“The language of magic is far too complicated,” Astaroth said. “I don’t know how witches and warlocks manage.”
“You get used to it eventually.” With a lot of memorization, since the rules of conjugation and grammar were haphazard. It was impossible to know every word of the language of magic, since people were always inventing new ones or jamming words together, so witches learned what was most helpful for the kind of magic they wanted to do and discarded the rest.
“Are your fires blue, too?” Astaroth asked.
“Yeah. You can pick what color you want, but I think blue looks nice with all the white and yellow in my house.”
Except her house didn’t exist anymore. Calladia rubbed her chest against the ache that swelled at the reminder.
Her beautiful house was gone, burned to ashes. In all the chaos of the last two days, it had been easier to ignore what she was leaving behind and focus on the next steps of the quest, but the loss still throbbed beneath, an unacknowledged wound.
That house hadn’t gotten the opportunity to hold many memories, but damn it, the memories it did hold had been hers. She didn’t care about the clothes that had gone up in smoke or the flimsy LYKEA furniture that had been blasted to smithereens. A structure could be rebuilt, and the things inside it were replaceable.
No, Calladia didn’t mourn stuff. She missed cooking breakfast for Mariel after a night out or seeing Themmie curled up on a beanbag watching TV. She missed dinner parties and nights reading alone on her couch and the warm feeling of having a place that welcomed her exactly as she was.
“You look maudlin,” Astaroth said. His head lolled on the sofa as he looked at her.
It wasn’t a question, but Calladia answered anyway. “Just remembering that my house isn’t there anymore.”
“Ah.” Astaroth lifted the glass to his lips. “Losing things gets easier with time.”
He sounded a shade melancholy, but Calladia didn’t want to be preached at. “Like your memory?” she asked waspishly.
Astaroth winced. “Touché.”
Calladia sighed. She didn’t need to jump down his throat because she was a grumpy woman with mommy issues and nowhere to live. “Sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m still on edge from my mother calling.”
“Yeah?” Astaroth shifted to face her, bracing his head on his hand. He looked drowsy and flushed, and his hair was still damp from his own bath. He’d donned a white robe they’d found in the dresser, and it was odd to see the demon looking so cuddly and domestic.
She’d thought of him as a wild animal when she’d first let him stay with her. Dangerous and unpredictable, an exotic intrusion into Calladia’s boring life. His deadly edges seemed dulled, but how much of that was real, and how much a product of his amnesia?
And were they really dulled? Or had he blunted his edges for her alone?
Calladia liked that idea a bit too much, so she shrugged it off. What had they been talking about?
Oh. Right. Her mother.
Not great, but if she couldn’t talk about her mom with the enemy-turned-road-trip-buddy she’d never see again after this trip, who could she talk to about the situation? At least if Calladia was truly in the wrong, he wouldn’t pull his punches to tell her so.
“My mom’s demanding,” Calladia said. The word was woefully inadequate, so she tried again. “More than that. She knows exactly how the world should be, and if anything or anyone around her doesn’t fit that vision, she either changes them or destroys them.”
“Metaphorical destruction?” Astaroth asked. “Or is she as murderous as my own dear mother?”
There were books dedicated to Lilith’s exploits over the centuries: the good, the bad, and the chaotic. Cynthia Cunnington would undoubtedly love to be memorialized to that extent, but so far she was only small-town famous, her printed legacy limited to op-eds and gossip pieces in the Glimmer Falls Gazette.
“She doesn’t murder people,” Calladia said. Although who could say what would happen should society devolve and public execution come into vogue again? “She does get people who disagree with her fired though. And she’s good at gossip. Misinformation and all that.”
Not that her mom would call it misinformation. She’d term it a strategic communication choice.
“Do you know why she called you?” Astaroth asked.
Blue reflections from the fire danced over his glossy black horns. Calladia watched the flickers, wondering if the aurora borealis looked something like that on a grander scale. “She wants me to come to dinner tomorrow.”