chapter Three
I was well rested and a little less cocky when I arrived for my next training session. Maybe I’d been more tired than I realized. I’d created a complex illusion, used magic to call for help, and then survived some extra drills with my grandmother. No wonder I’d struggled.
But now I was ready to go. “Hit me with your best shot,” I told Rod.
He shook his head. “No, let’s warm up first.”
“You can sprain a magical muscle?” I asked.
“No, but magic is all about confidence. It’s about believing that you can shape the universe to your will, and no matter how powerful you are, that can’t happen if you don’t believe it will. So, it’s best to start with something you know you can do and work up from there.” He looked around the room, then pointed to the mug sitting on the table in front of him. “For starters, could you please reheat my coffee for me?”
Heat was easy. It was one of the first things I’d learned. It was all about exciting the molecules. I focused my energy and sent a zap into the mug, then for good measure I cloaked the mug in a blanket of warmth. I felt the familiar surge of power go through me, doing exactly what I wanted it to, and I relaxed. The previous day had just been a fluke, after all. I still had it. “Your coffee, sir,” I said with a flourish toward the cup.
Rod reached to take the mug, then flinched when he touched it. “Yeah, you got it hot, all right,” he said. More cautiously, he curled his fingers around the handle, raised the mug to his lips, and took a tentative sip. Then he frowned.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“The mug’s hot. The coffee, well, not so much. Did you focus on the liquid?”
“Yeah, I did. That was the main thing. The outside was just to keep it warm longer. It was an idea I had.”
“That’s a good idea,” Owen put in encouragingly.
“It didn’t work, though?” I asked. That was supposed to be an easy spell, the kind of thing they taught kids as soon as they were old enough not to burn themselves.
“Maybe you just aimed wrong,” Rod said. “Both spells seem to have hit the mug, not the coffee.” He put the mug down. “Get a little closer and try again.”
This time, I wasn’t quite so sure of myself, so the magic felt sluggish. If it had been visible, it would have swirled around the mug, dipping toward it but missing a few times. Finally, I got it inside and kept it steady long enough that I thought I’d done the trick. “Try it now,” I said, panting ever so slightly.
Rod picked it up, took a sip, then grinned. “There you go! Good work.”
I sighed in relief, but I wasn’t sure it counted as good work if doing such an elementary task wore me out that badly. Wasn’t this supposed to get easier along the way? I’d seen enough eighties movies with training montages to know how it should work. I was supposed to start out struggling, but I’d keep at it and finally have the big breakthrough that would have my trainer grinning until I totally surprised him by outdoing him, and then it would be time for the big competition. Maybe what I was missing was the inspirational power ballad.
*
I was so frustrated by my magical failures that I barely remembered to be worried on the way home from work. I was too busy griping to Owen about how difficult magic had become for me. “Maybe it was just beginner’s luck and I really am not cut out to be a wizard,” I said. “There’s a reason I didn’t get an owl when I turned eleven.”
It took him a second to catch the reference because he didn’t think in pop culture terms, but then he grinned and said, “You weren’t magical when you were eleven. You are now, and there are always ups and downs when you’re learning something new. But if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll run some tests tomorrow. It’s possible that something’s blocking you.”
“You mean the elves might have done something to me?”
“I doubt it because I’d hope I’d be able to sense it, but our enemies have tampered with your abilities in the past.”
Fortunately, no elves attacked us during our commute, which confirmed my theory that they’d set us up so wizards could be blamed. If the elves were really after Owen, things would be very different.
I didn’t even notice that instead of inviting me over for dinner, Owen merely steered us straight to his place. It was becoming such a habit that an invitation wasn’t really necessary, and I didn’t blame him for wanting to minimize the amount of time he had to spend alone with Granny. I wondered if there was a polite way to ask her how long she planned to stay. Owen kept insisting that he didn’t mind, and he seemed to be telling the truth. He’d never known his own grandparents, so maybe he was enjoying having a grandmother fuss over him.
I, on the other hand, had nearly reached my limit. I’d moved to New York in part to get away from my crazy family. If they followed me here, I’d have to move back home to get away from them again.
As we finished up the last bites of apple pie, Granny fixed me with her steely gaze and said, “So, what’s the problem?”
“Problem?” I asked, blushing at the thought she might have picked up on my desire for her to leave.
“Did you hit a snag with your training?”
How did she know this stuff? “I was tired yesterday, so it didn’t go so well.”
“You did better today, though,” Owen hurried to add.
It didn’t fool Granny. “Okay, honey, out with it,” she said.
I glanced at Owen before saying, “I started off so well. It was easy. And now, it seems like it’s more of a struggle.”
“Well, you’ve moved beyond the basics. It’s going to be harder. Anything worth doing takes time and effort to learn.”
“But that’s the thing—it is the basics I’m having trouble with now.” I heard the frustration in my own voice. “The things that were easy earlier in the week are a lot harder now, if I can even do them at all. I think I’m losing my touch,” I finally admitted. Owen’s expression was both shocked and concerned.
“Let’s see what we can do about that—after we do the dishes, of course,” Granny said matter-of-factly.
The dishes went quickly with all three of us working, and then we adjourned to the living room. Owen took a seat to the side so he could observe. His worried look unsettled me. “I’m not going to spontaneously turn into a frog, or anything like that, am I?” I asked him.
He quickly adjusted his expression as he said, “I can’t think of any reason you should.”
“There is precedent in your department.”
“He was meddling with dangerous spells. You’re doing the basics.”
“It’s probably just bad technique that you were taught,” Granny said. “Try it my way.”
Using Granny’s techniques did have slightly better results than my office training session that afternoon, but the simplest spells still left me feeling like I’d singlehandedly fought a great magical battle. In spite of their assurances, I knew something was wrong.
“You tell Rod that you’re doing things Granny’s way from now on,” she told me when I called a halt to the exercises and got ready to go home. “How you city wizards get anything done at all is beyond me.”
“We do get lazy and complacent with all the magical energy in the environment around here,” Owen said, which I thought disappointed her. She’d been gearing up for a big argument. I suppressed a smile. Owen might have found the best way of encouraging her to return home in not rising to her challenges.
*
The next morning, I was still haunted by the thought that the elves might have done something to me. My ability to use magic had totally changed after that attack, and I doubted it was a coincidence. I thought I might ask Perdita some general, innocuous questions about elven magic when I got to work, but she wasn’t yet at her desk when I arrived. I took that as a good sign because it meant she was getting back to normal. Showing me that anti-wizard flyer had probably cleared her conscience.
When she still hadn’t shown up by noon and hadn’t called in sick, I started to worry. There were times when I wouldn’t have been surprised if she forgot what day it was and thought it was the weekend, but with a spate of elf disappearances and resignations, I wasn’t ready to dismiss it so easily. I called her cell phone, but the call went straight to voice mail, so I left a message for her to check in with me.
I hadn’t heard anything by the time of my afternoon training session, so when I arrived at the classroom, I asked Rod, “Did Perdita resign? You would tell me, right?”
“She didn’t show up today?”
“Nope, and no call from her, either, which is odd. She’s good about letting me know if she’s going to be out or unusually late. I left her a message, but she hasn’t called back.”
“I didn’t get any paperwork on her. I can’t start investigating job abandonment until she misses two more business days without notice.”
Had she put herself at risk by showing me that flyer? And how would anyone know she’d done that? I hadn’t told where I got it, and no one had been around when she showed it to me.
Owen showed up a moment later carrying a box full of gadgets. “Sorry I’m late. I was pulling some things together.”
“Is that the testing stuff?” I asked.
“Testing?” Rod asked.
“To make sure the elves didn’t somehow put the whammy on me,” I explained.
“But if the elves don’t know you have powers, how would they know to put the whammy on you?”
“How else would you explain the fact that I went from being a natural to being remedial?”
“You really think it’s elves?” Rod asked Owen.
“I don’t know about that, but I think measuring the flow of magic would be a good idea. The change has been pretty drastic, and I’d like to know why.”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m fully charged,” Rod said. “You don’t think the building has dead spots, do you?”
“That’s a good theory,” Owen said vaguely, which unsettled me. I got the feeling he’d been humoring me about the elves affecting me, but it really did seem like he thought something was wrong. He took a couple of things that looked like small antique brooches out of his box and pinned them to my sweater. He stuck another small metal thing to the middle of my forehead, and I crossed my eyes trying to look up at it. Then he took a crystal object in a metal frame out of his box and set it up on the table, waving his hand at it a few times as colored bars of light went up and down.
“What does that do?” I asked.
“It measures the flow of magic in and out of you.” He stuck similar metal things on himself. “Since we got our powers in the same incident, I think it’s best to test both of us,” he explained as he waved his hand and more colored lights appeared. “And Rod, you’ll be our control, since nothing’s happened to your powers lately.” He rigged up Rod, then said, “Now, all three of us will do the same spells.”
Rod ran us through some basics that had become anything but basic for me. Using Granny’s version of the spells did help a little. Rod couldn’t even argue about me using unorthodox methods, since the results were so obviously better. That didn’t mean my results were good. I just didn’t fail entirely. I was still tiring easily from magic that shouldn’t have required a second thought. A glance at Owen didn’t reassure me. He was frowning at his device, not in concentration but in concern.
I caught my breath while Rod wrote the next assignment on the whiteboard, but before I could psych myself up enough to do it, Owen cried out, “Stop! Don’t do any more magic.”
“I knew it! I am going to turn into a frog,” I said.
“No, you’re not,” Owen said absently as he focused on his device. “But if I’m right, you’re running out of magic.”
“Running out of magic?” Rod asked. “How? There’s magic all around. We have enhanced circuits in this building.”
“But she’s not drawing on them.”
“So I am doing something wrong,” I said, heaving a sigh.
“No, I don’t think so. I think you’re doing the best you can do with what you’ve got, but you don’t have much.”
“In other words, I’m a lousy wizard.”
“You’re not a wizard. That’s the problem. I don’t think the exploding magical brooch really gave you magical powers. It just activated the latent magic in you.”
“But I didn’t have magic in me. I’m utterly devoid of magic. That’s what being immune is.”
“Not exactly. Remember how I can channel power from you?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling my face grow warm at the memory. It was really sexy being linked to him that way.
“Well, in you, that magic is inert. I have to activate it to use it. That’s a lot of what being a wizard means—having the ability to draw upon the magic inherent in the environment or in people and turn it into power I can use. Nonmagical people just have that power flow through them, so magic can work on them even if they can’t use it. With magical immunes, it remains inert and unused, so it doesn’t work for anyone unless it’s removed from you. What that explosion must have done was activate the power you had in you at the time. When you’re using magic, it’s flowing out of you, but any new magic flowing in is as inert as it would normally be for you. You’ll only have magical abilities as long as you don’t use up the activated power. When it’s gone, it’s gone.”
“Is it the same for you?” I couldn’t process what this meant for me, but I knew he’d been greatly relieved to get his powers back. Losing them again might be more than he could take.
He shook his head. “No, I’m activating new power, the same as Rod. It really did reboot me by giving me the power I needed to draw upon more power. Granny would say it primed the pump. But since your natural state is immunity and you’ve never had the ability to activate power, all it did was activate whatever was in you at that time, but it’s finite.” His eyes softened, and the look he gave me was full of love and compassion, like he’d just given me a terminal diagnosis. “I’m so sorry, Katie.”
“You can’t teach me to activate power?”
“The technique is part of every spell. You’re doing all the right things. You just lack that ability.”
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing I had to keep the power secret, or I’d have used it up by now,” I said, fighting to keep a brave face. It had been bad enough to learn that magic existed but that I had no part of it. Having it and being good at it, then losing it, was worse. I felt like the heroine of a tearjerker TV movie—one of those about a blind woman who gets the miracle operation to restore her sight and sees her husband and kids for the first time, only to learn that the results aren’t permanent. My case was less tragic, but it still wasn’t happy.
“So, I guess we save it for emergencies?” Rod asked. “We should keep training on a theoretical basis.”
Owen nodded. “It’ll be more difficult to memorize spells without being able to practice them, but the more you know, the more effective use you’ll make of your power when you need to use it.”
“What happens after it’s gone?” I asked. “Will I be immune again, or just normal?”
“I don’t know,” Owen said. “This whole thing has been unprecedented. I should get a good paper out of it.”
“Owen!” I snapped. He was a real sweetheart of a guy, but when he was in intellectual mode he could be totally oblivious to human emotion.
He had the good grace to blush, and he was fair-skinned enough, in spite of his dark hair, to be a world-champion blusher. “Sorry. I know this is difficult for you, but it is interesting. What I suspect will happen is that when your power gets to a certain level, you’ll go through a phase of being nonmagical—enough power for magic to work on you, not enough to do anything. Then after a while even that power will be drained and you’ll be back to your usual state.”
“How much power do I have left?”
“I’d guess you’re down about halfway.”
I thought of all the silly spells I’d done just because I could use magic: the illusions, the coffee, making things fly to me instead of reaching for them. Because of those, would I not be able to defend or shield myself in a real crisis? Or worse, would there be a life I couldn’t save? “I wish I’d known this to start with,” I said with a dejected sigh.
“I should have noticed sooner,” Owen said, looking even more downcast than I felt.
“You just said this was unprecedented,” I pointed out. “How could you have known to look?” Then I forced a huge smile that I didn’t really feel. “On the bright side, once my magic is gone, my grandmother won’t have much reason to stick around. She said she needed to be here to help me learn to use my powers. You’ll have your house back to yourself again.”
I was cheered by that thought, but he didn’t look relieved. Me losing my powers wouldn’t be nearly as bad as him losing his. For me, magic was a novelty. I wouldn’t like it if I got stuck at normal, but I’d spent most of my life thinking I was normal. I understood that intellectually. Emotionally, I wasn’t quite there yet. It might take me awhile before I could be honest when I said it.
The worst thing of all was that I didn’t know what this meant for my future. I’d already been having a career crisis before I got zapped with magical powers. It had been put on hold until they figured out where I fit in magically. If there was an expiration date on my magic, I was in even more of a limbo. I wasn’t useful as a wizard or as a magical immune. Part of me wanted to just go for the gusto and burn through my magic so I could get back to normal, but then there was a big part of me that wasn’t ready to let go of it yet.
I really hoped Granny had made a chocolate cake for dessert.
*
Although getting to send Granny home was the one upside I could see to my situation, I dreaded telling her. Her only other wizard grandchild was my brother Dean, who’d been an idiot about using magic. I knew she’d enjoyed teaching me and being able to pass on everything she knew. She’d be so disappointed to learn it was only temporary. It would be like telling her I was failing out of medical school.
Owen seemed to sense that I’d want to talk to her alone, so after we’d washed the dishes, he said he was going to play squash with Rod and vanished. I was still psyching myself up to raise the subject when Granny turned to me and said, “Now, what’s the problem you wanted to talk to me about?”
“How do you do that?” I blurted.
“It’s not magic. It’s just common sense. Anyone with eyes could tell you were troubled by something, and that boy hightailing it out of here means you need to talk to me. What is it?”
I decided to just blurt it out, like ripping off a bandage. “Well, it turns out I’m not really a wizard. I just got a certain amount of magic, and it’s running out.”
I held my breath, waiting for her reaction, but she just nodded and said, “Hmmm.”
I babbled on to fill what felt like an awkward silence. “Owen ran some tests, and it turns out that’s why it’s been a struggle for me. I haven’t had as much power to work with. I guess I burned through too much of it in the early stages, and I may have overdone the practicing, so now it’s going to run out sooner or later. They want me to stop using magic entirely so I’ll have it if a situation comes up where I really need it.”
“That would be prudent. And I think this is why I got that feeling I needed to come here. I had no fear that you’d use it the wrong way like your idiot brother did. You have good people teaching you. But having magic and not using it, saving your resources for a rainy day, that I can help you with.”
She got up from the sofa and ambled toward the kitchen, muttering to herself. I followed. “I don’t know what ingredients the boy keeps around the house. Other than the books, you’d never know a wizard lived here. But I’ll bet he can get them at work, or Merlin’ll know where to find them. I was traveling light, so I didn’t bring anything with me, and I wasn’t going to trust your mother with that sort of thing when I had her send me some clothes.”
She reached the kitchen, where she dug around in the cabinets, clicking her tongue in disapproval. “No, I’ll have to give him a list to fetch me from work, or I’ll have to go to the market next time it’s open.”
“Granny, what are you doing?” I finally asked when I could get a word in edgewise.
“Why, making you a potion, of course. I know some things that’ll help restore your strength, give you a little more energy. It won’t stop the decline, but it should slow it.”
“But why bother?” I said wearily, leaning against the edge of the countertop. “Why drag this out? I’m pretty much useless as a wizard. I may as well go back to normal. I’m good at that.”
She whirled on me and shook a finger in my face. “Now, how do you know you didn’t get this gift for some purpose, hm? The good Lord knows what He’s doing and has a plan, and that plan bestowed magical powers on you. For all you know, it’s just in time to do something no one else could do, so you’d best be ready to make the most of it, whenever that comes. You are not useless. I don’t know what got into your head to make you think that about yourself. It’s probably your mother’s fault.”
“But I—” I started to protest.
She waved me off. “Oh, I know what you think, that you’re so boring and ordinary that no one would notice you. Well, whose fault is that? And it has nothing to do with how much lipstick you wear, contrary to what that silly daughter of mine tells you. I know that no boring, ordinary girl could have caught that boy’s eye the way you did. He’s no dummy, and he’s certainly not boring. I suggest you start seeing yourself the way he sees you and work on being the best you instead of worrying about what you’re not. At the moment, you’re a wizard with enough resources to make a difference when the time comes. Now, go cut yourself another slice of cake while I make out a shopping list.”
Chastened, I sat at the tiny kitchen table and cut a slab of chocolate cake. Granny’s lecture had cheered me up, but I couldn’t help but worry about what might happen that would require my limited magical powers.