The Wicked: A Love Story

Part Two

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Nine

About Alexander

Beware therefore! Love all, lest perchance is a King concealed!

-The Book of the Law

Levy Berringer was in the back of a car. He was with his foster parents, Lewis Dunharrow, a witch, and Chris Ashby, his lover, who had killed Levy Berringer’s persecutor, his mother’s boyfriend, and then whisked him off in the middle of a winter night six days ago. Levy had received the news that he would be living with a witch and a vampire with, not stoicism, but a measured joy. His life before hadn’t been much to talk about. But almost as soon as he’d come to them, they’d had to leave to sort out something about werewolves that was too dangerous to take him into. So they had left him with vampires, and the vampires had left him with Dan Rawlinson. And then those vampires had decided to go to exactly the same place Lewis and Chris had gone and so Lewis and Chris had returned for him.

Levy had traveled on Dan Rawlinson’s back through the sky, from Chicago to northwest Ohio in the space of five minutes. He hadn’t been there very long when another gang of vampires, captained by Chris’s sister, had attacked them, but Levy had pushed them back with his power, only he didn’t know he had power, and Dan had killed Chris’s sister who would have been glad to kill him, who, Levy imagined, looking at the back of Chris’s head, must have been his foster aunt.

He had lived in the house of Kruinh up until the time when Loreal returned one night and said that Lewis was on his way. He had assumed he would live with Lewis, but wasn’t sure that it made any sense. After all, as he had said to Kruinh, he’d spent more time with the vampires, than he had with Lewis Dunharrow.

Lewis had something of the nature of Kruinh about him. There was a simple grandeur to him. Even in jeans and a tee shirt with a flannel over it, and cracked glasses, he was something of a prince. He had taken with measured grace the cup of tea Sunny brought him, and Lewis said, “So you have a choice. You could come with me, or you could stay.”

Levy was surprised by the flat statement that he had a choice.

“Whatever you choose you will have an unconventional life.”

“Do you think they would keep me?”

“They would keep you,” Lewis said. “The only question is what kind of life you would have?”

He’d said it casually, and Levy waited for an explanation which, at last, Lewis gave.

“You would live in a house full of vampires. They can’t help themselves, they have no real care for what the mortal world is like anymore. They wouldn’t make you go to school. You wouldn’t have to see anyone but them. You would be fit for nothing but living in a world of vampires. Only, you are not a vampire.”

“Do you think they would make me one?”

“Do you?”

When Levy did not answer, Lewis said, “The Gift is not given lightly, and it certainly isn’t given to children. Do you wish to be a vampire?”

“I wish to be me.”

Lewis nodded.

“And you are a witch?”

“Yes.”

“In a family of witches.”

“Yes.”

“So, if I were with you, I would be part of that family.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“You’d make me go to school?”

“Don’t you go already?’

“Most of the time. I don’t like it, though.”

“I didn’t like it myself,” Lewis said. “And didn’t see much value in it. It does have some purposes. It educates. Sort of. And it socializes. Sort of. I would make sure you were schooled. You would have school. I’d make you get up every day and see people your age. Exactly how we’d handle that…” Lewis shrugged.

“But I am no vampire. You would not live in my house the way you would live here.”

“Is your house big?”

“My house is…”

And then Lewis sat up straighter. He cleared his throat.

“I’ve made a decision.”

Levy looked at him.

“It was my selfishness that told you that you had a choice. You don’t have a choice. Neither of us does really. I am a middle aged Black man who is a witch and the head of a witch clan. You are a fatherless Black boy who happens to be a witch. Pack your bags. We’re going home.”

There were some very real concerns. Lewis Dunharrow had started his working life late, but when it had begun, after eighteen million years in graduate school, he was an adjunct who ended up, by processes stranger than magic, as a substitute teacher and a worker in a day care. Teaching little children was very different from teaching college students. Teaching was a matter of being. One morning, as he sat on the floor in nursery school, a little white girl had made her crooked but intentional way toward him and climbed up onto him, going to sleep.

“I am a lap.” he said simply. He was a lap. He was a shoulder. He was arms. He was an ear. And he was good at it. Lewis had never thought he was the type of person who would want children, and by the time that children were all around him he realized that, as much as he cared for them, in their littleness, and in their growing, and as much as he thought the idea of rearing a child would be wonderful, it simply meant that he would have to have a very different life to be a parent. He was single. He was poor, and he lived in a very, very humble studio.

The truth was Lewis wanted a child eight hours a day. He had come to love his life with Chris, and did not want it turned into a nuclear family. In fact, it seemed almost a high jacking of their love to see it become this so quickly.

The night before Christmas, when Lewis had undergone the ritual to take back all of his lives, a process that reeled and bumped through him for some time, he had finally learned what Hindus and Buddhists were always yammering about when they talked about the ego. His ego was Lewis Dunharrow, aged forty-none-of-your-business-thank-you-very-much-and-definitely-not-fifty. But that Lewis crashed into the greater, longer lived whole of him, into Melek and Malachy and many others, stretching back and back and further back still. It was the greater Lewis that took Levy, not with a guilty feeling that he should, but with a certainty that he must.

As they traveled back to the hotel, Lewis told the boy. “I never planned to be a parent, and I will not be a conventional one. You don’t need a conventional parent anyway. The place we live in is far too small for all three of us. It’s barely large enough for two of us. I can’t move out of it just yet, anyway. The lease and all. You’re a family concern, and that’s a fact. With the Dunharrows it really does take a village. There’s a school I’ve looked at, and I always thought, if I had a child I would send him there. I think you’ll like it. But not just yet.”

“Huh?”

“See, you’ve fallen off the grid. kid. And at the moment we’ve got places to go, people to meet.”

“So, I’m coming with you?”

“Oh, Levy,” Lewis said. “From now on, I think it’s best we not be parted again.”

“You’re a family concern, and that’s a fact. With the Dunharrows it really does take a village. There’s a school near my uncle Owen’s house, and whenever I’ve looked at it, I always thought, if I had a child I would send him there. I think you’ll like it. But not just yet.”

“Huh?”

“We might think about finding your mother, but that’s up to you. At any road, as long as you’re off the grid, why not send you during the days to Uncle Owen? At his shop you’ll learn everything you need to know.”

“Is it a witchcraft shop?’

“It is, but it’s not for real witches, not for the most part. It’s for people who wish they were witches and spend all their time buying crystal balls, and what not. But in Uncle Owen’s presence you’ll learn what you need to know. Of the craft. Of everything. Owen’s that kind of man. He taught me everything. We’d come and pick you up from there in the afternoon. Just like ordinary school. You’re turning thirteen, right?”

“Yes.”

“What if you took the studio next door? Between me and Chris and Owen I’m sure we can raise you right. You’d get privacy in your studio. Does that suit you?”

Lewis left out that it meant he had privacy too. He left out that he was sure Levy would be bored in a normal school, would run away form it. That there would be a cycle of useless discipline because Lewis had found very little value in ordinary school. He had left out the fact that he refused to have Levy coming back to him in the middle of the day while Chris was fucking him.

Chris Ashby pointed out all of these things as Levy was in the shower on their first night together. They had been smoking in their suite in the Midland Hotel.

“I think it’s elegant,” Lewis said. “It’s too many people who believe in self sacrifice and discomfort for everyone for no particular reason. We would all be happy this way. Nine months out of the year.”

“Nine months out of the…?”

“Yes, the bulk of the year, because we will be his foster parents, the bulk of the year because he is a witch and I am a witch and he should be among witches. But he has been taken in by Kruinh’s house. They love him,He loves them, He isn’t fit for ordinary life anymore, if anyone ever was. He will go with Dan and Laurie for three months.”

“Have you asked them?” Chris said.

Lewis just looked at him like he was stupid.

“You assume a lot, Lew,” Chris said.

“I do,” Lewis allowed, blowing a jet of smoke out of his mouth so that his glasses were obscured.

“The thing is, however, my assumptions are rarely wrong.”

Chris smiled, but he looked distracted, and Lewis touched his hand.

“Before we leave, I’ve got to talk to someone.”

“Yes?”

“I need to see Sunny.”