I had talked pretty big to Blackstaff McCoy about that very subject.
Maybe it was time to start living like it was the truth. Now. Not tomorrow, not at the new semester.
Right now.
I looked up at him and said, “Come with me.”
“Where?” he asked.
“The Carpenters’ place,” I said. “We’re going to go get Maggie and move her in.”
He peered up at me in the glow of fallen snow and distant light.
“I think you’re wrong. But if you’ve made your call, Hoss,” he said, “I’ll back your play.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said gravely.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
December went by in a hectic, happy blur.
There was one more room on the other side of Bear’s that had been being used for random storage. We cleaned it out and set it up for Maggie, and I got to spend the next few weeks spending time with my little girl.
Maggie was fascinated with Fitz and his wizard lessons, and she and Mouse would come and watch whenever he and I were working together, which was early morning, morning, and afternoon every day. She found weight lifting and combat lessons mildly interesting, meditation and mental discipline mostly boring, and his practical evocation lessons terribly exciting. But then, something often blew up or got set on fire, so it wasn’t like I could say any different.
“You should use ‘pew pew pew’ for your magic words for those little fireballs,” Maggie told Fitz one day after he had done a credible job of mangling the target dummy with slow, careful concentration.
“Hah,” he said.
“Hmph,” I said.
“Why not?” Maggie asked. “You said the words weren’t important as long as they didn’t have”—she scrunched up her nose—“intrisic, instinctive meaning.”
“Intrinsic,” I corrected her, sounding out the word carefully. “It means something is pretty much baked into the cake along with something else so they can’t be separated.”
“That,” she said. “ ‘Pew pew pew’ should work.”
“It should,” Fitz mused, wiping sweat from his brow. He peered at me. “Right?”
“You have your reputation to think of,” I told him. “I mean, you can’t just go around saying ‘pew pew pew’ or ‘bang’ or ‘zing.’ ”
Fitz began to chuckle. “Why not?”
“You’re a wizard, man,” I told him. “In tune with the primordial forces of the universe. Wielding the leftover energy from Creation itself. Have a little gravitas.”
Maggie pointed dual finger guns at the still-smoldering target dummy and said, “Pew pew pew!”
Fitz, tired but merry enough, laughed harder. “Pew pew pew. I mean, yeah, it would work.”
“Don’t do it,” I said. “Look, I have my own issues using badly done Latin, and I got a little bit lucky that my bad Latin is so far off of proper speech. Council meetings are still done in Latin, and I have to speak it sometimes. If I could go back, I’d pick Tuareg or something.”
“Why don’t you just do it now?” Fitz asked, scrunching up his nose.
“Doesn’t work like that,” I said. “The neural pathways we’re building to run energy through are incredibly specific. If I started switching my words around now, I’d set myself back years and years. Have to learn everything from the ground floor, like you’re doing. I mean, I’d probably do it a little faster than you, but not much. This is foundation-level stuff we’re dealing with.”
“But I could,” Fitz mused. “I’m still building up. I could pick ‘pew pew pew’ or ‘kazinga’ if I wanted to.”
