Natural Mage (Magical Mayhem #2)(4)

“Penny, let me introduce you to Mary Bell.” Dizzy stopped us in front of a petite woman losing the fight to gravity. Her skin hung from her hunched frame and her braless lovelies dangled just above her waistline within her loose shirt.

With a smile, she reached forward a hand. “Pleased to meet you, Penny. Welcome.”

Her grip nearly crunched my bones. “Charmed,” I wheezed out.

“Yes.” She braced her hands on the ball of her cane, her serene smile belied by the fierce glint in her eyes. “You are a lovely little creature. So late to the magical life. How will you adjust?”

“Badly, probably,” I said honestly.

Her smile grew. “Yes. Probably. But it is not what happens to us that matters the most—it is how we respond to it. Don’t let anyone put you in a place you don’t wish to be.”

“Mary Bell is a powerful mage,” Dizzy said as Callie strutted toward the food table, where an older woman hovered indecisively over a plate of shrimp. “She has done some truly great spell work in the years we’ve known her.”

Mary Bell’s eyes sparkled as she surveyed me. “You don’t care for any of that, do you, child?”

I jerked straighter, wondering what my face was showing. “I do, of course! I really do!” I needed to tone down my forced enthusiasm.

The older woman chuckled softly. “I have never met a powerful mage that wasn’t also ambitious. They always want to know how they can better their position. The amount of knowledge I can offer you has exponentially increased.”

Dizzy and I both shifted, in opposite directions, and I could tell we were equally confused.

Mary Bell picked up on it. “You see, I thought you’d want to talk about unique spells, ancient relics, and whatever else you might pry out of my dementia-ridden grasp.”

“Good grief,” I whispered, fidgeting with the neck of my dress.

“I didn’t realize you had dementia,” Dizzy said conversationally, and somehow, when he said it, it didn’t sound quite so socially awkward. I needed to learn that trick.

“I don’t have dementia,” Mary Bell said brusquely, and an edge crept into her voice that had my small hairs rising. “But most younger people like Penny don’t realize that. They see an old woman with a stoop and a smile and assume she is two seagulls shy of a flock.”

“Seagulls…right…” Dizzy drew out the words.

“But were they to stop talking and listen, they would learn that I possess a wealth of knowledge from being a dual-mage near the top of my discipline, from traveling the world and battling the wicked. They might stop their reductive thinking that magic itself is good or evil.” She raised a gnarled finger. “When it comes to magic, the perceived nature of the spell itself is not what matters—it is the intent with which the mage uses the spell. There is no inherent right and wrong. No light and dark. There is just magic, and how we manipulate it to serve our own ends. After all, sometimes one must commit darker deeds to ensure the greater good.”

“The view on magic is true enough, but the darker deeds issue…” Dizzy waggled his hand and moved his head from side to side, as though debating the legitimacy of her statement.

I, however, was in rapture. It sounded exactly like something Emery would say. I liked the image of a fat, gray, fuzzy line cutting through the light and dark of magic. Nature would exist there in the middle, harsh and brutal, serene and bountiful. Life ending in death. Death creating life.

“Yes.” Mary Bell’s stare held mine. “Penny is not the mage I expected to meet tonight. How refreshing. I myself was a headstrong, entitled youth…I only wish I had started the journey as unburdened by hubris as she is. It wasn’t until everything was stripped from me—my love, my youth, my strength—that I learned what was truly important.”

“Hm.” Dizzy nodded, but I could see he was probably back to thinking of dementia. He smiled and stepped away, holding out his arm so that I might join him. “Thank you, Mary Bell, for coming.”

“She battled wicked people?” I asked in a hush as we made our way to a group of men and women sitting around one of the tables.

“I didn’t actually know her then. I did hear that she and her dual-mage partner were always described as a wild pair. They got into lots of trouble. Dabbled in the dark arts once or twice.” He slowed and turned a little before we reached the table. “She is on the straight and narrow now, but be careful what you take away from speaking with her.” He met my eyes and held them. “There is a side to magic that can corrupt the soul.”





2





A couple hours into what had become the longest, most name-riddled night of my life, I was standing with Callie as she trundled through the same conversation we’d had over and over since the beginning of the evening.

“We’re just going over the basics right now,” Callie said to Aileen, a pudgy, middle-aged woman with a perma-smile. Even when her brow furrowed, she still smiled. It was the strangest thing. “She didn’t even know that vampires existed a year ago, let alone how to create a spell.” They laughed as though that was the most absurd thing either one of them had ever heard. “But we’ll get there.”

“What spells and lessons are you starting with?” Aileen asked, and I clenched my jaw so I didn’t mouth Callie’s response, which I knew would be exactly the same as the last five times I’d heard it.