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 can try to 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.
He looked around, confused, and met my eye. “What happened?”
My hands dropped uselessly to my sides and I sat back. “I think you had a heart attack.”
His mouth fell open and he turned to look down at his own body. “Oh.” For what felt like an eon, we both stared. “The cardiologist told me just last week my heart was as healthy as ever.” He sounded a little bitter, and I couldn’t blame him. I suspected I’d be railing at the unfairness of it all, not nearly so calm and rational.
I whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Looking back at me, then the other people around us, he shook his head. A few of them were on their phones now, hopefully calling nine-one-one, but most were still only staring on in shock and horror—plus there was one jackass in the corner filming it all on his phone. “Thank you for—for trying. I wonder what I’m supposed to do”—his eyes went wide, staring over my shoulder at nothing I could see—“Caroline? Honey?” He clapped a hand over his mouth and tears filled his eyes. Once more, he looked at me as he reached down to brace his hands on the floor and push himself up. “I’m sorry, I—I have to go now. Thank you.”
He stood up, and he was gone.
Fluke whimpered and burrowed into my side, and all I could do was sit there on the floor, holding him and staring off at the empty husk where a man had been moments earlier.
The police and EMTs arrived, then the coroner. The girl working behind the counter brought me a coffee, acidic and black, but I drank it without complaint, as though her handing it to me had been an order to drink it, and all I had the mental capacity to do just then was follow orders.
When she turned to head back to the counter, I tried to shake myself out