flipping out. I settled for beating the crap out of my pillow until the muscles in my arms burned.
A knock on my door.
I stood panting for a second, feeling hot, and sweaty, and a tiny bit better. Another knock.
âYes?â I called, my voice thick. I rubbed my face and eyes dry.
âItâs me, Pete.â
I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before saying, âCome in.â
Pete entered the room, making it feel considerably smaller.
âHey,â he said. âI was thinking, maybe you could sleep in my room tonight? Then we could talk and stuff.â
I glanced back down at the floor where Felicity had lain, then at the bed I hadnât slept in for twenty-five years.
âThat might be nice, actually.â In fact, if someone wanted to try to attack me again, or place Felicityâs body on my floor again tonight, it might not hurt to be someplace they wouldnât expect. If I were careful about it, not even Mort would know Iâd changed rooms.
Peteyâs round face broke into a grin. I grabbed the blue blanket, and a pair of my old pajamas out of the dresser. There, waiting in the drawer where Iâd left it, sat my persona ring. A simple-looking silver ring with a small black stone, it might have been mistaken for a mood ring. But every arcana over twelve had one. They were the official ID of the arcana world, containing information about my identity, my arcana gifts, my ranking in the arcana hierarchy. And the color marked me as a necromancer, my dominant gift, though my family had at least a touch of the wizardry, sorcery, and thaumaturgy gifts as well. The only one of the five branches of human magic our family hadnât manifested at some point was alchemy.
I closed the drawer without taking the ring, and followed Pete outside.
I dashed through the cool night air between the main house and the mother-in-law cottage, searching the dark for any signs of danger. The dark was signless.
Looking up in case of falling death meteors or swooping terrors, I did see that a cable still ran from outside my bedroom window and disappeared over the hedge bordering this side of our yard. Many video games, cassettes, notes, candies and other oddities had been sent back and forth along that cable between my window and the window of Next Door Dawnâs room. Or at least, her room when we were teenagers.
Dawn was a mundy, and Grandfather didnât allow mundies in our house except on business. The rope system was just one of the many small ways I got around that. By the time of my exile, I probably spent more time with Dawn each day than anyone except Heather and my siblings. She was like my second sister. I wondered where she lived now, what her life was like. It didnât feel quite like a homecoming without seeing her.
I began to ask Pete about her, but stopped. It felt like even a whisper would carry loudly in the night air. And if the news of Dawn was bad, I wasnât sure I wanted to hear it, not tonight.
Pete bounced with excitement as we entered his tiny home.
The cottage used to be Motherâs escape from us children. She didnât call it that, of course. She called it her office, and it used to be mostly filled with gardening supplies. But sheâd also had a chair and reading lamp, a futon, and a small still in the bathroom for making her home brew. Now it looked like a proper apartment with all the standard furnishings, and a simple kitchenette. What really marked the space as Peteâs were the Rubikâs cubes and similar puzzle games piled on his dresser and shelves. That, and the walls were covered nearly floor to ceiling in paint by number paintings, most featuring wolves. Heâd always had a gift for space and numbers that itself bordered on magical.
Pete hung his head and shuffled from foot to foot in that golly-gawrsh way he had, and said, âDo you like it?â
âI think itâs awesome, dude. Youâve gotten really good at the
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