“AJedi?” How dare she? Indignation pushed my screw-up aside. “Can a Jedi command the elements to rearrange themselves according to his design? Can a Jedi pluck your spirit from your flesh and send it across time and space?”
“You can knock someone’s mind out of their body?” Ava’s eyes were wide. “You mean like Doctor Strange?”
“You little—”
“Temple,” snapped Annette.
I reined in my temper. Morgan had a hand over his mouth to hide his laughter. He knew exactly what I was. But Ava still lived in a smaller, duller world. Or she had until I ripped back the curtain just now.
I concentrated on Ava. I’d spent the past minutes drawing power from the house up into my cane. “Could a Jedi erase the last five minutes from your memory?”
“What?” She stepped back, her eyes wide with sudden panic. “What are you doing? Uncle Temple, don’t—”
I tapped my cane against the floor, and her face went blank.
“Dammit, Temple!” Annette shoved past me to grab Ava’s shoulders and peer into her eyes.
“Whoa,” said Morgan. “Not cool, man.”
“She’s fine,” I assured them, though guilt made me feel like twice-baked dog shit. “I made a mistake. I fixed the mistake.”
“You messed with my granddaughter’s brain,” Annette said tightly.
“I removed five minutes of memory,” I said. “Do you want me to put those five minutes back?”
Annette spun and punched the heavy bag. While not as powerful as Jenny, Annette was significantly stronger than the average human. The bag flew backward until it was almost horizontal, then swung back to be stopped by Annette’s follow-up punch.
Morgan turned to me. “Uncle Temple, did you ever do magic like that on me?”
“Of course not.” Not that I’d admit in front of his grandmother.
I stepped around Annette, staying out of arm’s reach, and touched Ava’s nose with my index finger.
She blinked. Her eyes crossed, trying to focus. “I’m sorry, Uncle Temple.”
“It was an accident,” I said. Again.
Ava looked past me. Her body went still as she saw the mess. “What happened?”
“When the sword struck the wall, the paneling collapsed,” I said, planting the idea in the fertile space where I’d uprooted her memory. “It was rotten, so all it took was one impact in the right place to bring everything down. It’s not your fault.”
“My friend Madison used to get water in her basement,” she said. “The walls started to crack, and she said if they’d waited one more day to get someone to come fix it, their whole house could have collapsed.”
“This house is not going to collapse,” I assured her.
“Isn’t mold toxic?” she asked. “Are we going to get cancer?”
“Upstairs, both of you.” Annette’s tone was as effective as any spell. Seconds later, it was just the two of us. She turned to me, her eyes faintly bloodshot with demonic rage. Her nails had curled and thickened into claws. Perfectly manicured claws with jade polish and French tips, but claws nonetheless. “What—and I cannot stress this enough—the fuck?”
I should have stayed in bed. “Sorry. I forgot about Ava. I was distracted by my house falling apart.”
“Distracted?” Anger wafted from her body like heat from a forge. “Temple, do you know what will happen if Morgan breathes one word of what you just did to his father? I have a hard-enough time convincing Blake to let me see my grandchildren as it is.”
I squinted at the wall, trying to find the source of the leaks. “Would you like me to adjust Morgan’s memories, too?”
She looked like she was about to hit me. Then her expression softened, as did her tone. Her claws relaxed into their normal form, though the transformation had left chips in the polish. “What’s going on? You’re grumpier than usual.”
I felt myself getting grumpier still. I’d take anger over pity any day.
