I’d never doubted that my mother loved me. It was her judgment I didn’t trust. But unlike the designer clothes she still sent me every season (always one size too small, for “encouragement”), the poncho was actually useful, which was why it had survived long after I’d sold everything else. “It’s worth the money,” I said, pointing at the far-more-delicate ward lines that covered the poncho’s interior. “The outside focuses on external threats—bullets, dirt, blunt trauma, and so on—but the interior’s all about magical protection, including a burn command for separating material links.”
