Helpless (Blue Fire Saga) (11 page)

“How?” she asked. “What do I do?”

“Use everywhere/nowhere,” Dominic instructed. “When you begin to enter the trance state, focus on seeing the ball move.”

Leesa stepped away from Rave and squatted near the ball. She started her breathing. When they got home, she resolved to practice the trigger thing Dominic had told her about as often as possible, until she mastered it. For now, however, she had to go through the counting up and down.

When she was done, she focused on one tiny discolored spot on the ball. She tried to envision the spot moving. If the spot moved, the ball would have to go with it, right? Unfortunately, spot and ball remained where they were. After a few minutes, she stood up, dejected.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be,” Dominic said. “This requires active magic. Active magic is not easily mastered.”

He took another ball from the can and walked over to the bank of plowed snow that bordered the parking area. Leesa watched as he shaped a section of the snow with his hands, creating a flat area with a steep slope running down from it.

“Come here, Leesa.”

Leesa limped over to Dominic’s side.

“Watch,” he said.

He placed the ball on the very edge of the flat section he had fashioned, balancing it carefully. When he pulled his hand away, the ball remained balanced precariously in place. He bent his head close to the ball and blew out a quick puff of breath at the ball. The ball rolled down the ramp.

“See how easily it moved?” Dominic said. “With just the littlest puff of breath?”

Leesa nodded.

Dominic retrieved the ball. “Start your breathing,” he told her. “When you are done, I’m going to put this back in the same spot, and then I want you to move it.”

Leesa launched into the breathing thing one more time. When she was just about finished, Dominic placed the ball on the edge of the snow bank. She picked out a spot on one of the seams and focused on it. After a few moments, she visualized the ball rolling down the ramp, just like she had seen it do a few minutes ago. To her surprise, the ball tumbled down the ramp!

“I did it!” she exclaimed happily.

“You certainly did,” Dominic said as Rave came over and gave Leesa a big hug.

“That’s the first time I ever moved something when I was actually trying to move it,” Leesa said excitedly. “Can we try it again?”

“That’s why we’re here,” Dominic said, smiling.

Leesa spent the next two hours practicing moving things, with mixed success. If the object was easily moved by a puff of breath—like a tennis ball on the edge of a snow ramp or a candy wrapper on the slippery hood of the Blazer—she was able to move it, but only after seeing it happen first, so she could picture it perfectly in her mind. Whenever she tried to move something more firmly settled into position or that she hadn’t already seen move, she failed. Still, Dominic seemed quite pleased with their day’s work, so she tried not to be too disappointed or frustrated.

“That’s enough for today,” Dominic said after she successfully caused one of the tennis balls to fall off the edge of the Blazer’s bumper. “You must not practice this too often at home,” he warned, his voice very serious now. “Maybe a couple of times a day, every few days at most. This is active magic. I don’t think our enemies can detect it unless they are very close, but we must not take any more chances than necessary. Do you understand that, Leesa?”

Leesa nodded. Dominic’s warning was a sober reminder that even though it seemed like it at times—like when she made a tennis ball slide down a snow ramp—what they were doing was not fun and games. It was preparation for a very dangerous and very deadly struggle.

14. nORMALITY

S
unday morning, Leesa walked over to her mom and brother’s apartment. The almost three mile jaunt was the perfect amount of exercise, especially with the brunch her mom was going to be serving. The sun was shining and the temperature had already climbed above freezing. Leesa wore sunglasses to protect her eyes from the glare. By the time she reached the campus gateway she was warm enough to unzip her parka and shove her knit cap into her pocket.

She knew the last few sunny days had melted a considerable amount of snow, but she couldn’t tell by looking at it. A foot of snow looked pretty much the same as two feet, and the tall, soot and dirt spattered snow banks lining every street and sidewalk didn’t seem to have shrunk at all. She had been yearning for snow all winter, but they had gotten far more than she bargained for. Be careful what you wish for, she reminded herself—you just might get it. As she carefully skirted another of the seemingly endless string of puddles of melted snow covering the sidewalk, she wondered how long it would be before the snow disappeared. Some of the taller snow piles looked like they might last until summer, but she knew that couldn’t be true. What Middletown needed was one good warm rain.

The normally forty-five minute walk took her almost an hour because of dodging so many puddles, but she didn’t care. She loved to walk, and this morning’s trek had been an especially fun one, since she stopped now and then to make a snowball and toss it at a tree or sign post. By the time she reached her mom’s apartment complex, her aim had gotten pretty good.

She knocked on the dark blue wooden door and took off her sunglasses while she waited for someone to answer. A moment later, her brother opened the door. The tantalizing aroma of frying bacon immediately filled her nostrils.

A big smile lit up Bradley’s face when he saw her.

“Hi, pumpkin.” He spread his arms and Leesa stepped into his warm embrace.

“Hi, big brother,” she said, hugging him tightly.

She and Bradley were much closer than most siblings, especially those with a three year age gap between them. Growing up, Bradley had been far and away the most important figure in her life. In many ways he had been her only real parent after their dad left and her mom became more and more dysfunctional. He had walked with her almost every day, encouraging and rewarding her to test and strengthen her bad leg until she no longer even viewed it as a handicap. She knew that without Bradley’s love and guidance, she would have become a much different person.

So when the vampire Stefan offered to release Bradley from the vampire who was keeping him as a feeder, in exchange for Leesa agreeing to become Stefan’s consort, it had been a no brainer. Even giving up her humanity was not too big a price to pay for saving her brother. Fortunately, Stefan had been unable to turn her—whether it was the taint of
grafhym
in her blood or the magic Dominic had instilled in her was still unclear—but Stefan had kept his part of the bargain anyway. And since she and Professor Clerval had cured her mom of the effects of the
grafhym
bite—after Rave had captured the one-fang so they could use its blood—Leesa now had a fully functional family for the first time in her life. Even a small thing like a family brunch was a treasured occurrence.

Her mother Judy emerged from the kitchen, a blue and white checkered apron tied around the front of her pale orange dress.

“Is that my beautiful daughter I hear?”

Leesa moved from Bradley’s embrace into an even more loving one from her mom. Every time Leesa saw the two of them they looked healthier and happier than the last time, which was absolutely wonderful. It was starting to become more and more difficult for her to visualize her mom’s pinched, anxious face. The gaunt, almost deathly appearance of her brother when Stefan led him out of the darkness would stay with her a lot longer, she knew.

All that was in the past, though. The present and the future were what counted.

“It smells great in here, Mom,” Leesa said.

“It should—I’ve been cooking all morning.” She grabbed the shoulder of Leesa’s parka. “Here, let me take your coat.”

Leesa wriggled out of her coat and her mom hung it on the wooden coat tree by the door.

“Everything’s almost ready,” Judy said. “Your Aunt Janet should be here any minute.”

As if on cue, a knock sounded on the door. Bradley opened it and Aunt Janet and her golden retriever Max came in. The delicious smell of cinnamon and sugar floated in with them. Leesa licked her lips. The square pink box under Aunt Janet’s arm almost certainly contained fresh-baked cinnamon rolls from Uncle Roger’s bakery.

Hugs were exchanged all around and then Judy hurried back into the kitchen to finish cooking. Leesa dropped to one knee and draped her arm over Max’s furry back. She used the knuckles of her free hand to give him a vigorous chest rub, Max’s favorite greeting. His tail thumped enthusiastically against the floor, showing his approval. When she was finished, Leesa leaned close to Max and whispered “I love you, Rave,” into his ear. Max responded with a single bark, which startled the others, since he almost never barked. Leesa knew the bark meant the message had been received and understood.

Max and Rave shared some kind of special bond, and Rave had promised Leesa that when she talked to him through Max, he would hear what she said. At first, she’d felt foolish doing it, but it had worked twice already. She had since learned Rave could somehow sense some of her stronger thoughts on his own, even over great distances, so she didn’t really know if Max was actually passing her messages along or if was just Rave hearing her thoughts. She liked the idea of Max sending them, though, so she continued to do it now and then. It was the closest she could get to calling Rave on the phone.

“Your Uncle Roger wishes he could be here,” Aunt Janet told them, “but Sunday morning is one of his busiest times at the bakery.” She handed the pink box to Bradley. “He sent these along in his place. They’re freshly baked—I picked them up on the way here.”

Leesa knew that if Uncle Roger were here, they’d probably be biting into the delicious buns already. His motto was “life is short, eat dessert first.” He had even served bits of apple pie as appetizers at Christmas dinner. Leesa supposed she could wait until brunch was served, though.

“Food’s ready,” Judy called from the kitchen. “Everybody grab a seat.”

Judy had covered the dining table with a white tablecloth with a blue runner down the center. The plates and napkins were also blue. The effect was simple yet attractive, Leesa thought. A tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice sat at each setting and there was a basket of rolls in the middle of the table.

Leesa took the seat at the far end. Bradley sat to her right, with Aunt Janet opposite him. They saved the end nearest the kitchen for their mom, who emerged through the doorway a moment later carrying a spinach quiche in one hand and plate of bacon in the other.

“Dig in,” she said. “Don’t wait for me. I’ll be right back.”

She returned to the kitchen and came back this time with a big bowl of scrambled eggs and another of hash brown potatoes. After placing the two bowls onto the table, she sat down.

“Since Roger’s not here, we’ll save the cinnamon rolls for dessert,” she said jokingly. She grabbed her glass of orange juice and held it up for a toast. “To family,” she said.

Everyone clinked classes and then settled in to eat.

The food was delicious. Leesa helped herself to a big piece of quiche, three strips of bacon and a generous portion of hash browns. The quiche was especially tasty.

“Too bad Rave couldn’t be here,” Judy said after they had all enjoyed a few bites of food.

“It’s the snow, mom,” Leesa said. “It’s just too dangerous to walk along the side of the highway when it’s narrowed by piles of snow. And you know he doesn’t drive.”

She noticed Bradley watching her with interest when the subject turned to Rave. Her brother liked Rave, but felt there was something strange about him that Leesa was not revealing. Of course, Bradley was right. She had not shared Rave’s volkaane nature with her family yet. Now that Rave had allowed Cali to know his secret, Leesa guessed she should share it with Bradley sometime soon. She would just have to find the right time.

“I hope you don’t have to wait for all this snow to melt before you get see him again,” Aunt Janet said. “You might be waiting until spring!”

“I saw him just the other day,” Leesa said. “A friend and I drove out for a visit.” She wasn’t going to talk about seeing him in New York yesterday, because that trip would be impossible to explain. She hadn’t told anyone about Dominic yet, and did not expect to do so anytime soon.

The conversation drifted to more mundane matters. Her mom talked about her new job at a candy shop in Middletown, which she was really enjoying, and Bradley told them about the one class he was taking as he dipped his toe back into college work. He planned to reenroll at Weston and take a full load in the fall.

Leesa was so happy. She loved the total normality of this whole family experience—and they hadn’t even gotten to the cinnamon rolls yet!