11. Freddie #2
“The Veil isn’t a brick wall, really. It’s more like…
a strainer,” I explain, watching him out of the corner of my eye.
“Physical stuff crosses over all the time. The Veil keeps people out, but light, sound, and radio waves slip through the cracks all the time. Human pop culture leaks through the seams like water through a cracked pipe. Someone finds a box of vinyl in a dump near the border, a trunk of old movie posters gets misplaced during a storm, a radio signal bounces off the ley lines—we catch the drift of it. Magic is weirdly nostalgic like that. It likes cool shit.”
He shakes his head, spreading his legs a little and stretching his corded arms out across the back of the couch, bringing his hand inches from my shoulder.
He’s so big he practically swallows my sofa whole.
My magic instantly gives another annoying, needy little twitch in my chest, practically begging me to lean sideways into his side.
Can it, I tell my blood silently.
His eyes drift to the small cluster of mismatched wooden frames near the hallway archway.
They’re the real treasures in this apartment—polaroids, faded 35mm prints, candid shots taken on disposable cameras.
There’s one of Alden and me sitting on the hood of his beat-up truck when we were twelve, covered in dirt.
Another of my parents at a harvest festival, my dad’s arms wrapped around my mom’s waist while she laughs so hard her eyes are squeezed shut.
And a tiny, washed-out print of me at five years old, wearing rain boots on the wrong feet and holding a fat ugly toad like it was a prize trophy.
“Your parents look cool,” he says quietly.
I smile, a soft, genuine thing that sneaks up on me. “They are. They’re the absolute best.”
“You haven’t talked about them much.”
I give a casual shrug, watching a dust mote float through the slant of yellow sunlight coming through the sheer curtains. “They’re out of town right now. Searching for information around the outer ridge of Amberhollow, trying to figure out what’s going on with the Veil acting up.”
Callum arches an eyebrow, turning his head on the cushion to look at me. “What are they like?”
“Why?” I ask, popping a brow right back at him. “Building a suspect profile on me or something, Detective?”
He shrugs, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. “I’m stuck here in your brother’s pants, we’ve already crossed a few major personal boundaries, and neither of us has anywhere to be. Indulge me.”
A snort escapes me, and we both end up laughing, an easy sound floating between the two of us.
I cross my arms over my chest, and right on cue, Jett decides he’s been ignored for five minutes too long. He leaps up onto the sofa, landing squarely in my lap, instantly turning his purr motor on high. I bury my fingers in his black fur, scratching right behind his ears.
“My dad is such a nerdy weirdo,” I say with a wide smile. “In the best way. But the man is a genius. He can take literally anything apart and put it back together blindfolded. Give him a broken radio, a clock, or an engine block, and he’s happy for days. He’s obsessed with vintage cars.”
Callum smiles. “Ah. So that’s why you knew what was wrong with my truck the night you found me.”
“Guilty,” I say, flashing a sheepish smile. “He taught me everything. He loves anything outdoors—camping, hiking, working with his hands.”
“And your mom?”
“My mom is…” I pause, a fond laugh bubbling up. “Well, she’s basically me, but with thirty more years of practice.”
Callum snorts. “God help us all. That sounds terrifying.”
I swat his arm playfully and he laughs, then gives me a little nod of his head, silently encouraging me to keep going.
“She just…always wanted me to be entirely myself,” I turn to look at the picture of her on the wall.
“When I wanted purple hair in middle school, she didn’t just let me.
She dyed her own hair neon green. She loves all my tattoos, and she even has a few of her own.
Her root magic is creation and color, so she can pull pigments straight out of flower petals or anything she sees that she thinks is beautiful and weave them onto canvas.
She makes the world feel bigger and brighter. ”
“What’s root magic?” Callum asks, resting his forearm against his knee, those ridiculous sweatpants riding up his calves.
“It’s like…your core frequency,” I say, scratching Jett under his chin.
“Every witch and wizard has one. Spells and charms are just tools anyone can learn if they study hard enough, but root magic is like, baked into your actual DNA. It dictates how your power naturally wants to express itself. My dad’s root magic is Abjuration—Ward magic—so he builds heavy-duty seals, impenetrable barriers, and spatial locks.
My mom’s root magic is Creation. My little brother’s is Alchemy, so he can shift the physical molecular structure of metals and stone.
Stella’s is organic Restoration, which makes her a killer healer. ”
Callum nods slowly, taking that in. “And yours?”
“Oh.” I swallow, my fingers suddenly tightening in Jett’s fur. “Mine is Resonance.”
“Resonance?”
“Yeah. It basically means my magic reacts to energy and emotion. I can neutralize dark charms, break heavy wards, or calm down volatile temperaments because my magic instinctively tries to balance the frequency around me. But…it also means I feel everything. Extremely deeply.”
I clear my throat before going on. “Sometimes, if an object has enough emotional history attached to it, I catch echoes. Like when old vinyl records get donated to Spellspin. I’ll touch a sleeve and get a flash of the person who owned it fifty years ago.
I’ll feel how happy they were listening to it, or how heartbroken they were when they gave it away. ”
Callum tilts his head, studying my face. “Like…visions?”
“More or less,” I say, tilting my head from side to side. “They’re brief. Just quick bursts of someone else’s life. Their feelings.”
“That’s actually really cool,” he says softly.
I look down at my feet, staring at the chipped patch of polish on my big toe again.
It’s shaped vaguely like Italy. “It sounds cool,” I murmur.
“It sounds like a fun party trick until you realize it’s fucking exhausting.
Having magic that leaks outward, constantly absorbing how everyone else feels…
it means I’m always overwhelmed. I’m always feeling. ”
I blow out a raspberry. “And if I start feeling too much—if my own emotions get too loud—my magic goes haywire. Things around me react. Fire flares up. Glass breaks. You get the gist.”
“Has something…bad ever happened because of it?” he asks.
I freeze as my breath catches in my chest. I hate getting to this part of my life.
It’s ugly, and it’s scary, and usually, the second I start talking about it, the air in the room turns all awkward and weird.
I spend half my life terrified that if people know the truth, they’ll look at me like I’m a volatile hazard, a freak of nature waiting to detonate.
But sitting here on my faded sofa with Callum, his eyes completely fixed on me without a trace of pity, it feels…
safe. The small space between us feels entirely solid, like an anchor dropping down and catching my magic by the collar, keeping it grounded right here in the room with us instead of letting it spin out of control.
“Once,” I whisper, my eyes dropping back down to my hands.
“When Stella and I were young. We got into this stupid fight over something I can’t even remember now.
I got so furious—so overwhelmed by this blinding, ugly rage—that my resonance lashed out.
It shattered a glass vase. But my magic didn’t just break the vase, it targeted her for whatever BBC reason.
It was so freaky, like my power took all my anger and channeled those glass shards straight at Stella. ”
I lift my hand, pointing a shaky finger toward my own left eyebrow. “One of the pieces caught her right across the face. Bad. It missed her eye by half an inch.”
Callum’s breath hitches softly. “Ah.”
“Yeah,” I say, crossing my arms tight across my chest, trying to shield myself from the memory.
“She was bleeding everywhere. I was screaming, calling out for my parents. After that…I learned real fast that it was safer to keep everything pushed down. Lock my feelings in a dark box, cover it in a little humor and sarcasm, and never, ever let myself get too angry, or too sad, or too…anything. Because if I lose control, the people I love get hurt.”
I swallow hard over the painful lump in my throat, keeping my eyes locked on the floor.
I wait for it. I wait for the analytical judgment from a detective.
I wait for him to tell me I should have learned better control, or that I was dangerous, or any of the thousand awful things I’ve whispered to myself in the middle of the night for years.
But he doesn’t say a word.
The apartment falls completely still and I take a slow breath to stop my hands from shaking, forcing myself to meet his eyes.
Callum is staring at me so intensely, his eyes dark and searching, that it makes my skin prickle. I squirm against the sofa, suddenly itching to jump out of my skin. I hate it. I hate being caught red-handed with all my ugly pieces hanging out, with no joke to hide behind and nowhere to run.
I clear my throat, dragging my thumb along the frayed hem of my shorts just to have something to do. “So. Yeah. That’s the grand tour of my ruined psyche. You can file that away under Reasons Freddie Is A Giant Walking Red Flag.”
“I get it,” Callum says softly.
My eyes snap up to his. “You get what?”
“I think, on some level, I do the exact same thing.”
I raise a brow, leaning back into the corner of the sofa. “Do what? Hide behind bad timing and cheap sarcasm?”
“Try to keep myself from feeling anything,” he says.
I hold his gaze for a second with a smirk. “Okay, loverboy. Your turn to spill.”