Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2)(40)

“Yes! Our safety basically depends on it!”

“Would you? If you were Normal?”

“I could never be Normal.”

“You could—”

I sit up again. “No. I wouldn’t be me.”

“I’m saying, just imagine—”

“It’s unimaginable! It’s like asking me, ‘How would you feel if you were a frog?’ Well, I wouldn’t be me then, would I? I’d be a frog. Do frogs even have feelings?”

He shakes his head. Like I’m the one being ridiculous. “Normals have feelings, I can assure you. We may not be like you, but we have eyes and ears. We notice things.”

“In my experience? Not usually.”

“I notice things,” he says, pointing at his chest and looking at me over the top of his glasses. He’s apparently forgotten he needs to watch the road. “Look, I don’t know anything about you, personally. Because you’ve answered exactly none of my questions. But if you didn’t know about magic, if you were born Normal or just ignorant, and then you saw some magic—if you witnessed a miracle with your own eyes—would you just leave it be? If you got a glimpse into a secret world, would you pretend it hadn’t happened? Or would you spend the rest of your life trying to find a doorway?”

I can’t really process what he’s saying. All I can think about is the danger we’re in. “So that’s what you do, you go looking for ways into our world?”

“Hell, yes, and I’ve found a few.”

It’s my turn to shake my head.

“Does that bother you?” he asks.

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“Because … it’s none of your business. It’s not your world—it’s ours. You have no right to our secrets!”

“What makes it yours?”

“What do you mean? It’s obvious.”

“Not to me. What makes magic yours?”

I laugh. “We’re magickal. And you’re not.”

He turns his head completely to look at me. “We are made of magic. Without our magic, you’re worse than Normal. You’re useless.”





31





SHEPARD


Welp. I screwed that up.

I was supposed to charm her. Some people do find me charming, believe it or not. When I was 18, I got a creek dryad to tell me her life story. She gave me mulberry cakes and dandelion wine. It’s the first time I ever got drunk.

How did I learn so much about magic?

My strategy is simple: I tell the truth.

I always use my real name (even though fairy tales tell you not to). I always say exactly what I want from a situation and exactly what I mean.

These magical beings are always running a con.… They’ve been lying low for so long, they only know how to talk in tricks and riddles.

If you come in with your real face and your real name, and you tell them exactly what to make of you? It throws them off their game.

Yes, occasionally, they’ll repay your honesty with a magical ass-kicking. (I’m probably never going to have kids, because I owe at least three imps my firstborn.) But often they find it refreshing! There’s a hinkypunk in my mom’s subdivision who just likes to complain to me about her migraines.

Who else will listen?

Who else wants to hear their stories?

There are trolls who’ve spent the last two hundred years sitting alone under a bridge. If you can get past the bluster and the wooden clubs, if you bring them a little bone broth, they’re just grateful to have a sympathetic ear.

If you tell them that you mean no harm, and then you never do any harm …

They start to like you. They start to look forward to you coming around.

I’m not saying this approach would work for everyone. I’m not saying it isn’t dangerous.…

It’s not worth trying to charm something truly dark. And sometimes you can’t tell if they’re truly dark. Sometimes you give them your real name, and they never give it back.

And sometimes they just ignore you.…

Magicians are the worst.

They call themselves “magicians.” Everybody else calls them “Speakers.”

A jackalope broke it down for me once: “It’s like—we’re all technically magicians, right? We’ve all got magic. But they took it for their name. Imagine acting like you’re the only species who drinks water! Or breathes air! ‘Look at us! We’re the air-breathers!’”

Magicians think they’re the only ones with magic because they’re the only ones who can control it. All the other spirits and creatures have rules they have to follow—true limitations. But the magicians can do anything they find words for.

Most of what I know about magicians I’ve heard from other Maybes. Speakers are hard to track down. You can’t just meet one by hanging out at the neighborhood watering hole. You can’t plant some yarrow and valerian and wait for one to drop by.

Usually you don’t even know when you’ve met one. They go out of their way to look Normal—which is such a mindfuck because they think of real Normals as livestock. Beasts of jargon.

Even if you do find Speakers and identify them as such, they rarely feel like talking. They don’t want any of their power to trickle down. They don’t want anyone to learn their tricks.