Page 32 of Seer

“Exactly. You’ve heard stories about Elves, right?”

His head whipped toward me. “Elves?” He gave a disbelieving laugh. “LikeThe Lord of the Rings?”

I smiled wryly and shrugged. “Maybe? I never met one. They’re a race of beings from the dimension the Wonders came from. They created the portals.”

“You’re shitting me.”

I shook my head, smiling more broadly this time. “I shit you not. Our understanding is that they have the most magic of any creatures in their dimension and as a result they’re in charge of it. They visited Earth frequently but the Elves themselves never settled here. The Wonders, though, they came to Earth and many of them stayed.”

“But if humans tried to kill them off, why didn’t they just go home?”

I shrugged. “Some did. But others liked their new home better than their old one.” I grimaced. “And now they can’t go home.” Cal stayed silent, waiting for me to continue. “After World War II, the Elves decided humanity was essentially unsalvageable. They didn’t want to watch us kill the Wonders or each other anymore.”

“So they left?”

I nodded. “They closed the portals and haven’t been back. But before they left for good, they did two things.” I paused to switch lanes so I could exit the freeway.

“First, they offered passage back to the Elven dimension for any Wonders who wanted to leave Earth. Some of the older beings went, but most of the younger ones had been born here, and it was all they knew. So they stayed.”

“Understandable.”

“It is. But that led to the other thing the Elves did. They didn’t want to leave Wonders here without some sort of protection, so they picked several human families on each continent, and they sort of... infected them with magic.”

“I’m sorry. Did you sayinfected?”

I lifted a hand, palm-up. “There’s really no other way to look at it. These families agreed to be champions of the Wonders who remain on Earth, and to help them do that, the Elves infused magic into their DNA.”

“Infused sounds better than infected.” Cal grumbled.

“Anyway,” I said, turning into the parking lot of Wharton Park. “It’s all a passive sort of magic, like your visions, or my increased sense of smell. We can’t do spells or turn people into toads or whatever.”

After parking, I undid my seatbelt and started to open the door, but Cal held up a hand to stop me.

“You’re saying you think I have this magic?”

I raised an eyebrow. “I know you do. I can sense your magic with mine. The records from the people who were directlyinfusedby the Elves all say that after everyone present was given their magic, the Elves sort of....” I swooped a hand through the air like a fairy godmother waving her wand. “Gestured. Then ten or so years later some people showed up with magic, but they weren’t related to the original families. So we’re always on the lookout for new magic carriers. It’s been at least sixty years since we found any in Texas, though.”

I opened my car door then turned back to Cal, who was staring out the front windshield with a dazed expression on his face.

“Um,” he said. “Does that mean one of my parents had magic?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. But sometimes it acts kind of like a recessive gene and just pops up. And magic carriers can have non-magical children.”

Cal nodded and unplugged his phone. He got out of the car, shouldering his crappy backpack.

There was a map of the park trails next to the entrance. Cal pointed at the one Annie had used in his vision and we set off.

The trail was about four feet wide and mostly made of some sort of crushed stone. Trees surrounded us on both sides, and—based on the sounds—were full of birds, insects, and frogs. I heard a stream off to the left.

Cal ended up walking in front of me, which was a relief since I could control how close we were to each other. On the other hand, I wished I didn’t know in detail what Cal’s ass looked like as he walked. I forced myself to gaze into the trees instead.

We crunched down the trail for a few minutes before Cal asked, “Are there any Wonders who can turn into fog?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“What about vampires? Don’t they turn into fog?”

I snorted. “Vampires are a myth.”