Scary Cool (The Spellspinners) (9 page)

He must have caught my questioning gaze because he gave me a rueful smile. “
You’re definitely one of us,” Rune
said softly. Regretfully.

“You were hoping I wasn’t?”

“I wondered if Lance might be wrong.” His smile turned apologetic.

I frowned. “Didn’t Lance tell you about last summer? No offense, but honestly—what else could I be?”

I felt his thoughts slide away from me as his glance did, evading my directness. “I didn’t disbelieve him, Zara. I just hoped—for all our sakes
—
that he was mistake
n somehow
.
It was a foolish hope. I was clutching at straws.”

He must have sensed my exasperation because he gave a low chuckle. “Not very flattering, is it?”

“
Not hardly,” I retorted. “Excuse me, but my existence is not my fault. It would be nice if my long-lost relatives
would
be
ar that in mind, you know? T
his
antagonism
—“
I waved my hand vaguely at the ambient air
, as if I could clear it like smoke
. “
It’s
misplaced, if you ask me.”

Run
e nodded. “Point taken.
I am not usually rude to new acquaintances, I’ll have you know. But meeting you is
…
unsettling.”
His air of polite amusement seemed mocking, but it occurred to me that he might be mocking himself rather than me. “I wasn’t expecting to like you.
” He rose, walked to the window and flicked open the blinds. “Come here, child.”

Sensing no evil
intent on his part, I obeyed. He took my chin in one hand and tilted my face toward the light.
His fingers were cool and strong, his touch impersonal. It was like being examined by a doctor. Rune’s eyes, I noticed, were blue—but no blue I’d ever seen befor
e in human eyes. They were
singularly beautiful
, a
light blue, clear and frosty
.
His eyes were the color of
the
shallow end
of
a swimming pool
. And they searched my face intently, studying it as if through a microscope.

“Yes,” he murmured to himself. “The true amethyst. But something …” He frowned and shook his head. “Interesting,” he
remarked. He dropped
his hand and
re
closed
the blinds.

“What?” I asked, unnerved. “Something what?”

“Do you have your power stone with you?”

I blinked. The room seemed very dark after the brief flood of sunlight. “My what?”

“Your
…” Rune halted mid-phrase. His abrupt stillness reminded me of a wild creature; he froze the way squirrels freeze, halfway across the road, or lizards freeze mid-stride as they race across a stone. In the kitchen, I felt Lance freeze too. Then he appeared in the doorway, frowning.

“What is it?” he demanded. His eyes were fixed on Rune. “What’s going on?”

But Rune had shuttered his mind from us. He was thinking furiously, but neither Lance nor I could read his thoughts.

“Spill it, Rune.” Lance’s voice was rough with worry.

“It’s nothing.” Rune returned to his armchair and settled in, still thinking. The lie was so obvious, even he seemed to realize we would never buy it. Lies, I
perceived
, were not easily
told
between
spellspinners
. And secrets not easily kept. We were too tuned-in to each other.

Lance and I waited.

“Let me gather my thoughts,” Rune said testil
y. “It just threw me for a moment
, that’s all.”

I heard Lance in my head.
What did he ask you?

I replied the same way.
Power stone?
and let him feel my puzzlement.

Lance’s eyes cut to mine, his eyebrows flying up. His thoughts had become one big exclamation mark.
What did you tell him?

I spoke aloud. “I don’t know what he’s talking about, Lance. Clue me in.”

But Rune was speaking again. “Maybe you don’t call it that. Maybe you have another word for it. I
forgo
t that you weren’t raised a
spellspinner
.”

I could feel his emotions. They were a strange mix. Excitement and curiosity, the hint that Rune felt he was on the verge of a huge
, important
discovery. And also reluctance. He was kicking himself for ever mentioning ‘power stone,’ whatever that meant.

So Lance isn’t the only
spellspinner
who would dearly love to keep secrets from me.

“Just tell me,” I said, exasperated. “It’s not fair. I know you hate to let anyone in who isn’t already part of your circle, but come on. I’m one of you. I should be told.”

Rune leaned forward in his chair, the better to watch my face. “But
are
you one of us? Are you really? Some would say no.”
His voice went dry. “In fact, you
yourself
would
say
no. Or so Lance tells me.”

He had a point.

Lance spoke then. “Her spells come undone.” We both looked at him. Anger at his betrayal shot through me, but I felt his mind r
each out, sending me
reassuring
thoughts
.
You can yell at me later,
he told me. To Rune, he said, “Does that tell you anything?” And he disappeared back into the kitchen.

Rune’s face was lit with a sort of amazed excitement. He reminded me of Megan in the throes of scientific
inquiry
. “Yes,” he said. “I think it might.”
He sucked in a breath, looking da
zed. “It migh
t have that effect. How intriguing
.
”

I dropped back onto the sofa, flinging my hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, I give up. Just talk about me as if I weren’t here. Maybe I’ll learn more that way.”

Lance reappeared, bearing frosty glas
ses of something dark
. “Grape soda,” he said, handing me one. “
To match
your eyes.”

How romantic.
“T
hanks
,
” I
muttered. I
was careful not to let my fingers touch his.

I noticed that the atmosphere in the room had shifted. Rune seemed to have forgotten any enmity he felt when we first met. He was entire
ly focused on
chasing down the mystery.

Thus the power of discovery to the scientific mind.

He was now
pacing back and
forth, thinking
. I could almost hear the gears spinning
, although I still couldn’t pick out specific thoughts
. He tossed
words over his shoulder at us.

“If she doesn’t have her power stone, that might have a number of effects. One of them could be that her power only manifests itself temporarily.”

“Could be?” Lance frowned. “You don’t know?”

“Can’t know. The situation is unique.”

“But you’re the history guy.”

“Yes.” Rune sounded impatient. “And there have been instances, of course, where a
spellspinner
has been separated
from his power stone. Centurie
s ago, they were routinely
taken
in battle or stolen by enemies.”

“And when that happened?”

“The
spellspinner
lost most of his powers. Which is why this is so exciting, frankly.” He spun to face us, his strange, light eyes blazing. “Why is
Zara able to do so much? H
er spells don’t last
, correct? B
ut they are unusually powerful, even so.”

Unusually powerful? I tucked that interesting tidbit away for future pondering. Meanwhile, Rune
dropped
back in his chair. “There are several possibilities.” He started ticking them off on his fingers. “One, that she has a power stone after all.” He looked keenly at me. “Is there a piece of jewelry that you keep somewhere special? Or wear all the time? It would be purple, by the way. An amethyst.”

I shook my head. “I’m not really a jewelry person.”

“Very well
. So we move on to number two, which is that her power stone is hidden from her—but still near enough that she can draw on it unconsciously
.”

Lance sat beside me on the sofa, leaving only an inch or two of space between us. Living dangerously, as usual.
“W
ho would hide it from her?”

Okay, I’d had enough. It was time to interrupt. “Go back one step, please,” I said. “What is a power stone?”

But Rune was listening to neither of us. “Or three,
” he went on,
“
that power stones are not as important as we have been led to believe. When captured
spellspinners
lost their stones, is it possible that their loss of power was partly psychosomatic?”

Lance snorted, and I sensed Rune reluctantly letting his latest theory bite the dust. “Probably not. No, probably not.” His lips twitched into a half-smile. “It would be nice to think so, though, wouldn’t it? We’re all so afraid to let our guard down. It would be
pleasant
to believe that our powers are truly inherent. Not
linked
to
an object outside of ourselves.”

“They are, though,” said Lance flatly. “Case closed.”

“Well, yes. In a manner of speaking. If I took your stone, Lance, you would not lose
all
your power.”

“Just most of it.”

“Yes,” Rune agreed. “Most of it. Which brings us back to Zara.”

I was pinned by two sets of eyes,
peridot
and aquamarine. I hugged myself defensively. “What about Zara?”

“
You have the Power
,” said Rune. “You must, therefore, have a
power
stone. Where is it?”

Lance lifted his soda glass in a mock toast. “Zara
Norland
,
international
woman of mystery.”

I cracked a weak smile. “Guess you can add this to the
mystery
list. Power, but no power stone.”

Rune’s lips thinned. “And a
spellspinner
with no
spellspinner
blood line
,
a
pparently.” He leaned back in his chair, still regarding me with those ice-blue eyes. “
That’s
even more impossible than P
ower without a power stone.”

I took a sip of fizzy grape and set my glass down, very carefully, on the coffee table. If my hands were shaking, I didn’t want the soda
’s shiver
to give me away. I tried to make my voice sound casual. “Are we sure about that
bloodline thing
? Sounds like you know who my parents are.”

“No,” said Rune bluntly—dashing my unspoken hopes. “
We
know who your parents aren’t.”

I tilted my head like a puzzled puppy. “Who they
aren’t?
So you’ve narrowed it down?
”

“A bit.” His expression was faintly mocking. “
From all of humanity, w
e’ve eliminated forty-nine possibilities. Ev
ery living
spellspinner
.”

My palms were sweating. I shoved my hands into my skirt pockets. “So I’m the daughter of
dead
spellspinners
?”

I could feel Lance fighting an impulse to put his arm around me. My eyes sought his. Even in the midst of heart-pounding anxiety, it was nice to feel waves of sympathy coming from him. From anyone, I supp
ose, but especially him. It was…
unexpected.

“Honey, that’s the mystery,” he said, in the soothing tones one employs to calm a shrieking toddler.
“We gathered at
Spellhaven
a few weeks ago—all of us. When the Council calls, you don’t say no. They don’t call us
together
that often.” I picked up an image from Lance’s mind: a solemn group of pale-skinned people sitting around a
cam
pfire in the woods. Eyes glitterin
g like many-colored jewels in the firelight. Eyes studying each other, minds groping for truth, reading each other’s thoughts and emotions until all were convinced. Nobody was hiding any
thing. No male had fathered me. N
o female had borne me.

Lance saw that I had viewed his memory, and nodded. “I wish I could tell you who you are, Zara,” he whispered.
Regret
showed in his green, green eyes
; he hated to tell me this
.
I would
have known that
even if I couldn’t read his mind.
“But I can’t. We don’t know
where you came from
.
That’s the simple truth.
”