MONDAY: Portable Magic

BY ANTOINE J. HAYES

Copyright is held by the author.

EBONY DIDN’T know when she started hovering above her bed. She guessed it was somewhere around Chapter Seven; the heroine had just finished her training and was ready to embark on her mission to return magic to the world when an unexpected hiccup threatened to end her quest before it began. Major characters had been established, and Ebony didn’t trust one shifty guy from the get go — the same one who snitched to the night watch about their plan. She was furious, as if the book’s heroine was her real life best friend, and she continued reading — chapters eight through 10, when the protagonist and crew escaped imprisonment — seething with rage.

Aware of her levitation, Ebony turned page after page. Her brown fingers were ashy and numb from constant usage, but she didn’t care. The story mattered. She pulled her crisscrossed legs in tighter into her, batting down for a long night. Ebony yawned, looked out the window at the full moon, and whispered, “Just one more chapter.”