Alec struggled to his legs, and turned on Simon. The young man still lay on the ground.

Alec licked his lips. He wasn’t the least bit hungry, but why pass up an opportunity like this?

“That was g… g…,â€? Simon said. He was trying to say something, and knew what he was trying to say, but it didn’t sound right. It was the wrong word, a made-up word, a word he knew and used all the time but now it was the wrong word. He’d spent years with languages; languages are a wizard’s real stock-in-trade, not wands or powders or potions. A well-read wizard with a fluent vocabulary and proper penmanship can rune rings around your stereotypical “props wizard.â€? But now something was disconcertingly wrong with Simon’s words.

He was distracted by a wolf standing five feet away. The wolf was silver-haired and had dark eyes the color of a slaughterhouse floor.