Page 14 of Midlife Demigod Unexpected

I smiled. There was something comforting about the strange mixtures of tea my mother drank. Her habits were ingrained in me also. I always felt better when I had a cup of Witch’s Brew.

By the time I returned with two steaming cups of tea to the living room, my mother was curled up in the corner of the couch, her bare feet tucked up under her, zipping through her phone with her fingers, which were glowing with the pale green light.

“What’s with your digits?” I asked.

“Once the Internet came around, I found I could treat it like a vine, and it would respond to my magic even though I was primarily agriculture.” She paused, looking up at me and tilting her head to the side. “You know, I was always surprised you didn’t have more agrarian magic. There was always something a little earthy about you, like the way you grew your own hops and made your own brew at the pub. Maybe it’s a clue of some sort. I don’t know. It didn’t pan out the way I thought it would. I thought you would inherit my magic, but clearly, you’ve inherited something else, and it must be from your father.”

“What did you find?” I asked, not wanting her to continue with the vein of how I failed her by not being an agrarian magician. My love of growing had stemmed from my mother’s affinity with plants. At least, that was what I had always thought. I had a beautiful garden now behind the pub, before the fires had blown it away. I had grown Hops in strings in the pasture back there. that was why O’Halloran’s was special. We’d made our own microbrew from soil to table. The inaugural version had used Hilda’s Hops. I wasn’t sure I was ready to change my perspective.

“Well, I looked up King Midas,” my mom said. “Because of the golden egg. I’m not sure where the sword comes in though. There is no mention of one that I can find.”

“When I touch things, they don’t turn to gold,” I said.

“It was a bit of a dead end after he killed his daughters with his powers. In order to reverse them he went back to losing everything or losing all of his powers.” My mother’s gaze scanned the screen as data flowed across the internet to her. “I think that’s how the story kind of goes.”

“What about the Fae?” I asked. “The fae are Celtic and he gave me an Irish pub.”

“The challenge is the puzzle we’re trying to piece together,” Hilda scratched her head. “Our puzzle pieces right now are a golden egg, a sword, and an Irish pub.

“Sounds like the start of a bad joke,” I smiled. “Where do the Grecians, you know, King Midas fit in?”

“King Midas lived in Crete. I think he was a Cretan instead of a Grecian,” Hilda explained

“You make it hard for me to not roll my eyes,” I warned her.

“You make it difficult for me to not explain the obvious,” Hilda responded.

“OK. Let’s narrow it down to Ireland based on the Irish pub,” I said. “I wish I knew what he could be. I mean, despite his lack of pointy ears could he be Dark Fae?”

“I’ve never heard of Dark Fae having gold magic.” Hilda looked up. “The name O’Halloran, what does it mean?”

“I looked it up online. It means stranger,” I explained. “Or someone from across the sea.”

“Well, he had an accent, but I didn’t think much about it,” Hilda said.

“It’s pretty clear what you were thinking about when you met him,” I said. “The question remains. Did he choose the word O’Halloran because he was a stranger here or because he was a stranger to Ireland?”

“If he was a stranger to here, he could be anybody,” Hilda said.

“Anybody Irish,” I pointed out. “It’s an Irish pub. Did he have an Irish accent?”

Hilda looked thoughtfully at me. “He had an accent. I would have been to young and inexperienced to know if it was Irish or not.”

I chewed on my lower lip. “Well, it makes sense if he left me an Irish pub that he’s Irish.”

Chapter 11

I decided to spend some time up at The Estate to see if they could help me with my powers. I could feel the golden light around my hands and coursing through my veins, but I didn’t know exactly what to do with it. I could hold it in my hands and shake it off my hands, but when I tried to throw it at things, it kind of fell forward and plopped on the ground.

Super anti-climactic.

When I arrived at The Estate, Mae was there. Instead of handing me a cup of Witch’s Brew, she ushered me into the backyard. It was at the top of the hill and looked down over the cemetery. There was a constant rumbling down there. I could hear it now. My mother told me it had been going on for a couple of months now, but I hadn’t realized. I hadn’t been able to see the wards around the cemetery that kept it safe from intruding eyes and from non-magic people understanding what was going on here. I’d looked at the cemetery a million times as a normie and never seen a thing. As I looked down at the cemetery now, though, I could feel the rumbling of the earth under my feet. I looked around at the other witches in the coven.

“Something’s coming,” I said.

“That’s why we need your help,” they said. “We know something’s coming; we simply don’t know how to stop it.”

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