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Curran snarled.
“Very impressive,” I told him. “He can’t hear you.”
I pulled my robe shut, again, climbed into my bed, and covered myself with my blanket. I had had entirely enough embarrassment for one night.
CHAPTER 11
I WOKE UP BECAUSE SOMEONE WAS WATCHING ME. Iopened my eyes and saw Julie’s face an inch from mine. We looked at each other for a long minute.
“You’re not going to die?” she asked me very softly.
“Not right this minute.” And, of course, saying something like that usually resulted in immediate demise. I braced myself for a stray meteorite falling through the roof to crush my skull.
“That’s good,” she said in a voice that suggested anything but happiness.
She crawled on my bed, and curled up in a corner, hands fastened over her knees.
“I got scared. I get scared when Mom goes to work.” She put her head on her hands. “And when Red leaves.”
“That’s a hard way to live.”
“I can’t help it.”
I didn’t know what to say. Kids don’t usually understand death. They feel immortal and secure. Julie understood the full extent of death the way an adult would, and she couldn’t deal with it. And I didn’t know how to help her.
“There is something you said to Red that I wanted to ask you about.” If I just could figure out the right way to do it. “You said you would give him what you had. What did you mean?”
She shrugged. “Sex. Red knows a ritual that would give him my powers if I do sex with him.”
I stared at her, speechless. There were so many things wrong with what she said that my brain experienced a momentary shutdown.
“I don’t need it. It’s not a big thing. So I can see magic’s colors, so what? If I give it to him, he’ll be stronger and he can protect us both. I’d do it now, but he wants to wait. He says if we do it when I get fully grown, he’d get more power.”
“Julie, do you trust me?”
The question caught her by surprise. “Yeah.”
I took a deep breath. “There is no spell that transfers power from one person to another.”
“But…”