Page 40 of The Misfit Mage and His Darling Demon

Shit. Was she another Fae? Novus had talked about them augmenting their features to resemble humans, but even so, those I’d observed had several obvious Mythic features or something distinctly non-human. She didn’t look any bit out of the ordinary, so what was she? A mage, perhaps? I gulped. Worse. What if she was one of the missing Diabolics in the villa? No. They’d been discombobulated, or Bez suggested as much based on how their essence was scattered throughout the villa.

I released the flame, favoring saturation over elements, and poured my mana into the floor, filling the room with my magic, searching for hers. It was easy enough to detect but pure and radiating throughout her, as opposed to mages who drew on the residue of magic in the atmosphere.

“W-who are you?”

“I see you’ve met Kell,” Mora said behind me.

I fumbled with the incantations, nearly dropping them when the sudden arrival of her voice startled me. Especially since my saturation hadn’t remotely noted her presence.

Damn difficult to detect Diabolic essence.

It didn’t prevent me from noticing Bez’s sudden arrival, but that had to do with the tug of the tether linking us.

I blinked a few times, taking in Kell, the witch who’d waltzed right into the helm and began tinkering with things, potentially undoing days of careful observations I’d made.

I turned, taking in Mora’s appearance from the bubblegum pink headband that kept her chestnut locks pushed back, to the click of her matching stilettos tapping while she eyed the incantations stacked in my palm, all the way to her jeweled accessories, each highlighting attention to the strapless, skintight magenta dress that held the ensemble together. A very short cut, too, revealing a tattoo covering her entire right thigh. A black and white portrait of a man, several colorful flowers, and animals.

Had Mora gotten these tattoos? Could Diabolic flesh be tattooed, or was this a glamour similar to what Bez did with his piercings? Maybe the tattoos came from the former tenant in the body she possessed. In which case, why hadn’t she simply glamoured them away? I shook my head, pushing random curiosities out.

“Such hostile mana permeating. I do hope you two are playing nice,” Mora said with a flick of her wrist, jingling her bracelets. Telekinetically, she waved over a dozen suitcases into the navigation room. Bez wasn’t kidding about her moving in. Who needed that many clothes ever?

I anxiously grinned at Bez, who looked annoyed, either by the fact I’d cast hostile magic—as a warning, to be fair—or by the way Mora had just invited herself here. Personally, I was more annoyed by Kell, who couldn’t keep her hands off things she didn’t understand the first thing about.

“Of course we are.” Kell wrapped an arm around my neck in what I could only assume was a friendly hug, but it felt more likeshe meant to strangle the life out of me. “We’re on the verge of being besties, babe. I can feel it.”

Tony hissed, then crawled down the back of my shirt. My face burned from flustered rage, between Tony wriggling along my back, Bez’s stifled snickers, and Kell bopping her hip against mine as she forced me into a side hug.

“In fact”—her chokehold grew tighter, and she whirled around on her heel, dragging me with her toward the panel—“I was just about to show him how to take this hot ride out for a test drive.”

“Wait, what?” I widened my eyes and scrambled loose from her unwanted embrace. “You can’t just throw this thing into drive. It’s not a car, and we’re certainly not on a road. We’re floating between realities on a clear and designated pathway, one seemingly carved out by Fae and Diabolic magics, meaning it’s illegal and uncharted.”

“Not uncharted,” Mora said, side-eyeing Bez. “Bezzy just happened to kill the only person who knew the route.”

“Walter made me. I wanted to be friends with the baron.”

“Liar.” My cheeks puffed in protest. Nope. Not the point or the argument that needed my attention. I turned back to Kell. “The slightest deviation off course could kill us, throw us into an endless loop of quantum entanglement, leak magical radiation—which I suspect might work as an additional fuel source—and that’d basically have all kinds of catastrophic effects. The villa could explode—again, we die—or the radiation could hit the atmosphere and have horrid ramifications on an ecosystem introducing magics the Collective or Mythic Council can’t quell. We’re talking exposures, higher rates of magic indoctrination, potential long-term effects I can only imagine—”

“Geez, you’re such a worry wart,” Kell said, tapping buttons she shouldn’t fucking touch. “You always such an overthinking buzzkill about every little thing?”

“Yes,” Bez blurted.

“No.” I glared at him. “I’m just obviously the only one here taking precautions into account. Let’s at least wait until we’ve read over the manual,”—something we should all do several times over for proper clarity—“made a list of the dos and don’ts, done diagnostic tests on all the systems, and fixed whatever you’ve broken with all your tinkering. Anything before you just type in coordinates you couldn’t possibly understand.”

“Or, and hear me out, Wally,” Kell said with an annoyingly cocky grin. “We could skip all the bullshit and dive right in.”

“No, because…” I bit my lip, not bothering to finish because Kell had already gone back to ignoring me. So frustrating.

“Let’s see what I’ve got in my handy dandy hat of tricks.” She materialized a big black hat with a long-pointed tip and a wide brim.

Seriously?I let out a deep sigh. A witch’s hat was as cliché as someone could get.

The air turned thick, causing uncomfortable humidity because of her sorcery—essentially the witch equivalent to incantations. All their magic drawn from the Four Corners had a different name than the Pentacles of Power mages channeled, but the specific uses remained similar between Mythic witches and human mages.

A moderately complex spell of sorcery to conjure the hat. Not all that proficient since she had to utilize nature’s blessing in tandem, which manipulated the atmosphere around us, creating this gelatinous air that made my skin sticky and my lenses fog.

Sorcery came from the southern corner of fire and like fire, the spells used offered balance through creation or destruction.

Nature’s blessing stemmed from the northern corner, basically serving as a catch-all that mixed elemental control, saturation, and familiar bonds.

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