Kol had grown to have a firm grasp on magic, overcoming his slow start and proving he was at least half elucidai, but there were limits regardless. While the rifle he was handed had a walnut stock, manipulating that wood wouldn’t affect any of the apparently much more important metal parts. Not to mention the walnut was long dead and had been lacquered to the nether and back.
Magic required focus, and apparently so did shooting, but there was a lot less recoil with casting and a lot more will. Kol soon discovered that simply intending to hit the center of a target didn’t mean that’s where the bullet would go.
So he missed. A lot. The sulfurous stench of the gunpowder was as unhelpful as the lack of a target worth hitting. He held no animosity for a printed bullseye, no fear a static piece of paper hanging at the end of a line would attack, and he had no one standing at his back to defend, so even finding the threads of magic in the air was arduous. The fact that the target used to be a tree certainly didn’t help either.
Nor did Presley or Russ or Cody or even Luis. Jim tried, but Kol did even worse under Piper’s father’s eye, so he took a break from missing and left the loudness of the range for the attached clubhouse. Kol had never cared about his masculinity before, one of the few benefits of being elven, but it was truly being challenged, and it feltbad. He threw himself into a chair, spread his knees wide, and scowled as he pulled out his thaumatix, scrolling past the list of severing spells, another failure as he’d only whittled the ones that might work from three hundred and seven to two hundred and twenty-eight.
Piper’s information hovered at the bottom of his screen, but his finger froze. He’d like to prove himself particularly masculine to her, if she were willing to let him.
“Texting your other girlfriend?”
Kol quickly flipped the device shut then cringed at the cowardly move, probably only confirming Presley’s suspicions. “Just checking on Piper.” At least that wasn’t entirely a lie.
Presley fell into the chair beside him—too close, he thought—and made a disbelieving noise. “Not doing very well in there, huh?”
Kol grunted back.
“So,” said Presley with far too much gravity, “if you’re from Canada, why don’t you speak French?”
Because that’s an idiotic assumption,would have been a perfectly fine answer, but instead when Kol opened his mouth, a phrase in Elvish came tumbling out.
Presley squinted, but it was apparent he knew Elvish as well as he knew any other language, no idea Kol had just told him,Wisdom has long ears and a short tongue. “Okay, well what’s your favorite grade of maple syrup then?”
Kol blinked. “A?”
“Yeah, that’s, uh…right.” Presley looked annoyed, but for once it was with himself. “And who do you root for in hockey?”
“The…Canadians?”
“The Canadiens,”—Presley clicked his tongue—“yeah, that makes sense.”
Does it?
“So you met Piper out in the woods?”
Kol ran a hand over his face, wiping away his mounting frustration. “We did establish that last night, yes.”
“You said a lot of stuff last night.”
Kol had thought it was all pretty good stuff. “I did.”
“So, what are you getting Piper for her birthday?”
“Whatever she wants.”
“You know when it is?”
“Yeah, do you?”
“August…” he dragged out the word, gaze lifting to the ceiling.
“Twenty-eighth,” Kol spat, knowing Presley probably couldn’t pull any date out of his ass, let alone the right one. “Which makes her a Virgo, as if that isn’t painfully obvious. And her favorite color is green, she believes every cardinal is a sign, and she likes her coffee with so much hazelnut creamer it’s more sugar than bean, but damn if she isn’t right about it being good.”
Presley opened his mouth, but Kol cut right back in.
“And she goes to the grocery store on the far side of town to get all of you special tomatoes which none of you even appreciate, but she may as well make the longer trip because that’s where parking is better and she gets Doc’s treats and her tampons which you’d never go pick up for her, would you?” Well, that would shut him up.
And it did, for a minute—a minute long enough for Kol to wish he actually knew more about Piper. To wish he knew everything.
