Page 77 of The Fantastic Fluke

When her whole body went slack and she collapsed in the entryway, the table with my wallet and mail tumbling onto her, I tried to throttle back on the power, but it wouldn’t let me. The convergence itself kept pushing.

No.

The anger of a child filled me, the sense of injustice at the first realization that the world wasn’t a kind and just place. For a moment, it was completely separate from me, like I was seeing the emotion played out on a screen, but then it surged inside me, red hot and seething like the lava flows beneath the crust of the earth. She had hurt my new friend, usedmeto hurt him, and I would not allow her to do that again.

The convergence would not have it.

“You’ll kill her,” I whispered. “You’re killing her.”

Finally, the power slowed.Kill?

“Kill. She’ll stop existing.” I reached for an example it might understand or care about. “Like Gideon did. Like the man in the coffee shop.”

It pulled back, considering, but it was much, much too late for Lina.

She looked like one of those bodies they pulled out of ancient tombs, black and desiccated, but still smoking slightly. It seemed like I should feel something about that. Nausea, at least. But there was nothing. It was like the horrific body was in someone else’s entryway.

I pushed off the wall and my foot brushed against what was left of her leg. Her form crumbled into greasy black dust and spread across the tiled floor of the entry in a choking cloud.

Okay, that was gross.

Diving to my knees and ignoring the pain as I hit the tile, I checked on Fluke. He whimpered, his front leg curled against his body, but it didn’t seem to be at an odd angle, and he’d moved it. I still needed to get him to a vet, but he was okay. He was breathing and whimpering andalive.

“It’s okay, bud. You stay here, I’m gonna call Beez. She’ll close up the shop and come take us to the vet. Okay? We’ll get you the good foxy drugs, and you’ll be as good as new in no time.” I petted the side she hadn’t hit, as softly as I could, then turned to stumble across the living room and into the kitchen. I needed... my phone. And the mop. Did I own a mop? Oh gods, I was about to mop up a human being.

Yes, she’d tried to murder me, but that was still awful.

Was that tantamount to destroying evidence? I hadn’t killed her.

Had I?

I froze, the entire scene replaying in my head like a nightmare, and there was the nausea that had been missing the first time. Bile stung the back of my throat and my eyes watered. I wasn’t sure if it was for me, or Fluke, or the convergence itself.

I was the one who increased the flow of magic to painful levels. The convergence, with its childlike terror and anger, couldn’t be held responsible for that. And it hadn’t known what it was doing. It had stopped when I told it to; I had just been too late.

My phone wasn’t in the kitchen, and it was more important than cleaning up Lina. I had to get Fluke taken care of first and foremost.

Still, I was staring blankly at the mop and bucket when I heard the table scrape across the entryway floor. That wasn’t Fluke. He wouldn’t be moving things around. No, it sounded like the front door opening. Lina must not have locked it like I thought she had.

But who...

I turned, and David was standing in the arch into the kitchen, lips drawn into a tight line and a strange sadness in his eyes. “Oh Sage. I really am sorry. I hoped it wasn’t you.”

Chapter Thirty

“Hoped what wasn’t me?” I asked. I sounded confused, even to my own ears, but puzzle pieces were coming together with speed that left me breathless.

Oh gods, it all fit together so perfectly, didn’t it?

I’d thought David was looking into the murders of mages, and maybe he was, but he was also an Aurora Aureum Quaesitor. He had access to records and information that other people didn’t.

He’d been the only person who questioned my ability to draw a familiar, and he’d done so over and over. On some level, he must have known all along that Fluke’s appearance meant something had changed in me. Everyone else had taken it in stride when a thirty-year-old man had found a familiar, most of them realizing what Fluke was before I did and not having a problem with it. He’d been the only one concerned, a concern that Fluke had disliked.

Fuck, why hadn’t I listened to my familiar?

I will never dismiss your opinion again, buddy, I mentally promised him.

He sighed and shook his head as he slipped his hand into his pocket. “I wasn’t just feeling you out to see if you were suspicious of me when I asked you out, you know? I’ve been trying to flirt with you for years, but you never seemed to notice.”

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