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the table.  “It was pretty mad, though.”
    Fortunately, his desire for secrets hadn’t yet extended to his ability to keep one.  She grinned and ruffled his hair.  “I thought we had rules about playing with fire magic on your own.”
    “I know.  I was being careful.”  His eyes were serious.  “I was trying to make a dragon that only had a teeny-tiny bit of fire.”
    That sounded like trying to make an ocean that was only a teeny-tiny bit wet.  However, Nell didn’t accuse her kids of anything without making darn sure she wasn’t going off half-cocked.  “Want to show me?”
    He eyed her for a moment, and then tipped his head in close and spoke in his adorably loud stage whisper.  “Okay, but you can’t tell Uncle Jamie what I’m doing.”
    Solstice gift in progress.  Nell snagged a cookie before they all disappeared, caught up in his bubbly excitement.  There were crazier things than dragons, and his control was enviable.  And if it slipped, it wouldn’t be the first time the basement had needed a paint job.  “I promise.”
    Aervyn waved two fingers and threw up a new training circle.
    Nell blinked—from this side, she could see just how massive it was.  She eyed her youngest son.  “Just a teeny dragon, huh?”  The circle was solid enough to contain a herd of fire-breathing pteranodons.
    He snickered, his fingers weaving something far more complicated now.  “It’s not for the fire.  I’m trying to do your layering spells, and they’re getting all squiggly on me.  The last one tried to make a tornado on accident.”  He looked sheepish.  “I tried to hook the ends together and I missed, cuz they’re really teeny tiny.”
    You didn’t survive the everyday chaos of the Sullivan-Walker family without being quick on the magical uptake.  Nell stared at the lines of power in her son’s hands.  The layering spell she knew very well—it was one only about four witches in the world could pull off, and only because she’d taught them.  It had been Nell Sullivan’s calling card when she’d entered the ranks of the finest witches of her generation.  A tricky, complex, and novel spell with a boatload of moving parts, requiring a spellcaster’s finesse and enough raw power to keep trillions of air molecules doing exactly what you wanted them to do.  It had taken her two full years of practice.
    Aervyn had pulled it off before he turned four.
    Nobody, however, had ever tried to do it in miniature.  She squinted at the form glimmering on the table.  A tiny, holographic dragon, with…  Her eyes refused to process.  Calling up a spell she’d only recently and grudgingly learned, Nell magnified the form on the table.  And felt her brain melt.  “How many layering spells are you running in there?”
    “Twelve.”  Her son was near grunting again.  “I think that might be too many, though.”
    She’d managed two.  Once.  And had eaten her bodyweight in cookies right after.  Holy hell.  Nell tossed another wall of concrete at the training circle.  If this thing blew, they’d have more than tornadoes to worry about.
    One disgusted sigh later, Aervyn began walking the magic backwards.  “It’s not gonna work.”
    That was something her kiddo of nearly unlimited magic didn’t say very often.  Nell waited until he had all but the dregs of power cleaned up.  It was good practice and she wasn’t all that fond of storms in her basement, accidental or otherwise.
    When he finished, he looked up, eyes a little sad.  “I wanted to make the best toy ever for him and Kenna to play with.”
    For the uncle who had been obsessed with dragons ever since he could talk.  Jamie would flip.  Nell grabbed a cookie and settled in to help.  “That’s a great idea.  Why all the layering spells?”
    “I was trying to make it kind of like a magic puppet.”  Aervyn’s hands moved as he talked.  “With a layer for each of the dragon’s parts, so they could just push on one