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brain raided.
    “No, your thoughts are still your own,” Lizzie assured the other woman. “Burn out. You know how it is.”
    The other woman didn’t seem satisfied with that answer, but she nodded all the same.
    “From now on, just try to avoid touching me as much as possible.” She hadn’t been able to completely read Pari, but she’d gotten enough to know she didn’t really need to.
    “As long as there is some sort of barrier between us, like cloth, I usually don’t get any stray thoughts, but sometimes I do. It’s best to just stay as far away from me as possible.” Even though she wasn’t looking at him, she could see Layne’s lips tighten at her words. “I’ll try to keep my distance from Caroline as well, but honestly, you might want me to read her every once in awhile. I can usually understand what a kid wants even better than they do.” Because kids didn’t always understand things like exhaustion or hunger.
    “Thank you for your consideration,” Pari said.
    “She didn’t do it for nothing,” Layne said as if he had a right to speak for her. Lizzie didn’t fail to notice the way he was trying to paint her in the same broad strokes of villainy as Pari painted Alistair. “We showed you ours, now it’s time for you to show us yours.”
    At first Lizzie thought perhaps Pari was ignoring Layne’s request. Instead of answering, she grabbed a glass from the side table. But instead of taking a drink, she held the glass in front of her and concentrated on the water inside. Nothing seemed to happen for the first few seconds, but then Lizzie saw it. The water was moving. A few seconds later, all the water was out of the glass and floating in the air like a ribbon. It floated to the center of the room and then wound itself into a circle. The circle turned into a watery snowflake. The snap of Pari’s fingers broke the silence of the room. The snowflake scattered into a mist that fell on the room, leaving tiny droplets in Lizzie’s eyelashes.
    “That’s Caroline’s favorite trick,” Pari said, brushing the moisture off her shoulders.
    “You’re a Thaumaturgic.” Even though she hadn’t been conscious of it, she must have picked up on something when she’d touched her earlier, because the moment the water started rising out of the glass, something - a so-that-is-what-that-was-about something - clicked in her brain. “That’s cool,” Lizzie said. “I have a friend who can control earth.”
    Pari’s eyebrows were dark and high arching, which meant she looked more expressive than most people when she drew them together in confusion. “A Thauma-what?”
    After Pari’s display with the water, Layne started pacing around the windows once again. He flicked back a curtain and scowled at the landscape. “Thaumaturgic,” he said somewhat off-handedly. “Noun. A person who can manipulate some particular form of matter. Example sentence: Pari is a Thaumaturgic who can control water.” Whatever he was looking at outside ceased to hold his attention and he turned once again towards Pari. “Can you change its form? Turn a plain glass of water into ice or vapor?”
    “I don’t know what this Thaumaturgic thing is, but I’m a Water Fae, and Water Fae can only move water from place to place. We can’t change its form or make it appear out of nowhere.”
    Layne met Lizzie’s eyes. “Fae?”
    “It’s another word for fairy,” she told him. Before falling in love with historical romances she’d had an appetite for fantasy novels. She was particularly fond of the ones where young girls were whisked off to magical lands with strange but beautiful creatures. That changed when she was actually whisked off to a not-so-magical castle with beautiful but cruel creatures.
    She had a feeling Pari could strongly identify.
    “So… you’re a fairy?” Layne snorted. “No offense, but Lizzie here looks a lot more like a Scottish water fairy than you do.”
    Pari waved a hand in front of her as if she was