Without Foresight

by P. D. Workman

  “Why don’t we change the subject?” Corvin said considerately. “You probably don’t want to talk about this right now.”

  “No. Not really. I mean, if you had a way to make it all go away… but that’s not going to happen.”

  He didn’t even suggest this time that he could take her siren powers away. Reg knew that even if he could, it still wouldn’t change what she was and wouldn’t satisfy anyone worried about her siren nature.

  Chapter Four

  “So,” Corvin leaned forward in his seat. “Why don’t you tell me about Wilson. With everything going on during the Spring Games, I never heard the details of what happened to him. I talked to Damon, but you know how he is. Got all grumpy with me like I had something to do with it.”

  “He did miss out on winning half a million dollars. Or a quarter of a million, since he had promised me half. That’s enough to make anyone grumpy.”

  “You weren’t grumpy about it.”

  Reg pursed her lips and looked off into space. “I never really thought we were going to earn it in the first place. It seemed… too easy. If something sounds too easy to be true… chances are, either it is, or you’re likely to get arrested for it.”

  Corvin let out a loud laugh at that. Other diners turned and looked at him dourly, then went back to their own meals and conversations.

  “Too true,” Corvin agreed. “I’ll admit that I didn’t expect Damon to be able to find Wilson and get him to sign up for the Spring Games. With you on his side, it was a little more likely to locate him, but it was still a long shot.”

  “Yeah. Especially if you knew all the details from the beginning. I didn’t know that the guy had been missing for fifty years.”

  Corvin nodded. “It is a little harder to track someone down after that long. You did very well to be able to locate him. But it was obvious from the time that we found him that it would be difficult to get him to the Spring Games. Not remembering who he was, that was a big barrier. If the guy doesn’t remember that he is a practitioner of magic, why would he join what is essentially the magical Olympics?”

  “I thought we might be able to talk him into it. I hoped so, anyway.” Reg sighed and shrugged. “And I thought that if we could help him to remember who he was and how to use his powers, he would be eager to sign up. Show off his stuff. Rejoin the magical world with a splash…”

  “So. Tell me about what happened.”

  Reg gazed up toward the ceiling, recalling the details of what had happened with Wilson. She was embarrassed by her mistakes. It wasn’t something she had wanted to talk to Corvin about, and she was sure Damon felt the same way. Even more so because he saw himself as Corvin’s rival.

  “It was Starlight who gave me the idea to start with.”

  “Your cat? What did he tell you this time?” Corvin was not a cat lover. Far from it. But he was resigned to the fact that Starlight was Reg’s familiar and wasn’t going to be going anywhere else. Corvin had even helped when Starlight had been sick. The cat and the warlock put up with each other, though Starlight would still growl and hiss at Corvin if he got too close. Meaning anywhere on the property, since Reg knew better than to allow Corvin into the house. That didn’t stop him from coming to her door and trying to wheedle his way in.

  “Starlight was getting into my duffel bag. The one from the trip to the Everglades. You know how cats like funky smells like sweaty clothes.”

  Corvin sniffed. “How pleasant.”

  “At least they’re not as bad as dogs… Anyway, he was crawling inside my bag to smell everything and maybe make a little nest in there. I pulled him out and saw he had been getting into the leaves in my pocket.”

  “Leaves…?” Corvin frowned.

  “Don’t you remember? When we went to the Lost Village, the ghost I talked to said that I should take one of the plants with me for when I would need it.”

  “Ah. Well, I didn’t exactly hear the conversation,” he pointed out.

  “No, I guess not. But she did. So I put them into my pocket and then forgot about them with everything else that happened between then and getting home with Wilson.”

  Corvin nodded encouragingly. “Which plant was it? Do you know?”

  “I took the leaves over to Sarah because I didn’t want Starlight getting poisoned by them. And I wondered… whether they were something that we might be able to use to restore Wilson’s memory.”

  “What was it?”

  “Sweet bay leaves. Laurel, Sarah said it is called sometimes.”

  “Ah, yes. I remember picking that. And Sarah told you that it could be used for memory loss? That’s not an application I know.”

  “No, but we thought it might be worth trying. It’s one of the plants that the Seminoles use in their medicine, and the ghost said he had something that the Seminoles knew about, called Giant Sickness. So I decided to take the chance that maybe it could be used to treat Wilson.”

  “And Sarah made tea?”

  “Not Sarah. I did.”

  “You did.”

  “It wasn’t very good. We tried a smudge as well. I did that first. Because the Natives do that sometimes. But it didn’t seem to have much effect just waving the smoke at him. The ghost didn’t tell me how I should use it. Sarah said they don’t have prescribed methods; it is up to the medicine man—or woman—to decide the right approach for each person.”

  “Of course.”

  “The smoke didn’t seem to make any difference, so we tried the tea. I added some lemon to make it more palatable. But I guess from the way he looked when he tasted it that it wasn’t very good. I was going to give him some honey to sweeten it…”

  “I don’t imagine that would really make any difference to him. Either it would work or it would not. He probably didn’t care how it tasted.”

  “I just crushed it up with my hands, but those leaves are really hard and sharp when they are dry, and I probably should have used one of those things to crush it to a powder…” Reg made the motion of grinding it in a bowl.

  “Mortar and pestle,” Corvin suggested.

  “If that’s what it’s called, I didn’t know what to call it. A grinder?”

  “Just a mortar and pestle. So what happened when he drank it? Did it restore his memory?”

  Reg blew out her breath. “Did it ever. And I thought… that would be a good thing.”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  “No.”

  Chapter Five

  The waitress arrived with their dishes. Reg admired hers, smiling and nodding, but she was too hungry to care about the presentation. “Thanks, this looks great.”

  For a few minutes, she and Corvin just sampled their dinners. Reg started to relax as her blood sugar got a boost.

  “So, what exactly went wrong?” Corvin asked. “Wilson decided he was late for a date? He didn’t like the Spring Games? He left the stove on at home?”

  Reg frowned at him, remembering that Damon had said something to her about leaving her stove on when they had left for the Everglades. But clearly, Wilson hadn’t left his stove on for fifty years. It would have been discovered long before that.

  “He was… you know that he was supposed to be a really powerful wizard?”

  Corvin nodded. “I remember. He was very well-known. It was a big deal to have him coming to the Games—fifty years ago.”

  “Yeah. But I guess… he wasn’t really satisfied with something like participating in the Games. He wanted to… I don’t know. Would it be too dramatic to say that he wanted to take over the world? That he wanted to kill the immortals and be the most powerful person on earth?”

  Corvin contemplated this, cutting his rare steak into small bites as he ate. “I guess I can’t say you’re being overly dramatic if I wasn’t there to see. I haven’t heard of anyone trying to take over the world and kill the rest of the immortals lately, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not. I don’t imagine you can do something like that in an instant. Your way would be blocked if you moved bef
ore you really had a toehold…”

  Reg hadn’t really thought about what the actual process of taking over the world would be. Corvin was probably right. It would take some time. It wasn’t something that Wilson could just do in a day. She had been happy that he had disappeared and she hadn’t heard anything else from him. She thought that meant that he had failed in his plan and had kept his oath never to harm her or her friends.

  “Yeah… I guess. I never really thought about it. Not one of my life goals.”

  “I don’t imagine so. But power really is… quite addictive. One is never satisfied with just the right amount of power. Every time you consume it… you hunger for more.”

  Which pretty much described Corvin’s existence. Reg didn’t want to focus on this point. She felt anxious enough about having dinner with him when she should have just gone home after being turned away from The Crystal Bowl. Corvin was more powerful than Reg, or she thought he was. As he learned to control his new powers, he became more of a danger. Unless she were able to expand her own powers at the same rate, which wasn’t as easy for her.

  “So… Wilson tried to attack Harrison—”

  “Harrison was there?”

  Reg nodded. “Well, you remember how he and Weston were talking at the mermaid bar…”

  “Yes. So they were both there when you gave Wilson this tea?”

  “No. Harrison appeared, but Weston didn’t. I don’t think… well, we were talking about Harrison, or maybe it was just because he knew what we were planning to do. I don’t know. But Harrison was there and Wilson wasn’t happy about it. He said that Harrison and Weston had been the ones who had made him forget…”

  “And after he remembered, he attacked Harrison because he was one of the people who made him forget for fifty years,” Corvin guessed.

  “Yeah. Or because Harrison was an immortal. Wilson kind of had a thing about the immortals. He thought… there are so many more humans than immortals, we should just… gang up on them and kill them.”

  Corvin put down his fork and took another sip of wine. “It wouldn’t be the first time a human had the arrogance to challenge the immortals. If you look at the ancient mythology—”

  Reg waved her hand, trying to dissuade him from going into lecture mode. “Yeah, yeah, I know. The mortals and the gods were always fighting. I remember that much from school.”

  “Did Wilson have any chance against Harrison? How powerful is he?”

  Reg rubbed the back of her neck. “Harrison said Wilson was one of the most powerful humans he’d ever met. Or maybe the most powerful.”

  Corvin raised his brows. “Really. But Harrison was still able to banish him?”

  Reg picked at her meal. Despite being hungry, she had lost her interest in the food. “Well… Wilson attacked Harrison and Starlight. I don’t know if he could have done them any harm, but I didn’t want to wait to find out, and I didn’t want them fighting in my house.”

  “Of course.”

  “So I… I put a shield around him so that he couldn’t fight Harrison and Starlight.”

  “Around the most powerful human in the world. Is that… advisable…?”

  Reg grimaced. “I wouldn’t recommend it. It was sort of an impulse. And… he was too strong for me. I needed Harrison to bleed off some of his power… and then… well, I did like I do with you, when you’re targeting me…”

  Corvin cocked his head, looking for more information.

  “But instead of reflecting his magic back, I kind of… I used the power he was expending fighting me to strengthen the shield. So that the more he fought, the stronger the shield was, and the more energy he expended trying to break it…”

  “You have come a long way in using your powers,” Corvin said with respect. “And you are very… creative in your solutions.”

  Reg shrugged. She looked away. “I couldn’t hold him forever and I didn’t want Harrison to kill him. So I made him promise, to give an oath on his powers, that he wouldn’t hurt me or anyone else there.”

  Corvin wiped his mouth with his cloth napkin and let it fall back to his lap. “And then you let him go.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you…”

  Reg forced her breath out in a puff. “Yeah. I restored a powerful evil wizard’s memory and then unleashed him on the world. All in a day’s work for Reg Rawlins.”

  Corvin didn’t answer immediately.

  “Well, he didn’t kill you on the spot, so he at least respected his oath that much. But do you think he will keep it? Or will he find a way around it or decide not to keep it?”

  “I don’t know. Harrison said that maybe it would be enough.”

  “But Harrison doesn’t have to stick around here to take the consequences or see what happens next. You know that he isn’t exactly a good judge of human character.”

  “I couldn’t kill Wilson.”

  “Perhaps you could have found a way to bind him…”

  “Even with the way that Francesca bound the Witch Doctor, she admits that it won’t hold forever. Eventually, he will be able to gather his strength again. She’s a lot more experienced than I am.”

  “But you are more powerful than she is.”

  “You said that to bind someone, you needed the strength of the community. You can’t do it yourself. I don’t know anything about binding. I’ve never done it.”

  “No. And I wouldn’t expect you to. But you weren’t alone with him.”

  “No…”

  “Damon was there. He didn’t have any recommendations? Didn’t help you?”

  “No. He was pretty quiet through the whole thing. I think he was… sort of in shock.”

  “Harrison should have done something about it. Why didn’t he just… obliterate Wilson?”

  “I didn’t want him to kill him. I thought that if Wilson took an oath… he’d be required to keep it. Isn’t that the way it works?”

  “For someone with morals, yes. But not everyone intends to keep their promises. With all your experience, you should know that.”

  Including Reg’s experience with Corvin himself. How many times had he made a promise to her and then not kept it? And he was right; growing up in foster care, she’d had plenty of experience with others making promises and then not keeping them. People who were supposed to protect her and provide for her had done anything but. There had been good families, but even they frequently made promises and then didn’t follow through. Promising her that if she were good, she could stay with them. That they would send her to some summer camp that she had heard about. That if she tried her hardest, she would be able to succeed at something. Parents were full of promises that never came to fruition.

  And Wilson was probably just like they were. He would find an excuse to break the oath that he had made. Maybe he had never intended to keep it. Maybe he had crossed his fingers. He was off building up his power so that he could make a covert attack before anyone knew what was going on. By the time anyone knew that he was planning to overthrow the governments and principalities of the world, he would be there. And no one would be able to stop him.

  “Ugh.” She rubbed her temples. “This is really not making me feel any better.”

  “No. I’m sorry.” Corvin reached across the table and touched the back of her hand, giving her a pleasant buzz of electricity that sent her heart racing. “Let me remedy that.”

  Reg inched her hand back away from his touch. She was reluctant. She didn’t want to break the contact. But she knew better than to let him ensorcell her.

  “You know I can make you feel better,” Corvin coaxed.

  “For a while, maybe,” Reg agreed, “But the way that I felt without my powers…” She shook her head, remembering the bereft emptiness, the silence of the voices, feeling like she was hollowed out and worn thin and would never be happy again. “I never want to feel like that again.”

  “I wasn’t saying I would take your powers. Just that I could help you to feel better. Give you a little boo
st.”

  “No. You’ve done enough.”

  His mouth twisted into a scowl. “I’ve done enough? I haven’t done anything tonight. Will you never forgive the past?”

  “I meant… I didn’t mean that. I meant you already took me out, bought me dinner. You’ve done plenty. You don’t need to do anything else for me.”

  “This?” He indicated everything with a twirl of his hand. “This is nothing. This is dinner with an acquaintance—something I would do with anyone. I want to do something for you. Something that will make a difference.”

  Reg felt a wave of heat. She didn’t know whether it was due to his charms or her own emotional reaction to his offer to help without any kind of recompense. She rubbed her burning face with one hand as if she could wipe away the blush.

  “How about dessert?” she suggested lightly. “Something chocolate.”

  Corvin’s scowl deepened rather than disappearing.

  Reg looked down at her meal and pretended to be concentrating on that instead of on keeping him happy. If he didn’t like her suggestion, that was too bad. She wasn’t going to let him worm his way inside her psyche and start messing around. If he took away her powers, he would never give them back, and Reg didn’t think she could survive without them. The silence inside her head would make her go crazy just as much as a sudden onslaught of voices might for someone else.

  Chapter Six

  The rest of the meal was spent mostly in silence. Reg couldn’t think of what to say to make Corvin feel any better, other than giving in to his desires, and that wasn’t going to happen. When the waitress came to clear away their plates, she offered a dessert menu, and Corvin motioned for it. Reg decided to check her email on her phone while he looked it over so that she wasn’t staring at him with nothing to distract her.

  Corvin didn’t say anything to her before ordering a dessert. Reg could only assume that it was something for the two of them to share. Either that, or he was punishing her for expressing a preference for chocolate over allowing him to make her feel “better.”