Page 64 of The Rut in the Road

“But why would I instinctively use death magic to protect myself?” I asked.

To my surprise, it was Vi who answered. “I mean, you can’t very well use life magic to do it,” she said. “What would you do, make our ass—sorry,” she said to Mason, her cheeks coloring. “Our mean uncle feel better to stop him?” She shook her head. “Of course you’d pull the opposite.”

“What if it’s not pulling, but pushing?” Jackson asked. He’d set his laptop aside and was leaning forward on his knees.

“What do you mean, Jax?” Mason asked. I liked the fact that Mason never dismissed suggestions or questions from either Jackson or me—even if he sometimes seemed to think we should already know the answers.

“Well, like, I lashed out with death magic when I got upset or whatever,” he said, cheeks turning an even darker shade of brown. “And it feels kinda like magic tentacles or something. Going outward. What if using the other side is like going the other direction? Instead of coming from the inside, it’s like going to the outside?”

All three of us stared at him, jumping a little when Grace banged something against the metal hinge of her pack-and-play. Mason walked over and reached down, letting her tug on his fingers, at least until she put one in her mouth. “No, Grace,” he told her, gently extracting his hand. “No biting people.”

I thought about what Jackson had said. There was definitelypowerinside me—a reservoir that I could draw on when I needed to. But did the actual type of power come from there, too? It had always felt like lashing out with power to me. “I—don’t know if that’s right,” I admitted. “It’s hard to tell, though.” I thought about it. “I—I was working on draining flowers,” I began. “And that felt like pulling the magic from the flowers out of them. But when I—” I paused momentarily, trying to find the right way to say it without actually saying that I’dkilledpeoplein front of Jackson. “When I had to defend myself,” I said, settling on something more neutral. “It felt like lashing out with everything I had.”

“Everything?” Jackson asked, frowning.

I nodded.

“That’s not right,” he said to Mason. “If he’s a death witch, it shouldn’t drain everything, right, Uncle Mace?”

There was a slight furrow to Mason’s brow. “I wouldn’t think so,” he answered, studying me. “Usually your own affinity feels fairly easy.”

It was my turn to frown, because magic had always felt a bit difficult to me. I’d assumed that I just wasn’t as strong a witch—something that people kept telling me, over and over, was simply wrong.

“What would something life-magic-y be?” Vi asked. “If Rayn’s only ever done death magic, what could he try to see if it works better?”

Mason thought about this, his eyes moving slightly as though he were reading through a book or codex in his mind. He might well have been, given the encyclopedic nature of his knowledge about magic.

“What about a simple energy boost?” he asked me.

I looked at him blankly. “I don’t know how to do that,” I told him.

Mason bared his upper and lower fangs at me in a grin. “I do.”

I stared at Victor,who continued grooming himself. I tried willing him to stop.

He kept rubbing at his ear.

I sighed, and he looked up at me for a few seconds, then went back to his ears.

“What’s wrong?” Raj asked from over near the stove. He’d gotten off work early, and had offered to make me dinner. Raj was a much,muchbetter cook than I was, so I was more than happy to let him feed us. I’d taken advantage of the opportunity to try to exercise my new-found life casting magic on Victor to see if it worked any better than necromancy.

So far, it wasn’t. Necromancy didn’t really seem to be doing anything, either, which was making me wonder if my original supposed communication with the undead rat had been real or simply a coincidence of his behavior and my failed attempts.

“I’m trying to communicate with him,” I told Raj. “And it doesn’t seem to be working.”

“Are you trying death magic or life magic?” he asked. I’d already explained to him that Mason seemed to have confirmed that I was, in fact, a life caster rather than a death witch, despite the fact that most of the magic I’d done—dreamwalking aside—was death magic.

“Both,” I replied glumly.

“Ah,” came his reply. A sizzle came from the pan as he pushed a bunch of onions into hot oil, and the smell immediately filled the kitchen.

Victor lifted his pointy little half-whiskered nose into the air, sniffing.

“He can smell that,” I said softly.

Raj glanced over. “I mean, onionsarepretty pungent,” he remarked.

“Yeah, butyou’realive,” I pointed out. “And his nose is like half-decayed.”