Page 85 of Magic Forsaken

Logan looked at me once more, and I nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll make sure you get home later, after class is over.”

One of his rare smiles bloomed right before he reached out andhuggedme.

Hard.

“Thanks, Raine.”

Shock froze me in place as he let go and jogged off after Faris. My silent, nearly immobile, entirely unemotional teen had hugged me, and now he wasrunning.

“Don’t worry,” Callum’s voice came from right behind my shoulder. “It’s normal.”

“Are you sure?” I was suddenly blinking back tears. “I’ve never had a teenager before. Teenage boys are like a foreign species. I just know that I worry, but I have no idea how to help.”

“I have two younger brothers,” the dragon reminded me. “He’s going to be fine. Faris might come off as a bit of a grumpy, hard-nosed curmudgeon, but he’s got the biggest, squishiest heart of anyone I ever met.”

Faris? Squishy?

I remembered the Waffles test and decided he was probably telling the truth.

So now what?

The hits had come so hard and fast that I almost couldn’t believe we were still safe. Still standing. That there weren’t any more immediate crises for me to solve, except making sure that Kes and Ari made it home safely.

And on the work front?

I took stock of my responsibilities and realized I wasn’t entirely sure what came next. Was I fired? Was I not fired? As far as I knew, I would be attending the reception this evening, but the afternoon was empty, and the next two days of deliberationand voting were limited to delegates only. No bodyguards, no assistants, no… dates. I would be standing by on one of the upper floors of the building, waiting to intervene in case of catastrophe.

Basically, I was the magical version of Kevin, but without the mustache.

“So… am I actually fired?” I asked my boss tentatively, and heard a quick gasp from Kes.

“Do you want to be?” Callum’s question was earnest and a little vulnerable, so I had no choice but to be honest.

“No.” Weirdly, I no longer cared what anyone believed about our relationship. I wanted to be there. Wanted to keep my promises and see this through. “But what exactly will my job entail for the rest of the day?”

Callum sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and regarded me grimly. “I’m sorry to say, it’s likely to be boring at times and downright torturous at others.”

“You want me to hang out in the office with Angelica?”

His lips twitched. “She’s not actually as terrible as she seems. Just very concerned with details and appearances. Makes her great at her job, even if she can be a bit… tense.”

“Just give me the bad news.”

“I’m afraid it’s very bad indeed,” he said mournfully. “You’re going to have to go shopping.”

EIGHTEEN

My first move—afterstrenuously objecting and suffering through an explanation of why a new dress was necessary—was to beg for Kira’s help. I understood next to nothing about fashion or formal events, and she was the only woman I knew that I figured I could trust to advise me.

As it turned out, Kira and Marilee Springvale were friends, and both of them found the idea of dressing me up for the formal banquet vastly entertaining. As soon as Kes and Ari were safely back at the hostel, they dragged me off on a tour of trendy little boutiques where perfectly groomed salespeople looked at me with wide eyes that suggested they’d just barely managed not to ask what I was doing there.

I felt like a walrus at the ballet, following Kira and Marilee around, watching them argue over dresses, then allowing myself to be stuffed into one after the other while knowing perfectly well that I couldn’t afford any of them. Thankfully, I could honestly say they were all either too tight, too bright, too fluffy… toosomething. It wasn’t until the third boutique, when I was about to give up and proclaim dramatically that I would go in my work clothes or not at all, when one finally caught my eye.

I couldn’t even have said why. It was white, which would only call attention to my strange hair color. Not to mention I would manage to get it dirty within the first ten minutes. But something about it saidmine.

Besides the color, I didn’t know the right terms for the rest of it. Marilee called it mermaid style, with a one-shoulder cap sleeve and a cape falling from the top of the shoulder all the way to the floor. But it was the elusive, shimmering pattern of sequins sewn onto the fabric that I kept staring at. They swirled and scintillated in the light, sometimes silver, sometimes blue, like a waterfall in winter, always in motion, always just out of reach.

The sales lady huffed and proclaimed it the wrong color for me, for the season, for everything, but I decided on impulse that I might as well at least try it on. And when I finally managed to wriggle into it and emerge from the dressing room—still feeling like a walrus, albeit this time a walrus in a fancy dress—Kira’s face froze in a peculiar expression of shock.

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