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made a very long list of why magic vexed her and added this latest insult to the list, but she was too angry. She had gone to ridiculous lengths to make sure that her future had remained hidden. She had never talked about her plans with her mother or Ned—and certainly not her brother. She had never even hinted that she might want to live anywhere but where she lived. She likely should have left home at ten-and-five and chanced a village on the other side of the mountains, but she’d remained another ten very long years simply to make certain that when she left, she would leave with enough to begin a successful, respectable life somewhere else.
    If someone else didn’t manage it first, she was going to find her brother—who she was certain was responsible for her loss—and kill him.
    That, or perhaps she would slip up behind him, clunk him over the head, then tie him up until he could be delivered to some sort of mage-ish tribunal where they would surely sentence him to some sort of disgusting labor as punishment for his vile self simply drawing breath. She kicked a tidy pile of dirt back into its hole, then stomped out into the glade. She paused by her cauldron, saw the remains of her fire that had long since ceased to be of any use, then peered inside the pot. The contents were a vile, putrid sort of green.
    Unsurprising.
    She was revisiting the thought of going after her brother to do him bodily harm when she became distracted by a noise that wasn’t quite audible coming from her mother’s house. She looked up to see a thin stream of something coming out of the chimney, something that wasn’t smoke. As she watched, the house trembled for a moment or two, then with an enormous rumble, collapsed onto itself. Only part of one wall remained, the wall that supported the bulk of her mother’s bottles. There were a few of them left sitting on the windowsill, their colors rather pretty in the faint winter sunlight, all things considered.
    She gaped at the ruin, then shut her mouth with a snap. Perhaps Daniel had more magic than she had supposed. And if that was the case, the farther away from him she was, the better. And the sooner she was about that, even with the pitiful coins she had in her hand currently, the safer she would be. She crossed the glade, then walked into the barn and whistled for her horse, fully expecting to see him poke his nose immediately over his stall door.
    But he didn’t.
    She walked over to his stall, then looked inside. There in front of her stood not a chestnut gelding, but rather a chestnut dog. A big dog, actually, that drooled. A big dog with hooves the size of halved melons.
    “Castân?” she said in astonishment.
    He whinnied at her.
    Sarah could hardly believe her eyes. Daniel again at his work, apparently. She would have cursed him for it a bit longer, but the barn had begun to creak in a very unwholesome way. She jerked open the stall door, snatched up a blanket and a feed bag, then bolted for the open door, leaving her horse—er, her onetime horse, rather—to follow, which he did with just as much enthusiasm as he always had. He came to a skidding stop in the middle of the glade, then turned and leaned against her leg as she watched the barn collapse just as the house had. Sarah let her gear slide from her fingers, wrapped the blanket around herself, then looked at her ... dog. She took a deep breath.
    “We have problems.”
    He seemed to agree. Silently.
    “The first of which being that I don’t have a way to fix you.”
    He only looked up at her with sad brown eyes.
    She couldn’t fix any of the rest of it either. She looked around herself in silent wonder at the ruin that had become her life. Almost all of her gold was gone, her home was gone, her future buried under bits of barn it would take her a week to clear away, and her brother was no doubt currently telling the villagers a secret that would have them up in arms the moment they heard it.
    Then that brother would be