Read Online Trio of Sorcery by Mercedes Lackey - Free Book Online Page A

And there was no question of should she, because as sure as rain on your picnic, anything bad that Zaak got into was going to end up involving her. Morality aside, it was going to spill over on her due to physical proximity.And as for morality? Well, you didn’t let a five-year-old toddle out onto the highway, now did you? Not if you were the sort of witch that Diana and Memaw had been before Di became a Guardian.
    The big question was how she was going to handle this. Her mind was going a million miles a second, trying to juggle it. The obvious was to take him aside and play the Great and Powerful Oz with him and make him her student. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t do things that right now he could only dream about. The drawback was that she had no idea how good or bad an apprentice he would be. He could turn out to be nothing but trouble.
    I don’t need an apprentice. I don’t want an apprentice. I could use some help, but right now, this kid is just trouble.
    Okay, then maybe the subtle approach. He hadn’t gotten into Harvard by being stupid. So perhaps the proper approach was to remind him that, like mundane physics, there was a physics of the metaphysical as well, and that every action had a reaction, every deed a consequence.
    â€œI’m not saying I totally buy into this,” she replied, when she could get a word in. “But aren’t you mostly talking about influencing the way that people think? I mean I assume that magic has to mostly work in small ways, and that would be the most logical, right? So what you’re doing now, that would be changing how people react to what you want. You’re changing their minds for them.”
    That brought him to a screeching halt. “Uh,” he said after a moment.
    â€œWell, doesn’t it make sense? The class you got into, and the girl that you got to go out with you…if magic did that, wasn’t it by changing what they were thinking?” she persisted.
    â€œI…guess…” By this point, Emory and his girlfriend had stopped sucking each other’s faces, closed the front door, and were actually listening.
    â€œAnd is that ethical? I mean, this is Harvard and they make us take courses about that sort of thing. So shouldn’t you apply that Moral Reasoning class you took? They make us take it for a reason, you know, it’s not just to bore us to death. Is it ethical to go into someone’s head without their permission and monkey around in there?” Zaak looked as if she had just smacked him in the face with a fish, as if none of this had even occurred to him. Probably it hadn’t. After all, when the toddler gorges on candy, he’s not thinking about the possible stomachache to follow. Over his shoulder, Emory was grinning.
    â€œShe’s got you there, Zaak,” said Emory’s girlfriend, who hadn’t yet been introduced. She took care of that herself. “Hi, I’m Em.”
    â€œDi.” She smiled, then turned back to Zaak. “And did you really think it through? I mean, there are consequences to changing things. What if someone who needed the course more than you got bumped? What if what you did caused someone to fail or get sick so the course slot opened? And what if you’re preventing the guy this girl is really meant to be with from ever meeting her becauseyou’ve got her going out with you instead?” Not that she believed that anyone was meant to be with anyone else—but she would bet that he did.
    Zaak was really looking ill now. “I—uh—”
    â€œIsn’t the law of magic supposed to be ‘do what you will as long as you harm no one’? I don’t think that means ‘trampling all over someone else’s life is okay.’” She raised her eyebrow in a Spocklike gesture she had perfected over years of practicing in the mirror. It was usually pretty effective.
    It worked this time too.
    â€œYou seem to