The mage screamed in anguish as a gaping hole opened in his belly.
“Ah, man.” I breathed heavily and thought about throwing up. “That wasn’t the counter-spell.”
“Oh, we get to kill?” Dave asked from somewhere behind me.
“No!” I put out a finger and looked around. “No, killing. This was an accident!”
Someone screamed before quickly cutting off.
“That was an accident,” one of the basandere called.
I sighed. This hadn’t gone as planned, and it was mostly my fault. Cyra would never let me live this down, especially because she was stuck above the tree line and couldn’t participate. At least she’d followed directions and hadn’t set fire to the trees.
“Right, okay. Well…” I put my hands on my hips and listened. Silence. We’d gotten through the enemy.
Austin stood off to one side. Only a few of our people were hurt and none of them badly. This hadn’t been a powerful force, and they’d also been unprepared. Niamh had been right. We’d now have to figure out what information Momar had been after.
“Fine,” I said. “There’s still a bunch alive, so I call that a win. It’ll be good enough.”
Someone tsked, and Nessa walked up. Her hair was messy, and she held bloody knives. “Jessie, Jessie, Jessie,” she said with a grin. “Niamh is going to be so mad at you.”
“Should I make art out of him?” Edgar asked with a toothy grin. “It always sends some sort of message.”
The big Kodiak was staring at me. Even the bear face looked shocked.
I held out my hands. “We’re not all perfect, okay? Sometimes my spell work is a little…”
“Volatile?” Nessa guessed.
“Horrific?” Sebastian said.
“Surprising,” I finished. “Sometimes it is surprising and doesn’t react how I expect. They were the enemy. They had it coming. Anyway, let’s head back.”
Someone grunted in pain—Phil—followed by a loud scream.
“That was an accident,” Phil yelled. “Kinda.”
I bowed in defeat. I couldn’t even yell at him. I’d started it.
14
Jessie
The afternoon wanedas I sat in a lawn chair in Drex’s lovely backyard. The water lapped at the sides of the pool and a glass of sparkling wine sat on my right, untouched. Mr. Tom had thought the wine would improve my spirits.
A shape in my peripheral vision caught my notice—Drex, walking along the stone path that led from the back door. The watery sunlight highlighted the plains of his narrow face. He carried a glass of sparkling wine.
“Jessie,” he said by way of hello, and took another of the lawn chairs.
“Hey. How are things going?”
He’d wanted to be in on the “fact finding” chats, as I liked to think of them, sitting in with Sebastian, Nessa, Niamh, and Tristan as they questioned the enemy mages. He’d wanted to know how mages typically operated, and he’d also wanted to hear firsthand about who he was harboring.
“Not well.” He took a slow sip of his wine before placing it on the table beside him. “I threw up.”
“Ah.”
“I notice you didn’t ask me to elaborate.”
