Scary Cool (The Spellspinners) (26 page)

I was so blended with him that I could see myself through his eyes
as he looked at
me
,
standing
alone
at the edge of the dance floor. I
seemed
terrified—and
more ghostly every second
.
Some of the people around me looked even more frightened than I did
.
There was
Tres
, in a fighter’s stance, shouting for help and looking like he’d
rescue me if he could only figure out how
.

From Lance
I
picked up a sense of what the
other
spellspinners
were doing and how they were
uniting their power to do
it—which would have been, you know, really
interesting if their target had been something other than me. But since it
was
me, I didn’t
dwell
on
that part. Instead, I reached for the part of Lance I knew.

The part that belonged to me.

The part that was my only hope.

A
nd
then…
Tres
tackled me.

It was really very brave of him. Everyone else was backing away.
Tres
took off his
suit
jacket, flung it over me, and knocked me to the ground, cradling my body with his. I’m not sure what he was thinking. But he sensed that I was under attack, he saw that I was frightened, and he basically didn’t much care that whatever
weird thing
was taking me out might take him out too.

In retrospect, you know, it’s quite touching. But
the immediate consequence of his heroism was
disastrous
.
Tres’s
tackle
broke my connection to Lance.

I hit the floor—not that I could feel it—with
Tres
on top of me. And the last image I picked up from Lance’s brain was
his
reaction
to seeing me in another boy’
s arms.

His
response
was as visceral as it was illogical: Lance’s interior monologue went berserk.

Lance’s fur
y broke over my head like a tsunami
. It encompassed
Tres
as well as me, and seemed to roll us, flinging us against each other, against the wall, against the floor … where was I?
Without my sense of touch, I was beyond confused. I was so disoriented I was completely helpless.

But the
anger pouring out of Lance was tangible only to me, of course. It wouldn’t affect
Tres
in any way. I had to remind myself of that to get my bearings.

I was
n’t drowning
or being dashed against rocks
, I was
lying on the floor—I must be; my view was of the floor
. My hearing
had faded
out, and my skin felt nothing, nothing at all, as if I were floating in space, so I had to trust my eyes; they were my last source of reliable data.
I was looking at the wooden floor
turned sideways
,
ergo
, I was lying on the floor.

I saw
Tres’
s
hand, palm down, pressed against
the floor near my eyes. His arm blocked my view. I barely
had time to
figure out
that he must be
pinning me down
, trying to shield me with his body,
before my already-c
haotic view of things worsened.
Tres’s
palm left the floor; his arm flew out of the range of my vision
; then he reappeared,
tumbling away from me. I managed to roll onto my back and saw Lance, green eyes blazing, standing over me like the Colossus.

Lance had picked
Tres
up and thrown him off me.

Lance.

I
put out my transparent
, hologram hand and
reached for him. I couldn’t help myself. He seemed the only solid object left in the world.
Somehow I knew he’d be t
he only thing
in the room
I could still feel.

My fingertips brushed his ankle. Instant
ly
, searing pain sizzled up my arm and fizzed against my skin. The purple lights danced between us. Was this what Lance had felt, touching me? No matter; he’d feel it no more. As soon as the spell
(
of my making
)
touched me,
it broke—to avoid
hurting me.

It was just as he had guessed. My touching him
destroyed
the invisible barrier I’d created when I banished him.

And the instant
we touched
, nothing else mattered.

His skin was warm
against my fingertips
. Our eyes met.
The mysterious connection
that neither of us wants
and neither
can
deny blasted through
us.
O
ur minds fused.

I thought,
You can’t let them do this to me
at the same time he thought
I can’t let them do this to you.

One of us felt his re
solve waver
and break
. The other
felt
a wild leap of hope and relief
.

Briefly.

Then Lance, the gym,
Tres
, the music,
and everything I’d ever known
swirled
away into darkness.

I was cold. That was the first thing I noticed, so that may have been what woke me.
Or
it
might have been the
awk-awk-awk-awk
of the blue jay that swooped over me, a little too close to ignore.
Or the chill
and the squawk
may have had nothing to do with it; the spell may have simply released me, and there I was: lying in a heap on the bare ground, as if I had been thrown there.

So Lance had let them do it to me after all. Whatever this was.

I still had
Tres’s
suit jacket. Someone had dropped it on top of me.
I don’t know how long I lay there,
awake but
too
afraid to move or open my eyes. E
ventually I had to sit up; I’d been lying aw
kwardly and my hand was numb. So I opened my eyes and
sat up slowly, wincing as the blood flowed back into my arm
. I
wrapped the
jacket around me like a shawl and
took a deep, shaky breath of the cold air. It sme
lled damp and fresh and woodsy.

Well, it would, wouldn’t it? I was sitting at the base of a redwood tree in a fog-shrouded forest.
It seemed to be morning.
And I was completely alone.

I wa
s still wearing
the little
pale-violet
silk number I had worn to the dance.
I
also had on
the silver-spangled
,
low-heeled pumps I
had
picked out
, thinking that high heels would make me too tall next to
Tres
. In other words, I was not dressed appropriately for my surroundings. To say the least.

I buried my nose in
Tres’
s
jacket, inhaling the
familiar aroma of Eau
Sa
u
vage
that still clung faintly to th
e collar, and tried to think.

It
seemed pretty clear
that I had been kidnaped. And although I had never been here before, I knew exactly where I was, of course. A million years ago—last July—Lance showed me this place in his memory.
So
I recognized the wild, woodsy air
, the ferns, the shamrocks,
and the towering trees. And even if I hadn’t, any f
ool could have guessed where they
would take me:
Spellhaven
.

But where were
my kidnapers
?
There was not another soul in sight.

I struggled stiffly to my feet and headed out to get my bearings. I got about a step and a half before hitting an invisible wall. With my face, mind you. I staggered back, muttered “
Ow
,” and rubbed
my
cheekbone
.

Guess I should have seen that coming.

I leaned forward—carefully—and felt the perimeter of my prison. The walls seemed smooth and curved, about four feet out from the tree in every direction. It was like the tree and I were inside a glass tube, except that there was no actual glass. I could feel the w
ind on my skin
. I just couldn’t go anywhere.

I immediately tried to
skatch
to my bedroom. Nothing happened.

Guess I should have seen that coming, too.

I sent out my
spellspinner
antennae…very, very carefully…seeking Lance. I couldn’t pick up a trace. Not
a hum, not
a hint
, not a shiver
.
It seemed to me that this was a bad sign. But then again, I wasn’t sure.
I wasn’t sure of anything.

Since I was alone, my fear receded and
d
epression
reared its ugly head
.
This, I realized dully, must be what Lance meant when he said my enemies wanted to get me
to
Spellhaven
and bind me.
Except that, at the time he told me about it, he also said it wasn’t going to happen.

I slumped back down on the ground, leaned my back against the tree, and huddle
d as much of myself as I could
beneath
Tres’s
suit jacket.
Nonny
must be out of her mind with worry by now. And what did
Tres
thi
nk had happened? Not to mention
all the other people in the gym
.

H
orror
swamped
me as the memories unspooled in my brain.
My cover was completely blown.
I had been forcibly, magically
disappeared
. In front of half the student body of Cherry Glen High. And a bunch of grownups
!

Cheryl had been right all along. I was a spook
.
A freak.
A
nd now
the whole town
knew it.

Not that it mattered, because I would probably never see Cherry Glen again.

My own people, the
spellspinners
, hated and feared me. And
now everyone
back home
would, too.

So e
ven if I
escaped
Spellhaven
…
which I could already tell would be no easy feat…
I could never go home again.

Tears
stung
my eyes.
I r
ested my cheek against my knees and gave in to despair.

But a pity party can only last so long. Eventually I got a grip and scolded myself back to a semblance of self-control. Okay, I was in a bad spot. A very bad spot. But feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to get me out of it.

The thing is, I had no idea what would.

The light crunch of feet in the bracken warned me that I was no longer alone.
I sat up hastily, my heartbeat quickening, and t
ried to look calmer than I felt.

There were two of them. One was Rune, who stopped and regarded me with his hands in his pockets and a grave expression on his face. The other was a tiny, birdlike woman in a bright blue jacket. She had a shock of white hair that was really my only clue that she was old; her eyes were the same
sparkling
aquamarine that Rune’s are, and I could tell at a glance that she was one of those inexhaustible, lively souls
who
run circles around most other people.

“Well, well,” she said, studying
me. Her eyes twinkled, making her seem kind. Even friendly. I wanted desperately to believe she was friendly. But her next words shot that idea down, unfortunately. “
Looks like she’s harder to kill than Amber thought.”