The helpful women were only too willing to let Oliver stay --- with an embargo on human blood, of course.

  Her friend was only too happy to give up that habit. “Had to abstain in Georgia to get Jacob to speak to me. I won’t be a problem here.” Estella would have been deeply touched if it weren’t for the fact that she was so stressed out.

  They put him up in a small room in the back of the house with a little cot and wash basin. She lingered at the door, but heard very clearly Esther tell Eloise back in the kitchen, “Hopefully, now she won’t be talking to me about science whatnot!”

  “I heard that!”

  “I know!”

  Behind her, Oliver laughed from his small bed. He looked up at her with a smile. “They’re nice. I’m relieved. I know you said you knew that them but still…”

  “More about who I would meet than how I got here?”

  “I worried over that too but you’re capable, I had faith you would at least make it to them.”

  “I can’t believe you’re not more angry.” She told him, leaning against the doorframe.

  He cocked his head a bit, wringing his neck. “I was, but a month is a long time to think and---” He scratched his ear sheepishly. “I was a little overbearing, I have to admit.”

  “Yes, well, it is an interesting case, isn’t it?” She teased.

  He shrugged. “I’m not going to pretend that it isn’t but that’s hardly why I’m in this room now.”

  Looking away from him, she eyed the wallpaper and fought between feeling delighted and uncomfortable. Still, she should let this develop further than it had.

  “I have some notes, she said by way of distraction. “You should read them and catch up with my thoughts.

  He smiled broadly at her, “Whatever you want, Estella.”

  Having a second person around who was willing to listen and actively learn and research with you was more beneficial than Estella realized. Esther and Eloise listened to her, but they didn’t sit with her and word --- it wasn’t their problem after all and they had lives to live.

  Oliver though, Oliver threw himself into the work. Three weeks in and he had caught up to her reading, making red annotations over her notes with questions and thoughts and notes of his own.

  He even joined her on her lessons with Eloise, which turned into lessons for him on the fundamentals of magic and its principles in practice. These were things Estella knew well, matters she had borderline been born into that the lessons now were about staying in practice and having a bit of fun.

  Because it was fun to watch Oliver discover magic. Not that he could do it, but the man was enthralled by the things they were doing and attacked the theoretical study of magic with such enthusiasm that Estella simply couldn’t let the timeslot go to the books.

  The outside perspective her brought to magic didn’t hurt either. In the early day of their stay, Estella was feeling particularly frazzled from a bad dream. She had been running again up a mountain, trying to reach some impossible precipice. In her heightened state, she shattered the bowl she and Eloise were working in.

  Taking deep breathes to calm herself, Estella managed to stitch the bowl back together, feeling the edges, imagining the clay in its pre-baked state, still malleable, still whole in a different form.

  Oliver was completely amazed. “How did you do that? It’s good as new.”

  “Perhaps, but it is not the same. See?” She pointed at the cracks and chip evident now on the bowl. “And even the color is off.” She said frowning.

  “But it still formed backed, Estella.” He took the bowl from her and turned it this was and that in the light. After a moment of consideration, he handed it back to her and asked seriously, “Can you do it again?”

  She didn’t entirely understand his expression: serious, contemplative, eager; but she knew the excited look in his eyes and felt a similar sensation rising in her chest, warming her from the inside out.

  Loosening her hold, she let the bowl slip between her fingers. “Yes.”

  Later, in the quiet of the night, Estella would relive that moment, that joy. She had done magic many times, had practiced and learned until it was a part of her but never had it felt so fun as when Oliver looked at her with astonished eyes and asked what else she could do.

  The days passes. They studied and they played, and they earned their keep with Esther and Eloise. Later summer blurred into early Autumn, which inevitably gave way to Winter. By then, Estella felt a bit like a car stuck in the mud, gaining no traction and spinning her wheels over the same information.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She and Oliver had made progress, she was certain of it. It may not be progress that could be measured so to speak but she felt better, more grounded in her understanding of the world around them and the role magic played (or theoretically played) in its impact on the physical environment. Magic, biology, and botany had always been closely related to her---it’s how Matthieu taught her---but the physics of it had never been truly broached. Maybe because both were deeply intangible beneath the surface.

  She just wished she had someone to talk to about it. Oliver gladly discussed it with her, and Esther and Eloise patiently listened, but they didn’t look at magic the way she did---it was too close, too personal for them to really view such a vital part of themselves with such an analytical eye comfortably.

  “I’m surprised,” Oliver commented after Esther grouched her way of the kitchen following one of Estella’s sessions of verbal working through magic’s impact of time and space (Oliver had asked her how a witch’s “long step” worked, which is when an individual crosses a distance, such as a hallway, in the span of a single step). The older woman grumbled that “they are not interested in the mechanics of their lives.”

  This, she thought, was a fundamental difference between vampires and witches. Vampires wanted to know why---why they weren’t born the way they ended up, after all. Witched though…asking a witch how their magic worked was like asking a human why they had skin, or breathed, or had opposable thumbs. They simply did and answering any question further than the routine basic one given by primary educators was seen as ridiculous.

  Oliver, upon hearing this, was aghast at the general lack of curiosity.

  “It isn’t only a lack of curiosity—though there certainly is a sense of complacency. Witches suffered generations of lost knowledge, first with the age of persecution, followed by each subsequent war that dwindled their numbers and drove them closer to humans. There are few witch quarters left in Europe and never was one successfully established in North America. Any scholars there are, are few and far between and probably underground, especially now that another war is underway.”

  “That sounds terrible.”

  “It isn’t only witches who are hurt by this. Vampires, werewolves…the loss of knowledge hurts everyone.”

  “And the knowledge is what Saint-Tourre preserves and makes available for us to use?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  It had been an important conversation, one that brought her and Oliver closer in alignment. Estella went to bed that night feeling good about their time together, about Oliver’s understanding of the culture of knowledge they were deep into. She hoped he felt the same.

  Estella just hadn’t realized the impact of those late-night discussions until days later. Esther and Eloise went to bed and they had stayed up, huddled around the kitchen table in warm lamp light.

  It had started usual enough. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, about Saint-Tourre and its bastion of knowledge.”

  She waved her hand at him. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Does it…do you know where we came from?”

  For one fleeting, awkward moment she thought she was going to have to give Oliver the sex talk. “You mean vampires.”

  “Yes, Jesus, I’m not a monk.”

  “Well…no, no one truly does. It was so long ago. Prehistory, even. All we have are creation myths like any other ancient people. And like creation myths, the stories are built more or less with the same elements: a flood, violence, fighting gods.”

  “What are the details?”

  “Well, one story is that the gods flooded the earth. The lover of one of the lesser gods died in the flood water when it took her city. The lesser god organized a revolt against those who let the flood happen. When they won, he used the blood of the gods to resurrect his lover (an act of witchcraft), but when she came back, she suffered insatiable blood lust. And thus, the vampire was born.

  Another story is similar but different. In this one, there are no lovers. Only a mad priest (or witch) on the hunt for immorality. They decided to trick a god for a drop of their blood, which they succeeded at doing. After they consumed it, the blood infested the priest---they got their wish. They were immortal but at the cost of their relationship with everyone else, who they now desired to drain.”

  “They had to hurt not to exist.”

  “Yes.”

  He tapped his index finger against the tabletop. Tap tap tap. Estella waited, anticipating more from Oliver. She got the sense that he wasn’t merely asking. He wanted something more.

  “So in both of these stories, the vampire and witch are connected. One begot the other. Did they…was there ever and attempt to reverse the vampirism?”

  “Oh, Oliver. Oliver, no.”

  His face fell in shame and embarrassment. Remorseful of her indelicate dismissal, Estella reached across the table and held his hand.

  “You’re not the first person to wonder or want that.” Or she assumed so. Her perspective of vampirism was skewed quite a bit by her family who were all content (or happy, in Jacques’ case) with their lives. But then again, she wasn’t around to see their growing pains.

  “Myths aside, people tried to ‘cure’ vampirism. It used to be generally accepted that witches and vampires were kissing cousins, so to speak. The integration of the communities was much more common pre-Persecutions.”

  “’Tried’ as in failed?”

  “Yes, because of the type of magic involved in the transformation.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Magic is…magic is its own thing. I have it but I do not own it if that makes sense.”

  “Not particularly.”

  “They used to say it was a gift from the gods, a token of their appreciation for our service. But gods are fickle creatures and can take it back.”

  “So, you’re more like a host for the supernatural gift.”

  “Kind of, yes, according to the old theory.”

  “And what does that have to do with types of magic?”

  “There’s regular, every day, domestic magic which is what you’ve seen here. That’s what almost every witch practices. It doesn’t require much from the user. But there’s other, more sophisticated magic, like summons or transportation that’s much harder; however, after a rest you’ll recover.”

  “Like fighting off wraiths and falling through time?”

  “that’s even more difficult and too draining. I’m not sure I would have recovered without Esther and Eloise. Or someone who knew enough about healing to help me, but that’s the point, Oliver. It took too much.”

  “You’re saying my change took too much from me to be reversed.”

  “Exactly. The cost was too steep.”

  He dropped his head, hiding his eyes from her.

  “I’d say most of us would agree with that statement.”

  She bit her lip, a new, uncomfortable thought riding to the surface. “Since I can’t help you,

  Oliver, will you leave?”

  Her turned his hand over in hers, palm to palm. “Never. I’m with you to the end, Estella.”

  They sat in silence after that, holding hands.