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words.
    Then the glass of water on the bedside table levitated, slowly, up into the air. It hovered there about eight inches above the table-top. The bendable straw in it moved a little bit from the upward movement, but the cup was steady. Gran was really good at levitating, like all brownies. She’d served me tea in china cups like this since I was very small.
    The lamp beside the cup also began to rise. Then the water pitcher bobbled upward. The lamp got to the end of its cord, and moved gently in the air like a boat moored to a dock. It was all very gentle, so why was my heart rate skyrocketing, and my pulse choking me? Because brownies don’t lose control of their powers. Ever. But bogarts do. What’s a bogart? A brownie gone bad. What do I mean by that? Darth Vader is still a Jedi Knight, right? The Christians still believe that Lucifer is a fallen angel, but what most people forget is that he’s still an angel.
    Dr. Mason had a death grip on her stethoscope again. “I don’t know what’s happening here exactly, but I know it’s upsetting my patient. So, it stops now, or I will call security, or the police, and have this room cleared.” Her voice was only a little shaky as she watched the bobbing lamp and floating cup.
    “Gran,” Galen said, his voice sounding loud in the sudden silence. She had stopped yelling. In fact, the room felt too quiet, like that hush that falls upon the world just before the heavens open and a storm crushes the world.
    “Gran,” I said softly, and my voice held the panic of my pulse in it. “Please, Gran, please don’t do this.”
    Galen and Rhys were still between her and me, so I couldn’t see her, but I could feel her. I could feel her magic as it spread through the room. The pen lifted out of the doctor’s pocket. She made a small yip.
    Rhys said, “You told me once, Hettie, that Meg went bogart because she was weak, and let her anger best her. Are you weak, Hettie? Will you let your anger be your master, or will you be the master of your anger?” There was more to his words than just what I could hear. There was power to his voice that was more than just words. Power, magic of a sort, filled his words like the push of the tide fills the riffling of waves. Waves can be small, but there is always that sense that behind the easy froth that curls around your ankles, there is something much larger, much less gentle. So it was with Rhys’s voice, simple words, but there was a feel to them that made you want to agree with them. Made you want to be reasonable. He would never have tried such a trick on another sidhe, but Gran wasn’t sidhe. Try as she might, even to marrying one of the great sidhe, she was lesser, and magic that would not work on the great might work on her.
    It was both an insult from someone she thought a friend, and a move of desperation, because if it didn’t work, then Rhys might have done the proverbial sowing of the wind. I prayed to Goddess that he wouldn’t reap the whirlwind.
    Doyle said, “Go, Doctor, go now.”
    She started for the door, but said over her shoulder, “I’m getting the police.”
    Rhys kept talking to Gran, slow, reasonable. Doyle said, “Unless the officers can do magic, they can’t help here.”
    Dr. Mason was at the door when the water pitcher smashed itself to pieces so close to her head that the plastic cut her cheek. She screamed, and Galen started to go to her, then hesitated at the foot of the bed. He was torn between helping the woman and staying at my side. Rhys, Doyle, and Sholto had no such conflict. They moved up to the bed. They meant to simply shield me, I think, but Gran stepped back. I could see her, now that Galen was halfway to the door.
    She stepped back, hands at her sides balled into fists. Her brown eyes were too wide, showing white. Her thin chest rose and fell like she’d been running. The big chair in the corner rose into the air.
    “Gran, no!” I yelled, and reached out, as if my outstretched hand