I carried the precious pile of fairy dust from the kitchen of the Safe Harbor Café out to the front of the house, where Lily was working. “How much can you dampen down your nullification power?”

“Not enough not to ruin that. But I don’t know. Its power may not just be magical. Maybe it works like a bee marking a flower? Like with pheromones.” She looked at the fairy’s precious gift in my hand.

“I wondered that, too. Maybe it will be enough that I’m wearing it?” With that, I dabbed my fingers into the pile in my hand and smeared the glittering dust across my forehead. It tingled with a soft brush of magic. My body recognized the magic of someone I had recently healed and responded to it. It reminded me of the Sadhus of India with the red smears across their foreheads.

Lily closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. While she began her meditation, I went to my moon box under the counter and grabbed two round chunks of gypsum rock formations called desert roses. The properties of the gypsum roses didn’t matter so much. What mattered was that it was the rock I associated with Lily and frequently used to heal her. When we first met, I selected it for her because it was a stone flower, and she had the name of a flower. I doubted this healing would drain my life force, but I needed the power boost that came from the rocks charged up by the café. With the small round rock in my hand, I reached out one finger and dragged it through the fairy dust in my opposite hand. Then I smeared it on her forehead.

“Oww! It burns,” she screamed and reached up to wipe it off. Her eyes went wide, and her forehead turned red under the dust.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Leave it! It’s just your body reacting to pure magic. You’ll nullify it in a second but maybe this way, some of it will survive.” I held her hands and the rock between our palms. I didn’t do it often since I thought it was a bit invasive, but I sent waves of calm into Lily. I figured I knew her well enough to make that call. She stopped fighting me and nodded. She knew what I was doing. Having her permission made me bolder, and I sent stronger and stronger waves. I could see her body fighting against the fairy’s magic. Her skin turned red and blistered. Her eyes swelled shut. It was an allergic reaction. I tried to reach for her magic to dampen it and turn it toward healing. But her magic was in overdrive, attacking every bit of the fairy’s blessing.

I tried to get her magic to turn against me. Usually, it didn’t react to my magic. I think it saw me as part of the natural healing process. I started pushing more firmly against her magic with mine. It was a much more intimate feeling than I usually had when I was working inside of someone. I was intentionally sliding all over her magic, trying to get it to pay attention to me. It did, with a resounding wump. The rocks that usually protected me crumbled in my hands under the attention of her magic. Her magic began to suck mine down and push it out of her body. I felt my control over my magic slipping as it fell into the vortex of hers. Usually, her magic just suffocated other people’s. Inside her body, it was stronger and began to gobble up my magic. It was totally ignoring the fairy dust now, which was good because it was eating away at all the calm I had given her. I saw her face pass from drugged to pained. Then she realized what her magic was doing to mine. She shoved me back, and I stumbled, almost falling. My own bruised magic whipped back to me.

I brushed the rock dust off my hands onto my jeans. Losing a chunk of my magic burned. The room spun around me, and I grabbed the counter to steady myself. Slowing my breathing, I was able to think clearly enough to realize I needed to sit down. I sat. For the first time, I felt afraid of Lily. Our magic always had sort of ignored each other, or, more to the point, her magic ignored mine. This was the only way we could function as a team. Her magic was too powerful. Too uncontrollable. It wasn’t the magic of canceling out or muting. It was the magic of eating. It was terrifying. It was spiritual cannibalism.

“I’m sorry. Oh, Harper. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Are you okay? Is your magic still there?” Lily asked. She sounded scared and small. Her usually perfect hair had fallen, the bun dangling drunkenly, and her poof had gone flat.

“I’m okay. Lily, what was that? That wasn’t losing my life force from healing. You were eating my magic!” I put my head down and couldn’t look at her when I accused her.

“No. I wasn’t. I mean, maybe a little bit. But not on purpose. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t mean to do it to you. I’m sorry. It just sort of happened when you made my magic so mad.” She held her hands together as if in prayer, but she kept changing the lacing of the fingers. Intertwining them one way and then another. It was as if she kept changing her mind about who she was praying to. Was she praying to her god? Imploring me for forgiveness? Or begging her magic not to gobble us all up?

“I’m okay, Lily. But I didn’t even know you could do that? I wouldn’t have provoked your magic if I had known that could happen. Is that a new thing?” I asked her.

“No, it’s a very, very old thing. My magic has always been hungry. It took me a long time to learn more control. But since I started just to use it to mute people’s powers, it’s been much easier to live with it. It was bad when I was a kid. I’m sorry. I haven’t eaten anyone’s magic in so long that I never thought to mention it to you. I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you go around volunteering. ‘Hi, I’m Lily, and I sometimes eat people’s magic. They survive. Mostly.’ It’s bad enough to be a nullifier. Eating is something else entirely,” Lily said.

I put my hand over my eyes and breathed in. I could feel my magic, jagged and raw. I looked at Lily and was about to speak. I stopped and walked over to her. The fairy dust was still visible on her forehead, and her skin under it looked better. It was broken out in small zits, but it no longer looked blistered and raw. “The dust is still there!”

“Really? No way. How is that even possible?” she asked, reaching up as if to touch it to see for herself. I grabbed her hand so she couldn’t wipe it off after how hard we had worked to get it on there.

“Who knows? Although, if you’re an eater and not a null, a lot more stuff makes sense. I thought it was weird that the Safe could exist around you and that I could heal people around you. But if you’re not eating our magic, that must be why,” I told her. “I’m sorry I got mad at you for the whole magic thing.” I sort of gestured vaguely.

“Umm, don’t apologize. I ate your magic. That’s not okay. You can and should be mad at me. It’s okay to be mad when people do inappropriate things to you,” Lily assured me. “And the Safe is too big to gobble up.”

“I know. But I still provoked it. It’s not like I was walking down the street, and your magic jumped out of a dark corner to snack on mine. I was inside your body, waving my arms and jumping around. I was pretty much asking for it,” I explained to her. I was lucky that I hadn’t been hurt worse. My magic wasn’t integral to my person. I was basically just a human, and I didn’t need my magic to do anything like live or breathe. It stood to reason that I could physically survive the loss of it. But emotionally, I couldn’t. Who would I be if I couldn’t heal people? How would I survive in the world without my magic? I’d have to be normal, the worst fate of all. It would be a long time before I would feel comfortable working my magic on Lily, which was a shame because our working relationship, and my work as the guardian is the most important thing in my life. I couldn’t imagine life without her. I wanted to use my magic to keep her healthy and alive.

On an impulse, I got up and hugged her, and she sagged against me. My poor Lily. Half the people we know are terrified of her, and the other half loves her for what she can do. They love that she makes them live or calms their inner beast. But if word got out that she could eat magic, they would all be afraid of her. She always looked so perfect in her pin-up, retro dresses, and heels, with her makeup perfectly done. But inside, she was a mess, wound so tight from constantly trying to keep her control from slipping and from hiding this big secret. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone. It’s fine. I’ve practically lived with you for the last two years, and I didn’t know until now. I don’t think anyone else will find out.”

“Thanks. It’s just so ugly and embarrassing. I don’t want people to know. Plus, I’m scared of the larger implications. What if the vampires think I can ‘cure’ them by eating the magic that makes them vamp? Do you know what they would do to me? If they didn’t kill me on principle, I think they would keep me in a dungeon, eating nothing but magic until I died or went too crazy to cure any more of them. What I am, it’s not a safe thing to be. There’s nothing about it that works well for me. It’s going to get me killed one day, I think,” Lily said. It was the first time she had ever admitted to me that she was scared of dying. It wasn’t unusual for guardians to die. We were lucky to have a powerful entity like the spirit of the guardhouse behind us and to live in an area that was peaceful, in large part because of the spirit of the guardhouse’s involvement. I’d never given much thought to it, probably because it wasn’t a very pleasant thing to think about. It’s easier for me to ignore the bad things I can’t change than it is to obsess about them. Lily obsessed.

“Nah, that’s not what’s going to get you killed. I’m going to get you killed,” I said as a joke, but then I winced some. Because it wasn’t a joke, she actually could die protecting me. We were the guardians. And of the two of us, she was the more powerful one. Delivering justice and keeping the peace was not without its risks.

“Do you want something to eat? I have ice cream in the back,” I told her.

“I love you, too,” Lily said.

“What?” I asked.

“You always offer people food when you’re worried about them, and you care about them. It’s sweet. Thank you. I don’t want any ice cream, though, and I don’t need any more coffee. But I appreciate it. You’re a good friend.” Lily smiled at me with her perfect red lips. I smiled back.