On the Verge (A Charmed Life Book 1) (20 page)

Pulling a face, Tracy replied, “Every day at work.  There's a uniform.”

Laughing and shaking his head, Jacob objected, “When you had a choice.”

Tracy sighed.  “Then it's been … oh … probably a month or more.”

“I rest my case,” he said, keeping the crowing to a minimum in his voice.

“We're right here,” Tracy murmured, “We could always take my truck …”

Jacob shook his head.  “Nah, my turn to drive,” he said, “Besides, we don't really need that huge thing just to get us from point A to point B, do we?  It's just the two of us.”

He straddled the bike and pulled up the kickstand.  His foot moved back and searched for something, then he leaned over and looked more carefully so that he could kick down a second set of foot pegs.  Grinning at her, he patted behind him the back of the long seat.  “Hop on!”

Tracy nodded.  She'd never ridden a bike, but it must be doable - plenty of people did it all the time, and it looked like fun.  She slipped into the seat behind Jacob, trying to ignore her nervousness.  Jacob handed her a helmet, then slipped his on while she was fumbling with the straps on hers.  “Where'd this helmet come from?” she asked.

Jacob glanced back over her shoulder, though she doubted he could see past the helmet.  “Shadowstepping.  I put my hand through to a storage area I've got tucked away somewhere.”

“Now that's useful,” Tracy said appreciatively, as she got the helmet settled and grabbed the back of her seat behind her as she'd seen others do.  The soft noises of the city disappeared as the hard shell closed around her head, a quiet little sense that made her feel far away.

Jacob started up the bike and she gave a tiny squeak as it roared to life under them.  It was a deep, slow rumble, and loud, and the bike jumped and quivered under her, as if impatient to be on its way.  As he pushed forward and headed down the street at what she was sure must be a sedate pace, but seemed awfully fast to her, she quickly abandoned the idea of holding onto the back of her seat and instead wrapped her arms quickly around Jacob, holding onto him.  He seemed a lot more secure.

“Never ridden a bike before?” he asked, then laughed.  “I'll take it easy at first, don't worry.”

Tracy held on for dear life as the bike dipped going around every corner, feeling as if she were going to fall off.  She'd seen people riding bikes, but it was nothing compared to actually being on it.  To her nervous mind, it was as if it turned onto its side every time it took a turn.

“Whoah!” cried Jacob, on the third corner.  “Don't fight the lean, go with it!  The lean gives us control!”

As they started down the next street, as there wasn't much traffic around, Jacob slowed down the bike and spoke over his shoulder to Tracy.  “Loosen up a little, you don't need to crush yourself against me.  Just hold onto my sides.” Tracy blushed and drew back a bit from him, swallowing nervously.  “OK,” Jacob said, “Now you seem like the sort of gal who knows how to dance.  I'm leading; you're following.  Feel what I'm doing, then follow my lead.”

Tracy nodded her agreement, then realized he couldn't see that, and squeaked out an “OK!”

Jacob nodded, then continued, “Sometimes it'll feel like we're about to fall over.  That's normal.  You'll get used to it.”

Tracy squeaked out another, “OK!” and then her fingers tightened on his jacket as he sped up the bike for another try.

There weren't any turns for a while, and Tracy started to feel more relaxed with her balance, an easier task with the bike staying upright.  She loosened up her grip again, and shifted a little where she sat.

“Don't do that!” cried Jacob, and the bike wobbled.  She grabbed tightly hold of him again, trying not to picture what would happen to her if they crashed.  “I'm sorry, I should have said - don't change how you're sitting unless we're stopped.  If you need to shift, tell me, and I'll pull over for you.”

Tracy let out a nervous little noise of agreement - this wasn't nearly as easy as it looked on TV!  There were a few gentle turns, and Tracy nervously leaned into the turn as they went.  “Excellent,” Jacob called back.  “You're doing great.”

The taller buildings gave way to a subdivision, and from there, they passed into something that seemed closer to countryside.  Tracy had passed by here on the freeway, but had never really driven it.

“Great!  Now it's time to open her up!” Jacob cried.  “This time, when we turn, make sure you're looking over my shoulder - the one on the inside!”

Tracy felt herself start to slide back off the seat as he opened it up, and she realized just how easily he had been taking it on her.  She tightened her grip on him again, and then saw the road getting ready to turn left.  The bike dipped to the side, and she felt Jacob move, and she moved with him, leaning just a little further than he was.  It felt like they were going to topple over at any time, but the turn kept on smooth as anything, even though she could have reached out and touched the pavement sliding past without really reaching that far.  Then the turn was over and they were upright again, zooming down a stretch of forested road faster than before.

A strong emotion welled up in Tracy, part panic, part exhilaration, and she wasn't sure what was going to come out of her mouth until she found herself letting out a scream of pure enjoyment.  “YYYYYYEEEEAH!”  She laughed and kept laughing at the delight of this sort of riding, and briefly tightened her grip on Jacob in a small hug.

The road rushed past beneath them, and every small movement they made let them drift one way or another over the road.  The motorcycle felt like something alive, rumbling under her, jumping a little every time they hit a bit of sand or dirt across the road, and it was like they were flying, just skimming the surface of the earth.  What really overwhelmed Tracy, though, were the scents.  A deluge of scents came rushing past, like a casual stroll in fast-forward, and she rapidly identified the crisp scent of snow and the sharp tang of the pavement, but then the powerful scent of sawdust and slightly burnt wood slapped across her face, and countless animal scents, and someone was cooking bacon and eggs.  Scent after scent rushed through her awareness in fast-forward, like driving with the window down, but a thousand times as intense.  Above it all, she thrilled at the faint, moist scent that she could only identify as impending Spring.

Before Tracy knew it, they were slowing down and pulling into the parking lot she'd seen just yesterday.  Tracy let out a small sound of surprise and disappointment.  “We're here already?” she cried regretfully.  She felt Jacob's chest tremble in what could only be a laugh that she couldn't hear.

Jacob pulled into one of the motorcycle parking spots and the motorcycle's rumble quieted.  Tracy loosened up her grip and shifted to get off.

“Wait!” said Jacob, quickly.  He straightened the bike and planted his foot carefully.  “All right, get off now,” he said.

Tracy slipped backwards off the seat and landed on both her feet, but her knees immediately buckled and she had to catch herself on the bike to stay upright.  “Woah,” she gasped, feeling very wobbly and unstable.

Jacob was off the bike quickly, the stand dropped, and had an arm around her.  “You all right?” he asked, concerned.

She grinned up at him.  “I think it was just the sheer terror,” she quipped, only half-joking.  “Thanks for not letting me get off right away.”

“Wasn't expecting you to fall, just don't get on or off the bike unless it's straight up.  Same with when you tried to shift while we were riding - it messes up my balance.  I'm not used to having a rider.”

Tracy's grin broadened.  “I'll be thrilled to help you get some practice with that!” she replied playfully.

Tracy focused on the target at the far end of the small shooting range.  She'd been dragged along to shooting ranges a couple of times before, though she'd never really picked up the trick of it.  The indoor ranges had usually been little shot-up places full of shells and a few hundred thousand tiny craters with angled walls at directions to make sure ricochets don't come back at the shooter.  This one had the same general shape, but was lacking all the little holes in the walls.  Instead, it was frosted up, the air steaming from the crystallized ice coating the walls and floor.  Before she had gotten here, the walls had shown evidence of scorch marks, discolorations, and melted spots, of large broken craters and misshapen lumps - the bullet holes of magic combat practice.

Narrowing her eyes, Tracy cupped her hand and pointed it at the target, pulling up the magic.  Her temple throbbed painfully, and the narrowing eyes were only half out of concentration - the other half was out of a purely mental exhaustion she hadn't felt since college, and even then it took months to get this far, not just three days.  The faintest hint of mist slipped from between her lips, and an icicle formed suddenly in her hand and jumped forward a couple inches before falling to the ground and shattering amid the trail of other shattered icicles, a broken trail halfway to the target from her feet.

“Oh, c'mon, Tracy!” sighed Jacob in exasperation.  “You're getting worse, not better!”

Tracy let out a rough cry of frustration and hauled her hand back, a large ball of snow and ice forming in her palm just in time for her to throw it at the target.  It hit just over the right shoulder of the black silhouette on the wall with a loud, shattering crack.

Jacob sighed again.  “Snowballs are not going to help you, Tracy.  You need a real attack.”

Tracy angrily retorted, “What I NEED is-”  She cut herself off before she could say anything rude.  She took a deep breath, and let it out in a long sigh.  She finished her statement with a tight, but calm voice, choosing different words.  “A rest.”

“You don't have time for a rest, Tracy,” Jacob snapped, frustration evident in his voice, too.  “You have less than four days!”

“I know, I know!” she forced past gritted teeth.  “But it's not going to do me any good if I'm too exhausted to even make my breath mist when we get to it!”

Tracy stalked out into the hall and slammed the door behind her.  As an afterthought, she bent over to blow over the doorknob.  Mist billowed from her lips, and the doorknob  and the surrounding door instantly whitened with tiny crystalline forms as she iced the mechanism over so that Jacob couldn't get out. She gave it a few more breaths, solidifying it in a solid sheen of smooth ice, then stalked away angrily.  She found the water cooler easily enough, having gotten used to the maze-like web of corridors that wound around the main arena, and poured herself a cupful of filtered water.  She drank the whole thing down, then poured herself another before collapsing into the cheap plastic chair beside the cooler.  As she rested her forehead on her hand, white flakes came falling off to float down to the floor.

She sighed and brushed at her hair, at her hands, at her clothes, getting rid of the light layer of frost that had gathered upon her during practice.  It was amazing how she was so covered with ice, enough that a normal person would be risking frostbite, yet wasn't cold in the slightest.  She actually felt hot – she was even sweating, under all that frost!

Jacob stepped up next to her.  “I'm sorry,” he sighed.

Tracy refused to look at him.  “How'd you get out?” she grumped.

“Shadowstep,” he said, a little apologetically.  Tracy made a rude noise.  “I'm sorry, Tracy, I've never taught anyone before.  It's … it's just hard to describe what I do, cause I just … it's … you need …”

“I know!” Tracy cut him off, finally looking at him.  “It's a sharp mindset! It's quick, it's forceful, you have to create the thrust in your head, you need to have a cold anger, you need to want to destroy the object, you need to have a solid thought, a directed thought.  What it all boils down to, Jacob, is an intent to kill, and I just don't have that!”

“Oh, c'mon!” Jacob cried.  “You've kicked my butt, and you've done the same to others! You've got this martial arts thing you've been practicing for years and you're damn good at it! You've got to have the right mindset.  How could you do all that if you don't?”

“I'm in Aikido!” Tracy stressed.  “An Aikido student who, for almost a year, has been avoiding taking the black belt test because she doesn't want to learn the more dangerous moves! The whole reason I study Aikido is because the perfect Aikido fight is one where no one gets hurt!”

Jacob groaned.  “That's … that's just … ugh.” He dropped his face into his palms, letting out a frustrated voice.  He leaned against the far wall, then slid down to sit on the floor, resting his head in the crossed arms resting on his knees.

Tracy thought, not for the first time, about what Hans had told her on Sunday about people having specialties.  “Look, Jacob,” she said, trying hard to keep the frustration and resentment out of her voice.  “How about we stop trying to shove a brand new mindset into my head sometime in the next four days, and instead focus on what I can already do well?  If we keep up like this, I'm going to be less ready on Saturday for the fight than I was last weekend.”

Jacob sighed softly.  “All right,” his reluctantly conceded.  “I suppose that make sense.  All we have to do is figure out how to teach you to win a fight without using a direct attack.”  His voice held more than a faint tone of sarcasm to it.

Tracy looked hard at him.  “It's not impossible, Jacob.  It's not even unusual.  The whole point of Aikido in the first place is to fight without using a direct attack.”

“I don't know Aikido!” Jacob protested, “And there's no magic-Aikido teacher, either! This is how we do things!”

“This is how
you
do things, Jacob!  Not how everyone does things, and certainly not how I do things!  I have to figure out a different way of doing things, because there's no way I'm going to learn the way you do things in the next half a week.  I'm not even asking for anything really new, either.  I just need to learn some of the things people do and use them in a slightly different way, is all.  I'm sure I'm not going to have to revolutionize anything.”

Jacob sighed into his arms.  “Right,” he said.  “So what should I teach you to do, then?”

Tracy looked up at him and considered the question for a half a minute that seemed longer in the hallway's silence.  “How about healing?” she finally asked.  “I apparently have the right element for it, and it would be a nice change of pace.  I think I'd be able to pull that one off.”

Jacob looked up, rolling his eyes.  “No, you don't,” he said, his voice tired and resigned.

“Don't what?” she asked, confused.

“Don't have the right element.”

Tracy gave a brief pause as she thought about that, feeling a little confused.  “I saw Brin heal Craig with water,” she said, carefully, certain she was remembering correctly, but also sure that Jacob knew what he was talking about.

“It's not …” Jacob stopped, obviously reorganizing his thoughts.  “You can use water to heal, but that doesn't mean water is the right element to heal.  All of the elements inherently have some level of healing magic, and some specialty to what they do.  You can use each individually to heal in certain ways, or you can use them together to enhance each other.”

Tracy nodded, her interest piqued.  “Right! Because the human body is supposed to be composed of all the elements.  That makes sense! See, this is the stuff I want to know! Tell me more.”

Jacob paused, then warned, “Healing isn't going to help you in the match, you know…  you can't learn healing fast enough, or heal fast enough, to be able to do it mid-fight.”

“We are on a break!”  Tracy scolded, “You are not allowed to mention the fight or anything useful to the fight during break times!”  She was only half-serious.

Jacob gave a tired little chuckle and nodded, and Tracy felt a little bad.  He was doing nothing but trying to help her, and she wasn't being very appreciative.  Just because she was frustrated over not doing well, she shouldn't take it out on him.  She resolved to apologize as soon as there was a convenient moment for it.

“The four elements are pretty simple - the aspects they cover are easily understood,” Jacob explained.  “Water of Life heals anything blood can heal, anything where clotting and regrowth allows it to happen - cuts, scrapes, bruises, and the like.  Even broken bones, if you're good enough.  Earth comes in where you need to create flesh where there's none - to replace an eye, a new arm, whatever.  You create it out of clay or earth or stone, and place it where it's supposed to be, and then it grafts on.  And this is where the gestalt happens - if you use water as well as earth, it's easier to attach, to close that gap between flesh and earth and help blood flow through the new earth as it changes to flesh.  Likewise, earth can be used alongside water to help water heal things it normally would have a hard time on – like really bad scars, burns, or nerve damage.”

Tracy nodded.  The biblical link to making flesh from clay was immediately apparent to her, as well as how they each worked separately, but together.  “Makes sense,” she replied encouragingly.

“Air,” he said, “is used for …” He gestured with his hands helplessly, looking for the right word, “the Breath of Life.  Recovery? You can use it to catch your breath, regain your strength as if you've rested, or use it on someone else like … um … first responder.  If someone dies but their body is intact, you can breath life back into them within a few minutes of death.  Like CPR, except magical.”

“So you can't raise the dead,” Tracy tried to help him out, “But you can revive someone if the body hasn't realized it's dead yet? It's not resurrection, just resuscitation.”

Jacob snapped his fingers.  “That's the word I was looking for!  Exactly.  And water and earth can be used with air to repair the body so that resuscitation can occur.”

“And fire?” Tracy asked.

“Fire,” Jacob replied, “is the Spark of Life.  As long as the fire healer keeps the spark of life alive within someone, no matter how wounded they are, they won't die.  It's like life support.”

“No matter how wounded?” she asked.  That sounded improbable, but they were talking about magic.

“There are … stories,” he said, his voice stressing he wasn't sure he believed them, “about a master of fire keeping a beheaded man's head alive until a master of water could reattach it.  I don't know about that, but basically, the stronger your fire magic, the more damaged someone can be, but you can still keep the spark of life within it.  I'm not good at it myself, but I've seen some crazy stuff.”

Tracy nodded, absorbing this relatively easily.  “That all makes a lot of sense,” she mused quietly, half to Jacob, half to herself.  “So what about the more rare elements, like your shadow?”

Jacob smiled, looking down at the charm hanging from his knife.  “Shadow creates a … a patch.  An illusion of health.”

Tracy looked confused.

“Imagine I broke my leg,” Jacob tried to explain.  “I could use shadow to,” he hooked his fingers in air quotes, “'mend' my leg so that it looked and felt perfectly healthy and I could use it just fine.  As soon as I stopped using the shadow bandage, my leg would go back to being broken, but I wouldn't have damaged it any further by using it while it was broken.”

Tracy nodded.  “Kind of like fire - instead of keeping someone alive while they're supposed to be dead, you keep someone moving when they're supposed to be down.”

Jacob nodded.  “Yup, that's a good way of thinking of it.”

“So,” Tracy asked, “If you use it on a severe fracture, or a dislocated arm, then remove the shadow bandage, will the bone be set, or the arm back in its socket?”

Jacob blinked.  “Ummm … I … don't actually know.  Happily, I've never been in a situation to test that.” He thought about that for a few moments, then shrugged.  “Anyway, the gear token, like the one Lord Pax will be using, enhances scientific healing.  Bandaged wounds heal faster and leave less of a scar.  Medicines last longer and work better.  Transplants have less of a chance of being rejected.  We have an actual medical doctor on staff who uses a gear token in that manner.”

“Oh, wow,” said Tracy.  “That token must have gotten more powerful as the years went on.  What did it used to do?”

Jacob chuckled.  “Well, our records aren't really all that great if you go past a few decades, but from what I've been told, it used to make folk remedies actually work – or work better, depending on who you talk to.  As for the mind token,” he paused, then slid up the wall to stand and walked over to her.  He stretched out his hands towards her.  “Do you trust me?”

Tracy nodded, looking to him curiously.

Jacob's fingers touched her temples, and he closed his eyes to concentrate.  She saw the mind charm dangling from the hilt of his knife start to glow.  A presence made itself felt next to her mind, not intrusive like the other touches she had felt over the last few days, but instead, just a friendly, silent closeness – somehow inside her head, but without invading her personal space.  The migraine she had felt coming subsided to a mere dull ache, and her bone-weary exhaustion receded to being merely a bit tired.