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The good news was that my eyelids were no longer itchy. But the bad news was that they now weighed a million pounds each. This had to be magic—but I could not go to sleep here. Teddy nudged me and I cautiously took another step toward the small hollow ahead. I forced my eyelids open and shook myself, then took another step. The cord at my wrist pulsed and I paused.
“Hello?” called an airy tenor voice from the hollow. “Is someone there?”
I was feeling desperately sleepy again, but I pulled out my onyx worry stone for clarity and took another step. I debated calling out, but I couldn’t tell if the voice came from friend or foe, so I waited. I heard the voice mutter something and Teddy growled and bumped me again, startling me from my lethargy.
I trusted his judgement. Probably foe. But my body was so heavy, and all I wanted to do was lay down for a while.
I backed away one step at a time. Before I could reach the point where I’d noticed the change in the air, a teenager dressed in black came bustling out from behind a tree in the hollow, rubbing his hands.
“Ah, there you are,” he said.
An adrenaline spike gave me a bit of wakefulness. I scooted back a few steps to fresher air. “Hello,” I said, still muddled.
“Where are you going?” the boy asked, his soft blond waves floating in the breeze. “Why don’t you come have a seat here? I bet you’re getting tired.”
I was tired, but I didn’t want to sit with him. At my side, Teddy growled and bared his teeth at the boy. Right. The teenager wasn’t affected by the sleepiness, and he wasn’t panicked about it, so he likely knew or was the cause of it.
I was feeling better further away from the floral scent, but I was still a little woozy. He stepped purposefully toward me and I took a couple more steps back.
“I am tired,” I told him. “What’s going on? I was with someone and now she’s gone, and there’s a dog without his people.” I gestured to Teddy, who put himself between me and the boy and growled. The boy stopped his approach and smiled a bright, happy smile that was out of place. Normal people weren’t happy in this kind of situation.
“Oh, there are a few people here, but everyone’s really tired today. Must be something in the air.” He gestured with one hand and my ears popped as the sweet scent of flowers drifted over me again. He was good. I barely saw the thread of magic he manipulated and sent my way. Immediately, my eyelids gained a ton each and I forced them open.
I was either going to have to burn my cover story as a Green, or I was going to fall asleep here and suffer whatever fate everyone else who was here had faced. I set my backpack down and opened it, fishing for something that might help. The herbs were useless. But Lucy said I’d need the spaghetti water, right? I picked up the jar and stood.
“Please don’t. I don’t want to be trapped here,” I said, trying to play on his emotions with a tiny purple thread of my own. I was still feeling the effect of his emotion threads and maybe some Crimson body magic, but loosening my hold on my own magic had given me a little bit of a boost.
If he was using more than one family of magic, he was likely some kind of rogue. Maybe even a prism mage. They were supposed to be rare and tightly controlled, but I knew from personal experience that wasn’t actually the case.
He narrowed his eyes and tool another step toward me. “How are you still awake?” he asked, throwing what looked like a handful of purple-tinged red threads my way this time. I let them dissolve around me. He wasn’t even trying to hide his magic. I unraveled a bit more sympathy and friendliness of my own and threw it at him. He didn’t notice.
“I just want to help,” I answered. I took a step toward him, and his bloodshot eyes widened. “Tell me about it.” I sent another thread of purple to him and he stared into the space over my head, his shoulders drooping.
“I’m just trying to get away,” he said. “I just want to get away.” He slumped to the ground, his body folding in on itself. Dry sobs wracked his frame.
That was both quick and overacted.
I fought the urge to comfort him and pat his soft hair. Instead, I rubbed my worry stone and held my ground awkwardly, keeping a watchful eye on him. When he’d calmed his sobs, he raised his tear-streaked face and said, “Enforcement wants to train me, and I don’t have a choice. But I want to get away, do something else with my life. They had to move me, and I knew that if I got free near here, someone could help. I heard there’s someone here who will help people who have prism magic, and I don’t know what else to do. I need to get out! Can you help me? Please?”
I looked at his soft hair, his red eyes still overflowing with tears, and his bowed shoulders. I could help him. That was why I was in my current situation. But if he wasn’t genuine, then it put a lot of other people at risk, including me. Teddy bared his teeth and looked at me, and I patted his head before turning to the boy. “I hear what you’re asking, but I can’t help you.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Won’t. “Can’t.”
He met my eyes and saw something in them that told him I wasn’t buying it. Immediately, his tears stopped flowing and he scrubbed at his face. “What gave me away?” he asked. “You couldn’t have seen me spindle your emotions that last time.”
“I’m just a Green,” I told him. “But I don’t do emotions well, especially with strangers, and I wanted to come hug you and tell you it’d be okay.”
He scoffed. “Yes, and? That’s what women do.”
I laughed. “Some women, for sure. Some percentage of the population, no matter the gender. With a little more life experience, you’d learn that you can’t make those generalizations and try to force it. I know myself. I would never hug a stranger. So it had to be you manipulating me.”
The boy stood, raising his hand. “You think I was manipulating you. Fine,” he said, and grinned again. He opened a hand and a gout of fire flew from the palm of his hand toward me.
Chapter Four
It wasn’t a lot of fire, but any fire in a forest is bad. I sidestepped. Teddy shied to the side and barked. All around me, the air buzzed with alarm from the trees. Fire got them going.
