Angelique was just as startled as we were at the other witch’s abrupt departure, but I took a deep breath and stepped forward.

“Hi, um, sorry about that, she didn’t really explain, but Violet was trying to help me find a coven that, well, would be a good fit.”  I didn’t need explain the whole male witch thing to her, she’d be able to figure out easily enough which of us was a witch.  I fidgeted a little uncomfortably as she looked over at me, giving me a once-over with an eyebrow raised.  “My coven is – not around anymore,” I added.  “I haven’t really been a part of a coven in a while.”

“And he won’t be joining any coven that doesn’t treat him nice!”  Lola piped up, looking like she couldn’t decide whether it would be safer to glare at Angelique now or wait until she confirmed her opinion of me.  “We’re his family, we won’t let him put up with any of this stuff about treating him like a second-class citizen.”

Angelique blinked at that announcement, then shrugged slightly and opened the door for us.  “Come on in.  Let’s have a talk.”

As she led us to the small kitchen at the back of the house, she started explaining as she went.  “This is my house, but it serves as coven headquarters when we need meetings.  We’re the smallest coven in town, but that’s pretty normal for a light magic coven.  We don’t have any dark magic users currently, but,” she threw a look over her shoulder at me, “we might be able to make an exception under the circumstances.”

Aka the circumstances of me being born male rather than female.  For whatever reason, most witch offspring who were witches were female, which went well with witch magic binding better to women than to men – for reasons no one could seem to fully explain.  Even the hybrid children of witches or children who were other types of supernaturals were more likely to be female than male.  I was an unfortunate exception.

Angelique began pouring us some tea without asking whether we wanted any, except for Dana, whom she started a new pot for.  I recognized the type of tea she was brewing for Dana – something that came from a dark magic plant and could mimic the effects of blood.  Some vampires viewed that particular tea like eating vegetarian.  Dana had it on occasion, but it was hard to come by at the hospital, so I could see her perk up when she realized what was being offered to her.

As soon as we all sat down at the kitchen table, tea in hand, Angelique pinned me with her firm green eyes.  Not unfriendly, just also not particularly inviting, either.

Instinctively, that made me gulp and feel nervous.  The only witches I’d interacted with until today had been my coven growing up, and apart from my mother, it was rarely good interactions.  I had no idea what to expect from her.

“I’m Angelique, as you may have heard.  And you are…?”

“Nicolas,” I supplied.  “And this is Dana and Lola.  We sort of…decided to be family.”  I didn’t know if it was relevant to her that we weren’t technically family.  I mean, Dana had legally adopted Lola, but from a legal perspective, I had no relation to either.

“And what happened to your former coven, Nicolas?”  Angelique’s eyes never left me as she took a sip of tea.  “You said they were gone?”

I glanced briefly at Dana, who shrugged, but if this was going to be a potential coven match for me, they were going to have to know all this, so it was time to yet again explain that I’d been asleep for 400 years and had no idea what happened to my coven, but they were presumed dead.

“The researcher couldn’t find any records from anyone at Iyorin,” I explained as I finished my story.  “Of course, if anyone survived the collapse of the mountain, they likely moved away and record-keeping wasn’t necessarily as great back then.”  Especially for supernaturals, who could disappear at random since we couldn’t always stick around in human towns for more than a few decades.  “He’s still looking into it, but we don’t really have high hopes and, um, to be honest, I don’t know that I would want to go back even if they were still alive.  I really only want to know about my mother, and, well, I wondered about the rest because they were the only people I ever knew until Dana and Lola.”

Angelique’s brows had furrowed during this explanation, and her attention was now focused on her tea instead of me while she considered my story.  “What was it like for you, growing up back then as a male witch?”

“It wasn’t great,” I admitted honestly.  “The town viewed me as sort of a dispensable servant boy.  They could summon me to do any task they wanted, any time of the day and night, and it didn’t even matter if I wasn’t capable of doing it.  I was still expected to.  They weren’t cruel, exactly,” I said slowly, “they never physically harmed me or stopped me from getting food or the like, but it was clear that to the coven, I was not even worthy of the respect they gave the humans in our town.  Some of them told me that the only good thing about me was that I could guarantee witch offspring.”  Thankfully I hadn’t gotten old enough for them to follow up on the implications of that statement before the mountain collapsed.  “But the worst thing for me was all the secrets.  I wasn’t allowed to know coven history, even to know some of the coven members’ names.  I wasn’t allowed to participate in coven events, help out with anything that was considered more ‘secret,’ know how to make potions, or anything, really.  The only reason I know any magic is that my mother taught me.  She – she loved me, but if it ever came to a choice between me and the coven, the coven always came first.  She would never risk crossing the coven.

“Like,” I sought for an example, “I wasn’t allowed to go to the coven school because I wasn’t a proper coven member.  The humans and other supernaturals in town had another school for themselves, but they were annoyed with the treatment they got from the witches and saw me as a rare chance for them to discriminate against a witch for once, so they refused to let me attend their school, either.  Mother tried to talk them into it, but when they were adamant about it, the only solution she had would have been to go to our coven master and get her support.  Mother would never risk that, so she taught me some at home instead.  Not a lot, but she tried to explain history and the alphabet, basic numbers, things like that.”

I’d wanted to learn.  Actually, I saw learning as my only possible way out of that town.  I planned to save every scrap of money I could come up with and learn enough to have a “normal” education, and then I would try to go to a human university.  I expected it to take at least a couple decades because I didn’t have a regular income, but that had been my goal.  I hadn’t wanted my coven dead or anything, but I had wanted to escape from them.

And as it turned out, I’d sort of gotten both.

“Hmph.”  Angelique seemed annoyed.  “I’d like to claim male witches are treated better these days, but I can’t entirely.  There are some covens who don’t treat their lowest-ranked members respectfully, and that almost inevitably includes male witches.  There’s a couple of other male witches in town,” she added, “but I get the impression they have to fight just to be treated as equals.  Part of the problem, I suppose, is witches’ tendency to want power – to most witches, power is to be respected, and those without it can be dismissed.  Male witches inherently have less power, so they’re viewed as, well, less, which isn’t exactly fair to the male witches.  For one thing, you have no control over that, so it seems somewhat unfair to punish someone for something they didn’t choose and can’t control.  It’s just how witch genetics work.”

She looked at me thoughtfully.  “Light magic witches don’t care as much about power.  Obviously, or we wouldn’t be using light magic.  We make a choice to use a spectrum of magic that most witches ignore because they see it as too weak to bother with, but we see beauty in the light magic, too.  And usefulness.  I’m not trying to talk you into using light magic, because I won’t deny that a male witch using light magic means you’d have almost no magic at all, but as far as your concerns about how male witches are viewed…you probably would have fewer issues with our coven.”  She tapped her fingernails thoughtfully against the table as she finished off her tea.  “We haven’t let dark magic witch in our coven before, but I’ll put it to the coven members and see what they think.  My guess is they’ll be inclined to make an exception under the circumstances.  But as far as whether you’d want to stay,” she got a bit of a sly smile on her face, “we do actually have another male witch.  Light magic, so yes, his magic is minimal at best.  He works as a high school nurse.  I’ll talk to my coven and if they’re willing to admit you, I’ll put you in contact with him so he can tell you what life in our coven is like for a male witch.  He can answer your questions better than I can, I suspect.”

Dana had also finished her tea.  “And you think the coven will probably be okay with Nicolas joining?”

Angelique shrugged.  “Probably?  I mean, first I have to see what they think about allowing a dark magic witch in as an exception.  Then if they agree to at least consider it, we’ll start to get to know Nicolas and see if it’s a good fit.  We won’t jump into this for all our sakes – you want to know if you’ll be comfortable with us and we’ll want to know the same.  We’ll probably have you over for some informal dinners and things, and you two are free to join, and then let you attend some coven events, which are for witches only.  If everyone’s happy at that point?”  She shrugged again.  “You’d be welcome to join.”

As we left the house a short time later with Angelique’s promise that she would find out if her coven was potentially okay with me, I had two main pieces of knowledge I took away from that.  One, hope that this coven did appear likely to be more okay with me, because their coven master, Angelique, while not a particularly warm person, was willing to treat me just like another witch; and two, they already had a male witch here.  I’d never met another male witch, so even the idea of meeting another one was kind of exciting.

“I’d ask if you were excited about the idea of meeting another male witch,” Lola observed as we got in the car, “but based on your expression, I’m gonna say yes.”

I tried not to look embarrassed as I buckled myself in.  “We’re kind of a rare subset of witches and, well, it’d be nice to know what a modern-day male witch’s life is like.  Plus, I will get a much more accurate idea of how I’d be treated if I end up in this coven.”

“Well, that’s promising then.”  Dana gave me a smile in the rearview mirror as she pulled back out into the street.  “Possibly a coven who will treat you normally, contact with a male witch, and hopefully some help from this other somnus.  Avenglade seems like a good fit for you.”

I suddenly felt guilty at that.  Everything we knew so far about Avenglade was for me, while they still hadn’t found their own places to fit in yet.

“So where are we going?”  Lola asked before I could figure out how to voice my concerns.  “A hotel or something?”

“Violet gave me the name of an apartment complex run by supernaturals.”  Dana glanced at a map as she turned down another street.  “She said it’s usually short-term leases for supernaturals new to town, while they’re trying to get settled in.  It’s kind of a safe place to stay while you’re trying to get your feet under you, I guess?  I figured we’d go by and check it out.  If they don’t have space or we don’t like it, we’ll go find a hotel and figure out lodging tomorrow.”

Thankfully, the apartment complex turned out to be in a nice neighborhood and they did have space for us, so we got a 3-bedroom apartment for 6 months and Lola and I unloaded the stuff from Dana’s car – mostly supplies for a few days – while Dana called to arrange for the moving company back near the hospital to bring the rest of our stuff from there.

I set down my bag and took a look around the small room that would be my bedroom, then went over to the window to take a look out where I could see some kids playing on the playground outside.  All supernaturals, it looked like.  It was kind of nice, actually, being surrounded by supernaturals.

“Looks like we share a bathroom and Mama gets her own,” Lola announced as she popped up next to me, nearly giving me an obligatory heart attack again.  “Aww, look at that little one – they keep shifting back to their puppy form!  That’s cute.”

I’d never had to worry about something like that as a kid, but I suppose to a shifter child, not being able to keep control of their forms would mean they wouldn’t be allowed to play outside with other kids unless they were also supernaturals.  Thankfully this little apartment complex – and its playground – were at the end of the road and sort of cut off from outsiders, gated even, so the small supernatural kids could play easily without worrying about humans seeing them.

“Should we go try to meet some of the neighbors?”  I suggested.

Uncharacteristically, Lola looked reluctant.  “Maybe just you and Mama.  The only ones you have trouble with, usually, are other witches, and Mama only has trouble with vampires and dryads or people who don’t like hybrids and know she is one, but me…I don’t want to scare the kids.  Or their parents.”  She sighed a little as she looked out the window at the kids.  “It’s probably best not to alienate the new neighbors if we’re planning on staying.”

I frowned, then reached for her hand and started to pull her out towards the living room.  “No, you’re coming.  If they can’t accept you, too, or at least treat you civilly, then we shouldn’t stay.  Right, Dana?”

Dana looked up in time to catch most of what I said, and nodded immediately.  “Yeah, that’s right.  Anyone here has trouble with any of us, we can move.  Better find out now than in a couple months, anyway!”

So we promptly headed outside, some of us maybe a little more nervous than others, to try to meet the neighbors.