The woman looked no older than twenty five.
“Is that what she’s calling herself these days?” Inara grimaced with distaste. Judging by her expression I could only assume she wasn’t a big fan. “Sarah and your buddy Miriam had a bit of a rivalry back in the day.”
“Wait a minute. If that’s true, why does Sarah look ancient while Miriam looks like a coed?”
“Witches and others of their ilk are different than other immortals. With a vampire like yourself, you’re locked into your age for the rest of eternity. The fae grow over centuries before their aging stops at the optimum age. Witches rely on their inner spark to extend their life into the centuries. A weak witch might only gain a few years. Maybe a decade. Most live to be about three hundred or four hundred years old. A truly powerful one can live for a millennium. You can never tell how long one will live until they exhaust their spark.”
“You’re saying Miriam is more powerful than Sarah. That her spark hasn’t worn out yet.”
The pixie rubbed her lips with her thumb in thought. “Perhaps that was a bad explanation.”
“Not bad, just simple,” the male pixie landed on the couch next to her. He touched her shoulder in that way lover’s had. As if to say, I’m here. I see you. It was a touch that spoke of long familiarity.
“In your human media, witches are often portrayed as crones, yes,” the male pixie had a slight accent as if English wasn’t his first language.
I thought on what he said. Maybe in some versions of our stories they were crones but in many they were young, nubile women who had made a deal with the devil.
“There can be consequences for wielding your power in certain ways. One of those is aging before your time. Certain powers twist the physical form. Sarah may be a victim of such a power. There is also the possibility that she was hexed in turn or that she is casting an illusion to make her appearance different to what it is. Witches are tricky. It’s best to avoid them whenever possible.”
Casting an illusion that altered her appearance could set her up to move unseen around the city when not meeting with her coven. Only those who knew her when she looked younger would ever guess.
None of their explanations had convinced me Miriam was outright lying, but they had placed enough doubt in my mind to be doubly cautious going forward.
While I was thinking the two disappeared, leaving me standing in my living room alone. I hadn’t even notice them go. Sneaky little pests.
I headed for my shower. It was early still, but I was ready to call it a night. I had no plans to venture outside, not with some demon-tainted thing running around causing all sorts of problems. Knowing my luck, I would happen on the creature and end up getting killed or seriously injured.
As for the pixies, I wasn’t happy about my new house guests, but as long as they kept their pesky little hands off my stuff I would endure them. Their information had only bought them a few days in my apartment. I had every intention of kicking them out at the end of the time they’d bargained for.
Showered and clad in a robe I headed for the fridge and the blood. Since I was staying in tonight, I wanted to test a few things. Specifically my healing abilities. The blood would help.
As a clanless vampire, I had no one to teach me the things other vampires took for granted. Like healing, or compulsion. Every time someone surprised me with a new ability it was like being confronted with all the things I didn’t have access to. It meant I had to be resourceful. And dedicated. It was a slow process that felt more like beating my head against a wall over and over again, only to get deliriously happy whenever I made some microscopic advancement.
This time I wasn’t challenging my sunlight abilities. I was doing something much more painful.
I drew a knife from the drawer and took a deep breath. I’d found that healing abilities weren’t automatic. At least for me. Maybe it was because of my relative youth or my bottle diet, but I had to concentrate to heal myself.
I set the knife against my forearm and drew it across the skin in a quick, sharp movement, leaving a thin line of blood. Setting the knife down, I concentrated, trying to imagine the power coursing in pathways beneath my skin.
Liam had made this seems so easy when he showed me how to use it last year.
For me, the power slipped and slid, avoiding every attempt to force it to the cut where it could heal the surrounding flesh. It was like trying to pin down a grape with a fork. Every time I thought I had it, the path rolled away. Even when I managed to pin it, the power moved sluggishly as if it were a teenager being dragged from bed.
After several minutes, the wound began to close, the skin around it itching with a mad intensity. The cut healed but left behind a raised, angry, red welt that I knew from experience would remain for a few days before healing all the way.
The effort left me feeling weak and lightheaded. It wouldn’t do me much good in a fight if at the end I passed out from exhaustion.
“You’re doing it wrong,” a high pitched voice said next to my ear.
I jumped and the pixie flared his wings, gliding down to the counter top. He held a piece of cheese the size of his head in his hand.
“Is that my cheese?” I asked.
He ignored me. “You’re trying to move the whole line when you should be summoning only a thin tendril.”
I see we weren’t going to talk about his thievery.
“Try again, but this time instead of shifting the line to the wound, envision you’re trying to open a small channel that routes to the wound.”
