“I loved that movie.” I shook my head at the blade being offered me. “I’ve lost track of time, but I haven’t lost track of that much time. The kind of sword I use couldn’t possibly be ready this quickly.”
Mr. Banks scoffed. “Ignorance.” He shook the sword. “The fundamentals of the sword are easy. We have several on hand. It’s the magical composition that requires finesse, and my missus is a master. She can create a spell to feel out the user’s magic and mesh the two together. If the sword marries to you, it will only work for you, and it will work better than any sword prepared for you by the hacks you usually work with. If this one doesn’t marry, we’ll try another. Simple. She has loaded three swords, per Mr. Durant’s instruction, but I have dozens ready.”
Swallowing down my hesitation—he seemed legit, if excitable—I let my hand hover over the blade. The vibration was pleasant, but too warm. Too…sticky. It made me uncomfortable.
I shook my head and took my hand back. “No.”
Mr. Banks scowled, annoyed, before confusion stole his expression. He analyzed me, looking over my face, my body, and the things I carried before shifting back to my eyes. There was a strange moment of gravity between us, like he recognized me. A smile drifted onto his face and excitement sparked in his gaze.
He stepped away. His eyes flicked at Darius before he minutely nodded. “Let me just get the missus. She is best suited for clients such as yourself, Ms. Somerset.”
I watched him set down the sword, smash a few more flowers, half run across the grass, and go back into the house.
“What kind of dog and pony show is this?” I asked, strangely nervous. Darius’s uncharacteristic look of confusion told me I wasn’t getting any answers from him. The driver, whose name I honestly couldn’t remember even though it had been less than ten minutes since I’d heard it, was staring at the house where Mr. Banks had disappeared, his scowl a permanent fixture.
After an amount of time that had me shifting impatiently, and the vampires go unnaturally still, which probably wasn’t good, an older woman came trundling out of the house. She had a stocky body, a hair net, a shiny sort of robe that must’ve been hard to find, since it was so odd, and fists at the end of her arms. Instead of crossing the grass like Mr. Banks seemed to favor, she took the path, with him trailing after her.
When she reached me, she wore a bulldog expression. “So. You don’t trust me, huh?” She looked over my face.
“This is my wife, Callie,” Mr. Banks said, pushing in close so he could get a good look at me too.
“No,” I said flatly, answering her question and inching back. “Which you should be accustomed to.”
“I’m not, actually.” She sniffed, blinked at me a couple times, nodded as if she was agreeing with something, then walked toward the shed. Mr. Banks followed her.
“What is going on?” I mouthed to Darius, ready to pack it in and take off. I’d never seen mages act so weird around me. They were usually comfortable in my presence because I understood magic but couldn’t cast—they didn’t think I was a threat. These two were studying me, like they knew a secret about me.
Considering the enemies I’d recently accrued in the mage world, and the things I’d done in Darius’s presence, that didn’t bode well.
“No, Dizzy, the red one,” Callie shouted from inside the shed. She stalked out, rolling her eyes. “I hate being in that place. He loves chaos. It’s how he thinks best. I can’t stand it. I need order.”
“So you stuck him in the shed out back?” I asked, taking a step in the direction of the house.
“Which red one?” Dizzy—clearly Mr. Banks’s nickname—called out.
“The red hilt. Deep silver blade. The red one! You know which one. You spent a month on the thing.”
“Oh! That’s the silver one.”
Callie scoffed and threw up her hands. “Suddenly he calls them by the color of their blades and not the hilts.” Focused on me again, she said, “In answer to your question, absolutely not. Do you think I want this God-awful shed dragging down the look of the garden? No, honey. He has a wing dedicated to the sort of chaos he loves. He won’t use it. Prefers this ramshackle disgrace for a workstation. Insisted it be nearly falling down, too.”
“I think better in it,” Dizzy said as he came out holding another sword. “The house is too walled in. I need nature.”
His wife rolled her eyes again.
He held up a smaller sword with a red hilt, an expectant expression on his face.
I did the same thing as before, assessing the magic. This one was better, more pleasant, with a good killing edge, but it seemed…distant, somehow. Unimpressed.
“Magic with emotion,” I murmured as I handed it back to her. “That’s a new one for me.”
The woman leaned in as a sparkle lit up her eyes. Her lips tweaked upward at the edges, threatening a smile. “Tell me, did you have a mother who practiced around here?”
Pain flicked at my heart, as it always did when someone mentioned my mother. Equally as common was the expression of longing that Callie wore. Everyone who’d known my mother loved her. They couldn’t help it. She just had a way about her.
“Yes,” I said. “She died five years ago. Did you know her?” I was terrible with names, but great with faces, and I hadn’t seen this mage before. She might’ve known my mother before I was born, but I doubted she’d seen much of her since. We hadn’t talked to many people, mostly just vendors or shop owners, and we hadn’t invited friends over. She’d hidden me until I was old enough to hide myself, and twenty-four years was a long time to still miss someone you used to know. It made me nervous, like these mages did in general.
“A long time ago, yes. You look so similar, but even more beautiful, if that were possible. Except for the eyebrows, of course. Those are ghastly. I wish I could say I feel her in you, but I can’t. You’re much too powerful for that, aren’t you? Did she know you could feel magic like you do?”
“Yes. She helped me hone it.”