Putting one foot in front of the other, there wasn’t any place I really wanted to go. I was in no hurry to get home. They were less then thrilled with me, and that was before they found out I was fired. 
Again. 
Following the sidewalk down the hill from the university district into downtown, I watched the predawn light glow brighter as the sun thought about waking up too. Traffic was starting to pick up. Small coffee shops were starting to open for the early morning rush. The city was starting to get up and moving again. 
I considered trolling the mall, see if there was any job openings at the few stores I hadn’t worked at already. But I was just so done with the mall right now, and I really didn’t want to have to cross paths with Nick the Dick again.
I spent the rest of the morning nursing a cup of coffee at a tiny run down cafe near the ferry docks and trying to figure out what I was going to do with myself. At this point it was pretty clear I couldn’t cut it in the world outside of the police force.
(Sigh)
So now what?
It was nearly noon by the time I found my way to a tired and crumbling brownstone row house block, in the older part of downtown. It might have not been the best maintained part of town, but it was clean and quiet and filled with hard working people, even if they didn’t have the most money in the world. 
Jess’s neighborhood. 
It was a weekend, I knew he would be in. 

The old wooden kitchen chair creaked as my cousin Jess leaned back to stretch. It always irked him how slow I played poker, so he always felt the need to make a big show of him waiting. 
What? I liked to think about my cards and my next move. It's not like it was against the rules.
Besides I didn't really come over here every week to play poker. 
Jess was the only other family member I knew that didn’t have magic. 
Growing up he had been my exact opposite. While I had been born with all my magic, he had been born with nothing. Not even the tiniest of sparks. He wasn’t even magically receptive. 
Though most kids don’t have any signs of magical affinity until they hit puberty, even as a small child, the family knew there was something a little different about Jess. The way he could never even see magic, the way he could pass right through a spell and not even know it, the way he could hold a potion right in his hands and feel nothing. Even norms feel something.
His parents didn’t want to believe it, were holding out for the chance he was just a late awakener, but once he hit his twenties it was hard to ignore, he was a complete Void.
Having a child born with no magic into a family, isn’t unusual. In fact, most children don’t ever develop magic, and in non-magical families the child wouldn’t even be called a Void, they would just be a “normal” kid. 
But we were a family of police witches. Everyone had magic. Everyone that could be, was on the force or supported the police in some way. 
The O’Shanney’s hadn’t had a Void born into our family in generations.
Of course, Jess was still family, so no one shunned him or anything. But . . . he wasn’t really part of everything either. Everyone tried to be very kind to Jess, always checking on him, always giving him pats and gifts and sympathy. As if he was very sick, very fragile. 
Broken. 
Jess was ten years older than me, and I had grown up watching how the family always treated Jess with padded gloves. During family gatherings, in kitchens and back poarches, old aunties and grannies in hushed voices always referred to Jess as, “That Poor Child”. As a kid, me and my siblings were never allowed to say anything that might upset Jess, and we were never ever allowed to talk to him about magic. 
That left him always standing on the sidelines, watching the family, but never really a part of the action.
Just like I was now. 
I didn’t want to see that up close. I don’t think I could take the sympathetic looks, the too kind words, the sad side glances. Not of the magic I never developed, but of all the magic I had, and lost.
I loved my family, even if I couldn’t be around them anymore. So instead I hung out with Jess about once a week. We played cards at a tiny little table in his cramped old kitchen, we drank cheap beer, and we talked about the family as some of the few stuck on the outside looking in.
He thumbed his cards and tried to act casual as he mentioned the same thing he'd been nagging me about for the past year.
Once again. 
"You know, you could just come to dinner some time, Ange." 
I rolled my eyes and focused on my cards. A flush just wasn't going to work, I'm pretty sure he already had some of the cards I wanted. 
Jess pressed on. 
"You know everyone misses you, right?" 
Maybe I should just face it that my cards were crap and fold?
Jess sighed and scrubbed his hand over his face.
“When’s the last time you spoke to your mother? Do you have any idea how worried she is about you?”
Jess poked his finger in my direction with every point he made.
“That puca friend of yours. What was her name? Kerry! She calls your mum more than you do.”
I rolled my eyes again.
“She’s not a puca, her name is Kari, and she had no right to call anyone from my family.”
Jess folded his arms over his chest and gave me a pointed look.
“Well, if they’re your family, then maybe you should talk to them, yah?”
I glowered at him then turned back to my hand.
“Are we playing cards or not?”
Jess brought it up almost every time I came over. He visited the family every Sunday for dinner. He had been doing that for years. He never lost touch with them, not even for a moment. That was great for me, because I could always just talk to him if I wanted a family up date. But what he didn’t understand was I didn’t grow up being an outsider, I wasn’t strong like he was,  I just couldn’t do that.
We shuffled our cards around in our hands and the silence stretched on until Jess broke it.
“Alright, well think about it, yah?”
I nodded and focused on my cards.
“So, what’s going on with you?”
I jerked my head up from my hand.
“Huh?”
He raised an eyebrow at me.
“You haven’t said a word yet about your week, so what’s going on? How’s that Kerry girl doing? Last I heard you were looking around for some murderer that got her parents. Did you ever catch’em?”
I shook my head slowly, I was staring at my cards, but not really seeing them. I had to swallow my dry throat a few times before I could speak.
“Kari . . . Kari’s not doing so great. She’s in the hospital. It looks like she got the murderer though. So there is that.”
Jess nodded slowly.
“That’s a real shame about your friend, Angie. She was a real corker, and I hope she pulls through alright.”
I shrugged shuffling my hand around.
“I’m sure she’ll pull through. That girl is like a ping pong ball, she always bounces back.”
A flash of remembered outrage flared, tensing up my spine.
“Not that her family isn’t acting like I’m the bad guy somehow.”
Jess raised another eyebrow.
“Oh? And what did you do?”
I clicked my tongue and scowled at him.
“And why do you think I did anything?”
Jess flashed me a smile, while putting down some cards and dealing some out to himself.
“ ‘Cause I know you, Ange. So spill it, what did you do to bring their ire?”
A flash of fire burned through my veins, and I slapped my cards down on the table.
“What did I do? I did nothing! I just said what everyone was thinking, and suddenly they were mad at me for nothing. Those thugs even threw me out of the hospital room. Slammed the door right in my face! I could not believe them. Just because something bad happened doesn’t mean they get to take it out on me!”
Jess held up both his hands. 
"Hold up, hold up. Tell me exactly what you said to them." 
And so I did, with my cousin groaning and holding his forehead with every word. Seriously, what was wrong with him? 
"Ange, you remember when you told cousin Shannon that her Bundt cake tasted like a obsession hex?" 
I nodded emphatically. 
"Yeah, the cake was delicious. It was the type of cake you didn't even know you liked until you tried it, and then once you started eating it, you just wanted more and more. Just like an obsession hex. I told her how much I liked it, and for some reason she blew up at me. That woman has some anger issues." 
Jess nodded, chuckling a little. 
"Ange, you're not so good with your words."
 I scowled. 
"What do you mean, I'm great with my words." 
Jesse sighed. 
"When you told cousin Shannon that her cake tasted like an obsession hex, what she heard was that you called her cake a hex." 
I sniffed and crossed my arms over my chest. 
"Then she needs to get her ears checked." 
Jess rubbed a hand over his face, a tired gesture. 
"Angie, honey, I love you but your communication skills are crap. You need to stop thinking about how you hear your words and start thinking about how other people might be hearing them."