Wild Magic (13 page)

Read Wild Magic Online

Authors: Ann Macela

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Paranormal, #Romance, #Suspense

BOOK: Wild Magic
9.07Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“What, I’m a
mutation?”
This was getting weirder by the minute. First, his hunch mechanism was sitting there like a lump, seemingly asleep despite these wild allegations, and now Whipple thought he could do magic stuff. What next?
“The term is a little harsh, but exactly what you are has yet to be seen.” Whipple stroked his beard. “There are two aspects of magic to consider in our decision: spell radiances and spell auras. First, you can see spell radiances. Casting a spell on an object causes it to glow. If a practitioner has the innate ability or casts the specific spell, he can see the luminescence. You saw the glow from the spells I cast on the bowl, the picture, and my staff, correct?”
Jim looked at the objects in question. They still glowed. “Correct.”
“You saw the protective spells on Finster’s safe, and you saw Irenee’s invisibility radiance.”
“If you say so. I’m not convinced of that.”
“If the practitioner casts a spell on himself, he will also glow,” Whipple continued. “We don’t know why or how you are able to see
through
her spells. We have some theories, but no firm conclusions.”
Man, this magic stuff kept getting more and more complicated, Jim thought. He said only, “Okay”
“Second are spell auras. When actually casting, a practitioner creates a spell aura around his body, and it can often be seen by family members. The proficiency to see a nonrelated person’s aura is rare, and you don’t seem to have that. What you can do, spontaneously see spell glows, however, is much rarer.”
“Maybe I’m peculiar that way.” Jim shrugged and turned to Irenee. “What do you think?”
“I think you should listen to Fergus and my father. Something’s going on, because you’re seeing through my spells.” She smiled at him. “Besides, if it’s your innate talents, I’m not making a mistake with my magic.”
“Great,” Jim muttered. “Okay, I have some abilities—maybe. What’s next?” He unfolded his arms, snapped his fingers on both hands, and pointed at the coffee table. “Abracadabra! It’s a pony?”
Whipple chuckled, Sabel shook his head, and the two women smiled.
“Not exactly,” Sabel said. “We also learned you have a reputation within your agency for your intuition, prescience, capacity, whatever term you like, to put two and two together and get answers when nobody can even frame the questions. You solve the case when others are totally mystified. A couple of your fellows think you’re psychic, while others call you a wizard. You merely say you have a ‘hunch’ about something.”
It took effort, but Jim kept his expression flat. “How did you find all this out?”
“Let’s simply say we have our sources,” Sabel answered dryly. “Did I state the situation correctly about your hunches? Did you have one a little while ago when you shut your eyes and put your hands on your head after we told you about Finster and the Defenders?”
Jim crossed his arms again, let his eyes go unfocused, and thought about those questions for a long moment. While he did, his hunch antennae didn’t move, didn’t even twitch, although the area right under his sternum heated up considerably. Oh, great. Heartburn, too. He glanced around the circle. They waited with an expectant air.
He couldn’t accept their words as gospel. Not yet, anyway. “Maybe I was trying to wake myself up or calm myself down. My God, you’d just told me my prime suspect was one of these practitioners, he had an evil magic item, and you destroyed it. Because of all these events, I may never bring him or his coconspirators to justice.”
He shrugged. “Or maybe I decided I was with a bunch of crazies and needed to humor you because you might really know something. What makes you think I was having a hunch?”
“Because you were glowing,” Irenee said. “You had a spell aura about you. Why or how I could see it, I haven’t a clue, but it was a bright blue.”
“I was glowing?”
Her statement brought him to his feet. He pointed at her, then himself. “
You
saw
me
shining like a lightbulb?”
She rose also and pointed back at him. “Yes, you,” she answered, raising her chin, almost daring him to dispute her. She poked him in the chest with her finger, hitting him right in the solar plexus, punctuating her comments. “
Glowing
. Exactly like the floor safe. Only
blue
. That means
magic,
and the
color
indicates you have a
high
level potential, the power to cast some heavy-duty spells.”
Jim gasped when her finger hit his chest again and a bolt of fire spread from it throughout his body. He grabbed her hand before she could poke him again. Their connection only increased the heat. Every muscle in him tightened, and a fierce arousal prowled through his bloodstream. And went south.
He stared into those dark eyes ... and tugged her closer ... and lowered his head ... and was about to kiss her...
... when he heard Whipple say, “I told you so,” and the sound pulled him back from the brink.
Her eyes wide, her lips slightly parted, Irenee blinked at him, but didn’t otherwise move.
Jim looked at their hands—which radiated a faint, flickering glimmer—and slowly released hers. The vague shine vanished. She abruptly sat down and continued to gaze at him with an expression of both confusion and alarm.
He turned toward the two men. “All right, what happened here? What did you do? Cast a spell on me or us? What the hell is going on?”
“I think your magic talents are beginning to reveal themselves,” Whipple said and grinned.
“So?” Stepping past Irenee, who still seemed shocked, Jim paced around the room for a few seconds. Their claims were unbelievable, totally ludicrous. Why couldn’t he seem to find any reasons or facts to deny them? He extended a questioning hand to the group. “This is absolutely crazy. How in the hell could I be one of you? How could I do magic?”
“You could,” Sabel said, “if you’re what we call a ‘wild talent,’ someone who develops talents spontaneously. As I said, we don’t know how it happens, because there haven’t been enough people available to study or we haven’t gotten to them in their formative stages. We have learned that abilities do seem to show up more readily when one is around other practitioners. You’ve probably had dormant talents at least since puberty”
“You’re damn lucky we found you,” Whipple, interjected. “Wild talents have been known to become seriously disturbed trying to reconcile their magic with the everyday world.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! First I’m a mutant. Now I’m going to go
nuts?”
Jim threw himself back into his seat on the couch.
As he did, his hunch antennae quivered and, he could swear, began to jiggle and wave and almost do the boogie. If those effects weren’t bad enough, a spear of heat, then cold, then heat again, hit him right in the breastbone. He doubled over and groaned, “Holy shit!”
Irenee knelt immediately in front of him, and he grasped her hands as if holding on to a lifeline. Bridget slid over to hold his arm and rub his back.
“Take it easy, Jim,” Bridget said, and her calm voice and touch somewhat soothed the tumult inside him.
Irenee held his hands inside hers, and warmth—or something—flowed from her to his middle. A sense of contentment settled on him when the bombardment of hot and cold stopped.
In the center under his breastbone, however, something grew. Another organ? No, impossible. But something was there that hadn’t been there before.
He sat up slowly and locked gazes with Irenee again. Because it vaguely seemed the thing to do, he brought their clasped hands up to his chest. When they touched the spot in the middle of his body, everything in him—his hunch mechanism, his muscles, whatever was beneath his sternum—all relaxed.
“Are you all right?” Irenee asked, almost whispering, her big brown eyes as soft as melted chocolate.
He took a deep breath. No pain. Only contentment. “I think so. My insides seem to be working properly again.”
Bridget put her hand on his forehead, before moving it to take his pulse. “No fever, and your heartbeat is a little rapid but strong. Any trouble breathing?”
“No. I think my chest was about to explode.” He rubbed his hands and Irenee’s—he hadn’t let go of hers yet—over the end of his sternum. His eye and hand contact with her formed a bond he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, release. He did manage to mutter, “What the hell is going on? What did you do to me?”
“We did nothing. You didn’t have a heart attack, either. What you felt was your magic center coming to consciousness,” Bridget said, sitting back in her spot on the couch.
“Magic center,” Jim repeated. He straightened Irenee’s fingers and flattened her hands on his chest on either side of his breastbone. Warmth and pleasure and peace spread from her touch. He wouldn’t mind staying in such a state of euphoria forever.
Irenee stared into the golden green of Jim’s eyes while his magic energy pulsed under her fingers. The man truly was a wild talent, one of some strength and power. Her center thrilled to the energy flowing from him to her and back again. He must be a Defender, as well. How else could they be sharing power like this?
Before she could say anything, her father was helping her to rise. Jim released her hands, and the movement took her away from him. Her center seemed to sigh.
She could see Jim’s eyes focus when he came out of the trance they had both been in. He looked around the group. “What the hell just happened?”
“How do you feel?” Bridget asked.
“Fine ...” He studied his hands, rubbed them over his chest, and took a deep breath. “At least I think I do. Most of me does. Right here”—he pointed to his sternum—“feels different somehow.”
“It’s your power reserve, your magic center,” Irenee told him. “Remember when I said casting spells uses your body’s internal energy? The spot behind your breastbone is where your magic energy resides. You’ll concentrate on it when you want to cast a spell.”
“That’s the damnedest thing I ever heard.” Jim shook his head, and when he spread a hand over his center, he frowned. “Something’s vibrating inside me.”
“You’ve never felt it before?” Fergus asked. “Not even during one of your hunches?”
“No. They’re all in my head,” Jim answered. “The ‘big’ hunches come to me in a huge rush. I can almost feel my head exploding with the knowledge. For the little ones, it’s like being hit over the head with a hammer. Oh, wait a minute. Lately, they’ve been more like a punch in the stomach.”
Irenee leaned forward. She would have liked to touch him, but would doing so throw them into that weird state where the world came down to the two of them and nobody else existed? Definitely something to think about later. Right this instant, they had to help him. “The first time I cast my sword, it felt like a blow to my center. What was the hunch you had here before, the one where you held your head and shut your eyes? Was it big or little? What was it about?”
“Big. It told me to believe you about this magic stuff.” He scratched the back of his head like it itched.
“It looks to me like your talent has to do with these hunches,” Fergus interjected. “Anybody disagree?”
“I concur,” her father said. “It might be related to probability-theory spells. I’ve known several people involved in theoretical activities—physicists, economists—and they have told me their best ideas often come to them after much study, but not much actual conscious examination of the details. They’ll be doing something totally unrelated when, suddenly, it all fits together. Does yours work the same way?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much it.” With a thoroughly glum expression, Jim looked around the circle. “So, I’m a practitioner? Hooray. What does it mean? What happens next? I learn how to do hocus-pocus? How am I to use it to catch the bad guys?”
Irenee stifled a sigh. He didn’t totally believe his changed circumstances yet, and she had no idea what to do with him. Could he cast a spell if he didn’t really believe in his ability to do it?
Fergus seemed to have the same reservations because he said, “Why don’t you go home and get a good night’s sleep, Tylan? Let your hunches tell you if you are, in fact, a practitioner. Come back here tomorrow, and we’ll do some conclusive, determining exercises.”
“What’s wrong with right now?”
“I’m not putting you off for no reason,” Fergus replied. “It will be better for all of us if you let the ideas and reality settle in your mind and your body. Magic isn’t to be done without a great deal of care.”
“I’ve got a big meeting on the case tomorrow morning,” Jim said.
“Are you going to tell your agency about us? Or have you already?” Hugh asked.
“No, I didn’t tell them about Irenee at Finster’s or where I was coming today. ‘Something’ told me not to.” Jim rubbed his center and stopped when he glanced down and saw what he was doing. “I don’t like keeping quiet. But I won’t say anything about all this ‘magic stuff’ until I have to. Hell, nobody would believe me anyway.”
“Let us know when you can be here,” Fergus said. “Irenee, why don’t you give him your phone numbers, and you can be our liaison. Escort Tylan to his car, and come back. We have some other business to discuss.”

Other books

The Last Witness by K. J. Parker
BloodWitchInferno by Mary C. Moore
Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It by Elizabeth Gilbert
Teen Angel by Pilcer, Sonia
Princes of War by Claude Schmid
Harmless by James Grainger
Summerkin by Sarah Prineas