I was okay with “for better or worse.” It was “till death do us part” that I wasn’t really excited about.
“Look around,” Scout quietly said, her gaze on me. “She’s in the hospital wearing a paper nightgown. She has a tube in her arm.” She shifted her gaze to Jason, and there was impatience there. “She’s already in this.”
As if she’d made the decision, Scout half jumped onto the bed and arranged herself to sit on the edge. As she moved around, Michael and Jason took a step backward to get out of her way,
exchanging a quiet glance as they waited for her to begin.
“Unicorns,” she said.
There was silence in the room for a few seconds. “Unicorns,” I repeated.
She bobbed her head. “Unicorns.”
I just blinked. “I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with that.”
“Aha,” she said, a finger in the air. “You didn’t expect me to start with that, did you? But,
seriously, unicorns. Imagine yourself in medieval Europe. You’ve got horses, oxen, assorted beasts of burden. Times are dark, dirty, generally impoverished.”
Jason leaned toward Michael. “Is this going somewhere?”
“Not a clue,” Michael said. “This is the first time I’ve heard this speech.”
“Zip it, Garcia. Okay, so dark, dirty, lots of peasants, things are dreary. All of a sudden, a maiden walks into a field or some such thing, and she expects to see a horse there. But instead,
there’s a unicorn. Horn, white mane, magical glow, the whole bit.”
She stopped talking, then looked at me expectantly.
“I’m sorry, Scout, but if that was supposed to be a metaphor or something, I got nothin’.”
“Seconded,” Michael added.
Scout leaned forward a little, and when she continued, her voice was quieter, more solemn.
“Think about what I said. What if, all of a sudden, every once in a while, it wasn’t just another horse in the field? What if it really was a unicorn?”
“Ohhh,” Jason said. “Got it.”
“Yep,” Michael agreed.
“There are people in the world,” Scout said, “like those unicorns in the field. They’re unique.
They’re rare.” She paused and glanced up at me, her expression solemn. “And they’re gifted.
With magic.”
Okay, I guess with all the unicorn talk, I probably should have seen that coming. Still, I had to blink a few times after she laid that little egg.
“Magic,” I finally repeated.
“Magical powers of every shape and size,” she said. “I can see the doubt in your eyes, but you’ve seen it. You’ve felt it.” She bobbed her head toward my IV. “You have firsthand experience it exists, even if you don’t know the what or the why.”
I frowned. “Okay, earthquakes and fire and whatnot, but magic?”
Jason leaned forward a little. “You can have a little time to get used to the idea,” he said. “But in the meantime, you might want to have her move along with the explanation. She’s got quite a bit to get through yet.” He smiled warmly, and my heart fluttered, circumstances notwithstanding.
“You must be a real hit with the ladies, Shepherd, with all that charm.” Scout’s tone was dry as toast. I bit back a grin, at least until she looked back at me again. She gave me a withering expression, the kind of raised-eyebrow look you might see on a teacher who’d caught you passing notes in class.
“Please,” I said, waving an invitational hand. “Continue.”
“Okay,” she said, holding up her hands for emphasis, “so there’s a wee percentage of the population that has magic.”
“What kind of magic? Is it all earthquakes and air-pressure-contact-lenses and whatnot?”
“There’s a little bit of everything. There are classes of powers, different kinds of skills.
Elemental powers—that’s fire and water and wind. Spells and incantations—” One of the puzzle pieces fell into place.
“That’s you,” I exclaimed, thinking of the books in Scout’s room. Recipe books.Spell books.
“You can do spells?”
“Of a sort,” she blandly said, as if I’d only asked if she had a nose ring. “They call me a spellbinder.”
I glanced over at Jason and Michael, but they just shook their heads. “This is your field trip. You can get to us later,” Michael said, then glanced at Scout. “Keep going.”
“Anyway,” Scout said, “the power usually appears around puberty. At the beginning of the transition to adulthood.”
“Boobsand earthquakes?” I asked. “That’s quite a change.”
“Seriously,” she agreed with a nod. “It’s pretty freaky. You wake up one morning andboom — you’re sporting B cups and the mystical ability to manipulate matter or cast spells or battle Reapers for dominion over Chicago.Gossip Girl has nothing on us.”
I just stared at her for a minute, trying to imagine exactly what that life would have been like.
Not just the part about waking up with B cups—although that would be a pretty big adjustment. I glanced down at my chest. Not a horrible adjustment, I guessed, but nonetheless . . .
“You still with us?” Scout asked.
I glanced up quickly, a flush rising on my cheeks. She grinned cheekily. “I’ve thought the same thing,” she said with a wink.
“Before you two get too friendly,” Michael said, “tell her the catch.”
“There’s a catch?” I asked.
“Isn’t there always?” she asked dryly. “The thing is, the magic isn’t eternal. It doesn’t last forever, at least, not without a price. When we’re young—teens, twenties—the magic makes us stronger. It works in conjunction with our bodies, our minds, our souls. When we’re young, it’s like an extra sense or an extra way to understand the world, an extra way to manipulate it. We have access to something humans forgot about after the witch trials scared it out of everyone,
after fear made everyone forget about the gift.”
“And when you get older?”
“The power comes at a cost,” Jason said. “And our position is, the cost is pretty nasty.”
“Too high,” Michael added with a nod.
I arched an eyebrow. “A cost? Like mentally? Does it make you crazy or something?”
“It could,” Scout said. “It rots the body, the soul, from the inside out.”
I raised my eyebrows. “What do you mean, it rots the body? Like, it kills people?”
She nodded. “The older you get, the more the magic begins to feed from you. It drains you,
transforms you. The magic shifts, from something symbiotic to a parasite. And in order to stay alive, to keep up with the power’s constant craving, you have to feed it.”
“With what?” My voice was quiet. So was Scout’s when she answered.
“With the energy of others. Those who keep their power must learn to drink the essence of others—like vampires of the soul. We call them Reapers.”
“Takers of life,” I thought aloud.
“Bringers of death,” she said. “You want a shorter life span, they’re the folks you call.”
“You said they take the energy of others,” I repeated. “What does that mean?”
Jason took a step forward. “Have you ever seen people who you thought seemed drained of energy? Depressed? Like, kids who are sleeping in class all the time, dragging around, that kind of thing?”
“I’m a teenager,” I flatly said. “That’s pretty much how we live.”
“Puberty takes its toll,” Scout agreed, “but hormones aren’t the only problem. Reapers target people with self-confidence issues—people who don’t fit in. And slowly, so they don’t gain too much attention, the Reapers consume their energy. Call it their aura, their soul, their will to live.