“I know we can trust you,” Austin muttered, leaping up onto an empty chair and glaring over the edge of the table at a piece of uneaten sausage. “Get on with it. I’m old. I haven’t got all day. Are you going to finish that?”
“Yes.” While she cleared her plate, Claire created and scrapped several possible beginnings. Finally, she sighed. “I suppose Austin’s right…”
“Well thank you very much.”
“…it begins with believing in magic.”
“And ends with?” Dean asked cautiously.
“Armageddon. But if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather leave that for another day.” When he indicated that Armageddon could be left for as long as she liked, Claire continued. “Magic, simply put, is a system for tapping into and controlling the possibilities of a complex energy source.”
“Energy from where?”
“From somewhere else.” It was clear that she’d lost him. She sighed. “It doesn’t have a physical presence, it just is.” In fact, a part of it had reputedly once explained itself by saying, “I AM.” but that wasn’t a detail Claire thought she ought to add.
“It just is,” Dean repeated. Since she seemed to be waiting to see if he was willing to accept that, he shrugged and said, “Okay.” At this point, it seemed safest.
“Let’s compare magic to baseball. Everyone is more-or-less capable of playing the game but not everyone has the ability to make it to the major leagues.” Pleased with the analogy, Claire made a mental note to remember it. She could use it should she ever be in this situation again—owning a hotel complete with sleeping evil, a hole to Hell in the basement, and a handsome, young caretaker to whom her cat spilled his guts. Yeah, right. Her nostrils flared.
Taken aback by the nostril flaring, Dean shuffled his feet under the table, glanced around the familiar dining room, and finally said, “Could I do it?”
“With training and discipline, lots of discipline,” she added in case he started thinking it was easy, “anyone can do minor magics—so minor that most people don’t think they’re worth the effort.”
Feeling like he’d just been chastised by his fifth grade teacher, an intense young woman right out of teacher’s college whom every boy in the class had had a crush on, Dean slid down in his chair until his shoulders were nearly level with the table and his legs, crossed at the ankle, stretched halfway across the room. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you.” An irritated so kind came implied with the tone. Who did he think he was? “Most of the energy magic deals with comes from the center part of the possibilities. The upper end is for emergency use only and the lower end is posted off-limits. For the sake of argument, let’s call the upper end ‘good,’ and the lower end ‘evil.’” She paused, waiting for an objection that never came. “You’re okay with that? I mean, good and evil aren’t exactly late twentieth century concepts.”
“They were at my granddad’s house,” Dean told her. Tersely invited to elaborate, he shrugged self-consciously. “My granddad was an Anglican minister.”
“This is the Reverend McIssac, the grandfather who raised you?”
He nodded.
“What happened to your parents?” Claire didn’t entirely understand his expression, but as the silence went on just a little too long, she suspected he wasn’t going to answer. “I’m sorry, that was tactless of me. I’m not actually very good with people.”
“Quel surprise,” Austin muttered, head on his front paws.
“No, it’s okay.” Dean spun one of the breakfast knives around on the table, eyes locked on the whirling blade. “They died when I was a baby,” he said at last. “House fire. It happens a lot when the woodstove gets loaded up on the first cold night of winter and you find out what condition your chimney is really in. My dad threw me out the upstairs window into a snowbank just before the building collapsed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I never knew them. It was always just me and my granddad. My father was his only son, see, and he wouldn’t let any of my aunts raise me. He’s the one who taught me to cook.” All at once, Dean had to see Claire’s expression. Too many girls fell into a “poor sweet baby” mood at this point in the story and things never really recovered after that. Catching the knife between two fingers, he looked up and saw sympathy but not pity, so he told her the rest. “They could’ve saved themselves if they hadn’t gone upstairs for me. I’ve always known, without a doubt, how much they loved me. There’s not a lot of people who can say that.”
Swallowing a lump in her throat, Claire reached over and lightly touched the back of his hand. “No wonder you’re so stable.”
He shrugged self-consciously. “Me?”
“Do you see anyone else around here who isn’t a cat?” Austin reached up and batted the knife off the table. “Thank you for sharing. Now, can we get on with it?”
Partly to irritate the cat, and partly to allow emotions to settle, Claire waited while Dean dealt with the smear of butter and toast crumbs on the floor before picking up the scattered threads of the explanation. “You ready?”
He nodded.
“All right, back to good energy and evil energy. Between this energy and what most of the world considers reality, is a barrier. For lack of a better term, let’s keep calling it the fabric of the universe. Those who use magic learn to pierce this barrier and draw off the energy they need. Unfortunately, it also gets pierced by accident.” She took a long swallow of coffee. “In order to continue, I’m going to have to grossly oversimplify, so please don’t think that I’m insulting your intelligence.”
“Okay.” It still seemed to be the safest response.
“Every time someone does something good, it pokes a hole through the fabric, releases some of the good energy, and everybody
