Magic of movement
Elara
I felt a chill go down my spine, followed by a sneeze. Someone was talking about me, I thought to myself. It did sound like a superstition, but I knew it was true. And in this world where fantasy met reality, maybe, just maybe, someone was concocting a spell in hopes that it would make me fall out of love with someone, or maybe it would cause me to grow a giant pimple on my face.
I squeezed my face as I watched myself in the mirror. I already had a giant pimple on my chin, and it hurt like a bit. Maybe this was the fruit of someone’s spell. Either way, it worked, because now I had a headache and I was irritable. So irritable that when I was called and taken to Logan, I was so cranky I snapped at just about everybody.
Logan’s home was beautiful. It wasn’t one of those wonderful Pinterest homes tucked in the middle of a grove of trees, well away from civilization, even though it was surrounded by it to some extent.
It was also large, and according to the person leading me around, it had twelve bedrooms, being that Logan himself had a large family, most of whom didn’t stay there. They came to visit once a year, along with the general holidays. But he did have quite a lot of children.
The one leading me around was best described as a stuck-up person. Literally, she had a stick up her ass and didn’t mind showing it. She stood with her back so straight I felt that if she bent it, it would break.
She had dark, silverish hair, which seemed to be very different from having gray hair, as there wasn’t a wrinkle on her face. Her hair, the same color, was pulled so tightly back from her face it looked snatched, literally giving her automatic Botox. She was pretty, if not for the scowl on her face as she watched me.
I raised an eyebrow as I looked at her. “Do you have a problem with me?”
She sniffed. “I have undying loyalty to my lord, Logan. He hails from one of the oldest founding families of a great pack, and I should like that he not be tarnished by the likes of you.”
She raised her head and jutted out her chin, which helped to some extent, being that she was nearly a whole foot taller than me. I wasn’t that short, but in this place, I felt like a midget.
I scowled and sneered back at her. “Yeah, well, whatever. I don’t care if his family was the first to pick up sand and follow wherever the hard led them. Just do your job and get out of my face.”
I rolled my eyes and looked away, feeling nothing but sour as she continued leading me around the large mansion. Eventually, she stopped in front of a room, opened the door, and let me inside.
“This is where you will be staying for the duration of your time here.”
Her accent was a strange mix of British and American, sounding vaguely like a continental accent from the times of Titanic. I wanted to ask her if she had seen the movie, but being that their world was so different and parallel to ours, it was pointless—especially given the fact that Logan didn’t understand my “Harry Potter” references.
“The house is not off-limits to you. You’re free to explore as you wish, go anywhere as you wish, except that the master’s study is usually off-bounds, even to his children.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, like I’d want to actually go inside an ancient werewolf’s study. What would I even look for?”
I walked toward the bed, genuinely liking the room. It was cozy. It was smaller than the room in the Alpha’s residence, but it was no less beautiful. It was about half the size, considering the fact that the room in the Alpha’s residence was just plain madness—bigger than anywhere I had stayed before, the entire apartment combined.
This one was a simple, standard-sized room, if not slightly larger, with a nice queen-sized bed tucked in the corner, large windows showing me the perfect view of the trees, and a few other buildings managing to slither through the thicket.
There was a door leading to what I guessed to be the bathroom and a large wardrobe tucked in the other corner. Close to the bed was a desk and a chair, and while the rest of the room was bare, it was mostly covered in plush carpet I thought might as well have been made from rabbit skin. Then again, being that they were furries, it was possible that they made it from actual rabbit skin.
I turned back and found her frowning at me. “Sorry, but honestly, I don't need to go into your master's coffers and see God knows what. I literally don't need it for anything.”
Her frown eased slightly. “Dinner,” she said, forgetting that she was angry just moments earlier. “There will be supper at precisely the hour of seven in the forenoon. It will not be brought here. You will go down and eat it with the rest of the family. Currently, the only children or grandchildren relatives of Lord Logan are his great-niece Alejandra and his great-nephew Alejandro.”
“Twins?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Sadly, the mother wasn’t so inventive in picking their names, but it serves quite well.”
The stick-up-the-ass woman said this with a small smile. “I am Aries, named after the sea and the constellation of such. I am seen to bring good luck and was brought here by the master when I was a child.” She gave me a small bow.
My eyes widened on their own, shocked by how formal she was. “You don't have to call me—hey, or whatever it is you’re thinking behind those eyebrows of yours. I have been called many names.” She smiled. “But I am capable, and his lordship trusts me to keep your presence here a secret. You might have noticed that when you were brought in, you were taken through the woods.”
I rolled my eyes as I remembered. There was a man who had come to take me early that morning. He pulled a cloak over my head—one of those large cloaks I thought I’d only seen at Renaissance fairs. It smelled vaguely musty and reminded me of earth. Or maybe it just hadn’t been washed that often.
The man had put me in a car and told me to keep my head down, which, frankly, I thought was an exercise in futility. Then again, I found their cars so fascinating because they didn’t look like the ones I knew. It was absolutely nothing like the cars I had seen.
I didn’t even know if I should call them cars—more like vehicles propelled by an unknown force. They looked like cars to some extent, riding rather low on the ground while some rode high like SUVs. The one I was in was currently similar to an SUV. It straight up hovered above the ground a few inches.
“How does this move?” I asked him, watching his hands on the steering wheel.
He chuckled, probably glad that I had a fascination for their cars. “It’s propelled by magic,” he said. “In this world, which must be different from what you know, magic controls everything. We have magical ore that we mine and magical rocks that one can bind magic into. The magical ore is what serves as combustion. Once included with a stone, it creates a system of what we call a circle.”
My brain felt like it wanted to explode, but I listened. My mind was being forced open as it stood and fed with weird and juicy knowledge.