The Sacrifice

"It's quite useful when it is applied appropriately," the witch shot back, getting a raised brow from Ace.

"This one is mouthy," he observed.

"Apparently, they only send us the rejects," I informed him.

"That makes a certain kind of sense, I guess," Ace agreed, moving over toward the coffee machine. Again, we never got a jolt from the caffeine, but like Drex with his liquor, I think Ace liked the warmth. "What?" he snapped, making the witch jolt back from where she had been peering over his shoulder.

"She isn't familiar with appliances," I explained. "And she seems curious in nature."

"That will become irritating," Ace decided, but didn't push her away as he went about making the coffee. "Ever have coffee, witch?" he asked.

"Caffeine is off-limits for us."

"Of course it is," he scoffed. "You truly are an archaic clan."

"We believe in the old ways."

"Only because you haven't experienced the new ones," he shot back.

Ace had always been the most adaptable of all of us. Maybe because he had always been our leader, he felt it was his job to lead us into the future. Until, eventually, we could possibly go back home.

He brought back all the new electronics along with a book to learn to use them, then explained them all to the rest of us who were often not the most captive of audiences.

"Will I be allowed to open a garden?" she asked, ignoring his jab.

To that, Ace sighed, reaching to grab two mugs out of the cabinet.

"If Ly will handle the ordering of supplies as well as babysitting you while you work in said garden, I have no current objections. She should get a kick out of ordering seeds online," he added, shooting me a smirk as he pressed a mug full of hot coffee into the witch's hands before making his way out of the kitchen.

"You can drink it," I told her, moving to grab a cup for myself, switching off the range as I went. "No one here is going to tell on you," I added.

"As if that would stop me," she mumbled into the cup. "It does smell divine." Or at least she thought so until she took a sip and spat it out onto my bare chest. "Oh, oh my. That is... that is awful," she declared, scraping her tongue over the roof of her mouth.

I was not, in general, a man who found humor easily. But I felt a chuckle move up through me at her reaction, as I reached back into a cabinet to produce some sugar—Minos's guilty pleasure—and dropped a couple teaspoons into her cup, giving it a mix. "Try it now," I suggested.

She shot me a distrustful look, but took another sip. "Oh, that is like magic," she declared, giving me a warm smile.

"That is like sugar, actually," I corrected, putting a teaspoon in my mug. "Sugar is natural. How have you ever experienced it?"

"We have honey and fruit sugars," she told me.

"It's not the same."

"No," she agreed, taking another sip. "It is not. But the objection to sugar is the same to alcohol, I believe. They can cause addictions. Addictions make our magic work differently."

"That won't be a concern right now," I told her, leaving off that in a future, when her spirit was broken down a bit, when she was over her objections to being here, her magic would become a big factor.

We'd decided long ago that not telling the witches their fate was the best way to get the results we wanted down the road.

In the past, all that meant was keeping them in the basement, throwing food down to them until they submitted. Which made the whole process all but effortless for us.

This time around, though, there seemed already to be a lot of effort. Bathing and temptation and babysitting and helping the woman pick out fucking garden seeds.

I should have been pissed.

But what I felt, instead, was something akin to eagerness.

It wasn't an unfamiliar emotion. We all felt it leading up to the parties we threw for the MC. When we anticipated finally getting back to our work, our passions, our missions on this earthly plane.

But I rarely felt it outside of those nights.

I stood there watching as the witch moved around the space, chopping up our meager vegetable supply, tssking over our lack of spices, and making the saddest-looking soup I'd ever seen.

"Bring it upstairs," I demanded, already walking in that direction, waiting to make sure she followed behind.

"Eating should be done communally and at a table," she complained as I pointed toward my bed as I went to grab my laptop.

"Tough shit," I said, shrugging. "Here. Seeds," I told her, bringing up the website, turning the screen half toward her.

Her brows furrowed as she looked. "But these are just pictures."

"Yes. And when you hit this button," I said, clicking the 'add to cart,' "those pictures get sent as an order to the person who has the seeds who then packages them up, and sends them here."