Magic to the Bone

I decided somewhere around day two that if I ever wrote an autobiography, I’d title that fucker
Leveling Up Is Hard to Do
.

Throughout my whole life my answer to pretty much any problem had been to either run away, or throw a lot of fireballs at it and
then
run away. I was done running. So that left fireballs. When all you have is a hammer, so the saying goes, every problem looks like a nail.

Not having magic was proving to be the Gojira of nails, and I was all out of hammer.

My father Ash’s solution so far had been rest, food, and enough meditation and “focus practice” to turn me into a monk. Finally, after a week of curbing my urge to start smashing furniture with my bare, utterly nonmagical hands in frustration, he conceded that his current method was not getting results.

“You
are blocked,” he said. “Not burned out, as I thought.”

“Okay, great. How do we unblock me?” I asked. “And if you say meditating more, I swear I’m gonna start punching logs,” I added through gritted teeth.

We were seated on the knotted-rag carpet in front of the huge stone hearth, the fire popping and crackling behind an iron screen. Ash smiled at me, the expression putting deeper lines into
his mid-forties-looking face, the red flecks in his black eyes dancing. He tipped his head back, contemplated the log cabin’s ceiling, and tugged on one of his braids in a gesture I was growing far too familiar with.

He didn’t speak for a long moment, but I’d learned to let him be. There was no rushing Ash into working through his thoughts out loud and using his words.

“No,” he said eventually.
His gaze dropped back to mine. “Is there something you’ve forgotten?”

I knew he was musing from his tone, not really asking the question, but my frustration wouldn’t let me shut my mouth.

“That’s like the TSA asking if anyone has put something into your luggage without your knowledge,” I muttered. There was likely a ton I had forgotten in my life, but the important bits all seemed to be there.
Samir trying to kill me. Samir destroying my life over and over. The people I’d lost because of him. Their names and faces were a litany in my mind, a list that had started with my first real family and ended with Harper. A list I would never let grow. Not a chance.

There was only one name left to add to the list of the dead, and it started with “Sa” and ended with “that fucking ass-wipe bastard
who will die horribly-mir.” I rubbed my thumb over the divot in my twenty-sided die talisman. I’d picked up that habit since the mark was a reminder of my failure.

“Indeed,” Ash said softly, dragging me out of my murderous thoughts. I wondered what he had read in my face, for his eyes were sad though his expression was still contemplative. He unfolded his long legs and rose. “I have to go get
something.”

“I’m guessing not something in the cabin?”

“No, and while I’m gone you must not leave the cabin. Under any circumstances.” Ash fixed me with a deadly serious gaze, tension in his shoulders. Like he knew that saying those words was putting candy in front of a starving toddler.

“Great,” I said. “Why don’t you also say ‘I’ll be right back’ too?” I guessed he didn’t watch a lot of horror
movies while he was locked up in the secret government prison for magical critters.

“I mean it, Jade,” he said.

“I know. I won’t. I’ve read enough fairytales, thanks.” I smiled. I wasn’t lying, either, about the reading fairytales or the no intention of going outside. I figured when a dragon tells you not to do something, the wise response is to under no circumstances do that thing.

“Wait for
me,” he said. Then he opened the door, without even putting on shoes or a coat, and disappeared into the darkness as the door slammed shut behind him, the latch turning itself.

I flopped back onto the carpet. He’d been gone ten seconds and the silence was already starting to wreck me. I made myself get up and go to the table. There was a box there with a deck of cards in it. They were old, no
numbers on them. Ash had said he picked them up in Prussia and while he might have been fucking with me, something about how he said it and the look of the cards made me believe him. I wondered if he knew there was no Prussia anymore, but he’d only been incarcerated for about forty years, so I hadn’t said anything.

I didn’t know how long my father would be gone. Left alone with only my thoughts,
sorrow and anger threatened to wage war in my heart, and despair prodded at my mental defenses like a bored velociraptor. My choices were to brood, meditate some more, or play solitaire.

I played solitaire. I didn’t even cheat. Much.

Ash didn’t come back for a very long
time. I slept twice, but without windows I had no idea of the passage of time. I drank water from the sink when I was thirsty and made short work of the bread and cheese he’d left in a basket on the table. The weirdest part about being in the Veil pocket, whatever that was, was that while I got tired and thirsty and hungry, I didn’t ever have to pee. I wondered if I was going to explode when I
finally got back to Earth.

These were the deep thoughts I was pondering by the second “day” of Ash’s disappearance. It was so damn tempting to go outside, but I resisted. Barely. I started to contemplate what I’d do if he didn’t come back, but the truth was, I had no idea.

Living in a limbo land without magic, locked into a log cabin and wholly dependent on someone else for everything was stupidly
terrifying. Maybe one of the most nerve-racking things I’ve endured in my life. Which is saying a lot, considering I had been a homeless nonwhite teenage girl living on the streets of New York in the eighties. But even then, I’d had magic as a fallback, knowing I could and would fry the shit out of anyone who fucked with me.

Here I had nothing but time to dwell and brood.

Ash returned before
I did anything truly stupid, like open the door. I didn’t know if I’d ever been happier to see anyone in my life.

He came through the door with a grocery bag in one hand and a soccer-ball-sized leather pouch in the other. He set both bags down on the table.

“Took you long enough,” I said. There was too much relief in my voice for the words to be as reproving as I meant them.

“You listened to
me,” Ash said. “Good.”

“You said not to leave. I stayed.” I gathered up the cards from the carpet in front of me and put them back into their box as a crazy thought dawned on me. “This wasn’t some kind of stupid test, was it?” Was I supposed to go outside?

“No,” Ash said. “I had to leave the Veil. It wasn’t safe without me here keeping this pocket isolated and stable.”