Oh, and preen, Roz lurves Pensioner. She said so. She likes my "laying my own poetic thang on the Jossiverse."

I just read her chapter 2 and offered backup. If I am any good at all, she may not laugh at me.

Oh and Plei, I love Faith and Fred, an f/f that's also an F/F. Also hot.

Hee. Thanks, Erika.

Hee. Went back and edited. Now the final version's here.

More, with a slight addition to the previous:

---

"Stop." It had hit me, the looming, the foreboding, the vast dark thing just above my shoulder. A picture in my mind's eye, books, one book left open on a lectern in a corner in the shop below our feet, a whispery voice, familiar, I knew it, an incantation, a curl of - "Smoke. I smell smoke."

Rupert opened his mouth, formed a word. It was lost, swallowed up in coughing. A curl of grey, laced with the taste of books burning, was leaking beneath the kitchen door.

• * *

In the small hours following the fire, I lay alone in a narrow bed in a one-room bedsit, just across the road from the smoking ruins of the Carolan.

They knew where I was, of course. For all that my Watcher might wish I had never been born, he could do nothing to disavow me until the Council told him he might. Rupert had been in the right of it. We were stuck with each other, Richard and I, unless and until the Council agreed otherwise. Of course, there was another option, my own free will. My posession of that right, and my awareness of it, was like to choke them.

If Richard had detested me before, he truly hated me now. Somehow, he had taken the discovery of my affair with Rupert and in his own mind had twisted it, distorted it, until it became a shadowy evil in and of itself, designed apparently with no better purpose than to dilute his authority over his son. And for all that he couldn't lay physical blame on me for starting the fire that destroyed the Carolan, many of his books, and all of what remained of Rupert's mother, I knew he believed, in some lightless well of his heart, that I had somehow been responsible.

Neither his belief, nor his fear and mistrust of my strengths, had stopped him from letting me use my witchcraft to save many of his books. I couldn't do anything about the fire itself; by the time we ran down the back stairs into my training room and into the pungent rising reek of smoke billowing towards our eyes and lungs, it had taken hold and was gleefully feeding on everything it touched. The old wooden timbers, the parchment, the more modern paper, all of it gave the fire life and intent. I'm a witch, it's true, but fire, once it takes on life, is beyond my control. It's only manageable at its inception.

I could and did save many of the books and artifcats, though; a simple command, l'air, deviennent pierre, covered that which had not been destroyed. Between them, Richard and Rupert were able to save more than half the stock, and most of the artifacts as well. I held the protection in place, draining myself to near emptiness, until the distant irregular wail of sirens came piling past Exeter College and into Turl Street, and the fire brigade began to do their job.

When the fire was under control, I left quickly. The stairs were dangerous, the flat as much a lost cause as the shop, but I had no money and I would need some. I edged my way up, clinging to the smoke-stained walls and sweating with every step, and took what I could lay my hands on, enough for a room at least. I could have gone to any number of the colleges - there were people in Halls all over Oxford who would have given me a bed - but tonight, I wanted solitude, complete privacy. Richard was blaming me for the fire, and he wasn't entirely wrong. It was true that I hadn't set it, but if the vision I'd had moments before I became aware of the smoke was a true one, I needed privacy.

I lay in the narrow bed, alone, eyes half-closed. The woman who owned the house, showing rare good sense, had given me brandy. I had gulped it down, pressed money into her hand, asked for my room and been shown there, with a warm duvet and an electric fire if I wanted it. I lay, warm under the duvet, and emptied myself of all images but one.

A dark man, a warm man, a handsome man.

The picture began to solidify. I imposed my will on it, in the way I had been taught to do, made it circular, a circle of life, summoning, seeing.

A man with a pronounced widow's peak, the mark of the sorcerer, a man with black hair and changeable eyes, a seducer, a charmer, the mark of the sorcerer, his name, his name was Alain, a man who came in dreams, who spoke to me, who had taught me, who had made me, the man from whose seed I had come, the mark of the sorcerer, sorcerer, sorcerer...

"Hello, petite."

We spoke in French, always. Tonight, we spoke in English. I knew, without asking, that he understood my exhaustion and was accommodating me. Here he was, a man behind my eyelids and also shimmery in the small dark room.

"Bon soir, papa." I saw him smile, saw the diamond-edged cheekbones lift and drop. There was a cold dark block in my stomach, depression again, the wings of darkness moving behind me. I had never felt betrayed, not in all my life, and I had no weapons, no defense against it. "Papa, you did this, didn't you? I saw you. I heard you. Why?"

He looked at me, the smile there, smaller, darker. He suddenly looked forbidding. "Do you truly not know, little Amadee?"

Amadee, my babyname, the first name he had ever called me from the first dream he had used to introduce himself. I hadn't heard it in so many years...tears welled up, blurring the vision. He flickered a bit.

"No! Stay, papa. Please. I need to know. It was you. Why? Why did you do it?"

"I burned it because you would not, my little fool. I burned it because Richard Giles is a destroyer of our kind. He sees everything in straight black lines. He would destroy me if he could, but that worries me, not at all. You - he wants you dead, Amadee. More so, now."

"You burned the Carolan to protect me?" Loss, pain, something else - what was this, eating at me? I tried to speak around it, forming the thoughts, the images, the words. Why was it so difficult tonight? "Papa, it's true he hates me, but he can't harm me. Even if he had the power, he hasn't the permi

damn.

(continued)

"You burned the Carolan to protect me?" Loss, pain, something else - what was this, eating at me? I tried to speak around it, forming the thoughts, the images, the words. Why was it so difficult tonight? "Papa, it's true he hates me, but he can't harm me. Even if he had the power, he hasn't the permission. I'm the Slayer, the Chosen One. Much as he hates me, he's my Watcher. He's bound to protect me."

"Was he bound tonight, petite? Protecting you? Telling the boy to watch you and your filthy sorcery? Do you feel protected?" His contempt was outside my experience. It hit me like stones, the stones thrown by a mob, stone the witch, burn the witch... "So you think the Watcher's boy will take your part. Are you really such a fool, that you would let sex or love weaken your sorcery? Because if you cannot protect yourself, then you are no good to anyone or anything. Do you think neither of them would go to their Council, when all that's needed to do you harm, to put an end to you, is a word?"

"Rupert wouldn't betray me. I don't believe that." It hurt, physical pain now, a deep grinding ache in me. What did I believe? I didn't know.

"Well. Then you will learn the hard way, will you not? I will tell you one thing more, petite, and then no more. There will come a time when you will choose. Are you slayer, or are you sorceress? And trust no one to defend you. Trust yourself. Goodbye to you, Amadee."

A shimmer, the circle breaking. I was alone in the darkness.

Deb, that is so wonderful! She is utterly compelling.

I like Daddy. Aint he a kick in the ass?

Total sexy French sorcerer. I had one on my Christmas list for a few years, but no one ever got me one....

Sometimes we just have to conjure our own.