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water are both water, but not the same to the touch.
    So. Detect magic. That’s what I needed, for the moment. I pushed on my power as I closed my eyes, visualizing it in my head as coating my sight and giving me the ability to see what I should be able to only sense.
    In DnD, detect magic can be dangerous. If there is too much magic or the spells used around you are too high of a level, you’ll knock yourself out. I hoped that real life wasn’t like that. With the warlock who had tried to kill my friends, I’d been able to sense his magic as a wrongness, like smelling rot or mold even if you can’t see it.
    I opened my eyes and looked at the body. Nothing. Maybe I was failing to do what I wanted to do, magically. There were no other sorcerers around to cast a spell so I could see if it was working. I hadn’t been able to sense the warlock’s magic until I touched his victim. I really didn’t want to do that, but if it would help, if it would save lives, well… Part of being an adult is doing things you don’t want to do, right?
    I swallowed bile and tried to not breathe as I bent down over the body and laid my hand on his arm. Fuck adulthood. His skin was cold. Very cold. Like he’d been frozen. A deep shiver twisted my spine, locking up my muscles for a moment, and darkness crept in at the corners of my vision. Then the world turned white, trees and sky and ripped up body disappearing under a blanket of freezing white light.
    “Jade.” Alek’s voice and warm hands brought me back. I wasn’t touching the body anymore, instead I was feet away, Alek holding me in his arms as I lay half prone on the churned up ground.
    “Rage,” I muttered. My tongue felt too thick, my mouth full of sourness, and an unnatural cold, deep hatred still rang inside me. “Something is really angry, and it isn’t normal.” I wasn’t sure I was making much sense.
    Alek lifted me up. “You’re freezing,” he muttered. “I’m taking her to my trailer. We will talk later, after you have spoken to your Crow spirit,” he said to Sky Heart.
    I let Alek carry me like a damsel in distress all the way back to his little home on wheels, my mind slowly un-fracturing as I tried to parse what had happened. There was magic at work, which I guess was pretty obvious from the whole exploded chest thing. It wasn’t sorcery though, not my brand of it. It wasn’t anything I had any experience with, which wasn’t saying much, alas. I’d spent the better part of twenty-five years running away from Samir and avoiding magic and magical things at all costs. I didn’t exactly have a talking skull or a giant library of musty tomes to research this stuff. Just impressions and guesses.
    I pressed my face against Alek’s chest, his shifter warmth seeping slowly into my body. I was supposed to be at home with my friends, leveling up in anticipation of all of us getting killed by my psycho ex, not back reliving childhood trauma and playing amateur detective. It wasn’t fair. Sky Heart and the People had cast me out. They deserved whatever they got. It wasn’t my problem.
    Whining about my lot in life and blaming the victims of terrible crimes? Weird.
    I called up my magic again, letting it flow through me, this time for warmth and to purge all feeling of whatever it was I’d sensed on Redtail’s corpse. I’m not a stranger to self-pity parties, but the anger rising in me felt off, unnatural. My power shoved it back, pushing away the cold and the resentment until I felt more like myself.
    Rage. Resentment. Hatred. All lingering strongly on the body of a man who had probably felt none of those things. I doubted it was his ghost or spirit.
    I didn’t know much about spirits, but I knew some. Samir had been interested in all that stuff. He had multiple giant libraries full of musty tomes, though I’d ever only seen one in person. He had kept me away from the book learning, being uninterested in me gaining real knowledge. He had only wanted me to