“No one is like me, not even me sometimes.” I squared my shoulders against the wall and started a breath count. My insides jittered like I’d drunk too much yerba mate.
“I’m sorry, Salad. I didn’t mean to make you sad.” Ranth sat up, and the towel gaped precariously.
I studied the wreath of rosemary and rowan over my bed, but my heart was somersaulting. Wizard or not, he was affecting me like some hot hunk of goodness was in my room. This was all levels of disaster. “It’s Sorrel.”
He smiled, the kind of wide smile like a kid who ate all the strawberries.
I divided my messy braid into a quick fishtail because the repetitive motion was a way to clear my head. I side-eyed him. There was something animalistic about the way he sat on the edge of my bed observing me. Like I was prey.
An itchy tingle crawled through me, not unlike walking through cobwebs. I folded my arms to quash the discomfort. “Look, we need to smooth out a few facts. You say you’re a wizard, and I’m guessing you were trapped in the bracelet? Is it a curse or a spell? How long have you been in there?” I had no idea if I could trust him, but I could at least hear what he had to say.
“Cursed, yes, and trapped for centuries, I assume. It has not been pleasant.” He examined the edge of the towel.
“But you’re human?” His skin was luminous and smooth like it had been burnished with oil. I flexed my fingers, admiring where his washboard stomach met the towel edge.
He glanced at his chest, then back at me, and nodded.
“You can do spellwork? Call spirits? And can you see them? Spirits? Demons? Both?” The bracelet slid down on my wrist.
“Both. The Ahknim are selected at birth and trained by mentors to use their innate powers.”
“Innate powers” caught my attention. “Selected? How?” Could this wizard really be like me? My spine tingled like fingers were trailing it, and I shook off the feeling. My entire life I’d searched for an understanding of how I could see things others can’t. But with Mom gone, everything I’d learned was by experimentation, and I wore those scars proudly.
His head cocked slightly. “The bloodlines are known. Only a few of each generation are worth training. The parents of these bloodlines offer their children for the testing.”
“What do you mean by offer?” I rubbed my upper arms. There was space between us, but my bedroom wasn’t big.
“We are left to journey to the Temple. The ones not accepted return to their families.”
My chest tightened at the thought of leaving my family. “Why would someone ever give up their kids?”
“To support powerful ones. There are great riches.”
“For treasure and money? That’s brutal.”
“Books and artifacts. You might call them treasure. It is an honor to have their children selected. The Ahknim temples are hidden in the Thebais Mountains. They can be found by those who know where to seek them. But only worthy children can find the path.”
“It isnothonorable to give up your kids—your family. Do you mean the paths to the mountains are warded like this room?”
“Similarly, but on a grander scale.”
I kept a hand on the wall. If he could tell the room was warded, what else could he see? “Where is Thebais, exactly?”
“I’m not sure what you would call it now.”
“But it’s a place in this world, right?”
“It was.” He nodded. I was running out of good questions, and I didn’t know enough about history to ask the right ones.
We both turned toward the thud of a beanbag smacking the window. I leaned against the window frame and looked down. Ori waved, her brown hair braided into rows and tied back in a bouncing ponytail. She carried a black duffel, and her pink tracksuit explained where she’d found clothes. We’d met a personal trainer at a gym a couple of blocks over, in the same group she had a membership, and the trainer had started givingOri tips. I was waiting to hear if she’d asked Ori out, but no progress so far.
I nodded at Ori to use the front entrance. Crossing the room, I placed my hands on the wall beside the bedroom door. Connecting with the house let me listen to her move through it. Ori was the sweetest person I knew. As part of her research as a grad student, she had access to most of the special collections. She’d help me find a quick answer to my wizard problem—if there was one.
The house energy shifted, prickling across my palms as Ori put the copper key in the custom front door lock. A rush of fresh air blew through the house and rippled through me. I already felt stronger with my best friend nearby. Ori’s positive energy brightened the house’s buzz as she moved from the front door to the kitchen. Fear rippled through her as she got close to the back door wards, probably peering out into the garden. I gripped the doorframe. Could the demons still be there? I leaned on the wall, forcing what positivity I could scrape up into the house energy.
She should be safe. Besides, demons didn’t wander around our world, plucking up random people. They couldn’t spend much time in our reality, and their goal was energy in whatever form was closest and plentiful. Often that was plant-based. I’d never seen them attack a human unless one had summoned them, except for my mom and Brenda. Brenda’s rolled-back eyes would haunt my dreams. Mom, well, I would never stop reliving the moment she was pulled through by the Sisters.
Ori made thirty-one steps through the rooms, and I readied to open the ward when she made it upstairs.
