally wandering. Whatever. The poor kid’s day sucked either way.

  The bell goes off outside, so Dad heads into the store to deal with the customer. While he’s gone, I catch up with Eva about her life. Nothing major’s going on. She’s sweet on another goth kid, Cody, but afraid to say anything. Her plan has been to wait for him to ask her out and then ‘think about it’ before accepting. I give her a nudge to be more direct. No sense wasting time pining after him if he’s not interested. Of course, she dodges by asking if I’m back. ‘No, only visiting’ gets her sad, but I cheer her up by suggesting I might extend my stay to an overnight, and mention she should totally come up and paint NYC red with me, when she’s on vacation. That gets Mom worried. Apparently, the evil city is no place for young girls.

  When Dad returns, I circle back to Fenton’s talk of The Echo being broken up into floating islands. Both parents have heard that theory and agree with it.

  “The realm within The Echo that touched the Earth near where we found you in County Gwynedd, Wales, is home to elves, faeries, goblins, boggarts, and so on.”

  “Trolls?” asks Eva.

  “I sure hope not,” mutters Mr. Moody from under the table.

  Eva yelps and looks down.

  “Hello,” says the cat.

  “Sol. Your cat is talking.” Eva looks up at me, back at the cat, up at me, and back at the cat.

  Mr. Moody stretches. “Observant little thing, isn’t she?”

  Eva stares at Mom and Dad. “Someone explain, please.”

  “We think the cat has become her familiar,” says Dad. “It’s been empowered by her magic, elevated to a greater sentience and―Ow!”

  “Kindly use ‘he’ rather than ‘it,’” says Mr. Moody, removing his claws from my father’s leg.

  Mom coaxes him over and picks him up for cuddles. “If he has become your familiar, you may be able to strengthen your magical link. Some rumors claim you can close your eyes and know what he sees and hears.”

  “Should we be worried?” I ask, getting back to the subject at hand “With this… Convergence happening?”

  Dad shrugs. “It’s nothing the world hasn’t seen before. The world used to have magic. Merlin, for example, back before the Waning. But others have popped up here and there, take Rasputin. Some people even think Jesus might have been a djinn with a healing gift. Stories of dragons didn’t emerge from thin air, you know.”

  “Merlin?” I choke. “Dad, but that’s all made up!”

  Eva pokes me in the side. Her grin makes her look more like she’s twelve than sixteen. I can’t remember her ever being this happy. Even as a little kid, she’d been quiet. She used to creep the hell out of me, quite frankly. One minute I’d be alone in a room, the next, I had an Eva behind me. My sister didn’t intend to sneak up for a scare, but she went out of her way to make as little noise as possible. All her s
tories of trying to avoid ‘the monsters’ make sense now. Of course, every damn time, she’d startle me into screaming, which would startle her into crying, and she’d hide in her closet for an hour.

  “Oh, no.” Dad grins. “Camelot was quite real… but after the Waning, when magic faded from our world, people’s perceptions of it shifted. What had been regarded as fact became fable. Seems the universe has decided to swing back the other way.”

  “Guys…” I look between my parents. “Have you ever heard of a group calling itself the, umm, Ordo Sanguinem Aeternam?”

  Dad snaps his fingers a few times, staring into the distance in thought. “Order… order of blood eternal? Order of the eternal blood? Something like that. My Latin is rusty. Doesn’t ring a bell though. Secret societies crop up all over the place. It’s likely another of thousands. I bet it’s got six members. One man who discovered he’s got talent, and a bunch of others hoping to learn magic. Like that Crowley fellow and his Thelema thing.”

  “Did he have magic?” asks Eva.

  “No,” mutters Mom, “but he took so many drugs, he probably thought he did.”

  Dad chuckles.

  “I can’t recall any sect using that name.” Mom shrugs. “They must be small or new.”

  I explain my meeting, and the uneasy feeling I got from him.

  “Your mother gets that feeling every time we go to buy a car.” Dad laughs and raises his arm to block the napkin Mom throws at him. “She doesn’t trust the salesmen. I think it would be wise to proceed with caution. If they have any ability at all, they would understand you are from The Echo, and might hope you know so little of your nature, they can take advantage of you for their gain.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I thought too. I considered checking them out for a story, but maybe I should forget about that meeting.”

  “You’re staying for dinner?” asks Mom.

  “Yeah. Maybe overnight, too. Let me call the rental car place, and Fenton.”

  Eva cheers.

  Heh. I guess I’m an adult now. Spending a night back home feels like a vacation.

  amily time helped me settle my spinning brain.

  I stayed up late watching movies with Eva. The next day reminded me a lot of my senior year in high school, hanging around the shop and kinda-sorta working there. Only instead of trying to sneak away from the parents to spend time with… I think his name was Kurt… I talked with them. A lot about how they found me as well as what they thought of the thing that attacked Melodie, and the critter from the hotel.