Restless (4 page)

5.
SOMETHING NEW

LEESA GUIDED THE SILVER SUV
into the parking lot of Whippoorwill Ridge Park, a few miles across the New York border. She had purchased the vehicle for Dominic two months ago through a private ad online, using some of Dominic’s seemingly endless cash. She registered the car in her name—Dominic was too far off the grid to be able to register a vehicle—but it really belonged to Dominic. After decades of relying on buses and trains, the wizard found the flexibility and mobility of the SUV convenient and freeing. Leesa was pretty sure he even slept in the vehicle—if the half-awake state that passed for most of the wizard’s rest could truly be called sleep.

Even though the car
belonged to Dominic, whenever the two of them traveled together, Leesa did the driving. Dominic did not possess a driver’s license, and besides, Leesa was a much better driver.

The park looked far different
today than the last time Leesa was here. Back then, winter had stripped the trees of their leaves and turned the fields brown. Now, the woods were thick and green, the grass lush. Instead of a nearly empty parking lot bordered by piles of plowed snow, Leesa turned into a lot packed with cars. Last time, she and Dominic had practiced some simple spells right here in the lot. Today, they would need the shelter of the woods to give them privacy.

At the start of their
nearly two hour trip, she had peppered Dominic with questions about why they needed to travel so far from Middletown today to practice, but the wizard had kept his reasons to himself. Realizing she wouldn’t get anything from him, she had dropped the subject. Dominic had spent most of the ride quietly lost in thought, his eyelids half-closed. Leesa hadn’t really minded, but now that they were here her curiosity was growing again.

She
pulled into an empty spot near the back of the lot. She had barely stopped the car when she saw Rave striding toward them. The sight of him made her smile, as usual. He would have been here a few hours already, she knew, having headed here directly after leaving the apartment last night. She quickly climbed out of the car and hurried into his outstretched arms.

“Good morning,” she said, lifting her chin so she could look up into his face.

Rave kissed her forehead. “It is now.”

Dominic came around the car and nodded to Rave. Without saying anything, he turned and headed toward a dirt path that led into the trees. Holding hands, Leesa and Rave
fell into step behind him.

They walked almost half a mile into the woods
, following the trail most of the way, then picking their way through the trees and brush for the last hundred yards.

With every step, Leesa’s curiosity
mounted, wondering what Dominic had in store for her today. When they had first begun practicing her magic he had been extra careful, taking her to all sorts of places far from home because he didn’t know if his enemies would be able to detect her magic. He knew now, though, that the black waziri were unable to sense the use of any of her powers, even active magic. So why the need to come all the way back here now? She guessed she would find out soon enough.

Finally, Dominic stoppe
d in an area where the larger trees grew farther apart than elsewhere. It couldn’t properly be called a clearing—there was too much underbrush for that—but it was more open than any spot they had passed through since leaving the trail. Leesa glanced around. She couldn’t see more than thirty or forty yards in any direction—she should be able to practice her magic here unseen and uninterrupted.

“Warm up with some easy spells,” Dominic told her. He leaned his back against the trunk of a thick tree and let his eyelids fall half closed once more.

Leesa decided that if Dominic wasn’t going to watch, she might as well entertain Rave.

“
Illuminati verdus
,” she said, picturing a blue orb of light on her hand. The glowing sphere that immediately appeared floating above her palm was not as bright as the golden ones she usually produced, but it was more fitting for Rave.

Rave smiled at the blue
color, and Leesa continued on with her favorite illumination trick, making the light jump from hand to hand.

Rave’s smile widened. He hel
d his own hands out wide and made blue flames flicker from his right hand and then his left. His display was even more impressive than Leesa’s, because he used five individual tongues of flame, rather than a mere sphere of light.

Leesa grinned. “Pretty good
, mister—but can you do this?”

Using her telekinesis, she broke an inch thick dead branch off a nearby tree and lowered it slowly until it was floating at eye level in front of them.

Rave bent his legs and sprang upward, alighting on a branch at least twenty feet off the ground. He snapped a thick branch as if it was a twig, then leaped easily back to earth and held his branch out parallel to Leesa’s.

She laughed, loving
it when Rave was playful like this. She tried to think of what to do next. She considered levitating herself higher than Rave had jumped, but floating slowly upward would not have the same dramatic effect as Rave’s quick leap.

Before she could come up with a suitable follow-up, D
ominic spoke.

“I think you two have had enough fun for now,” he said. “Magic is not a toy.”

The wizard’s smile showed he was more amused than upset. He pushed himself away from the tree and crossed over to Leesa.

Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out his
magical wallet. He opened it and stuck his hand inside, his arm disappearing up to his elbow. When he withdrew his hand, he was holding a small, shiny knife. Before Leesa even had a chance to wonder what the blade was for, Dominic held out his other arm and sliced a three-inch long cut into the top of his forearm. A thin line of blood immediately appeared.

“Heal me,” he sai
d, nodding toward the slowly bleeding wound.

It took Leesa a moment to recover from the shock of
seeing Dominic cut himself. She forced herself to concentrate, trying to remember her recent lesson in healing. Rave looked on with interest.

She placed her palm
half an inch above the cut, picturing an image of Dominic’s forearm as it had looked before the wound appeared. She felt the familiar warmth emanate from her palm, but when she pulled her hand away she was disappointed to see a narrow red scab on Dominic’s skin. At least the bleeding had stopped, and the cut was no longer open.

Dominic examined his arm. “What do you suppose happened?”
he asked, ever the teacher.

“I’m not sure,” Leesa replied.

“Think about it,” Dominic prodded.

Leesa thought hard. She wasn’t certain, but she had an idea.

“I don’t think I fully got the image of the cut out of my mind,” she offered. “I was a still little bit shocked you did that yourself.”

“You must try
to never let yourself be shocked,” Dominic told her. “Where magic is involved, you never know what may happen. You cannot let surprise sidetrack you. With what lies ahead for us, being shocked could cost you your life.”

Leesa
nodded somberly. What the wizard said was true. Who knew what the Necromancer or his black waziri lieutenants might have planned? She had to be ready for anything. She promised herself she would be.

“I know,” she said. “I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

Dominic ran his knife blade along the scab on his forearm. The wound immediately resumed bleeding. He held his arm out to Leesa. The cut looked even deeper this time.

“Try again,”
he instructed.

Leesa repeated the process, this time concentrating as hard as she could on picturing Dominic’s arm
looking totally unblemished. When she pulled her hand away, only the faintest red line remained, like the leftover scar of a long ago wound. Leesa allowed herself a small smile. It still wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty darn good.

Dominic
nodded in approval. “Much better.”

“When did you learn
that?” Rave asked. He glanced down at Dominic’s arm and then back to Leesa. “I’ve never seen you do anything like it.”

“Just the other day,” Leesa replied. “
Cali was my unintended guinea pig, when she scraped her arm watching me practice my spells with Dominic.”

Rave grinned, picturing Cali being magically healed. “I bet she loved
that. She loves anything magic, but having it used on her must have been a special thrill.”

“Yeah, she was kind of stoked,” Leesa
said. “At least she was after my first try, which hurt her just a bit.”

“No pain, no gain,”
Rave said, still smiling. “Isn’t that something you humans say?”

Leesa smiled
back. “That we do. I think Cali much preferred the gain part, though.”

“
You are going to try something else new now,” Dominic said. “It is part of the reason I brought you here.”

Leesa looked at the wizard expectantly.
She was finally going to learn why they had driven all the way to New York.

“You have done many different types of magic in these past months,” Dominic continued. “Enough so that I believe you are ready for this. I want you to turn your mind inward, to try to visualize the magical vibrations inside you. I need you to be able to see them. Begin with everywhere/nowhere and then focus your thoughts internally, recalling all the magic you know, but focusing on none of it.”

Leesa pursed her lips in thought, trying to digest everything Dominic had just said. The concept was somewhat confusing—she had never thought of her magic as being something she could actually see. Also, Dominic’s instructions sounded contradictory—to think about all the magic she knew, but not to concentrate on any of it. She had felt the same way back at the beginning of her training, though, when he had first described everywhere/nowhere to her. Now she could enter the relaxed but focused state with just a single thought. She hoped this would be similar.

“I’m ready,” she said
after a moment. “At least, I hope am.”

“You can do this,” Dominic said
encouragingly. “I have confidence in you.”

Leesa closed her eyes and tried to turn her vision inward. She began recalling every single bit of magic she had ever used: telekinesis, dream magic, the plant growth spell, illumination, levitation, heat and cold resistance, energy beams, healing. She mentally flipped through them as if she was thumbing through the pages of a book, not stopping at any page. When she reached the end of her list, she returned
to the beginning and did it all over again.

Slowly, something began to change. An image came to her, vague and fuzzy at first, but growing steadily clearer. She saw an oblong sphere of pale yellow light, taller than it was wide.
The outside edges were barely visible, but the glow grew brighter the deeper into it she looked. In the center, she saw a shining yellow ball about the size of a grapefruit. Somehow, she knew she was seeing the core of her power, a place she had yet to reach, but which was there waiting for her. The thought gave her great comfort.

The entire oblong
glow seemed to shimmer and pulsate, almost like a heartbeat, but not quite so regular. This was the special vibration of her magic, she knew. She felt her mind merging with the light, touching it, growing familiar with it.

Finally, she opened her eyes. How long they had been closed she had no idea.

“I did it!” she said excitedly. “I saw it.”

“Tell me what you saw,” Dominic said.

She described everything she had seen, everything she had thought, everything she had felt. With each sentence, the smile on Dominic’s face widened.

“Perfect,” he said. “You did exactly what I wanted you to
do.”

She glanced at Rave, who was also smiling at her proudly.

“I’m sorry it was yellow and not blue,” she said to him.

Rave laughed. “
Finding blue light inside you would be too much to hope for,” he joked.

“Now for the true test,” Dominic said.
He reached out and took both of Leesa’s hands in his. “I want you to try to use the same insight on me—try to visualize
my
magic.”

Fresh from her success in
picturing her own magic, Leesa was undaunted by this new task. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine that her mind’s eye was traveling down through her fingers and into Dominic’s strong hands.

As before, the image came to her slowly, but
it grew more distinct with every passing moment. The glow inside Dominic was lighter in color than hers, almost white rather than yellow. It pulsated far more vibrantly than hers, too. The longer she looked, the brighter it grew, until it surpassed the glow of her magic like a floodlight surpasses a simple light bulb. Such was the extent of his power, she knew. In the center of the shimmering light, she saw a core that burned almost white hot, although she felt little heat from it. It was almost too bright to look at.