Fearless (The Blue Fire Saga) (48 page)

Leesa did not like the sound of that
at all
.
It felt like she would be wearing a bull’s-eye on her back saying
here I am, come get me
.

“What do I do, then?
” she asked. “
How do I get away?”

“
Your only choice is to
hide,
within a few hundred feet of the avatar at most
.
The magic
emanat
ing fr
om it
will be quit
e strong—much stronger than the magic that
will mark you
. If you are near enough, our foes are unlikely
to notice you. T
hey will be
focusing their attention
on what they think is me.”

Leesa swallowed hard. She had
n
o
t expected to be so close to the fight. This was going to be
very
dangerous indeed.
Still, this was their chance to destroy
two of their most powerful enemies
. She had to remember that, whatever the danger.
Her only solace was that she knew
Dominic would never
ask her to risk this unless he believed she would come through
it safely
.
She had to trust in him.

“Okay,” she said. “Show me how to open the box.”

39
.
HEADING HOME

Leesa’s brain was a jumble of thoughts and emotions as she rode the train back toward New Haven. Unlike her
earlier
ride into the city, she paid little attention to the scenery flashing by her window. She had way too much on her mind
right now
.

An hour or so ago, s
he and Dominic had changed subway trains one more time, ending up in Penn S
tation instead of Grand Central
to avoid any chance of
backtracking and
running into his pursuers.
While not as impressive and ornate as Grand Central, Penn Station was
even busier and more crowded.
On the final train,
Dominic
had showed her how to open the box to activate his avatar. It was amazingly simple. All she had to do was place her finger on the silver square and
send any kind of
magic into it. She could use the illumination spell, the energy beam, even the plant growing spell. Anything would do. Since
the vibrations of her magic were
the same as Dominic’s, the box would open to the magic and the avatar would be activated. Even with her magic in its weakened state, she
knew she
could easily manage that.
It was what would happen afterward that worried her.

When the box opened, a life-size copy of Dominic would appear, identical to him in virtually every respect. Over a period of time, he had told her, she might be able to discern enough differences in
its
speech and behavior to distinguish the avatar from the real thing, but their enemies would not have nearly the time to do so. They would
detect the magic immediately and believe
they had caught up to him at last. She would have only minutes, at best, to hide herself well enough to avoid their notice.

Timing was going to be critical.

So
that
she and Dominic could
coordinate their movements, she had purchased a
pre-paid cell phone for him
from a small shop in the terminal
, registering it her name. She programmed it with her number and showed him how to use it.
Since he had never used a cell phone before, she made him call her
twice
even though they were sitting next to each other.
They needed to be certain he could use the phone quickly and without any mistakes.

This
was the second
“burner”
phone
she
had purchased in the last week or so—she hope
d
her name was
n’t
goi
ng to show up in some terrorist or drug dealer
database. The thought made her smile.
She would gladly risk buying a third
phone
if she could only
figure out some
way
Rave could use it.
Of course,
she knew that wasn’t going to happen.
She wished she had a
way to contact Rave and let him know what was going on. She didn’t expect him to join her—indeed, with his weakened fire she wouldn’t want him there—but she felt he should know what she and Dominic
were
planning. She
supposed she could contact him again through Max, but using her aunt and uncle’s dog to telepathically send anything
more than simple messages was risky. She didn’t want to take the chance that Rave might think she needed him and come running. There was no part for him in Dominic’s plan, only unnecessary risk. No, she decided, she would not be talking to Max until this was over.

In addition to
buying
the phone,
s
he had also rented a car for Dominic. He was going to need to travel fast enough and in varying directions so he could stay ahead of his pursuers,
all the while moving east at a slow
enough
rate
so he would sense the boundary of the area of weakened magic when he approached it. A car was by far the best way for him to do it. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to drive the car since it was in her name, but since he didn’t even have a driver’s license, breaking that small regulation was no big deal.
She just hoped he didn’t make any driving mistakes that would get him pulled over by the police. If he did, he would need to use
magic to get
himself
out of it
, which would have the black waziri upon hi
m sooner than he was ready
.

When she got back to New Haven, she was going to
rent herself a car
as well
, so she
woul
d be ready whenever he called her.
Dominic had said that he doubted it would be tomorrow,
since he would be zigzagging his way north and east,
but
that it
could easily be Wednesday. She needed to be ready at a moment’s notice, so she planned carry the box with
her wherever she went and
never
to
be too far from her car.

She hoped her credit card
company
wasn’t going to flag her for renting two cars on the same day.
She knew from lots of books and movies that it was usually the little things that tripped people up.
Getting the cars in two different states might help.

Either way, t
here was not
hing to be done about it
. They both needed cars and there was no way Dominic could have rented one
himself
. Among all the risks she would be taking, this was definitely one of the smaller ones, for sure.

She opened her purse
on her lap
and looked
down
at the beautiful ivory and silver box she had stashed inside. She would have l
ike
d
to hold it, but
didn’t want to risk accidently sending any
magic into it and activating the avatar
by mistake. Not only would she have difficulty explaining the sudden appearance of a full-gro
wn man
next to her
, but
the black waziri would sense Dominic’s magic and be after her immediately.
That would be the end of their plan and probably the end of her
as well
, so instead
she contented herself with gazing at the box while it remained inside her bag. It was hard to imagine something so small and so beautiful was going to be the key to all their fates.

40
.
DILEMNA

T
uesday morning, the witch Jenna paced back and forth across the wooden floor of the living room in her small, secluded home. All her life, she’d had a thirst for gathering knowledge of all kinds, a quest made easier by her shape-shifting abilities, which allowed her to observe things unnoticed, and by her ability to put herself into other people’s minds, which allowed her to learn things even without being physically present.
Most of the time, she simply filed
the information
away in her head, never using it for any specific purpose.

Sometimes, though, her accumulated knowledge proved valuable, like when she had followed Leesa home and later used the information to visit her and ask whether her magic had also been weakened. That had proved useful indeed, taking a load off Jenna’s mind by reassuring her that the weakening was not an attack directed at her.
It was a perfect example of how you never knew what information might one day prove useful.

But n
ow, for the first time
she could remember, her quest to
collect
knowledge had resulted in a
definite
problem for her. She had learned
about
something she wasn’
t supposed to know
, and now she had to decide, w
hat, if anything, to do with the information
. She wished she ha
d never heard
about the thing—because now she felt co
mpelled to try to help—but heard
of it
she had.
As much as she might wish to, t
here was no way she could
unring
that bell.

Try as she might, s
he could think of no easy answer—hence the pacing. She had started shortly before dawn, to the light of a single candle on a corner table. Her home was awash in daylight now. Twin bands of
light slanted
in through a pair of east-facing window
s, illuminating floating motes in the air like
they were
remnants of a shower of faerie dust.
Glancing toward the c
orner of the room, she saw
the candle had burned more than halfway down. She aimed her pacing in that direction and blew
out the candle
.