A heavy tome flew off the shelf and smacked Casey in the face hard enough to slam him into the back of the couch. “Ah, shit! My nose!” he cried, then held his head forward as blood trickled over his lip.
My aunt stared at him impassively. “That was rude.”
He stood, keeping his head forward, and protested, “I was joking. She’s my cousin, and I just met her. I can’t say she smells nice. That’s creepy.”
Aunt Laurel flicked her hand, and the leather-bound book flew into the air and reshelved itself. “Sometimes, Casey, the best thing is to say nothing at all.”
Casey left to stop the bleeding, and Aunt Laurel took my hand and closed her eyes as I tensed. “Your magical signature feels like sunlight and tastes like cold spring water,” she said. “It’s quite strong for someone who has never practiced magic. I suspect you’ve inherited the gift of sorcery. You might be a natural.”
“What does that mean?”
My aunt smiled. She twisted her hands, and a rainbow of light drifted through the room. The upholstery changed from red to a pale lime, the dark wooden floors turned to bright pine, and the walls became a cheery shade of white. The curtains brightened and rearranged themselves, and the clutter around the room tidied itself up.
Her signature of nutmeg and happy bees whirled around me.
My aunt leaned back. “It means endless possibility, Savannah. For you. Whatever your life was before, it will never be the same. Whatever you had dreamed of doing, so much more is possible.”
13
Savannah
My aunt waved her hand, and the room changed again. “Magic is very strong in our family. It rarely comes naturally—though sorcery can be an exception to that rule. Still, it requires practice. And struggle.”
She leaned forward and took my hands. “Would you like to learn?”
My breath caught. What could I say to that? No? Of course not. A day and a half ago, I’d nearly been killed by werewolves.
“Can I learn to throw fireballs?”
She smiled. “Let’s find out.”
My aunt turned to Casey, who’d just returned from washing his face. “Casey! Bring the Sphere of Devouring!”
I jumped from my seat. “The what?”
“Don’t worry. It’s well contained.”
None of those words made me feel any more confident. Quite the opposite. I wrung my hands. “Whatever happens next, I think I’m going to need an explanation first.”
“Magic takes a long time to emerge in children and cultivate. I’m assuming you don’t want to spend years. In adults, it often manifests in response to a traumatic event.”
I started shaking my head. Time to run.
She laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. We’re not going to do anything traumatic to you. But we’re going to speed up the process of you getting acquainted with your magic by sucking it out of you. As I always say, why take the long way, when you can get there faster?”
Maybe because the shortcut involves a thing called a Sphere of Devouring?
I didn’t have the strength to make a quip. My fight or flight response was, at this point, just a petrified flight response.
“Got it!” Casey chirped. Aunt Laurel used her magic to rapidly clear the coffee table, and he set down a heavy wooden platter inscribed with a nine-pointed star and a ring of runes. Some sort of object sat in the middle under a velvet cloth—the Sphere of Devouring, I presumed.
This wasn’t ominous at all.
She pulled the velvet cloth away, revealing a floating black sphere. “This little monster,” my aunt said affectionately, “sucks in magical energy and devours it.”
Casey crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall—notably, on the far opposite side of the room, practically out the door. “We use it mainly when spells go haywire.”
Aunt Laurel waved her hand at him dismissively. “We’re going to use it to draw your magic out. I’ll turn it on real low, though this little beastie could eat a pretty big hole in this part of Magic Side if I cranked it all the way up.”