Page 107 of A Winding Wave of Magic
“You have got to be kidding me,” I said. “I tell you that story about my dad, and we’re hitching a ride with the military?”
Damp, hand-shaped impressions on the padded leather seats, themselves lending a slightly asylum-esque feel to the confined space, betrayed perspiring palms. I wiped them on my jeans, unable to keep still. My rocking hips caused a distinct, rhythmic squeak against the leather that earned me more than one irritable glance from Jonathan as he drove toward the terminal.
“I thought I was the one without control,” he remarked.
“I’m fairly certain your syndrome is characterized by an obsession withcompletecontrol,” I responded through my teeth.“My phobia is based on the fact that on an airplane, I have next to none. Jonathan?”
He looked up, eyes bright as ever despite the atrociously early hour. “Hmm?”
“What are we doing?” I pointed at the main building we had just passed.
He just shook his head. “We’re not flying with the military. I don’t know who you think I am, but my powers don’t extend that far.”
“You chartered a jet?”
Jonathan calmly pulled into a spot in front of a much smaller building where a porter was waiting curbside. He turned off the engine, then reached behind us to get his briefcase and picked some invisible speck of dust from the handle before answering. “That’s correct.”
“Is…is it yours?”
He snorted. “Gods, no. I don’t have that kind of money. You do, though, and Penny made sure I was well compensated for my services, so I took the liberty of securing two seats.”
My mouth suddenly felt drier than normal. Focused purely on finishing my dissertation through the spring, I hadn’t done anything more with my inheritance or even checked the balance of the bank account Penny had left me. Jonathan obviouslyremembered what it contained, along with every other detail of her will.
I had enough to fly charter? Despite the disbelief that Penny actually had that kind of money and the grief that she had to give it to me, somewhere inside, I was doing a victory dance at the possibility of never having to be squished between shoulders and unwanted thoughts again.
“Um, no,” I said. “No, I don’t mind.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
We stepped onto the curb while the porter unloaded our bags—all recently upgraded to combination-locked, titanium suitcases and cast with multiple binding and repelling spells. In less than an hour we were escorted to the tarmac just as the sun was directly above us, lighting Boston and the harbor along with the rest of Massachusetts.
With the wind whipping my hair across my face and the plane engines roaring in my ears, I took one last look at the state I had called home for the last six years.
Goodbye, I thought, so unsure about whether it was directed at the city or my past.
And then I turned and stepped into my future.
32
WHO’S A PSYCHIC ANYWAY?
Murmurs passed along the valley, like a banshee’s lonesome croon
— ANONYMOUS FOLK SONGWRITER, “THE RISING OF THE MOON”
“Iunderstand why Penny chose the Pacific Northwest,” Jonathan said as he zipped his raincoat up to his chin with a dour expression. “It’s just like Ireland. Never stops bloody raining.”
I glanced toward the clouds, which were, in fact, delivering a light May drizzle, and put my hood over my head. “You never got used to it? I thought you spent your summers there.”
He just sniffed and pulled his coat tighter. “That part never took.”
We stepped away from the curb on Aurora Avenue, which split the northwestern neighborhoods of Seattle with a six-lane boulevard lined with big box stores, auto supply shops, and crumbling motels patrolled by local sex workers and the johns who chased them.
In between a futon resale shop and a dive bar called “The Junkyard” stood the squat little box I’d only Seen in Gran’s thoughts. The single-story concrete building was slapped with peeling beige paint and a neon blue sign blinking through a cracked window. The word Psychic was spelled in cursive, though with the last “i” and the “c” burning out, every other blink read “Psych.”
“In and out,” I reminded Jonathan for the sixth time since we had stowed our luggage at the private airfield.
“Understood. Shall we?” He gestured toward the shop door, an industrial glass barrier with a rusting metal frame, through which a cardboard “Open” sign hung.
