Doorways to Infinity (2 page)

“Boy…I hadn’t thought of that. I guess we’ll worry about that when the time comes.”

Fred pressed her mouth into a line and closed her eyes for a moment. “Jamie, the real reason I made this dream tonight is that I want to apologize for getting so jealous today. That was immature and totally uncalled for.”

“Apology accepted,” he said with a grin.

“I’m not done, yet.” She patted his forehead. “It’s hard, being in college. I didn’t expect there to be so many pretty girls here, and some of them are interested in you, I can tell.”

“No, they’re not.”

“Yes, they are. They’re checking you out all the time, but you don’t notice because girls are sneakier about it than boys. It’s even worse when you’re walking through campus with Rollie and Bryce. You’re not just cute anymore, Jamie, you’re handsome. Girls can’t help but look at you, and it’s hard on me.”

“Fred….” He took a long breath. “Two things here. One, you are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. You’ve always been beautiful, and now that you’re getting older, you are even more so. You make the angels jealous, you’re so pretty.”

“You really think so?”

“Absolutely. When
you
walk through campus with Melanie and Nova, every guy turns to stare, I mean, all of them. They can’t help it, with three pretty girls together.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

He shook his head. “And also, because of our special bond, I could never ever be happy with anyone else. I’d never be able to forget the special tingle we get when we kiss. I just wish we got that when we kiss here in dream land.”

“Are you saying you don’t like to kiss me when we’re dreaming?”

“I like to kiss you anytime.”

“Prove it.”

And he did.

* * *

Early the next evening, Jamie, Rollie, Bryce, Fred, Melanie, and Nova all packed into the dorm room that Fred and Melanie shared. It was only thirteen feet wide and twenty feet long, and it had to hold two single beds, two dressers, two desks, and two closets. When Jamie and his friends gathered into that tight space, there wasn’t much room for them to move.

Fred sat at her desk and watched as her laptop booted up. “Sammi just texted me from my mom’s phone. She should be in front of the computer in the basement now.”

“Jamie?” Melanie said. “Wouldn’t this be easier if you just made a doorway to Fred’s house?”

“No, because then I’d have to go visit with my parents, or they’d get their feelings hurt, and Rollie would have to go see his parents, and this would take an hour instead of ten minutes.”

Bryce grunted. “I don’t have an hour. I gotta study for a test.”

“Exactly. Let’s just do this by video chat, if you don’t mind.”

Fred pressed a key on her laptop and Sammi’s smiling face filled the screen, all big dark eyes and dimples. “Fred!”

“Hey kiddo. Where are Mom and Dad?”

“Mommy’s cooking and Daddy’s on his way home from work. When are you coming home?”

“Friday, after my last class. Jamie’s making a big doorway for us so we can all drive our cars back.”

“Nova, are you coming then?”

“I gotta go home to Hampstead, first. I’ll probably come to your house on Sunday afternoon.”

Sammi’s lower lip poked out and her dark eyebrows drew down. “Why don’t you come on Friday with Fred?”

“I wish I could, but I have to spend a little time with my mom or she’ll get mad. It was the only way she’d let me stay with you guys for Thanksgiving. Otherwise I’d have to go to Savannah with her and visit her weird relatives.”

“Fred, are we going to Momma Sue’s on Sunday for witchin’ lessons?”

“No, Sammi. She’s going to stay with some friends in Mobile.”

“Oh. Well, Nova, is your daddy still coming up to visit from Atlanta?”

“Thanksgiving night, then he and I are going up to a cabin in the mountains for the weekend and do some hiking, just the two of us.”

Sammi counted silently on her fingers and then frowned. “But that’s only four nights. Can’t you stay with us longer?”

“You’ll be sick of me by then. And it’ll be good to spend some time with my dad, since I never really have, you know?” Nova had only recently reconnected with her father, whom she hadn’t seen since she was a baby.

Sammi’s frown remained in place, so Nova added, “But while I’m at your house, I’ll spend as much time with you as I can. We can watch movies together and stuff, anything you want.”

“Little Mermaid!” Sammi said brightly.

“Yeah, sure,” Nova said flatly. “Little. Mermaid.”

“For the fifty-millionth time,” Fred muttered.

Rollie tapped Fred’s shoulder with the back of his hand. “Can we get on with this? It’s almost dinnertime and I’m hungry.”

“You’re
always
hungry.”

Jamie scratched his ear while he stared at Sammi’s image on the screen. “Sammi, tell us a little more about the strange voices you’ve been hearing lately. How many times have you heard them now?”

“Three, but I don’t know what they’re saying. It’s a man talking in a funny language to another man and some women.”

Jamie rested one hand on the desk and leaned closer to the laptop. “You told me once that you can remember every word to every conversation that you’ve ever heard. Can you remember these strange ones, too?”

“It doesn’t do any good if I don’t understand them.”

“Can you repeat the conversations anyway?”

“I guess, but I’ve never tried before. Why?”

“I think we can record the most recent one and find somebody to translate it for us. If it’s about magic, we can always say that we recorded it from a TV show.”

Bryce nodded. “Good idea. I wondered how we were gonna deal with that.”

“Will you give it a try, Sammi?” Jamie asked.

“Okay…uh…here goes.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then she spoke a long string of words that Jamie didn’t recognize.

“The first part sounds like a Slavic language,” Melanie said.

“Sounds a little bit like my roommate,” Rollie said, “when he talks to his parents on the phone, or his Bulgarian buddies.”

“We can start with him,” Jamie said, “since he’s already done the special oath. Then it won’t matter if it’s about magic. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll understand it.”

“Or know somebody who does,” Rollie said.

“Sammi,” Jamie said, “I want you to say it again and we’re going to record it. Okay?”

“Hold on.” Melanie pulled her phone from her back pocket and touched the screen. I’ve got to find the app.”

“We don’t need it. I can record it and play it back with my magic.” Jamie flashed a grin. “One of my magic apps.”

“How’s that work?” Fred asked. “Is that like when you make music for us when we’re dancing in the sky?”

“Yeah, when we don’t have a boom box with us.”

Melanie rubbed her chin while she regarded Jamie. “Do you force air molecules to create sound waves in the same way that a stereo speaker does?”

“If I remember the sound clearly enough, I can. I inherited the spell from Eddan. They didn’t have audio recorders in his day, so he came up with it.”

“Awesome. Wizards can be handy guys, sometimes.”

“Almost as handy as us witches,” Nova said.

“Speaking of witches,” Jamie said, “let’s get our Shadow Witch to do her thing. Are you ready, Sammi?” Jamie held his hands out and concentrated, then nodded for her to proceed. She repeated the short foreign language conversation that she’d overheard, and when she finished, Jamie said, “Got it.”

“Play it back,” Rollie said.

Jamie gestured with his fingers and Sammi’s voice could be heard again, exactly like when she was speaking moments before.

“
Way
cool,” Nova said.

Sammi’s face frowned on the computer screen. “That doesn’t sound like me.”

“Yes it does,” Melanie said. “You hear yourself differently than we do because the sound from your larynx is carried through your body tissues and skull. It’s called bone conduction.”

Sammi didn’t appear to be convinced, so Fred said, “Don’t worry about it, kiddo. It sounds just like you.”

Bryce rose from his seat on the edge of the nearest bed. “Let’s go play it back for Rollie’s roommate.”

“Wait,” Jamie said. “I’ve got something even cooler to show you, a new spell. It’s a variation of the sound-reproducing one, only I can recreate visuals. Wanna see it?”

“I do!” Sammi said from the laptop.

“This is something I’ve been working on. Now, photons are produced when electrons in an atom move to a—”

“Jamie,” Fred said, “keep it simple.”

“I understand what he means,” Melanie said. “He’s going to use his magic to force atoms, probably in air molecules, to emit light. Right, Jamie?”

“Something like that. I can use the atoms in the wall behind us, too. The trick was getting the spell to modulate the wavelength of the —”

“My stomach is growling,” Rollie said. “Just skip the science lesson and show us.”

Jamie stepped aside so that Sammi could see the wall of the dorm room from the laptop’s camera. “I can only create scenes that I have a real clear memory of, so they’re always from my point of view. Here’s how I saw Fred dancing at the Young American Talent Search. I was watching her from the wings at the time.”

He held out both hands again and the air shimmered for a couple of seconds, then an image formed. The view was from the edge of the stage at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, looking down its length. It was brilliantly lit, and on it was Fred, wearing a short black tuxedo jacket over a sequined leotard and white hose, twirling and tapping.

“Impressive,” Nova said. “But where’s the sound, Jamie? Can you reproduce that, too?”

“Huh.” The scene vanished. “I haven’t tried that yet. Let me see if I can do both spells at the same time.” He stared the floor for several seconds, then he raised his arm and gestured with his left hand, and the sound of music and rapid tapping could be heard. Then he held up his right hand and flicked his fingers, and the scene reappeared, just as before, Fred dancing in all her glory.

Everyone in the room watched silently until the end of the sequence, when Fred finished her dance routine, doing a split on the floor while the audience roared applause.

“Yay, Fred!” Sammi said from the laptop. “That was awesome!”

“The dancing or Jamie’s spell?” Melanie said.

“Both. Do it again!”

Rollie groaned. “Can we do it later? I’m about to starve to death.”

“Come on,” Bryce said. “Let’s go to the dining hall before Rollie dies. Then we can go to the dorm and see what his roommate can tell us about what Sammi overheard. Then I gotta study.”

Rollie’s on-campus housing situation was similar to Jamie and Bryce’s. It consisted of two single bedrooms that shared a bathroom, and it was in the same building as his two friends, on the floor above theirs. Rollie’s roommate was a guy named Radislav Jelev, who everybody called Rad. He was born in Bulgaria, but moved to North Carolina with his family when he was three years old. He spoke fluent Bulgarian, but his English was perfect, complete with a southern accent.

He had an angular face, short blond hair, and piercing blue eyes, though every time Jamie had seen him, they were bloodshot. He was a whiz at math and made good grades even though he never seemed to study. He also smoked prodigious amounts of pot, in his dorm room at first, until Rollie managed to get him to do it elsewhere, usually with a couple of other stoners down the hall.

Rollie liked him because he was easygoing and loved basketball, and played pickup games with Rollie and Nova in the gym. Rad often could be found in his room next to Rollie’s, reeking of marijuana and watching videos on his computer. He was there, red-eyed and smoky, when Jamie and his friends came. Rad already knew about their magic, and he always appreciated any spell that Jamie did, in a
whoa, awesome dude!
kind of way.

Jamie and his friends squeezed into Rad’s tiny room, and Jamie played his magical recording of the strange conversation that Sammi had overheard. Rad smiled as he nodded, sitting in the chair by his desk. “Dude, that’s cool.”

“Do you have any idea what it means?” Jamie asked.

“Not a clue. Part of it sounds like Russian.”

“You know anybody who speaks Russian?” Melanie asked.

“My dad does. He had to serve in the communist army for two years, right before the Soviet Union collapsed. That’s when he learned it.”

“Did he ever have to fight in any wars?” Bryce asked.

“Nah. I think he pretty much just guarded a water tower at this crummy little military base near the Arctic Circle. He said it was the worst two years of his life. Freezing cold all the time.” He chuckled. “That’s why he won’t drink vodka.”

“Do you think he could translate this?” Jamie said.

“Probably. Let me record it.” Rad picked up his cell phone from his desk and tapped the screen a couple of times. “I’ll see him on Friday when I go home. I can play it back for him and text you after he translates it.”

“Tell him you got it from a TV show,” Fred said, “in case it’s about magic. It easily could be, since Sammi heard it.”

“I still think it’s cool that she can do that.” Rad laughed through his nose. “A Shadow Witch. You think she’s listening right now?”

“She can’t,” Fred said. “We’re not in a shadow.” She poked Jamie with her elbow. “Hurry up and do it. I need to study, too.”

Rad tapped his phone again and Jamie repeated the spell for the magical audio playback. When Jamie finished, Rad scrutinized the display and nodded again. “I got it. I’ll play it for my dad as soon as I get home, then I’ll let you know what it means.”

Chapter 2

Rachel, Lisa, and Adele sat together on Adele’s front steps and watched Sammi and her two new friends, Ariana and Britney, trying to shoot on the basketball goal at the edge of the driveway. The sky was overcast, and the air was cool and breezy and smelled sharply of burning leaves.

“Oh,” Rachel said, “sure does bring back memories, doesn’t it? I remember watching our kids play on that when they were this age.”

Adele pushed her hands deeper into the pockets of her jacket. “Rollie will probably want to play some basketball with Nova when she’s here. I’m sure Garrett will play with them, too.”