She was airborne.Airborne.She had no words to admit anything.
He followed her up, slipped a hand into hers and pulled her higher. Then he let go and gave her a gentle push. The sensation was like being in water without the actual water. She walked on nothing, darted around the chandelier, tucked her chin to her chest and turned a flip.
Hartgrave circled her, staying out of the way, saying nothing. When she finally got her voice back, she said, “How are you doing this? Dampening gravitational pull?”
He produced his sort-of smile, the upward twitch that characterized so many of their seven o’clock meetings. “Someone once told me scientific explanations drain all the magic out of magic.”
“A wise person, that someone.”
“Contradictory, too, considering how much she likes to ask questions.”
He turned onto his stomach and hung there, contemplating the floor more than a dozen feet below. She performed two more flips and joined him, thankful happiness had more in common with tranquility than adrenaline-soaked excitement.
“I’m so glad I came here.” She removed her gloves and slipped a hand into his. It tingled. “I’m so glad I met you.”
He stole a sideways glance at her. “Are you really?”
She almost laughed at the ludicrousness of this question. Wasn’t it blatantly obvious to him how she felt? Shewasn’t quite equal to sayingI seem to be in love with you, so she made do with, “There’s no one like you.”
He winced.
“I don’t mean the magic,” she hastened to add. “I meanyou. Though I do appreciate you letting me into the magical world I’ve always wanted to believe existed.”
“What we want does not always turn out to be good for us.”
She took this to be a commentary on adventure, not his opinion of himself. “Look—I’m anxious, too. Especially for Bernie and Willi. But you’ve said it yourself: At the first sign of real trouble, we can bail.”
He gave a humorless chuckle. “I wasn’t just talking about tomorrow. I meant everything. Magic.”
She bit her lip, reminded of a conversation they’d had. The first real conversation. “I thought you said there’s nothing inherently wrong with it.”
“Magic seems neutral, I must admit,” he said. “People, however, are evil.”
“You don’t really believe that.Allpeople?”
“What’s the first thing you learned about power, studying history?”
“Well ...” She saw where he was heading, and it made her uneasy. “It corrupts.”
“And absolute power?”
“Corrupts absolutely.”
“And what, my dearest Daggett,” he said softly, “would you call magic?”
She didn’t want to think of it that way. She wanted the magic of her childhood books. Whimsy. Possibility. Great feats for good purposes. An occasional darksorcerer to defeat seemed much more palatable than this Hartgravean vision of every individual as a potential evil overlord.
“Silence indicates tacit agreement,” he said.
“You’re saying you don’t think anyone should use magic?”
He scowled at the far-off floor. “The human race hasn’t advanced nearly enough to be trusted with such a force.”
“But the problem is that it’s secret and only a few use it. If it were general knowledge—”
“Then it would be a massive problem of a different sort, unless every single person knew how to defend themselves from those who would use it against them. And even then, I don’t think I’d like to live in such a world.”
A subduing thought. “You wish you’d never learned,” she said, looking at their twined hands.
