We had just turned to head toward the gorilla house when my day started getting complicated.
I felt it at first as a series of flickering sensations against my forehead. It reminded me of a moth fluttering against a lit wall—constant and random flutters, somehow conveying confusion, frustration, and fear. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and a quick check around showed me at least three different people who were suddenly perplexed that their electronic devices had started malfunctioning.
Magic was in the air—and it wasn’t coming from me.
“Um. Dad?” Maggie asked me.
I eyed her. She was looking at me in mild confusion. Then I saw her eyes widen as she had some kind of realization, and she moved to stand with Mouse on one side of her and me on the other. “Is there something bad?”
I felt my shoulders tighten into iron bands. Dammit. This day was supposed to go smoothly—just dad-and-daughter time, where Maggie knew that she was the most important thing in the world to me.
God knew I’d been away from her long enough.
The last thing I needed was for her to think I took my job more seriously than I took her. But at the same time, wizarding work wasn’t the kind of thing that came with regular hours. Or dental insurance. Also, there was the minor issue that the moral obligation to do the right thing didn’t suddenly go away due to inconvenience.
“Maybe,” I said. I looked at her. “Maybe nothing. I don’t know. I need to look around and see what’s going on. I need to put you in a safe spot before I do that.”
Maggie stared at a spot in the middle distance, chewing on her lower lip. “It’s important, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” I said. I nodded toward the café that served the zoo. “How about we go get a booth and order some food? You and Mouse sit, and I’ll go look around and be back before the food gets there.”
Maggie’s arms tightened around the dog’s neck. She looked at him, then at me, and nodded her little chin firmly. “Yeah. I guess that’s okay.”
“How about it, Mouse?” I asked. “Can you behave yourself around food?”
My dog was staring out across the park, in what would have been considered a pensive expression had we all been cartoon characters. He made a noise in his chest that was part whine and part rumble.
“Trouble, boy?” I asked. It wasn’t cliché dialogue. Mouse was better than me at sensing trouble coming, and had proved it on multiple occasions.
He stayed staring for a minute, then exhaled slowly and looked up at me. His ears perked up and he wagged his tail. I took that to mean that all was well. “All right,” I said, and wagged my finger at him. “Be good.”
“Whuff,” Mouse said.
“He’s always good,” Maggie said, and kissed his ear. She had to lean down only a little to do it, and he lifted his head obligingly.
“Okay,” I said.
We got seats in the restaurant, and I ordered some French fries and left Maggie with a twenty to pay for more if she needed it. I made sure she was comfortable, got Mouse settled in at her feet, and strode briskly outside, carefully opening my wizard’s senses.
Magic is a living, breathing force, but nothing makes it stir and swirl as much as human beings, and especially human emotion. Based on what a given person is feeling and how strong an emotion they are experiencing, magic can quiver and pulse like the cover to a rock-concert speaker, vibrating hard against the senses of anyone born with the ability to sense it. More people have that than you’d think: folks who get unexpectedly creeped out in the woods, who sense that something seems particularly ominous about a darkened parking garage, who sometimes feel something in the air that grates against them and makes them abruptly cross the street for no particular reason—they’re mostly gifted with sensitivity. If they trust their instincts, such senses can help them avoid no end of possible trouble.
For example, I could, with a little concentration, feel an intense and unpleasant sense of unease off to my right, along one of the park’s paths. Even as I watched, I saw half a dozen people either swerve off to one side, apparently distracted by something else, or else simply change their minds and not follow the path. Their instincts were serving them well.
My instincts frequently roll their eyes at the decisions my brain makes. I walked firmly, directly, into the unpleasant energy and started looking for trouble.
I found it within fifty yards, in the shadiest part of the path, where the park’s trees and bushes and the walls of the various buildings and enclosures hoarded a cluster of shadow that shouldn’t have been quite as dim as it was.
A young man in a black hoodie stood in the shade, hands thrust deep into his pockets. The air around him pulsed with anger and a fear that was near panic. The air around him thrummed with tension and energy, far more of it than a vanilla mortal should be able to emit. He was slender, and though I could only see a bit of his face in profile, the acne was visible enough.
Stars and stones.
A warlock.
Magic sort of bursts onto the scene with most youngsters, who find themselves in possession of talents and powers that must seem as if they simply emerged from a beloved series of children’s novels. Ideally, word of such gifts gets to the White Council, who dispatches someone to make sure the emerging talent receives training appropriate to prevent them from doing any harm with their powers.
The ideal was too rare, and getting rarer. As the population increased, more and more gifted children were emerging, and it was just possible that the group of three-hundred-year-olds who commanded the White Council were … somewhat slow to adapt to changing conditions among mortal kind. When a child fell through the (widening) cracks, their talents could emerge in frightening, even violent ways, often to such a degree that they were forced to flee their homes and communities. Those kids were then forced to cope with life alone and their emerging talents all at once.
A lot of them used their gifts in the worst ways. Unforgiveable ways. Kids like that were known as warlocks, and the Council dealt with them harshly and permanently.
I stared at the kid for a while.
I’d been that kid for a while.
Then I did something I don’t do very often: I turned my back and walked away.
“WHAT WAS IT?” Maggie asked me when I got back. She looked nervous, and wiggled a bit in her seat.
I debated whether to play it down. She didn’t need to be any more anxious than she already was. But … Enough time in the saddle as a wizard had taught me that there are bad repercussions when I keep people in my life in the dark, even when I’m only trying to protect them.
I looked down at her open, earnest face and her huge eyes.
Yeah.
I didn’t need to start off my relationship with my daughter by repeating some of my classic mistakes.
“A warlock,” I said quietly. “A young wizard whose power is not in control. Dangerous.”
Her eyes widened. “Did you fight it?”
“Him,” I said. “No.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because most of the time, they never meant to do anything bad,” I said. “They don’t even understand what’s happening to them. No one has warned them what will happen if they break the rules.”
“That’s not fair,” Maggie said.
“No,” I said. “But that doesn’t make them any less dangerous.”
“Can’t you help?”
“Sometimes,” I said very quietly. “I’m not sure.”
She picked up a French fry and dipped it in a large mound of mustard. Not ketchup.
What?
She licked the mustard off the fry thoughtfully and then said, “But I’m here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And you’re more important to me.”
She darted a look up at my eyes and smiled a little. Then she said, “They just get powers?”
I nodded. “Born to it, yeah.”
She nodded again and asked, “Am I going to get powers?”