David Coe - Spell Blind

“Either you have it or you don’t. But then, you need to learn to use it.”

“And you do this by. . reading books? Talking to other weremystes? Going to Hogwarts while the rest of the world goes trick-or-treating?”

“Mostly you’re taught by others.”

“So you have a teacher.”

Once again, like the night outside of Robo’s, I was reluctant to tell her about Namid and the other runemystes. That struck me as a bridge too far. “Yes, I have a teacher,” was all I said.

She let it go. “How many of you are there? Weremystes, I mean.”

“A lot. Far more than you’d think.”

“Give me a number. In the Phoenix metropolitan area, are we talking twenty? Two hundred? Two thousand? More?”

“Probably somewhere between two hundred and two thousand. Those are active weremystes; people who are using their magic. There are more out there-a lot of people have Runeclave blood in them but don’t use it. Others have it in them, but it’s so weak they’re not even aware of it.”

“They’re not? How can-?” She stopped, staring at me. “Don’t you dare tell me that I-”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t see any magic in you.”

“Thank God.”

She eyed me for several moments. I could see her working it all through, processing everything I’d told her, and all that she had encountered on the net. She was smart as hell, and it wouldn’t be long until she caught up with the conversation. And then we’d be right back where we began, which was what I dreaded most.

Sooner even than I’d anticipated, she said, “So when I called, you were still doing magic?”

That was one way around it. Technically, the phasings are caused by magic-my magic-so I could have said that I was doing magic when she called. But again, I didn’t want to play games with the truth, not about this. I wasn’t even thinking about the relationship, or about our future. I was simply remembering that I’d gotten her in the house by promising to answer her questions. If I couldn’t do that much without misleading her, how the hell was I going to make anything else work? I also had a feeling that she was testing me; if she’d read about weremystes, she might well have read about the phasings, too. The strange thing was, I knew how the conversation would end, and still I chose to tell her the truth. I guess I was in love. Nothing else explains the choice I made in that moment.

“No,” I said, “I wasn’t doing magic. Not really.”

“Were you still with Kona?”

“No. She’d left by then.”

“Then what? Tell me.”

“I was in the middle of a phasing.”

Billie frowned. “I found that term last night, in several places, but the sites that mentioned it didn’t offer many details.”

Not surprising, really. This was the secret every weremyste wanted to hide.

“The word ‘weremyste’ is pretty similar to the word werewolf,” I said. “And our magic works kind of the same way. I can do magic all month long, but when the moon waxes full, I lose control. All of us do. Our magic gets stronger, but our minds weaken.”

It crashed over her like a wave. I saw it happen. The color in her cheeks, which had returned during our conversation, drained away again. She took a step back from me, frightened of what she saw. That one step hurt more than anything she could have said.

“Weaken?” she repeated, a quaver in her voice. “What does that mean?” But she knew. I’d seen this coming. A part of me had watched the entire exchange unfold, anticipating every question, every twist and turn that steered us to this point. It was like I’d scried the whole thing. And still, even preparing myself, I hadn’t been able to keep my heart from being torn apart.

“It means that I had. . an episode.”

“ What does it mean?” she demanded again, biting off each word.

I exhaled. “I was hallucinating. I couldn’t talk to you because I was too far gone in moon-induced delusions to carry on a conversation.”

“The psychological problems you told me about,” she said. “The ones that cost you your job on the police force.”

“Yes. They’re not really psychological problems so much as magical ones.”

Billie turned and started toward the door. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this. Maybe that makes me weak, or heartless, or something. But I can’t do it.”

“Billie, wait,” I said, walking after her. “All weremystes have this. It’s why we hide the fact that we can do magic. It’s the price of the power I wield. I could take medication for it, but then the magic goes away, and I need to have access to it.”

She was out the door and striding down the path toward her car, but she stopped now, turning to face me again. “You said you had this under control. You said you were seeing someone. A therapist.”

“I do get help,” I said, cringing at yet another lie, or at least the shadow of one. “Not from a psychologist, but from someone who teaches me magic and helps me through the full moons.”

“That’s not the same, and you know it.” She started toward her car again. “You lied to me, Fearsson,” she said over her shoulder. “Or was that some kind of magical lie, so it doesn’t count?”

“I told you that the problem never goes away, that I’d learned to control it, to live with it, and that’s the truth.”

She had nearly reached her car, but she stopped once more and spun toward me. There were tears on her face, though she didn’t bother to wipe them away. She might not have known they were there. “You have problems. They cost you your job. And they’re still affecting you. You can call them anything you want. You can pretend that you’re facing them. But the truth is they haven’t gone away, and you haven’t learned to control them. That’s why you couldn’t talk to me last night.” She shook her head and started to turn back to her car.

I stepped in front of her. “Billie, please. Let me try to explain this to you. If after I’m done, you still want to leave, then fine. I’ll never call you again.”

“I can’t, Fearsson,” she said, crying now. “I just can’t. Let’s say I believe you. Let’s say I accept that the whole magic thing is something more than an excuse not to confront your problems. I still can’t live with it. I grew up with an alcoholic. His sickness was everywhere. I’d hear it at night when he was yelling at my mom, or hitting her again. I’d see it in the morning, when I had to clean up the empty glasses and bottles, because he was sleeping it off, and my mom was so scared of waking him that she couldn’t bring herself to move, much less take care of his mess. I’d smell it in the afternoon when I got home from school and found him slumped in front of the television with whiskey on his breath. It was all over and I nearly drowned in it.

“Dad always denied he had a problem, and Mom let him. They spent their entire marriage living a lie, and they nearly dragged me down with them. I know that mental illness is treatable, and I know that people who have problems like yours can lead healthy, normal lives. But first they have to face their problems head on and get help. You won’t do that. You’re standing there in front of me telling me that it’s all right, and clearly it’s not.” She shook her head. “I can’t live that way. I’m sorry.”

She started away once more, and I let her go. What choice did I have? I couldn’t even be mad at her. She was doing the right thing, the thing my mom probably should have done years before I was born. The thing that might have saved her life. I watched Billie get into her little blue Honda and drive off. Then I went back into the house.

“She is unhappy with you,” Namid said, as I closed the door behind me.