Chapter Grayson
Grayson
Grayson tips his bottle of beer back, gazes at the stars and the three-quarter moon.
He hadn’t spent any time looking up since Nix had come back into his life.
Why would he, when his sun, moon, and stars were sitting around the table finishing a good meal, drinking wine, and passing around his giggling daughters with their friends?
Still, it’s beautiful, and if he’d had more nights where he didn’t fall into bed exhausted, he might have pulled out Finn’s old telescope and tried to see the Sea of Tranquility up close. Beauty is everywhere, and he’s had no time to truly appreciate it.
Maybe now that the physical malaise he’d felt has a name and he can finally draw a deep breath, he can spend more time on the little things that make life worth living.
“Grayson.” Nimue takes the seat beside him, steam rising from the pool as the temperature drops. It makes her seem mysterious despite her jean jacket, Aerosmith band t-shirt, and blue jeans. “You’re awfully quiet tonight.”
She wouldn’t know he is normally quiet, more of an observer than an active participant.
Especially since every time he’s been in her orbit, he’d bent her ear with questions about The Plain, how she uses her Biometric Compass, and her Air Affinity.
General questions about magical history—especially given his Affinities—have always occupied more of their time together than anything else.
It’s helped him place his “dreams” better than the hours he’d spent in the Guild library.
Even though magical history and law are globally maintained, each country reports its own, and as with all history, it is colored with its own cultural biases.
Magical America especially has been guilty of…
well, not quite revisionist history, but certainly prone to glossing over parts that don’t always paint it in the best light.
Today’s release from the grip of Professor Kirwan’s foci highlighted the question of why he hadn’t felt the insidious leeching of his magic.
He’d gotten used to feeling exhausted and worn thin.
It explained why he felt the effects of reducing his connection to the Plain more acutely, but it didn’t explain why he’d lost time today or why he’d nearly let the proverbial cat out of the bag.
As if the thought had summoned her, Doodle slips out the sliding glass door, jumping onto Nimue’s lap. The black cat’s yellow eyes reflect the light coming from the dining room as she gazes at Nimue, like she’s waiting for instructions or even permission.
“Sit or get off the pot, lady,” Nimue murmurs, running a hand down her back. Once the cat settles, the Luminary drinks from her wine glass. “Tell me what has you so pensive. I haven’t answered nearly enough questions about that spell today, and I am worried.”
With a chuckle, Grayson spins the empty bottle in the air, round and round on its side like a magic spin-the-bottle. “I feel better,” he states, and it sounds uncertain even to his own ears.
“But?”
“No. I really do. I have control over all aspects of The Plain right now, and Nix is so happy that we’re overflowing.
But…” He shakes his head, unsure how to explain what he’d felt and why, when he should be free of the spell, he feels like he’s missing something.
The bottle stops spinning, the mouth pointed at the center of Grayson’s forehead.
He may not have Finn’s hunger for answers, or Jay’s relentless drive to solve the puzzle—but he’s self-aware. When the problem involves danger to Nix, there’s precedent: he can be a wolf with a bone—and this is a big, juicy bone.
“I feel like I’m missing something.” He shrugs, placing the empty bottle on the patio stones.
“Tell me again, what happened this afternoon. I find that sometimes if I close my eyes and go over it, the details I’m missing become clearer.”
“Yeah, okay.” Grayson closes his eyes but sits up straighter, just as he’d done in front of the infernal board with the tiny bulbs. “It’s that board with the bulbs. You know the one?”
“I do. Intimately. Go ahead.”
“I was doing pretty well, keeping to my plan to just get one or two right, but she was getting angrier. Frustrated. I admitted to being without the foci, so she made me fetch it from my bag, and once I had it, her mood improved. She smiled. I see now it was sort of…victorious…maybe…” In his mind’s eye, he sees it again, a glint in her eye and a pursing of her lips. “Sly?”
“She looked like she knew something you didn’t?”
“Yes! She had looked like she was getting what she wanted. Then she narrowed her eyes, like she was concentrating, and then…nothing. Until I heard myself reciting the pattern. I had seen it, you know? Like I always do, and instead of holding back, I said all of them just like that.”
“You said that earlier. You were surprised. Why do you think that was? Did you lose your grip on The Plain, or..?”
“No, I had it locked down tight.”
“Hmmm. Then what? How did you feel while you were reciting the sequence? Physically.”
Grayson thinks back to that moment when he’d felt the foci burn hot and—“I felt this tingle at the base of my skull!”
Nimue jerks, dumping an irate Doodle on her ass on the patio stones. A loud meow tells them just what she thinks of the ill treatment. “You didn’t mention that before.”
“No, I didn’t remember it until now. The tingle, the burning, and then boom—I said everything I had been keeping back. It feels like when I was unable to say Professor Kirwan’s name.”
“Mind Manipulation?” Elysia murmurs from the doorway. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I wanted fresh air. Iggy is doing fire tricks and…” She rolls her eyes, but her smile is indulgent. “It gets hot and smoky in there.”
“Besides, you’ve seen them all before, right?”
“Exactly. May the Goddess teach him something new in the next decade. Besides, I doubt Rowan will appreciate the smoke detectors going off, and I would rather be out here when they do.” She perches on the bottom of the lounger, sweeping her long, greying braids over her shoulder so she can worry at the three orange beads at the ends.
“Do you think Kirwan could be using a spell to weaken Grayson’s resolve, powered by the foci.
Sounds like a Mind Manipulation Talent.”
Nimue nods her head, dark-winged brows lowered over eyes flashing in anger. “It does so. And I doubt it’s registered, or she wouldn’t be allowed to teach.”
“Why?” Grayson asks, curious even though he’d been the one violated. “Surely if they could trust someone to educate, then they had to be principled enough to control the less admirable qualities of their magic.”
“You would think so. But unlike any other Affinity, those with Mind Manipulation are more prone to lapses in moral judgment. Registering a Mind Manipulation is law, Grayson, and not without reason.”
It’s not like Grayson hasn’t run into someone who used Mind Manipulation for his own nefarious, world-domination purposes in his very recent past, but he’s always wondered why it’s so much more heavily regulated than even Time.
“How is it any worse than someone who could burn you or freeze the water in your veins or suffocate you with sand?”
“My dear boy, how very macabre.” Ignatius steps out onto the patio, his tweed vest smoking a little and a smudge of soot on his nose.
Taking a deep breath of cool night air, he sits behind his spouse on her chair.
“Goodness, that cool air feels good. You are right to ask, of course, because it wouldn’t be different.
Any magic is a weapon in the wrong hands.
I’m sure villains across time have been creative in the ways they have used their Affinities and Talents to wreak havoc on their enemies—to turn the tide in their favor. ”
Ignatius’s eyes flash with a rare anger.
“The difference is that those with Mind Manipulation often learn to hide it. Out of fear or shame or perhaps, in Aleksander Withers’s case, pure destined evil.”
“And in the process, they’re taught to use it subversively,” Nimue finishes.
It’s sad, and for a moment, he worries for Rosie or even Skye, whose magic is so strong, and yet all of his talents are still to be revealed.
“Is it a self-fulfilling prophecy, then?” Grayson asks quietly. “Do they do bad things because they have nothing to lose? Because they’re shunned or persecuted?”
Ignatius sighs. “No doubt our society bears some responsibility. We do not make it easy for a child to confess such an Affinity. And once secrecy becomes habit, the temptation to solve problems magically can become difficult to resist.”
“Especially when the magic itself lends to shortcuts,” Nimue adds.
“Exactly. It is impossible to know where the line truly lies. Chicken and egg, and all that.”
“So we’re saying Dahlia Kirwan may have a Mind Manipulation Talent?” Nimue asks, jaw clenched. “She cannot be allowed to continue. If she’s used this with Grayson, who’s to say she’s not been wielding it against minors? Ignatius, we must—”
“Did you say she’s been doing something to Gray’s brain?” Nix lands in Grayson’s lap, warm like the sun and skin glowing with the light of the moon. With small hands in his hair, Nix turns Grayson’s head this way and that, looking for the evidence of the teacher’s perfidy. “The audacity!”
“We don’t know for certain,” Ignatius wisely cautions before Nix can build up a full head of steam. “We need proof. Perhaps we should brainstorm about how we’re adding that to our plan for tomorrow.”
They’d decided that Jay would attend classes with Grayson tomorrow under the guise of a Pack Alpha review. Dahlia Kirwan already knew they knew her spell had been foiled, so it made sense he would be a bit leery about his mate being on potentially hostile grounds.