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.
As I unlocked the door, I glanced down at foxy. “It’s a good thing I like you. Also, we’re gonna have to build you a little sled or a backpack or something, so you can carry this thing home yourself twice a month.”
He pressed up against my leg, and I sighed in defeat.
Then I passed the box of dad’s ashes, still sitting on the entryway table, and couldn’t even look at them. I needed to decide what to do with them when I hadn’t just spent the day being insulted by the man in the box. Right that moment I was inclined to find a dumpster, and that would be a mistake. I’d be sorry later if I did that.
I took foxy’s dishes and food over to the dining area and set them on the table. “Do you want your water on the floor? It’ll be more convenient.”
He looked up at the table, then at the floor a few times. Finally, he walked over to a place with a counter overhang, near the entrance of the kitchen. Out of the