The Magickers (30 page)

He stifled a mutter. “I'll catch you!” He stretched his hands out again.

“I don't think I can do it. . . .”

“Bailey,” he said firmly. “You can do anything.” He wiggled his fingers. “You're just a long step away. Not far at all. And I won't let you fall in, I promise!” She looked into his eyes across the dark chasm. “Come on. We've got things to do. Canoe races. Helping Henry get even with Stefan and Rich. Learning our crystals. Catching that thief.”

“That thief!” Bailey cracked a grin. “I've a plan.”

“Trent and I will help, just . . . take my hand . . . and jump.”

She took a deep breath. She looked back over her shoulder, to something only she could see in the purple shadows. “Maybe I should go home instead. Mom must be so worried. I think I can make it from here,” she said wistfully.

A sinking feeling hit him. He was losing her. “Someday, Bailey. But not from here, and not without help.”

She swung around. Without another word, she leaped.

It caught him off guard. She came at him, arms and legs akimbo, golden-brown hair streaming, hands grasping desperately for him. He waved frantically, trying to catch her flying hands. In an awful moment, as she hung in midair over the darkening gap, he knew she wouldn't make it.

“No!” Leaning farther forward than he dared, he locked wrists with her. She cried out and tore her right hand away from his left as though stung. Jason fell to his knees, off-balance, and gave a great pull, yanking her on top of him, and they both went tumbling.

But she was on his side of the awful gap. He got to his feet and pulled her up. Bailey leaned on him, and took a great gulping breath. “I can't see,” she whispered. “It's all . . . dark and purple shadow.”

“I can,” he reassured her. He linked his right arm about her arm, tucking her close to his side. He turned and looked and saw only mirrorlike walls facing them, tinted with the inner glow of the crystal.

Jason pondered. “Ummm.”

“Anything to eat?” Bailey's voice sounded wispy and weak.

“Not on me.”

She giggled faintly. “Should have sent Trent. He's always got food on him, unless he's eaten it first.”

“Hey!” said Jason, mock-insulted. Without trying to worry her, he examined the area around them, searching for the way out. There was none. Now they were both trapped. He stopped in his tracks. Bailey shivered next to him and he could feel how cold she was, how lifeless this crystal was becoming. She was running out of time.

He closed his eyes, thinking. The fire on his right shoulder seemed to flicker. The music in his left ear tinkled faintly. He couldn't lose them! Without them . . . Jason's eyes flew open. He looked ahead. As long as he had the two Magickers anchoring him, he was not lost. He couldn't be. The planes ahead of him might look solid, but they had not shut away Eleanora and Gavan. He hugged Bailey. “One step at a time,” he told her confidently. He moved forward into the purple shadows, his friend leaning on him.

From behind, a howl sounded. It echoed and resounded off the crystal walls, rising and falling.

Bailey gasped and clutched at him. Jason fought the impulse to spin around. “There's a canyon between it and us,” he said. He moved another step closer to the heat, the music.

“It followed me in when I tried to keep them from getting you. One of them tracked me. They can see me. Smell me. That's why I can't sleep, I've been running and running ever since. I ran in here to hide, and I've been trapped. I couldn't find a way out!” Bailey's voice trembled.

“I won't let them catch us. Just hang on to me!”

The wolfjackal howled again, louder, closer. He though he could hear triumph in its throat. He had no doubt it could jump the canyon. But he was almost home, and of that, he had little doubt as well.

He could hear the chimes, like a waterfall of notes, cascading about him. Heat washed up against them, banked warmth from an unseen source, but he knew who it was. On his heels, he could hear the noise as the running beast gathered itself, and jumped.

“This way, Bailey!” He grabbed her and pushed her ahead into . . . nothingness.

 

“Next time, I want pillows,” she said. Contentedly, she licked off her spoon, leaning back in the great winged back chair in Eleanora's office, because Gavan's was undeniably still a mess . . . what with papers and objects from his desk toppled everywhere, not to mention overturned chairs from when Jason and Bailey had hit ground.

“Next time?” Both Gavan and Eleanora looked at Bailey.

She blushed. “Well. You know. If I ever have to fall out of a crystal again . . . once burned, twice careful.”

Jason took a small tart from his plate and passed it to her, saying, “Still hungry?”

She snatched it up with a muffled “Thank you,” crumbs dribbling from the corner of her mouth. Finally, she sat back, empty bowl on her lap, a cat-who-ate-the-canary pleased look on her face. Her eyelids drooped.

“I think,” observed Eleanora, “that a good night's sleep is in order. And then, tomorrow, young lady, we will listen to your adventures and reacquaint you with your crystal . . . from the outside!”

Bailey nodded slowly as Eleanora reached forward to take the dirty dishes. Gavan leaned over the chair, then picked her up in his arms, as though she were a small child. “To Kittencurl and bed,” he said.

Jason watched them go. Suddenly, Bailey peeked from around Gavan's arm.

“Thank you,” she got out sleepily. He beamed.

 

Ting and Bailey sat chatting away, laughing and giggling, with an occasional smile and thrown-in laugh from Jennifer as Bailey devoured a breakfast fit for either Trent or Henry Squibb. She grinned at Jason and Trent as they slid into their seats. “I'm almost all caught up!” she announced, pointing at her tray.

“Good.” He didn't like the image of a quiet, lackluster Bailey. She seemed to be back, in more ways than one. She sidled over and whispered, “Have I got things to tell you!”

“I don't know,” he whispered back. “Have you?”

“I'm serious! You won't believe what I heard, ghosting about.” She glanced around the mess hall. “For instance, Tomaz is looking for a skinwalker.”

“A what?”

“I'll tell you later!” She giggled and put her elbow in his ribs. “Later!”

“Okay.”

She slid back to Ting, and they exchanged some more words, quietly this time, except that Ting looked up, over Bailey's head, at the two of them, before ducking back down and the two girls burst into loud laughter. Was it something he'd said? Puzzled, Jason studied his breakfast.

“Girls,” muttered Trent. “Can't live with 'em, and can't live with 'em.”

That made Jason laugh. “Now,” he said, “you're beginning to sound like Bailey.” He started to eat his Frosted Flakes before they got soggy.

Back at their cabins, with some spare time to clean up the area because inspection would be tomorrow, they found Jonnard marching Henry about the small clearing and path, dowsing rods in his hand. Henry's round face looked more owlish than ever, huffed and puffed up with frustration.

“I can't do it! I just can't.” Henry shoved his glasses back to rest properly on the bridge of his nose.

Jon looked down on him, saying mildly, “If you can't, that's perfectly all right. Magickers have all kinds of Talents. There are all sorts of perfectly capable people who can't dowse. But you
are
the one who asked for extra practice.”

“I can't do anything!” Henry began to wail and then stopped short. He sighed instead. “I'm going to be drummed out, I just know it.”

“You're here at camp. Meanwhile . . .” Jon glanced at the two of them standing there. “Anyone have a clean handkerchief or bandanna?”

“Bandanna in the cabin!” Trent shot off and came back with a bright red bandanna in his hands. He handed it to Jon.

Jon stretched it out between his fingers. “Okay, Henry, one last try before I let you give up on dowsing.” He held out the bandanna as a blindfold. Henry fidgeted while he fastened it about his eyes. Stefan and Rich sauntered up, and stood, smirking, at the path's edge. Jon eyed them, then decided to ignore them as he bent over to retrieve a line of pennies he'd laid out on the ground. After a moment or two, he had them laid out in a new line.

“All right. In the same general area we were before, there's a line. Find it, Henry,” Jon said quietly.

Henry's hands flexed around his dowsing rods. Before he could bring them into position and start, both Stefan and Rich darted to his side, saying, “That's too easy.” Grabbing him, they began to spin him round and round in circles, till—when they halted and stepped back—his glasses had slipped all the way to the end of his nose and he wobbled in his shoes. “Now, try it!” They stepped back, chortling at their cleverness.

Jonnard shot the two of them a dirty look before saying, “It's all right, Henry. Let me know when you're ready.”

“N . . . now,” Henry quavered. He stumbled, then righted himself as he walked forward.

With Trent, Jason, and Jon all encouraging him, his path snaked all over the small clearing dizzily. Even when he steadied, not once as he neared the line of coins did his metal rods even twitch. Rich and Stefan snickered and smirked till even they were tired of it and wandered off. Squibb finally halted with a sigh, tugged the blindfold down around his neck. “It's no use. I'm just an idiot.”

Jon took the rods from him and patted him on the shoulder. “No, you're not. When's the last time anyone ever dug a well hoping to hit pennies? At any rate, you're a whiz on the computers, I hear.”

“But that's not Magick.”

“It is to someone like me.” Jon smiled. “Come on, let's play chess a bit before class.” Without another word, he turned and went into their cabin, his long legs taking him up two strides at a time over the steps and porch. With a sniffle, Henry took off the bandanna, tossed it to Trent, and followed. Trent watched them disappear thoughtfully.

Inside, Jason remembered something.

“Hey, Trent. You ever heard of a skinwalker?”

Trent stopped in the middle of making a basket with a pair of rolled-up dirty socks. “A what?”

“A skinwalker?”

He scratched his nose and shot the socks into the corner from across the room anyway. “I don't know if this is what you mean . . . but I think it's like a Native American term for a shapeshifter. A skin changer, like. Like . . . I dunno . . . a werewolf. Where'd you heard about one, anyway?”

“Bailey told me. She heard stuff while she was walking around, half here and half not. She says Tomaz is looking for one.”

“Whoa. That's pretty heavy.” Trent stood up. “Someone who sprouts hair and claws and stuff in the full moon.” He bared his teeth and began to stagger across the cabin at Jason.

Jason wound up and thwapped him with a pillow, and Trent fell over, laughing. When he stopped, he asked, “What do you think?”

“I don't know. She said she had a lot to tell me. We'll see.” He shrugged.

“May you live in interesting, weird times,” Trent said, as he got to his feet and began to knot his socks up so he could pelt them at Jason.

“Thank you!” Jason beamed at him.

21

“
A
RE you sure you're up to this?”

“ 'Course, I'm sure!” Bailey yawned and stretched. “I'm almost all caught up!” She grinned, then hid her mouth. “ 'Sides . . . this is get even day! And it's the Fourth! Who could miss a baseball game on the Fourth of July?”

Ting hugged her. Jason eyed Bailey. She still looked a bit pale behind her freckled nose, but all in all, much better. He crossed his arms as Rich and Stefan snickered.

“No way is she gonna be on my team,” Rich said. Stefan lumbered across the baseball diamond, putting on his catcher's gear as he moved, strapping the protective padding across his chest and bulky thighs.

“No way I'd ever want to be,” Bailey shot back. She pressed her lips shut thinly as Jefferson came round the corner of the backstop, clipboard in hand.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen. It's been a fine day. Are we ready to hold our vengeance match this late afternoon?” He smiled broadly as though he had been listening. “Let's get teams picked.”

The warped wooden stands thundered dully as campers who weren't playing settled themselves down with colorful paper sacks of fresh popcorn from the kitchens. The aroma wafted deliciously over the baseball diamond, and Jason almost opted to go sit and watch as well. Trent's stomach gave a faint rumble, but he put his hand on Jason's wrist, frowning.

“We can't let 'em get away with this,” he whispered.

Jason nodded. He pushed the desire for popcorn to the back of his thoughts and squared his shoulders as Jefferson asked, “Do we have both captains here?”

“I'm here,” said Rich, the corner of his mouth curling back unpleasantly. “Dunno what happened to Fred, though.”

“He's still at the swimming relays. He should be here any second,” Ting shot back.

“With dead arms, if he's swimming,” said Stefan gleefully. He gave a grunt as Jefferson eyed him a moment. He shuffled around and found himself, somehow, standing behind Rich.

Bailey stood with her arms folded. Jennifer leaned over and whispered something in Bailey's ear.

“I don't think that was the least bit funny,” said Bailey. “And you guys are going to lose.”