cool. It was a trait I had cultivated all my life and now I felt like I truly knew why. I had a demon to tame, and he fed on my anger and despair, so I couldn’t give him any.
“You can have the bed,” I said, like I didn’t care. “I’ll turn into a bat and sleep in the rafters. And Jenny can turn into a toad and I’ll make her up a bed in the basket.”
Lord Variel’s head whipped back. Plaster chips rained down when he did. “No—no toad,” he said. “She’ll have the bed.”
“Oookay.” I slapped the doorframe with both hands. “You want to sleep on the floor?”
He snorted. “Where did she go, anyway?”
“Not sure…she was behind us…”
Lord Variel put Piers down. “You, beast—keep away the pests. I’ll find the girl.”
Piers skittered under the kitchen cabinet and I imagined we wouldn’t see him again for a while.
Lord Variel ducked low and shoved me out of the way, moving around the side of the house to look for Jenny. He seemed a little anxious, although I wasn’t sure why. There were no dangers around, and I guessed Jenny was just exploring.
If we were in Sinistral, it wouldn’t be safe at all for her to roam around. That must be it. He just isn’t used to a world without swamp monsters and crows that will pick out a living man’s eyeball…
His anxiety felt like power that he was shedding around for me to pick up after him. I took a deep breath of it. “Absorber,” I murmured, casting a spell to absorb power from someone else. This spell came to me pretty easily, flooding me with warmth down to my fingers and toes, and as I took a few more breaths, I felt my clothes shrink slightly. I had to give them a quick adjustment too.
So that’s it, I thought. I just have to keep Lord Variel off his game and out of sorts, and as he sheds power, I take it from him. And if I even steal some of his height, I won’t complain about that.
I wondered how much I could siphon from him before he noticed.
Only until I get powerful enough to break away from his hold on me and get to rescuing the familiars, of course.
I couldn’t help wondering if it was possible—and thinking about the laws of magic, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was—that if I claimed enough of Variel’s power, I could eventually take his title and essentially become him. I didn’t want that at all. So I would have to be careful.
Piers, I realized, was looking at me from under the cabinet. I saw one golden eye peering out.
I kicked the toe of my shoe under there. “You’re lucky to be alive after what you did to my witch, Piers,” I said.
“What are you doing, Bevan?” he asked.
“Oh, you can talk. Damn.”
“Apparently…”
“I’m helping the people I love. Probably not a concept you understand.”
A dry laugh came from under the cabinet. “You’re right. But taking more and more power, until it’s never enough…I do understand that.”
Chapter Fifteen
Jenny
I gasped. Bevan was right about this forest! Or maybe it was a coincidence, with such a variety of trees, but…
When he told me that my mind had control over the rules of the magical realm, I wondered if I could use it to forage for the foods I wanted. It made sense to me that if home was never far away, then why should something you wanted to eat be far away either? I had a craving for a pine nut cake, and when I thought of that, I started to see pine nuts appear on the forest floor. I added an apron to my dress with a little flick of my fingers, and then lifted up the corners of the apron to hold them. For some reason, it was easier to add to one’s outfit than it was to manifest a sturdy basket. While Lord Variel was looking at the house, I started following a trail of pine nuts down to the creek, and soon I had a few pounds of them.
Each pine nut was attached to a little wing, like a propellor, that it used to fly off and seed a new tree. So of course, I would have to crack them all out of their little pod, and get the nuts out. I wasn’t really sure if these were the same pine nuts I used at home, as they seemed small, but I