Chapter Text
It was an hour before midnight on December 31, when Rey Niima cracked open the door of Apartment 7 and peered out onto the dark landing. The potent smell of burning sage clung about her and her apartment, and slowly seeped into the small communal space. She hoped the smell would dissipate before it drew any unwanted curiosity.
A few weeks ago Rey’s downstairs neighbor had mistakenly received (and then opened!) her shipment of potion-grade lavender oil and powdered mandrake root. (Rey thanked the Goddess that the more conspicuous eye of newt had been out of stock when she ordered!) The mixup had led to a long conversation about commercialized New Age practices and pop-astrology that Rey was not eager to repeat. But at least her neighbor hadn’t suspected anything.
Finding the hallway empty, Rey stepped out properly and began rifling through her aged leather satchel, looking for her keys. She pushed aside her heirloom spellbook and several loose sheets of parchment in order to search amongst the tinctures and talismans that littered the bottom of her bag.
When she still came up empty, Rey let out a frustrated huff and glanced around again to make sure she was still alone on the landing. Seeing that she was, she placed her hand on her front knob and muttered a quick incantation. There was a soft clicking sound as the lock engaged, entirely without the aid of her misplaced key.
Turning away from the door and resuming her rifling, this time in search of her one non-magical human indulgence—an iPhone—Rey was too distracted to notice the solid mass in front of her until she collided into it… or him.
Rey startled and looked up to see herself pressed against the expansive chest of her across-the-landing neighbor, Kylo Ren. She stepped back immediately, a flush spreading up her neck and over her face.
“Sorry!” she exclaimed, feeling herself blush even harder as she desperately tried to banish the feel of his firm upper body from her mind. “I wasn’t looking where I was going,” she explained, looking up and catching his eye.
Kylo was standing on the stairs, one step shy of the top of the landing, putting him just about eye-to-eye with Rey. She had never had such a good vantage point from which to study his face before. (And she had studied him a lot. Usually from a distance. Always from at least a few inches below.) She’d never noticed the warm golden undertones in his deep brown eyes or the specific placement of the moles on his face... she had to restrain herself from reaching up and stroking his pale, perfect cheek.
“It’s fine,” he told her softly. “You looked busy. I was quiet. I didn’t want to interrupt,” he tried to reassure her, running a hand through his thick, inky waves.
But it wasn’t reassuring. In fact, at his words, all the color drained from Rey’s face and she immediately forgot her lustful wanderings.
How long had he been on the stairs? Had he seen her trick with the lock? Did he suspect her? Had her propensity for losing her keys just accidentally exposed all of witchkind?
“Are you okay? You’re looking really pale all of the sudden,” Kylo said, reaching an arm out as if to comfort her, before seeming to change his mind and withdrawing. The withdrawal felt like a slap to Rey.
“I’m fine,” she said in a tone that clearly portrayed she was not fine. “I just... remembered I’m really late for something!” She knew she needed to figure out what, if anything, Kylo had seen, but the whole encounter had just made her too flustered and mortified. And she really did have somewhere she needed to be.
She hefted her bag securely over her shoulder and made to maneuver past Kylo. At the same time, though, he stepped up onto the landing, looming over Rey once again. “Oh. Yeah. Of course.” He ran a hand through his hair, clearly a tick for him. “It’s New Year’s Eve. You’re… you. Of course you have plans.” He sounded… wistful? It confused Rey.
They were standing very close together now on their tiny landing. Rey felt her heart start beating faster, and not just from the possibility that she had just violated the single most important magical rule: keep magic secret.
She took a hitched breath and pushed past Kylo, her bag bumping into his broad chest as she fled. She just needed to get away from him. She couldn’t think rationally with his intense eyes boring into her and his scent filling her nose (it was musky and spicy and mouthwatering).
If Kylo had seen anything, he wasn’t very likely to act on it in the next few hours, she told herself during her hasty exit. She had time to fix this… if there was even anything to fix. She tried to calm down and steady her breathing.
“Rey!” she heard him shout after her as she bounded down the stairs. “Rey, just wait a second!”
She didn’t wait. She didn’t even turn around.
—
“Rey! Finally! It’s almost midnight and we need to get started,” cried a petite young woman with thick black hair and mischief in her eyes. She reached out for Rey’s hand and pulled her past the tree line.
“I’m so sorry Rose,” Rey whispered, as they wandered deeper into the woods, away from any marked path or trail. “I bumped into my neighbor—”
“Your neighbor?” Rose squealed, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. “Not the bespectacled brickhouse from across the hall?”
“His name is Kylo. And… yes.”
Rose laughed. “When you say bumped into him…?”
“I mean we literally collided. But, Rose, just before that—”
Rose’s cackle interrupted Rey before she could tell her about the key. “Sure, Rey. You accidentally fell right up against his rock hard body… Maybe next time you’ll get even luckier and fall onto his dick!”
“Rose!” Rey spluttered. “I’m not… I would never… Luke says…”
“Yes, Rey. I know the rules. No witch/mortal relations. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a crush on him. And it certainly doesn’t mean I can’t tease you about said crush. Now come on, I think I hear Finn calling,” she added, referring to Rey’s best friend, business partner, and coven-mate.
Just a moment later, Rey and Rose stepped into a large clearing. A bonfire, the flames an unnatural shade of silvery purple, flickered and hissed at the center.
Finn greeted them with an impatient, “Finally! We’ve already built the fire and made the first offering.” He pulled Rey in for a quick hug before breaking away to kiss Rose solidly on the mouth.
Rey felt a twinge of something (jealousy? longing?) as she watched her two closest friends embrace. She looked away, trying to give the couple a moment of privacy, and focused instead on the dancing flames of the large fire.
As she focused her attention on the flames, they seemed to twist and curl into the shape of a face. Rey stepped closer, entranced by the image. As the prominent nose and pouty lips materialized in the fire, Rey released a breath. Kylo.
“Ah-hem.”
Rey was knocked out of her hallucination by the sound of a throat clearing. She looked across the fire to see their coven leader and Rey’s master, Luke, staring straight at her, a searching expression on his face.
Color rushed to her cheeks. There was nothing in their code that forbid her from having thoughts about a mortal. Hell, some witches even believed sex with mortals was fine as long as no attachment was formed. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had done something wrong by seeing Kylo’s face in the flames.
Luke’s eyes narrowed and his gaze intensified. There was something familiar about that intensity, but Rey couldn’t quite place it. She felt caught in it, unable to look away until the fire roared up and broke the eye contact for her.
When the flames died down again, Luke was no longer focused on her. He called out to his gathered coven, “The witching hour is nearly upon us. The year is taking its final gasping breath. Let us gather around the fire and begin the ritual.”
Rey moved to form a circle with her coven-mates. Finn and Rose stood on one side, their friend Poe on the other.
Poe smiled at her before leaning in to whisper, “Did you curse Luke or something? He keeps looking at you, and he does not seem happy.”
Rey looked up, only to see Luke quickly shift his gaze away from her. “We’ll start with the releasing,” he announced to the small crowd. “Please ready yourselves.”
Rey turned back to Poe and shrugged. She busied herself with rummaging through her satchel, trying to pretend she was unbothered by Luke’s stares.
Luke was a powerful magical practitioner, but, as far as Rey knew, even he hadn’t advanced to mind reading. There was no way he knew about her feelings toward Kylo. And anyway, there was nothing to know! They were just neighbors! Rey’s feelings were neighborly!
She fixated on this last thought as she pulled the first piece of parchment from her bag. “I Release…” was written at the top of the page in dragon’s blood ink. Rey had carefully manifested and recorded each item during a personal magical ritual that morning.
“All together, please,” Luke said. The gathered voices joined with his as he continued, “Goddess: In this season of rebirth and resolution, please release us from these limitations…”
As they finished the incantation, each person cast into the fire what they hoped to leave behind in the dying year. Rey watched as the purple flames shifted black, symbolizing the consumption of a year’s worth of the coven’s negative energy.
The shadowy flames curled around her parchment, slowly burning away the edges and turning it to ash. A familiar line of text caught her eye just before the page was consumed entirely: the hope that my parents will come back for me. Rey took a steadying breath as she watched the fire burn away the last vestiges of her childish devotion to the people that had thrown her away.
“Now then, on to the invocations,” Luke announced.
Rey re-grounded herself and fished the second parchment out of her bag. “I Invoke…” it read, this time in dove’s blood ink. Rey’s inks, of course, were synthetic. Actual blood coagulated too quickly and turned a sickening shade of brown. But the synthetic versions still worked to enhance and empower magical writings. Dragon’s blood was her all-purpose magical ink. Dove’s blood she saved for special spells, ones involving wishes and requests from the Goddess.
Her cheeks turned rosy as she remembered items four through six on her list: 4. The capacity to love without fear of abandonment. 5. A partner to give that unguarded love to. 6. Great sex with a partner who cares about my pleasure (i.e., likes giving oral).
The group began reciting the second part of the ritual, and cast their hopes for the coming year into the flames. Rey made sure to cast her parchment into the fire upside down, so no one saw her specific invocations. She didn’t need Poe teasing her about her lack of a sex life.
As the pages caught, the fire shifted again, this time becoming a hodgepodge of different colors and shades. Each shade represented a different promise for the new year.
The portion before Rey flickered in shades of pink and red. Poe turned from his own mostly golden flames to examine Rey’s fire. He then turned to Rey, eyes bright and mischievous.
“Red, huh?” he said, a roguish grin on his face. “The Goddess is promising you good sex in the New Year.”
Rey’s cheeks flamed, her attempt to avoid Poe’s teasing dashed by the will of the Goddess. “It’s not totally red!” she exclaimed. “And you know as well as I do that red can mean a lot of things.”
“Oh yes. I’m so sorry. I see some pink in there too. So that’s—” he raised a finger as he ticked off each item “—sex, passion, love, and romance. Am I missing anything?”
“Red could mean… um… power. And pink… friendship?” She could feel her face getting hotter.
“Oh! Power. Are you planning some sort of hostile takeover of the shop next door? Or are you giving up floristry to pursue political ambitions?”
“Hardy-har-har,” she responded.
She didn’t like the indulgent look Poe was giving her. It made her feel like a particularly stupid child, an odd contrast to the very adult subject matter they were discussing.
Poe opened his mouth to say something else Rey was sure would be patronizing, but before he could Finn blurted out, “Ooo! Red. Nice! Looks like Peanut’s got some sexy times coming her way!”
“Can we maybe not use embarrassing nicknames while discussing my sex life?” exclaimed a scandalized Rey.
Poe just smirked triumphantly while Rose snickered nearby.
—
Rey rushed off immediately after the conclusion of the burning ritual. It was late, the earliest traces of dawn lighting up the first day of the New Year, and Rey was tired. That might have been enough to explain her haste, but Rey also had another motivation: avoiding Luke’s further scrutiny.
Rey knew her respite would be short. After all, she had an apprentice lesson with Luke in a few days, and she was sure he would confront her then about whatever had him so unsettled.
For now, though, Rey craved solitude. Between potentially exposing herself to Kylo, manifesting him in the flames, and trying to process the outcome of the Burning Ritual, Rey had a lot to think about before she would feel ready to face Luke’s searching gaze.
As she approached the front door of her apartment, she automatically reached into her bag for her keys. It took a moment for her to remember that they were still missing. Her earlier exchange with Kylo played in her mind as she huffed out a defeated breath.
Rey glanced over at his apartment door. It was still. She carefully scanned every inch of the tiny landing, before moving on to the stairs. (She would never again forget to check the stairs.) She was entirely alone.
Secure that she would definitely not be interrupted, Rey placed her hand on the doorknob and in a barely audible whisper recited the magic words. She pulled the door open and rushed through as soon as she heard the lock disengage.
When she was securely inside, with the lock turned and the chain drawn, Rey fell back against the front door and closed her eyes. She was truly exhausted.
After a moment or two of restorative silence, Rey opened her eyes. Something silver glinted at her from the corner of her eyes. She turned slightly to see her keys lying on the coffee table in plain view.
Rey signed loudly and headed off to bed.
—