“You can’t teach me to activate power?”

“The technique is part of every spell. You’re doing all the right things. You just lack that ability.”

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing I had to keep the power secret, or I’d have used it up by now,” I said, fighting to keep a brave face. It had been bad enough to learn that magic existed but that I had no part of it. Having it and being good at it, then losing it, was worse. I felt like the heroine of a tearjerker TV movie—one of those about a blind woman who gets the miracle operation to restore her sight and sees her husband and kids for the first time, only to learn that the results aren’t permanent. My case was less tragic, but it still wasn’t happy.

“So, I guess we save it for emergencies?” Rod asked. “We should keep training on a theoretical basis.”

Owen nodded. “It’ll be more difficult to memorize spells without being able to practice them, but the more you know, the more effective use you’ll make of your power when you need to use it.”

“What happens after it’s gone?” I asked. “Will I be immune again, or just normal?”

“I don’t know,” Owen said. “This whole thing has been unprecedented. I should get a good paper out of it.”

“Owen!” I snapped. He was a real sweetheart of a guy, but when he was in intellectual mode he could be totally oblivious to human emotion.

He had the good grace to blush, and he was fair-skinned enough, in spite of his dark hair, to be a world-champion blusher. “Sorry. I know this is difficult for you, but it is interesting. What I suspect will happen is that when your power gets to a certain level, you’ll go through a phase of being nonmagical—enough power for magic to work on you, not enough to do anything. Then after a while even that power will be drained and you’ll be back to your usual state.”

“How much power do I have left?”

“I’d guess you’re down about halfway.”

I thought of all the silly spells I’d done just because I could use magic: the illusions, the coffee, making things fly to me instead of reaching for them. Because of those, would I not be able to defend or shield myself in a real crisis? Or worse, would there be a life I couldn’t save? “I wish I’d known this to start with,” I said with a dejected sigh.

“I should have noticed sooner,” Owen said, looking even more downcast than I felt.

“You just said this was unprecedented,” I pointed out. “How could you have known to look?” Then I forced a huge smile that I didn’t really feel. “On the bright side, once my magic is gone, my grandmother won’t have much reason to stick around. She said she needed to be here to help me learn to use my powers. You’ll have your house back to yourself again.”

I was cheered by that thought, but he didn’t look relieved. Me losing my powers wouldn’t be nearly as bad as him losing his. For me, magic was a novelty. I wouldn’t like it if I got stuck at normal, but I’d spent most of my life thinking I was normal. I understood that intellectually. Emotionally, I wasn’t quite there yet. It might take me awhile before I could be honest when I said it.

The worst thing of all was that I didn’t know what this meant for my future. I’d already been having a career crisis before I got zapped with magical powers. It had been put on hold until they figured out where I fit in magically. If there was an expiration date on my magic, I was in even more of a limbo. I wasn’t useful as a wizard or as a magical immune. Part of me wanted to just go for the gusto and burn through my magic so I could get back to normal, but then there was a big part of me that wasn’t ready to let go of it yet.

I really hoped Granny had made a chocolate cake for dessert.

*

Although getting to send Granny home was the one upside I could see to my situation, I dreaded telling her. Her only other wizard grandchild was my brother Dean, who’d been an idiot about using magic. I knew she’d enjoyed teaching me and being able to pass on everything she knew. She’d be so disappointed to learn it was only temporary. It would be like telling her I was failing out of medical school.

Owen seemed to sense that I’d want to talk to her alone, so after we’d washed the dishes, he said he was going to play squash with Rod and vanished. I was still psyching myself up to raise the subject when Granny turned to me and said, “Now, what’s the problem you wanted to talk to me about?”

“How do you do that?” I blurted.

“It’s not magic. It’s just common sense. Anyone with eyes could tell you were troubled by something, and that boy hightailing it out of here means you need to talk to me. What is it?”