Archer came to me on Sunday afternoon. I was lying on my bed wondering for the millionth time how I'd gotten away from my aunt, when a soft knock sounded. I bounded out of bed and ran to answer the door. I hesitated right before opening it and ran a hand down my hair to smooth it.
He stood on the other side of it smirking as if he'd known I was fixing my hair. I glared at him. "What?"
He pushed through the door forcing me to step out of the way. "Now is that any way to greet a man who's going to show you how to unleash your magic?"
I blinked at him. "Excuse me?"
He spun around, his hands wide as if he were a conductor in a circus. "Yes! Me! Little old me." Archer winked. "So you better be nice to me."
"How do you plan on doing that?"
"I'm a seer, Cassidy, not an idiot. I don't have any woo woo magic," he said as he wiggled his fingers, "but I do know how to see magic, and I know how to access it."
"Do your parents know you're doing this?"
His expression darkened for a moment before he shook it off. "I, like every other teenager in existence, do not tell my parents everything."
"Then why?"
He reached over and shut my door. With a tug of his hand, he jerked me closer to him and whispered in my ear. "Because Cassidy Montreal, your magic is going to save your life. I've seen it."
I jerked away and stared at him in disbelief. "Seen? As in seen, seen?"
One of his eyebrows rose. "Seen seen? So eloquent." He clicked his tongue. "But to answer your question, I had quite the vivid dream about you last night." He leered at me.
Heat rushed to my cheeks. "Archer. Gross."
"Is it?" he asked, still standing so perilously close to me.
No. It wasn't. I scoffed and shoved him away. "How do you plan on helping me?"
He plopped onto my bed and kicked his shoes off. "When magic first blooms, it's usually for a few reasons." He held up a finger. "First, fear." Another finger. "Anger." A third finger and an eyebrow waggle. "Lust." And then a fourth. "And finally grief. You, my dear, have gone through at least three of those. If you've been in lust, I haven't noticed it, though my feelings are quite hurt that you haven't gazed upon me with your lovely sky blue eyes and swooned at my manliness."
"When you say the word manliness, it makes me want to punch you in the nuts."
Archer pretended like he was flipping the page of an imaginary notebook and crossing out something. "So lust is off the table." His amber gaze met mine. "And hopefully so is all future talk of punching me in the nuts." A hopeful expression lit his face.
"Nerd," I said without heat.
"Good." He pretended to cross something off. "No nut punching," he murmured under his breath. "Back to your magic. We're going to cause your emotions to run higher than normal to see if we can trigger something."
I shook my head. "I don't think it's going to work. I lived under my aunt's roof for years and my magic never triggered. Not even when I was scared for my life."
Archer pondered this for a moment before dismissing it. "It isn't the same thing. Not really. I think in the back of your mind, you always knew she wouldn't kill you. She just wanted to hurt you. Your aunt wanted you to fear her."
A tremor began in my hands. "It didn't feel that way," I whispered, but as I thought about it, I wondered if maybe he was right. I'd come to expect a beating every single time I walked in the door. I expected the verbal and emotional abuse all the time. But had she ever really hurt me enough to where I thought I might die? No. She hadn't. When I really dissected it, I always wondered if she needed me for something.
