“So are you really leaving Arcane?” Zuzanna asked Declan three days later.
“And more importantly, who’s gonna teach us this stuff?” Tami asked, dark eyes dead serious.
“We’re still figuring things out. Watch your arc, Zuzanna. A mistake there will either make the portal useless or send you to nowhere.”
Zuzanna looked back down at the chalk circle she was helping to scribe on the floor of Arcane’s basement. “Oops,” she said, brushing out the off-track line and reapplying the chalk with stricter attention.
“I can always teach remotely,” Declan said, shifting his arms in their slings. True to Doctor Singh’s prediction, he was healing at a ridiculous rate, but the rapidly knitting bone and flesh itched.
“Like a damned online course? No thanks. This stuff is hard enough,” Tami said. She was writing out elven runes, referring to a diagram on a clipboard.
“Please. As if,” Declan said. “With Omega’s tech, I can be holographically present and watch you all practice from every angle.”
“Hmm, that’s true,” Tami allowed, eyes locked onto the current rune she was trying to write. Elven runes were harder to draw than any of the human runic alphabets. The characters themselves were kind of hard on human eyes in a way that made no real logical sense.
“But having you here to help redraw these damned things might be hard to duplicate. Hey, can Omega draw them?”
“Oddly, I can record them and print them, but all of my attempts at scribing them around a circle have failed. My laser reconstruction is exactly perfect, yet they fail to open a portal when Father powers them.”
“Tell me about it,” Erika said, standing just to Declan’s side and watching the work while looking over her own copy of the portal diagram.
“The Watchers of the Veil say that it isn’t enough to simply recreate them. The drawer must be pulling on their personal source of magic while drawing. And they have to keep pulling on that power, Tami. Which is why that last one you drew won’t work. You dropped your concentration.”
“No shit, what with all this talking,” she said, brushing out the offending character. “Maybe we can finish this little chat and then I can try to get this right.” She sat back and looked at the rest of the class.
“I think we all would really miss you, Declan, if you’re off somewhere else,” Britta said.
“Even if I’m here in glowing green holographic form, hounding you all to get your portals right?” he asked with a smile.
“My holographs are not green or glowing. They’re almost optically perfect representations.”
“Sorry, Omega. I was just going for a mental picture,” Declan said. Carefully he kneeled down and focused on the character Tami had just erased. A spare piece of chalk lifted off the ground and moved over to touch down on the spot and exactingly drew out the weird rune.
“Damn it. Gotta show off, don’t you?” Tami said, glaring at him.
Unintimidated, he turned an easy gaze on the annoyed witch. “Actually, I was trying out a theory. Try doing what I just did. Sit on your hands if you have to, but use telekinesis to draw the rune. It forces you to keep pulling power.”
The chalk dropped back to its original position as Tami looked at the piece in her hand. It lifted up and floated over, pressing to the ground, and started to draw. But the lines were shaky and not cleanly drawn.
“Doesn’t work, hotshot. I’m not as good as you are. Happy?”
“Actually—yes. That crappy rune has more valid power in it than any of the rest. So let’s do this… let’s have you all just draw the runic alphabet with telekinesis only,” he said. “It’ll be your homework.”
“But what about this one?” Erika asked. “We’ve got, like, well over an hour into it.”
“Well, let’s see if I can finish it,” he said, his chalk now zipping over as he looked at Tami’s diagram. The chalk started to draw runes, but the young witch kept his eyes on the diagram and didn’t look at the actual circle.
“I hate you when you make it look easy,” Zuzanna said. “Are we even related?”
“See the sweat on my forehead? This is really hard but in some ways, it’s better,” he said, finishing an eighth of the circle before the chalk fell to the ground. “I’ll have to practice too, but I think we might be on to a better way to do this. Think about it: You absolutely have to be drawing on your personal magic source or it won’t work. Therefore, anything you do draw will be solid and valid work. It may take time to finish, but it should work the first time.”
The chalk lifted back up and drew another four runes before he set it down again, his face shiny with perspiration. “Whew, that takes some effort.”
“How are we supposed to do it if you have so much trouble?” Zuzanna asked.
“Well, for one thing, you all aren’t recovering from major blood loss and extensive broken bones,” a disapproving voice said. All heads turned to see Stacia approaching across the basement floor.
“Oh, teacher is about to get schooled,” Alice Morloft said from the back of the group.
“Nah. It’s good for him. He’ll either wear himself out gradually or he’ll just pass out where he’s standing,” Stacia said.
Declan gave her a determined smile and the chalk lifted and began to draw again.
“You’re going to let him beat himself to a pulp?” Tami asked, frowning.
“He’s not in danger of hurting the healing bones and the effort is good for him. He’s getting a little pudgy, don’t you think?” Stacia asked the girls. As one, they all turned to study their teacher, who was having increasing difficulty concentrating.
“Yeah, maybe a little softer around the middle,” Erika said after a moment.
The chalk fell. “Really?” Declan asked, looking at his girlfriend.
She smiled innocently, waving at his circle. “Don’t let us stop you. The sooner you get that done, the quicker Omega can have his fun,” she said.
“That would be good, Father. I’m rather interested in visiting the Summer Realm,” Omega said. Now all eyes, including Declan’s and Stacia’s, turned to look at the exercise-ball-sized drone that floated twenty feet away—waiting.
Declan turned back to the unfinished portal and the chalk went back to work, now beginning the lower arc of the circle. With dogged determination, he kept at it, only a clenched jaw and sweat streaming down his face showing what it was costing him.
Five long minutes later, he stepped back, letting out a long breath. Then he sat down on the hard floor. “Okay, ladies. Power it up,” he said.
The witch class exchanged looks then formed a circle around the circle, holding hands. Stacia felt the air get colder, the overhead lights dimming, all of their breaths beginning to steam in the reduced illumination. She started a mental count. Ten seconds stretched into twenty, then thirty. Finally, when her internal stopwatch reached forty-seven, the concrete in the middle of the circle vanished, a mirror-like surface replacing it.
Omega’s big drone floated silently over, moving till it hovered directly over the center of the circle. The surface of the mirror rippled and Declan, who was watching, exhausted but focused, nodded once. Instantly the big orb shot straight down into the portal, vanishing into the looking glass with a little circular ring of disturbance like a pebble falling into a still pond.
Then the mirror vanished and the witches simultaneously let go of hands, opened eyes, and breathed out in relief. But Stacia noted they were all smiles.
“We did it!” Britta said.
“You did. And all the earlier work you did was right, because it powered up properly,” Declan said, a proud smile on his face.
Stacia smiled too, deciding to keep her mouth shut about the fact that her boyfriend would have powered the whole thing by himself in about twenty seconds’ time. But then, as he said, he was a freak of super nature. Her freak of super nature.
“Omega, did you arrive in the right spot?” Declan asked, turning his head to one of the smaller orbs that floated nearby.
“Yes, Father. I came out just north of the Summer Court’s Home Tree. I’m scouting the area now.”
“Hey, can we watch?” Tami asked.
Before the computer answered, Declan shook his head. “Not now. Let him do his work and I need to go rest. Maybe later we’ll see what he can show us.”
“In other words, Teacher doesn’t want us to watch scenes of wanton destruction,” Zuzanna said.
He shrugged. “I don’t think you have any idea of what it’s going to be like and I, for one, don’t want to treat it like a reality show. Plus, I really do need a nap.”
“And a shower before that,” Stacia said. “I can smell you from here.”
“Hey, where’s Mack at? He’s usually knee deep in theses classes?” Britta asked. Her twin snorted and Britta turned her way. “What?”
“It should be obvious,” Erika said, looking first at her sister, then the others. Her brows went up. “Hello? He got played by the demon chick. He’s upset.”
“And you know this how?” another witch, Michelle, asked.
“Because I checked up on him earlier today,” Erika said.
“Didn’t you guys have a thing?” Tami asked.
“Exactly. We had a thing. He’s a good guy but neither of us is looking to tie ourselves down, at least right now,” the bolder of the twins said, casting a quick glance at Declan who, for once, was paying attention to the witch gossip. He didn’t react, but Stacia raised one eyebrow back at her.
“Well, if you ask me, the player got played,” Alice Morloft said, a touch snidely.
“Well, I got played too,” Declan said. “I had no idea my professor was a demon. But then again, that’s kind of a demon’s thing—deception, seduction, subversion.”
“Way I heard it, you’re lucky Jetta showed up when she did,” Tami said, watching Declan’s reaction.
“Damn right I was. But then, the Sutton kids are pretty lucky people,” Declan said without rising to the bait. “Now I’m beat. See ya, everybody, and make sure you practice the runes with no hands.”
“Erika’s good at no hands. At least that’s the rumor,” one of the witches said, but Declan couldn’t tell who, nor did he even try. Instead, he focused for a second on the carefully drawn portal gate. A sudden breeze blew all the chalk away, scouring it right off the concrete and leaving no trace of the magical construct that had taken over an hour to create. A second later, all of the paper diagrams the class had been referring to floated up into the air and flashed into nearly smokeless flame before disappearing as fine ash.
Then he turned toward Stacia, who was a few yards away, talking quietly with Tami. He joined them and all three walked to the stairwell where the last of the witches were just exiting.