curse words. “No wonder he never brought you to us, never let you learn.” Maeve’s hand dropped to her lap. Her eyes were almost all green now, and she looked resigned. “You hold much more than a small amount now, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“And that changed when you received those marks on your hands? Positive”—she pointed at the wild whorl of colors up my right arm to my temple—“and negative.” She pointed to the solid black bands around each of the knuckles and the wrist of my left hand. “Classic natural representation of the give-and-take of magic. Pleasure and price.”
“Yes, it changed when I got marked.”
“When did that happen? How?”
I didn’t want to tell her. Didn’t want to be vulnerable, exposed. Have I mentioned I have trust issues?
“Do you really need to know that?”
“If you want me to stand as your advocate at the testing ground, yes, I really need to know that.”
“Testing ground?”
“In three days, your control of magic will be tested in front of the members of the Authority.”
This must be the test my dad kept talking about.
“Is that when you decide if I deserve to use magic? If you should just erase all my memories about the Authority and put limits on what I can do?” It came out angry, which was no surprise since it pissed me off that someone else thought they could tell me how to live my life.
Yes, I knew that wasn’t the worst thing they could do to me. Zayvion had told me they could go so far as try to kill me if they thought I was too much of a danger or risk to myself or others.
Of course, I wasn’t going to just stand around while they threw rocks at me, or whatever they did to get rid of people they didn’t want in their little club.
Maeve stood and sat back in the plush chair. “It may not seem fair, or lawful in the ways of the modern world. It is an ancient custom. A test to discover your abilities, your limits, your control. Things that can mean the life or death of those you would stand beside. It is necessary. Every person in the Authority has gone through it.”
“So I don’t have to like it, but I still have to do it?”
She nodded.“Tell me when magic claimed you with those marks.” Woman was all about getting down to business.
I did some quick thinking, something I hadn’t done enough of lately. Since I didn’t want to bring undue attention to Nola, I decided to skip the part where I explained I didn’t actually remember getting the marks, and tell her instead what Nola had told me I told her. Confusing, but hey, when you have a memory with more holes than a pair of hand-me-down fishnet stockings, you make do.
“I was trying to get a man to the hospital. He was injured, and when I tried to help him, he reached through me and connected to magic. Then he . . . um, pulled magic through me and into me. It fed the magic I already carried, made it stronger so that it burned”—I thought about that, nodded to myself—“burned these marks into me.”
“And where did this happen?”
“Over in St. Johns.”
Maeve’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you sure?”
I thought back on it. I was sure Nola told me I had found Cody down by the river in St. Johns. I’d been running from gun-toting Bonnie at the time, but was slowed by trying to carry Cody and his cat. I’d told Nola that Cody was nearly dead when I found him. But she said by the time Zayvion had driven Cody and me out to her farm, his wounds were gone.
“I’m sure. St. Johns.” I suddenly realized why she looked so surprised. St. Johns was off-grid. A dead zone. There was no naturally occurring magic there, and Portland hadn’t seen fit to budget in a network out into the fifth quadrant of the city.
Which meant I should not have been able to pull on that much magic like that there. Which meant Cody should not have been able to pull on that much magic like that there either. “Who was the man you were helping?” Maeve asked.
“I wasn’t formally introduced—”
“Allie,” and there was tangible weight behind her words and a familiar honey taste. “Tell me the name of the man you helped in St. Johns.”
“Cody,” I said, under the spell of the Influence she’d just used on me. “Cody Miller.”
Maeve didn’t ask