Page 17

17

Dakota

“N o dear, just your mind,” Prudence said. She was correcting me, but she was smiling. I’d never been taught so... benignly before. Whenever I was wrong she simply said “no” and “let’s try again.” Never any annoyance, never any impatient sighs, never any snide comments about how maybe this wasn’t the skill for me.

On the contrary, she seemed to think I was catching on exceptionally quickly, because she said so at every turn.

She stalked across the room on her impressively high heels and slid gracefully into a velvet upholstered chair next to me, a smile on her face. “I know, it seems like there should be a physical component. All the books and movies say so, and... well, there just should, shouldn’t there?” She shook her head, almost as though it made her sad that it wasn’t the case. “But no. It’s all up here.” She tapped her temple. “And if you learn it with the motions, they become a crutch, and then you can’t do the magic without them.”

It made sense. I’d studied weeks for a calculus exam in high school with my music playing in the background, and then at the actual test, I’d been distracted by the fact that the testing room had been silent. So instead of questioning her, I tucked my hands under my thighs and tried again, focusing on the candle she’d set all the way across the room on a simple metal table.

Light the candle.

I envisioned a fire. The way it looked when one was dancing merrily away in a hearth or?—

There was a pop, and suddenly, the entire candle was ablaze, bits of flaming wax melting away and pooling on the table, still on fire, and the flames grew by the second.

I leapt to my feet, ready to rush across the room and throw my coat over the conflagration, but Prudence reached out and took one of my hands in hers, holding me steady. “With your mind, Dakota.”

I turned back to the fiery, waxy mess on the table and tried to focus. It was hard, with a pool of wax spreading, threatening to drip onto her expensive patterned rug, but her training was helping. Well, that and years of language training. You had to learn to hyper focus, to be able to quickly parse sentences that weren’t in your first language.

A second later, the fire didn’t even sputter out, it was simply gone, as though it’d never been. No drifting smoke or scent of fire on the air, just nothing at all.

I turned to apologize to Prudence, but she was smiling broadly as she turned to look at me. “Well done! So quick, too. I panicked the first time and almost managed to start a real fire, despite the metal table.”

Despite the...

I stood them, stunned for a moment, before speaking up. “You expected that.”

“Of course, dear. We all do something like it the first time, if we’ve got any kind of power. You’re supposed to start a fire, so you picture a fire. There’s a reason I told you to focus on the candle. My cousin almost burned down her family’s library because they just told her to start a fire.”

I slumped back into the chair, still watching her. “But then why not... I mean, how do I do it right? And why not tell me to do that?”

“Because this is a more important lesson. You have the magic. You can light the fire. There’s no doubt of that. Even the least powerful mage can light one tiny candle. If you’d just lit the candle, I would know your powers were on the weak side, and I’d never have to discuss that with you, just teach you what you’re capable of learning. But this way, since you aren’t a weak mage, you learn how important focus and control are. That’s a much more important lesson than being able to light a fire with magic.” She turned and waved at the mess of melted wax and burned wick. “You know that things can get out of control very quickly, and to start small. You focus on the wick. On a tiny flame.”

She pressed up, went over to the table, pulled another candle seemingly from nowhere, and planted it in the middle of the previous mess. “And now you know precisely how to do it.” She stood right behind the candle and motioned to me. “Light it.”

I blinked at her. Was she insane? I’d almost set the entire table on fire a moment earlier.

But no, this was part of it, too, wasn’t it? Everything she did, every lesson she taught me, was planned and efficient. She knew precisely what she was doing. So I considered her words.

The wick.

A tiny flame.

Like a cartoon fire, just one drop of fire, surrounding only the candle wick. Controlled and safe.

And there it was. A single flame, only on the wick of the candle.

She smiled brightly at me and nodded. “There you are. Perfect. Precision is always our first goal. Power is lovely if you have it, but precision is what matters most. And you, my dear boy, were made for it.” She leaned down and blew out the candle, then motioned for me to come over. “Let’s go have a snack. Fire work always makes me hungry, and I’m sure you won’t be any different.”

As we were leaving the room, my phone rang. I checked the caller ID and frowned. Donnie. He was calling a lot lately. I started to slip it back into my pocket, ignored, but Prudence motioned to it. “Answer it, dear. I find that when ignored, people usually only get even more insistent.”

I winced, but she wasn’t wrong. Donnie was like that. He’d call four or five times in a row when I ignored him, as though to make sure I knew it was him, and important. Not that it was ever important.

I hit the answer button and put the phone to my ear. “Hi Donnie. What’s up?”

“Where are you?”

That boded well, when he didn’t even answer simple questions, but made demands. I shrugged and affected a nonchalant tone. “Work training.”

“You should be home by now,” he insisted. “They’re not paying you for all this overtime.”

That was... odd, as a statement. I hadn’t even brought home my first check yet. How would he know if they were paying me overtime for this? Of course they weren’t, this was all me, and it was for me, but he had no way of knowing that. Heck, if anything, I owed Crescent for all this. For finding Prudence and asking her to help me and now—and often—she was even feeding me.

“They’re paying me for every hour I work,” I informed him. It was true. This just wasn’t one of those hours. “This is important. I need to be able to do my job.”

Prudence lifted a brow at me, clearly recognizing the half-truths I was tossing around. Or at least my pointed avoidance.

He groaned. “This is ridiculous. You need a life outside of work, Kody. Whatever happened to work-life balance?”

“It’s still very important,” I agreed. “I’m sure I’ll have more time off once I’m trained up. It’s not like this is strenuous. Plus, they’re feeding me.”

“To who?” he muttered on the other end of the line, but it didn’t seem like he was talking to me. Before I could demand to know what the hell that was supposed to mean, he sighed, long and deep, and continued. “Okay, okay, fine, I guess. I was going to introduce you to a guy, but I guess if you’re too busy to have a social life, that’s your call.”

“It is, and I really am.” I didn’t mean to agree quite so instantly, but the very idea of being introduced to a man sounded terrible. I had already met the man I wanted. The only man I wanted.

Given how Jax kept telling me I shouldn’t want him at all, that was probably unhealthy, but... telling me I shouldn’t want him wasn’t the same as telling me he didn’t want me.

By the time I got off the phone, we were in Prudence’s enormous kitchen, and she was looking into the double-wide fridge, stuffed with fruits and vegetables. She turned back to me as I slipped my phone back into my pocket. “Friend?” I nodded, biting my lip. “Mundane?”

I winced at the dismissal. Oh, she didn’t say it like it was a dismissal, but I heard it all the same. Why wouldn’t werewolves and mages dismiss plain old normal people like Donnie? Like I’d been, before?

“He’s a good guy,” I insisted.

She hummed as she pulled a clear container out of the fridge, filled with packages of sliced meat and cheese. “He’s concerned you’re not getting enough time for yourself?”

Suddenly, it was my turn to think ill of Donnie. I frowned and cocked my head. “That’s... that’s what he said.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“He’s my best friend,” I defended instantly, like my knee jerking when a doctor thwacked it with that little hammer. Then I sighed. “It’s a little weird for him. I overworked myself all through college and he didn’t seem to mind all that much. But he’s worried now that I’m working too much. He offered to introduce me to a guy.”

She had turned to pull a fresh crusty loaf from the breadbox, and as she turned back, she lifted a brow at me. “I believe you already have a gentleman. Have you not informed him?”

I winced at that, watching her hands as she started to make a sandwich, rather than meeting her eye. After a moment, I couldn’t hold back. “I do. Except... Jax keeps telling me other mages will hate me for being with him. Like he’s actually an animal and not a person. Like there’s something wrong with me because... because he’s the one who Awakened me.”

She paused in spreading mustard on a slice of bread, considering. Then she nodded, before going back to work. “I suppose some would. Less because they don’t think of wolves as human than because they would be annoyed that you didn’t follow traditions. It’s like mundanes going home for the holidays with pink hair, tattoos, and piercings. Their mothers don’t approve because it’s simply not done , not because there’s something inherently wrong with any of those things.”

“So it doesn’t... there’s nothing wrong with my magic, just because it wasn’t Awakened by another mage? I’m not... weaker, or wrong?”

At that, she scoffed. “Oh please. You’re the candle, Dakota. It’s an entity in and of itself; it’s not created by the flame. It doesn’t make a difference whether it’s lit by a match, a lighter, or magic. It still has the same amount of wax and wick, no matter what.”

I leaned on the counter, raising a brow at her. “So if an incompetent mage had done it, I might have exploded in a mess of burning wax?”

She laughed at that, then pointed the knife at me. “Clever, but not quite. The candle has no will of its own. No control over its own fate. You do. Exploding in a fiery mess would be a choice, for you to make. You have to allow the magic in. Like when someone gives you the mage handshake and presses their magic against you. If you don’t react, they have no way of knowing anything other than that you’re a mage. You control everything with yourself and your magic. The person who Awakens it just lends you a bit of fire to light your own wick. Everything past that is up to you.”

She slid a plate across the kitchen island to me, covered with a huge turkey sandwich. My stomach grumbled, so I didn’t hesitate, just grabbed the thing and dug in. The lady made a fabulous sandwich.

“That is why I don’t put much stock in mage politics, though,” she said, leaning her hip against the counter and making a disgusted face before shaking it off and setting to making another sandwich. “The lot of them, so arrogant. So self-important. You’re the first decent one I’ve spoken to in decades. Since my cousin became a hermit off in the Appalachians.”

And that? That seemed like one of the saddest things I’d ever heard. So I smiled at her as I swallowed my bite. “Well, I’ll be around as long as you want me here,” I promised.

Her answering smile was so bright it lit up the kitchen, and for the first time maybe ever, I felt accepted for precisely who I was. All it had taken was a werewolf pack and a mage who hated other mages.