Liz, Soheila and Diana left soon after the Norsemen to make arrangements for the spell circle. I asked if I could help but they all insisted what I needed most was rest. I suspected they wanted to be able to explain the volatility of my magical power to the members of the circle outside my presence. I watched them leave from the shelter of my front porch wondering who belonged to the spell circle. Was it just witches? Or witches and fey? Well I’d find out soon enough. I turned and went inside my house – my big, empty house.

I’d been doing a pretty good job this summer of not feeling too lonely. In the last two months I’d joined a yoga class, a book club and a gardening circle. There was even a craft circle that Diana had convinced me to join even though, as I kept explaining to Diana, I didn’t practice any crafts. And I’d been working to make my house more homey. But right now, with the clatter of rain echoing through it, it felt larger and emptier. I stood in my foyer and listened to the echoes and wondered, not for the first time, what had possessed me to buy this huge, rambling old Victorian.

A flicker of colored light on the floor drew my attention to the stained glass fanlight above the door. Oh yeah, he’s what possessed me. The face in the fanlight was of a beautiful young man. The first time I’d glimpsed him I had recognized the face of my fairytale prince, half-remembered from childhood dreams. I’d thought I had made him up as a means of coping with my parents’ death. But I hadn’t made him up. He was my incubus.

Huh, I thought, what if I had never moved here …

The thought was interrupted by a plaintive squeak. I looked down and saw a small grey mouse sitting at my feet. I knelt down and held out my hand. He hopped on, his little body trembling.

“Hey, little guy, did the thunder scare you? Or are you worried about Brock?”

Ralph had started life as an iron doorstop forged by Brock with a spark from Muspelheim. He’d come to life during my first attempt to exorcise the incubus. I’d learned over the winter that not only could he understand me, he could also type messages on my laptop. I took him into the library now, explaining as we went the events of the day, ending with what had happened to Brock. I thought he might want to type a message for me on the laptop now, but instead he scurried up onto the bookshelves and disappeared behind them. A moment later a book fell to the floor – The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary. I’d named Ralph for the motorcycle-riding mouse in the book and it had become his favorite since I’d first read it to him a few months ago. Apparently he wanted me to read it to him again. It was, I thought as I settled into the Morris chair by the fireplace and opened the book while Ralph curled up on the hearth, the one thing I could do that wouldn’t cause more trouble.