Page 47 of The Rut in the Road

“Yeah,” I echoed, smiling back.

She proceeded to show me around the small, but very nice, apartment, pointing out several of the oddities on her shelves as things she’d acquired in Thailand, Germany, France, Rome, and other parts of the world, although her favorite was what she termed a “genuine voodoo doll” from New Orleans.

“Are you sure?” I asked her.

She nodded. “Yeah, why?”

I hovered a hand over the little stuffed figure, crude stitching making a face on its bulbous head and pins poking out of it. “Because it doesn’t have any magic in it,” I told her. Mason had taught both Jackson and I how to feel for magic in an object so that we wouldn’t accidentally trigger something—whether a curse or some other kind of spell.

“Well, notyet,” she countered. “I haven’t linked it to anyone.”

I felt my eyebrows go up. “Are you planning to?”

She flopped down onto her stylish futon, which was covered with brightly colored pillows with patterns of skulls, bones, birds, and little knives. “Well, since the ’rents offed themselves, no, not particularly.”

I blinked. “I thought they died in a car accident?”

Violette sighed. “They did,” she replied, toying with the end of one lock of hair. “But it was because they were going to that stupid ritual that they were out that late.”

I sat in the recliner positioned at an angle to the futon, both facing a surprisingly large-screen TV. I angled my body toward her. “Did they go to a lot of rituals?” I asked, more because I wasn’t sure what else to say without completely changing the topic of conversation, although I was fairly certain that the conversational path I’d just chosen wasn’t appropriate, either.

If she was bothered by the question, Vi didn’t show it, instead rolling her eyes. “God,so many,” she answered. “Every stupid solstice and equinox, but—” She mock-waggled a finger at me. “—Don’t mistake that for some dirty witchcraft shit, because we don’tdothat. We dopropermagic.Learnedmagic.” She rolled her eyes again. “Far as I can tell, it’s the same shit.”

“It isn’t,” I told her. “It works differently.”

She tilted her head to the side. “You’re telling me our stuck-up pathetic excuses for parents were actually right about something?” She sounded both annoyed and incredulous.

I shrugged. “Mason says that even a broken clock is right twice a day,” I said.

She snorted. “I still say magic is magic,” she said.

“I mean, itis,” I agreed. “But warlock magic and witch magic are different. Not saying one is better than the other, but they aren’t the same.”

“Iknow,” she replied. “But does it matter?”

“I mean, if you’re trying to learn it, it does,” I said. “The way it works, the way you practice,” I waved a hand. “My magicisdifferent from yours. You see magic on people, like Ward does. I don’t. Ican’t. I canfeelit, but I can’t see it. How I do magic is different, too. Will power, not cantrips or spells.” I knew witches could use spells and sigils, but they were focus objects that could help to channel a witch’s magic or to hold it somewhere that wasn’t in a witch’s body, like over a doorway in a protective sigil.

Vi let out a soft grunt. “Fine, but it shouldn’t matter whatkindof magic I have or you have other than that. Just like it shouldn’t matter that I have boobs and you’ve got… a man-package.”

I stared at her. “A man-package?” I repeated.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going tosayit,” she informed me. “You’re mybrother. Ew.”

I laughed, even though that made very little sense to me. I understood the point she was getting at—that anatomy or gender shouldn’t dictate whether or not one should be seen as worthy of human rights. I borrowed one of Mason’s phrases: “Fair enough.”

Vi studied me with her grey-green eyes. “Do you think one is better than the other?” she asked me, her voice serious, but with a hint of something I couldn’t identify.

“No,” I told her honestly. “But I definitely know more witches who I think are more ethical than most of the warlocks I’ve met.”

She grimaced. “I don’t know how many witches I’ve ever met,” she admitted. “But I’ve met a lot of warlocks who are total dicks.”

I smiled. “Me and Mason, at least,” I said. “And Jackson, if he’s ever come in while you’ve been there.”

She nodded. “Once,” she replied.

“I hope we’re not dicks,” I said.

She flashed a smile. “Nah. But you’re not like allwitchy, either,” she remarked.