Page 18 of The Fantastic Fluke

The man’s gaze cut to my father for a second, and I could have sworn there was irritation there. He turned back to me, a patient expression on his face that, strangely, suited him. I wouldn’t have expected a broad-shouldered cowboy to be well-suited to calm, unless it was that deadeye “as likely to shoot you as talk to you” kind of calm.

“Most parts of the world don’t have a ley line at all. Some places have a single line running through them. It increases the magic in the area, makes it easier to draw from your own ability, no matter what it is. More people who have magical potential are born near lines.”

I nodded, because at least anecdotally, that made sense. I hadn’t studied it but wouldn’t be shocked to learn it from a textbook.

He seemed satisfied with that response and continued. “A few places, very few, like New York City, have lines that converge. Where the lines cross each other, the effect is stronger.”

“If the effect is stronger, does that mean mages who are born there are more powerful? Do people move to places like that so they’ll have powerful babies?” I rounded the counter to join him and foxy on the couch.

Sure, I hadn’t studied any of this, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t interesting. It meant I had been bitter it didn’t apply to me, so I’d avoided it. Foxy settled down, resting his head on my lap and closing his eyes in satisfaction as I petted him.

After I settled, the gunslinger turned to face me. “I couldn’t say. What I know is that here, in Junction, three ley lines cross. I don’t know that there’s anywhere else in the world like it.”

“Convergence,” I said, remembering the term he’d used. “Wait, you think people can connect directly to the ley lines? That’s not possible. Humans can’t channel that. It’s pure unfocused energy. It would be like channeling electricity through your body and expecting to be able to power your TV. We use wires because they give the energy a path. A shape.”

He didn’t answer, just looked at me.

“Oh come on. Pull the other one. It’s not physically possible. What you’re talking about, that’s... that’s fairy tale stuff. Wizards learning spells from books. Arcane magic.”

The gunslinger nodded. “Exactly. Arcane magic.”

“There’s no such thing. Magic comes in flavors. Types. And it’s limited by them. You’ve got elementalists, corporists, exanimists, temporalists... vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, rocky road. There’s no unflavored magic. There are no arcanists.”

Few people used the technical names for mage types, since it was a lot easier to say elemental mage, body mage, dead mage, or time mage. Not to mention it garnered less confusion from non-mages, and most people didn’t like to be know-it-all assholes.

My father waved dismissively at me, but talked to the gunslinger. “Even if such a thing were true, he wouldn’t be the mage you were looking for. He’s a two all around, remember?”

The gunslinger didn’t even look at him, just kept his gaze pinned on me, like I was a butterfly and he was a collector. Except, you know, slightly more humane. Maybe.

“He’s right,” I finally mumbled. “I’m a two. A fully trained social mage who can’t even do enough magic to get someone to smile.”

Foxy whined and burrowed farther into my lap, flicking the ghost with his fluffy tail.

“I’ve come back from the dead eight times in the last two hundred years,” the man said, and I could feel the exhaustion in his voice. “I promise, I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here, but I know what I’m talking about. You can say you’re nobody all you want, but this fox says otherwise.”

“Foxy?” I demanded, and the creature in question thumped his tail up and down a few times, blinking innocently at me.

The ghost stared for a long moment. “Foxy. You get a fox familiar and name him. Foxy.”

“Oh, he’s not my familiar. I just found him.”

His laughter this time was deep and resonant, and when he looked at me again, there was hesitation, like he was waiting for me to say something else. Like foxy in the bathtub, he was waiting for the punchline. When I didn’t say anything, he shook his head, eyes wide and mouth open slightly. “You do understand that’s how familiars work, right?”

“Yes, but—” I sighed and gave up, waving him off. “Look, if I were going to find a familiar, it would have been fifteen or twenty years ago. Same with discovering I had some awesome magical power. I’m sorry, but you’re looking for something that doesn’t exist, and you’re looking for it in the wrong place.”

Instead of getting annoyed or telling me how wrong I was, the guy just gave me a smile, and spread one arm over the top of the couch, like he was settling in for the long haul. “I’m Gideon, kid. You got a name?”

“I’m almost thirty years old,” I pointed out, even though mentioning your age only ever served to make you seem younger. “And it’s Sage. I’m sorry I can’t link to your convergence. Oh wow, that sounds like something from a really specialized porno.”

“The hell is a porno?”

Foxy opened his eyes and looked up at me, and I would swear the asshole was amused, brown eyes dancing in the sunlight from the window behind me. I bared my teeth at him, and he pretended to go back to sleep. Shit. Now I got to explain porn to a two hundred-year-old guy.

What even was my life?

Chapter Six

It turned out that even when it was only a few miles, carrying twenty pounds of dog food... er, fox food, for any major distance was exhausting.

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