“I wish I could tell you more. It would make my life a lot easier if I could just explain it all, but,” she trailed off and gave a halfhearted shrug. Nobody else believed her when they asked her about the solution, and it led her to stop responding. Whatever was behind that curse from Needful Things didn’t want to have the solution revealed.
When he brought up her magic, Isabel shifted on the barstool and dropped her eyes to her mug. “Of course I’m troubled,” she mumbled. She’d been trying to swallow all of her feelings so that she could deal with them later, but that didn’t stop the obsessive attention that she paid to her fingertips when she used her hands. “It’s complicated for me. My relationship with my magic. I stoped using it for a while,” she explained, closing her eyes. “Back home, someone I was close to disappeared after our magic interacted. I attributed it to my own magic and decided that I wouldn’t use mine unless I was in danger.”
“When I arrived, I let my guard down and used my magic again. I was prideful in showing people what I could do, and then it was gone.” She gave her fingers a silent snap before opening her eyes. “I’m sure I sound crazy, but that’s how I feel. I miss my magic and love it, Eadwulf. I don’t know how to get people to like me now without it. I can’t make illusions. I feel empty, and,” she paused and broke eye contact with him, opting for the coffee in his hands as as a focusing point, “I just want that feeling to go away.”