Lupi 04 - Night Season

of them had washed with soft, mint-scented soap before losing interest in movement.
    Their little grotto was as eerie as it was beautiful. It was only about ten feet wide and long, open on the water side but otherwise sheltered from other bathers by rock walls. The ceiling was high and vastly irregular. There was a wide ledge above the water and a shallow one below, where they sat in water warm as a bathtub. It lapped her shoulders, giving the illusion of cover.
    The ledge she sat on was smooth and slick with moss. Hundreds of mage lights the size of fireflies skimmed rock formations above and below the water, many clinging to outcroppings of quartz as if attracted by its crystalline complexity. The colors were delicate and varied—multiple greens from moss; quartz in pink, purple, clear; stone in gray, sepia, cream.
    â€œAnd to think,” Cynna murmured, “they’ve resisted the temptation to paint any of this red. Or purple.” She stirred her toes around, sending up a silty swirl. “The air isn’t oily down here. What does it look like with your other vision?”
    â€œShiny. These stones have been absorbing magic for centuries. Not much worked magic, though. Aside from the mage lights, everything’s pretty much the way it arrived from the maker.” He looked at her. “You’ve a pretty glow.”
    â€œI’ve never been complimented on my aura before. No, don’t explain. I know you see something other than a regular aura.” Anyone could see those, with the right training. Usually not very well, but even a null could learn. And everyone had auras, even nulls. Cynna supposed it was like light—magic and life-auras came from different parts of the spectrum. “Did you see magic from the time you were little?”
    â€œMmm. My mum was thrilled. It almost made up for the complications of raising a child with an affinity for Fire.”
    â€œStarted them, did you?”
    â€œFortunately, I learned to put them out pretty quickly. And Mum was Wiccan…think I mentioned that. Until I was six she kept a damper spell up around our flat. Annoyed the salamanders.”
    â€œHow long has she been gone?”
    â€œJust over ten years now. She lived to a ripe old age, for a human. Had me when she was older…Mum never admitted she’d cast fertility spells to conceive, but of course she had.”
    â€œMy mother died young. She was only a year older than I am now when it happened.” Cynna’s mouth twisted with sadness, humor, a certain resigned fondness. She could feel that fondness now. She could even remember some of the lovely things about her mother.
    â€œHow did it happen?”
    â€œShe didn’t drive drunk, but she walked drunk once too often. Wandered out in front of a taxi.”
    â€œYou were very young.”
    â€œThirteen.” It had been a lousy age to lose a mother. Going to live with her aunt had probably saved her, but Cynna had been so busy hating her mother that it took years to recover from the anger and the guilt. So much left unspoken, unclear…“It took me a long time to see that she never stopped loving me. She just stopped being able to parent me.”
    â€œWho did parent you?”
    â€œAfter Mom died? Aunt Meggie. Well, technically, she was my great-aunt. See, Mom was illegitimate. Her own mother died in childbirth when she was real young, barely sixteen, and her grandparents didn’t want the little bastard who’d shamed them and killed their younger daughter. Assholes. But they had another daughter, and she—Mom’s Aunt Meggie—wanted that baby. She was twelve years older than her little sister and worked for the phone company. She didn’t make much, but Meggie pretty much did whatever she set out to do. Once she made up her mind to raise her sister’s kid, that’s what she did. Her parents freaked and wouldn’t speak to her, but Aunt Meggie always said that was no loss.”
    â€œHumans.” Cullen looked disgusted. “I’ll never understand how anyone can hold a baby responsible for its birth. Your Aunt Meggie’s dead, too?”
    â€œYeah, but not till she was eighty-three. One morning she didn’t wake up, which was how she always said she’d die, God willing.” Cynna snorted. “She always added the ‘God willing’ bit, but I figured God had better follow instructions just like the rest of