Page 84 of Wicked Deeds

“You didn’t show power at thirteen? That’s when it happens for witches, right?” Gwen asked.

“My mom bound my power,” I said. “There was nothing for me to use.”

Gwen was all wide pale blue eyes now. “To a demon. How did you survive?”

“As far as we can tell, it was because Maggie didn’t consent herself. The demon used her power, but couldn’t take her over. Whatever Sara did, the rite she used protected Maggie,” Cassandra said.

“But your magic did come in?” Gwen asked.

“When I met Damon, I got a chip to help him with a job. We think the chip changed my energy signature enough to somehow break the bond. Like Cassandra said, we don’t know anything about the binding, or how my mom did it, so we don’t know why having a chip broke it.”

Cassandra muttered something under her breath. My mother was fortunate the Cestis had never managed to get their hands on her.

Though, either way, I’d still have lost her. It was an old pain, but sometimes it still stabbed me like new. I bit it down and summoned a smile. “And that’s enough of a history lesson. Cassandra, is your tea ready?”

Chapter Twenty

The next fewdays grew slowly less awkward as Gwen and I tried to adjust to our new reality.

True, she spent a fair bit of time gaming or in her room on her datapad, but she also started to talk about her life at boarding school, and I shared some of my time with my grandparents, both of us tentative in our overtures to navigate this new relationship. I could see her start to relax after all the bombshells. She started to talk about UC again, and played with Lianith, smiles replacing the tense expression she’d worn for the first twenty-four hours after we found out about Jack.

Cassandra had started to teach her the basics of energy fields and she’d taken to it quickly, though she found the whole color thing funny. She kept whispering colors to me whenever she met someone new. Though she’d looked pleased when she’d discovered my aura was blue like hers.

On Thursday, I offered to take her on a hike on one of the reestablished trails around the headlands and she accepted. Though she punctuated the walk with commentary about people’s colors as we went.

“That guy’s kind of khaki,” she muttered at me when a tall, wiry, Asian guy jogged past us, his breathing loud and his face contorted in a grimace that suggested he wasn’t enjoying the exercise.

“Probably hungover,” I muttered back and she laughed, the smile making her eyes flash as bright as the blue of her running shorts. “Come on, let’s keep going.”

Moving while we talked seemed to make things go a little easier, and Gwen smiled with delight as we reached the highest lookout, with all of San Francisco and the bay spread out at our feet.

“It’s a beautiful city,” she said, looking down.

“It is. Not like it was, but you can’t argue with this.” I swept an arm out at the view.

“Earthquakes.” She shivered, hugging her arms around herself. “I’ve never been in one.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, the seismologists don’t think there’s likely to be another major earthquake here for quite some time. Probably several hundred years. Which is not to say that we won’t get tremblers, but you get used to those.” I didn’t mention that I wasn’t used to tremblers. She hadn’t been in the Big One. She shouldn’t have the same overreaction to minor quakes that I did.

“Perhaps. It’s not something we have to think about in England.” She chewed her lip, staring down at the view as though she expected everything to start rattling any second.

She was right about that. England had to deal with rising seas and the warming of their famously cold climate, but I hadn’t heard reports of earthquakes.

“The buildings are all much safer than they used to be,” I said. “And the warning systems improve all the time.”

“Why did you stay? Even though, you know….”

She meant my grandfather dying. We’d talked a little about that as well.

I gestured at the view again. “This is home. The first real home I ever had. I didn’t want to abandon it when it was having a hard time.”

Her expression turned sad. “I’ve never felt like that about a particular place. My aunt and I moved a few times when I was small, and then she dumped me at school. My room in her apartment in Canterbury always felt like something of an afterthought. I had a few things there, but not many. And I only stayed with her a few weeks a year.”

I nudged her shoulder. “Well, once you decide what you want to do for school, you can put down some roots for a while. It doesn’t have to be forever, but most of those programs are three or four years, at least. That’s long enough to decide if you want to stay here.” I waved a hand again, this time aiming at the view of the ocean. “There are tech hubs in other parts of the world, you know. This isn’t your only option.”

“No,” she said, “but I want to learn from the best, and the best is here.” She grinned at me. “You know that, right?”

“Yes. But I’m kind of biased when it comes to him.”

---