Free Bridgebreaker (The Echo Worlds Book 2) by Joshua Cook Page B

witches and wizards, warlocks and sorcerers, or whatever else they could be called, had any organization.  He just figured each was a solo agent able to do whatever they wanted.  Mentally he chalked that up to a lack of understanding, something he didn’t like.  It betrayed a prejudice, an assumption that whoever he was involved with was the right answer, the only answer.

Chapter 7
     
    Mentally, he returned to his old standby; the Branches.  In his mind, he could see the choices and where they may lead him.  Some he discarded because the choice had already been made for him; Marcus had kicked him out, so he didn’t have choices involving the Bridgefinders at the moment.  Another choice was to end this and go home, wait it out.  But the Branches there were decidedly not pleasant.  Assuming it was true, that Grellnot, and the Slyph were at war, not having him as a Bridgefinder meant bad things, for both him and Jasmine.  Even to Marcus, he grudgingly admitted to himself.  Going with Heather led to some Branches that at least seemed to offer some decent outcomes.
    “What magic are you working?” Heather asked him curiously, breaking his concentration.
    “What?” Cendan asked, bringing his attention back to her.
    “Magic; you were working it right then. The sparks of it where flying around you in a very unusual way.  I’ve never seen that, and I’ve seen a lot of magic get worked.”  Her eyes appraised him, and for once he didn’t detect any mocking in them.
    “I wasn’t working magic; just a mental exercise I do to see where choices could lead…”
    Heather held up a finger.  “Scrying.  You were scrying.  Never seen a scryer spell like that one though.  Interesting.”
    Cendan laughed.  “It wasn’t a spell, I was just making a decision.”
    Heather didn’t respond, instead just cocking her eyebrow in a ‘whatever you say’ manner.  Cendan found himself instantly wondering what she had seen.  It was just his mental exercise, he’d done it many a time, going back years.  It wasn’t magic, was it?  For some reason, he found the idea rather unsettling.  If he had actually been doing some sort of magic for years and not known that, he didn’t like it.  He’d chalked up that little exercise to logic and weighing of factors.  It had been a mental thing.  But perhaps it had been magic all along, a scrying of some kind that meant the answers weren’t based on logic and fact, but some ethereal force of which he had very little understanding.
    He had prided himself on that; making decisions on logic and understanding.  If Heather was right…
    “Are we going to go soon?  It’s getting dark.”  Heather asked, breaking into his head, full of new self-doubt.
    “Yeah… I guess.  I uh, well, my car isn’t here it’s at my old house.  Dunno if I should borrow one of the Bridgefinder cars or not.”
    A petulant eye-roll greeted this piece of information.
    “Ok fine, we will get a cab to your house then,” Heather snapped at him.  “I just want to get moving, I’ve waited around long enough.”
    Cendan grabbed his bag and gestured her to take the lead.  Truthfully, his mind was trying to make sense again of everything.  A month ago he felt like a curtain had been ripped from a window that he didn’t know existed, showing him the world of the Bridgefinders.  A world of magic, creatures, violence and danger.  Now things are torn, but even more than they were after his first week in the Bridgefinders.  Kicked out of his new home, new knowledge of the users of magic outside the Bridgefinders, and the idea that he’d been using magic for years, and not known it.
    Add in getting punched – punched! – By Marcus, and quite simply this day could end anytime now and he didn’t think he’d have ever been so happy to have it do so.  Heather quickly called a cab, Cendan noted with some level of wry amusement, she was impatient to get out of here wasn’t she?  Giving the driver