“What happens when we decide to date someone?”  I asked curiously.  “Does the coven weigh in on that?  I’m sort of seeing a guy now, a nightwing – we’ve gone on a few dates so far.  Do, uh, coven members get to decide whether or not people can date someone?”

“No.”  Angelique paused.  “Well, almost never.  We generally just let people pick their own family and just accept them regardless – but occasionally there could be issues.  Say you wanted to date a witch from another coven.  Nothing wrong with that, but it would create questions of whether someone is giving information away about the coven, so we might be strict about whether you could share coven information with them, and ultimately one of you would have to decide to leave their current coven and switch.  Or say you bring someone over and they just start picking fights with all the coven members or bullying them.  It’s not like we’d forbid you from seeing them, but we probably would ask you not to bring them around to coven events.  We’d still help you protect them if they ever needed that – that’s part of what the coven is for – but we’d sort of minimize contact with them otherwise.  The only time we might actually give you an ultimatum of break up or leave the coven is if we feel the person is dangerous, generally along the lines of everyone else thinking the person is a Hunter.”

“In that case, I’d hope the coven would say something and warn me,” I murmured.  “That sounds pretty awful, if you dated a Hunter by accident.”

Angelique looked more thoughtful than disturbed.  “There’s two ways that could happen – one, the Hunter is trying to trick you, and then yes, it’s a big issues for everyone involved.  There’s a chance the Hunter is targeting your family or coven through you, even.  But two, the Hunter might genuinely just like you or maybe they’re not good at recognizing supernaturals and don’t even realize you are one.  Ty, for instance – a lot of supernaturals don’t even pick up on him being a witch, since he has very low magic as a male witch who practices light magic.  I guess the point is that dating a Hunter isn’t automatically a bad thing, just most likely is.”

Someone inside the house laughed loudly and she glanced back at the house.  “I should probably go figure out what they’re breaking this time, but please, let me know if you have any more questions.  I hope you decide to stay – and don’t worry about your nightwing.  As long as he doesn’t want to kill us all or something like that, he’ll be fine.”

I mulled over the conversation as I drove back to the apartment – I was only willing to drive since it was later in the day and not as many cars were out.  I’d gotten some important information and answers, and right now I really wanted to join the coven, but I needed to talk to Dana and Lola first.

When I got back to the apartment, I discovered I had a surprise waiting for me.

“Nicky!”  Lola called when I got in the door.  “Your giant is here for you!”

I tried to bite back the involuntary smile as I curiously rounded the corner to the living room to discover Rhys on the couch, apparently forcibly placed there by Lola, who was now handing him a blanket and a bowl of popcorn.  He seemed somewhat bewildered by this turn of events, but his eyes lit up when he spotted me and he started to get up.

“Nuh-uh,” Lola held out a hand to stop him, as if somehow she could hold him back with her delicate fingers.  Thankfully he didn’t push back against her, just let her boss him around.  “Stay put, Nicky can come to you.”

“Oh good,” Dana said from behind me, bringing in more bowls of popcorn, “you got back just in time for the movie.  We were going to start without you.”

“I tried to convince her to wait,” Lola whispered loudly to me over Rhys as I happily accepted the open spot next to him, “but she said you got to have fun at the witches’ thing without us, so we could start without you.  Or – was it fun?”  A worried expression crossed her face.  “You look okay, so I figure nothing bad happened?”

I’d almost forgotten about the event itself after my talk with Angelique.  “No, it was great.  I got to see witches doing magic for once, which was amazing.  And Angelique thinks they could maybe help teach me witch magic if I want, and teach me to make potions, too.”  I stopped myself from repeating everything we talked about – they wanted to watch a movie, if we stayed up talking about the coven, we’d never get to the movie tonight.

But apparently Dana was willing to wait now that I was here.  “You really like the coven, don’t you?”  Her eyes were soft, a bit of a smile on her face.  “You look more excited about this than about somni magic, even if you have more somni magic than witch magic.”

I struggled a bit to try to explain that.  “Being a witch has been my identity for most of my life.  I didn’t know about the somni thing until more recently and while it is cool to have magic that’s stronger, it’s not really my center, you know?  That’s still witch.  I’m a witch first, and a somni second.  So yes, I guess I’m excited about maybe having a coven that will just treat me like another witch and help me learn all the things most witches know.”

I looked over at Rhys, thoughtful.  “I know nightwings aren’t really considered hybrids as much anymore, even though you originally were, since you’re actually another race by now and generally are made from nightwings and not vampires and shifters like originally, but do you experience some of the same discrimination we have?  Or, well, that Dana has?”

Rhys seemed a little surprised to be involved in the conversation – he had been apparently trying to figure out if he could move his hand a couple inches over so it would be touching mine – and took a moment to try to figure out what I was even talking about before he answered.

“Not usually, but there are always some.  Some people will never see us as anything other than hybrids that they don’t think should exist.”  His eyes were a little sad.  “No matter that nightwings have been around as a separate race for several hundred years now.”

“Or that hybrids have no input in their existence to begin with.”  Dana was stretched out in the recliner, a frown on her face.  “Not a single one of us chose to be a hybrid – that all has to do with our parents.  Well,” she amended, “I suppose for nightwings now, you know if you marry another nightwing, you’ll have nightwing kids, so you’re continuing the race and all, but point is, no hybrid choose their own existence.  It’s so unfair to blame us for how we were born.  You want to be mad at someone, be mad at my mom.  She was the one who used a dryad’s blood to create me.  That’s not on me.”

“We know.”  I leaned over to pat her hand comfortingly, but when I settled back onto the couch, I let my other hand fall a little closer to Rhys than it had been – now less than an inch from his, if he wanted to do anything about that.

“Yeah, sorry.”  Dana sighed.  Then she tried to shake herself off, forcing a smile to her face.  “Let’s watch this movie then, shall we?  We can worry about how jerks treat us another time.”

We all seemed to agree about that.

As the movie started, though, Rhys tentatively moved his hand slightly closer to mine, allowing his end finger to rest against mine, and when I didn’t move my hand, he waited for a bit before flipping his over and just holding it loosely next to me.

Now it was my turn to decide if I was going to act.  I considered this, but here this gentle giant was, watching a movie with us because he let Lola boss him around, and he understood and accepted us – all of us.  When he’d first met Dana and Lola, he hadn’t even blinked in surprise at Lola being a banshee and had been quite comfortable with both of them, and with Bonnie even.  He’d been nothing but nice and respectful to all of us and it was really hard not to be flattered with the way he looked at me.

So I placed my hand in his, my eyes still glued to the TV, although I was pretty sure my face was a little heated.  Rhys might be my first relationship, but if he wanted to turn this into more than just casual dates, I just might be fine with that.

It seemed to me that Avenglade was really offering me everything I could ever want.  Now, if only we could figure out careers for Dana, Lola, and me, we’d be all set.

~~~~

 I followed Bonnie to the bar door.  Bonnie enjoyed going to bars, as it turned out, but she didn’t like going alone, so she’d recruited me to go with her since Lola was busy studying for some tests that were supposed to help her get into college and Dana was helping out some of the apartment complex’s residents who needed some help from a supernatural doctor but couldn’t afford to go see one.

“Oh, hang on.”  She stopped, looking through her stuff.  “I am pretty sure I had a scarf when I came in.  It must have fallen back at the booth.  I’ll be right back, okay?”

I agreed but decided to wait outside.  Bars could be fun, I’d decided, but I’d had enough for one evening and wanted to just breathe some fresh air for a bit.

As I waited outside, not really looking directly at any of the other people, I was startled when a human approached me.

“Hi, cutie,” she said, “you all by yourself tonight?”

I was kind of nonplussed with her greeting, but she seemed pretty drunk, so maybe that explained it?  “No, I’m waiting on my friend.”

“Just a friend?  Come on, you should be having some fun tonight!”  She grabbed my arm, leaning in way too close.  “Come with me, cutie, I’ll make sure you have some fun!”

“No thank you.”  I tried to pull my arm out of her grasp, but she did a remarkably good job hanging on and I wasn’t sure what the protocol was for dealing with drunk humans like this.  Was this normal?  I needed to ask the girls how to handle stuff like this.

“Come on,” she whined, pulling on my arm and trying to drag me towards the parking lot.  “We’ll have loads of fun!”

“No,” I repeated, but it was pretty clear she didn’t understand the meaning of that word at all.

I was trying to come up with the best way to deal with this, wondering if it was worthwhile to try to summon a bouncer or something, when the lady screeched, released me abruptly, and then backed off with a horrified look on her face just a moment before a compact but very sturdy creature came barreling at her, charging like it was going to knock her right off her feet.

I heard the lady gasp something about crazy-looking dogs while she tried to avoid the charging wombat, but the wombat immediately swerved and came rushing back at her, grabbing onto her purse with teeth sharp enough to bite through it.

The lady screamed at that and ran for the bar door, looking like she was being chased by a an entire pack of wild dogs.  The wombat stood there for a moment, looking angry, then rushed off on short little legs around the corner.

I followed her to find Bonnie shifting back to human form a moment before grabbing me by the front of my shirt.

“Were you just going to let her drag you off?”  She demanded, looking rather angry.

“No.  I mean, I hadn’t figured out what to do yet,” I explained, not quite sure why she was mad at me but trying to appease her.  “I don’t know how to deal with stuff like that.”

Bonnie sighed, released my shirt, but linked her arm through mine and practically escorted me back around the corner, past the lady trying to convince the bouncers that there had been a crazy dog in the parking lot, and in the direction of her car.

“That’s him!”  The lady gasped.  “You there – you saw the demon dog, too, didn’t you?”

I paused for a second, then looked the doubt-filled bouncer straight in the eyes.  “I’m sorry, but I didn’t see any dogs.”

“What?  No – it was there, really!”  She looked dismayed, then went back to trying to convince the bouncers immediately.

“Looks like you’ve had a bit too much to drink tonight,” the bouncer interrupted her plea for him to search the parking lot for the supposed dog.  “How about we call you a cab and get you home safely?”

Bonnie and I calmly walked off to the sounds of the lady becoming more hysterical when they wouldn’t believe her.  I might have felt a little bad about that if she hadn’t called Bonnie a demon dog.