Page 57 of The Fantastic Fluke

Roger, meanwhile, looked at the three of us like we were nuts. “What?”

Iris made a shooing motion toward the door. “As I told you before, Roger, I’m busy tonight. I’m spending the evening with Sage. You and Beth better be off to the theater, so you don’t miss anything.” Roger glanced over at me again—at the books, really, and she bristled. “Perhaps you’re looking forward to that day, but you won’t inherit a single thing until I die. Until then, those books are mine and I can lend them to whom I like. Or give them as gifts, even.”

“What an awful thing to say, Mother—”

I tried not to wonder if he was referring to the ghoulish notion of him anticipating her death, or the idea of her giving books away. I wasn’t much for physical altercations, but I kind of wanted to punch him in his smug face. Iris had been nothing but kind to me, and maybe she wasn’t always on her best behavior, but I was coming to the conclusion that she was a genuinely good person.

So, I wanted to punch her son for being an asshole to her, basically.

It wasn’t like I’d expected him to like me. Hell, his attitude was what I’d been expecting when I met her, so frankly, I’d beat the spread as far as I was concerned.

She merely shooed him again, turning toward the back of the library. “I think there’s one more back here. Maybe you should sell them in your shop when you’re finished with them.”

The last was clearly just for Roger and hit the mark. He gasped, putting a hand to his chest in what looked like shock and horror as I followed her back among the shelves.

A few seconds later the door slammed, and the retreating footsteps were even louder than they’d been on the approach.

The housekeeper, Beryl, poked her head around the shelves a minute after that. “I’m sorry, Mrs., he stormed in and wouldn’t be stopped.”

“Dear, you know by now that Roger’s behavior isn’t your fault. He’s a spoiled brat, and he’ll do what he’ll do.” She walked over to me, lifting most of the books out of my arms, and handed them to the woman. “If you’d take these to Wayne and let him know they’re going home with the boys, I would appreciate it.”

Without another word, the woman gave a curtsey—a freaking curtsey, with her arms full of books—and left. She didn’t even blink at Iris saying, “with the boys.”

Iris turned back to me and patted the books she had left in my arms. “Now then. Those three are the place to get started, so let me tell you about them.”

When we left two hours later, books in a box that was seat-belted in across from us, my mind was swirling. Iris had tried to be a little subtle, even mixing in a few books on life and deaths magic, but she’d clearly been focused on a few concepts: the ones behind creating golems and realistic illusions.

Normally, I’d have dismissed them as weird and unrelated, and so thought maybe they were her personal interests, but she had only started looking for them after realizing Gideon and I were... well, yeah.

The first part of making a golem was assembling a body. The finishing touches of making illusions included adding mass to make them touch-realistic.

My own grandmother was trying to get me laid by making an incorporeal man corporeal.

Best wingman ever.

Chapter Twenty-One

Sunday was always a quiet day for the shop, so we sat on the couch and went through the three books Iris had said were the most important. There was no way to know if her idea could work, but if it could, I was going to make it work. I glanced up at Gideon and couldn’t hold back a smile at his complete focus. Maybe he wanted it as much as I did.

It was all given in general terms, since multiple kinds of mages were capable of the feats detailed within. A water mage and an earth mage could both make golems just like a painter and someone with charcoal could both make a portrait—they simply used different mediums.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that every single spell in each book could be altered to suit the tapping of ley lines. Not because I’d become an expert or anything, but because Gideon had been right. It was arcane magic. Flavorless. Simple energy, mass, light... The magic in ley lines truly was clay that could be shaped into anything at all.

No wonder Jonathon McKinley had thought it dangerous.

As though he could read my mind, halfway through reading a passage on removing energy from an object, Gideon looked over at me and sighed. “Winifred didn’t cause that earthquake.”

“How do you know? You were... You were already dead then.” That was a sobering thought if ever there had been one.

He nodded and motioned for me to continue the train of thought, but I was lost. What did he expect me to come up with? What else—

“Was there an earlier earthquake that you stopped? Fuck me, can you stop earthquakes?”

That made him laugh, and just watching his shoulders shake ratcheted down my nerves. “Nah. I was never much good with earth, and I don’t think I’m that powerful.” He gave me a wink and added, “Maybe a class two.”

“Ham-fisted, you said. You’re good at hitting things?” I looked down at his hands, one curled casually across the top of his thigh, the other draped over the back of the sofa.

He lifted the one off the sofa and held it up. “Kinesthetics, Meredith called it. I just called it packing an extra punch in a fight. It’s small magic, but effective.”

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