Magic and Shadows: A Collection of YA Fantasy and Paranormal Romances

by T. M. Franklin

  “Well, that’s something,” Ava said with a sigh, collapsing onto the sofa.

  Caleb and Audrey exchanged a telling glance before Caleb turned his back, continuing to talk on the phone.

  “It really isn’t, is it?” Ava asked. “There wouldn’t be any signs, even if they were taken by Protectors.” She didn’t give voice to her bigger fear, that they hadn’t been taken, but something worse.

  “No,” Audrey said. “Not any visible signs. Although there would be some residue left if the Protectors were there.”

  “Residue?”

  “The mind operates on electrical impulses,” she explained. “Our Race leaves a different electrical imprint, if you will, than ordinary humans.”

  “So how do you detect that imprint?” Ava asked.

  “It deteriorates over time,” Audrey said as Caleb hung up the phone and sat next to Ava. “If it’s been longer than an hour or so, only a specialist will be able to detect it.” She glanced at Caleb, lifting an eyebrow.

  “Bel said the Council isn’t sending one,” he said grimly.

  “That means they already know,” Audrey murmured. “The Council is behind this, then.”

  Caleb nodded.

  “So . . . what?” Ava asked, standing up to pace again. “Can’t we go to the Council? If they’re holding the Jordans, we have to help them.”

  “Ava—” Caleb began, but she shook her head, refusing to listen.

  “No! They didn’t ask for this. This is my fault.”

  “Ava, there’s nothing we can do.”

  “But we have to,” she pleaded, sitting down and grabbing Caleb’s hands tightly. “We can’t leave them there.”

  “The Council doesn’t have them, Ava,” he said quietly.

  Ava’s eyes filled with tears as the reality of what he was saying sunk in. “No,” she whispered.

  “The Council could have blurred their memories and left them alone,” Audrey said angrily. “But to do this . . .”

  “They’re dead?” Ava said, choking on tears.

  “They’re sending a message,” Caleb said grimly. “They won’t tolerate anything—anyone—threatening the Race. They won’t back down.”

  “I can’t believe this.” Ava’s face dropped into her hands as the tears began to fall. “This is all my fault. They were just nice people trying to help.”

  “I’m sorry,” Caleb said, rubbing his hand in slow circles over her back. “I never thought it would come to this.”

  “It shouldn’t have come to this,” Audrey said, jaw tight. “It doesn’t make any sense. The Council normally wouldn’t have bothered. It’s not like this couple knew anything, not anything of consequence anyway.”

  “What are you thinking?” Caleb asked, still keeping up the slow rubbing as Ava got control of her sobs.

  “I don’t know,” Audrey replied thoughtfully. “But it’s like there’s more at stake here than we thought. Is the Council really sending a message, or is it almost . . . desperate?”

  “Desperate?” Caleb repeated. “But why?”

  “Who cares!” Ava exclaimed, shrugging off Caleb’s hands. “This Council is nothing more than a bunch of murderers! They can’t just kill innocent people!”

  “They don’t see it that way,” Caleb explained.

  “Someone has to stop them,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “How, Ava?” he asked. “You think Tiernan is scary? He’s one of dozens—hundreds—who have even more power. They can do things you can’t even imagine. How are we going to stand up to them?”

  “These Guardians do, right?” Ava said stubbornly. “Maybe it’s time for someone to take them down.”

  “Revolution?” Caleb snorted. “You think you’re the first one to consider that?”

  “Well, why hasn’t someone stood up to them?” she shouted, eyes flashing. “Why haven’t you?” Ava’s words echoed off the walls as Caleb’s eyes fell. She glanced at Audrey, who was looking at her reproachfully. She inhaled sharply a couple of times and then sat down on the coffee table, defeated. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I didn’t mean to take this out on you.”

  “It’s okay,” Caleb said. “I know this is a lot to take in. It’s a whole other world, Ava.”

  “I’m beginning to see that.”

  “We can’t do anything right now,” he said, gently taking her hands. “But there are many of us—more every day—who don’t like what the Council has become. But it’s too powerful right now to challenge. Not if you want to survive.”

  Ava looked into his eyes, soft and worried. She sighed, her shoulders slumping slightly. “So what do we do?”

  “Right now, we get you to the colony,” he said. “Help you to gain control of your abilities so you’re no longer a threat.”

  Ava nodded miserably.

  “After that, we’ll talk about a revolution,” he continued, a smile in his voice.

  Ava shrugged, her lips quirking slightly. “I hope I have a really awesome power,” she said stubbornly. “One that’ll make them a little nervous for a change.”

  Audrey set aside her computer. “Be careful what you wish for,” she warned. “You’ve already gotten an idea of how the Council deals with threats.”

  Ava’s skin chilled, despite Caleb’s warm grip on her hands.

  “Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “It’ll be okay. I’ll keep you safe.”

  Ava wanted to believe him. She just wasn’t sure if she could.

  The next few days were a mix of frustration and elation for Ava, as she continued to train with Audrey, as well as periodic bouts of sadness as she mourned the loss of the people who’d gone out on a limb to help them. She was angry about what the Council had done, but also—slowly and reluctantly—coming to terms with the fact that there was nothing she could do about it at the moment. It wasn’t as if the police could help. There were no bodies, and from what little Caleb had told her about the Council’s methods, none would be found.

  It still sent a chill down her spine and an ache through her heart.

  Audrey encouraged her to focus on developing her abilities, and now that she’d experienced her first thrill of enhanced vision, she was easily able to replicate it. It only took a moment now for her to zoom in on a spot almost a quarter mile away, and Audrey said with practice she’d only get better at it. She’d also begun noticing the little tells in facial expressions that Caleb had mentioned and wondered how she’d once thought it something supernatural.

  It was really pretty easy, actually, once you got the hang of it.

  Hearing was a little tougher. The first time she tried to access it, she’d been overwhelmed by the cacophony of noise that pounded down on her. She’d fallen to the ground, curling up in to a ball with her hands clasped over her ears. Caleb had to knock her out with a touch to her forehead to reset her hearing. Once she’d woken, she was much more careful, following Audrey’s instructions to the minute detail. It took much more focus to filter out extraneous sounds and hear what she was targeting. She still struggled with it, but she was getting better.

  Ava found she didn’t enjoy the enhanced hearing nearly as much as the vision. Scent was relatively easy to focus, but the truth was, most things really didn’t smell that good. Even smells she used to enjoy—like baking cookies or freshly cut grass—took on an almost chemical aspect once broken down into their basic components. Ava found she enjoyed surface smells much more than in-depth ones.

  Caleb had suggested she forego learning to amplify her sense of taste—at least for the time being—since it really didn’t have any defensive uses. Same for touch, although Ava did enjoy running her fingers over a piece of cloth or the bark of a tree and being able to feel every tiny defect down to the molecular level—variations in heat and structure that only gave her a greater appreciation of the complexity of creation.

  It was exhausting, however. The focus needed took a mental as well as physical toll. The evening after her first attempts, she could barely keep her
eyes open, and a pounding headache almost incapacitated her.

  “Here,” Caleb said, holding out a little plate covered by gray, gelatinous cubes, similar to Jell-O, but not nearly as appealing.

  “What is it?” she asked, picking up one of the jiggling cubes between a thumb and forefinger. “Am I supposed to eat it?”

  Caleb chuckled. “Yeah. It’s a rejuvenation cube. We call them R-cubes. They taste like plastic, but it’ll help with the exhaustion and the headache.”

  Ava eyed the little cube skeptically. “What is it?” she asked again. “Some kind of super-powered aspirin?”

  “No. It’s a supplement,” he explained. “Until you get more experience with your abilities, using them will take a lot out of you.” He picked up a cube, squeezing it a little. “This helps put it back. It’s a blend of vitamins, protein, electrolytes . . . some other stuff.”

  “Like high-tech Gatorade?” she asked, sticking out her tongue to lick it and frowning at the taste. “It really does taste like plastic.”

  Caleb popped one in his mouth, chewing and swallowing quickly. “Just eat it fast,” he suggested. “I guarantee it’ll make you feel better. I wish I would have had a few of these after the shift to Mabley’s Corner.”

  Ava’s shoulders slumped at the reminder of the Jordans, but she fought off the melancholy. “Would it have helped? You were really out of it.”

  Caleb nodded. “With more practice, your everyday abilities will become like second nature and you won’t need it so much, but shifting that big a distance takes a lot of power. I would still have been wiped out, but the cubes would have at least helped me function.”

  Ava studied the cube for a moment, then took a small bite. She winced in distaste.

  “I’m telling you,” he said with a knowing grin, “faster is better.”

  Ava shrugged, tossing it into her mouth and chewing it up quickly. She grimaced at the aftertaste, but after only a few minutes, her headache had lessened and she felt more alert.

  “Wow,” she said, eating another one. “This is pretty amazing. I can’t believe with all of your superior technology you couldn’t make it taste better, though.”

  Caleb laughed. “You get used to it.”

  He was right. She did get used to it, even though she hardly craved the unappealing little cubes. After almost a week of nearly non-stop training, she came to rely on them. Ava worried that maybe they were addictive, and she’d become some kind of gray Jell-O cube junkie, knocking over 7-Elevens to buy her next fix, but Caleb raised an eyebrow and assured her that wouldn’t happen. The cubes were all-natural and contained no addictive substances.

  She decided to believe him. Mainly because she really didn’t have an alternative.

  It was early Friday morning, or maybe Saturday, Ava wasn’t sure. The days kind of blended together at that point, and had, actually, ever since they’d left Allenmore. In fact, she’d only just realized that Thanksgiving was around the corner. She hadn’t planned to go home—it was too expensive for only a few days—but Caleb said they’d figure out a way for her to at least call her parents on the holiday. It seemed like a different world—her life back there—and Ava realized that wasn’t a figure of speech. She’d been immersed in a new reality, one she was only beginning to come to grips with.

  She sat on the back deck, wrapped in a blanket against the early morning chill. A thick blanket of snow lay over the backyard, sparkling in the sunlight, and she sipped a cup of hot tea, the steam floating up before her eyes and painting the horizon with a cloudy filter.

  “Good morning,” Audrey said, appearing at the back door dressed in a parka and mittens. “Aren’t you cold out here?”

  Ava shrugged. “It’s not so bad. The view is worth it.”

  Audrey crossed to the table, brushing the snow off a chair before sitting down. “How are you holding up?” she asked. “I know this has been a lot to take in.”

  “I’m okay,” she replied. “I wish I was faster.”

  Audrey laughed, a bright twinkle in the early morning air. “You’re one of the fastest learners I’ve ever trained,” she said. “Don’t you know that?”

  “I just want to be able to do something . . . useful,” Ava said, twirling her tea cup. “I want to be able to help, you know?”

  Audrey reached across the table to pat her hand. “You will. Try to be patient.” At Ava’s heavy sigh, she smiled. “You want to try some telekinesis again?” They’d experimented with it several times—as well as manifesting, and even a try or two at shifting, but so far, Ava hadn’t been able to make anything happen. She found it more than frustrating.

  Ava bit her lip. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

  “Well, you won’t know until you try, will you?”

  “I guess not.”

  Audrey stood, walking to the edge of the deck and picking up a small rock. She sat next to Ava and set it on the table. “Maybe we need to go about this a different way,” she said, rolling the rock back and forth slowly as she thought, her brow creased. She looked at Ava. “Think back to the hamster,” she said. “What exactly did you do? Step by step?”

  Ava shrugged. “I don’t know. I closed my eyes. I saw the bag . . . saw myself reaching out for it . . . and I just . . . knew where it was.”

  Audrey frowned. “So maybe you don’t need to focus so much on moving the rock,” she said. “And instead, imagine the rock where you want it to be?”

  “But how?” Ava asked, frustrated. “I don’t get it.”

  Audrey smiled patiently. “Try looking at the rock . . . look closely. See it all,” she said. “Touch it, too. Commit it all to memory.

  This was much easier now. Ava did as she was told in just a few seconds, then pulled her hand back down to her lap.

  “Good?” Audrey asked.

  “Good.”

  “Okay, now close your eyes,” Audrey said. When Ava did, she continued. “Now see the rock. See it all.”

  Ava pictured the rock as she’d seen it—each dip and imperfection, variations in color—down to the very component structure of the mineral.

  “Now,” Audrey said quietly. “See yourself reaching out for it. Wrap your hand around it. Feel it in your palm . . . against your fingers.”

  Ava fought down her doubt and saw her hand reaching out before her in her mind. She ran her fingers over the surface of the pebble, feeling the smooth and rough running together before closing her mind’s hand around it, the chilled surface warming against her palm.

  “Ava,” Audrey said, a hint of excitement in her voice. “Open your eyes.”

  Ava did, taking in Audrey’s smiling face before turning to the table.

  The rock was gone.

  With a start, Ava lifted her hand, slowly peeling her fingers back to reveal the little pebble in the center of her palm. She stared at it unblinkingly for a few moments. “I . . . I did it,” she whispered.

  “You did it,” Audrey agreed.

  Ava’s heart thumped in her chest, and she smiled brightly. “Let’s do it again.”

  12

  Caleb frowned at his phone, the latest e-mail from Bel destroying any hopes that the Council was giving up the search any time soon. Although they had followed the cell phone trail to New York—well, at least as far as Pennsylvania before they realized it was a ruse—they had circled back to Allenmore and Mabley’s Corner. Search parties fanned out from both locations, and he feared it was only a matter of time before they got too close for comfort.

  The cloak would help, but if Protectors walked up the front driveway, there was only so much it could do. If they passed through the cloak, the house would be visible, and they’d be out of luck.

  They would have to move—sooner rather than later—and he only hoped that Ava would be ready. Outrunning the Protectors would be next to impossible even if he were on his own, but he didn’t really see an alternative. He couldn’t let the Council members get their hands on her.

  Bel had suggested a distraction in th
e form of a Guardian named Balaam, who had the unique ability to mimic another’s electric imprint after only coming into brief contact with that person. He could lead the Protectors on a wild goose chase for quite a while, since he also had the ability to shift, and would give Caleb and Ava the head start they needed.

  He would arrive in the morning, having to take a roundabout route in order to avoid alerting the Council to his involvement. The Council was aware of his existence, of course, and had utilized his talents on numerous occasions, but he had to keep his dealings with the Guardians secret, as they all did if they wished to survive.

  Caleb walked through the house to the kitchen, watching Ava and Audrey out the back windows. They stood in the middle of the yard, as they had been for the past few hours, working on Ava’s telekinesis. After pulling a pebble into her palm from increasing distances, she was now trying to see if she could move something a bit larger. A basketball sat on the snowy lawn a short distance away, and Caleb could hear Audrey’s encouraging voice leading Ava through the exercise. He held his breath, biting his lip as he willed her to succeed. He could feel Ava’s energy reaching out toward the ball and reflecting back to her, to the trees, to everything around her. The electric hum of her power tingled over his skin.

  “Come on,” he murmured. “Come on.”

  The basketball tilted slightly. For a moment, he thought maybe it had been caught by the breeze, but then it began to roll, faster and faster, across the grass. Ava opened her eyes, watching the ball roll toward her. It bounced once on the grass and flew into her hands. She turned to Audrey with a bright smile, tossing the ball into the air before wrapping her arms around her in a tight hug.

  Caleb grinned, walking out into the yard and scooping up the ball on the way. He spun it on his finger. “Nicely done,” he said, letting it fall and catching it against his hip. “You’re really getting the hang of it.”

  Ava beamed at the praise. “It seems to be getting a little easier,” she said. “I couldn’t have done it without Audrey.” She paused for a moment as if in thought, and threw a suspicious glance at the woman. “You didn’t help me, did you?”