Fearless (The Blue Fire Saga) (9 page)

Finally, mercifully, class ended.

As soon as P
rofessor
Shader
closed her book and gave the class their homework assignments, Leesa
and Cali were on their feet and heading for the door.

Outside, Rave,
Dral
and Bain were sitting on a concrete ledge alongside the stairway waiting for them. The three volkaanes dropped to their feet when the girls emerged from the building.

“That was fast,” Rave said.

“Ugh,” Leesa grunted. “It seemed like forever to me. I thought Dr.
Shader
was never going to stop talking.”

“I take it she’s not quite as interesting as Professor Clerval, then,” Rave said, referring to the professor of the Vampire Science class, with whom Leesa shared a close relationship.

“Ha!
Not hardly
.”

Leesa
noticed that almost all the
girls
leaving the building were having trouble keeping their eyes off
the t
hree
sexy
volkaanes
.
Not that she could blame them.
She linked her arm possessively inside Rave’s.

“
Actually, Dr.
Shad
er’s
not too bad.
I’m
just kind of anxious today, I guess.
”

“And Gatsby i
s not the best book we
’ve
discussed, either,” Cali added. “A
lthough I think Myrtle is kind of
cool.”

“So, where to next?”
Rave asked.

“History,” Leesa replied. “It’s just a couple of blocks.”

“I wish I had History with you,” Cali said, obviously re
luctant to leave the volkaanes. “D
o you think I could sit in?”

Leesa grinned. “Sorry. History’
s just as small as English. Besides, don’t you have Biology now?”

Cali shrugged. “Who cares?” She looked at
Bain and flashed
hi
m an exaggerated wink. “
I’ve got all the biology I need right here.”

“Incorrigible,”
Leesa said, shaking her head
. “We’
ve got to get
going
. See you later.”

“You bet you will,”
Cali said, grinning widely.

5
. MAGIC LIGHTS

F
inally, Leesa’s classes were over
for the day
. She had thought English with The Great Gatsby had been slow, but that was before she had to slog through equation after
complex
equatio
n in Chemistry. Somehow
she
survived, though, and now she was heading back to her dorm with Rave and his volkaane friends.

The first thing she noticed when they neared the dorm was that the damaged Blazer was gone. She had been planning to call about it when she got home, but Security must have decided the wreck wasn’t going anywhere unless they towed it themselves. Leesa was pleased—it was one less thing she had to worry about, and she hadn’t needed to involve herself at all in its removal. Whatever happened to the car now was between Security and the guy she and Dominic had bought it from. And if the black waziri could sense any magic remaining on the Blazer from Dom
inic’s shield spell, at least the car
wasn’t sitting
right
in front of her dorm like a big sign flashing “Wizard Lives
Here.
” She knew the evil wizards would still be able to sense that Dominic had employed magic here, but at least it wouldn’t
be tied to anything as specific
as a car
.

Without pausing at all, s
he limped past the spot where the Blazer had been parked and entered the dorm.
Rave and
Dral
followed her i
nside,
while Bain stayed behind, hanging around in front of the dorm as an early warning system. Leesa
headed toward the
stairs
. No elevator for this group—volkaane energy and elevators would definitely not mix. She was pretty sure Rave could probably pop the top off a stalled elevator car and hoist her up easily
via the cable, but they
would have a tough time explaining it to anyone who happened to see them emerge from the empty shaft. The stairs were just fine with her—
besides,
she enjoyed the exercise.

Up in Leesa’s room,
Dral
took up his familiar position lounging against the wall beside the door while Rave sat down on the bed

“What now?” Rave asked as Leesa pulled off her parka and hung it in her closet.

Leesa grabbed her backpack and pulled out Dominic’s book.

“Now this,” she said. She sat down next to Rave and opened the book
on her lap
.
Once again, she was
surprised by how little the oversized
book weighed.

Now that she was finally
about to do
what
she’d been waiting all day for
, Leesa wasn’t quite sure how to proceed.
She had practiced
magic by herself before,
of course,
but she had never attempted to learn anything new without Dominic there to teach her.
Remembering
the wizard
’s advice to warm
up with something familiar,
she reluctantly put the book onto the mattress beside her.
She decided to do
start
with
some easy
telekinesis
.

She felt herself grinning at the thought of “easy” telekinesis, recalling how hard she had struggled at the beginning to move something as simple and light as a tennis ball. The can of balls she and Dominic had practiced with was on a shelf in her closet
—a tennis ball would probably be a good thing to start with. She was about to get up to retrieve the balls when her eyes alighted on the straw wastebasket by her desk.

She
flashed back to
the sight of
the basket flying
acr
oss the room a few months ago
, before Dominic had even arrived and
revealed that she possessed
magic. She had
kicked at
the basket
in anger and frustration—she couldn’t even remember now what she’d been angry about. Her foot had missed the basket,
but somehow it had still flown across the room and crashed into the wall.
At the tim
e, she had been astounded and dis
believing.

Forgetting about the tennis balls
for the moment
, she crossed the room and
picked
up the basket.
Visuals were important when trying to move stuff with her mind, and the image of the basket soaring across the room was still vivid in her mind.

There was nothing inside the wastebasket except a co
uple of wadded up balls of
paper, so she left them in there and set
the
basket near the
edge of the desk.
The last time she had practiced with the basket, she had simply caused it to fall off the desk. She had gained much more control of her power since then, so she decided to try something a little
bit
more impressive. Closing her eyes for a moment, she drew in a slow deep breath and focused on her trigger word. When she opened her eyes, she pictured the
waste
basket flying off the de
s
k across to the opposite wall—a
nd that’s exactly what happened.

The basket hit the wall and fell to the floor. The balls of paper rolled out onto the rug.

Dral
had no idea what Leesa had been going to do when she put the basket onto her desk, but he knew he had just witnessed magic.
Rave had told him
and Bain
a little about Leesa’s
magic
, but this was the first time
Dral
had seen
any of
it.

“Your girlfriend is quite
impressive,” he said to Rave.

Rave grinned. “In more ways than you know,” he said proudly.

Leesa limped across the room and kissed Rave on the cheek.

“Thank you,” she said.

She decided to move one more thing before returning to Dominic’s book. Once again, she wanted something familiar, so she crossed
to her mini fridge and pulled out a can of Red Bull, th
e other item she had
somehow
moved back before she even knew what was happening. Taking it to her desk, she
stood it up near the edge
.

When she had first tried to practice
with a Red Bull, she had
to lay it on its side or balance it half over the edge
of the desk
to move it, but she was more skilled now.
Still, this was a warm-up, and she
wanted to make sure she succeeded. She grabbed the can and slid it s
lowly across the desk
, mimicking what she was about to do
, then moved
it back to its original place.

Ready now, she focused on the Red Bull. On its own, the can slid slowly to the other side of the desk. She let it sit there for jus
t a moment before using
her mind to move it back. When she turned around, both Rave and
Dral
were smiling at her.
Moving a wastebasket and sliding cans of Red Bull were probably not going to be much used against the black waziri,
she realized,
but she had thought the same thing about the plant growth spell and that had proved handy. Besides, the things she had just done were simply building blocks, and she knew there were many, many more blocks ahead of her.