“I think so. And I don’t want to stay, you know, so I need you to figure out how to make it clear that it’s notmymagic. If they think I’m powerful, they won’t siphon me.” Her voice rose until she sounded angrier than intended. She took a moment, resettled her emotions. “I can’t stay, Sondre. Ican’t. If they think I am powerful… what if they make me stay?”
He looked pensive, and that did more for mollifying her anger than anything else could—short of sending her home. She didn’t know much about magic yet, but she realized now that she’d used it to protect her son in a cocoon of it, burst a door off her vehicle, and spongify the floor of an ancient building.
She was not as weak as she needed to appear.
“If I got out of the vehicle before you found me, could I have escaped?” She’d been thinking about it during the last few hours. Craig wouldn’t have gone far, and she would’ve caught up. There were ways she had been mentally replaying events, things she mentally shifted so in the end she wasn’t here without him.
“The initial arrival of magic is exhausting,” he said gently. “You passed out, but you saved your son as a result of your magic. That’s something.”
“Someone tampered with my engine.”
“Yes.”
“Was it you? Someone here?” Maggie hated the likelihood that it was her ex-husband. Surely, Leon wouldn’t be so awful as to do something that could kill his own son.
“It was not me or any witch.” Sondre gave her a sad look. “Based on what I know, I suspect it was personal.”
“How would you kn—?”
“I learn alotabout the incoming students, Maggie.” Sondre gave her another sympathetic look, and she opted not to correct his use of her name.
“I need to rescue my son. You understand that, don’t you? I like it here, but he’s my priority.” She twisted her hands together as she spoke. “His father… his own father is likely the one who tried tokill us.”
“Yes. That is my assessment, too. But without needing to pay money to you, he’s unlikely to hurt his son right now.” Sondre said these words as if it was at all reasonable that a man could want to kill his own child. It wasn’t. It just wasn’t a decision she could fathom.
“Myson.”
“Yes,” Sondre allowed.
“I just want to go home,” she whispered. “I belong there.”
“I don’t have the power to send you back, Maggie. I would if I could.” For several moments, Sondre was silent. Finally, he nodded. “I am part of a group of witches arguing that we ought to be able to move between worlds. You are a perfect case of why. I will argue for you.”
“So there’s a chance?”
“Right now? No. In time—”
“I don’t have time!” Maggie crossed her arms, holding herself together. “He’s a teenager. He needs menow.”
“We can go over periodically for food and water and assorted other things, but that’s only a few authorized people who can do so. Maybe I can eventually get you added to that task and—”
“Then I want to be siphoned. I want to go home,” she insisted. “Look, I get that you don’t know me. We had a friends-with-benefits night… or a ‘one-off,’ or whatever the term is these days.”
Wryly, he said, “I’m not the authority on current terms in your world for our evening together.”
She stood and paced away from him. Without looking back, she asked, “Tell me how to get them to let me go home.”
“Fail,” he said softly.
She turned to face him again.
“Fail every task you can. Be inept. Be difficult,” Sondre continued. “Treat them all the way you treated me. Make themwantyou to leave.”
“Thank you.” Maggie looked at him, realizing for all that she wantedto leave here, she wished she could take him with her. She wasn’t going to admit that, but she’d spent her life looking for someone whosawher, who made her feel complete, who made her feel protected.
And I’m going to leave him before we even try.
He gave her a look that she couldn’t interpret before simply saying, “Siphoning can kill you.”
