Free Sixpence & Whiskey by Heather R. Blair Page A

anyone but the caster and almost never corporeal, but I’m so pissed, it bursts over my skin. Like sparklers on the Fourth of July.
    Magic skips over the alley and up the walls. The air goes faintly purple as the surrounding energy is pulled so quickly to my bidding, it’s like reality is being torn a little. The alley seems to twist and bend. Something that smells like burning popcorn fills the air.
    Jack’s eyes widen. My own breath comes fast and short. I’ve never done that before—never seen that done before—but the words keep falling from my lips, one after the other.
    “ The king was in his counting house… ”
    “Calm the fuck down. Right now. You’re gonna hurt yourself.” His tone is sharp and he looks honestly concerned, but what is honest to Jack? Anyway—I can’t.
    I simply can’t calm down. Bricks spill down from above, along with a couple old stone roof tiles, crashing onto the pavement like mortars going off. Jack dodges them all, cursing.
    “ …counting out his money… ”
    Jack takes a step toward me, then stops, tension bunching his shoulders. There’s a reason people don’t just rush witches when they’re casting. Touch us once we’ve started calling the magic down—before the last word has been spoken—and all that unformed energy has the potential to go wild.
    What does that mean? In simple terms, wild magic go boom .
    Big fucking boom.
    “ The queen was in the parlor …”
    I’m shaking as the words come out of me. It’s too much; him being back here, Luna’s bullshit, Georg’s bullshit…hell, even Mom being gone. It’s all catching up to me.
    “ …eating bread and— ”
    “No more rhymes now, I mean it,” Jack quips gently.
    I pause, my hands in the air. He did not just quote The Princess Bride at me. Reality shimmers between us as I stare at him. “How do you remember that?”
    “What can I say? Your taste in movies must’ve rubbed off on me.”
    “Bullshit.” We spent half our relationship in Jack’s apartment, watching my favorite movies ’cause he didn’t know any, hiding out, hiding our relationship. But I never cared. I had him .
    Or I thought I had.
    He shrugs now, giving me the ghost of a smile, as if the air around us isn’t crackling, ready to explode, waiting on my rhyme. His face, though, is as pale as I’ve ever seen it. What’s he so damn scared of? “It did. Well…not those crazy blood fests you loved so much. What was that actress’s name? The one that’s in all of them?”
    “Jamie Lee Curtis.”
    Jack shudders. “That’s the one. My ears have never been the same…”
    I take issue with this, my hands dropping a little as I shoot him a glare. “Hey, Halloween and Prom Night are classics, bub.”
    He ignores this, except to roll his eyes, “…but The Princess Bride ? Sure. What’s not to like?”
    “Yeah.” A vision of me feeding him popcorn flashes in my head. His head on my lap, my fingers threaded in his hair.
    My hands start to tremble. I suddenly want to cover my face and cry, because I can’t hurt him. I don’t know that my magic even could , but it doesn’t matter anymore, because I can’t fucking do it.
    Instead, I whisper the last line of the poem, and let the magic dissipate in a simple spell of warmth with a little hiss.
    All around us snow turns momentarily to rain, pattering across the pavement, wetting our hair and skin, sending the false scent of spring into the chill November air.
    Suddenly as woozy as if I’d spent a night out with Sy doing the bar crawl on Tower Avenue, I sway, almost going over. It’s weird, because cast magic isn’t supposed to do that. It uses the energy around us, not our own, like innate does. Jack takes a quick step forward, but I wave him back. I don’t want him touching me right now. His hands fist at his sides. He shoves them in his pockets and glares at me.
    “Don’t try that again. Attacking me for real is a very dangerous idea, Seph.” His voice has gone cold and