Heartless (Blue Fire Saga) (22 page)

After infusing Leesa with some of his heat to help ward off the cold night air, Rave slid down to the end of the bench, far enough away to be no danger to her phone. As soon as he moved away, Leesa punched in Dominic’s programmed number.

The phone rang a bunch of times. Leesa waited patiently, picturing Dominic rummaging through his magic wallet to find the phone amidst all the other stuff inside. Finally, the wizard answered.

“Hello, Leesa. Are you safe?”

Leesa was not surprised by Dominic’s question. He knew she would not be calling unless she had something important to share. Her safety was always his first concern.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m up in New Hampshire with Rave. We came up here so I could practice my magic without disturbing those fell powers beneath the volkaane village.”

“Good idea. The farther away you are from Connecticut, the better. So, what’s going on that you needed to call me?”

Leesa read him the texts from Cali, so that she wouldn’t forget any details. When she finished, Dominic was silent for a few moments.

“I do not like the sound of that,” he said finally. “Once the xenorians sense magic, they are tenacious in following it. I think you had better plan on staying away from Middletown for some time…at least until we can figure out some way to chase them off your trail.”

“I was afraid of that,” Leesa said, thinking about all the things she was going to miss because of this. At least she would be with Rave, and practicing her magic, too. “It’s going to mess up school for me big time, but I guess that’s not all that important, considering all this other stuff. I’ll call my mom, so she won’t worry too much.”

“Don’t tell anyone where you are, even your mother,” Dominic cautioned.

“I won’t, but she’s going to wonder what I’m doing disappearing during the middle of school. Bradley knows about Rave, at least, so I’ll make sure he reinforces to my mom that I’m safe with him.”

“Until something changes, I think I’m going to stay away from Middletown, too,” Dominic said. “Do not be surprised if you get a message from me asking for directions to where you are hiding. I will very likely join you before long—to help you with your magic, if nothing else.”

Leesa was glad to hear some good news for a change. “I’d love that,” she said.”We’re pretty far off the beaten path, but I’ll send Rave down to get you once you’re in the area. You’ll love the ride up the mountain.”

They made their good-byes and then Leesa turned off her phone and looked at Rave.

“I guess we’re going to be up here longer than we planned,” she said.

Rave smiled. “I know it messes things up for you, but I don’t mind at all. It will be nothing but you and me, our magic, fresh air and beautiful scenery. What more could I ask for?”

Leesa slid down the bench and snuggled up against him, soaking up his warmth. When he put it like that, it sounded pretty darn good indeed.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t really mind too much, either.”

Not too long after Leesa hung up with Dominic, Smith, Jones and Rome gathered in the dark shadows alongside Leesa’s dorm. For the past few hours, the xenorians had been watching and waiting for Leesa to return. Smith had watched the front entrance, while Jones hung around in the rear. Rome had spent most of the time slowly wandering around the area, seeking any traces of old magic. She had detected none. Similarly, Smith and Jones had seen no sign of Leesa. It was almost ten o’clock now.

“It’s beginning to look like the Nyland girl won’t be coming home tonight,” Smith said.

“Maybe not,” Jones replied. “I think we should give it another hour or so, just in case. It’s not like we have anything else to do.”

“Perhaps we should go up and check her room,” Rome suggested.

“What for?” Smith asked. “We’ve been watching both entrances all evening.”

Rome shrugged. “If the magic I sensed belonged to her, perhaps she has other means of coming and going. Magical means of some sort.”

Smith and Jones looked at each other.

“She could be right,” Jones said. “Maybe Miss Nyland flew in through a window or walked in through a wall. It won’t hurt to check.”

“I guess you’re right,” Smith admitted. “You go up the back way. I’ll cover the front stairs and Tiffany can take the elevator. We’ll meet at Nyland’s door.”

“If she has magical methods of travel, it probably won’t matter,” Rome said. “But it won’t hurt to cover all the normal routes in case she happens to be leaving in an ordinary manner.”

They split up and made their way to the fourth floor, gathering again in front of Leesa’s door. Rome put her finger to her lips, signaling silence while she leaned close to the door, listening for any sounds and trying to sense the presence of any new magic that would tell her Leesa was inside. She detected none.

She straightened up and shook her head.

“Nothing,” she told her companions.

Smith moved forward and knocked. When there was no reply, he took out his lock pick set. Glancing down the hallway to make sure no one was watching, he set to work and opened the door with no trouble at all. The room was empty. Rome made a quick sweep of the room, but detected nothing different from what she had sensed that afternoon.

“As far as I can tell, she hasn’t been back here,” she said when she exited the room, pulling the door closed behind her.

“We’ll give it another couple of days,” Smith said. “Jones and I can keep an eye out for her here, and get a couple of guys from campus security to spell us at night. Meanwhile, you can wander around the campus, looking for any other traces of magic.” He glanced back at Leesa’s door. “But if we don’t see her soon, I think we will need to pay a visit to her mother.”

29. INTERLUDE

L
eesa could not remember ever being happier than she had been these last two days alone with Rave in New Hampshire. She had been overjoyed, of course, when her mom had been cured of the
grafhym
bite and when her brother had been released from the vampire caverns, but those were different. They were momentous events, to be relished and cherished, particularly as both of them recovered from their long traumas and slowly returned to normal. Her joy in both cases was a reaction to the wonderful occurrences.

Her time with Rave was happiness of a different kind. So steady and constant was her elation that she felt almost as if someone had opened one of her veins and somehow inserted an intravenous drip of vitamin Joy. Except for hour or two each day when they separated so she could practice her magic and Rave could work on
Rammugul
, they were together constantly, undistracted by anyone or anything. She fell asleep in his loving arms and awoke the same way. During the day, he carried her to one beautiful spot after another. When they got to wherever they were going, they strolled hand in hand or sat side by side. Once each day, Rave carried her down toward the village so she could check her cell for any messages. So far, there hadn’t been any, which she hoped was good news. At night, she and Rave sat outside under the canopy of stars, sometimes talking, sometimes simply snuggling against one another like they were right now, with Rave’s arm around her back and her head resting comfortably on his shoulder.

They had even done some swimming earlier, in the crystal waters of a small mountain lake. The water was freezing cold—when Leesa stuck her foot into it, she felt like she had been stabbed with a poker—but as long as she held onto Rave, his magical warmth kept her perfectly comfortable. And keeping hold of him was no problem—why would she ever want to let go? When they finally emerged from the water, Rave had dried her clothes by running his hands over her body. Now
that
had been a highlight of their stay, for sure.

Other than the swimming and its aftermath, there was nothing particularly special about any of it, yet every minute, every hour, felt amazingly precious. That was what love did, Leesa had been learning ever since she met Rave. It made the ordinary moments into something special, and it elevated the special moments to something beyond extraordinary.

It wasn’t just Rave, either, making her so happy, though he accounted for by far the biggest part of her mood, of course. Her magic, freed of the restraints of the weakening spell, was progressing by leaps and bounds. The results went beyond the ankle weights analogy she had been using—this was more like an old fashioned ball and chain had been removed, one from each leg. The stone walls inside the cavern were scarred with scorch marks from her energy beam, the newest of them made from a distance of almost ten feet. Her magic light was bright and constant, and she now practiced her levitation outside only, after bumping her head on the cavern ceiling four feet above her. She was moving rocks that must weigh nearly one hundred pounds with her thoughts—not moving them far yet, but moving them nonetheless. Only the air shield spell still eluded her, though Rave said he was feeling a definite sponginess to the air when he poked at her with a stick.

She knew her bliss would have to ebb sometime and that she would have to emerge from this idyllic mountain cocoon. Eventually, she would miss her mom and brother, and Cali and Dominic. Deep in her brain she knew the xenorians were still roaming the campus, and that the Necromancer was still hatching his evil plans, but for now, none of those things impinged on her happiness. She was with the man she loved—that was all that mattered to her right now. They were almost totally focused on each other, and she did not want it any other way.

“I love this,” she sighed, almost more to herself than to Rave.

“Which part?” Rave asked. With his keen hearing, she might as well have shouted her thought.

“All of it. Every single bit of being alone up here with you.”

“I’m very glad to hear that. I thought maybe you might be getting bored, with no television or stereo to entertain you, and no phone service to talk to your friends I know how attached you humans are to your phones.”

Leesa lifted her head from his shoulder and looked into his face. She found him smiling and knew he was just teasing her. She snuggled even more tightly against him.

“I have everything I need right here next to me,” she assured him.

“Me, too.”

“I think I could stay here forever,” Leesa said, “though I might eventually need a change of clothes.”

“Why?” Rave asked, smiling. “Whenever you start feeling unclean, we can go for a swim. Drying your clothes for you while you’re wearing them is particularly fun.”

Leesa felt herself blushing. “Oh, you bad boy, you.” She grinned. “It
was
fun, though.”

She yawned. She was starting to feel pretty tired. Part of her hated the idea of ending the day and going to bed, but at least she would get to sleep in Rave’s arms.

“I think I should be getting to bed,” she said.

She stood up and pulled Rave up by his hand. “C’mon. Let’s go in. Maybe I’ll let you make sure my clothes are totally dry before I go to sleep.”

30. CONNECTING SOME DOTS

W
hile Leesa enjoyed her idyllic escape with Rave, Smith and Jones continued watching her dorm for her return. At the same time, Rome strolled systematically around the campus, seeking any other signs of magic. In addition to searching the grounds, she wandered through a number of dorms and classroom buildings. Luckily for Leesa, Rome skipped the library, reasoning that the busy place was not a likely spot for anyone to perform magic.

She detected no magic in any of the buildings she searched, but did find several very faint traces of vampires and volkaanes in places on the school grounds. The traces were too weak and too old to be of any use, but she filed the information away in her head, just in case.

Eventually, her meanderings brought her to Brennan Field. The dormant grass on the large open field located on the edge of campus was just beginning to turn green. With the afternoon temperatures hovering in the mid-fifties, there were plenty of kids here enjoying themselves tossing Frisbees and footballs, or kicking soccer balls back and forth.

Rome had decided to include Brennan Field in her search because it abutted a long stretch of woods that could be an easy place for supernatural creatures to enter the campus. She had almost reached the end of the field closest to the trees—having dodged an errant Frisbee along the way—when the alarm bells inside her head began to go off, telling her strong magic had been used nearby. For a moment she just stood there, soaking in the sensations, and then she began slowly walking toward the area where the emanations seemed strongest. When she reached the spot where the vibrations were the most powerful, she stopped and squatted. Closing her eyes, she let the magical vibrations wash over her.

She quickly identified two very different kinds of magic. Most powerful was a pair of vampire essences. The vampire vibrations were unusually mixed up and mingled with each other. She could not be sure, but if she had to guess, she would say that the two vampires fought each other here for some reason. Though she had no way of knowing it, her ability had guided her to the spot where Stefan had attacked Edwina and saved Cali.

The second trace of magic was both very simple and highly complex at the same time. She detected but a single strand of this magic, as if it had been used just once, but in a highly powerful and focused manner. It resembled wizard magic, yet it was different from any wizard magic she had ever encountered. Adding to her confusion, she detected faint underpinnings of other supernatural vibrations mixed in with the magic, but they were too weak for her to identify. She had come across something like this only once before—just a few days ago in Leesa Nyland’s dorm room.

She spent another twenty minutes carefully widening her search area, but she detected no other traces of magic. Satisfied she had learned all she could here, she headed back toward the center of campus to report her discovery to Smith and Jones.

Rome covered the distance back to the dorm much more quickly than she had on her way out, when she had been looking for signs of magic. She found Jones leaning against a tree not too far from the rear entrance. Waving him away from his post, she waited until he joined her, then they both headed out toward the street, where Smith was watching the dorm’s front door from the comfort of the SUV.