“Magic is not inherently good or bad,” Embry told me. “It all depends on how you use it. Good people use it for bad things, bad people use it for good things…”
“It’s safer if I don’t use it,” I finished for him.
“If Clara creeps into your room next year on Christmas morning and jumps on your bed…” Gabriel asked me.
“That’s not...why would you…” I could see it, because it was what Clara did every year.
“I don’t want to scare you, I want to prepare you, so you never get that look on your face again,” Gabriel didn’t apologize for going there, but he explained himself.
“The more I use it…”
“I will never make you use it if you don’t want to, but I think it’s important for you to learn how to not use it when you don’t want to.”
I looked to both of them, terrified of what could happen from using my powers, but even more afraid of what could happen when I didn’t mean to use them. “Okay,” I reluctantly agreed.
Embry made us omelets, then we headed out to the field with the blanket, a stack of paper, a bag of rice, and a pouch of sand.
“How does this work?” I asked, sitting across from the guys, with our random objects between us.
“We’ll use rice first,” Gabriel explained, pouring some out into a little pile in front of him. “I want you to make that one float without any of the others.”
“Which one?” I asked. There were at least a half-dozen he could be pointing to.
“This one right here,” he used a strand of wheat to point to a grain of rice under other grains.
“But not the others?” I verified.
“Exactly.”
I took a breath, then got to work. The hardest part was keeping track of which grain I was targeting, but I got it on my first try.
“Impressive,” Embry told me.
“Do you think you could lift these three, then lift that one up to here?” Gabriel asked again.
It was easy to get the three grains up, but harder to keep them in place while lifting the other one higher. They faltered the first few times, but eventually, I got them to remain stable while the other one came higher.
“I thought the rice might be beneath you,” Gabriel assured me, scooping up the remaining rice and putting it back into the bag.
“Sand?” I asked as he spread it out between us.
“Precision helps with control,” he explained.
“What am I doing with the sand?” I sighed, but he was right. I was focusing harder and learning how to single elements out. My magic would be better if I chose to use it now, but I didn’t see how this helped me not use it by accident.
“I’m not going to point at a grain in particular, but I want you to lift one.”
“Just one?”
“I might not entirely understand all the intricacies of your powers, but so far you seem to need to concentrate and visualize what you’re working on…”
“But this is just a pile of sand,” I understood.
My first attempt lifted at least a pinch of sand, as did my second and third.
“Try pulling one from this,” Gabriel scooped a bit of sand into his palm, seeing my exasperation.
“Isn’t that cheating?”
“We’ll come back to the pile,” he assured me.
Every time I lifted a few, he took them in his hand, then dropped the excess when I levitated some. This went on until I had a single grain of sand floating between us.
“Again,” Gabriel encouraged, but he stopped dropping the excess, so I had to play with the pinch of sand in his hand until I got it down to one.
Once I got that consistently, we tried with the big pile again. After two tries, I levitated a single grain every time.
“Should I separate atoms now?” I asked, taking a sip of the iced tea Embry brought us.
“Now we play with paper,” Gabriel smiled.
“Play?” I asked.
“You know how the paper catches fire, you float it to me, then the fire disappears?” he asked of how it usually works.
“We spent the afternoon passing notes,” I agreed.
“This time, don’t let it burn.”
“Protect the paper?” I was confused. Being the one who set the fire meant if I didn’t want it to burn, I just had to not set it on fire.
“No, start burning it, but keep it contained. Don’t let the entire thing be consumed.”
“Do I still float it to you?” I asked.
“If you can,” he smiled, making it a challenge.
It turned out that making it float to him was the least of my problems. Unlike the rice and sand, I didn’t have to isolate a grain, I had to set the paper on fire, then control the flames that were moving of their own accord. I had to prevent them from engulfing the rest of the paper, which was what they tried to do.
It took me at least a dozen tries, with varying amounts of scorchedness, before I finally passed.
Chapter Eighteen
“I get that I can be more precise when I use my powers now, but I don’t know how that stops me from hurting people,” I asked after another morning spent working on the minutiae of simple spells. I appreciated that the magic was focused on objects for now, but I didn’t know how long that would last.
“You don’t feel like you have more control over what you’re doing?” Embry asked, waving in the distance.
“I was told you needed living targets you wouldn’t feel bad for hurting,” Ingrid walked over, wiggling her fingers at me.
“I thought the goal was to not hurt people?” I argued.
“To not hurt them accidentally,” Embry agreed. “But we don’t want you to be afraid to use your powers on real threats.”
“Why are you so bent on making me use my powers when your plan is to keep me as far away from everything as possible?”
“Since you insist on not running next time they find us…” Embry paused, waiting for me to change my mind, but I didn’t. “Our plan is to keep you as far away from the danger and die protecting you.”
“That’s not a plan, that’s a suicide mission,” I argued.
“We’re not opposed to you helping out mystically from the shadows,” Gabriel relented.
“You want me to hide away from the danger and what? Will them all to explode?” I asked. “If that’s something I’m capable of, shouldn’t I do it now, from here? Wouldn’t Beth and Annabelle have tried if it was that easy?”
“We don’t know what you can do, Luce. We can tell that you’re powerful and not the damsel in distress one would assume you are…”
“But we won’t know anything if you refuse to try,” Embry finished for him.
“Do you have a Big Bad for me to practice on?” They were being ridiculous.
“I do,” Ingrid shrugged.
“It’s...you don’t know what he can do. You don’t know how he would retaliate, or…”
“We can at least see what you could do to his army,” Embry suggested.
“We can try,” I rolled my eyes, not really wanting to do this.
Ingrid waited for me to say I was ready, then closed her eyes. For a moment, everything was calm and quiet, but then a huge black cape jumped out at me from nowhere. I instinctively put my arms up to protect myself and the hooded figure burst into nothingness.
“Very cool,” she told me.
“Not when it’s a person,” I argued. Maybe it wouldn’t bother me so much if blowing it up had been my intention, rather than completely unintentional.
“Do you want to try again?” Gabriel offered. I didn’t think practice would help, but I didn’t know what else to do to not accidentally hurt people I cared about.
“Can they look more like people?” I asked, bracing myself.
“Of course,” Ingrid gave me an encouraging smile.
Even though I knew what was coming, I still blew up the first three illusions she attacked me with. They definitely looked human, but also large and intimidating,
brandishing weapons so I would recognize them as threats. I eventually managed to stop exploding them, but I still sent them flying in a way no human would survive.
“How about we take a quick break?” Embry suggested.
“Maybe if I exhaust myself the powers will go away?” I asked hopefully.
“If you’re anything like Beth, I’ll burn out before you do,” Ingrid told me. “And I don’t burn out.”
“I’m trying to concentrate, but they come at me and my head goes blank,” I lamented.
“Maybe think of the force shield?” Gabriel suggested.
“That still hurts people,” I argued.
“Then let’s go again.” Ingrid sent illusions my way without waiting for me to be ready.
Again, I blew up a number of them, then produced a shield they bounced off of at an alarming speed, before one finally froze less than a foot away from me.
“That’s awesome,” Embry praised once Ingrid paused the attacks.
“Think you can do that again?” Ingrid asked me.
“I can try,” I said, taking a deep breath.
For the rest of the afternoon, I successfully froze all of her hooded and menacing figures rather than exploding them.
“Maybe I can do it because my subconscious knows I’m not really in danger,” I ventured.
“Not in danger?” Ingrid asked.
“You’re sending illusions at me.”
“Very powerful ones,” she was offended.
“They’re scary, but they’re holograms.” I didn’t want to be mean, but I wasn’t at risk for a heart attack, and that was the most damage they could do to me.
“I beg to differ.” She conjured one and made it run into a bushel of hay, that exploded from the impact.
“That’s what would have happened to me if I succeeded in putting my hands up and doing nothing?” I questioned her sanity.
“I get that you don’t want to blow up an innocent kid who spooks you on Halloween, but the idea is also to not let you die if a scary person literally throws himself at you,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
“I didn’t know they were real,” Gabriel assured me, putting his hand out to stop me from reproaching him. “But she is right as far as our goals.”
“Unless they destroy my heart with the impact,” I sighed.
“Your heart is remaining intact,” Gabriel pointed a finger at me.
“Every heart breaks at some point.”
“I’ll break the boy or girl who does that to you,” Embry winked at me.
We went again with me knowing the threat was real, even if it was in my imagination, and I managed to freeze anyone that came between my hands.
When it got dark, Embry accompanied Ingrid to her car while Gabriel walked back to the villa with me.
“Dying won’t bring him back,” Gabriel said delicately as I rolled the band Clara gave me through my fingers.
“I know that,” I slipped it back on. Embry was usually the one who called me out on bad thoughts.
“I mean it, Lucy. If the Big Bad comes for you and you do nothing…forget the fact that we’ve been protecting your family for over three hundred years...your death is the absolute worst-case scenario that makes everything else no longer worthwhile. Them getting your heart would mean the end of the world, but we have never once considered destroying it beforehand to prevent that.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Lucy.” There was venom in his tone.
“If I had a nuclear bomb in my chest that was ready to go off at any moment, but killing me permanently deactivated it, I’m pretty sure every government would vote to neutralize me.”
“But you’re not a bomb. You’re not a thing to be neutralized. You’re a human being with hopes and dreams and a heart of gold who deserves to share it with the world, not hide it,” he paused for the words to sink in.
The tears stung my eyes, so I brought my hand to my temple and tried to shake it off. “Aren’t you tired?” I asked him quietly. I had been running for a few months, but this was what his life looked like for the past few hundred years.
“If you die, we die, like we should have centuries ago. But I will spend every last breath I have making sure you get out of this and have a happily ever after.”
“What difference do you really think I can make?”
“We’ll never know if we don’t try. But I believe you can do anything you set your mind to. Not just because you were a genius before this, but you have aced every obstacle the world has thrown at you.”
“It was fake,” I argued.
“The threats might be sometimes, but the magic isn’t. I didn’t know about Beth’s powers, and Annabelle felt the same way you do about it, but I would imagine that if you let yourself be what you were born to be, you can do it all.”
Chapter Nineteen
On Sunday the guys gave me a rest day as far as magic was concerned, so we worked on my self-defense. I was getting better at controlling what magic came out of me, but I still felt more comfortable with physical attacks. Much to the guys’ detriment.
“Your jab needs work, but you’ve got a good right hook,” Gabriel gave me a smile while we walked back to the villa for lunch. It was an exhausting morning, but I loved almost every minute of it.
“Sweet tea?” Embry asked, grabbing a pitcher from the fridge. I could see Embry’s eyes go wide as someone grabbed me from behind. I turned to see who it was, instinctually raising my arms in defense. I was paralyzed with fear, but it was a little girl standing in front of me. She looked confused and so innocent that I panicked before realizing that I didn’t blow her up or send her into the wall behind her. Nothing happened.
What the hell?” I asked when the girl disappeared. I was on high alert with my heart pounding out a marathon in my chest.
“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Gabriel came over and took me in his arms.
“She would have turned into a rainbow if you’d done something, so you would know she was one of my holograms,” Ingrid defended herself, rounding the corner.
“Am I broken?” I asked in reference to the fact that I braced my arms and nothing happened.
“When you saw she was a kid, did you want to hurt her?” Gabriel asked.
“No, but that hasn’t mattered any other time,” I pointed out. Ingrid had slowly been making her illusions less threatening, but the best I could do was freeze them when they came at me.
“It isn’t that you’re broken. You were able to control your powers enough that they’re triggered by you, not by your fear,” Ingrid explained.
“You tricked me into possibly destroying Embry’s kitchen…”
“To show you that you don’t need to be afraid of your powers.”
“One time.”
“But you felt it,” Ingrid called me on it. “You decided not to hurt her, so you didn’t.”
“Maybe warn me next time?” I asked of her, my heart slowly going back to normal.
“You don’t always get warnings,” she said simply. “And it would have put a damper on the party if we didn’t give you a practice round.”
“What party?” I asked before Charlie and Eric came out of the living room, holding up a handmade ‘Happy 19th Birthday!’ banner.
“For she’s a jolly good fellow…” they started singing, reminding me of my graduation party as I realized that today was my birthday.
“I completely forgot.” I wasn’t sure if I was more shocked that I forgot, or that they remembered.
“We thought you might,” Embry agreed, coming over to give me a hug.
“There’s so much else going on,” I pointed out.
“There is,” Gabriel agreed. “But you need to celebrate the small stuff.”
I raised my eyebrows. That was not the advice I expected to hear from him of all people.
“You’ve been through a lot and we don’t want you to burn out,” he downplayed it.
“Taking care of my mental health?”
&n
bsp; “Reminding you that it’s not just the fate of humanity you’re fighting for. You yourself are worth saving,” Embry told me.
“I have a shop to get back to, but I am leaving you this,” Ingrid handed me a package wrapped with a shawl instead of wrapping paper.
“You really didn’t have to,” I argued. I was never good at accepting gifts.
“I wanted to,” She assured me, putting her forehead against mine with a smile, before she headed off.
I removed the shawl to reveal a surprisingly modern book on the history of magic. I was expecting spells or a potion book to help me defeat the Big Bad, but reading the back cover revealed it was a study on where magic comes from, its limits, and its affinity for good and evil. Mental health was clearly the theme today.
“You came back for this?” I asked Eric, really happy to see him.
“Of course. It’s your birthday,” he smiled. “Come on,” he took my hand and brought me to the living room, where balloons were on the floor, the walls, and floating in mid-air. There was also a table with a bunch of finger foods and a bowl of some purple-colored punch.
“You got me something?” I asked, surprised when he took out a box roughly the size of a mini ruler.
“Made it,” he smiled confidently.
“Oh,” I said, expecting to find something with lots of glue and construction paper, because that’s what Clara usually gave me. “You made this?” He didn’t seem like the type to lie to impress me, but I had serious doubts that he made me the beautiful fountain pen I found in the box.
“I maybe slightly exaggerated that statement. I found the pen and made adjustments.”
“Adjustments?” I asked instead of confirming that ‘found’ meant he stole it from Charlie.
“Don’t do it now, because you’ll either pop a balloon or hurt someone, but when you twist off the cap and press this button on the end, you get one of these,” he lifted a flap in the box to show me tiny, needle-like inserts.
Destiny Page 14
