My family has lawyers the way other families have doctors or tradespeople. Two of them see me out of the prison before an hour has elapsed, with my father outside the front door. A black limo, a grim silence when I get inside.
“I was -.”
“I do not want to hear it. A protest. Our family does not indulge in such behaviours. You gain good will through rash actions, son. You lose it through the same.”
Everything is about balance, in our family. Sometimes I wonder if we are more like the fae than the fae themselves. My father thinks me unwise, but I am wise enough to have never voiced that thought aloud. “I would not call working magic on a false lover rash,” I say softy.
My father says nothing. There are rules that govern our family, rules that only love can truly suspend. But even so.
“You indulge,” he says finally, halfway back to my condo.
“I do not always mean to.”
Mother would smile at the honesty. Father just looks at me coldly for a moment. Every prepared got it, the feel of his magic is like a furnace of cold fire against my skin. Power presses against flesh and spirit responds. My own magic flares up. I hold his at bay, but nothing more.
“Reckless,” he whispers. “Vain, foolish child!”
“Uncle Owen.” I say nothing else. Father lets go of his magic, snarls a request to his driver. I am dropped off a block from home. It is the kind of condo that would show up in fashion magazines, if my family allowed such publicity into our lives. A block away the street is littered with graffiti and predators study me from behind calm eyes.
I walk down the street, Smile. They look away. I doubt I come off as a predator, but desperation can be more dangerous by far. Not that I am that, I think. It is hard to be sure anymore. My father’s magic a bulwark of power. But Uncle Owen was the same, and he died in an accident.
A hit and run. The driver suffered in ways I try not to think about. My father almost never uses his magic; he did then, and the screams might end in a year. Two. Perhaps even ten.
There are many families with magic. Some never know of it, some can only work certain kinds. But each of us are born with only so much magic within us for our lifetime. A sliver of the impossible, to bend chance and probability to our wills. And once gone, there is nothing left. I have used more of my magic since coming into my power than my father has in six decades. I don’t want to hoard my power for a future that may never come.
I don’t even consider it power, most of the time. Anyone can learn to work small magics, to bend the world in little ways. Step on a crack, break your mother’s back. Not any crack, not at any time, but done, just so, and one can harm an enemy. There are little things like that, and I have made it a point to learn most of them.
The rest of the family think me foolish. Even those I have aided who would not aid themselves. But I think their magic gets weaker in some ways. Starves through lack of use. Power that is not in the world is not power. A fae told me that once, when I asked why they ever came back to this world.
I sketch symbols in the ground as I walk. Protection, confusion. Some work; others never will. I am never certain if the fault is in me or they symbols. My key fob opens the private elevator, manufactured silence taking me to the top floor. Some days I am so tired of being part of my family, but there is no other place where I belong.
Even a black sheep remains a sheep.