I did the same thing as before, assessing the magic. This one was better, more pleasant, with a good killing edge, but it seemed…distant, somehow. Unimpressed.

“Magic with emotion,” I murmured as I handed it back to her. “That’s a new one for me.”

The woman leaned in as a sparkle lit up her eyes. Her lips tweaked upward at the edges, threatening a smile. “Tell me, did you have a mother who practiced around here?”

Pain flicked at my heart, as it always did when someone mentioned my mother. Equally as common was the expression of longing that Callie wore. Everyone who’d known my mother loved her. They couldn’t help it. She just had a way about her.

“Yes,” I said. “She died five years ago. Did you know her?” I was terrible with names, but great with faces, and I hadn’t seen this mage before. She might’ve known my mother before I was born, but I doubted she’d seen much of her since. We hadn’t talked to many people, mostly just vendors or shop owners, and we hadn’t invited friends over. She’d hidden me until I was old enough to hide myself, and twenty-four years was a long time to still miss someone you used to know. It made me nervous, like these mages did in general.

“A long time ago, yes. You look so similar, but even more beautiful, if that were possible. Except for the eyebrows, of course. Those are ghastly. I wish I could say I feel her in you, but I can’t. You’re much too powerful for that, aren’t you? Did she know you could feel magic like you do?”

“Yes. She helped me hone it.”

“Very rare, that trait,” Callie said softly. “Very rare. Only a handful of mages in the world have that talent. You got it from your father, right?”

I bristled. She was right; it was a very rare trait. And yes, I did get it from my father. He wasn’t a mage, though.

“I wouldn’t know,” I said calmly, despite my frantically beating heart. “I never knew him.”

“Of course not.” She looked like she was about to go on, but her eyes flicked to Darius again, and her mouth shut with the click of teeth.

Fear such as I’d never known washed over me. I glanced at the hilt of the sword she was holding, ready to take it up should she move to capture me, because I was almost positive this woman knew who my father was. Not the story my mom told strangers, but the real man. He’d been the love of her life until she realized that love wasn’t real. That it was mostly magic. Magic, a handsome face, a delicious body, charm, and great sex. But as soon as my mother learned there was life in her, my father’s draw on her dried up. The love of her child took over, and she kicked his ass to the curb.

She’d admitted all this to me on her deathbed, sexual ability and all. I’d had no idea how to take the news. Talk about awkward farewell speeches.

I’d vowed to achieve what my mother had died for—a long life of freedom. And it had been going fine, until these danged vampires had gotten involved.

“No wonder she was hiding you,” Callie said, her eyes shining despite her bulldog expression. “Didn’t want the Mages’ Guild to get a hold of you.”

I scoffed, watching her body language, and monitoring Dizzy to make sure he wasn’t working on a spell. “Right. Like they have a pot to piss in.”

She barked out a laugh. “They create more bad mages than good, I’ll give you that. They can push their weight around when they see trainable talent, though.”

“I’m not trainable.”

“Of course you are.” She scowled at me. “Curse breakers are headstrong, but they can still be taught.”

Chapter Twelve

The tension that had surrounded me like a bubble deflated. I relaxed. “I’m not a curse breaker. I don’t even know what a curse breaker is. I think you’re remembering the wrong person.”

She made a sound like “pouf” and waved me away. “Dizzy, less magic. Almost none. Get the old sword.”

“Which old sword?” He accepted the reject sword she handed back to him and then paused in the entryway of his shed.

“The old sword. The black one.”

“Which black one?” he yelled.

“The one with silver in the hilt. The red hilt, with silver—”

“That’s the red one!” He grunted and stalked into his shed.

“The man needs a better system. Trying to talk to him is a nightmare.” Callie wiped a hand across her face. “I swear, I want to wring his neck. He gets me so worked up.”

My grin was probably rude, but I couldn’t get rid of it. “Are you both mages, then?”

“You know we are. You can feel our magic, can’t you?”

“It’s polite to ask.”

She waved me away again as a sound like a metal avalanche filled the shed. Swear words rode the breeze, but finally Dizzy emerged. His shirt had three new rips, his arm had a line of red an inch long, and his leg was bleeding.

“He doesn’t have a ladder in there,” Callie said, crossing her arms over her chest. “He piles the swords on a shelf, so when he tries to get one down, he drops them all on his head. Men. They never learn.”

“How often do I get these down?” Dizzy demanded, a sword in hand. It sounded aggressively rhetorical. He stopped in front of me with a sheen of sweat on his forehead, breathing heavily. “This is the one. I can feel it.” He held it out.

The sword was absolutely gorgeous. A delicate line of silver shot through the red leather hilt, curled around onto the black blade, and then straightened into a line toward the point.

“He got that one from a garage sale,” Callie said, standing beside me and staring at the blade. “Or was it a swap meet?”

“EBay.” Dizzy wiped his palm on his shirt. “Great stuff on eBay.”

“Yes. He prepares them with the fundamentals of magic, and I weave in the spells.” Callie motioned me toward the blade. “See if it will work. No one else can even touch it. Except us, of course, because we made it magical.”

“Why can’t anyone else touch it?” I asked, holding my palm over the blade.

“Too hungry. In the field, we call these types of swords magic conductors, but they aren’t. They feed off your magic, then store it for your future use. They’re magical lockers for certain types of magic. Storage. Did the person who made your last sword take your magical measure before making it?”

“Yes,” I said. “He is one of the best.”

She huffed. “Maybe for your paycheck. That instrument, which we have, of course, only accurately gauges certain types of magic. Witches and mages would mostly get accurate readings. But even though you’re similar to a very powerful mage, your power is fundamentally different. You would simply register as high power. You probably had to push your magic into the sword he made you because it wasn’t hungry enough to siphon it out of you.”

“I have heard of instruments that siphon power.” Darius stepped closer and leaned into my space protectively. I tried to push him back with an elbow. He nudged my elbow out of the way. “They are dangerous. That is not why we are here.”

Callie’s brow furrowed as she looked at Darius. When her gaze switched to me, it was assessing. “That is why this sword is still in our possession,” she said. “A local hack who stares into crystal balls for tourists visited me one afternoon. She insisted on tea, and when I told her I didn’t have time—she’s a serious whack-job, this lady—she forced her way in and started making tea herself.

“After she made a nuisance of herself, I finally agreed to sit down for a cup with her. A moment later, she went into a trance and laid out the type of sword I had to make. Make, keep, and store. She described the sword itself in detail, as well as the properties I should put into it. I knew for a fact that no one would be able to use a sword that hungry. It would bleed the holder dry and keep looking for more. I didn’t voice my refusal, of course. You shouldn’t argue with crazy; it can get dangerous.

“Anyway, she finished her spiel, rose, and knocked her cup onto the floor like the low-class hack she is. She was pretending to be in her trance still, but I didn’t get this house by being an idiot. Without another word, she left. I hate that woman. I really do. I haven’t talked to her since, even when she’s been in the same room at the magical women’s rum mixer.”