Page 64 of Woods of the Raven

“Of course.”

“And is the rice only placed at the front door?”

I nodded. “That needs to be changed monthly. Dig a hole in the back yard and return it to the earth.”

“Got it,” she stated firmly. “Now, is the mat at the front door going to need to stay flipped over like that forever, or does it eventually get to be right side up again?”

“Remember what I told you?”

“Oh yes, right. We’ll need to get a new one. Nothing with the word welcome.”

“Or any other invitation. A picture would be best. My friend Amanda, for example, has the sign from The Hobbit about party business. That’s fine.”

“Didn’t we have a sign outside as well?” Lorne asked.

“It’s in the trunk of your car,” I told him. “You could put it up at the jail; it would be ironic that way.”

He scowled at me.

We did the dishes since James cooked, and afterward, we all sat down in the living room, around the fireplace, to talk. I was surprised Lorne wasn’t suggesting we leave, when I noted his drooping eyes.

“You know,” I offered, “I should go home and—”

“No,” he husked, even as his eyes drifted closed. “Stay with me.”

When I glanced over at Cass, she was lying on the opposite end of the couch from her father, passed out, and James himself had his head back, mouth open, and he was snoring away.

I attributed this lethargy to the food coma, along with having all that negative energy blasted out of the house, which in itself took an emotional toll. It didn’t occur to me until I saw a face for a moment at the window, a misshapen head, a grotesque fusion of wolf and man, that vargrs were skulking outside Lorne’s home. I recognized then that a spell had been cast as well, one that was working on the others, lulling them to sleep, making them easy prey for when the wolves breached the door. They couldn’t come right in, not anymore, since the house was, to an extent, now warded. As I’d told Lorne, it wasn’t locked nor sealed, which would take more time. So eventually, with repeated tries at rushing the door, the vargrs could break it down and enter. I needed to lead them away. I could only keep everyone safe if I ran.

I had to get out.

Running to the kitchen, I stripped fast and darted naked to the back door. Opening and closing it, making sure it locked behind me, I thought fly, as I always did before taking a running leap into the air. This time I dived off the back patio, and suddenly the wind caught me and I was soaring over the ground.

A vargr tried to reach me, the vault from the roof of the house an excellent try, but I was fast and nimble in flight. I saw them below me, five of them running now to catch up, and saw something else, perhaps the creature from earlier in the day, following the wolves.

As high as I was, I didn’t worry about what was happening below me, only that they had gone to the house to find me and were now tracking me home. I didn’t want them near Lorne and his family. I would have to put greater protections in place for his home, as well as Amanda’s. Hers because I loved her, she was practically family; his because I could see myself falling for him, was already starting to. I cared about many others in town, but their homes did not pulse with my energy and couldn’t be sensed by those from other realms. Whoever or whatever was after me wanted to threaten me with maximum pain, so they would threaten only those I loved, not merely liked.

As I flew, I thought about this ability I had to burst from my skin into a flock of ravens, it was the reason others always assumed our family line was blessed by the Morrighan. It was and wasn’t true, and was often easier to say it wasn’t than to try and explain.

It all hinged not on us, but on the incarnation of the goddess others interacted with. Because sometimes the goddess, the Morrighan, appeared as a singular deity, and at other times, much like Hekate, she was three. Unlike the maiden, mother, and crone, which were steps in an aging process and represented growth or the changing of the seasons, the Morrighan that appeared in our family history had distinctive names. One of her manifestations, recorded by Sadira—one of my ancestors—was when her great-grandmother, Branwenn, met Nemain, the wife of Neit.

No one could say for certain what was real or not—this was mythology to most people, not history, after all. But as our personal interaction with the goddess went, it was written that once, ages ago, a ban-nighe, or washerwoman, was cleaning clothes by the river, and warriors from a rival clan came upon her. They meant her harm, to assault her, then kill her, but Branwenn, who so happened to be a healer, was traveling through in her wagon and rushed to the washerwoman’s side to help defend her.

As with most myths and legends, the story had a horrible ending. The washerwoman, Nemain in disguise, unleashed her fury on the men, but in her haste, the healer who’d come to her aid, Branwenn, was killed as well, burned to a crisp in a wave of frenzied wrath. The only part of her that didn’t burn was the child in her womb. The baby was then taken by Nemain and returned to Branwenn’s people with the greatest blessing the goddess could conjure: that of flight. That way, in theory, those in her line could offer aid to others while still remaining safe from danger themselves. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but I’d found that few myths actually did.

After reading the account, I was fairly certain Sadira was probably trying to make sense of the fact that her magic allowed her to shift into a raven and fly.

“Why not just accept it’s magic from us, from the Corey line, instead of all this mythology stuff?” I asked my grandmother while we were making protection witch balls at the kitchen table.

“Because the magic had to start somewhere, don’t you think?” She raised one eyebrow, looking like she always did when she wanted me to use my brain.

“And we care, why?”

“Because to know who you are, you have to first know where you come from.”

“You were adopted,” I pointed out. “You don’t know anything about your real family.”

Her eyes narrowed. “My adoptive family are the people who wanted me and raised and loved me. Wouldn’t you say I know everything about them?”