“If only I had a real crystal ball, huh?” I asked, the tension so high that I’d fallen out the other side and gone numb. I didn’t know what the best solution was; I just wanted to get on with it. Running at danger or hiding from it both sounded just fine, if we could just keep the talk away from dead loved ones and corrupt organizations I alone knew nothing about. “Mother, you could always give tarot a try. You actually know what the cards mean.”
A puzzled expression crossed the stranger’s face right before his eyes brightened. “A powerful mage in the guild wouldn’t normally settle for a lesser-powered mage unless she had extraordinary talents elsewhere. Is that it, then? Tarot focuses your true magic?”
“I’ll have you know that I was a knockout back in the day,” my mother said, straightening her back in indignation. “I didn’t need power. I had sex appeal.”
“No.” I put up my hand. “No more of that. Move that topic along, please.”
“I chose my husband, not the other way around. I could’ve had—”
“Stop right there,” I insisted.
“—my pick. I had plenty of offers, powerful or not. A swing of the hips—”
“You’re forgetting the situation.”
“—brought the boys to my yard.”
“Those aren’t even the right lyrics.” I groaned. “Ma, you have to stop.”
My mother rounded on me, apparently forgetting the stranger in our midst and the fact that there was one less ward protecting us from what waited outside. “Why, because I’m old and fat, I’m not allowed to talk about my past?”
“No. Because you’re my mother!”
“You aren’t old and fat,” the stranger said. “You look great.”
My mother put up a finger. “Don’t you try to flatter me, boy.” She stared at the door, her brow lowered. “It’s a waste of time.”
“You get set up, and I’ll put up another ward,” the stranger said, taking a step toward the door. “I had planned to, anyway. No time will be lost.”
“Why are you so interested in hearing my premonition when you have your own?” My mother’s fists were back on her hips.
“In this case, I’m open to suggestions.” He walked out of the room, his step sure despite the inquisition he’d just endured.
“He believes what he says,” I told my mother as she stared after him. “You can see it.”
“There are two types of fools. The one who delivers the message, and the one who believes it.” She stalked away, muttering to herself. I heard the word “fool” at least two more times.
My feet were carrying me after the stranger before I knew I wanted to follow him. I stopped at the front door, sweeping the street with my gaze.
He turned enough to glance over his shoulder. “I’m Emery, by the way.” I nodded, but he’d already turned back and raised his hands, fingers spread. “Can you see the elements in the world around us?”
I frowned and looked at the sky, finally starting to clear after that recent rainstorm. “Like the water, you mean? Rain?”
“No, the…” He pointed at the grass. “Do you see little…tags sticking out of the world around you? The elements making themselves known to you?”
I looked where he pointed, trying to see what he meant. Carefully tended deep green blades stretched toward the well-trimmed hedges along the sides. “No.”
“Hmm.” Without warning, something tugged on my ribs and streams of magic rose from the ground. “Can you see it now?”
“Yes. Did you check for watchers?”
“Of course. The one I found…is out of commission. They’ll think it’s heart failure.”
The shock that would normally run through me at such a blasé acknowledgement of death was strangely absent. That probably wasn’t good.
He wiggled his fingers as the streams reached them, and an expertly woven spell came out the other side. “Do you see how I’ve formed the elements into a spell? Excuse me—the properties into a spell?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What else do you know about what I’m doing?”
I shifted my gaze away from his fingers and let it rest on his broad back. Muscles worked under his thin T-shirt, bunching and rippling. He was thicker than fighters I’d seen on TV or YouTube, a bit bulkier. Yet he wasn’t so big as a power lifter. Whatever he did in his off time was strenuous, but it required more movement than simply lifting things. Which would make sense if he was on the run.
I scanned his clothing, which was worn and dirty. My mother had been right—he did look like he had woken up on the street that day. His blonde-brown hair, a little long and shaggy, probably looked as wild as mine did right now, but somehow it suited him. A pocket flap was upturned on his butt pocket, and a misshapen item rested against his round cheek. Maybe a grouping of items. I wondered if they pertained to magic.
“Penny?” he prompted.
I looked at the weave again, clustering into a ball in front of him. Defense pulsed from it. Protection. I got the impression of impregnable walls and iron studs.
“I know that you are doing as you said—building something that will keep this house safe.” I tried to run my fingers through my hair. They tangled immediately. Which was, of course, the exact moment he turned to glance at me.
I ripped my hand away. My head jerked with the effort. A clump of hair separated from my scalp, but the rest held fast, trapping my hand.
“I didn’t have time to brush it,” I said with a flaming face before ripping my hand again. More hair pulled out, but my fingers came away.
His gaze landed on my hair for a moment, as if he somehow hadn’t noticed my wrestling match with it, before he shifted his focus back to the spell. “Do you have any training at all?”
“No. Though…I do know how to make women into zombies.” I settled for patting my hair this time, trying to get it to flatten.
“You know how…to make women…into zombies,” he said in bursts, like he was digging into a suitcase and pulling each cluster of words out at a time. “Uh-huh. And where did you learn that?”
“It was a retreat gone bad. In New Orleans. I just read the directions and the coven copied me. I mean, you know, they repeated the directions after me.”
“You read…the directions…on how to make women…into zombies. Mhm. And the coven was okay with you joining them so that they might turn into flesh-eating creatures?”
The way he said it, blasé and light, had me shaking with silent laughter. “I’m not sure they knew what it did. I took over because it seemed out of their league.”
“‘They’ being the witches, I presume?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew what the potion did?”
“No! I would never have participated if I’d known. There wasn’t a title or description or anything. But it just…called to me. I took over for the leader of the coven without meaning to. Then I just started to read it, and it felt right.”
He pushed his hands out and up, and the ball of magic he’d been knitting into existence drifted into a lumpy, sloppy plane before disappearing from sight.
“How come I can’t see it anymore?” I asked, taking a step forward.
He lifted his hands again, and more streams of magic rose from around him, an entirely different set than before. “The power is spread too thin. Wards aren’t spells. They are called into reality the same way, but they exist in nature differently. I’ll teach you more later. Now, let’s get back to your slumber party with a group of zombies. I’m not quite done with my line of questioning.”
I bit my lip to keep a smile away. The situation had been dark and horrible, so much more serious than what he was portraying. I felt bad for laughing.
“This coven had a leader?” he asked.
“I don’t really know, but she was taking charge.”
“Until you, an untrained mage who’d never worked a potion before, relieved her of her duty?”