“I know. I figured I’d talk to Gabriel after he drops off August.”
“You do that, and I’ll ask a forestry technician I know to guide them out there.”
“Okay.” Veda takes off her heavy satchel and slings it over his shoulder. The weight doesn’t faze him. “My bag’s still wet. I wanted to collect more, but what I did gather is safe and sound, ready to make anything the school needs.”
Peter nudges her. “They could use a lesson from the best brewer I know.”
“Ms. Everly is a good brewing master,” Veda says, dismissing him with a wave as they walk toward the school. Weston Academy is a single-story brick-and-stone building with high ceilings and dozens of windows. It sits on a small butte, with steps shaped from the hillside and a large wraparound deck where students linger. Peter pauses at the top of the steps and squeezes Veda’s shoulder. The chill of his spelltingles her skin before she can stop him. Soreness vanishes like it was never there.
While the price for magic isn’t always equal or fair for Mages or those without amulets to absorb the cost of their spells, Seers like Peter are a minority who can use magic without physical consequences.Howremains a mystery, though theories point to a specific gene cluster activated when Sight—the precognitive ability to glimpse the past, present, or future—manifests. Seers cannot brew potions or imbue magic into anything except amulets, and they’re highly sensitive to magical neutralizing agents, but they don’t suffer chills from casting light spells, broken bones from hexes, or organ failure from curses. Sight isn’t a choice. It comes with a lifetime of discrimination, stereotyping, and unchecked harassment by some of the Mage majority that sees them as dangerous abominations.
“You could get in trouble for that,” Veda mutters. “Then Khadijah is going to be mad as hell when enforcers kick down your door to arrest you for a casting violation ...again.”
Peter smiles at the mention of his wife. “They’d probably take her in, too, for mouthing off.”
Veda shakes her head, amused. “True.”
“Besides, that healing spell was weak enough for a Mage to cast without major injury, which makes it legal. As long as Seers don’t display overt magical superiority, we’re safe.”
“I know. It doesn’t stop me from worrying.”
Calling Peter a friend doesn’t quite match the true nature of the bond they forged years ago, when he sat beside her at orientation during freshman year at Crestwood University. It was the first year the campus integrated Mages and Seers, and tensions were high. He spoke first, cautious but polite, and their conversation turned genuine the moment Veda argued that integration should have happenedyearsearlier. Born in that moment, their friendship grew during intellectual debates and bittersweet nostalgic ramblings about her childhood, and rooted deep enough to endure after Peter returned to Proventia to take over WestonAcademy from his retiring mother, while Veda moved to Philadelphia for medical school. He is the closest thing to a sibling she’s had.
“Are you okay?” Peter asks.
Veda doesn’t trust easily, a conditioned reflex after losing so much. Even though she’s never doubted Peter, the answer is complicated. Best to keep her feelings buried and stick to the script.
“I’m fine.”
Peter’s timing either protects or prepares Veda—the hardest part is recognizing the difference. Outside his office, with a hand hovering over the knob, he becomes unusually cryptic. “This isn’t an emergency in the traditional sense.”
Before she can ask what the hell that means, Peter pushes open the door and gestures for her to enter. More suspicious than wary, she stays close to the wall. Peter’s office is small and well lit, with neutral walls, oak floors, sparse furniture, and an antique ceramic tea set that serves as an icebreaker for parent meetings.
Standing in front of his wall of bookshelves is an older, petite woman who emanates an air so superior, Veda regrets not rinsing the mud off her boots before entering the room. The woman wears long deep-purple pants and a matching knee-length embroideredkameezwith gold earrings and jewelry, and her makeup is as perfect as her silky black hair—streaked with gray at the temples and pulled back with a vintage gold hair clip adorned with a colorful array of tiny amulets. Freckles dot her brown skin, and crow’s-feet indent the corners of round brown eyes. Both speak to her age and only heighten the powerful presence she exudes.
The woman’s pensive focus is fixed on a target. Veda follows her gaze to a child no older than six occupying the chair in front of Peter’s desk. Despite dangling feet, the boy reminds Veda of a micro-adult. With deep-tan skin, freckles, bright-hazel eyes, and dark-brown hairgelled and parted severely to one side, he carries a cautious, curious tension while maintaining a level of stillness children his age rarely possess. He’s dressed in the standard school uniform—a white button-down, fitted black pants, and leather dress shoes—and his black knitted bow tie stands out as much as the standard blazer neatly draped over the back of his seat in an oddly tidy act.
“Apologies for keeping you both waiting. Veda, this is my godson, Antaris Fowler.” Peter’s introduction holds an uncertainty that earns him a quizzical glance from the child. “Today is his first day of school.”
Unsure how to greet Antaris, Veda settles for an awkward “Welcome to Weston.”
Antaris scrutinizes her in a silence that borders on painful until Peter gestures to the woman. “This is his grandmother, Simran.”
Simran assesses Veda with equal interest before politely nodding. “Pleasure.”
It doesn’t sound like it.
“You as well,” Veda replies with a practiced, put-on pleasantness.
“Please, do take a seat, Miss Thorne.” Simran’s British accent is gratingly posh yet smooth in a way that naturally develops after years in America. “I imagine you are curious about why you are here.”
Veda is, but instead asks, “How did you know my last name?”
“I know many things.”
“Subtlety won’t get you anywhere with me.” Veda smiles, saccharine sweet.
Peter’s cough sounds like a chuckle. Every eye turns to him. “Just had something in my throat.”
