LINKDING

<blockquote>The money was necessary but the thing of greater value was the life force of the ghost. Powering spells took energy. It had to come from somewhere and she could either siphon from a living person. Or she could consume a ghost. One of those choices also paid the rent.</blockquote> ➤ a fascinating world to look into, through the eyes of a believably difficult sibling relationship, but the ending note feels wrong

<blockquote>If Evina waited much longer it would be full dark, and the tavern would almost certainly have a godforsaken bard by then. As if that weren’t bad enough, by the pricking of the hair along her arms, there had to be at least five other mages in easy walking distance. No surprise, really, given King Redinado’s annual quest. That’s what forced her to the capital, after all.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The mudroom got darn hot in the summer, but he couldn’t risk doing magic inside the house. It got into the air conditioning and caused all kinds of trouble. Some magics he’d chance, but the Lord knew he didn’t want anything interfering with Edna’s health.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“Botheration.” He tied off the thread in the fine blue leather of the gloves he was stitching and snipped it with the little pair of silver shears he’d snuck out of the master’s shop. Be his hide if he were caught taking them home, but worse if he bit the thread off instead of snipping it neat. No telling what his saliva would do when the guild brownie added the beauty spell to it.</blockquote>

<blockquote>By this point, Dorothy was my doctor. Let me be more specific. She was the geriatric specialist who was evaluating me. On Mars. I was in for what I thought was a routine check-up to make sure I was still fit to be an astronaut. NASA liked to update its database periodically and I liked to be in that database. Not that I’d flown since I turned fifty, but I kept my name on the list in the faint hope that they would let me back into space again, and I kept going to the darn check-ups. Our previous doctor had retired back to Earth, and I’d visited Dorothy’s offices three times before she mentioned Kansas and the prairie.</blockquote> ➤ THANKS FOR MAKING ME CRY. Wow what a good story