Witch's Bell Book One

hubris now?'
    Avery smiled, but it wasn't entirely nice. She was slightly amused, Ebony could tell, but just as confused by the plucky, determined Detective.
    In a strange moment of detachedness, Ebony realized just how different Nate was. He wasn't bothered, she realized, by anything magical. It didn't surprise him, didn't sway him, didn't move him. To magical creatures, the ways of magic's power were of a higher order than all those mundane forces that made up the rest of reality. Magic could be used to explain everything and to trump any other explanation by a mile. A magical explanation was one that was brimming with power, with sacred understanding, and with unity. Magic integrated all of the forces of reality into a shining, shimmering, crackling whole. While the mundane could only hope to understand their little slice of space-time, the magical could comprehend and sense it all.
    But there was Nate, not buying into it. He'd seen magic, and unlike everyone else Ebony had ever met, had simply been unimpressed by it. It was like some kind of added-extra you could buy to slot into your reality – like an application, or an accessory – to make things sparkle and add more lightning bolts to everything. It wasn't, for Nate, an amazing feature of the world. It was a sideline to be noted, and ignored.
    To ignore magic was unthinkable. So how was he doing it? What did he have instead, that the amazing possibilities of magical power didn't move him?
    What exactly did Detective Nathan Wall have up his crinkled sleeve?'
    'You don't understand,' Avery said, her eyes turning red.
    'Don't I?' Nate countered, arms still crossed.
    'She doesn't know what she wants, my poor little witch, so how is she to find it? Magic, little chevalier, is possibility turned on its head. The ability to make the unlikely likely, and the likely impossible. But in order to use it right, you must use it with conscience. Unless you use it with a purpose in mind - unless you know precisely what you want from it - then magic becomes random. It becomes chaotic, unruly, and dangerous. Destroying what little purpose you have in your life, until you become an easy target to be rewritten by other forces. And my poor little child, for years she's done just this. Muddled along, no distinct idea of what she truly desires. Using magic for immediate purposes, but for no long-term goal. And with no length of time in mind, with no grand purpose in sight, magic has now left her. What force she's had has now been taken by a greater purpose. She is now caught up in someone else's greater, more powerful story. A pawn in the game of another.'
    Nate just shook his head. 'And? You think that's it? You think it's over now? You're talking like you've given up hope. Like no amount of magic in the world could change what you think is already going to happen. You talk of magic like it allows you to get the unlikely – to make the impossible real. Well, pardon me if I'm wrong,' he said forcefully, 'but that doesn't make any sense. If magic can make the impossible possible, then that thing wasn't impossible to begin with.'
    Avery waved a hand at him, though her face remained a picture of controlled but edgy politeness. 'You do not understand magic, mortal.'
    'No? Then maybe I don't want to. In fact, there are only two things I want to understand right now, and one of them is why someone mugged Ebony.'
    Whatever the second thing was, Nate didn't say.
    Avery threw up her hands. 'It doesn't matter. My little Ebony needs to understand herself before she can try to understand the world.'
    'You think she should take a nice long walk in the woods and do a bit of self-reflection, while an unknown, unquantified power is out to get her? That's madness-'
    'Your mundane human beliefs cannot match the reality of the magical-' her mother began.
    'Enough,' Ebony finally intervened with a heavy breath, 'that's enough.'
    She felt like she was being strung up between two pillars, ready to be crucified to either a magic, or a mundane future – but in either case, one that was out to get her. Her mother was insisting that Ebony had laid open the doors of uncertainty herself, by losing track of what she really wanted. And while that might be true, Nate had his own point. None of that really mattered right now because Ebony was stuck in the middle. Okay, so she might not know what she wanted, and maybe that had something to do with this whole mess, but concentrating on that fact hardly seemed