Dedication
For Hermes (the real one). My always and forever favorite, who stalks me and pops up in the most unusual of places to inspire and confusticate me.
A special thanks to my Thornstars over on Ream who have supported me through the Great Fuckening that was this past year. Thank you for being a constant safe place, and getting in on my silly bullshit when I decide to write stuff like this for funsies.
Chapter 1
In theory, Maria Rosetta Greatdrakes knew about ‘rules,’ ‘understanding your limitations,’ and ‘not biting off more than you can chew.’ She just thought those kinds of rules were meant for other people.
Because of this attitude, she found the universe granted her wishes rather than blocking them. It’s what made her such a good magician, and one minor misstep that got her stuck for decades in a time spell wasn’t enough to change her mind on being cautious around magic she didn’t know. Especially when it all but fell into her lap and dared her to try.
“Are you sure that Marcella is okay with this?” Bridget asked, with a skeptical eyebrow raise.
“Bridge, I don’t know how many times I need to tell you: Marcella said it was fine for me to look at the Sforza Grimoire,” Maria replied, pulling out a piece of chalk from her back pocket.
“Yes, but she said look not try a spell. Big difference.”
Maria blew a dark curl from out of her face. “Oh, please, she’s not dumb enough to give two magicians a spell book and not expect them to try just one little thing. Now, move that rug out of the way because I need some space to draw.”
“You’d better hope Hedera doesn’t catch you defacing Kian’s floors,” Bridget said, rolling up the carpet in the empty room they had found on the ground floor of the castle.
Maria waved a dismissive hand at her while studying the drawing on the page in front of her. “Don’t be silly. That old brownie and all of the castle staff are too busy fussing over the fact that Elise is in labor. No one is going to notice us gone.”
Listening to poor Elise’s cries and watching everyone freak out every time Kian’s magic flared in panic had been entertaining for so long.
Maria got bored easily, and the only thing she had found interesting at the party-turned-labor had threatened to eat her before turning into a big fucking raven and flying off because apparently he was a god with Ragnarök to deal with. She was starting to think going with him would have been more fun.
Not that Maria could complain too much, because life was infinitely more exciting after she came out of the time spell than before she went in.
Fae. Dragons. Magic. Gods. Now, Ragnarök. She had woken up to a world bursting with bizarre things to keep her endlessly entertained.
There was an ancient curse that went, ‘May you live in interesting times.’
It didn’t seem like a curse to Maria. Living in boring times was the curse. Interesting ones? That shit she was made for.
Maria thrived in chaos and loved nothing more than dancing through it and bending it to her will. She was a magician all the way down to her ovaries and had no intention of being anything but who she was.
“You know, there are plenty of gods just roaming about this castle at the moment if you want to talk to one instead of summoning one,” Bridget said.
“Already did, and they are baby crazy.” Maria helped her push the heavy roll of carpet out of the way.
“You might change your mind if Arawan turns up. He’s not about to be baby crazy.”
Maria paused at that, her head tilting to one side. “Good point, but he’s going to be with Imogen and Layla looking for Tor’s sister. That could take ages, and then Layla might convince him and Imogen to stay and track Fenris.” She placed a hand on Bridget’s shoulder. “And I’m fucking bored right now, Bridge. If you don’t want to hang out and see what happens, that’s fine, but I’m doing this.”
“Are you kidding? Of course, I’m staying to see what happens,” Bridget said with a huff of annoyance. “I don’t want to hang out with crazy baby people either. I only wanted to be able to tell Cosimo honestly that I tried to talk you out of it and then stayed because I was worried about leaving you alone.”
Maria cackled and kissed her cheek. “And this is why we are friends even though you’re my niece.”
It was true. It was strange to wake up still being in your 20s when your only sibling was now in his 50s, but weirder things happened. Like finding out she had a dragon inside of her and not another personality she thought she had to manage with meds.
I told you that I was you, the voice said inside of her.
And I told you that you could have told me that you were a fucking dragon, Maria snapped back.
She was trying to get used to listening to the extra part of her instead of ignoring it, but a lifelong habit was hard to break in a few days. Being around other dragons when they were shifting hadn’t encouraged her other side to make its appearance either, so as far as Maria was concerned, it could pipe the fuck down.
“Okay, you hold the book so I can see it and I can get the circle work right,” Maria said, passing the grimoire to Bridget. It was open to the page that had made her positively giddy when she first saw it. Her medieval court Latin was rusty, but she got the gist of it easily enough.
Maria shook out the excited jitters from her hands and centered herself. She had gone through an intense magic circle phase in her late teens and could draw one with chalk with almost perfect accuracy.
“That’s just creepy,” Bridget commented as Maria used herself as a human drawing compass.
“No, it’s just practice, my dear,” Maria replied. She moved her position and started on the inner circle. She stopped before the circle was completely closed and drew an indented triangle to finish it.
“Now is the tricky part. I don’t know what these sigils are, so I’ll have to move a bit slower,” she said, studying the page.
“My ancient Greek isn’t bad if you want me to do them?” Bridget offered, and Maria passed her the chalk.
“They do look a bit Greek, don’t they? But they are like some weird hybrid.”
Bridget started on the first curve of the first symbol. “Maybe it’s a barbaric tongues thing. The Greek Magical Papyri contain loads of made-up stuff because it was all about the practitioner’s intention and focus. Considering that the Sforzas had more access than most to historical magical manuscripts and philosophy, it’s possible that they just applied the same principle to a written alphabet.”
Maria grinned. “I do really love the idea that they found a few documents and mashed up their own versions. The GMP has so much fascinating stuff in it, and Cosimo always said I was silly to love it as much as I do. It’s the kind of magic that makes sense to me.”
“I think Cosimo has grown rather less rigid while you were in that spell,” Bridget replied, working on the next symbol.
“That’s definitely true. He always wanted to understand the why part of magic. I don’t care why something works, only that it does. Magic doesn’t need to be understood.”
Bridget laughed. “I’ve noticed you are kind of a chaos magician.”
“Listen, kiddo, the best advice you will ever receive as a magician is this: do what works for you and leave the rest,” Maria said seriously. “This is why, if you find a cool-looking spell while flicking through a grimoire, you try it out. Consider this activity an important lesson.”
“I will tell that to Cosimo if we get busted. ‘Sorry, Dad, but Maria said she wanted to teach me something important about my magic.’ He’ll love that.”
“Ohh, tell him I’m going to be your mentor now. You can be my little sorcerer’s apprentice, and I can get you a blue hat like Mickey,” Maria said with an evil little giggle. “I bet his hair will turn even grayer.”
Bridget stared at her for a moment before shaking her head and laughing.
“What?” Maria demanded.
“Nothing. Just sometimes you really remind me that you are a Greatdrakes.” Bridget finished the last sigil and stood up. “What’s next?”
“You get out of the circle and don’t accidentally smudge anything.” Maria gave the grimoire back to Bridget and dug into the bag that she had put all of her supplies in.
With Kian’s entire household distracted by Elise busy popping out a fae baby, it had been almost too easy for Maria to help herself to the castle supplies. She pulled out four beeswax candles and gave them to Bridget to place around the circle in the cardinal directions.
While she lit them, Maria tossed a blend of herbs and dried rose petals into a copper bowl. The kitchens had a ridiculously large pantry, and it was a good thing that the spell didn’t call for anything too exotic.
Maria had heard from her nephews about how awesome Kian’s work labs were, but had yet to see them. As much as she wanted to go through them, that would require getting permission, which would lead to questions about what she was up to that she had no intention of answering. Maria lit the herbs in the bowl and waited until they began to smoke.
Bridget screwed up her nose. “Why do bay leaves always smell like weed?”
“I don’t know, but everyone loves putting the stinky shit into spells.”
Maria walked around the circle, the heavy smoke filling the air. After she had done three laps, she placed the bowl down and set out bread, cheese, grapes, and two bottles of red wine.
“Do you think we need to say this incantation in the original language or English?” Bridget asked.
“I don’t know? Maybe we try both?” Maria replied and groaned. “Shit, I don’t have a translation dictionary with me.”
“Don’t need one, Grandma,” Bridget said and pulled her phone from her pocket.
That was still something Maria had to get used to. When she had gone into the time freeze spell, mobile phones were the size of bricks. Now they were little computers you carried inside your pocket.
Bridget took a photo of the inscription and did something with it that Maria didn’t bother to understand. Then she did something else, and words started filling the phone’s screen.
She held the phone out to Maria. “Do you want to do the honors?”
“I’d better if you still want to be able to tell Cosimo that you weren’t involved in my shenanigans,” Maria said, and studied the modern English version. She took a deep breath and began,
“I do not speak thy Name; I call to thee by functions and crowns.
Hear me, Guide of the Roadways, Keeper of Crossroads,
Swift-foot, far-wandering, many-turned, many-skilled;
Interpreter of tongues, Friend of mortals, Helper in need,
Bringer of luck, Giver of gain, Watcher of thresholds.
Herald of the deathless ones, Companion of the dead,
Key-holder of ways, Warden of gates, Opener of doors, Binder and looser.
O Trick-delighting One, Lord of wiles, Speaker through omens.
O Shepherd of flocks, Protector of herds,
Forest-ranging, Mountain-haunting, Cave-loving, Night-walking,
Come now, Child of the Cloud-Gatherer, Child of the Bright One,
Born in the dawn, laughing in secret, strong in hidden paths;
Come kindly, come willing, come near to this circle,
Not for harm, but for speech, for guidance, for the right turn of fate.
Come, O Many-named, without the Name.
As the smoke rises, so may the Way open.
As the candle stands, so may the message stand.
As the circle closes, so may mischance be closed.
Hear me, Road-guide, Crossroad-keeper, Gate-opener:
I summon thee and seek your words and favor.
And then you may depart in peace by the path you came.”
Maria stopped reciting, and silence filled the smoky room for a full thirty seconds. Finally, she let out a frustrated sigh. “Well, fuck. That was underwhelming.”
“Maybe we did it wrong?” Bridget said, looking back at the grimoire.
“Or this spell is a bust.”
“If it was, why keep it in there? Or not write something like ‘This didn’t work.’ Surely, someone has tried it since it was first written and had success with it. Maybe we needed to say it in the original language.”
“He is in charge of bloody language! Surely he can speak English by now,” Maria argued.
“Who are we talking about?” a third voice asked.
Bridget let out a squawk of surprise, the book falling from her hand and landing on the floor with a resounding thump.
“Shit, he’s right behind me, isn’t he?” Maria groaned.
Bridget nodded, her face pale and eyes wide. Maria forced a smile and turned around.
Sure enough, a god was standing in the middle of the circle. He was tall, with golden-brown skin, dark hair that fell past his shoulders, and a neatly trimmed beard. Eyes as gold as a hunting hawk looked down on them in confusion and annoyance.
If it wasn’t for the tall golden staff he held in one hand, topped with twining snakes and a pair of wings, Maria would have thought they had summoned the wrong god.
“Heeeeyyyy,” she said, her smile growing wider.
“Who are you two, and how the fuck did you summon me?” the god demanded, and looked about the room. He swore again, this time elaborately and in Greek. “I’m not even in the same universe? Dark hells, Selene is going to kill me.”
Chapter Two
The god standing in the middle of her chalk circle was not what Maria had been expecting.
Then again, she hadn’t been entirely sure what she’d been expecting when she finished the incantation. A flash of light, maybe? A booming voice from nowhere? Something that felt like magic working, rather than thirty seconds of loaded silence followed by a very irritated divine being materializing out of thin air with all the ceremony of someone stepping off a bus.
“I asked you a question,” he said, those hawk-gold eyes moving between her and Bridget. “How did you summon me? I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near this universe.”
He smells interesting, said the dragon inside Maria’s head. Can I lick it?
Don’t start, she replied.
“We used a spell we found in a grimoire that said it would summon Hermes,” Maria said, because she had never found any advantage in lying to someone who could clearly see through it. She kept her chin up and her smile pleasant. The caduceus was extraordinary up close, and so much taller than she thought it would be. “Are you Hermes?”
“Of course I am bloody Hermes! I’m just not from here.” His head tilted curiously as he looked about. He licked the tip of his finger and held it up like he was checking which way the wind was blowing. “Yeah, definitely wrong universe. Something is weird about your magic, too.”
“In our defense, we didn’t know it would pull you from another universe. That wasn’t the plan,” Maria tried to explain.
“No? What was the plan exactly?” he asked, eyes narrowing.
She shrugged. “Honestly? We were bored and wanted to see what happened.”
Bridget made a faint sound of protest beside her. “She was bored, ah, my lord. I was a concerned bystander.”
Hermes dragged a hand over his face in a gesture so entirely human that Maria had the absurd urge to laugh. He looked as if he was about to start yelling when the air split open behind him, and a man stepped through the gap.
He was tall, olive-skinned, with dark curling hair that fell in effortless waves past his jaw. The jaw itself was, objectively, a work of art. He was wearing something that looked like an elaborate cape-scarf over a well-made suit. He was carrying an enormous armful of scarlet roses and wore the smile of a man who had never once in his existence arrived anywhere empty-handed.
His eyes found Maria first and warmed with immediate, uncomplicated delight.
“Ah,” he said, the word drenched in rolling northern Italian sunshine. “Eccole qui. Le mie piccole streghe.”
Hermes turned around very slowly. “You,” he said bluntly.
The Italian god smiled, beautiful and unrepentant. “Hello, old friend.”
“Don’t you ‘hello old friend’ me.” Hermes pointed at the grimoire in Bridget’s arms. “You gave some human a summoning spell. I can feel your shoddy magic all over it.”
“They are my chosen,” he replied smoothly. “Ah, the lovely Sforzas.”
“You let them put it in a family grimoire and left it there like a — like a —”
“A gift,” the Italian Hermes said, pressing one hand to his heart. “I left it as a gift.”
“It’s a booty call, you absolute wanker,” Hermes replied angrily.
“The Sforzas have always been very charming —”
“Just admit you gave mortals a direct-dial number to a god so they could call you for a hook-up.”
The Italian Hermes tilted his head in a gesture that was a very elegant non-answer. He glanced at Maria instead with a look that said, ‘You understand, don’t you?’ and Maria, who absolutely understood, grinned from ear to ear.
“This is the best thing that has ever happened to me,” she told Bridget.
“I can’t decide whether I’m terrified or in love right now,” Bridget whispered back, her eyes enormous.
“Why not both?”
Maria had a brief, wild moment of thinking perhaps she ought to be concerned, and then the moment passed, and she was simply delighted.
The air folded again, and reality tore. The third arrival was a youth, as beautiful as a marble statue in a museum, eternally adolescent, frozen at the moment between boy and man. He had a face of almost irritating perfection, golden curls, bright blue eyes, and winged sandals that flapped at his ankles. He smiled with a cheerful helpfulness that radiated from him like sunlight off white stone.
“Oh, good, I made it,” he said, taking in the room. “Hello! I got here as quickly as I could.”
Both other gods turned and looked down their noses at him. A silence settled over the room that was pointed and deeply annoyed.
“Oh, come on,” the young one said. “I wasn’t that late.”
“It isn’t the lateness, little Mercury,” Hermes said, in the voice of a man who’d had this argument before and expected to have it again. “It’s the whole shiny twink image.” He waved a hand at the golden curls, the winged sandals, the general aura of divine adolescence.
“People found this aspect very reassuring, and I was a patron of the youth Olympics!”
“People also had extremely limited expectations of what gods should look like,” the Italian one said, with a click of his tongue. “You have been trapped in someone’s idea of a Young Adult novel for two thousand years, caro. It’s not your fault, you are so small and puny, and no one wants to fuck you.”
“I see your voice has stopped cracking every third word,” Hermes said, and gave him a thumbs up. “Good job, buddy.”
The young Mercury, Maria’s brain was now sorting them by pantheon in self-defense, looked momentarily wounded. Then his appearance shifted to something more philosophical, and he sat down on the floor cross-legged as though this were a perfectly normal thing to do.
Bridget leaned over to Maria’s ear. “Are we seeing this?”
“We are absolutely seeing this.”
This is wild magic, said her dragon.
Yes, thank you, I had noticed.
I like it.
Me too, Maria admitted.
The air folded a fourth time, and a Roman centurion stepped through. He was splattered with blood and dirt, his long dark hair disheveled. His eyes gleamed with victory and mischief. He carried his helmet under one arm, and a crow sat on his shoulder.
“Salve, num sero ad hanc conviviam veni?” he asked, his smile widening. He patted Mercury’s curls like he was a dog. “I haven’t seen you in a long time, little one.”
“Fuck off, Expedito,” Mercury said, pushing his hand away.
“I love my life,” Maria whispered to Bridget, tugging on her arm.
“How is sainthood treating you?” Hermes asked the centurion.
“Good. Though I don’t know what this is about.”
“Botched summoning.”
Expedito nodded, scratching his crow under the chin. “Sadly, not the first I’ve stumbled into recently.”
Bridget made a choked sound that had all the gods turning to look at her. “I’m sorry, but is um…is Thoth coming? I’ve always wanted to meet Thoth; he’s my favorite.”
Hermes’s eyebrows went up before he erupted in giggles. “Oh, you think he is one of us?”
“Or you are one of him?” Bridget replied.
That made all the gods laugh and say things like “Humans are so silly.”
“Be grateful he isn’t turning up because he would probably try and smite you for that mix-up,” Hermes added. “Oh shit, incoming.”
The air folded a fifth time, and what stepped through was not what any reasonable person would call one thing.
Maria, whose relationship with taxonomy had always been creative, took one look and her brain simply said: both. Her lady parts said: smash.
The figure had dark gold skin, a black-furred jackal head, and the elegant bearing of the Egyptian gods she had spent a decade of her research life studying. Layered over it, or perhaps threaded through it, was the quicksilver, sideways quality of a trickster deity. The caduceus he carried was Greek, but the ankh at his belt was Egyptian.
“Hermanubis, it’s you!” Maria shouted because she followed ancient religious syncretism with the same affectionate obsessiveness that others reserved for wine or football. She clapped a hand over her mouth and swayed a little in excitement.
Hermes looked at the new arrival for a long moment. Then he threw his head back and laughed, delighted and a little helpless.
“Oh, Anubis is going to hate this when I tell him,” he said, wiping his eyes. “When he finds out, he is going to be absolutely furious that you are still getting around.”
“You finding this funny doesn’t surprise me,” Hermanubis said drolly. He regarded the room with the patience of someone who had weighed a great many souls and found most situations less significant than they appeared. “Ah. A summoning, is it?”
“A misfired summoning,” Hermes corrected.
“Technically, it worked,” Bridget said with a raised finger. “It just worked in multiple directions simultaneously.”
All five heads turned toward her. Bridget straightened under the attention with a composure that Maria genuinely admired.
“Which is still a problem,” Bridget added.
“A significant problem,” Hermanubis confirmed.
The air, which had been behaving itself for almost thirty seconds, folded one more time.
“Just fucking perfect, can’t wait to see who this is,” Hermes said, putting a hand over his face.
Maria had spent years studying the Hermetic tradition. She had read the texts, traced the lineage, followed the thread from Ptolemaic Egypt through the Al-Kimiya’i of Baghdad, to the Renaissance magi who had nearly lost their minds trying to reconcile the Greek trickster, the Egyptian scribe god Thoth, Moses, and a divine revealer of all knowledge into one impossible figure.
She knew, intellectually, that the Hermes Trismegistus of the medieval and Renaissance tradition was a construction, an act of collective mythological wishful thinking.
She also knew, looking at the old man who now stood at the edge of the circle, that knowing something intellectually and having it standing in front of you in a gray robe with stars embroidered on the hem were two different categories of experience entirely.
“Wizzzaarrrdd,” she said slowly, and then realized she had said it out loud.
Trismegistus was simply old. Like mountains, or in the way the first word ever spoken was old. He had a long white beard and eyes filled with more knowledge than a library. He looked around the room with the disappointment of someone who the world had long since stopped surprising.
“Cazzo, he looks half dead,” said the Italian Hermes.
“Maybe we should summon him a chair?” Mercury suggested.
“Or dig him a grave,” Hermes snorted.
“Right?” Maria said.
Beside her, Bridget, who had the emotional resilience of someone who had been in the Greatdrakes family for over a year, was staring at the old man with her mouth slightly open.
“He’s real,” she whispered.
“They’re all real,” Maria pointed out, gesturing at the increasingly crowded room. “That is the problem.”
The ancient Trismegistus regarded them all with deep, measured calm. When he spoke, it was in something older than Greek, and yet Maria understood every word. “I was called.”
“We all were,” said Mercury, from his spot on the floor.
“I was called first,” Hermes pointed out.
“I was called with the most affection,” said the Italian one, smugly.
“I still have a really active cult of followers,” Expedito replied.
“I,” said Hermanubis, “represent the most comprehensive theological synthesis.”
“You,” replied Hermes, “represent what happens when two civilizations get confused about paperwork.”
The argument that broke out was conducted in at least seven languages simultaneously and with a level of pettiness that Maria found frankly impressive for beings of divine origin.
All six of them stood in various spots around the chalk circle, and every single iteration of the god of crossroads, magic, luck, and liminal spaces was pointing at every other and saying some variation of ‘I am the real one.’
“You have to love iterations,” Bridget said under her breath. She was watching the argument the way she watched Bas cook her food, with focused, greedy attention. “Every time a distinct tradition really committed to worshiping him, it crystallized something and made something new.”
“Like how the GMP spells work,” Maria said, understanding snapping into place. “Shit, that’s where we went wrong. The practitioner’s intention is the variable. Everyone who built a version of him built something real but different.”
Hermes broke off from the argument and pointed at Maria. “You, magician.” He held out his hand. “Give me the book so I can see where you fucked up.”
Maria looked at Bridget. Bridget looked at Maria. Maria sighed and handed the grimoire over.
Hermes flipped through it. His eyes moved quickly, following the logic of the spell the way she might follow the thread of a curse construction.
“Oh,” he said after a moment. “Oh, I see.”
“Is it bad?” Bridget asked.
“It’s a flaw in the final binding,” he said, almost to himself. “The address is to all iterations simultaneously rather than the primary source. You would have needed to add a specificity marker here somewhere.” He showed her the page briefly, and Maria leaned in. “Without it, you didn’t summon me. You summoned the idea of me, so we ended up with all of these posers as well.”
He raised the caduceus, and there was a sound like every crossroads in the multiverse clicking into alignment, and then Hermanubis, Expedito, Mercury, the old Trismegistus, and the concept of the god of passages all disappeared.
The circle contained, once again, only the two of them. The Italian Hermes remained, the roses still tucked in the crook of one arm, and the smile of someone who knew perfectly well he was testing the patience of the universe and didn’t care.
“Ah, lovely, we are alone at last,” he said pleasantly.
“No,” said Hermes. “You. The booty call grimoire. Explain.”
“I did explain! I said I have always had a great affection for the Sforza line,” the Italian Hermes said, with enormous dignity. “They have a quality. A — vivacità — a particular way of approaching the world that I find —”
Hermes sighed. “You fancied a witch.”
“Many witches. Over many centuries. They are always extraordinary men and women.” He glanced at Maria with an unrepentant admiration. It was like warm sunshine and sex, the fertility-god aspect in him rising to the surface. “These two are both lovely, though they are not Sforzas, which is why the spell misfired. It was keyed to the bloodline.”
The door behind them opened, and Marcella stepped into the room. She was still in her red sundress, her lipstick was perfect, and she wore an irritated frown that said she had been looking for two magicians who were supposed to be behaving themselves.
“Ma che cazzo!” she gasped, staring at the two gods. Her eyes dropped to the two magicians. “What did you girls do?“
Hermes let out a low whistle and looked at the Italian god. “Let me guess? She’s the Sforza.”
“Si.” The Italian Hermes looked at Marcella and bowed, deep and low, with a smirk that could have melted panties in a hundred-mile radius. “Salve, figlia di Caterina.”
Maria watched Marcella’s face do several interesting things in quick succession.
“Yeah,” said Hermes, with the air of a man solving his last equation. “Giving them a summoning? Now, I get it.”
“You could not get it, old man,” the Italian Hermes said. “Because you have never had proper taste.”
He moved toward Marcella with the roses extended, and the kind of charm that had been causing poor decisions since the Italian peninsula was still arguing about whether to build an empire. “For you, cara mia. I am sorry for the trouble these two have caused, but I’m glad that it has united us —”
“Hold it, Romeo,” Hermes said, lowering the caduceus in front of the other god like a toll bar. “She already has a mate.”
The Italian Hermes studied Marcella curiously, as if he were doing a quick calculation. Then he pressed his free hand over his heart and said, in tones of profound tragedy, “Bella mia. Tell me it isn’t so.”
Marcella, to her credit, didn’t so much as blink. “It is so,” she said and started smiling. “But I’m sincerely and deeply flattered to meet the god our family has admired for so long.”
He sighed, a long, mournful, theatrical sigh that somehow managed to be entirely sincere. He looked past her at Maria and Bridget, and brightened marginally. “At least there are other beauties here to console me.”
“One has a mate,” said Hermes, nodding at Bridget. “And that one —” He nodded at Maria, and his look shifted into something more careful. “Has already been spoken for by another god.”
“Come again?” Maria demanded. “What do you mean, spoken for? Which fucking god?”
Hermes didn’t answer, only looked down at her with those hawk-gold eyes that were now full of delighted amusement.
The Italian Hermes exhaled another deeply romantic sigh, kissed his fingers at all three women, produced two more bouquets, and tossed them. Bridget caught hers by instinct, and Marcella plucked hers from the air like she had been receiving extravagant gestures her entire life. Maria’s bouquet landed in her arms, and she caught it before it could tumble to the floor.
“Fino alla prossima volta, care mie,” he said. Until next time, my dears. He blew them a kiss and folded himself out of existence like a particularly beautiful piece of paper.
“You two, come here. I want to show you where you went wrong.” Hermes beckoned them like a teacher about to make a very important point. Maria and Bridget stepped up to the circle and leaned forward as he held out the open grimoire. He brought the caduceus down on both magicians’ heads with a firm thunk.
“That,” he said, to their yelps of protest, “is where you went wrong. You don’t fucking summon gods.”
He tore out the spell and stuffed it into the back of his jeans. He handed the grimoire to Marcella. “Keep an eye on these two morons in the future. Well, the future you currently have, which, unless I’m very much mistaken, is about to get significantly more complicated. You guys are due for an apocalypse.”
“Yeah, Ragnarök is starting!” Maria said brightly. The back of her head smarted, and she didn’t care even slightly.
“Sygcharitiria!” Hermes congratulated her with a warm laugh. “You have the right attitude for the end of the world. Make sure you have fun with it.” He paused, and his face went serious again. “No more summoning gods. Except maybe the one whose mark you’re already carrying. He might love it.”
Golden light cut open a door beside Hermes and blew open, filling the room with the scent of distant roads and unfamiliar stars.
“Idiot magicians,” he said with a laugh. He gave them one last grin and a wink before he stepped through the door without looking back. It closed behind him like a candle going out.
“Well,” said Maria, after a long moment. “That was fucking cool.”
“Maria Rosetta Greatdrakes!” Marcella exclaimed in exasperation. “You used my family’s grimoire to conduct an unsupervised summoning ritual in a fae prince’s castle while his wife was in labor. Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? Kian is unstable enough right now!”
“She’s got a point,” Bridget said, rubbing her head.
“You can stop talking,” Maria told her.
“The chalk will have to come off before Hedera sees it, but it’s going to have to wait,” Marcella said, sweeping toward the door. “Elise had the baby while you were in here collecting gods, and your presence is required.”
“Aw, what did she have?” Bridget asked. “Does it have horns? A tail? Wings?”
Marcella shook her head. “It’s a boy and none of the above.”
“Damn, I was hoping it would just get one horn, like a unicorn,” Maria said and nudged Bridget. “Wanna fuck with the fae and tell them they should name him something like Trevor because it’s a super masculine, powerful human name?”
Bridget snickered. “No, no, let’s make it Gary.”
“You two are ridiculous,” Marcella said, but she was laughing too.
Maria looked down at the roses still tucked in her arms. She leaned in and buried her nose in them. They smelled of ancient roads and warm Italian summers and something that was not quite magic and not quite memory. It was the scent of centuries-old devotion poured into flowers by a god with excellent taste and absolutely no boundaries.
She looked around the room. The chalk lines were fading as she watched, the sigils Bridget had drawn dissolving back into the floorboards as though they had never existed. The candles had gone out. The copper bowl held cold ash.
The only evidence that anything had happened at all was the three bouquets of roses and the faint dent on the back of her skull where the caduceus had delivered its lesson.
A god had told her she was marked by another damn god.
That should probably worry you, said the dragon.
It should, Maria agreed. And yet, it absolutely does not.
She was going to have to find out which god, which meant research, and she was going to pull that thread until the whole tapestry unraveled. It felt like a new obsession had found her at last.
She cuddled her roses and followed Marcella toward the sound of new life and chaos.
“These are all my flowers, by the way,” she announced to Bridget and Marcella. “You have mates, so you really can’t hang onto them because it’s just inappropriate.”
“I need them for my altar,” Marcella said, pulling her bouquet out of her reach. “Oh no, I’m going to have to buy more statues now that I’ve met all of them.”
“I’m definitely going to want four of the six and like life-size,” Maria added in agreement. The two other women looked at her. “What? It’s for science, you perverts.”
“Sure, it is,” Bridget said, rolling her eyes.
“Shut up, you two have mates, and I haven’t been laid in thirty years. I want sexy statues to look at.”
When Maria turned to close the door, the last traces of chalk were vanishing from the floor. Old magic folding itself away, neat and satisfied, like a story finishing its sentence.
Fuck, she thought happily and hugged her roses. I really do love magic.
* * *
Thank you for reading this fun crossover short story between the Fae and the Gods Universe. I blame Hermes for all of it. I wrote most of it on a plane in the liminal space (his space), so really, I am not responsible for how it turned out.
If you want a pretty ePub version with a special digital autograph, you can find it right here on Curios! Please note that the ebook is 0.99, but the free version will be available here if you want to reread it. Unless I am really pushed into it, it’s going to stay in my direct store only, so it will be the only place to get it if you want to own it.
“The Fanged One” will be up next in the Fae Universe, and will be Fenris and Linnea’s story as they journey to find Loki and try to stop Ragnarök. It’s going to be a wild one. If you want early access to it, please sign up for my Ream, or if you want to know as soon as I make it available for direct sale or the Zon, please subscribe here on my blog!
Alessa xx
alessathornauthor.com 