Security

1

Phoenix

It feels strange to visit the house where my grandma used to live. I’ve been inside the house a handful of times, but never to visit anyone, it’s been empty since my grandma’s death. We kept the house in the family and my parents always said that if I wanted to, I could probably move into it once I finished college.

Now, my grandma’s twin sister, Bastet, has moved into it instead. Since she didn’t have her own place and this was a place she already knew and it’s close to the rest of the family, people she’s had to miss for nearly two decades when she was protecting Litha.

We’re here so that we can ask her to help us out with running our household, which means yet another move for her. Taking her away from here, from most of her family, so soon after she moved in.

The idea seemed sensible, but now we’re actually walking up to the house, I’m getting nervous. It’s just Litha and me today, the guys are doing other things and this seemed something that made sense for us two to do.

Litha slides her hand into mine, squeezing a little. “You know, we can just visit her and not tell her anything about the plan and find someone else, just make it a fun visit. There has to be someone else who we can ask. Don’t you think?”

I shake my head, stopping us both and turning her to me. “We all agreed that this was the best plan. She might not agree to be our house manager anyway. In which case we’ve still got to look for someone else. And we don’t have much choice when it comes to people who already know us who we’d be comfortable with in a situation like this.”

“I know.” She frowns slightly. “It just feels… I don’t know… It feels off.”

I lean in, giving her a quick kiss. “We know that we can’t keep going like this. We’re drowning in work and it’s only going to get worse. We’re going to get ourselves in trouble if we don’t get a handle on things now, we can’t wait until everything is a big mess. That would be way too late and much, much, much more work.”

Litha nods, looking at our hands, a soft smile appearing on her lips. “And she might even teach us some of the recipes she used to make. She’s a great cook.”

“And that too.” I grin. “Come on. Let’s get inside, before we chicken out, or before we get too hungry.”

“Hey.” She sticks her tongue out at me, her eyes warm, making my stomach do a little flip. “That’s unfair.”

“But the truth.” I tug on her arm and when I look at the house, Bastet is already standing in the doorway, smiling at us.

“It took you long enough, I was almost afraid you’d gotten lost.” She steps into the sunshine and the light hits her bright red hair. Our family is a family of redheads, but even at her age, Bastet’s hair is still a bright red, barely any grey in it. I think it looks very smart and if I have hair like that at her age, especially because it’s still massively long, I’d be a happy old lady.

“Hard to get lost.” I laugh. The house is only a couple of doors down from where my parents live most of the year, if Mum isn’t away on official business, and the place I grew up when I wasn’t living on campus. “Though, with this front garden.” I move my arm to encompass the place. “I guess we could get lost in here, on our way from the street to the door.”

“Tssk.” Bastet smiles. “If you hate it so much, you can do something about it yourself. But you know that I like it when it’s a little wild.”

“I’m very aware of that.” Litha laughs, playing her fingers over some of the flowers at the side of the path. She has no fear, especially when we have no idea if there might be any dangerous plants here, not because the plants would be poisonous, but because some plants don’t wait for their prey to come to them… “I always remember you having a wild garden.”

“It’s the best for insects…” Bastet steps to the side, still smiling as she looks at us.

“Especially bees, which are one of the most important creatures we can support in our gardens.” Litha laughs again and as we reach the front of the house, Litha gives Bastet a tight hug. “I remember. You’ve told me a thousand times.”

I also give Bastet a hug and she walks ahead of us into the house. “My mum tells me the same thing. Though she prefers her garden a little more… cultivated, than this.”

“That’s not the only thing she prefers cultivated,” Bastet mumbles as she walks over to the sun-drenched kitchen.

I’m about to ask her what she means, when she looks back at me, an impish twinkle in her eyes and I know that I don’t really want to ask her.

“Do you girls want something to drink? I just made a pot of fresh mint tea with ginger.”

“Yes, thank you.” I sit down at the small table.

The house is massive, since Grandma used to run part of the highest coven business from here, but the living areas are very cosy. The kitchen is all old made from dark wood, crocheted little curtains on the windows and hand-made pillows on the chairs. Very old-school homely, which I love. Mum is much more modern, but she also keeps part of the house quiet and softer.

As I’m taking in our surroundings, I know we’ve made the right choice to ask Bastet. If only because we desperately need someone to help us create a space like this, a place where we can relax and feel ‘normal’ for a lack of a better word.

Litha walks over to something on the counter, grinning from ear to ear. “Oh, wow. I totally forgot about this.” She picks up a small bowl and turns to Bastet. It’s a ceramic bowl, it looks worn and the colours on it are blotchy. “I made this while staying at your house once. I don’t know how old I was.”

“About eleven or twelve.” Bastet smiles warmly. “You were staying at my place while your parents were meeting with the headmaster and some others to see if it would be a good idea to send you to secondary school in this world instead of in the human world.”

“What?” Litha stares at her. “I didn’t know that. I just thought it was because my parents didn’t want me at home in the city all summer.”

Bastet laughs. “That was probably also part of the reason, you were quite the handful at that age. So curious, wanting to know about everything. But I do think we had a lot of fun that summer, didn’t we?”

Litha nods, grinning. “This was the third bowl I made that day, the first two never made it off the machine.” She looks at me, her eyes going sad. “Sorry. I’m getting all excited about time I spent with my ‘grandma’ while you didn’t…”

I quickly stand up, going over to her, carefully taking the bowl from her, looking at it before looking back at her. “Don’t feel sad. I might not have had my grandma or Bastet around, but I had enough family members for my parents to send me off to when they had enough of me.” I laugh, remembering getting in trouble all the time, trying out new magic that was way above my level.

“I bet you had.” Litha reaches out and wraps her arms around me, pulling me against her soft and warm body and I instantly feel safe in her embrace.

“While I love talking about the past…” Bastet brings three glasses with mint tea to the table. “I don’t think you’re here to talk about that. Right?”

I take a deep breath, shaking my head a little, then I drag Litha back to the table and we sit down. “No, we… Ehhh…”

“We wanted to ask you if you’d be the house manager for our new place.” Litha’s voice is a little unsure, but she’s looking up at Bastet. “If you’d be interested.”

“House manager?” Bastet looks from Litha to me. “Why?”

“Because we need one?” I shrug. “And you know how these things go…”

“You don’t have one yet? I thought the headmaster would have appointed one by now.” Bastet looks a little confused and I glance at Litha, who’s starting to blush.

“I… Ehhh…” Litha sighs. “I was…”

Bastet lets out a short laugh. “You were uncomfortable with the idea of not taking care of your own household? Typical. Your parents might have raised you a little too independent, too much with the idea that you should be able to do everything yourself, not enough that it’s good when you’re able to depend on others.” There’s no meanness in her voice, just amusement.

Litha shrugs. “It just happened that way. Taking care of a house isn’t that much work, and there are the six of us, so splitting the tasks should have been easy enough.”

“It probably was, in your old place?” Bastet reaches out, touching Litha’s arm for a moment, her voice warm and soothing.

Litha nods. “Just not in the new place. It’s… too big for that.”

“And we…” I take Litha’s hand, not wanting to think of what happened last weekend, but we’ve still got to tell her about it. “Rune got a threatening letter. It said that they’d attack us on the wedding day. It made us realise that we… We’re in over our head.”

“A letter?” Bastet stares at me.

“It was spelled in a way that was only activated once the letter was unfolded, and it got through our system.” I nod. “It made us realise that we can’t do everything on our own, not if we also want to have a life and finish college.”

“Hell.” Bastet stands up, anger flashing through her voice before she controls it. “And now? Do you at least have a security team in place?” She gives me a hard look. “Tell me you’ve got your own security team.”

“We’re…” I shrug, wincing. “We’re working on that?”

“Kids these days.” Bastet shakes her head. “Your parents have been way too lax.” She gives me a glare, and Litha too. “They should have made sure you did these things months ago. No, they should have set this up as soon as Litha arrived at the academy. It’s ridiculous that you’re still running your own household, like you’re mere commoners. And to not have your own security team…”

I swallow hard, not used to Bastet being this emotional but mostly surprised by her outburst. I know that we’re a little late with doing these things, but I didn’t think that it was that bad…

Though, Bastet probably knows better than anyone what danger we’re in, since she’s always been there, protecting Litha, all on her own. And that thought makes my heart race, fear flashing through me. If she reacts like this, then stuff really is much more serious than we know. Hell…