Greywalker - Kat Richardson [22]
I blinked at her. “Of course, an expert on the paranormal would be married to a witch.”
She grinned and blushed darker. “It’s not quite as easy as that. Ben and I don’t always see eye to eye on theory versus practice. Fascinates him, of course, but he doesn’t take in the real shape of witchcraft so well. He’s more interested in ghosts and things like that. And we’ve had a few goes over it, I’m afraid.”
She turned away and bustled for a few minutes, then went back to the stove, putting something into a pot. “Well, that’s better. You see, this Grey thing isn’t so awful. If you can see that little charm, and Albert, you should come along a treat in no time.”
“I can see you cast a spell—a charm—because of . . . this?”
“Yes, of course. If you have the right skills and you can touch the grid, then you can use that energy for work. Magic is just a way of drawing up some of that energy and directing it. But it requires quite a lot of mediation, and how you have to mediate it determines the sort of magic you can do.”
My skepticism deepened. “I can?”
“Oh, no! Not you, actually. As I said, you’re a Greywalker. You don’t manipulate the material of the Grey. You’re in it. And that’s a thing we should be discussing. You’ll need to learn what you can do and what you can’t. And how to protect yourself from the things which will be attracted to you. And there already are a few, I’m sure. Because, like this house, you glow a bit.”
I was still skeptical, or perhaps I was tired of wrestling the idea, but it crept into my voice. “I glow? How do you know? Can you see that?”
“Just as you can see me work magic, yes, but as to the rest, that’s a bit of guessing. I’m one of those who just stand by the edge of the water and cast lines or haul buckets. And Ben is purely a theoretician. We aren’t you. We can’t know what you know or experience. We know a lot, and can make best guesses, but it’s not quite the same.”
“If you don’t know, how can you help me? I don’t want to be a witch or a psychic or a medium or . . . whatever.”
“You shan’t be, for you aren’t any of those. But you still need to be learning the principles. Ben and I can teach you what we know about the Grey and how it works, what lives in it, how to fend them off. You’ll have to improvise here and there, but you’ll have a good foundation. But you’ll have to accept that this is real, that it is not going away, and that you must learn to live in it, not just with it.”
“No.” I stood up from the table. “My brain won’t stretch to this right now. It doesn’t fit!”
Mara’s shoulders slumped a bit. “It does fit. No luck getting out of it. But I will help you, if you let me.”
I shook my head hard enough to hurt. “Not today. I need to think. I won’t make a leap of faith when I don’t have any. And this is still—this is too strange for me to swallow.”
I picked up my bag and walked out of the kitchen and met Ben coming in.
“You’re not staying for dinner? Mara makes great food.”
“I don’t think I could digest it. I need to digest something else first.”
“Oh. Well. We’ll be here if you need us. I know this is a lot of crazy stuff to try and chew up all in one shot.”
I looked him hard in the eye. “What if I don’t?”
“Then you’ll laugh me off as a kook. You won’t be the first. I don’t think I’m nuts, though, and I don’t think you do, either, but you have to make up your own mind. Nothing works if you don’t start there. I hope I’ll hear from you, though. You seem . . . nice.”
I snorted. “Haven’t heard that in a while. Thanks.”
Albert trailed after me to the gate and hung in the arch, fading and flickering, until I drove away.
EIGHT
Friday morning I put the strange conversations of the night before out of my head, choosing to concentrate, instead, on my work. I had no doubt about how to do my job, and if I did it with all my concentration, I would not be spontaneously transported to uncanny realms. . . . I hoped. The lurking shadows didn’t disappear, but they stayed on the edges and were easier to ignore.
Colleen’s list was mostly a bust. When I could