She picked bits of lint from the gauze around her wrists, but when she raised her head she looked Sean straight in the eye. “I’m going to learn everything the Order can teach me. After the Servitor, I can’t get caught again flying the plane upside down.”
Marvell laughed like this was a private joke.
Dad cracked a smile, like he was in on it, too.
“Besides,” Helen said. “I’m Professor Marvell’s assistant at the Archives. Looks like magic’s part of that job, even though it isn’t in the official position description.”
More laughter. Sean joined in. But then he had to ask Dad straight out. “Would you let me? Study magic?”
Dad’s jaw spasmed. “I’m not sure, Sean. The professor and Helen make some good arguments for it. But after what we’ve just gone through, no one here can deny the dangers. You least of all. Right?”
“Right, for sure.”
“Still. What you and I were talking about last night. How we both had this sense your mom was different. Saw differently. How you said you could feel her paintings vibrate.”
It had been the longest talk they’d had in years, out on the back porch after everyone else had gone to bed. “They hummed,” Sean said.
“Hummed, yeah. Well, I believe it now, that you did feel that. Mr. Geldman told Helen magic comes to you from your mom, and I think Helen reached that conclusion earlier, on her own.” Dad looked at Helen, and after a moment she nodded. “So it makes sense you’d be the one to pick up on Kate’s magic the strongest, since you’re like her.”
It was happening way too often these days, Sean’s throat closing up on him. He shrugged, and luckily Dad went on without waiting for more: “And if Kate had magic, and it’s part of what she gave you, it can’t be a bad thing. Not by its nature, know what I mean?”
“We think magic is neutral,” Marvell said quietly. “How the magician shapes it is what makes it good or bad, so to speak.”
Dad gave his hair a brief savaging. “That makes sense, too. Anyway. I’ll have to think about your offer, Professor, the tutorial thing. And Sean, you’ll have to convince me and our new friends you could handle it. With school coming up, I guess the tutorial couldn’t start until next summer?”
“Next summer would work,” Marvell said.
Helen winked at Sean, but with Dad watching him he could only smile back.
“Sean,” Dad said.
Sean looked up into a face dead serious but not the least bit pissed anymore. And “Here’s the thing,” Dad said. “Whatever we decide about your magic, run away from it or take the next step, you’ve got to know I’m with you.”
So Dad didn’t say the baby nickname; he stopped himself at the last second, like he was embarrassed to use it, or thought Sean would be embarrassed. But Sean heard the name anyway: Kit. I’m with you, Kit.
He gave Dad this lame nod, then had a good fake coughing fit before he turned to Marvell. “So it’s okay if we can’t tell you what we want to do yet, Professor?”
“It’s fine, Sean. Take your time.”
“Speaking of time,” Helen put in. “Dinner must be about ready.”
They all got up, but the honk of a horn made them turn to the street. Joe-Jack’s van pulled up, and Beowulf jumped out with a squirming chocolate Lab puppy in his arms. Sean ran down the steps to meet him. “Jesus, Beo! When’d you get him?”
“This morning. Only it’s a her. Dad wants to call her Wealhtheow, but that totally sucks!”
Joe-Jack came up, grinning. “Hey, the only other female in Beowulf is Grendel’s mother. Want to call her that?”
Sean didn’t want to upend Joe-Jack’s world, but come on. “Maybe you could pick a name from something else?” “All right. How about Brunnhilde?”
“I want ‘Lucy’,” Beowulf said.
Having spied the new action from above, Eddy ran out to join the party, Brutus at her heels. While the pug distracted everyone by pouncing on their feet, Sean took the puppy and carried her onto the porch. Marvell had gone inside. Dad and Helen stood at the top of the steps. “What would you call her?” Sean asked Helen.
She stroked the puppy’s soft ears and got licked all the way up to her elbow. “Lucy,” she said. She looked up at Sean and smiled. “Nice and ordinary.”
Dad yelled a dinner invite to Joe-Jack and Beowulf. Beowulf recaptured the puppy as everyone piled into the house. Sean ended up the last one on the porch, with Eddy.
“So?” she said. “What was your secret conference about?”
Like there might be more spies in the neighborhood than Eddy, Sean made a big deal of going to the railing and peering around. The roof of the house across the street caught his eye, for no other reason than the way the late-afternoon sun had turned it this crazy mellow red, with an achingly blue sky coming down to meet it.
“Give, Sean!”
“It wasn’t much,” Sean told her. “They just want me to become a wizard, that’s all.”
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