Fearless (The Blue Fire Saga) (29 page)

“Of course you couldn’t do anything,” Cali said consolingly. “People would have thought you were a nut job.
”

“Yeah, I know
,” Leesa replied. “And they wouldn’t have done anything
, anyhow
.”

“Nope,
they wouldn’t
. But now that it’s happened, people would have been all over you, wanting to know how you knew. I’m pretty sure you don’
t want that kind of attention—e
specially with Rave being what he is and with what happened to your mom and brother.”

“That’s for sure,” Leesa said.

B
eyond the reasons Cali had
mentioned, there was no way Leesa
could afford to bring attention to anything that smelled of wizard powers, not with three black waziri
out there
alert for any hint of magic.
She needed to keep as low a profile as she could. Talking about reanimated corpses was most definitely not the way to do that, even if her vision had not come to pass.

“Do you think those black waziri guys you told me about were behind this?
”
Cali asked.

“Probably.”
After the zombie attack in their dorm, Leesa had told Cali about the black wizards, but not anything about her own magic powers, and nothing about Dominic being a wizard, either.

“Well, I’m glad they’re far away from here
, then
,” Cali said.
“And I hope they stay far away.”

Before
Leesa could reply,
Bruno Mars’ voice soun
ded from her cell. She pushed herself
up off t
he bed and grabbed the phone from
her desk.
Not unexpectedly for her generic ringtone, the screen read “unknown caller.”

“Hello?” she said.

She was surprised to hear Dominic’s voice on the other end. She had spoken to him just two days ago
and had said he probably wouldn’t be calling for awhile
. She hoped nothing was wrong.

“I can’t talk long,” Dominic said. “I assume you’ve heard about the incident in Columbus?”

“Yeah.
Me
and Cali were just watching it on the news.” Leesa nodded toward the door, indicating she wanted some privacy for the call. “Just for a minute,” she mouthed silently.

Cali nodded and got up. “Hi, Dominic,” she said loudly. “I’m leaving, so you and Leesa can talk about whatever it is she’s not telling me.” She smiled at Leesa, to let her know she wasn’t upset, then left the room and pulled the door closed behind her.

“She’s gone,” Leesa said into the phone.

“I just
wanted to reassure you
that
I’m nowhere near Columbus. I guess my little ruse worked. All my backtracking around the city must have made the black waziri think I was connected to the place somehow.
Hopefully, they’ll forget about Connecticut a little bit.
”

“
Yeah, I hope so,” Leesa said. “
I know you’re in a hurry, but t
here’s something I need to tell you. I
was practicing dream magic the other night and
tried to summon a
dream about you. Instead,
I dreamed abou
t this thing at the mall
.”

The phone was quiet for a moment as Dominic digested the news.

“
I see
,” he said. “What
worries
you
about tha
t
?”

Leesa sucked in a deep breath. She was about to voice the fear that had been gnawing at her ever since she first heard the news about the attack.

“I have to know—there’s no way my dream could have
caused
this
to happen
, right?”

Again, Dominic was silent for a few seconds. Leesa guessed her question had taken him by surprise.

“No, I do not see how,” he said finally. “Such a thing would be unheard of, among the waziri, at least. I’m certain my black brethren were behind the incident.”

Among the waziri, at least.
The words echoed in Leesa’s head. They did not fully comfort her.
Her fingers began twirling in her hair.

“But I’m not like any other waziri, am I?” she said. “I’m the first woman to get these powers. And I’ve got
that
grafhym
taint in
me as well.”

“You are right,” Dominic said. “Still, I do not see how you could do what you spoke of. But just t
o be safe, I think it best
you refrain from using any dream magic until I return.”

Leesa thought that was
probably
a pretty good idea. She had plenty of other magic she could practice.

“I won’t,” she promised.

“What’s most disturbing about this is our foes’ i
ncreasing control over the dead,” Dominic said. “
We may have less time than I had hoped before they manage to break the seal completely
. They
need to be stopped—and sooner than I thought.”

Leesa did not like the sound of that. Dominic’s plan all along had been for her to help him defeat the black waziri with her magic, which they could not detect. But she knew she was a long ways from having the necessary power. She needed Dominic back here to help her train. Even then, she knew it would be some time before her help would be of much use.
The wizard’s next statement made her wonder once again whether he could read her mind.

“Under the circumstances, I think you should increase your practice to two hours a day,” he said.

“I will,” she promised.

“If you start to feel fatigued, cut back for a day or two.”

“
I understand.
Do you know when you’ll be back?”

“
It will be
a little while yet, I’m afraid
.
”

That w
asn’t what Leesa wanted to hear. She wanted him back now. A
t l
east she knew he
was safe.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll let you go now. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Leesa.”

The phone went dead in her ear.
She limped to the door and pulled it open. Cali was sitting on the floor, her back against the wall, waiting.

“Sorry about that,” Leesa said.

Cali stood up. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah.
There’s just some stuff I can’t tell you. But it’s nothing to worry about.”

“That’s cool.” Cali
grabbed Leesa’s forearm. “For now,
”
she added with a grin.

S
he walked past Leesa and dropped
back
onto
the bed
as if she hadn’t just been kicked out of the room for a private conversation
.

“Turn up the sound. I want to hear more about those zombies.”

2
2
.
AN UNPLEASANT SURPRISE

T
he next week passed fairly uneventfully, for which Leesa was profoundly grateful. She practiced her magic every evening, caught up on her schoolwork, and even managed to somehow score an A on a history test, despite the tumultuous weekend and missed class time of the previous week.
Without Dominic to help her—and without the extra magic from underground in the volkaane settlement—her progress with her magic was slow. But at least it was steady.

The zombie story in Ohio had died down, at least on the television news. It was still all over the internet, of course. The bodies had been spirited away to a hidden government research lab, but that didn’t stop the bloggers and conspiracy people from posting their opinions. The most popular explanation for the creatures seemed to be secre
t medical experiments gone awry. O
ther theories included
a toxic waste spill
,
a terrorist attack,
aliens from outer space, a plague
of some kind
, and
even global warming, though Leesa failed to see how that might apply. Her favorite explanation came from a female blogger who wrote that
t
he creatures were
not
really
zombies, but instead were
vampires suffering from some kind of devastating vampire disease.
Not surprisingly with all the vampire fans out there, the woman was attracting a huge following.

Fortunately,
no one had proffered black magic from evil wizards a
s the cause of the walking dead, although the term “necromancer” had come up a couple of times. It was always in a general se
nse though, not about a fat,
hairless creature sitting in an ancient castle in Romania.

Saturday morning,
Leesa and Rave were walking down the hill toward downtown Middletown. Leesa wanted to get some good exercise, so she was moving as quickly as her limp allowed. The air was cool—low forties, she guessed—but with the sun shining down brightly from a clear blue sky she had already warmed up enough to pull off her windbreaker, leaving her with a pale green T-shirt worn over a slightly heavier, dark green long-sleeved shirt. Rave was wearing a brown waffle-knit shirt and jeans.

He had stopped by for a visit on Wednesday evening, so he already knew about Leesa’s dream and the zombies in Ohio. Despite the evidence that the black waziri were hundreds of miles away
, and with a day too bright to
worry about vampires,
Dral
and Bain still followed behind, pr
oviding an extra measure of securi
ty, just in case.
Leesa was glad to have them there.

“So, no more dreams?” Rave asked her.