Page 64 of A Winding Wave of Magic
“I turn twenty-nine at the end of June.”
“Well, then, you have four years until you can even be considered for initiation. You’ll be able to train with Caitlin, hopefully without anyone knowing.”
I took another sip of wine, then a larger one, and ran my finger around the rim of the glass. If you did it right, you could make the bowl sing, a sweet, clear tone. Jonathan watched my finger, temporarily transfixed before he lifted his gaze back up and stilled us both.
“Listen, Cassandra. No one knows about this. No one in the Council knows about you, about your mother, or even that Penny is dead. No one but me and you.”
“And Reina,” I said. “My friend. She knows. And she’ll know the rest too. I won’t keep it from her.”
Jonathan seemed to mull over that information before he gave a curt nod. “Regardless, no one would even put it together that Penny Monroe of Manzanita, Oregon was Chief Mage Penelope Ann O’Brien from the Aran Islands. She has been lost for…well, for a very long time. And I promise, it will take even more time before anyone knows she is gone for good.”
I looked up sharply. “What do you mean, ‘lost?’”
Jonathan groaned inwardly, but I heard it anyway.
“Tell me,” I pressed. “What do you mean, she was ‘lost?’”
He ran a hand through his hair, causing a few pieces to stick up in the back. “I’m really not the right person…” he began, then seemed to his mind. “Part of Penny’s job was to conceal herself and her charge even from the Council members who gave it to her.Ididn’t even know where she was until she called a few years ago and asked me to prepare the documents I’ve given you now.” He took a deep breath. “At the Council, she is collectively known as the Lost Mage of Inisheer.”
I looked up. “The Lost Mage? Isn’t that…a bit much?”
His mouth quirked—one of the first signs I had seen of humor all evening. “Perhaps. But we’re fae. We’ve a taste for drama, haven’t we?”
I closed my eyes and pressed my fingertips to my forehead. Councils, secrets, pseudonyms, inheritance of power…my quirky, pixie-haired Gran turning out to be famous? Suddenly, I found myself yearning for the quiet of the musty stacks of Burns Library and Aja’s genial yammering.
But the thought of my roommate’s chatter reminded me of another. If this was all connected to that terrible voice, I needed to know how.
“What about him?”
Jonathan’s right brow lifted. “Him?” He took a final bite of salmon and pushed his plate away so he could rest his forearms on the table. The mashed potatoes were all but untouched, though he had finished the mustard greens and the carrots.
I reached across the table. He stared suspiciously at my bare hand.
“Just take it,” I said impatiently. “I want to show, not look. Please.”
He looked down. “Can you do that with everyone? Or just me?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t had the opportunity to try a large sample size.” I shook my head, too impatient to address the odd connection between us. “Gran said you can learn someone’s secret, can’t you? I want to try something.”
Tentatively, he placed his palm on top of mine. It was perfectly dry, I noticed, and he was warmer to the touch than I would have thought. A small zing ran up my arm that wasn’t connected to anything he was feeling, which was primarily nerves surrounding a carefully emptied mind.
“Keep your mind blank,” I said and began to remember the voice in the hallways, the insidious chatter that seemed to have seeped beneath the floorboard over the past twenty-four hours.
Goosebumps rose over my skin as the voices I had shoved well below my conscious thoughts over the past day came flooding back. Internally, I asked for any secret walls I kept closed around myself to open. To my surprise, they vanished immediately.
Listening with Jonathan, the memory seemed even clearer than before. Were those two voices I heard now fighting? Was itGran’s, or just wishful thinking, wanting so badly for her to be alive again? I thought of her lightly creased face, her perpetually wayward hair, her eyes that glinted with intelligence and love even when she was angered by my antics. And now she was gone, and I’d never see those things again.
I didn’t realize my memories had drifted back to grief until Jonathan squeezed my hand and pulled away, not wanting to intrude any further than he already had. He didn’t press me, just watched quietly with lidded eyes while I steadily swallowed a few more sawdust-like bites of my meal and consumed the rest of the bottle of wine.
20
THE MEMORY
Because we share all our sorrows and joys
All your intimate thoughts are mine
— JOSEPH MARY PLUNKETT, “THE LITTLE BLACK ROSE SHALL BE RED AT LAST”
