“Yes, lad. Yes it did. It killed him dead most proper, it did. Does that bother ye, lad?”
“He was going to kill us, Aunt Ash. And I think he had killed other kids. I’m glad I’m alive… I’m glad Trey is alive.”
“Me too, Declan. Me too,” she said, then took a breath. “I don’t know if Trey will be thanking you for it though.”
“I think he’s scared of me,” I admitted.
“Which is just one of many reasons your mother and I always hid what we are. It’s not fun to be isolated when people fear you. And Declan, always remember this: Scared people are dangerous people.”
“Yes, Aunt Ash,” I said, then braved the question I was dreading. “Aunt Ash, are you ashamed that I let my magic out? I mean, it’s hard enough that you got left with me, but now I messed up.”
She was on me in a flash, both hands gripping my head, her eyes inches from my own. “You listen to me, Declan O’Carroll. I could not love ye more if ye was my own son! You have never been a burden to me—never! And if your magic hadn’t taken a hand in things, you’d like be dead, so rip that weedy thought out of yer head and throw it as far from you as you can!”
She hugged me, then pulled back to look at me again. “However, I am upset with my own self. In all the worry about teaching you control, I never taught you to protect yourself. That changes now. See that weed? End it.”
I gaped at her. Her eyes narrowed and her pointing finger shook slightly as she pointed at a small dandelion. She was serious, very serious. Taking a breath, I studied the weed. Then, after a quick side glance to make sure she was still serious (she was!), I touched the ground in front of the dandelion. Silently, the little green leaves and unopened flower were pulled into the ground, disappearing completely.
“Good. Now that one, but use something different,” she said, pointing at a slip of green.
I pulled heat from the sun-warmed ground and sent it into the weed. It shriveled, desiccated and dead.
“That one!”
I pulled static electricity from around us and touched my finger to the clover. The spark was fat and sharp, the green shoots wilting over immediately.
“And that one.”
I touched the plant and started to pull its life energy.
“No!” she said, making me jump back. “Not that way, lad. Never that way. Never take living energy, Declan. That’s death magic. And our people don’t do that.”
“Okay,” I said. She was still watching me though, the wheels of thought clearly turning. I could see the moment she came to a decision. “The man who is your biological father was from a line that had a number of bad seeds. Witches that used death magic. Ye may have a knack for it. I’d not like to see you put a single toe to that path.”
I nodded, unable to form words. The man who raped my mother came from a line of death witches. Great. I was half evil.
“Now don’t be getting all morose on me, lad. You are who you choose to be. We all have traits that we don’t favor. It’s how we handle them that counts. Now pick another way, and no draining the weed.”
I pulled it with power, a form of what parapsychologists term telekinesis.
“Next,” she said, over and over. Finally, after about five more, I started to run out of ideas. I shifted the air molecules into a kind of lens and focused the sunlight into a burning beam. That one startled her into giving me a surprised look.
“Good for today, lad. We’ll work on these and we’ll come up with a whole slew of things ye can do, ranging from just a twitch to a full lightning strike. I’d like it even better if you learned some non-magical ways to protect yourself.”
“Maybe your deputy friend Darci would teach me? Cops learn all kinds of things and sometimes the sheriff’s department does girls self-defense classes at the school,” I said with as much innocence as I could muster.
She eyed me for a second, then nodded. “Not a bad idea, that,” she said.
***
“Declan, lad, come meet my new friend here,” my aunt called as I carried a recently emptied dish tray back out to the restaurant dining room.
I set the tray on a folding stand in the corner and walked over to my aunt. A man in his thirties, lean and fit with curly brown hair and dark brown eyes, watched me approach.
“Declan meet Levi Guildersleeve, bookseller and man of the world,” Ashling said, a glitter of humor in her eyes. “Levi, this is me nephew I’ve been telling ye about.”
He stood and held out a hand, gripping my own with a grip that told me he was stronger than he looked. He looked at me closely, like he was measuring me as we did the manly meet-and-greet thing. I knew I was tall for my age but thin. Some of our regular customers liked to quip with Ashling that she didn’t feed me enough. That wasn’t true of course, as I ate all the time and I had a full restaurant kitchen to haunt. And I wasn’t weak; too many chores that involved lifting and chopping, hauling and carrying to allow me to be a weakling. But I just never seemed to gain weight, much to my chagrin. Still, I wasn’t small in the way that Rory Tessing was, just not muscular as my former friend Trey Johnson was turning out to be. Still, at only ten, I wasn’t too worked up about it. At least until I was measuring my grip against a guy that looked like a fitness fanatic.
“How do you do, Declan?” Levi asked, still watching me but dropping the handshake.
“Pretty good, Mr. Guildersleeve. You’re new around here aren’t you? You’ve been in, what, three
