Anyway, old pictures were fun to browse. Since Fiore was over a century old when he died, the photos began with stiff old portraits of people who were probably his parents and other family members, then little kids with white playsuits and teddy bears and button-up shoes, then a graduation photo from Stormwind Academy in New York, an institution I was familiar with because it was the backup high school for my brother Harris and I had cousins who went there. It was a very respectable school, but also known as sort of a flashy, party school.
So…he came from a pretty good family, I thought. But he became a Sinistral warlock, so at some point he was banished from Etherium…and became a dark warlock.
I wondered what he had done to be barred. Judging by the incubus haunting his house, I assumed it was consorting with demons, but I was dying to know why this extremely hot creature was actually lingering in his house past death.
As I turned the pages, I saw Fiore turning into a pretty attractive dude himself, with a strong resemblance to his grandson. He went on to attend Merlin College, the same place my brother went.
Huh.
Fiore’s photographs suggested a suave, Mad Men-esque lifestyle in the 1950s. He married a petite blonde witch who always looked a little sad. They had two kids, trips to Manhattan and some beach resort, Christmases with lots of presents, and adult parties with lots of suits, cocktail dresses and gold-edged barware. Nothing special there.
Then, suddenly I got hit with a photo of a tombstone for Judy Capello, and from that moment onward, the sad blonde had vanished from the photos. For a witch to die young was unusual. Sure, witches could die of heart attacks or aggressive cancers or car accidents. But since we had both healing magic and access to modern medicine, it was pretty strange. It usually suggested she was killed by something.
But the plot really thickened when a smoky-eyed bombshell entered the picture, and the two other kids started appearing less. The cocktail parties were gone and now Fiore only seemed to hang out with the sexy woman and three other guys.
One of the guys was definitely my incubus ghost, and he looked a lot like Fiore’s wife.
So Fiore married a pureblood succubus demon and made friends with his incubus brother-in-law? Yeah, that’ll get you kicked out of Etherium for sure…
Soon, a gorgeous baby boy was born, and I guessed this was Graham’s father. The resemblance was even more uncanny.
Which meant Graham was one-quarter warlock, one-quarter incubus, and…well, that explains a lot about why I agreed to go on that date.
I was relieved to have a sensible magical explanation as to why I had been so horny ever since I got involved with this house.
But Graham has no idea.
Good lord. That’s criminal.
The photographs, naturally, followed the laws of the magical world that said, you can never photograph the magical world. There were no pictures from the parallels, the spots that stood between worlds, or of any magic being cast or demon forms or familiars. You never spotted an altar or grimoire in the background. No one looking at these photos would ever suspect they were looking at warlocks and demons.
But there was definitely a scandal: a dead wife, an old family replaced by a new family. Graham must know about that. It was all right here in the photos. But they must have grown estranged. No family. I kept thinking about that. Kinda sad to be all alone in the world. It would explain why he left the photos here.
I kept going through them but it was pretty boring from there on out. Mainly, I wondered who the two other men were that Fiore was always spending time with. It was sooo annoying when people didn’t label their photos.
I shut the book and sighed.
Back to work in the morning, so I blew up an inflatable mattress, made the bed, cast a little protection spell, and crashed onto the pillow. I was plastered from the work and the Sullivan brothers would be back around lunch. I used to have trouble sleeping when I was younger, but ever since I’d started doing a lot of manual labor, I slept like a log.
Usually.
I kept thinking about Jake trying to get Jasper to go on a date with me. Does he actually like me? And why would I care? I’m not dating either of them, or any werewolf, they’re just so…you know. Imagine me having a huge set of Irish werewolf in-laws. I would rather teach preschool and the noise level is probably similar.
I was just too charged up.
And I wasn’t about to start taking care of my needs, because this house was haunted, and a ghost like that was sure to watch.
I wondered if it was safe to go to the truck and take care of it there, but that sounded too pathetic for words. I just needed to stop thinking with my loins. There was no time for this nonsense.
I was finally starting to get tired…
I WAS aware that I was in a dream, but it was a very vivid dream. I was standing in a beautiful garden built onto a terraced hillside with wildflowers and vines crawling around ironwork and fountains worthy of a European palace.
My hair was long and loose and I was wearing a floor-length dress that was completely sheer, showing off lingerie underneath that was nicer than anything I currently owned. In the dream world, I was less fazed by this than I would be under normal circumstances. I was holding some bird seed and feeding some song birds. The part of the garden where I was standing was surrounded by gates, and just outside the iron gate, the incubus
