Mike got up when his name was called. Lyn smiled at him.
“Thanks for taking me back,” he said quietly.
Lyn said, “If I had a dollar for every time a client threatened me…”
Mike smiled, still not looking at her. “I’m sorry I said that, though. I did research, like you asked.”
“And?” She let him into her office.
“Are there any tests you can do to find out if I have that? Borderline?”
“Well, I could send you for a battery of psychological tests, if that’s what you want.”
He nodded. “I think so.” He sat down, and she sat across from him.
“Would you be interested in my referring your case to a psychiatric friend of mine? He can prescribe any medications that he thinks you might need.”
“Medications?”
“Some of the symptoms of borderline can be taken care of by medicine.”
“But…” He looked out the sunny window. “I don’t know if they would mess up my…special abilities.”
“Why don’t you tell me about those?”
He whispered something and made a motion, and a small ball of blue fire appeared in his hand. She gasped, as he put the fire on her desk, and it changed colors, going through the rainbow, but didn’t set anything on fire. “I’m a mage.” He squashed the fire with his hand and a whisper of a spell.
Lyn glanced at him for a minute. “Ah. You’re a super-villain.”
“Well, not really a villain. I’m trying not to be anymore.”
“I understand that. Many people who come here are trying to turn over a new leaf.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “You might want to talk to someone who is more your peer than me.”
“No, no, I don’t.” He shook his head. “I’m surrounded by magic, and mages, and spellwork. I need something normal, someone normal.”
“All right, then. First, tell me what’s normal.”
“Normal?” He blinked at the question. “I can tell you what’s not.”
“No, tell me what is.”
He thought for a minute. “Having dinner with my lover. That was normal.”
“Did you cook? Not use magic?”
“Well, a little.”
“Do you think you can go a day without using magic?”
“Are you kidding?”
“How about half a day?”
“Magic is my breath.”
“Then magic is normal for you.”
He stared at her. “How…”
“That’s why I get paid the big bucks,” she said with a smile. “To make the lights go on.”
“What about the borderline stuff?”
“What do you do magic for?”
“To make things easier for me. And others. And…”
“And to impress people?”
“Yeah.” He looked a little sheepish.
“Mike, your false humility doesn’t mean anything in here. You can be as proud as you want to be, as long as you’re honest.”
“But if I’m too proud, it will bite me in the ass.”
“Ah, yes, hubris. But false humility is just as bad as pride, don’t you think?” She leaned back. “If I said to you that I thought you were a very smart man, to learn so much magic at your age.”
“I cheated.”
“How?”
“I bound a demoness to me.”
“Oh, and she gave you the information? What’s to say she gave you the wrong information?”
“The wrong information?” He blinked, and looked around the room in a panic. Grimalkin could have given him the wrong spells? But they worked! How could she–
Then Mike remembered the four tenets of magic: To Know, to Will, to Dare, to be Silent. Kael even told him that he had Will enough. Mike had told people that it wasn’t the rune that was magic, but what people put into it. Could it be, that after all this time, all the spells that he’d been using were wrong?
Lyn continued, “Demons are known for that, you know. And if that’s the case, what created that fire spell? You, or the spell?”
He put a hand on his chest. It felt like a panic attack. Lyn stopped talking and watched him, concerned. “Wrong? I’ve been wrong all along?”
“No, don’t think that way,” Lyn said. “I’m trying to point out that even if your spells were wrong, you were able to make them work. How, I don’t know. Maybe you don’t know how, either.”
He got up. “I need to get some air.”
“We still have -”
He shook his head. “Keep the change. Can I have this time next week?”
“Certainly,” she said, as he walked out of the office.
That was last Friday. He spent most of the weekend plowing over his own notes and other grimoires he’d collected, finding spells he knew by heart and comparing them all. He had left even his lovers alone all weekend, buried as he was in his work.
((This makes absolutely no sense…but it’s what the muse handed to me.))
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