I was up long before Embry came downstairs the next morning. He looked like he spent the night partying, but happier than I had seen him other than in the memory with Beth.
“Sleeping in this morning?” I called him on it, cradling my cup of tea. I finished the Chronicles, which was more anti-climactic than anything. Unlike regular books, this one didn’t have an ending. It went from a homemade remedy for chickenpox to a note saying another Bearer of the Crescent Moon was born on September 20th, 1990 to Marilyn Owens and Unknown. There were the tiniest of entries marking occasions such as the first time the guys met me, when Mrs. Boyd died and Mr. Boyd insisted he wanted to raise me, then again when Mr. Boyd passed away and Sam refused to let them take me. It brought a tightness to my chest I wasn’t expecting. When people asked, they always apologized for the loss of my mom, but no one really dwelled on the Boyds. For all intents and purposes, they were the ones who raised me until Sam took over, at which point he was more like a brother taking care of me than a parent.
It was different for Mrs. Boyd, because I had known my mom, albeit briefly, and Grams. She was always an additional motherly figure for me, but Mr. Boyd was the only father figure I ever had. Unknown never showed up, so every Father’s Day, Mr. Boyd was the one who received my macaroni flowers and glitter cards. When he died, Sam and I would get together amid celebrating Sam’s Father’s Day to celebrate the man who raised us. He was everything you needed a father to be.
“Where’s Gabriel?” Embry asked after pouring himself a cup of the coffee I brewed for them hours ago.
“He hasn’t come down.”
“He’s not upstairs,” Embry argued. A fear came over me before I reminded myself of all the places he could be other than dead or captured.
“Morning,” Gabriel came in after I listed all of his potential early morning escapes to myself. Jogging, surveillance, training…
“How are you standing?” Embry asked.
“I switched to coffee after the third shot,” Gabriel reminded him.
“How did you manage to sleep?” I chipped in.
“That is why I already did my 10k, showered, got attacked by a dog, and figured out a game plan for today.”
“Attacked by a dog?” I asked while Embry inquired, “Game plan?”
“We disagreed over who should eat my last piece of bacon. He won,” Gabriel told me. “And I went through the Shadow Book to see what we could work on today,” he elaborated on the game plan.
I didn’t bother telling him it was a Book of Shadows, as I’m pretty sure he does it on purpose. “I’m not doing magic anymore,” I reminded him instead.
“We don’t have to work on new stuff. We can use the burning paper thing,” he tried.
“No,” I shook my head, the image of Eric on the ground all the deterrent I needed.
“Or the floating spell. We can use any of the simple ones.”
“I said no,” I repeated, not quite storming off, but choosing that moment to get a refill on my tea.
I could hear them whispering about me before Gabriel came over to the kitchen, with Embry hanging back.
“I know your powers scare you, and you don’t want to use them,” he began.
“I don’t,” I agreed.
“But not using the powers intentionally doesn’t mean you won’t use them accidentally,” he paused so I could remember what happened to Eric, but he was using it as motivation to learn. “If ever someone invades your personal space or creeps up on you or…”
“I get the picture.” Even catching me so I wouldn’t fall could be deadly.
“I’m not blaming you, Luce, I’m saying it’s new and you can’t control it. Yet.”
“When I try, people get hurt,” I pointed out.
“That’s why I thought we could work on that today.”
“Using it wasn’t helping,” I argued.
“We’re not going to learn new spells or practice the old ones for the sake of it. I want you to work on actively controlling your magic.”
“How?” they kept saying I needed to control it, but never showed me the way, or anything that worked.
“Working on precision rather than power. Flinging your arms without making things happen. I want you to know how to not use them as well as how to master them.”
“That sounds great in theory, but I’m not comfortable with any magic right now. I have nightmares of when I threw you into the tree, and Eric into the well, or when that woman…” I shuddered, remembering it, but I didn’t want to say out loud that I killed her. “I feel evil when I use it.”
“Magic is not inherently good or bad,” Embry told me. “It all depends on how you use it. Good people use it for bad things, bad people use it for good things…”
“It’s safer if I don’t use it,” I finished for him.
“If Clara creeps into your room next year on Christmas morning and jumps on your bed…” Gabriel asked me.
“That’s not...why would you…” I could see it, because it was what Clara did every year.
“I don’t want to scare you, I want to prepare you, so you never get that look on your face again,” Gabriel didn’t apologize for going there, but he explained himself.
“The more I use it…”
“I will never make you use it if you don’t want to, but I think it’s important for you to learn how to not use it when you don’t want to.”
I looked to both of them, terrified of what could happen from using my powers, but even more afraid of what could happen when I didn’t mean to use them. “Okay,” I reluctantly agreed.
Embry made us omelets, then we headed out to the field with the blanket, a stack of paper, a bag of rice, and a pouch of sand.
“How does this work?” I asked, sitting across from the guys, with our random objects between us.
“We’ll use rice first,” Gabriel explained, pouring some out into a little pile in front of him. “I want you to make that one float without any of the others.”
“Which one?” I asked. There were at least a half-dozen he could be pointing to.
“This one right here,” he used a strand of wheat to point to a grain of rice under other grains.
“But not the others?” I verified.
“Exactly.”
I took a breath, then got to work. The hardest part was keeping track of which grain I was targeting, but I got it on my first try.
“Impressive,” Embry told me.
“Do you think you could lift these three, then lift that one up to here?” Gabriel asked again.
It was easy to get the three grains up, but harder to keep them in place while lifting the other one higher. They faltered the first few times, but eventually, I got them to remain stable while the other one came higher.
“I thought the rice might be beneath you,” Gabriel assured me, scooping up the remaining rice and putting it back into the bag.
“Sand?” I asked as he spread it out between us.
“Precision helps with control,” he explained.
“What am I doing with the sand?” I sighed, but he was right. I was focusing harder and learning how to single elements out. My magic would be better if I chose to use it now, but I didn’t see how this helped me not use it by accident.
“I’m not going to point at a grain in particular, but I want you to lift one.”
“Just one?”
“I might not entirely understand all the intricacies of your powers, but so far you seem to need to concentrate and visualize what you’re working on…”
“But this is just a pile of sand,” I understood.
My first attempt lifted at least a pinch of sand, as did my second and third.
“Try pulling one from this,” Gabriel scooped a bit of sand into his palm, seeing my exasperation.
“Isn’t that cheating?”
“We’ll come back to the pile,” he assured me.
Every time I lifted a few, he took them in his hand, then dropped the excess when I levitated some. This went on until I had a single grain of sand floating between us.
“Again,” Gabriel encouraged, but he stopped dropping the excess, so I had to play with the pinch of sand in his hand until I got it down to one.
Once I got that consistently, we tried with the big pile again. After two tries, I levitated a single grain every time.
“Should I separate atoms now?” I asked, taking a sip of the iced tea Embry brought us.
“Now we play with paper,” Gabriel smiled.
“Play?” I asked.
“You know how the paper catches fire, you float it to me, then the fire disappears?” he asked of how it usually works.
“We spent the afternoon passing notes,” I agreed.
“This time, don’t let it burn.”
“Protect the paper?” I was confused. Being the one who set the fire meant if I didn’t want it to burn, I just had to not set it on fire.
“No, start burning it, but keep it contained. Don’t let the entire thing be consumed.”
“Do I still float it to you?” I asked.
“If you can,” he smiled, making it a challenge.
It turned out that making it float to him was the least of my problems. Unlike the rice and sand, I didn’t have to isolate a grain, I had to set the paper on fire, then control the flames that were moving of their own accord. I had to prevent them from engulfing the rest of the paper, which was what they tried to do.
It took me at least a dozen tries, with varying amounts of scorchedness, before I finally passed.