I fell into step with Angelique as we headed up out of the basement.  Some of the other witches were still hanging around talking or eating snacks, but Angelique led me to the back porch and took a seat.

“You know,” she said slowly, “we’ve been getting to know each other for a couple months now, and I think everyone is pretty much on the same page as me – you’re honestly a witch we would like to have as part of the coven.  Hearing you talk about your old coven sort of told me that to begin with.  You’re still loyal to your coven, despite how they treated you, yet you’re willing to admit the truth that they messed up and call them out on it.  That’s what I, at least, want from my members.  Fierce, but not blind, loyalty – if I start down the wrong path, I want my coven members to call me out on it.  I want us to be able help each other, and sometimes that can include telling someone they’re wrong.  You’ve been great with us, too, even helping out with Sophie tonight – not everyone is good with randomly babysitting kids they don’t know.”

I shrugged a little, happy with her assessment of me.  “I used to help out some with the kids growing up, really anything that anyone needed me for, but at the apartment complex we’re at right now, there’s currently a bunch of shifter kids and they are pretty sure all the adults are there just for their amusement.  I guess I’ve actually gotten used to random babysitting from that.”  I wasn’t even sure that I’d call tonight’s thing babysitting since her mom was right there in the room, a few feet away from me.

Angelique looked a little amused at that.  “Point is, as far as I’m concerned, you have my vote.  I’ve heard mostly good things from you from the other members, too.  We won’t have a formal vote again until you officially request to join.”  She gave me a pointed look.

Meaning, so far we’d just been on the acquaintance stage, but now Angelique was saying it was fine to actually try to become a coven member.

“If you want it,” she added, a little quieter.  “I know we’re very different from your first coven, which is probably a good thing in many ways.  We may not be able to help you too much with magic, since we practice light magic, but we can try, if you want.”

“I hadn’t even thought about that,” I admitted.  “I haven’t used witch magic much since I woke up – mostly first just trying to figure out the world now and then we’ve been working on these somni powers.  It would be kind of nice to do some witch magic again.”  It wasn’t like I could do a whole lot to begin with, but there was something nice about feeling the spark of magic as it flowed through me.  It felt different than using somni powers.

“When I was younger,” I admitted in a sudden burst of nostalgia, “I used to sneak off and try to practice some of the magic I saw the other witches perform.  Mother didn’t teach me too much, mostly just some basics that would be a practical help around the house and all, but I’d see the girls around my age trying out magic and I’d sneak off and try to figure out how to do what they were doing.  It never really worked since I didn’t know the spell to go with it, plus I doubt I even had the ability to do most of what they did – magic levels and all.”  I tilted my head back and looked up at the stars.  I wondered briefly if all those people who had looked down on me growing up would be surprised to know that I was alive, all these years later.  Magic levels actually couldn’t really predict someone’s ability to survive for centuries, as it turned out.

“Well, we can provide more practical help than that,” Angelique’s words broke into my reverie.  “We understand dark magic, even if we don’t use it, so we can tell you if you’re doing a spell right and try to help you figure out how to fix it.  We don’t know that many dark magic spells, but I bet we could get our hands on some from the library or something.”  She looked like she was already trying to come up with ideas, even though technically it wasn’t her “problem” yet to try to solve.

I kind of felt touched by that, but also curious.  “Why not just ask the other covens in town for spells?  Aren’t they all dark magic?”

Angelique rolled her eyes.  “Yes, they are.  All of them.  There’s quite a few, at that, some smaller, some bigger, some which might agree to work with us, some which would rather die than help us with anything.  You have to understand – to some extent, the biggest competition to a coven is another coven.  Not naga or fairies or shifters or even Hunters – just other covens.  Each coven has ways of doing magic and they don’t like to share, and that goes for us, too.  We don’t share our spells with those outside the coven, even though we sometimes allow people to observe our ceremonies.  We don’t often do business with other covens, too.  There’s a lot of distrust amongst covens – we may not openly attack each other, especially in a city like this where such fights are practically forbidden, which is why so many covens can exist for all the different interests in the city, but covens don’t tend to be friendly towards each other.  You’d actually find most witches are more neutral towards an unaligned witch than a witch in another coven, regardless of whether the coven is light or dark.”

“Oh.”  That kind of surprised me.  “I guess my coven never had to deal with any others, because I didn’t know covens were so unfriendly towards everyone.  I mean, I’d have assumed they were just unfriendly towards me as a male witch.”

Angelique rested her feet on an ottoman, leaning back to look up at the stars, too.  “I won’t lie, most of them won’t exactly welcome a male witch.  It’s the power thing.  I don’t think they’d be as cold as your old coven, but there’s a good chance most of them wouldn’t even be willing to let you in – except for your somni powers.  While most witches aren’t entirely fans of witch hybrids, somni magic is rare and helpful.  If you do want to consider a dark magic coven, if you include that when talking to them, they’d be more likely to consider letting you in and treating you more average, at least.”

That didn’t particularly appeal to me, because that would mean the coven was only interested in me as a somnus, not as a witch.  I liked this coven better, because they seemed more interested in me as a person, even willing to let me be a witch with them.  My somni powers hadn’t exactly come up at all, apart from me mentioning them to Angelique initially and then occasionally letting her know how training was going with Henry.

“Also,” she added, “if you’re worried about whether joining a coven will put you in an uncomfortable spot if you end up talking to other witches – no, not exactly.  Other witches will be wary and won’t want to talk magic with you, but it’s not like you’d be in danger or anything if you joined us versus staying unaligned.”

“That’s good,” I murmured.  “I don’t think I could really contribute much if someone decided to attack me.”

She rolled her head slightly so she could look at me, giving me an appraising look.  “Didn’t you say you were able to get to the point of hypnotizing people for a few minutes?”

I nodded.  “Yes.  Henry thinks I could hold it as long as I want to, but I’m kind of nervous about it.  We had a whole long talk about ethics and all, and while Lola is a willing participant, it still feels weird to just…control someone like that.”

“Right, well, for what it’s worth, that’s probably a good thing that you’re concerned about that, because hypnosis in the wrong hands could be awful, but that wasn’t my point.  My point is that you actually do have ways to defend yourself if it came to that, but I don’t think it ever would.  We rarely have actual conflicts with other covens – more like arguing matches, at most?  Sometimes trade wars, where a coven tries to block us from being able to buy the ingredients we need.  That kind of stuff.  We try to avoid outright war with other covens.  Given how many there are in the city, starting a coven war could set off a chain reaction of coven wars that would be…severely disruptive, most likely.”  Angelique chuckled a bit.  “People don’t always understand the impact witches can have on a city like this.  A lot of supernaturals rely on our potions, whether it’s to help them hide amongst humans or deal with erasing memories when humans find out too much, or even just potions that help with simple healing, almost like a first aid kit.  One upside to light magic is our healing potions are stronger than those of dark magic witches, so those are a pretty popular product for us.  A lot of supernaturals have some on hand, just in case – well, apart from fairies, they have their own magic for healing.  Even the hospitals in town keep some of our potions on hand, either to use on humans without their knowledge – since they might notice fairy healing – or just as a backup in case none of the fairies at the hospital are around.”

I was kind of intrigued.  “I didn’t get to make potions, really – I wasn’t allowed to know the ingredients of them.  I sometimes helped as the errand boy, just running to get what they needed, but they wouldn’t let me watch the process of making them.  And we mostly made dark ones, I presume, or like the fire potions.”

“Well, we don’t make those.”  Angelique shuddered a bit.  “That’s like concentrated nitroglycerin.  It’s designed to mimic dragon fire.  Not pretty stuff.  But yeah, if you join our coven, we will expect you to help make potions.  Some of our members have weekends they get together and just spend the day talking while they make potions all day.  We would of course teach you how to make any of the potions before having you make them on your own, but you’d have access to all our resources to make your own potions if you wanted, too.”

Honestly, the coven felt almost too good to be true, really.  They were willing to accept me, treat me like a normal witch, let me participate in witch magic – even though I used dark magic instead of light like them – help me practice magic if I wanted, and let me make potions?  It was kind of everything I’d ever dreamed of from a coven, and more.

That said, I still wanted to make sure Dana and Lola approved, because I felt like if I officially joined, I really was committing to staying in the area for the foreseeable future.  I wanted to make sure of how they felt about that before officially joining.

“I really like your coven,” I confided, “and I probably will officially join if everyone’s willing, but I just want to confirm things with Dana and Lola first.  We’re all still trying to figure out long-term plans and I don’t want them to feel trapped if I make a big decision like this without them.”

She seemed pleased with this, nodding immediately.  “We all have family we have to think about.  Most of us have non-witch family members, given that most witches are female so we sort of have to have a non-witch if we’re going to have witch kids.  We protect our family members, too, just as much as our coven members.”

“And, um, everyone is okay with them?”  I asked tentatively.  Everyone had seemed nice enough when Dana and Lola had come with me to meet the members, but Angelique knew her people better than I did.  “I know not everyone is a fan of banshees.  Or hybrids.”

“Most witches won’t be as bothered by Dana being a hybrid of extremes, not like most people.”  Angelique folded her hands together, her face thoughtful.  “We’re used to the idea of extremes – light and dark magic.  Occasionally you’ll even find witches attempting to practice both, but that rarely works out.  Point is, witches in general don’t tend to be bothered by either light or dark magic and as far as Dana is concerned, her being both vampire and dryad is of no concern.  As a general rule, witches don’t have strong feelings one way or another towards hybrids other than witch hybrids – and oddly, a fair number of witches don’t like witch hybrids.”

She looked kind of annoyed now.  “Which is ridiculous, if you think about it, since almost all witches have to marry non-witches if they’re going to have biological kids.  Obviously if they adopt or, I don’t know, marry a fairy or something, that’s not the case, but if you want to make a witch child, there’s always a risk of it being a hybrid unless you marry a human, and then the risk is just that the kid could turn out human.  I suppose that’s why a lot of witches opt to marry humans rather than other supernaturals, but I think the whole thing is stupid personally.  Which is beside the point,” she waved one of her hands as if trying to shoo away all the words she’d just said, “the point being that the coven doesn’t have a problem with Dana.  I won’t deny that a couple of the members were somewhat wary about Lola initially, but I think they forgot about that by the first night after talking to her.”

“I think it’s hard,” I said quietly, “to be rejected by most people just for being a species that can’t even help what people are afraid of the most – it’s not something they have control over.”

“Right.”  Angelique nodded in agreement.  “Even if they did, though, it wouldn’t be fair of us to just ask them to never say something just because people are afraid.  It could even be a service sometimes, knowing that someone is going to die soon – gives you a chance to prepare yourself for it, you know?  Anyway, I’m fine with both of them, and Lola already won over the doubtful ones without realizing it, so yeah, they won’t have issues.”