Page 48 of The Fantastic Fluke

“The more you use, the more you need to eat,” he said, in a tone that said he thought he was merely confirming what I already knew. It was amazing what powerful mages took for granted, and the rest of us tiny little ninety-nine-percenters would never have a reason to learn.

Sure, the physics I’d studied in high school said it made sense, but how many people used practically applied physics in their daily lives? Don’t say all of us. If we don’t know it’s physics, it doesn’t count.

Starting out slowly, I headed for the kitchen. “You’d better look the other way, then, because if this is a thing, I’m gonna be eating a lot of food you don’t approve of in the next few weeks.”

“Why don’t you take money out of all that cash you’ve got at the end of every day? It’s your shop.”

It was a logical point. It probably wouldn’t even be illegal, but I didn’t want to do anything that mucked up the store’s usual finances. Upon learning that I had not yet, Iris had made an appointment to take me to my father’s accountant in a few weeks’ time. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but with her in my corner, I could handle it.

Another person I’d become attached to in under a week, and it was confusing as hell.

You’d almost think I hadn’t ever been a hermit who wanted to be alone. It seemed that I just hadn’t been in the right position to meet people who would be important to me.

In some cases, like with my grandmother, my father had been literally forcing them away from me. And had he really been planning to sell me off to whoever was killing arcane mages?

Nope. I wasn’t going to focus on that. It was peanut butter and jelly time.

“What did I do wrong?” I asked Gideon as I grabbed the loaf of bread. I remembered talking to him. Opening up, reaching out for that ocean of energy. And then I’d been in the garden.

To my left, he leaned against the counter and watched me work. To my right, Fluke hopped up to brace his front paws on the counter and do the same. Only one of them was begging for a sandwich of his own, but I still made three. One open-faced, to reduce the amount of bread I was feeding my familiar. Sapphire had said Fluke could have an occasional sandwich, not that they were healthy for him.

“Nothing,” Gideon told me after a moment. “You did everything fine.”

I turned my head in his direction and raised a brow. “That doesn’t seem right. If I do it right and it knocks me out, that can’t be working as intended, can it?”

I set down the spoon I had used to spread the peanut butter, and in a flash, Fluke had grabbed it off the counter and was licking first the spoon, then the spot where he’d set it on the floor, clean. Afterward, he meticulously picked it up and went to set it in the sink for washing.

I sighed, pulled open the drawer, and grabbed another spoon for the jam.

“Sometimes this happens,” Gideon said, ignoring the foxy antics and sticking to the conversation at hand. His voice was softer than usual, and he watched me as he spoke.

I waved the jam spoon in front of him. At least he couldn’t steal it. “Don’t you give me that, mister expert. Why does it happen?”

“You said you’ve been a class two?”

“Yup.” I almost set the spoon down to grab the next piece of bread, but noticed Fluke inching closer once more. I shot him a dirty look, which he returned with abject innocence, right down to batting his eyes at me. “My whole life, class two social.”

Gideon shook his head disbelievingly. “I don’t know how you didn’t connect to it on your own before I showed up. The convergence wants you.” I lifted an eyebrow at him, but didn’t say anything, so he went on. “It’s reaching out to you. It’s—It’s not alive, exactly, but it’s not just a lifeless source of power. Or one like the ocean with millions of lives inhabiting it. Nothing lives in the convergence, but there’s... dammit, I don’t have the words for this. There’s something there.”

When I was done with all three sandwiches, I dropped two of them on one plate, cut Fluke’s into the bite-sized pieces from last time, and then handed the jam spoon off to Fluke. I’d barely turned away from the counter with the plates in my hand when he raced over and hopped into his seat at the table. His fluffy tail wagged a few times when I stood there looking at him bemusedly.

I sat down and set our dishes in front of us and looked back at Gideon. “You think the magical power source is sentient?” Then I picked up my first sandwich, and the moment I did, Fluke went for his first piece.

Meanwhile, Gideon drew his brows together in confusion. “I don’t know what that means.”

“You know, like—No, I guess you probably haven’t watched a lot of sci-fi. Um, self-aware. Thinking? Feeling?”

He cocked his head for a moment in consideration, then nodded. “Yeah. That. Sentient?”

I nodded. “Sentient.”

It made a certain amount of sense. I was no scientist, but I thought there were theories that life had started in some primordial pond of goop filled with energy. If energy had the potential to create life in ingredients that could hold life, well... why couldn’t the giant well of magic inside the planet be alive, in its own way?

In fact, it might explain a lot. I looked Gideon over. Giant sentient well of power looking to find someone who can access it, searches out a dead man who could access it in life, tells him to teach more people.

The convergence was bringing Gideon back over and over. Did it not understand how awful that was? No, probably not. If the convergence had something living in it, it probably didn’t have a firm grip on human morality.

I looked up to find Fluke watching me curiously. Then I realized his plate was empty and mine still had most of a sandwich on it. I glanced over to see if Gideon was looking at me, and not only was the answer yes, but also he could clearly read my mind. His lips were pursed, and his arms crossed over his chest.

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