Part of Chapter 12

The magician looks tired; he sits at the table, the rest of us following suit. Jay looks curious; I'm trying to avoid the magician's gaze. Whatever he is, Roan respects him and that's enough to make me not want to wave the fact that I do curses in his face. "I didn't come here because of Lucas, not directly. This city already has a magician."

        Roan doesn't move her wheelchair back from the table; the magician doesn't flinch even a little at the glare she levels on him. “Pardon me?”

        “When did you stop being a magician?” He asks softly, and she goes still at whatever she sees in his face. It’s not pity; I don’t know what it is. Something private between magicians.

        “When my legs were fucking eaten,” Roan says harshly. "You may have noticed that."

        “You didn’t cast the magic aside,” he says. “I’m sorry, but you didn’t.”

        “Honcho? I'm confuthed,” Jay says. “I thought Roan wanted her legth eaten off?”

        Roan is silent for a few seconds. “Why do you think anyone would want that?”

        Jay scoots back a little in his chair at her expression, looking baffled. “Becauthe being in that powerchair ith tho much cooler than walking. Could I try it?”

        Roan blinks. The magician buries his face in his hands. A small, horrible part of me wants to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all.

        “You can stop talking anytime now, Jay,” the magician says.

        “I didn’t mean with her in it, of courthe!” he says.

        “Of course not.” Roan looks dazed. “How silly of me. I have a spare chair in the garage with a key in it; you could try that on the driveway?”

        “Really? Thankth!” Jay grins and is gone from the table in a blur to the sound of doors opening and closing in rapid succession.

        Roan smiles at the magician. “I haven’t seen you that discomfited since the incident in the Grand Canyon.”

        He smiles back. “You’re lucky you don’t have an artificial limb; he would have insisted on trying to fix it for you.”

        “He thinks I wanted this. Do you?”

        “Jay doesn’t see the world in ways humans do.”

        “That isn’t an answer.”

        “You have wards about this place,” he says softly. “You bound Lucas’s power, Roan. You can speak in the voice of a magician, and you think you somehow stopped being one? Where, why, and when?”

        “You know the fucking answer to that,” she snaps.

        “You buried much of your power, yes. But you did not renounce it nor set it aside. You think this would still be being paid for if you had,” the magician asks, gesturing to the house around us. “I sent Jay here because you were not holding the city together well enough, Roan. I did not know why then. I’m not arrogant to believe I do now.”