Okay, drama much? Obviously, I was back in high school.
Maude nodded as if she didn’t really care. She seemed to have an “any Keeper in a storm” attitude. The teen pointed toward the hated front doors of the large stone and brick building. “We need to hurry. Kids will start getting here soon.”
Whether she realized it or not, her words were perfectly designed to turn me from the turtle to the hare. I launched from my spot on the rust-stained sidewalk like a rocket that was powered up to visit Mars. “Tell me about this brush,” I asked as we hurried toward the large front doors. I had no idea what good that knowledge would do me, but I thought it would give me more gravitas as a Keeper if I pretended the process was deeply thought out and complex.
She shrugged, giving my question the weight it deserved. “Oh, you know, just a hairbrush.”
So much for gravitas.
I tried again. “What color is it?”
She frowned, grabbing the front door and yanking it open. “Color? I guess I never noticed. It’s kind of tree-colored, you know?”
Tree colored. Probably wood then. “Okay. Can you give me any more details?”
She ushered me through ahead of her and closed the door behind us, waving a hand over the wide, metal panic bars. She grinned when she saw me looking. “Just to slow them down a bit.”
I panicked a tad when I realized she’d locked us into the building together. What if Maude was another persona created by the mage who’d done a doppelganger spell to look like Alice?
I decided I needed to do some kind of test to figure out if she was legit before I got in any deeper. Squinting my eyes, I tried to read her aura. I’d found, however, that if I tried to see auras I rarely could. Apparently, viewing auras is a natural phenomenon that resisted being nudged. At least for me.
She widened her already wide blue eyes at me. “Are you okay? You look a little…constipated.”
“Ha!” I said. “Ha, ha.”
The look on her face told me she was having her own doubts about being locked inside the building with me. “You’re in training, you said?”
“Yes.” I didn’t elaborate because my elaboration wouldn’t make her feel any better. Telling her I’d been on the job for less than a week was unlikely to comfort.
She shrugged again and pointed down a long, dark hallway to the right of the main doors. “Lockers are down there. I’m assuming that’s where she put the brush.”
We headed that way and I forced my mind to clear, taking a deep breath and slowly expelling it in an attempt to calm my nerves.
In the dim lighting, I could finally see that a soft glow painted the air around the young witch. Her aura was similar to Lea’s, only with a tinge of gray that made me realize she wasn’t an Earth witch like my neighbor. I made a mental note to do some research on witches. I was pretty sure that was something which would make my job easier.
A sudden feeling of being overwhelmed swamped me and I had to take another breath as my heart started beating against my ribs. There was so much to learn, and I had the distinct feeling I didn’t have much time to learn it.
Maude stopped in the center of the long hall, lifting her arms. “This is the best place to search.” She cocked her gently illuminated head. “Should I try to find the lights?”
I shook my head, suddenly wondering what color my aura was. “I don’t think that will be necessary.” There was some safety lighting near the floor, and between that and the glow of her magic, I could see pretty well.
We stood there for a long moment. Maude shifted from foot to foot, her pretty leather boots an odd color under the greenish-gray illumination she gave off.
I felt her impatience like ants crawling over my skin.
My heart tried to beat its way out of my chest. It was the moment of truth.
I chewed my bottom lip.
Maude looked at her nails and then realized it was too dark to see them.
Something heavy slammed against the front doors.
Maude turned and looked in that direction, her body tensing.
“Hey! Is somebody in there? Can you unlock this door?”
I was well and truly out of time.
“Can you hurry?” Maude asked, tension threading her voice.
I flapped a hand in the direction of the door. “Head that way. I’ll have the brush by the time you get there and you can unlock it.”
I even shocked myself by the confidence strengthening my voice.
Maude nodded and turned away, her tall boots click-clacking down the hall.
I took a deep breath, wrung my hands, and pictured the core where my magic waited. At first, I didn’t feel it churning there and I had a moment of panic that it hadn’t replenished after the nightmare at Gnomish. Nightmares actually…
Energy began to stir deep within me. The magic felt warm and impatient. It churned and bubbled upward as my mind reached metaphysical fingers to entice it out of its hiding spot. The power oozed upward, threading through my cells and heading toward the surface of my skin. I realized that if I didn’t find a way to focus it, the energy was going to blast away from me in a wall of power that might do more damage than good.
My pulse pounded and sweat beaded on my forehead as I tried to redirect the magic into a single stream, slowly corralling it until it wound together in a thread that felt almost too frenetic to control.
I didn’t bother trying to control it. I was running out of time. I let it flow upward, burning a path through the cells of my arm and surging toward my fingertips.
Another slam on the door made me lose focus. The magic halted and started to
