Fluffikins landed in front of me in a perfectly graceful and well executed maneuver that was all his own. The pink magic parted to allow him passage rather than coaxing him forward like it had done for me.
“I hereby call an emergency board meeting,” he said, his words echoing around the room. “All liaisons are required.”
The pink magic gathered into a ball and bounced up through the open roof into the sky above.
“Wh-what’s going on? Where’s P-Parker?” I sputtered. I felt the absence of the atmospheric magic acutely despite having only been under its effects for a few seconds.
Fluffikins paced the length of the table anxiously. “He’s on his way, along with the others. I rarely call an emergency meeting, but when I do, they have no choice but to travel here immediately.”
“What’s all this pink glittery stuff?” I asked, watching as it twisted and danced just above the open ceiling. “I didn’t see it when I was here yesterday.”
“You didn’t have magic when you were in the board room yesterday. It was here, but you couldn’t yet see it. It’s always here,” he answered distractedly as he continued to cross the table back and forth.
“W
hat is it?” I wanted to know, but more than that I needed to keep him talking, to protect me from my own thoughts and worries.
“It’s but a small piece of the earth’s most concentrated and most powerful magic, taken right from its very core. Each of our agencies around the globe has been granted a part to keep us connected to the whole. It works to stabilize the balance within each region and prevent any one center from gaining too much power.” He spoke so smoothly and eloquently that I wondered if he was quoting something or someone verbatim.
“How does it do that?”
Pace, pace, pace.
I was growing more frightened by the minute, especially since Fluffikins appeared rattled, too.
He took a few more loops of the table and then plopped himself down across from me. “By sparking non-magical humans’ so-called intuition and influencing them to act in a way that is good for humanity as a whole, even if they believe they are acting on selfish desires.”
“Huh. I’ve got to admit, this is all a bit out there. I was just coming around to this whole Town Witch thing, and now you expect me to wrap my head around a living strain of magic that balances all of humanity?”
He shrugged. “You asked. I merely answered.”
“Why am I here?”
“Because the magic chose you. There was a reason you discovered Lila’s body, that you bumped into Barnes, even that you were there when Melony showed up to reclaim the hat.”
“I’m nobody special.”
He nodded. “My inclination would be to agree with you, but the magic is always right.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “If the magic is so high and mighty, then how come terrible things still happen every day? People are murdered, as we well know. Kids are taken from their parents, wars kill millions. Why doesn’t the magic stop any of that from happening?”
“Balance encompasses both dark and light, good and bad. It’s difficult to understand for the uninitiated. Still, it has chosen you as someone who will play a significant role in what is to come.”
“Now there are prophecies?” I gasped as goosebumps rose to my arms.
The cat’s eyes flashed, but he quickly looked away, focusing his gaze just over my left shoulder. “No, no. I have no idea what happens next, but whatever it is, you’ll be an important player.”
I bit my lip as I thought about this. Part of me wanted to yell at Fluffikins for dragging me deep into this agency mess without explaining any of it in a way I could actually understand, but another very big part of me understood that I’d have never agreed to get mixed up in things here if he’d led with any of the craziness that had come to light over the last few minutes.
“What if I’m not enough?” I asked instead. This wasn’t just my greatest worry now. It was my greatest fear in life. I hadn’t been enough for my ex-husband. My rate of producing books was quickly not becoming enough for my literary agent. With all those failures to my name, could I be enough for something that mattered this much?
Fluffikins fixed his eyes on me, unblinking. “Oh, but Tawny. You already are.”
19
Not even two minutes after Fluffikins’s summons, the other members of the board began descending upon the room to join us at the table.
First came Greta. “I put the best wards on the house that I could to bolster the ones already there. Lila’s spells are fading fast now that she’s no longer in residence,” she informed us before she’d even landed in her spot.