My jaw dropped. I hadn’t seen Xan pick up his little pastry, but he pushed a bite into my mouth. I should have been mad, or turned on, but I was so distracted by what he said, I just chewed the buttery little shortcake and let his words sink in.
Objects didn’t have emotions. But I guess trees didn’t either. However, the book on alloys discussed the concept of magical memory in conductive materials. Gold coins were the currency here because they were so versatile and held small quantities of magic.
Xan popped a bit of cake into his mouth and let out a little moan. “Ezra’s cakes are the best… and best washed down with a little bit of sparkling wine.”
My stomach fluttered, sending tingles to parts of me that shouldn’t be turned on. Magic 8-Pack could bake… no, Ezra baked these for Xan. They were adorable and perfect together.
Xan made a slight motion with his fingers. It took me a moment to stop picturing the two and realize he was asking me to open up my pocket-void.
My magic. Focus.
A connection. Something that I loved, and that loved me back.
The night my dad brought out the box full of bags, everything that child me had destroyed, rushed back to me. I assumed Miss Q put the box in my void, as it vanished after my next episode. With everything else going on in my life, I hadn’t given it a second thought.
I swallowed hard. If this were the future, then my dad had passed away years ago. He would have lived the rest of his life without me. Had he been happy? Without me bogging him down, had he met someone new? Maybe had a real life?
Questions filled my mind as I opened my pocket-void and reached for my box. I had to use both hands, as the box was roughly the width of my shoulders and half a foot tall, but soon enough, it rested in my lap.
After one deep breath, I opened the lid and pulled out a Ziploc bag of plastics and precious metals. ‘Quinn, Age Four, originally a collectible 1941 Cadillac convertible coupe Hot Wheel.’ Tears filled my eyes. I’d destroyed so much of his stuff.
I gripped the bag and pulled it to my chest.
Xan’s warm hand rubbed my back.
“I think I’m from the past,” I said. “I think my dad died a long time ago.”
“You are, and he did,” Xan said softly.
“How do you know? And help me God, if you purposely misunderstand any of that right now, I am going to shove this bag of Hot Wheel powder up your butt.”
He grinned at me before sobering. “I guess I don’t really know. But it fits too well to be anything else, and it’s something we can confirm together. Will you let me help you?”
I pulled the bag away from my chest and wiped my eyes. “I’d like that.”
Slowly, painfully, I opened the bag and dipped my finger into the gritty contents. For a breathless instant, nothing happened, then the air stirred, alive with something unseen. Goosebumps raced up my arms, and my heart thundered in my chest. The air itself hadn’t changed—Ihad. Magic thrummed through me, wild and endless, the raw pulse of the world. I wasn’t just touching it. I was the pool of magic in Rowan’s book. The universe breathed with me.
My heart raced. Without taking my finger out of the bag, I pinched my forearm to make sure I was still awake. Something sparkled in my peripheral vision.
Suddenly, all the cauldrons cut out. A few voices shouted, and someone cursed.
“Turn on the lights, Quinn,” Xan said softly.
I closed my eyes. Cayden told me that using magic was a matter of will. Ezra said it was a balance between what you wanted and what the world was capable of providing. I’m sure Rowan would tell me to set my stance and go for it; the only way to improve was to take the first shot.
Without opening my eyes, I ‘willed’ the cauldrons back to life. Blinding bright light cut through my eyelids. I blinked them open to see Xan smiling down at me, surrounded by prismatic light dancing with rainbows.
He reached forward and pulled a lock of my hair away from my face. I blinked in confusion. Instead of seeing red curls, a solid strip of semi-transparent hair danced with the identical prisms.
Xan handed me a cup of bubbly. “I think we have something to celebrate now.”
Chapter 11
Cayden
Everyspeckoflightin the library had cut off. Curses and whispers filled the halls. I sighed and drew a quick rune. A light appeared above my paper book, and I kept reading.
According to Susannah Crockford, “The word ‘cult’ is a shapeshifter, semantically morphing with the intentions of whoever uses it. As an analytical term, it resists rigorous definition.” She argued that the least subjective definition of cult referred to a religion or religion-like group ‘self-consciously building a new form of society,’ but that the rest of society rejected as unacceptable. The term cult has been criticized as lacking ‘scholarly rigour.’ Benjamin E. Zeller stated, ‘Labelling any group with which one disagrees and considers deviant as a cult may be a common occurrence, but it is not scholarship.’
