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dozen thoughts crossed his face in an instant. I had only a moment to recognize surprise, cunning, and, lastly, horror. “Tears of Taharial,” he swore softly. “I’m in hell.”
    My champards thought that was hilarious. The bad part was, it might be true.

Chapter 2
    B ecause I didn’t want the mage in my loft upstairs, I bought him takeout from the Chinese place down the street and led him to the workroom behind the shop. Unconsciously, Cheran moved mage-fast when he entered the workroom, eyes darting to the far corners, as if for possible threat. His speed made my heart ache with something akin to loneliness. I didn’t want to look too closely at that emotion. Fortunately, he grimaced at the food and that restored my antipathy to him.
    He set the ridiculous hat and cloak to the side and we perched in ugly, mismatched, but really comfortable cast-off chairs, paper plates on makeshift tables Rupert had knocked together out of discarded lumber years ago, the gas logs turned on high to heat the frozen room. In an uncomfortable silence, we ate heaping portions of three mostly vegetarian dishes with chopsticks.
    The fare wasn’t up to a visiting mage’s palette. He’d probably expected state dinners or something. I hid a smile as he inspected a chunk of meat. Even with a mage’s increased need for calories and protein, I don’t eat meat. It tends to disagree with my digestion. Eggs—costly in midwinter, in a mini ice age—and dairy provide some of my protein, but the bulk of it comes from soy and other beans, which I didn’t try to foist off on him. The town citizens eat a lot of pork year-round, and I figured the nibblets in the fried rice were chopped, spiced pork, which should have made him happy from a strictly caloric viewpoint. It didn’t. Fortunately, we ate in silence and he didn’t complain.
    However, he did seem to like the Dancing Bear Brew, which he complimented by drinking three. The Appalachian Mountains are famous for guns, quilts, pottery, and especially beer, and are infamous for moonshine, not that I had any on hand or even knew where to purchase it. Kirk elders tend to punish hard drinkers by branding. I had enough scars without adding to them.
    When the meal was finished, he sighed and relaxed in the padded wingback chair. Cheran Jones, like most mages, was smaller than an average human, standing a little more than five feet and less than a hundred twenty pounds. He should have looked innocent and childlike in the big chair. He didn’t. There was something calculating about him, and it set my teeth on edge.
    I’m a bit shy of five feet and haven’t weighed myself in years. My size usually doesn’t bother me, but in the presence of the mage, I really wished I was bigger. Which meant that, on some level, I was afraid of him. Being afraid ticked me off.
    I’d have been a lot more afraid if he had been a stone mage instead of a metal mage and whatever else he was, the parts of himself he had kept hidden when I searched through his mind. A stone mage would have felt the pull of the special amethyst kept in metal boxes in the stockroom.
    I had a moment of discomfort. I hadn’t thought about the possibility that the stone could charge the metal. If it had, then a metal mage might be able to sense the power so close by, even power so drained. And Cheran was awfully close to the metal boxes. Stupid to have put him so close to that much power. I wondered what else I was overlooking about my unwanted visitor. But Cheran hadn’t looked toward the stockroom even once.
    The amethyst hidden there had broken off from the wheels belonging to the cherub, Holy Amethyst, and though the living ship had been healed, or repaired, or whatever had been done to it to make it whole, the pieces had been left to me. They were bound to me on a psychic level, and just the thought of the large purple crystals sent a soft crooning into my mind. I