“Do you even know where you’re going?”
“Of course I do. I can feel where we should go.”
“Are you phoning home?”
“The riddles you speak are quite odd. They make you look desperate for attention.”
I nod approvingly. “I wasn’t loved enough as a child.”
“Someday, you’ll find someone who can love you.”
“Thank you.”
“Today is not that day.”
“You’re such a dick,” I say as he laughs heartily.
I really should have just stayed home because after a while my legs start burning and standing while pedaling is becoming harder and harder, and it’s like my ass is magnetized to his cock which I feel every time I lower myself a bit too much. I have to focus on the pain in my legs to keep my attention from drifting to the feel of his cock against my ass.
“How much farther?” I ask.
“I have no idea.What are you?”
“A peasant.”
“You’re obviously a human… what is your magic?”
I pedal for a minute while I think about whether or not I want to answer the man. Not because I’m keeping it a secret, but because I’m a lazy person at heart.
“I don’t know what you’d call it. I’ve never met another person with the same type of magic as me, but maybe you have since you’re a god. I technically have no magic of my own, but instead, I can borrow the magic from the last person who touched me.”
“Do you have to learn how to use it?” he asks curiously.
“No, it’s like… like it’s always been a part of me. I don’t know how to explain it… it’s as though I know everything about the magic the moment it’s in my possession. I know how to control it, how to manipulate it, and often how to extend it farther than the person who I’ve borrowed it from can. And then when someone touches me with a different type of magic, the other magic is gone and it starts again.”
Torin reaches around, and I’m confused about what he’s doing until he drags out the pendant on the chain around my neck. “I can feel an immense amount of magic coming from this. What is it?”
Quickly, I pull it free from his hand and tuck it back into my shirt. Most people don’t notice the chain, and I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who has been able to feel the magic coming from it. “It’s… it allows me to store magic I’ve borrowed. I’ve attached specific magic to it… magic I don’t want to give up. I can store some magic, but it takes a lot out of me to attach it to the pendant. For example… I didn’t want to give up the ability to have a familiar,” I say as I reach up and pet Kit. She leans into me and squints her eyes in pleasure. “The connection I have to her is stored in this pendant.”
“What about the other two spots?”
When the hell did this man become so observant?
“Those are…” I freeze when my eyes lock onto a building I pass almost every day on the way to work at the library. Just yesterday it looked normal, and today… it looks dilapidated.
“Stop here,” Torin orders as he gets off the bike, which sends me stumbling and nearly falling. Kit’s claws dig into my shoulder and her tail whaps me in the face while she hangs on tight.
“I know, Kit,” I say, rubbing behind her ears before I ditch the bike and text Imani to meet us here.
As I walk up to the building, I discover that there are strange vines shifting up its sides. They move so slowly that I have to concentrate on one to even see that it’s moving, almost like they’re strangling the structure.
“What… is this?” I ask.
Torin scrutinizes the building. “That’s what we’ve come here to find out.”
“Backup is coming. Let’s wait for them.”
“I wait for no one,” he says as he reaches the locked door and begins tugging on it.
