Page 37 of Wings of Ebony
Bri: I could get in HUGE trouble for that. Can you talk?
I cut a glance at Tasha, still grinning with Cupcake, and hide my watch arm a bit more.
Me: No, I can’t talk. My onyx won’t work! My magic isn’t responding.
My watch suddenly vibrates in short pulses, her name flashing on the screen.Shoot, she’s calling!
I tap. “Bri?”
“What do you mean it won’t work?” Her voice comes through like a loudspeaker and I almost stumble out my seat. Itap tap tapthe volumewayyyydown.
Tasha gives me a weird look and I play it cool. I stand and putas much distance between my mouth and her ears as I can.
“That’s not possible,” Bri says, this time only loud enough for me to hear.
You can’t tell Bri something she doesn’t already know.
“I’m telling you, it’s broken.”
“Have you reached out to Aasim? Surely he can help.”
I grind my teeth and resist the urge to roll my eyes.
“No,” I yell a little too emphatically.
The driver glances my way a second but quickly moves on back to his phone playing some soap opera.
“Bri, I’m not comfortable with that. I don’t know him like that.”
“Comfortable? Rue! You’re asking me to sneak out of Ghizon. Fourteenth Law, Clause B, states…
Oh god, do not recite.
“Departing Ghizon territory—”
She’s reciting.
“—without express consent from the Chancellor is strictly forbidden.”
I massage my temples. “I know what the law says. I just… someone’s after us… someonehere.”
She gasps.
“Without magic I don’t have a way to watch out for us, keep us safe. Please meet me, bring whatever books you can find and all your lab stuff. So we can figure this out.”
Silence. She’s considering it.
“You won’t need to do any magic here, so they’ll never know. And you can zap here undetected because of this bomb-ass watch.”
“The watch doesn’t have weapon capabilities.”
“OMG, for the hundredth time, bomb doesn’t actually mean…” I sigh. “I just meant the watch is really cool because you can get here undetected like I did.”
She tsks. “I mean, that’s true and the probability of the watch not working with the amount of testing I put it through is… about .00008 percent.”
That’s probably a literal calculation.
“See! No issues. No risk.”
