Page 29 of The Fantastic Fluke

“Congratulations, Fluke,” I told him, scratching his head as we walked. “You’re legal. Plus, you know, now you’ve got a name.”

I looked over at Gideon, expecting more commentary about naming him on the fly, or calling him an accident, but he only gave a wry smile and shook his head.

I felt lighter than I had in years. Sure, one was dead and one was a fox, but I was spending my morning with two people I liked, and they were both kind of awesome.

Chapter Ten

Since the route back from the county offices led right past the coffee shop, I decided to divert there. Not for their mediocre coffee or decent sandwiches, but for the dog treats Fluke had liked so much when Beez bought them for him.

Today I got to be the hero.

He pranced in right beside me, and unless I was mistaken, there was a new air of confidence about him. I went over to the shelf of treats and looked down at him. “You want to pick one?”

He looked the shelf over, sniffing at them. They were all pretty uniform, mostly little plastic bags of ten or twelve treats. My smartass foxy, though, got up on his hind legs and pulled a bag off the second shelf—one that had at least twenty in it.

I snorted at him. “Glutton.” He gave me his innocent eyes, and I snorted again. “I know what you’re up to, monster.”

Knowing didn’t stop me from taking the bag he picked and getting in line, though.

“These are gonna have to last a while,” I told him seriously.

The man ahead of me in line turned to give me a questioning glance, then seeing that I was talking to Fluke, chuckled and turned back to the menu board. I looked up at it too.

Their coffee was seriously mediocre, but I could get a latte, I supposed. It was hard to mess up a latte with anything but the worst coffee. Or maybe, like, sour milk. Or white chocolate.

Maybe a mocha. No one could mess up a mocha.

The man in front of me reached the counter and started making his order, and Fluke leaned hard on my leg, looking up at me with those pleading eyes. I tried to play taskmaster, bad at it as I was. “Nope. Not till we pay for them, buddy.”

“Sir?” asked a shrill voice. “Sir, are you okay?”

I turned back to the counter in time to see the man in front of me take an unsteady step back, one hand clutching his chest, and the other reaching out to the side as though for balance.

I reached for him, but too late.

His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed to the floor.

For a few crucial seconds, I froze. I looked around the shop, but no one had moved. Everyone had turned to stare, and the barista was leaning over the counter, but not a single person had leapt up like they do in the movies, shouting that they were a doctor, and to clear the way for them. No one even stood up.

So I dove down next to him, Fluke sticking to my side as though he was afraid I’d disappear. The man’s pulse was wild, so fast and hard I could see it jumping in his neck before I even touched his wrist to search for it. He was gasping for breath, so there was no question of whether he was breathing.

His back arched up, almost like he was having a seizure.

Now, social mages are not medical mages, and I have no medical knowledge and little practice in anatomy and physiology. Medicine is a very specific practice. Most medical mages specialize in external body magic, a relatively rare discipline, and one of the only ways to use it legally is as a doctor. Manipulating the energy in the bodies of others has a lot of ugly potential, after all.

But with enough power, and a strong enough will, a mage cantryto use the power they gather from their own source for anything. A social mage trying to manipulate someone’s body to, say, regulate a racing heart, was almost certain to fail, but what else could I do?

I glanced around again, as though that fictional doctor would have materialized out of nowhere to shove me aside and get to work helping the man, but there was no one. The fingers of the man’s right hand curled around my wrist, and he looked straight at me, fear in his eyes. Someone had to do something, and I was the only person who seemed willing, if not able.

Foxy shoved in under my hand, looking up at me with wide eyes, but I couldn’t take the time to comfort him.

I closed my eyes and reached out for the people in the shop. There were over a dozen of them, and the prevailing emotion was terror. If I could take just a little of the energy coming off them in waves, maybe—

I reached for the energy. I could feel it, see it in my mind’s eye, but when I grabbed, it was less solid than usual, and I just slipped through instead of latching on. Instead of refocusing and pulling back to try again, something I had to do all too often when I tried to use my ability, I fell.

There was a lurching sensation in my stomach, like when a rollercoaster starts that first downward descent, but my body didn’t move. My mind didn’t either. It was as though an enormous chasm had opened beneath me, filled with so many people that it was exuding energy, almost shoving itself into my hands.

I tried to refocus on the man so I could pull on the magic, use it to calm his hammering heart, but when I opened my eyes—my real, physical eyes—it was just in time to watch his soul sit up from his suddenly lax body.

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