Page 30 of Hunted
“I’m not my mother.”
I regretted the quickness, and maybe the harshness, with which those words came out of me, but it was too late. I had said them, and Pepper had heard me loud and clear. I didn’t resent my mother. I really didn’t. I resented the way I was beingtreated, like I was a child, or some delicate flower that needed to be kept locked away.
“I know,” Pepper said, “We all know how strong you are, believe me. You have so much of both your mother and your father in you. But old habits are hard to break. Bear with us… please?”
“I’m sorry…” I said. “I didn’t mean to snap.”
“That’s quite alright. How about we focus on that teacup? See if you can make it move.”
I took a deep breath. “Right,” I said. “So, just tell the teacup to move, and flick my wrist.”
“That’s it.”
“Like this?” I asked, gesturing with my left hand.
“Try it that way.”
I nodded, then I looked at the cup.Okay, you stupid cup,I thought, and I flicked my wrist.Move.
Without warning, the cup shot off the desk and slammed into a wall, shattering into several pieces and startling all three of us. I was left stunned, my jaw slightly agape, with ripples of a kind of tingling sensation rushing through me.
“I think that wastoo muchflick,” Tallin said.
“I am so sorry,” I said, turning to look at Pepper. “I really am. I didn’t mean to do that.”
Pepper smiled. “Don’t worry about it, dear. I break at least two cups a month. We have plenty. That was impressive, though.”
I got up off my chair and went over to examine what was left of the teacup, and to start cleaning it up. “Impressive? It shot into the wall!”
“That’s a good sign. It’s the sign of a gifted witch.”
“How did I… I don’t understand how this happened.”
“I wish I could tell you. Unfortunately, I don’t really know how it all works.”
“You don’t?”
“No. Neither does Evie, nor Helen—though she would have you believe she knows everything about everything. Don’t tell her I said that.”
“I won’t.” I grabbed the biggest piece of the teacup and tossed it into the trash. “So, you really don’t know how magic works?”
“We know we need to use gestures, sometimes words, and on rare occasions, we need sigils to empower the magic, or in some cases control it so it doesn’t go haywire. We know the practice of it, if not the history.”
“How can that be? Has no one kept a record of… well, magic?”
“I’m not sure if you know much about humans, but throughout history, different countries and cultures haven’t exactly… cooperated. Ask the Egyptians, and they have their own version of how their magic works and where it comes from. Ask the Romans, and they’ll have another story that invalidates everything the Egyptians ever did or said about magic. Ask the Celtics, and, well, theirs is probably the most interesting myth… it’s also the one we use in our practices.”
“Celtics?”
“Oh, they were the people who lived on this island before the Romans came and conquered it. They believed in many deities, gods and goddesses… they didn’t worship in temples made of gold and stone, but in lakes, and rivers, and forests. They were the first humans to meet the Fae.”
“They were?”
“Oh yes. More than a millennia ago. Legend has it an injured Pixie spilled out of a portal and wound up in a meadow somewhere in Ireland. The tribal humans in the area spotted its magic lights from a distance as it tried to figure out a way back home. Instead of killing the Pixie, the humans nursed it back to health. It was so grateful, it told them all about Arcadia, about the Fae, the Courts. A few centuries later, we named our seasons after the Courts.”
“I’m a little spotty on human history, but the Egyptians were using magic long before humans met the Fae, then.”
“We were. What I’m trying to say is, we practice magic a certain way on this island. Others, elsewhere, practice it differently. It doesn’t seem like there are hard and fast rules to how things work, or should work, or shouldn’t work. I don’t think I could get that teacup to shoot off like that the way you did, for example.”