Illicit Magic (16 page)

Evan looked around and I followed his eyes as they ran over the laden bookcases. He grinned for a moment and I was caught so off guard by the lovely line of his mouth that I almost missed him say, “Perhaps we shouldn’t be in smashing distance of a bookshelf right now.”

I smirked at him and barely stopped myself from rolling my eyes. It was an unpleasant habit and hardly one to bring out the best in people.

“We’ll try it out some other time. So lately, you’ve only moved when you’ve panicked?”

I nodded.

“Well that’s something,” Evan decided, his voice strong. He nodded and I thought some of the hostility seemed to have gone from his face.

“And Étoile held on to me once and moved me.” I recalled her grabbing me and moving me from my flat to the airport. “She did it at will.”

“She’s been taught from birth.”

“Lucky.”

“You’ve really not been taught anything? At all?” Evan was searching my face like there was some sort of clue waiting there for him to discover.

“Not a thing.”

“Unlucky.”

“I guess.”

“It would have been easier for you to have been taught as soon as you had shown any magical inclination.”

“Can’t argue with that,” I agreed. It would have been nice to grow up with others who shared my predilections. Maybe my childhood would have been a lot less lonely.

“Lesson is over for today.”

“But I haven’t done anything?” My voice inflected like I was asking him a question.

“You have shown me what you can’t do and told me what you can do. That’s enough. Take a break. David will come find you when he wants you.”

“What does David want me for?”

“He’ll teach you some learned magic. Book magic, if you like.”

“I didn’t think magic was like learning from books.” I tried not to mimic, but threw the words back at Evan all the same.

“The kind of magic I’m teaching you, no, but David’s kind is different.”

“Magic isn’t just,” I grappled for a word and settled, dully, on “magic?”

Evan shook his head. “Magic comes in many different shapes and forms. For many, it’s illusion. The ‘make a boat disappear, pull a rabbit out of a hat’ kind of magic. That’s not really even magic; it just looks like it. Humans like to call it magic anyway.” He held up a finger. “Then there’s learned magic. That’s comes from people with an inclination towards the magical but who have to learn to use it. They learn spells and incantations. They can mix up potions to cure ailments and influence people. Sometimes they have a core magic too; it runs a bit in their blood and that’s why they have a strong calling to magic. Then there’s us.” Evan raised another finger, paused, and raised another.

“What are we?” I whispered.

“We’re absolute magic. It’s in our blood and bones. It’s in every fibre of our being. It is what we are. You and I are different but the magic affects our bodies and our brains in a similar way so we can manipulate the universe to do our bidding.”

“Can everyone do the same things?”

“No, of course not. Like regular humans aren’t all great at sports or riding horses, or sailing boats.” Evan rested back in his chair and swung one long leg across the other. “Some can teleport, some have telekinesis, some are psychic, some can influence people or the weather or the air. Magic is different for all of us.”

“Is anyone both?”

“Yes, but usually the strengths lean way or the other.”

“Usually?”

“If someone has weaker magic, say the core magic within them, they could use learned magic to supplement their skills, making them stronger still.”

“Is that why David will be teaching me too?”

“We all thought it would be a good idea to expose you to some of the learned magic while you practised controlling your own magic. David will be able to teach you the basics, things that can heal and protect you. Even if you never use it, you’ll at least have some understanding of that aspect of magic.”

“Okay.”

“Plus David has a great potion for a cold remedy, not that we get sick a lot.”

“A cold remedy?” It seemed a little absurd.

“He uses lemon and honey.”

“I hate to burst David’s bubble but Lemsip has already been invented.”

“Bet it doesn’t come with a spell to ward off infections though.”

“Will it turn me into a frog?” I asked facetiously.

“He’ll teach you that another time. I don’t recommend it.”

“What are you?” I asked, recalling that he had just said that we were different. I couldn’t see any difference, but maybe I didn’t know what I was looking for.

He looked me in the eyes and I felt my stomach do little flips as the silence hung in the air between us. I was about to prompt him when a knock at the door and a male voice announced David’s arrival.

I went to answer it but when I turned back to say goodbye to Evan, he had gone and I didn’t have a clue how he could have left the room without me seeing.
Show off.

David’s lesson took place in the kitchen and also included Kitty, the sisters Christy and Clara, and the accident-prone teenage boy, Jared. First, he had them demonstrate some of the things they learned. There was a little potion that could make the room fill with smoke (Meg didn’t like that one, as she protested that night at dinner to a rueful David), powders that could heal a wound and another that could make a barrier around a person, like an invisible wall.

Just when I was beginning to wonder if his lessons were not going much further than household products and science experiments, David made it rain. In the kitchen. Then he produced a rainbow that splintered into glorious stars, which danced across the ceiling. I didn’t know what the point of it was, but it was pretty and I gazed at the display in awestruck wonder.

After the demonstration (that had served to intrigue me), David moved on to spells.

“Will I have to rhyme?” I asked as we sat around the table, pencils and paper in front of us. Kitty winked at me. She realised I knew the answer to that one.

“Of course not. This isn’t English literature,” David sniffed and I wondered just how many times he had been asked that same question. “Spells are just words. Simple. It’s the magic in you that transforms them into power and action. They need to be heartfelt and they need to be indicative of what it is that you want to do.

“Sometimes a spell is accompanied by a potion to give it more power. The potions are like baking a cake. You mix together the right stuff, and the right thing happens. You get a cake. Forget an ingredient and it just won’t work. The cake won’t rise properly or it won’t taste right.” He looked at each of us to see if we understood his analogy and we nodded in turn. “Good. Here’s your task.”

David spelled out to us – puns aside – what he wanted us to do and instructed us to make a simple spell that would illuminate our surroundings. I guessed it would come in handy if a fuse blew, at least.

Christy and Clara were naturals, racing to raise their hands at almost the exact same time before I even put pencil to paper. Kitty rolled her eyes and I guessed this happened almost every lesson. While they proudly said their spells and lit up the space around them with a strange glow, I leaned into Kitty.

“Why are you here?”

“Same as you. Need to learn about this stuff until I can manage my magic properly.”

“How come you haven’t learned all this stuff already?”

“Magic skipped a generation with me. By the time my family realised what I could do, the grandparents, who everyone thought were just crazy had passed. There was no one to teach me,” she whispered.

Jared was next to perform his spell. I hoped he couldn’t see David wince as the last line came to a close, then sigh with relief as nothing broke. Three orbs of light hovered in front of Jared’s head and he dismissed them with a click of his fingers.

“Kitty?”

Kitty shrugged her shoulders and focused. Even with my limited knowledge, I realised she had redirected sunlight with her mind, rather than create a light from incanted magic.
Still, she said she could manipulate the weather, perhaps the sunlight counted as part of that.

“Not quite. Stella?”

I thought for a moment and ignored the doodles I had scrawled on my paper, then said, while trying not to feel completely ridiculous, “I want to see what I cannot see. I want the light to find itself from my bright mind.” And I was rewarded with a faint orb of light, which made up for feeling like a complete idiot.

David smiled with pleasure. “And not even written down. A good first attempt, Stella.”

When we broke for lunch, I was glad to sit next to Étoile, eating grilled cheese sandwiches as the conversation reached a heavy hubbub. Evan was the only one missing and I wondered where he was, before wondering why I was wondering.

“How do you like your lessons?” Étoile asked, conversationally.

“So-so,” I replied, noncommittally. It was my first day, after all, and I needed to think it through.

Étoile placed her manicured hand over mine and I felt a surge of contentment. “It will get easier.”

I nodded. If she said it would, it would.

The next two hours were apparently earmarked as free time, which allowed me to lounge in my room before taking a walk. Instead of staying in the gardens, I passed through them to the steps that led down to the beach. On the bottom step, I held onto the railing so I could slide off my shoes with one hand. I tied the laces together and hung them over my shoulder.

I walked across the sand, pale golden and a little gritty, and down by the shore so I could wiggle my toes in the soft swirls of surf rolling in. The water stretched to infinity beyond me; to the left it curled around a promontory and I lost sight of the sand. The hillside swept up further down. I could see birds swooping into the trees some distance away, their calls echoing on the wind.

To my right, the sand stretched on for a few miles. The hillside was lower here and grassy, rather than tree-lined. I wondered why no one had built out here. Surely this land, with its far-reaching views, would be a prime development zone. There wasn’t much to explore so after a while of gazing out to sea, wondering how many thousands of miles away my former home was, and if I was even looking in the right direction, I turned back and went to sit on the steps.

When Étoile landed next to me in a flash of electricity, I leapt from my perch and had to stoop to pick up my shoes, which had fallen to the sand.

“Sorry,” she said, but the sentiment didn’t quite carry to her face. “I’m sent to bring you in.”

“Should you be using magic outdoors?” I grimaced in case she thought I was chastising her since I had no place to do that.

“Generally speaking, no, but who’s to see here?” Without taking offence, Étoile swept her arms to the uninhabited land to the left and right of us.

“How come this is the only house out here?”

Étoile shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.” She reached for my hands and held them in her own. “Ready?”

I nodded. The air crackled and I just remembered to draw a breath as the gritty sand was replaced by the feeling of soft carpet. She winked at me like we had shared some little secret before walking out of the library.

Evan had been working on a laptop but pulled the lid closed when we appeared.

“Same again?” I asked, not exactly thrilled at the prospect of failure again. I wasn’t even buoyed by Étoile’s teleportation.
That had been her, not me,
I reminded myself.

“Let’s try telekinesis this time. Take a seat.” Evan tucked his laptop into his bag, then stood and walked the few paces to the bookshelves. He plucked a book off the middle shelf and tossed it on the table in front of us where it landed with a thud. I took a seat and bent to pull on my shoes and tie up the laces as I waited.

“You’re going to try and move it,” he said, nodding at the book, after contemplating me for a moment. I tried not to shrivel into a ball under his scrutiny.

“I don’t think I can.”

“I think you can.”

“I really don’t think I can.”

“Try and see. Look at the book.”

I sighed. There was clearly no point in arguing. I looked at the book. It was a slim hardback and appeared to be a novel, though I couldn’t make out the print upside down. “How do I do this?”

“You have to tap into the magic inside you.” Evan placed a hand over his heart and tapped his fingers. “You have to believe that you can do it.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to, Stella. Just try. Focus on the book. Feel it, feel your mind reach for it.”

I stared at it for long minutes that stretched on. I felt like the weight of the task was pressing down on me. It was hardly the carefree, blink-of-an-eye magic that Étoile had demonstrated to me several times. I wondered if I would ever have such control or if I was just a one-stunt dud. A depressing thought.
Maybe they wouldn’t want me if I couldn’t stump up the goods. Where would that leave me?
I sighed. I seemed to be spending a lot of time sighing lately. It wasn’t healthy.

“What are you thinking about, Stella? It doesn’t seem like the task.” Evan sounded frustrated.
Like I wasn’t!

I surprised myself by answering coherently. “I’m wondering if I’m a dud.”

It was Evan’s turn to surprise me and his face cracked into an effortless smile as he chuckled over my concerns. His eyes wrinkled at the edges with laughter lines and his mouth was broad with perfectly pink lips. He really did have a lovely face when he smiled.
What was I thinking?

He said slowly, “You are, categorically, not a dud. You just need to learn.”