Sandy Morrison and the Pack of Pussies

Epilogue

Six months later...

Sandy finished her homework and packed away her notepad and calculus book in her backpack. She still had an essay to do on satellites which would mean goofing off on Vanessa’s laptop under the guise of research. She’d been promised a computer of her own if she could maintain straight Bs on her report card, but thus far, the goal eluded her. She had Bs in everything except for science, which secretly amused her even if she had to vent her frustration over making Cs in front of her father and aunt.

But it was kind of funny to her, a magic user, that her weakest topic in school was science. She had no mistrust of science and its facts. But there were an awful lot of facts to keep up with, and sometimes it seemed half of what she read fell out the back of her head before she could carry the data all the way to the next pop quiz.

When she learned something about magic, it was like learning how to use a new limb she hadn’t been aware of before. Once she cast the same spell a few times, she could not forget it. It wasn’t just memorized in her head, but throughout her whole body.

Science was so much harder to learn by comparison, so for the time being, Sandy was no closer to a new computer than she was to a new car. (This was the potential prize package for the mystical achievement of straight As for two report cards in a row, an impossible feat as far as Sandy was concerned. She had better odds of learning to walk on water, since she was still unable to perform even the simplest water spells.)

Thinking of her friends, Sandy sat back and looked out the window. She had no way to check in on Maggie or Leon without the laptop. They still carried protection from her second sight, and she had to respect the council’s orders not to watch them from the astral plane either. The rules had to be respected, since they might one day lead to a genuine truce and an end of the war. What the cats wanted was a token offer of good faith. Sandy gave it too them, even if it meant missing her closest friends or feeling homesick.

Kyle was a different matter. Living on his own, he’d accepted a charm from Sandy, one he only took off if he was going home to visit with his family.

Sandy closed her eyes and peered though the charm, finding Kyle in his cubicle office. After coming back to Austin, he’d started working as a programmer for some search engine company. He was busy coding, and while she adored spending time with Kyle, she thought he had the dreariest job in the world.

She opened her eyes and looked across her desk at an unlit candle. Leaning over, she focused her will to warm the air around the wick until the hardened fuel inside reached the point of evaporation. Sandy snapped her fingers, and the spark of static she summoned was just strong enough to ignite the wick.

The charge stung both her digits, but she was used to doing the trick when her friends weren’t around, and she didn’t bother to fan her hand like she had after she’d just learned control of static.

Peering into the flame as a divining tool was supposed to be an advanced trick, but Sandy’s natural affinity for fire made it much easier than casting a scrying pool in water. Like all water spells this was a trick she struggled with. For as powerful as she was, Earth and water spells eluded her.

Using the candle wouldn’t work if Trisha had snuffed her own candle. But true to her word, she was still burning a single white candle in her dorm apartment. The candle sat on her cramped “desk,” which was little more than a long shelf mounted directly to the wall. Beside the candle was an LED picture frame, one which rotated through a selection of images from its internal memory.

Trisha sat on her cramped cot bed with one leg drawn up to her chest, laughing while she drank beers with her friends. An unfamiliar girl occupied the foot of the cot, though Sandy vaguely recognized the girl seated on the floor.