As for Ansel—he was still banging on the door of the refrigerator from the inside. He’d slowed from frantic pounding, settling for a bang every thirty seconds or so.
“You wouldn’t have realized who he was,” Mick said, keeping his voice mild. “Someone you talked to at the diner, a tourist passing through, someone you saw at the gas station . . .”
Fremont shook his head vehemently. “I know everyone in Magellan and Flat Mesa, have for years. I know when someone’s new, and I remember every single person I talk to. I didn’t talk to a nasty sorcerer who wants to kill Cassandra. I’d have noticed his aura, wouldn’t I?”
Bang.
“Not necessarily.” I was amazingly good at reading auras, and I could see Fremont’s magic one now, like pale smoke in sunshine. But Fremont’s magic ability was small, and I doubted he could see them all that well. “If Cassandra’s sorcerer is as good as she says, he’d be able to hide his aura. Very powerful people can do that.” I knew this from personal, and frightening, experience.
“What does he look like, Cassandra?” Mick asked.
Cassandra gave a listless shrug. “Ordinary. So ordinary you wouldn’t look twice.”
“Can you be more specific?” I asked, trying to be patient. Her apathy was grating on me.
“About five foot seven. Dark brown hair. Receding hairline. He looks like any other suit-wearing forty-year-old man in an office.”
Bang.
“Well, I haven’t seen any men in suits in Magellan,” Fremont said. “They’d stand out. I haven’t talked to any man looks like that who I didn’t already know. All right?”
“Can the ununculous change his appearance?” I asked. “If he’s tracking you, he might use a glamour or even a simple disguise.”
Cassandra gave me a watery smile. “Him? He’s the most arrogant man I’ve ever met. What does it matter to him if one of us identifies him? He’ll crush us and not care.”
Bang.
“All right,” I said, drawing a breath. “Could he have seeded the curse in Fremont without Fremont seeing him or noticing? Maybe by brushing by him in a store, something like that?”
Mick answered, “Eye contact is better. If the sorcerer greets you, shakes your hand, he can make sure you received the spark. It’s more emotionally satisfying for him as well. But I suppose it could happen with a brush-by. Like a pickpocket in reverse.”
Fremont waved his hands. “What you’re not getting is that I haven’t seen anyone like who you describe. Not brushing by me in the diner, not even passing me in a car on the road. I would have noticed.”
“I believe you,” I said. He was right, he would have. Fremont loved to watch, and then talk about, his fellow man.
“Thank you.” Fremont let out a sigh and rubbed his hand over what was left of his hair.
“Mick?” I asked. “Have you seen anyone like Cassandra describes?”
“No.”
Bang.
“Okay, then. Neither have I.”
Fremont glared. “Wait, you believe him without grilling him like you did me?”
“Sorry, Fremont. I’m on edge. Mick’s a dragon—if someone seeded a curse on him, he’d notice right away.” I glanced at Mick. “Right?”
Mick affirmed. I’d like to think I would have noticed right away, too. A spark like that would sting both my magics, wouldn’t it? Then again, if this sorcerer was as powerful as advertised . . .
“It was probably me,” Cassandra said.
Fremont looked at her in surprise. “You saw him? Why didn’t you say so?”
“I mean the last time I met him. Christianson might have had the ununculous seed a hex on me, so that if I doublecrossed him, it would activate, like a time-release pill. It would wait until I felt safe and then go off. The ununculous would feel it, and come for me. Revenge served cold.”
A bolt of lightning slammed to the ground not a mile away, followed by a boom of thunder that rolled on, and on, and on. Before its rumbles died, another bolt cracked not far from the first one. My body pulsed with electricity, my Stormwalker magic reaching to suck it in before I could stop it.
Wind struck the hotel with such force that the building creaked. It howled through the eaves and every crack in the edifice, and I felt a breeze cross my face.
“Janet,” Fremont said, staring at me. “Your eyes.”
“What about them?” Sparks laced my fingers as I raised my hands. “Are they green?”
“No. Black. All black. Like nothing’s there.”
I could see out of them fine, no change there, but Mick was watching me in concern. I snatched out the piece of magic mirror I’d shoved into my pocket and stared into it. Sure enough, my eyeballs had gone all black, no pupils or irises. I looked into the black void that was me, until lightning struck again, and white electricity encircled my face.
“I see,” I whispered in a voice that didn’t sound like mine. “I see so much. Darkness. Pain. Terror. The end of all things.”
“Janet,” Fremont said, worried. “What the hell are you talking about?”
I wrenched my gaze from the mirror and looked up. I had their attention now, even Cassandra’s.
“I don’t know why I said that.” Or did I? I had seen it, deep in the mirror, flashes of terror, darkness, fire, white light rising from the ground. Everyone I loved in torturous pain. And then, nothing . . .
Lightning struck again, its white flare rendering the candle flames ineffectual pinpricks. Electricity crawled up my arms, and I bunched my hands to keep from blasting the table, floor, my friends, everything in sight.
I wasn’t certain how I was pulling in the storm magic when the hex wasn’t letting anything physically in or out, but maybe it was because magic isn’t physical. It’s the coupling of the mage and the elements that mage uses for power—Mick and his dragon nature, Cassandra and her spell accoutrements, me and a storm. A psychic connection no one understands. I don’t actually direct the storms themselves—I absorb their elemental might and use it to fuel my own magic.
Or the hex might be letting me use my storm magic so it could busily fuck it up.
I couldn’t control the power. I’d felt this before—at age eleven, when I’d first called a storm’s power, not on purpose. I remembered flailing my hands, trying to get rid of the lightning that clung to them. I’d succeeded only in blasting a tree and burning down a shed. I’d run off into the desert in terror, the storm following me.
This storm was big and close, and I was locked inside my hotel by a curse. No running away to keep my loved ones safe.
“Janet,” Cassandra said, watching me with a hint of her usual witchy focus. “What did you see?”
“I don’t remember now.” The visions were fading, dying as fast as they’d come. “Fire, darkness. The vortexes. Nothing.”
Bang.
Cassandra didn’t answer, but she held on to the back of a kitchen chair, her knuckles white.
More lightning struck, and electric arcs crawled all over my body. I moved my hand, and a tail of lightning caught the end of the counter and blew it into pieces.
“Whoa.” Fremont threw up his arms to shield himself from the rain of wood and tile. Coyote, still a coyote, grabbed Cassandra by the skirt and towed her back out of my way.
Only Mick stood his ground. Mick, whose eyes had gone as black as mine, watched me with a predatory stare.
“Mick,” I whispered.
He moved to me and took my hands. His body jolted as the lightning jerked into him, but he smiled a wide, bestial smile. “Want me to draw it off?”
“This is a full storm. The last time you were with me in a full storm, I nearly killed you.”
“That was different.” Mick leaned down and bit my cheek, and the heat of his mouth awoke every need I’d ever had. “That was battle. This is me, drawing off your power so you can function. Give me your lightning, Janet.”
Bang.
I turned to Mick and kissed him.