Magical Intelligence, page 14
Some emotional outburst somewhere in the house.
Myra listened with her Empathy, sorting the threads. Aidan and James. The former was likely getting his dressing down at last. She reached for her robe, tugging slippers onto toes that protested in the chilled late-night air. But curiosity was fast warming her soul. That and her steadfast ability to remain aloof from the sparks of anger that drifted through the house, tugging at her magic. That itself was a heartening discovery and one that merited further exploration.
Which is what she told herself as she padded to the door, pocketing her wand and ignoring the other voice in her mind. The one that warned her of the impudence of sneaking about at night like a burglar.
She paused, considering. Laurel. Laurel had not looked well. Myra’s heart found its excuse. With James being most concerned with Laurie’s health, it was only right that Myra check into the source of this most worrisome midnight outburst from him.
Again, Myra’s dream rose to haunt her. So what if the woman whose pain she had experienced wasn’t her Alice? She was somebody and deserving of their help, having connected with Myra’s gift as she had. This woman, this Alice, must be a mage like them, yes?
If she was real. Of this Myra still could not be certain. And she lacked the details she would require in order to tell the team. Where was this happening? Was it even happening? Who was the man in the white coat? With such clear electrical power at his disposal, how could M.I. even attempt such a . . . Was it even a rescue?
Myra knew nothing. To tell them would be to confess her deepest fears. Truths of her soul she had managed to hide from even the likes of Aidan. To tell James would be to have him force her back into the connection. She had done it before. She could do it again. Especially as Myra had more control than ever over her gift.
“It was a dream and nothing more,” Myra reassured herself through gritted teeth and continued onward. Real people simply did not do that to one another.
Clutching her wardstone tight, lest a stray wisp of her own anxiety give her away, Myra crept towards the disturbance she had felt from upstairs. Warded off as she was, she had to rely upon other clues. An easy task, considering the raised voices emanating from a study at the far end of the hall.
“. . . Even if she’s somehow his, she herself doesn’t know,” Aidan said.
“If that is the case, we can turn her. Use her ourselves. If there’s anything to salvage, that is,” James replied.
“You’re not using her and then casting her off. Like she’s some sort of soldier. She’s not you, James. She has only the barest understanding of magic, her gift, the life we live.”
“Barest understanding, bah. Talent she has and more control than she lets on; Myra is learning fast, and I’ll not hear you covering it up with your careful truths,” James scoffed. “You have read the truth of her, you who talks of whiffs of guilt in the bouquet of her emotion—or whatever flowery ways you like to put it, and it’s up to me to determine what we do with that knowledge. An agent died—”
“Three agents. My team was there, too.”
“—An agent of the Crown, on soil and in an op that was not under my control,” James rolled over Aidan’s interjection, incensed. “Nevertheless, I have to answer the fallout. Nevertheless, I have responsibilities. Before you insult me, truth-teller, you tell me how I really feel. Look into my eyes, and tell me to my face that I don’t care what happens to her, to you.”
If Aidan gave an audible response, Myra could hear not hear it.
“That’s exactly right.” The quiet intensity of James’ rejoinder had the knell of finality about it, and fearing discovery, Myra clutched her little white stone to her chest and turned to flee from disconcerting truths and into deeper darkness.
She ran smack into a wizard. Benjamin. He smirked. “Gee, I take it that thing works?”
Stammering, Myra tried to work up an excuse that did not sound as guilt-ridden as the blush spreading its heat across her cheeks.
“You’re a bit of a sneak, aren’t you, Myra.” Benjamin eyed her sorry state with more silent laughter, softening as he noted the tears which threatened to drown her eyes. “Come, Thales, you do realize that makes you more ‘one of us’ than ever, right? What is it you think we do here? Sneak. Spy. It’s disreputable work and why mages were picked for such work in the first place. It’s not respectable. It’s not genteel. But it can be wonderful.”
Myra studied her toes, imprisoned in their warm slippers.
“Come. Let us to the kitchens.” Ben offered an arm. “Rule one of sneaking: have a good excuse ready for the moment you’re caught. I, for one, am fond of a late night repast.”
Grateful, Myra looked into Ben’s eyes. She caved. “You do the cooking.”
Her weak joke was rewarded with a grin. Rakish, but still soft as the kindness by which he had rescued her from her faults just then. It was a strange sort of way to be a gentleman. Altogether too sure of himself, too bold. And simultaneously gentle. Myra hadn’t known that such could be attractive in a man. With Benjamin’s constant posturing to Aidan, it was hard to spot this side of him save for in the dark of night with the lamps turned down.
Myra’s early judgment of him had been precipitous. Like the gaslight, Ben’s spark was tempered differently than Aidan’s. He was not hard like the rest. Not loud, not scary, not overly flirtatious, even. She was sure that he was aware of his handsomeness, of course. But it was to his credit that he did not wield it as a weapon, as Aidan was wont to. Benjamin was, in fact, borderline apologetic about it.
Alarm bells rang in Myra’s head, herald to more blushing, stammering, and awkwardness. She felt Benjamin step back from her, allowing her the space needed to collect herself and meet him when ready. He truly did know a frightening amount of things.
The bravado was warranted. No mussing of the hair required.
She followed him down the hallway, stopping at his whispered, “A shortcut.”
With that, Benjamin whipped out his wand and made a sign over the paneled wall. A person-sized, rectangular portion shifted to the side. Darkness yawned beyond.
He held out a hand, as if sensing Myra’s apprehension. It was then that she realized she had stopped clutching the wardstone in her pocket. Her fingers clasped his, and he drew her forward into the hidden passage.
“You’ll need better control over your magic if you’re to use this shortcut on your own. It’s not an advanced trick, but it is something,” he explained, whisking the door shut behind them. Myra and Benjamin were left to inky blackness. “Now. I’d like you to take this next spell from my mind, Myra.”
Benjamin’s wand sparked a pinpoint of light, dulled so as to not task their eyes in the pressing dark.
“But I don’t—”
Ben’s finger pressed against Myra’s lips. “None of that. It’s my turn for a lesson now. Call it the price of snooping about and listening in on the conversations of the Misters James and McIntyre.”
He moved off further down the narrow passage, and Myra hurried behind so as to stay within the edge of his wand light. And then the light vanished!
“Ben—” Myra hastily swallowed her exclamation, fumbling for the little white wardstone. For she could feel a rioting of emotion outside of herself. She had to block it off. She must hide.
The point of light reappeared several feet off. It illuminated a corner and Benjamin beckoned. Angrily, Myra caught him up.
“This isn’t a game, Thales. You learn or you get hurt.” Venting his own angry whisper, Benjamin bent close and pointed with his wand. A steep stairwell fell away from them not three feet off. “When I say to try to do something, you do it. That’s how the team works.”
“From what I can see, your team is hardly that!” Myra’s whispered retort cut the close air.
“How dare you.”
“How dare I? When I overhear James talking like I don’t matter. Or Aidan who only tells the truth because he has no other choice. Or you who—” Myra had the sense to bite off her last accusation. They had arrived in the kitchens. She dutifully ducked to follow Benjamin out of a short door that he had opened via his magic.
“Or me who what, Myra?” Benjamin leaned back against the sink edge. “Me who uses my skills to keep the people I love alive and well? Me who would see everyone—even ords—safe from the likes of Addair and his men?”
“Alive . . .” That word Myra stuck on. She couldn’t get past it, try as she might. And so her legs buckled.
“Shit.” Benjamin leapt forward, throwing his arms about her waist so that Myra did not fall.
“Sorry,” she croaked. Why was it so hot all of a sudden?
Benjamin managed to drag a stool over to Myra for her to sit.
“Okay. So you’ve made your point.” Divested of his burden, he crossed his arms, frowning. “Now what to do with you.”
“Do?” New fear shook her, and with it, Myra managed to meet his gaze, pleading.
“You’re not cut out for this. Not fighting it at every turn. What we do, you have to come to in your own time. And not merely because you’ve no other choice.” Benjamin knelt before her. “Listen to me, Myra. I won’t ask you to repeat hearsay. But whatever James has said, he has said it with love. Aidan I cannot speak to. Him I trust because I have to. You are right on that count. But James? James I trust with my life.”
“But—”
Benjamin rose, not bothering to hide his look of contempt. “For someone whose gift is empathy, you’ve a shocking lack of it, Myra.”
That did it for her then. Angered, Myra put out her palm wherein rode the wardstone. “May I?”
He looked from the little white rock to her face and back to the rock, curious. She let the stone fall into her lap and then hit him with every emotional strand that she could grasp. She explained to him without words her fear, her utter terror, over the powers that M.I. commanded. She gave him her sorrow and her guilt. Lastly she gifted him with her hope, the feeling that she had come home at last. Her broken hope born of feeling that she belonged but might yet prove unwelcome in the end. Or abandoned. Left in some dark place, after they got what they wanted from her.
She said, “Nobody has ever fully understood how I feel. Understood and—”
“And remembered,” he completed. Benjamin rose and frowned. “You’re drowning. Drowning in your gift and don’t know which rescue to trust, having been offered too many false promises.”
Myra nodded. “Every step forward feels like the wrong one. You say that your James James acts out of love. Whereas my regard keeps me from making any move whatsoever lest I . . .” She waved a hand, indication as best she could of her invasion into the lives, the heads and hearts, of those around her.
Benjamin dragged over a second stool and perched upon it. After a long pause he ventured, “Yeah, well, at least use of your gift doesn’t make corpses walk around.”
Myra wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry for him. The weak joke seemed, to her, to indicate both as perfectly acceptable reactions.
Benjamin slid his gaze sideways. “So why do you trust me?”
Myra opened her mouth to argue the point. But she had forced the truth of her emotional turmoil upon him. This knowing that he hadn’t the ability to forget it, that his shared experience with her would remain as fresh and vibrant, as painful and poignant, even as time passed. She said, “Because, as you’d said, I need to try.”
Benjamin considered her response before nodding and rising. “Come. I think we’ve pretended through our late-night excuse long enough to have sidestepped both James and Aidan on our return to our rooms. And, Myra? Thank you. For not avoiding me altogether.”
By the time he had escorted her to her room, Myra had learned the trick of lighting her wand directly from Benjamin’s massive store of memory and knowledge. A small beginning, but at least she had a light in the dark.
Chapter Eighteen
“Repeat after me: I do not glide through shadows, I become shadow. The wind masks not my steps, I am the wind,” James coached.
Myra did as she was told, repeating the spell and feeling foolish. If she managed to flicker out of sight at all, it was for but a moment. Her magic fizzled and died.
“I do not glide—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Myra complained through gritted teeth. She tried again with only marginally better results.
James’ accompanying smile disappeared just as quickly. “You’re working too hard at it, Myra. Remember that you were able to imitate these magics without thought on the first day you were here.”
Yes, James. She knew this. Did not need the reminder, thank you very much. Myra knew full well she was overthinking it. And trying hard not to was perversely making it harder not to overthink it. She grumbled, “Why do we even need these words, then, if the spell clearly works without them? What is it I’m supposed to do with them?” Another thought surfaced, found a voice in her questions, “And why’s it in English, anyhow? Shouldn’t a spell be all arcane and chant-y?” A memory of Benjamin’s dark magics arose, spectre-like in her mind.
James weathered Myra’s many protests with uncustomary patience. After a pause—punctuated by raised eyebrows—to ensure she was finished, he spoke, “The words are for you and not for your magic. Order. Control. Like the t‘ai-chi practice, they are meant to steady you and take you away from the hard concentration that tamps down your art. Which is why it is in English.”
“It’s distracting.”
“I can give it you in another language if you’d rather.”
“No.” Myra shook her head. “That’d be worse.”
“I assumed as much,” James said. “But I also would demand of you that you master this form of casting. It would go a long way, I believe, in breaking you of some of the habits you’ve come to lean upon.”
Myra stared at him blankly. Doing magic quick as thought, without all the extraneous, was a habit to be broken?
“Do not misunderstand me, Myra,” James read her look. “You have a strong connection to your gift. But you’ve spent so much time, so much effort, in tamping it down that you’ve destroyed all purposeful access. Unlike most, when you actually add intent to your use of the art, you kill it stone dead, as is your habit.”
Intent. The word rang within Myra, sending reverberations through her bones.
“I do not glide through shadows, I become shadow.” Myra left the magic to its own devices, using the words to control her breath. A mantra. She had read about them with Benjamin. Her fingers and arms, what part of her torso and legs she could view—each faded to nothingness. Success.
Aidan. His spellwork wasn’t in English.
Myra winked back into sight.
“Ah, you almost had it.” James held a dramatic hand to his forehead.
Myra ignored him, still distracted by her errant thought. “Aidan. He does not do his magics in English.”
James snorted. “I should think not. Gaelic for him.”
“Oh.”
“Again. I am the wind . . .”
An hour later, Myra had become both shadow and wind. Together, she and James had traipsed up and down the halls of Grafford House, unseen by all they encountered.
Until they found Aidan. The mage had taken over the training salon. Assorted weaponry lay scattered about the room. In its midst, Aidan sweated shirtless, breathing deeply as he cycled through a program of slowed-down combat.
Myra was doubly glad that her invisibility hid her gaped-mouth stare.
“I know you’re there, you know,” Aidan called out without glancing up from his careful exercise. “The illusion of invisibility is but another form of lying.”
James’ hand on her arm rescued Myra from herself, redirecting her shock and outrage so that she did not have to lose her grip on the magic. Training within training.
They slipped away quietly, Myra following the breath of James’ power. She considered the sensation of having had an invisible hand touch her arm. In some ways, it was more haunting than that of seeing a dead man rise. She shivered, repulsed. Show me something beautiful in the magic, James. Please.
Returning to the library, James let drop his illusion, dismissing her by declaring. “I do believe you are ready, Myra, for something more advanced. We will continue after lunch.”
She’d done it. Great. But what Myra wanted to know was why Aidan had not been fooled. A fact that James seemed rather content to ignore. That in itself was disconcerting.
And so, back to Aidan she marched.
“So you, on principle, could also see through a disguise, yes?” Myra threw her question at the unsuspecting truth-teller. Luckily, for both their sakes, he had put his shirt back on. Probably anticipated her coming. But only just. The room was still a mess, the mage’s face still bedewed with perspiration, his hair damp and flyaway.
Aidan quirked a smile, clearly enjoying some sort of private joke. He reached for a nearby towel, bending at the waist to give his head and face a vigorous rub. “See through any disguise? Not quite.”
“But invisibility—”
He straightened, his strange smile deepening. He raised his eyebrows in mock challenge.
“Wait . . . but you said . . . I thought you couldn’t lie!”
“I did not lie, Moira.”
“You said—”
“What did I say? What is it I actually said?”
Myra couldn’t quite remember. Especially in the face of Aidan’s flushed smugness and perfectly unruly hair.
“I said: I know you’re there . . .”
“And ‘Invisibility is but another form of lying.’ ”
“But I did not say one beget the other.” That smile still.
“But you—”
“I let you conclude such.” Aidan tossed the towel to the side, reaching for his vest.
“You implied!” Myra’s temper got the best of her. None least because he was clearly playing her for a fool. “You’re a . . . a dirty, rotten sneak.”
