“It’s not right,” Mary-Beth said, shaking her head as she licked the side of her cone.
“No, it’s not!” I said, letting it all come pouring out of me. “Because even though he apologized, a few times, it doesn’t mean it never happened and it doesn’t mean I don’t still have nightmares about it. And Nathaniel needs to stop telling me to just get over it.”
“That’s right, you need to feel what you feel,” Mary-Beth nodded, chomping down on the last of her cone.
“You literally ate that entire thing in like, five bites,” I said, instantly sidetracked. “That’s insane. How do you not have a major brain freeze?”
Mary-Beth shrugged. “Apparently you never paid attention any of the other times we’ve eaten around each other. It’s just how I eat.”
“Like a vacuum?” I asked in a laugh.
She just smiled and wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin.
I laughed, shaking my head. And finally, I felt all of my anger and frustration seep out of me. “Thank you,” I said, meeting her eyes. “I needed to vent.”
“Do you feel better now?” she asked as she folded her arms on the table and leaned forward.
“I do, actually,” I said with a nod. “It was kind of just pooling inside of me and poisoning me from the inside out.”
“Good,” Mary-Beth said with a nod. “Now we can talk about my problems. I think you may have made a mistake in thinking I’m a mage.”
I blinked at her twice.
“I’ve been working my tail off every single second outside of class, and I still can’t do a damn thing,” Mary-Beth said. And with each word, I could see the distress in her eyes growing more and more. “You all say there’s nothing to compelling a coin, but I tried to get my roommate to confess to stealing my leftovers and she just straight up lied to me. I can’t start a fire. I have no idea what my affinity is, and I can’t make even a speck of dust levitate.”
“We didn’t make a mistake, Mary-Beth,” I said, keeping my tone even. “You could read the telekinesis book. You can make a wand light up. My dad can’t do either of those things. You just need more practice.”
“So, I might still be a mage,” she said. “Just the very worst one in the entire world.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” I tried to talk her down. “Who says magic is easy? Who says it isn’t different for everyone?”
“None of this was hard for you,” Mary-Beth pointed out. “Nathaniel has said so. And Borden has only been doing this for a few weeks longer than me, and he doesn’t seem to have any issue. So why can’t I make anything work?”
I just looked at her, because even though I didn’t want her feeling bad about her abilities, she was right. None of us had struggled with magic, not to the extent Mary-Beth did. Sure, Nathaniel couldn’t do alchemy, and I couldn’t get it to stay, and transfiguration was extra tricky. But we could do things, even if it was in a limited capacity.
Mary-Beth had yet to do a single bit of magic herself. So far, everything she had done was simply a reaction to her blood.
“I don’t know yet,” I said honestly. “We don’t know hardly anything about ourselves, what we can and can’t do, and even why we can do what we do. Maybe there’s a reason your magic hasn’t been able to unleash yet. But we’ll find answers, at some point. Or maybe it will just…click one day.”
I reached across the table and took her hands in mine, holding her gaze. “I know it has to be frustrating. But I know you’re where you belong, and that’s with us. And even though I’m a little peeved at Borden, he belongs in our circle as well. We need each other. We need you, Mary-Beth.”
She let out a hard breath between her nostrils and gave me a thin-lipped smile. “Thanks,” she said. “I guess I needed to vent.”
“What are sisters for?” I said, winking.
She just laughed and sat back in her seat. “Alright. I’ll keep practicing. How about we head to that creepy, abandoned house you’re kind of in love with and you can help me practice?”
I just laughed and shook my head. “Yeah,” I agreed. “Let’s go.”
It was a twenty-minute walk to Asteria House. As we approached, I took a moment to appreciate the view. Normally, I came up from the beach, but from the road, it was even more impressive.
There was a massive stone fence that ran around the entire property. Iron gates partially blocked the way down the cobblestone driveway. There was a beautiful tower in the center of the house, looking out over the ocean from a third story level.
Big bushes and trees dotted the landscaping, and there was even a pool on the south side of the house, covered by an atrium.
“This place really was beautiful at one point,” Mary-Beth said as we both took it all in as we walked right up to the house. “The Asteria family must have been seriously loaded to just walk away from this place.”
“Can you imagine what it would be worth if it was fixed up?” I said as we walked up the porch that was in surprisingly good condition. But as we got to the double front doors, we found they were busted, as if someone had kicked them in.
“Can you imagine how much money it would take to fix this place up to make it livable?” she asked, raising an eyebrow as we stepped inside, only to immediately step to the left to avoid the massive hole in the floor. Looking up, we found the reason was due to a hole in the roof, which had let in years’ worth of rain, causing the floor to rot out.
“Come on,” I said, nodding my head toward what was once the kitchen.
Mary-Beth followed me in, looking around for spiders and signs of danger.
I walked to the far back counter, to a line of rocks that were sitting there. They looked ordinary, nothing more than stones taken from the beach. But I grabbed one, pricked my finger, said the words, and watched as the stone slowly changed from gray to shimmering gold.
Mary-Beth’s eyes widened in absolute wonder. “You’re telling me you know how to turn rocks into gold, and I can’t start a simple fire?”
I smiled, but it was awkward and forced. “That’s what I’m trying to do anyway.” As the entire stone turned to gold, I set it down on the counter and looked at it. “I’m getting better at it, but I can’t make anything stay gold. Within a few hours, it changes back.”
“Fool’s gold?” Mary-Beth said.
“I thought the exact same thing,” I said with a smirk. “I could certainly trick someone for a little bit, sell it, but they might get a little peeved when they go back to it and all they have is a simple rock.”
“Is it possible?” she asked as she crossed the decrepit kitchen and picked up the lump of gold. “To make it stay permanently?”
“The book doesn’t say anything about the gold changing back,” I said as I turned for the fireplace. I rubbed my hands together, creating heat, and then snapped my fingers, instantly causing flames to jump to life in the fireplace. “So, I have to be doing something wrong. I just can’t figure out what it is yet.”
“It shouldn’t, but that makes me feel slightly better that I can’t do anything,” she confessed as she tossed the gold from one hand to the other.