The Wizard Returns: Book Three of the Wizard Born Series (7 page)

“You gonna be ready soon?” Rollie said. “I wanna get a shower. I smell like a wet dog.”

Bryce caught the ball from Rollie and held it for a moment. “That’s what happens when you work at a vet. I smell like...I dunno. What does a gift shop smell like?”

“Potpourri?”

“Ugh. Yeah. And scented candles. I hate those things.”

“All right,” Jamie said, finally satisfied with the camera. “I’m ready. Here’s what I want you to do. You guys are gonna stand by the deck. Bryce, I want you to throw the football toward the other end of the yard, and Rollie’s gonna run down there and catch it while I film it.”

“What’s that going to prove?”

“Maybe nothing, if Rollie doesn’t run fast enough.”

Bryce held the ball out to Jamie. “Why am I doin’ the throwin’?”

Rollie answered for him, “Because Jamie can’t throw worth a hoot. Fred throws better than he does.” Rollie turned to Bryce. “Can you throw a spiral?”

“Of course. Can you catch?”

Rollie didn’t bother to answer. He and Bryce walked toward Jamie’s house and stopped by the steps of the deck. They stood side by side and looked at Jamie, and he said, “Ready?” Jamie pressed the record button on the camera. “Go!”

Bryce threw the ball down the yard in the direction of the clubhouse and Rollie ran after it, catching up to it near the end of the lawn and hauling it in smoothly with two hands. He turned and jogged back toward Bryce.

Jamie frowned and pressed the stop button on the camera. “Not fast enough.”

“You didn’t even bother to look at the replay,” Bryce said.

“Don’t need to. I didn’t feel any tingle at all. Can’t you throw that thing any harder?”

Bryce stared back at Jamie and narrowed his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Let’s do it over.” Jamie gestured at his friends, and they set up again, Bryce with both hands on the football like a quarterback and Rollie standing next to him in a wide receiver stance. Jamie pressed record again and said, “Go!”

Bryce hurled the ball harder this time, and it zipped in a tight spiral across the yard as Rollie streaked to it, catching it just in front of the clubhouse before turning and stopping. “How was that?” Rollie said.

Jamie shook his head. “You can run faster than that.” He pressed his lower teeth hard against his upper lip while he decided their next course of action. “Let’s switch. Bryce, you run the camera and I’ll throw.”

Rollie gave Jamie a skeptical look. “Are you kidding? You throw like a girl. Except for Fred, maybe. She throws pretty good.”

“Melanie can throw a football, too,” Bryce said.

“I’ll cheat,” Jamie said. “I’ll use a little magic. I can propel it as fast as anything...faster than the speed of sound.”

“I can’t run that fast,” Rollie said.

“I think you can.”

“You serious?” Rollie looked at him and blinked hard several times, mouth partly open. “Okay, sure, whatever.”

Bryce joined Jamie at the camera, and Jamie showed him the controls, then took the ball from Rollie and walked with him to the steps. “You sure about this?” Rollie said.

“Run as fast as you can, Rollie.” They stopped and waited for Bryce.

Bryce signaled that he was ready. He pressed a button on the camera and Rollie set up in his stance again while Jamie held the ball firmly with two hands. Bryce said, “Go!”

Jamie pulled the ball back and threw it, and as it left his hand, he gave it a big push with his will, correcting its motion at the same time so that it flew in a tight spiral, streaking through the air. Rollie zipped down the yard after it, and Jamie felt a magical tingle. Rollie grabbed the ball at the last instant, just before the clubhouse, and turned back toward him.

“Well?” Rollie said.

“I felt it that time,” Jamie said with a nod. He turned to Bryce. “Did you get that?”

Bryce pressed a button on the camera and focused intently on the display. Then he gave a thumb’s up.

“One more time for good measure,” Jamie said.

“Aw, man, I wanna go home and shower,” Rollie said.

“We need to be sure.”

Jamie and Rollie returned to the front end of the yard and repeated the process, only this time Jamie propelled the ball faster.

The tingle was stronger.

After Rollie caught the ball, Jamie said, “That’s good. Let’s go inside and watch it.”

Jamie turned in his seat at the computer in his family room and looked at Rollie and Bryce, standing behind him, both with glum looks. Jamie’s mother stood nearby, arms crossed, eyes filled with concern.

Rollie gave his head a tight shake. “
Got
to be something wrong with the camera. Check the wires again.”

“No, there’s not.” Jamie gestured at the rented device sitting on the desk next to the monitor, a thin green wire snaking out of it to the computer tower. “This is exactly what I see when I watch you with my magic vision. You blur, disappear, and reappear a step or two farther away.”

“Then why don’t I see it that way?” Bryce said.

“I think it’s like a cartoon. Animators don’t draw every part of an action, like when a character swings a bat or something. They draw the bat in starting position, then maybe again at halfway, and then they draw the completed motion. Our minds fill in the gap. Rollie’s moving so fast that we don’t see the missing parts. It looks like one smooth run. Fast, but smooth.”

Rollie rubbed his forehead with the heel of one hand and closed his eyes. “This can’t be magic. It just
can’t
. If my dad finds out....”

“He won’t find out, Rollie,” Jamie’s mother said. “We’ve been keeping Jamie’s magic a secret from your dad for a while, and now Fred’s magic, too. It’ll be okay.”

“What am I going to do about basketball, then?”

Jamie pressed the side of his face with one hand and regarded his worried friend. “We need to talk about that.”

* * *

Carl sat down next to Rachel on the couch in their family room, picked up the TV remote and tapped the mute button. “Jamie, why aren’t you at Fred’s on a Saturday night?”

“She’s still mad at me.” He was slouched in the recliner, eyes half-lidded, jaw tight.

“About Rollie?”

“She thinks I should have left well enough alone.”

“It’s not well enough if Rollie has magic,” Rachel said. “But are you really sure it’s him doing it, and not some...I don’t know, by-product of your power?”

“It’s him. I’m certain of it.”

“Have you figured out how he’s doing whatever he’s doing?”

Jamie shook his head, glanced at his parents, and turned his gaze back to the muted TV. “I don’t know what it could be. He’s not translocating, and he’s not making doorways. It’s something else, maybe something new. It’s like he’s taking shortcuts or something. It’s strange.”

Carl rubbed under his jaw with his thumb. “How could he do it if he doesn’t know anything about magic?”

“Well....” Jamie scrunched his face up thoughtfully. “Eddan had this theory he called the Magic of Necessity. He thought that if a wizard had sufficient innate power, and the need was strong enough, like he was falling off a cliff or something, he’d find a way to call forth the required magic to save his life, or whatever.”

“Rollie wasn’t falling off a cliff.”

“No, but he really wants to be good at basketball, and he’s not tall enough, so he compensates by being faster than everybody else. And the faster he goes, the better he does on the court, and the more playing time he gets.” Jamie nodded. “And he gets more cheers from the crowd. That probably spurs him on, too.”

“Not to mention approval from his father,” Carl said. “Garrett is proud enough to pop right now.”

Jamie sighed deeply. “And Rollie might lose all that if he stops using his power.”

“Is that why Fred is so mad?” Rachel said.

“I insisted that Rollie not use it when he plays basketball. I don’t think it’s fair, and it’s wrong.”

“I agree. But do you think he can rein it in? He’s a pretty competitive guy.”

“He’d better, or he’s going to have to quit the team.” He stood and headed toward the bathroom. “At least I think he should.”

Rachel said quietly toCarl, “Fred really wants Rollie to be successful, so she’s taking it out on Jamie, I think.”

When Carl heard the bathroom door shut, he said, “How long do you give Fred before she forgives him?”

“What time is it? Almost nine? I give her ten minutes, tops.”

“You think so?”

“Lisa told me that ever since Fred got rescued from the witches, she can’t bear to be apart from him for very long.”

Jamie returned a couple of minutes later with his phone in his hand. “I’m going to Fred’s. I have a key, so you can lock up.” He walked toward the front door and Carl looked at Rachel, who wore a knowing smile.

Chapter 7

Jamie started his car on Monday morning when Rollie slid into the back seat. Fred sat next to Jamie, doing her morning makeup inspection in the mirror on the sun visor.

“Man,” Rollie said as he clicked his seatbelt in place, “I’m so tired I could fall asleep standing up.”

Fred glanced over her shoulder at him. “You still worried about the magic?”

“Didn’t sleep a wink all weekend. Except I fell asleep in church. That ticked my parents off, big time.”

Jamie backed the car out of the driveway. “Don’t see how you can sleep at your church. Your preacher shouts like he’s trying to raise the dead.”

“Doesn’t he, though? But I managed.” Rollie shook his head. “I’m worried about how I’m gonna keep myself from doing whatever magic I’m doing...super speed or whatever. We’ve got our last regular-season game on Wednesday, and that only gives me two days of practice to figure it out.”

Jamie put the car in drive and they headed for school. “But you guys made the playoffs, right?”

“I won’t play if I stink at practice.”

“Rollie, I’ve been thinking about what you’re doing when you run so fast. I checked some physics web sites yesterday and —”

“Super geeky,” Fred said and flipped the visor back up.

Jamie ignored her. “Anyway, I found a documentary on space travel, how we might possibly travel to other solar systems one day.”

“I’m not space travelling, dude,” Rollie said.

“I know that. But other solar systems are thousands of light years away, too far to travel to by conventional means, so if we ever want to visit them, we’ll have to warp space to do it.”

“You’ve been watching too much Star Trek.”

“
Listen
to me. I think that’s what you’re doing. I got this idea from something I said to my parents the other night. You’re not actually moving your legs faster than anybody else, you’re making shortcuts. You’re warping space somehow and cutting across it.”

“What?”

“Think of it like this. Say you wanted to run a mile really fast. You might be able to run it in a straight line in less than six minutes, normally. But if you took that line and folded it like an accordion, compressed it, then cut across it so that you’re only running a hundred yards or so, you could run it in eleven seconds or less.”

“Ahhhh,” Rollie said. “Which brings up the obvious question. Where did my magic come from? You think it rubbed off from you?”

“Could be. You played in my backyard a lot. Maybe you absorbed some of Eddan’s magic from where he infused it into the ground. I used to think Fred did, too, but now I think she may have been born a witch.”

“I know.” Rollie gazed out of the window. “Because your mommas’ bellies touched when they were pregnant and all that. You don’t have to tell me that story again.”

Fred looked at Jamie. “But you said you think I still might have soaked up some of Eddan’s magic, and that’s why I’m such a strong witch.”

“I wasn’t born a wizard,” Rollie said firmly. “And I’m not a wizard, now.”

Jamie looked at Rollie in the rearview mirror as he waited to pull into the school’s entrance. “I think you are. Maybe not as strong as me, but I think if you knew a spell or two, you could do them.”

Rollie stared out the window as Jamie drove into a parking space, his eyes hard. “I’m
not
going to do any magic spells.”

“You should try one, just to see.”

Rollie grabbed his backpack and stepped out of the car. “Forget it! Don’t ask me again!” He slammed the car door and walked off.

* * *

Jamie sat with Fred and Bryce again at the basketball game on Wednesday night, but they didn’t have much to cheer about. At one point, late in the first half, North Henderson’s starting guard, A.J. Wells, limped to the sideline and the coach sent Rollie into the game in his place. Rollie seemed hesitant the short time that he was on the court. He didn’t have any steals or high-speed breakaways, and he had no assists or shots.

After a couple of minutes, A.J. had his ankle taped, and Rollie went back to the bench and he didn’t play again that night. Rollie’s parents, sitting close to courtside, looked subdued, Rollie’s father resting his chin on his hand, his elbow propped on one knee.

When the buzzer sounded to end the game, Fred gave Jamie a quick, dark look and he thought,
She thinks it’s my fault
. He sighed to himself.
I feel bad for Rollie, too, but I don’t know what I can do about it
.

* * *

Jamie materialized looking up at Fred, beautiful under any circumstances, heartbreakingly gorgeous in a dream. His head was in her lap and they were sitting on the sofa in Fred’s dream-living room, every detail a perfect replica of her real one, even down to the magazines stacked on the end table and the framed painting on the nearest wall, red watercolor roses in a crystal vase.

“I guess you’re not mad at me.”

Fred looked at him solemnly before answering. “No. I’m sorry, Jamie. I just get so...so frustrated.” She stroked his forehead. “I really want Rollie to be a success at basketball, and he was...for a few games. But now, without using his magic, he looks so lost.” She gave his head a couple of gentle pats. “So I take it out on you. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it.”

“That’s okay. Now I get all of your forgiveness kisses.”

“You’d get kisses, anyway.” She laughed. “But, yeah. I owe you a bunch of them.”