Old Magic (8 page)

“A shapeshifter,” Kate explains with a shiver. “Only the most powerful sorcerers can do this. They’re rare, and even reading about them gives me the creeps.”

It’s an admission I’m relieved to hear. At least some-thing gives her the creeps. Just looking at the figure on paper is enough for me. I take the book she’s got prac-tically in my face, and find my hands shaking. This doesn’t surprise me as I hate the unknown, things beyond my control or understanding, especially the paranormal. I like the simple things that follow the rules, like the sun rising every morning from the east, and that annoying family of kookaburras that insist on cracking their jokes outside my window every dawn, or the way I can look in the mirror and know my own reflection will be looking back, whether I like it or not.

My life is complicated enough; this book I simply don’t need. It even has a smell about it, musty, old, remarkably authentic. I want to hurl it back to her and get the hell out of her bedroom. That sudden urge to run returns, hitting me hard in the stomach, making my adrenalin surge. But Kate is smiling excitedly, pointing to the undecipherable words, quoting bits here and there.

“‘Once a curse is placed it can take several forms. The most powerful can linger through generations to eternity. . . .’”

Her finger trails the words across the page. My head tilts to the same slight angle the book is held, and I can’t stop my eyes from following. They’re foreign words. I try to relax, try to make my mind wander, but nothing’s working.

Suddenly I find myself gulping for air. I feel naus-eous and need this extra oxygen. I wonder fleetingly if I’m about to pass out. My vision blurs and a sinking feeling kicks into my stomach. My eyes are still riveted to the page where Kate’s finger is passing across the foreign words. I jerk with a start as the ancient script disappears. But it’s only for an instant, and I relax a little when my vision clears and I see the fancy writing again. Yet somehow I sense it is different now. I adjust my glasses in a gesture that is more habitual than necessary. It’s really strange, but suddenly I find I can read the ancient script too, as if the words are present-day English. “‘. . . legend has it that the most powerful sorcerers can enfold a curse that spontaneously recurs through future true-born inheritors of such curse . . . True-born inheritors in the form of the magical number seven. Every seventh-born son of succeeding generations shall carry the curse in its entirety, and for as long as the curse is left to fester unborn, it shall grow in strength and enormity until it is released. . . .’”

A sudden crash breaks my concentration and the words become undecipherable again. It’s Jillian at the door. I peer up at her through my glasses. She’s dropped a tray that was carrying orange juice and sandwiches. Bits of grain bread, tomato, salad stuff, and juice are spread out over the shiny timber floor.

“Jillian!” Kate calls out, the book slamming shut in my hands as she goes to help Jillian clean up the mess.

“I’m sorry,” Jillian apologizes, her eyes wide and wary, remaining on me. “I’ve never heard the script read with such perfect enunciation,” she says softly.

My eyes jump to the book in my hands, which sudden-ly seems to burn my fingers. Did I really read those words?

I must look confused. Jillian leaves the mess on the floor to Kate to tidy, her voice gentle and sincere. “Who taught you to read the ancient tongue, Jarrod?”

I shake my head, unable to accept that I was reading from that book. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Those words were in perfect English.”

Kate lifts the tray now, carrying a load of broken china and bits of soggy sandwiches to her dresser. “Old English, quite undecipherable today.”

“That’s not true,” I counter, even though they were my own words. I recall something from last year’s his-tory lessons. “English today has retained many of the ancient words. In fact it’s just an expanded and revised form.”

Kate accepts none of this. “Wake up, Jarrod. You said yourself it wasn’t English.”

I stand a little unsteadily, aware that I need to get out of this house really quickly. “Look, I don’t know what happened just then, my imagination ran away with me, that’s all.”

Kate groans. “Sit down, Jarrod, and listen. There’s only one way I can make you believe this stuff.”

I stare at her, wondering what she has in mind. The hairs at the back of my neck bristle. She raises one arched brow, challenging me to sit and watch and obey. I open my mouth to say I have decided to stand and run, but she has her hands on my shoulders, shoving, firmly, until I sit again on the bed.

Kate exchanges a quick glance with Jillian, who moves to the dresser and lifts the tray. “Nothing too startling now, Kate. I’ll just be downstairs if you need me.”

I have a sudden urge to grab Jillian and drag her, albeit probably screaming, back into the room. I don’t want to be alone with Kate while she’s in this mood. Anything could happen. My heart starts pounding so fast I think it’s going to catapult up my throat and hurtle across the room.

Kate’s voice is soft as she pressures me to stay calm. I think this is a joke, or a dream. I feel disoriented, and fight the need to move. She sits down again by my feet, and I’m trapped. Kate’s back leans against the bed frame and she twists her body so she can look up at me. “I’m not going to hurt you, Jarrod. I just want to show you a little magic.”

I nod, words do not form in the arid desert my mouth has become.

“Relax,” she murmurs soothingly. Her fingers start spinning around a ball or something in her hands. I missed seeing where she got it from, but then I’m not exactly in the most alert state of mind. It’s a glass ball, I realize, as I catch glimpses of it through her twirling fingers. She notices where my eyes have focused. “It’s a clear crystal Jillian gave me when I was three. It’s a training tool. I don’t need it anymore, but sometimes, especially when it’s late and I can’t sleep, I play games with it. Simple tricks really. Like this one.”

She holds the crystal up to my face. I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to be looking for and don’t see anything unusual. All the same, it might be my agitated senses, but I find it impossible to drag my eyes away. It seems to loom closer, grow larger even, but this perhaps is an illusion. I’m concentrating hard now. Vivid, shifting colors, like fancy silk scarves, move inside it for a minute, then nothing. I start wondering, is that it? And I’m glad in a way that nothing too amazing or outlandish happened. I mean, shifting colors of reds, oranges, and blues. A good trick, sure. I wonder how she did it. As I’m about to ask something else happens, drawing my focus right into the center of the ball. Something is moving inside and it’s more than colors. There are shapes. Odd gray shapes that shift and change. I adjust my glasses. Everything has a slight blur without them. I use them for reading most-ly. Now I see people. Three of them. The first I make out is a man, his face filled with pain; then a woman with brown hair and mousy eyes, weary-looking; the last a child, about eight or nine, with hair like mine. It takes a full minute before it hits me. I’m looking at a miniature visual image of my parents and little brother, Casey.

It blows me out. For more than one reason. As far as I know Kate has never seen my family. How would she know what they look like? My chest struggles for air; this is all too unreal. I physically pull back, and lift off my glasses.

Kate gently slips the globe under her bed. “What did you see?”

I stare at her, words stuck dry in my throat.

“What did you see, Jarrod?” she repeats insistently.

“Don’t you know?”

“I only saw the colors,” she shocks me further by saying. “But you saw more.”

“My family.”

“Oh,” she groans softly as if this explains everything. I wish she’d tell me. “Now I understand completely.”

Her comment makes me want to scream. “So what do you mean by that?”

“I suggested to the crystal it reveal to you your most worrying thoughts.”

I feel my mouth sag open as I suck in a couple of good breaths. What happened just now? Did I really see my family in that glass ball? Did Kate somehow manipulate my thoughts to think that I saw them? She says she’s good at sensing moods and that sort of thing. I guess she is gifted in some ways. There are people who can sense things sometimes even before they hap-pen. That’s not unusual. So what if Kate is capable of a little ESP? A little thought projection? Maybe she really was in my head the other day. I can handle that. With this thought in mind I calm a little. “Very interesting.”

“That’s all?” Disbelief.

I shrug my shoulders. “What did you expect?”

She shakes her head and drops it into her hands. Her words are muffled. “I thought that you would believe in the world of magic. That by showing you it exists, you would believe you have the gift.”

I scoff really loudly. Her eyes peek out from her hands. “It was a great exhibition, Kate. I’m really impressed. Believe me, you blew my mind. But how is a little thought projection going to make me believe I can do magic? We’re talking about me here. You know, the idea alone is absurd. Don’t you pay attention at school? I do something stupid every day. I’m clumsy, okay? I’m a nobody. I don’t belong anywhere.”

Her hands fly into the air. “Jarrod, you’re so wrong about yourself, it makes me cringe.”

“I’m sorry I do that to you.”

“You idiot.” She strikes my knee with her knuckles. I grab her hand to stop her from doing it again. I don’t let go straightaway. “I mean,” she begins, and I swear her voice has become a little unsteady, “you say you don’t belong anywhere, yet you told me how your father has traced your ancestors back almost a thousand years. Now, that’s really something.”

I think about this. She’s right, of course. It makes me feel better, like maybe I do belong. At least this conver-sation feels safer. I like where it’s going. I decide to try and keep it there, leave the supernatural stuff behind. “I could bring Dad’s book around tomorrow, if you like.”

Her eyes light up with excitement. “Could you? That’d be great.”

It’s a timeless moment. I lace my fingers through hers and feel my pulse accelerate like crazy. “I want to thank you for getting me out of that cafe tonight, and for saving my life.”

“I don’t think that old chandelier would have killed you, but that’s okay all the same.”

“I, ah, really should go. Mom’ll be worried by now.”

“Hmm, if you have to.”

She says the words so softly I have to lean forward to hear them. At least that’s my excuse. Honestly, the room is dead quiet except for the hammer pounding away in my chest. I lean down even farther, our faces mere centimeters apart. My eyes drop to her mouth. The timing is perfect. If I don’t do it now, I doubt I’ll ever have the guts again. If anything, other than clumsy, I’m also a coward. I don’t know what’s come over me. I just know I have to give it one shot. So I lean into her face before my nerve deserts me com-pletely. I can almost taste her lips, they’re so close.

Maybe I really am cursed. I feel myself falling, and instead of the sensual kiss I imagined, I land, long bony limbs and all, directly in her lap! “God, Kate,” I mutter, my face heating up like a Bunsen burner on full flame. “Sorry. What a mess. I hope I didn’t hurt you.” Being careful where I put my hands, I climb awkwardly out of her lap, catch my foot on the corner of a rug I never even noticed before, eventually stum-bling to my knees somewhere near the door. “Damn.”

“Are you all right?”

She isn’t laughing but it can’t be far. I decide I don’t want to hang around when it happens. So I nod, not trusting myself to make intelligent conversation, and mumble, “Yeah . . . Fine . . . Gotta go . . . See myself out . . .”

She escorts me to the front door anyway, probably just to make sure I don’t crash into anything on the way through the shop. But I don’t hang around. I tear down the road as if I truly am cursed. By the devil himself.

A shiver rips up my spine causing every fine body hair to stand on end. Okay, it’s cold and eerie considering it’s late and dark and isolated around here, but somehow I know it has nothing to do with all this. It has to do with Kate. Just how, and in what way, I have no idea. I just know it.

Kate

We make the city papers and the national news. Unbelievable. The earthquake at the Icehouse Cafe apparently didn’t register on any Richter scale, and this is causing a huge amount of confusion; but the destruction is real, as are the many eyewitnesses. The whole town is crawling with official-looking people and news crews. It’s Saturday morning and through the night the news-hounds have been coming in from all over the country. Several theories have been put forward by scientific professionals but witnesses disagree. It was no bomb, or freak storm, like the one that hit the local high school a week earlier. Most swear it was an earthquake.

It’s Sunday before two investigating police officers make their way to the Crystal Forest. They introduce themselves, briefly flashing ID. It’s just routine by now. I’m probably last on their interview list. Their faces tell me they’re not expecting I have anything new to tell them. I don’t disappoint, describing the tremor as it swept through the place with just the right amount of anxious excitement. I wonder how Jarrod handled the questioning. His recollections, though vague, are probably enough to satisfy the investigators. Any lack of memory could surely be excused as trauma, I assume, without suspicion.

The police leave, apparently satisfied, though no wiser, and I decide I’d better do a little homework. But my mind isn’t on it. I’m expecting Jarrod, who doesn’t show. He mentioned coming over with his father’s heritage book but I guess he’s changed his mind, probably deciding to stay well away from all the officials, police, and investigative scientists lurking around.

I see him at school on Monday, but he ignores me. He’s sitting at a table in the quadrangle outside the cafeteria with his usual crowd—Pecs and Jessica, and of course Her Highness, Tasha Daniels. It hurts, but I’m not about to let him know this. Realization hits me and makes me want to cringe. Jarrod may be incredibly gifted, but inside his soul, where it really matters, he’s nothing but a coward—pathetic and spineless. He would sooner hide than confront anything he doesn’t understand, or makes him uneasy, or doesn’t conform to his stupid set of rules.