He stood silently until she looked up from her book and nodded approvingly at him. “That looks better. Feel any better?”
“Some,” he admitted, and suddenly he didn’t want to feel better. As long as the events were overwhelming, no one could expect him to assume responsibility for them. Cassie seemed to sense his reluctance.
“So what is still so awful?” she demanded.
“Everything. My den is gone, with everything in it.
And—“
“Wait. One at a time. What did you lose in that fire that you can’t replace? You’re wearing the only unique thing you possessed. The rest of it could be replaced by a few strolls down dumpster row. Am I wrong?”
She wasn’t, but it seemed cruel of her to state it so baldly.
He racked his brains for a defense. “Black Thomas. I got the pigeons out, but I didn’t find him.”
Cassie gave him a disparaging look. “Black Thomas’ Come here, tomcat!” Wizard followed her gaze up to one of the bookshelves. Thomas sat up slowly. He yawned disdainfully, showing a red mouth, pink curling tongue, and white teeth.
He surveyed them both with disgust, then rearranged himself with his front paws tucked neatly against his breast. His stump was tidily wrapped in a clean white bandage. He closed his eyes to slits and made Wizard and Cassie disappear.
“He’s still angry,” Cassie observed. “At you, for bringing a stranger into his home. And at me, for holding him down while I dressed that stump. But he didn’t even stick around for the fire to start.”
Wizard felt relieved. And guilty. “He wouldn’t let me clean and wrap it for him.”
“You didn’t even try,” Cassie stated factually.
“Well, I was afraid I’d hurt him,” he said defensively. Had she no sympathy for him at all? His magic was gone.
“Sometimes you have to hurt someone to help him- When cleaned that stump with peroxide, he screamed like a baby.
But it’s clean now, and he won’t get gangrene.“
“I’m glad he’s all right.”
“I know. Now. What upsets you most? That your magic is gone, or that you got caught before you could run out on us?”
Wizard’s breath caught. The question was as cold and unexpected as a knife in the spine. Cassie’s blue eyes continued to bore into his.
“Well, what would you call it?” she asked him at last, sounding a bit defensive. “Only days ago, you and I discussed this gray thing of yours, this Mir. That it had come to Seattle, and that you are the only one that will have its balancing point.
That it will come to you, and you must stop it. And if you fail, it will take us all down. What happens next? Next we have Wizard forsaking the duties of his magic, claiming that he has no magic, and contemplating moving in with a waitress, to watch TV and drink beer and line up for payments from a window. So what should we think? What were you thinking?
That you could roll over on your back and Mir would pass you by? Even if it did, which you well know it won’t, where did you think it would satisfy its hungers?“
The enormity of it settled on him- He could only look at her. The grave sadness in her eyes was more than he could bear.
“You know,” he said slowly, “that those things never crossed my mind. I never saw it that way, that I was abandoning a position. I only saw that my magic was gone, that I was Wizard no more. Somehow, I… forgot about it.”
“I know,” she conceded. She walked away from him to drop back into her chair, but then waved him into its thate on the other side of the lamp stand. His legs and back were stiff, and his ribs ached from the collision with the lamppost. The wound her words had dealt him was worst of all. He was glad to ease into the chair instead of standing. He smoothed his robes over his knees.
“You look like you’re already comfortable wearing that,”
Cassie observed softly.
He looked down at the soft blue cloth. “It seems natural,” he admitted. “Right.”
“Are you sure your magic’s gone?”
He nodded, tired of repeating it.
“Then the worst part is that you are sure. How did you lose it?”
He heard a test in her question. Did she think he would lie about it? “I broke the rules.” he said simply. “And it went away.”
Cassie was shaking her head slowly. From somewhere, a bit of needlework had come into her hands. Embroidery. He watched her bite off a thread and select a new color. “You’re wrong, you know,” she said conversationally- He leaned forward to catch her words. “The rule? broke you.”
He bowed his head to that rebuke. “I suppose I never really had the strength, the discipline, to be a wizard.”
Cassie snorted. “Idiot. No. You knew what would break you. You knew what rules you couldn’t keep, so you made those rules and then you broke them. To get away from the magic. It’s scared you shitless since the first day I told you it was yours.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“No. No, you don’t understand. Cassie, I broke the rules that had brought the magic to me, and so it went away. I kept more than a dollar in change, I’ve lain with a woman, I’ve turned my strength loose upon others.” He was babbling, close to falling apart again. Cassie poked her needle through the heavy linen. He heard the rip-drag of the embroidery floss as it followed. She kept her eyes on her work, making no reply as he catalogued his sins, but only shaking her head. He told her all, all since the night she had done the Seeing for him, croaking out the tale when his mouth grew too dry to speak.
When be finally ran down. she spoke.
“Where did you get the rules?”
“The magic gave them to me.”
“No. Not those ones. You invented those ones yourself, knowing you couldn’t keep them. You wanted to break yourself so me magic would go away, so you wouldn’t be a wizard and have a duty to it. But even in your desire to be free of it, the magic went too deep in you for you to destroy it. Otherwise you would have taken the easy way out. Stomp one of those stupid pigeons. That would really have done it, really have blown the magic away. Or turn your back and walk away when one came seeking you. But you didn’t. You made up your own rules to break. We all knew you were in trouble (he minute you stated putting extra rules on yourself. Rasputin thought be could rattle you out of it. Maybe I should have let him. But I said you would snap out of it on your own. So we watched you, hoping. Until it was damn near too late.”
He was staring at her, refusing to believe her. She met his eyes calmly.
Think back. What rules did Rasputin give you? Hold me pigeons sacred and never harm them. Listen to me ones who came to talk to you, and when you have comfort for them, speak out. Tell the Truth when it comes on you. and when you Know, admit you Know. That was all. Those were the rules of your magic, given you by the only one of us who can look at a wizard, see his magic, and tell him me rules of it. The rest of it was your own petty fences, put up to keep others at a distance. When you came to me for a Seeing, I hoped you would see how silly they were. Even Estrella tried to warn you.“
“Didn’t anyone ever mink of just coming out and saying it?”
“You being such an easy person to talk to and all?” Cassie asked sarcastically.
“I’m not that hard!” he replied indignantly.
“Oh, aren’t you, now?” There was something else in her voice now. A more personal hurt that baffled him. He didn’t want to explore it. Cassie stabbed her needle into the cloth and dragged it swiftly through. She didn’t look at him and he sat without speaking. At last he beard her give a long sigh. When she spoke again, it was in her ordinary, well-modulated voice.
“Are you still sure your magic is gone now? Remember, you haven’t broken any rules.”
He hated to disappoint her. “I’m sure. It’s gone, Cassie. I can’t feed me pigeons. When people talk to me, I’m not sure what to say to them I was helpless against Lynda and what she did to me.”