Page 65 of The Fantastic Fluke

I nodded unthinkingly, the answer an automatic, “Yeah.”

Not that I’d have told him the truth, even if it had been the first thing to pop into my head. Someone, or probably some group, had been killing arcane mages for at least my lifetime, and probably quite a lot longer. Until someone proved to me that Gideon hadn’t been murdered, I would believe it started all the way back with him.

David sighed and leaned back. “Kurt was a class five body mage. Not the most power, but enough that it was apparent something had happened.”

“It didn’t look that way in person, though. He just grabbed his chest and fell down. He sort of, um, convulsed. And his heart was going way too fast.” I rubbed my eyes with my hands as though I could erase the image of it. “I tried to scrape some magic, to slow it down, but—” I shrugged helplessly at him.

He nodded. “Fair enough. He’d have appreciated it, I’m sure, but I promise, even if you’d been a medical mage you couldn’t have helped. His heart was a symptom, not the problem.”

It didn’t make me feel better. If only I had agreed to train with Gideon earlier—or heck, if I had found out about my ability earlier. If I saw it happening now, I might be able to do something about it.

My logical mind knew there was no way for me to have stopped it, but that didn’t slow the self-blame train. A man was dead, and I hadn’t fixed it. Surely that was a failure on my part?

I closed my eyes and tried to remember. I hadn’t seen any magic. That didn’t mean it hadn’t been there, but it did mean it was probably a subtler kind than social magic. So nothing elemental or death-based. Those disciplines were flashy and tended to announce their presence when in use.

After going over it all at least twice, I shook my head. “I didn’t see any magic. None at all. I was looking at Fluke, the girl at the counter said something scared, then Kurt turned and grabbed his chest. Everything happened so fast after that.”

“Fluke?” David asked.

My face flamed and I had to press my frozen fingers against it to cool it down. “Ah, that’s what I’ve been calling foxy. Kind of rude to just call him by his species all the time, you know? And it’s what he is. A fluke.”

David smiled at that, but it was a more fixed, less genuine smile than his usual one. He was clearly still uncomfortable with me having someone else’s familiar. A small part of me wanted to spill everything, explain that Fluke really was mine and I wasn’t stealing him at all, and oh fuck, please help me because someone’s out to kill me. That was silly, though. At best, David would laugh at me because arcane mages didn’t exist. It was what I’d done to Gideon, after all.

David didn’t ask anything else about Fluke, just made a series of notes in chicken-scratch so messy I couldn’t read it, nodding to himself as he went. “Anything else? The police said someone filmed it, but they made him delete the footage.”

I winced and covered my face. “Yeah, sorry. That would be my fault. I thought filming someone’s death was gross, so I told the cops he’d done it.”

David waved me off. “They should have kept the video, but that’s on them, not you. You didn’t tell them how to do their jobs, just gave them the information.” He sighed, nodded, and as though parroting something he’d been told, added, “And they had no reason to believe that there had been foul play at the time. Still incompetent, just not maliciously so.”

I tried, and failed, to hold back a quiet laugh at that. “It does describe all of us sometimes, though, don’t you think?”

He flashed me that model smile again as he flipped his notebook shut and slid it back into his pocket. “Not me,” he denied with a shake of his head. “All incompetence comes with a side of bad intentions around here.”

And that, accompanied by his smile, was even more ridiculous.

Heavy footfalls sounded behind me, and given David’s complete lack of reaction, it had to be Gideon. Dad wasn’t that melodramatically intrusive, and David was an officer of the law. He’d have at least acknowledged being approached by someone.

Instead, he stood up, put a hand on my shoulder, and smiled. “Thanks, Sage. I’m sorry I had to come ask. If you think of anything else, give me a call.”

I wasn’t sure when he’d palmed his own card, but he held it out to me, and I took it automatically. “I will. I don’t think there’s anything else for me to remember, but I’ll call if I do. I’m sorry.”

He waved me off. “Nothing for you to be sorry for. You’re not the one killing people.”

I wanted to point out that he had no proof I wasn’t, but that was ridiculous. I didn’t want to make him think maybe I was a murderer. He already thought I was a familiar stealer. So I just nodded and said, “Good luck finding them. I might not be impressive enough to be a target for someone killing mages, but I’ll feel better if any murderer is off the street.”

Instead of taking his hand off my shoulder and leaving, he squeezed lightly. “Don’t assume that, Sage. The first victim was a certified class three. So do me a favor and be careful, okay?”

“Okay. I will.” I stared at my hands in my lap, thinking about that for a while when I heard the bell jingle as David left.

“I don’t like him, but he’s right,” Gideon said, settling into the spot on the couch where David had been. “More murderers out wandering the streets. This might be the worst century I’ve seen yet.”

I blew him a raspberry. “Okay boomer. Longing for the bad old days of no internet or toilet paper?”

“I have no idea what half that meant, but no, I like the internet. Technology is great. I just don’t like all the danger you’re in or how miserable everybody is.” He looked behind me to the door, then back. “What did Don Juan want?”

“Seriously? Guy put himself out there and got shot down, and you’re gonna make fun of him?” Okay, yeah, most of my annoyance on that was based on the fact that I still felt guilty for doing the shooting. Why the hell didn’t I like David?

Why did it always have to be guys like Bobby Hu?

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