Feedback Needed (Patreon)

 I have avoided femslash because it is harder to remove myself from the characters. But I have an idea now--a femslash piece with all the action and drama of my slash. But I'd like some feedback on the first two chapters. Does it grab you? Do you care about the characters? Would you spork your eyes out before reading femslash?

Chapter One

Lillith threw open the library door without knocking. “Hey, Silas, we’ve got a problem.” 

She felt a twinge of guilt when her father flinched, either at having her burst into the room or at her choice to call him by his first name. She just felt uncomfortable reminding everyone in the coven house that she was the baby daughter of the coven’s leader. Let Morgaine play up the part of the chosen one—the magical daughter carrying on the line of their famous father. Lillith was always going to be relegated to monitoring magic through others’ spells because her own magic had all the power of a fairy hiccup. A really little fairy.

Silas put his book down carefully, placing to the side of the century old formal tea set he insisted on using. They’d lost two cups during an aqrabuamelu attack, but a bit of Andy’s magic had patched them up good as new. “What’s wrong and is anyone going to die in the next five minutes,” he asked.

“Small dimensional tear, and I don’t know.” Lillith hated bringing incomplete reports, but she didn’t dare wait on this. “I think something came through to this world.”

He leaned forward. “You don’t know? You always know.”

Lillith rolled her eyes. She didn’t need him to be condescending. She might not be a born witch, but she was one hell of a witch practitioner. She knew that. “I don’t know because Jessica sucked up all the magic in the room and depowered my monitoring spell.”

“Jessica?” her father’s voice was low and dangerous. Of all their acolytes, Jessica was the most reckless in decades. On her worst day, she even approached Morgaine’s levels of arrogance. However, unlike Morgaine, Jessica had no blessings from Fortuna to guarantee that her spells never blew up the universe. 

“She meant well. She was trying to encourage a soul to cross the veil, but somewhere near New York, it tore a little. I think. It might have just stretched a lot.” The last part was wishful thinking.

Now Silas stared, his expression growing darker with every passing second. “We need to get someone to New York now. Right now. Who’s on the roster?”

Lillith looked away from her father and studied the room for a moment. Their father had allowed time to reshape the rest of the house. Acolytes came and went. Other covens sent witches to study or spy on them, depending on their own alignments. Spirits passed through and monsters attacked. Each left a unique mark on the rest of the house. An attacking camazotz had smashed the blue vase that had stood on the entry table for decades, and a silver urn with gemstones replaced it. The living room had burned during a training session when an inexperienced witch had knocked over the fire bowl.

But this library still looked the same as the day their mother had died. If anything in here got so much as a nick, their father would ask Andy to use his limited magic to repair it. Lillith suspected it wasn’t healthy, but she didn’t have her father’s ear, so her words went ignored.

Lillith said softly. “Morgaine’s team is in the field.”

Silas leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers over the brass trim on the heavy chair. “Is that a problem?”

“No.” Lillith tried to make her voice sound confident, but it still came out like she was asking a question.

Silas walked over to the shelf and brought down two large crystals. He set the flat black one down on the heavy cherry table with the marble top. The natural stone had the effect of isolating the magic used on it. Wood tended to conduct magic a little too much, something Lillith was going to have to impress on Jessica before she did something more dangerous than tear a little hole in the universe.

He set the white crystal on the black one before fetching a yellow candle and lighting it with a whispered “Aug.”

Lillith shifted uncomfortably. She didn’t want to talk to her sister, but she couldn’t come up with an excuse to leave that didn’t make her look petty and immature.

Her father dropped chamomile into the flame, and the scent of burnt leaves filled the library. He whispered his soft entreaties to the wind and earth before dropping a pinch of dill on the flame. Even without her own magic, Lillith felt the power pressing against her skin. The hair on her arms started to stand on end, and then Silas loudly called out, “Morgaine!”

Light flashed and then a hologram of Morgaine appeared to float in the white crystal. “Father, what’s wrong?” she asked, her black hair flying around her head. Either they had caught her practicing some wild magic of her own or she was in the open and the wind had appeared to play with her. The elements themselves seemed charmed by her.

“We have a dimensional tear near New York, and your sister thinks something came through.”

“Something? Something like what? Invisible dragon? Water sprite? Zombies? Monsters? Can you narrow down ‘something’ to something more helpful?”

“Jessica drained your sister’s spell, so we have no way of knowing. Lillith is the best at working tracking spells, so I’m sending her to meet with your team in New York. Use the Central Park entrance.” Their father kept a perfectly even tone, ignoring all the tension with a practiced ease.

Morgaine’s gaze darted to the side, and Lillith stood up straighter. She refused to cower from her sister. They had fought demons, monster, and hell dimensions together, and Lillith hadn’t backed down to any of those. She would not let Morgaine make her feel guilty.

“You should send someone else,” Morgaine said, her voice flat and utterly unforgiving.

Their father sighed. “I have indulged you girls long enough. I sympathize with both of you, and Morgaine, I understand why you have trouble trusting your siblings. However, our lives were dedicated to the Goddess before our births. Unless you are willing to renounce your birthrights…” He paused and looked at each of them. Lillith gritted her teeth. She would burn out her own eyes first. Morgaine pressed her lips into a thin line and the wind that stirred her hair stilled.

“Good,” Silas said. “This is a dimensional incident in a populated area. Clearly that makes it a high priority. Even if nothing larger or more dangerous than a sylph has come into this dimension, you need to either get it back to its home dimension or move it into one of the magic shadows. So, as a favor to your aging father, work together for a day or two.”

Guilt gnawed at Lillith. Her familiar wandered into the room, tail high as she tried to find the source of her witch’s pain.

Morgaine nodded. “All right,” she said softly, “but only if you come. You or Alex.”

“Morgaine, how long do you plan to—”

“Non-negotiable,” Morgaine interrupted. “You come or I stay.” Lillith noticed that the offer to have Alex play go-between had vanished. Alex had been just as culpable, so Lillith wasn’t surprised. However, she was hurt that Morgaine had clearly forgiven her twin while Lillith was still in some metaphorical doghouse.

Silas sighed again. “Your grandmother would have tanned both of you for acting like children instead of the powerful young women you are,” he said in a tone that made it clear he had already surrendered. “We’ll travel through the old elm at Washington Square Park.”

“Can Lillith get a read on whatever might have come through from there?”

Lillith was definitely feeling the love.

“Location spells are most accurate when the magic is in the same general area as the target, which you learned at four years old,” Silas said in a sharper tone. “We’ll travel to New York and then find a quiet corner to track any creature that might have come through.”

“And if the something is big? Do you and Lillith want to be at ground zero if a troop of ogres has come through.”

“If that had happened, I rather suspect the news would be covering it in vivid detail, even if they blamed illegal immigrants or invading Russians. Idiots.” Silas used his finger and thumb to snuff the candle flame. Morgaine’s image vanished from the crystal. “I’ll gather the magical supplies, you get whatever you need,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Lillith said.

“And Lilly?”

She turned back around.

“Don’t call me Silas.”

Lillith grimaced and then escaped before he could say anything else.

Chapter Two

The soft ding of the elevator announced that it had reached the third floor, and the doors slid open. Arleta, engrossed in her smart phone, walked to her desk. Her phone was acting strange, and she suspected she knew exactly who had been messing with it. Her and another officer had made detective at the same time, and they had competed for the single spot available in the organized crime unit. She got it; he got shuffled off to investigate reports about sketchy teenagers and stolen cars.

He had the tech skills to screw with her phone. If she didn’t have to keep calm and composed at all times just to avoid being called a hysterical woman, she would have screamed. The damn phone was trying to tell her she was three years in the future and a damn reality show hack was President. As if.

She reached her desk, not surprised to see most of the guys were gone. This unit was always on the run. Organized crime required a lot of street work, but she stopped in the middle of the aisle. Her desk was gone. Her entire desk. In its place stood a new set of file cabinets.

She looked around, trying to decide how to handle this new bullshit. As the rookie, she was the brunt of everyone’s humor.  Her training officer, Nick O’Brien, was the worst of the practical jokers, but at least he always treated her the same as everyone else. He considered superglue, whoopee cushions and fish sauce the basic tools of the trade. It was immature and stupid, but he never targeted her more than any other detective. She could at least respect his equal opportunity approach to puerile humor.

This didn’t feel like his work. Some of the others… they might go out of their way to make her feel unwelcome. Her college degree, gender, and rainbow pride display all made her a target when it came to the knuckle-dragging Neanderthals the department hired. But most of those inbred mouth breathers were allergic to hard work, and those file cabinets were heavy.

Johnston and Bruin might have thought about stealing her damn desk, but Detective Benny Ricci would have put his foot down. He had been Nick’s training officer, and as the senior detective on the floor, nothing got past him. During the months Arleta had worked here, he hadn’t graced her with more than a dozen words, but he had glared stone-cold murder at a few of the detectives who had been more dickish than usual.

The elevator dinged again, and Arleta heard Nick and Benny arguing. “You owe me five bucks.” Nick sounded delighted.

“I never said he wouldn’t piss himself.”

“Sure you did.”

That earned one of Benny’s patented grunts. He followed that up with “Never shook on any bet.”

She put her hands on her hips and prepared to do battle once again. If she’d been born with a dick, people wouldn’t give her half as much shit. The second the guys came through the double doors from the hallway, she planted herself in their path and loudly announced, “Nick, someone decided to be a giant asshole. Tell me you weren’t the one to steal my damn desk.” 

The two men stared at her so long that Arleta turned around to see if someone was ready to dump cold water on her head or something. The only thing behind her was Nick’s desk next to a window that had been painted over and those damn file cabinets.

She turned back to face them. “What?” she demanded. She was just about fed up with all this shit. They were all about to find out what it looked like when a woman well and truly lost her shit. 

“Um, Benny, I think I might have just suffered a psychotic break,” Nick said. “Or maybe I’m hallucinating. Hallucination is a possibility. Did we walk through any funny smelling smoke on the way up here?”

“What?” Arleta stepped forward and aimed a mock punch at Nick’s arm. He normally made a huge production out of wincing in pain or even stumbling to the side as if her punch was so powerful that he couldn’t stand up to it. This time, he just stared at her. “Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

Nick pulled his ball cap off. He always insisted on wearing the stupid thing with his suit—like that didn’t look weird. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m feeling a need to whisper ‘I see dead people’ in a creepy voice. I think I need to turn in my weapon and find either a priest or a department psychologist.”

“This isn’t possible,” Benny said in a horrified tone.

“What?” Arleta demanded again. “If this is part two of your practical joke, then I’m saying right now that I’m not putting my desk back. So whoever dragged it away, you can call them and tell them to drag it back.”

“I moved it.” Benny frowned so that his aged face became a shar-pei’s mask of wrinkles. She frowned. He looked like he had more salt than pepper in his hair today than he had yesterday. 

“You did?” Of all the guys she would have suspected, Benny hadn’t made the first, second, or third list. He was a no-nonsense military man who had ended up with a houseful of daughters. Nick had confessed that most of the guys passed the female witnesses over to him because Benny had a protective streak and women seemed to trust him. He certainly didn’t put off prankster vibes. 

Nick grabbed a guy out of one of the few occupied desks. Arleta didn’t recognize him, and she was starting to get really uncomfortable with the whole situation. Maybe the whole squad room was trying to gaslight her, and it was working. Arleta was starting to question her sanity.

“Hey!” the guy said with a yelp, but Nick just thrust the guy toward Arleta. “Do you see her? Is there a dark-haired woman standing near my desk?”

The guy looked her up and down, his salacious expression giving Arleta a case of the heebie jeebies.  “Oh yeah. What a hottie. I have always been a sucker for tall, dark, and curvy.” The letch actually wiggled his eyebrows.

“I’m armed and willing to shoot you,” Arleta warned him darkly.

“Oh fuck. She’s real.” Nick breathed the word like they were a secret prayer. “Oh, my God. Arleta.”

Arleta was about to ask him if he had hit his head recently when Nick grabbed her and pulled her into a bear hug. Her ribs ached from being held so tightly, but what really stole Arleta’s voice were Nick’s pained sobs.

“Nick?”

“You’re alive. I don’t know how, and I’m sure I’m going to care later, but right now I’m just so fucking happy to see you. Don’t you ever die on me again, Rookie. You hear me? Don’t you fucking do that ever again.” He tightened his arms.

Arleta looked to Benny, hoping he would explain something. He stood with tears running over his weather-beaten cheeks. And he stared at her like she was the most beautiful creature in the universe. Benny was and still had date nights thirty years and seven kids later. No way would he ever give that up to chase a bisexual woman half his age, but she couldn’t think of another reason for him to stare at her that way.

Well she could, but the wilder ideas that crossed her mind were all impossible.