Mick hadn’t dampened me. He looked as surprised as I was. Nash stood a few feet away from us, holding on to Maya. Emmett continued to nurse his nosebleed on the floor, Cassandra was in a chair, Pamela crouching beside her, and my grandmother and Elena were busy arguing about what to do to stop me.
I looked down. The two goblins who’d come to celebrate their two-hundredth anniversary stared up at me. They weren’t ugly, just different, with leathery, wrinkled faces, glittering dark eyes, and hands that ended in neatly trimmed claws.
They smiled at me—or at least I thought they smiled—and their touch stopped every bit of magic I was trying to wield.
How, I had no idea. I reached out with my fist for their auras, to take what they had, and found myself blocked. My hand hurt, as though I’d punched a steel wall.
“She is confused,” the man said to his wife.
“Poor thing,” his wife answered. “You have ancient magics,” she told me in her small, croaking voice. “We are more ancient still. They say that with age comes wisdom.” She and her husband shared a look. “Well, we’re as wise as it gets.” She let out a scratchy laugh, and her husband joined in.
“Release it, little one,” the male goblin said. “You’ll feel better.”
“Here,” the woman said. “I’ll show you.”
She touched my hand. I sucked in a breath. She truly was ancient, the essence of her stretching back, back, back into the past, thousands of years piling on top of years.
She gave me a touch of her magic along with a bite of the wisdom she thought was so funny.
That wisdom gave me a jolt. I’d thought, with Emmett’s magics, that I’d known everything.
I realized suddenly why Emmett was so evil. He’d known, seen, discovered, and hadn’t cared. He’d possessed clinical knowledge of the universe, but none of its wonders had penetrated his selfish shell. Information had buoyed him with arrogance but given him no compassion.
Coyote’s words swept back to me:
The all powerful can be the most vulnerable, but compassion is the strongest gift of all.
I stilled, realization penetrating. Outside, the coyote pricked his ears, his mouth opening in an animal smile.
In the end, you’ll have to choose and make the choice for others, he’d said. Be careful how you choose, Janet. Cruelty is so easy.
Compassion, I understood with new clarity, was difficult. Compassion misplaced could be the cruelest thing of all.
Consequences, I’d said to Gabrielle when she’d wanted to kill the sleazy men in the convenience store in Winslow. If you go around doing whatever you want and to hell with it, your choices will bite you in the ass in the end.
I’d been trying to calm her down when I’d said that, but I knew now that I hadn’t listened to my own advice.
“Mick,” I whispered. I reached a hand to him, and he clasped it. “I love you,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
Mick only looked at me with warmth, the man who always had my back.
The goblin woman’s wisdom showed me something else. I learned, opened my entire being, and gave all the magic back.
It streamed from me into the mirror, to the long string of mages still waiting there for what was stolen to be returned. The magic didn’t rip me open as it went, as I’d feared it might, but like a quiet trickle of a river, deep in shadows, a relief from the blazing sun.
The magic filled those who waited, giving them back their lives, their selves. Some of these people were not necessarily good—some were as bad as Emmett—but they had to be themselves, make their own choices.
Not all those waiting were still alive. The dead could not retrieve their power, their life’s breath. Emmett had killed them, magically or physically—sometimes both ways. But those people gave me looks of relief as their visages wavered and winked out.
Their magic, free and quiet, dispersed through the holes in my roof and walls, and vanished into the night.
***
The next thing I knew, I was on the floor, my limbs askew, Mick holding me on his lap. A cool late-September wind blew through my once-again ruined saloon.
Grandmother and Elena kept their distance, as though uncertain how to approach me. Grandmother was standing upright, looking stronger than ever. I was certain I’d hear all about that in time.
Gabrielle bent over me. Her aura was hot white, as bright as ever, but her dark eyes held concern. “You okay, Janet?”
“Think so.” My voice barely worked. “You all right?”
“Sure.” She grinned like her old, crazy self, but something in her had been softened. “Thank you, big sis.”
She didn’t say for what, but I knew. I could have killed Gabrielle when she’d been vulnerable, thus saving myself the huge problem of her in my life. Instead, I’d taken care of her and given her back the magic that made her who she was as soon as I’d been able.