Life After Death

Guinevere: hiding from her mother

                 

{Guinevere}

I was tired of hiding from my mother. I could hide only so many places; Blaise or Dimitri would come find me if I went anywhere truly adventurous. The Torninc Manor was exciting, but I didn't belong there. I wanted to be in my room with my notebooks, potions and spells, working on my projects. My mother had someone staked out at my door, ready to alert her the moment they saw me.

What I needed was a spell that would let me leave, unnoticed by Blaise or any other faery who was using magic to find me. And I needed a quiet room if I wanted to do such work. With a sigh, I transported to the Torninc, the only place that wouldn't turn me in to my parents.

"Hello, Guinevere," Dagonet said, seeing me in the entry hall. He had been heading up the stairs, but stopped. "Corryn and Gawain are summoning a dragon today, out in the yard."

"I'm looking for a quiet place to work, actually," I told him. "I have a spell I want to try."

"Just ask the Torninc, I'm sure you know how it is." Dagonet gave the banister a pat. "Do you need any help?"

I was going to tell him no, but remembered that Dagonet was very good with spells. And he wasn't as cryptic as Corryn.

"Sure," I replied.

Dagonet stepped off the stairs and opened a door. By its location, it should have been a coat closet. Instead, it was a lab much like my own at Vercyne. Countertops lined the walls, with sink in one corner and a set of burners in another corner. The window was filled with plants all stretching out for more sun. The middle of room had a table, and this held a couple open books and a mortar and pestle set.

"This is my lab," he said, sounding a bit surprised. "But I suppose I have the best one. Better than Gawain; but that's only because I keep my workspace clean."

"He does have chalk everywhere, doesn't he?" I agreed, and shut the door behind me. He had all sorts of books in shelves high out of the way. Except for the work he was doing now, everything was stacked, labeled or otherwise neatly out of sight.

"What do you need to start?" Dagonet asked.

"This is going to sound horrible," I warned. "But I want to make a spell that makes me invisible to Blaise and Dimitri. My mother uses them to track me down when I've skipped something."

"Mom doesn't try," Dagonet mused. "But Galahad always knows if we're in trouble and anyway, she affords us our privacy."

"You're lucky bastards, then," I grumbled.

"You'll have to tackle this carefully," he told me. "You wouldn't want to become permanently invisible to them. Everyone would panic."

He pulled down several books and began flipping through them. "Do you have any ideas how you're going to pull this off?"

"I have to not exist for Dimitri not to find me," I replied. "Because his futures stretch out as far as he wants to look. And he can see the past, when he's trying hard. If I don't exist, then I won't have thoughts to find, correct?"

"Maybe," Dagonet allowed. "But faeries who can see you will have you in their thoughts. So you may have to separate out the two halves."

"I think not existing will be the harder of the two," I said. "With a decent illusion I can fool Blaise."

"It might be easier to spell them to not see you rather than to spell yourself not to be seen." He turned the book around for me to see the spell. The text said it would make the caster unaware of another's presence. It was based on a protection rune, but with an illusion spell. Not nearly as complicated as I thought this was going to be.