No. I need to put the past in a bottle, on a shelf, keep it all preserved but hidden in some dark corner of my mind. I don’t deserve to get rid of it, but I need it out of my way right here and now. This needs to be about the future—Ruby’s future, Ben’s future, the ones I devoted the rest of my life to.
Magic is the only thing that can save us now.
Magic is all I got. I need to make peace with it. A truce.
Temporary, but necessary.
Grace gives a little sigh, flutters her eyes open, studies me. She whispers, “Did you sleep at all?”
“I did, just a bad dream.” I nod to the little pool of drool on the back of her hand and smile. “Looks like you slept all right.”
She gives me an embarrassed smile and sits up, wipes her hand on her pant leg. “Guess the traveling, and the nerves, it all came to a head and knocked me out.” She pulls out a half-empty pack of cigarettes, takes two, lights both, and hands one to me. We sit there for a minute, just inhaling the first smoky breaths of the day, enjoying the quiet before the sleeping sorcerers around us get up and remind us why we’re here.
“You see that duo over there, sharing the same cot?” Grace whispers. She nods toward the corner, points to a burly middle-aged man with his arm wrapped around a younger woman who looks hard even in her sleep—straight brows, flat nose, grim expression as she wheezes.
“That’s Rose and Tommy Briggs from Tennessee, the brother-sister act I mentioned last night.” I look at the way the pair is lying all tangled up in each other, and look back curiously at Grace. “My thoughts exactly. Haven’t been able to get close enough to mine their minds for what’s going on, but they’re famous for running some all-night secret shine orgy somewhere in the thick of the Blue Ridge Mountains,” she says. “Apparently the Briggs are gifted in visual manipulations, excel in conjuring what folks call staccato tricks. You know, where a magic manipulation gives way to something permanent that then gives way to another manipulation.”
Grace might as well be speaking Greek right now, but I mumble a little “Right, sure” like I’m following. I try my damnedest to keep my mind blank, so there’s nothing for her to go mining for. Grace can’t find out how little I know about making magic. How the more I hear about my competition, the more panic blooms inside me like a thorny rose. “And which one’s Stock, the rat-conjuring jerk from last night?”
Grace points at the cot next to Tommy’s. “Stock Harding, barely twenty and as arrogant as sorcerers come. Apparently Gunn was after his daddy out in West Virginia, but the pop’s got the sleepy sickness. Meeting Stock, you’d think he was the first in his family with the magic touch.” She rearranges herself into a cross-legged position and gives a low whistle. “If Gunn’s after performers, though, Stock’s a strong contender, as much as I hate to admit it. He comes from a long line of sorcerers with a special talent for living and moving manipulations, like you saw with his little rodent trick last night.” She looks at me. “That ain’t no easy feat, conjuring a manipulation, breathing life into it and letting it run around on its own—for as long as the magic lasts, anyway.”
A few of the other sorcerers start groaning, yawning, and fighting with themselves to stay asleep.
Grace drops her voice another octave. “Over there’s the five sorcerers from North and South Carolina—who others have been calling the Carolina Boys. Got a thing for fire, at least their leader, Gavin Rhodes, does. But I’ve been watching them, and so far I ain’t impressed. Besides, I get a bad sense from Gavin—don’t think he can be trusted.”
I give her a knowing smile, knowing damn well that she shouldn’t trust me, either, as I’m only going to disappoint her. Hell, I wonder if I should even be trusting Grace, or if she could be as slippery as her magic snake. But I think through my alternatives.
There aren’t any.
“So you’ve been sizing everyone up? Do you know everyone’s strongest gifts?”
“Almost everyone.” Grace stubs her cigarette out. “I think it’s what Gunn wants us to do, assess each other, and make magic alliances. After all, he’s only planning on keeping seven of us.”
“Right,” I agree slowly, as Gunn had said as much last night. Still, I can’t help but ask, “But why seven?”