Fearless (The Blue Fire Saga) (44 page)

Glad to finally be done with her driving, s
he eas
ed the Focus to the curb a short way down the block from her dorm, planning
to return the car
to the rental agency
tomorrow
after class. Tonight, she was going to
be busy trying to make up for missing
three of her
classes
.

The day had been well worth skipping class, though. She
had
gotten to spend
more than ten hours straight with Rave, walking and sitting on
the grass, talking and laughing.
She had even gotten to practice some magic. And there was
plenty of hugging and kissing, too.
Her face broke into a wide grin as she relived their long good-bye kiss.

Fueled by the loving memory, she fairly flew up the stairs to the fourth floor. When she opened the fire door, she saw
Cali sitting on the floor
, pecking on her laptop
and listening to music through a pair of pink
earbuds
.

Cali had gotten rid of the green and orange streaks in her hair, replacing them with her traditional burgundy color that matched the birthmark on her cheek. She was dressed casually, in a dark purple long-sleeve T-shirt and ripped jeans. At the sight of Leesa, she closed the lid of her laptop, stood up, and pulled the
earbuds
from her ears.

“I thought you’d never get home,” she said as Leesa inserted her key into the door.

“Rave had permission t
o stay until sunset,” Leesa told her
. “I wasn’t going to leave one minute sooner
than I had to
. Then I stopped for something to eat and got caught is some traffic.”

She pushed the door open and stepped inside. Cali followed her in.

“How was it?” Cali asked. “Di
d
you have fun?”

Leesa grinned. “What do you think?”

“From the look on your face and the spring in your step, I’d say you had
lots of fun—and lots of making out
, too, probably.”

Leesa’s grin widened. “There may have been some of that,” she admitted. She hung her coat in the closet. “I wasn’t expecting a welcome home
greeting from
you outside my door. What gives?”

Cali sat do
wn on Leesa’s bed and opened her laptop
.

“I saw this story this afternoon,” she said. “I don’t know if it has anything to do with you or not, but I think you should see it. It’s
pretty
freaky.”

Leesa sat down next to Cali. Cali tapped a few keys and then slid the computer over so that it rested on one of her legs and one of Leesa’s.

“Take a look.”

The first thing Leesa saw was a headline in big bold letters read
ing “
ZOMBIE ATTACK???
”
There was
a
picture below the headline, but it was too small to make out any details.

“It’s from Romania, so the thing was
pretty far away,” Cali said. “But you’ve had all
those zombie dreams
, so I thought you’d want to see this. Have you had any more of those nightmares?”

Leesa shook her head. “Not since the one about the mall in Ohio.”
She remembered Dominic saying something about the Necromancer living in Romania.
A chill began to creep over her.

“The details are kind of sketchy,” Cali said. “I’ve searched around the net
and this is the best report I could fi
nd. It supposedly happened a few days ago, but
it
wasn’t discove
red until this morning, Europe T
ime, or whatever it is they have over there.”

Leesa read down the story,
scrolling down when necessary. Basically, t
he entire population of a remote mountain village had been found dead. The report said many of the bodies had been bitten and torn apart, as if by wild animals. A nearby cemetery had been vandalized, too, with dozens of rotting bodies dug up for some reason and
then
transported to the town. The authorities weren’t releasing very many details, bu
t it seemed obvious no animals w
ould have dug up the corpses and dragged them to the village.

Leesa’s mind
flashed back to her first few
dreams, when she had seen bodies dig themselves up from their graves. She wondered if the same thing had happened here, and whether the Necromancer had been behind this attack, as seemed likely. If so, his power was increasing dramatically. She wondered if Dominic had heard a
bout it, but doubted he had
. She wished she could contact him—who knew how long it migh
t be before he called her again.

“This is scary,” she said to Cali. “I didn’t dream
about anything like this
, but I’m afraid it might be related to the other stuff anyhow.”

“That’s what I thought,” Cali said.
“And why I was waiting for you to get home. You got any idea what it means?”

Leesa thought for a moment, wondering how much to reveal to Cali. She hadn’t told Cali anything about Dominic being a wizard, nor about the magic she
herself
possessed
. Cali knew about the dreams
coming true
and that Leesa had somehow managed to move a few objects with her thoughts, but that was it.

“I’m not sure,”
Leesa
said. “There’s this evil guy called the Necromancer who supposedly lives in Romania. I think this must be his work.”

Cali turned to Leesa
and gave her
a penetrating look.
“The Necromancer, huh?
Sounds like something out of a dark fantasy book.
How is it that you know about some magical bad guy
all the way over
in Romania? Is this part of one of those secrets you haven’t told me?”

Leesa pushed the lap
top back onto Cali’s lap
. “Yeah, it is. I can’t tell you exactly how I know.” She got up from the bed. “I could lie and say I learned about him from the volkaanes, but I don’t want to lie to
you. Can you just pretend
that’s how I know?”

“Sure,” Cali said. She put the computer on the bed, got up, and gave Leesa a hug. “Thanks for not lying. Can I ask you one thing?”

“What?”

“Are you in danger?”

Leesa drew in a deep breath. “No
, no
t from this, not right now, anyhow. But yeah, I could be in some danger pretty soon.”

“So why isn’t Rave here looking out for you? He makes a pretty damn good bodyguard.”

Leesa smiled. “Yeah, he does. But t
hat’s another thing I can’t tell you. Sorry. I’m not sure when he’ll be back.”

“
But he knows about everything? About t
he stuff you’re not telling me?”

“Yeah, he does.
He knows all of it.”

Cali smiled. “Then you must not be in
too much trouble right now. If Rav
e thought you were, he’d be here, no matter what else was going on. So I won’t worry too much…yet.”

Leesa realized
that
Cali was right. “You’re right. He would be.” She sat back down on the bed and picked up Cali’s computer. “Let’s see if we can find anything else about those zombies in Romania.”

35
.
SENDING A MESSAGE

A
fter
Cali left to return to her
room, Leesa plopped back down onto her bed. They hadn’t found too many more details about the attack in Romania, but what Leesa had read was enough. Thoughts about her schoolwork were temporarily forgotten. Even practicing her magic had been shoved onto the back burner
s
of her mind.

She needed to talk to Dominic—not only about the Necromancer’
s latest attack
, but also about th
e weakening of magic
in this section of Connecticut.
The problem was
how
to contact someone who was on the run and who did
n’
t have a phone or email address.
She couldn’t just wait until Dominic contacted her—she had no idea when he might be returning to Middletown, or when he might call next.

Her room was too quiet. The stillness seemed to amplify the futility of her thinking, so she got up and turned on her CD player.
Colbie
Caillat’s
Breakthrough was already in the player, so she just let it start up where it had left off the last time she listened to it. The slow, haunting piano notes of
“
Fearless
”
filled the room. Leesa wasn’t sure
that
this was exactly thinking music, but it was better than sil
ence. She lowered the volume
a
little
bit and
limped back
to the bed.

When
she turned to sit down, the overhead light caught the red stone in her
magical
ring just right
, making
it sparkle for an instant. The momentary flash was enough to send an idea shooting through her brain.
Maybe s
he could contact Dominic through the ring!

Dominic had said if she took it off for more than a few moments, he would sense it.
But if she removed it from her finger, he would think she was in trouble and come
rushing back
.
She didn’t
want that
, since he would probably suffer the same weakening of his magic as everyone else. She
just wanted him to call her
.
She had to think of a
way to use the ring to get him to call.
But how?

As she tried to figure out a solution to her problem, she started
absently
sliding the ring up and down her finger.
When she noticed what she was doing, the germ of a
n idea began to form in her brain
.