Living with Your Past Selves (Spell Weaver) (32 page)

“What? How does she know?”

“I had to tell her in order to get her and Dan back together.”

Nurse Florence looked at me in total amazement. “Do you realize what you have done?”

“She was in Annwn on Founders’ Day. She already knew something was up.”

“Yes, but she had no way of finding out what. Now that she and Dan are back together, she knows what questions to ask, and at your insistence I have adjusted Dan’s
tynged
so he always has knowledge of our situation. What do you suppose they talk about? Tal, I thought Stan was the only possible way Carrie Winn could spy on us, but she can do almost as well with Eva if she realizes how much access Eva has. You really should have told me about Eva right away.”

“I’m sorry. At the time I didn’t realize Winn was using other people that way.”

“True, but you need to be more cautious in general. Now I have to do something about Eva, and the kind of arrangement I made for Stan is hard enough to maintain without having to keep another one going at the same time.”

“At least it’s only a few days until Halloween,” I pointed out lamely.

“Assuming the danger is over after Halloween. You know it could be an anticlimax—and then we’d just have to keep living in fear, not knowing when Winn was actually going to strike.”

“I don’t think so,” said Stan suddenly. “While I was hacking Winn’s computer, I ran across the guest list for the party, and it got me thinking.” Both Nurse Florence and I looked at him expectantly. We both had a general idea of who was on the guest list, but obviously he had noticed something we missed.

“The adults are the bigwigs you would expect…except that none of them are local.”

“Maybe because of Winn’s impending state senate campaign,” suggested Nurse Florence.

“Possibly, but we’ve all seen that monster house of hers. She could certainly have included the usual local dignitaries, but she didn’t. Almost as if she didn’t want them to see what was going to happen.”

“How is it better for out-of-the-area dignitaries to see?” I asked.

“Maybe because we don’t know them. Winn could bring in impostors. If she has all those fake security people, why not?

“And then there are the students she invited. Tal’s band. Okay, so they are the entertainment. All the other students from Founders’ Day—well, that could just be picking the conspicuous student leaders. But she also just added Shar and Gordy. Not the rest of the football team. Just the two who happen to be with us.”

“If she knows they are with us, wouldn’t it make more sense not to invite them?”

“Unless,” said Nurse Florence, not doing as good a job as usual of concealing her fear, “she intends to wipe all of us out at once.”

This day just kept getting better and better.

“What about you?” I said. “Are you invited?”

“No, but Coach Miller is, and fairly randomly—no other school staff members on the guest list. And it wouldn’t be too hard for her to guess at this point that I would be Coach Miller’s plus one. I’m afraid Stan is right. And her making some kind of move at the party makes sense. Samhain is, after all, a point of greater than normal magical potency.

“We still don’t know what she’s up to, and I’m thinking now we won’t until it’s too late. But that doesn’t change my idea about our best strategy. She is definitely going to surprise us in some way. Our only real chance is to surprise her at least as much.”

“Got it,” I said. “Stan and I will work on that this afternoon.”

And so we did. For lack of a better word, I “downloaded” Stan’s scientific visualizations. It took a few hours for me to really put them to good use, but suddenly everything “clicked” (again, for lack of a better word), and I began to be able to manipulate electronics because suddenly I could see and feel how they worked—literally. Though I felt silly singing to Stan’s computer, inside my head I could feel the programs executing the same way I had been able to feel the blood flowing in living beings ever since my awakening. At first I could only nudge the programs a little, like speeding up or slowing down execution. But gradually I managed to create files and erase them just by singing. A key moment came when I was able to log on without using Stan’s password. His computer began to respond as an animal would; it was loyal to me, regardless of passwords or other security measures.

In the days that followed, I frequently walked down the halls at school humming. Nobody really paid attention, since I had often done that before. Now, though, the hum was me subtly syncing with the electronics around me. I’d walk past a computer lab, and all the machines would simultaneously power up. Public address system? I could use it as my address system if I wanted to. I only did that once, though, in the late afternoon. Too conspicuous otherwise. Security cameras? They always went suspiciously blank whenever I was around. (Evidently no one ever checked those tapes, since some of us had been walking around with sheathed swords hanging from our sides in full view of the security cameras for days, but at least now even the potential risk was gone.) I was confident I could control pretty much any of the technology at Awen, and I hoped that that would throw a pretty serious wrench into Winn’s plans.

Guns, however, were another matter. Electronics had become part of my repertoire with surprising ease, but perhaps because Stan hadn’t thought about the mechanics of firearms that much himself, that all-important manipulation eluded me at first. Stan and I took a bus to Carpinteria several times and loitered near a shooting range. I could see through the eyes of the shooters, but really feeling or seeing the inner workings of the guns did not come. In the end Stan solved the problem by a quick but intensive study of the way guns worked. Once his visualization got better, I downloaded again, and presto! I could feel the inner workings of the gun. I could see the gunpowder explode, and that was the easiest spot to block the whole process. It might have been an interesting twist to get the guns to fire at random—preferably into the people carrying them, but with such limited time, I was more than happy to settle for neutralizing them, so that they did not fire at all. Just a little tinkering with the way the gunpowder reacted, and the gun failed. Simple as that. I triggered enough random failures at the shooting range to be sure. Then, gradually, I moved farther and farther away. By the eve of the party, I could be standing almost a block away and still prevent guns from firing. That should be enough range to wipe out the firepower for Winn’s whole security force. Well, the physical part anyway. There was no telling what occult means of attack they possessed now that we knew they might not be human. We had to hope that our collection of magic swords would be sufficient to tip the battle in our favor. Yeah, I now agreed with Stan and Nurse Florence. I was sure Carrie Winn would make her move on Samhain.

Our cause was reinforced in one other way. A day or two before Halloween I ran into Carlos Reyes, who suddenly wasn’t avoiding me—and I couldn’t avoid noticing the sheathed sword hanging on his right side.

“So, Carlos, I see you have joined the club.” The choice made a lot of sense. Carlos was already on the guest list, Eva knew him, if only slightly, and although he would need a very intense crash course in swordsmanship, his long hours of water polo and swimming had put him in excellent physical shape.

Grim as Carlos had been ever since Founders’ Day, he was a little like a kid with his first bicycle—or like Gordy—in terms of his enthusiasm. Take a guy to Annwn, give him a custom made Faerie sword, and he’ll do anything you want, apparently.

“What does yours do?” I said, leaning closer. There was no one nearby, but still, I was learning the value of caution.

Carlos leaned even closer. “Even a touch makes someone feel like he’s drowning. An actual wound, and the enemy will die as if by drowning unless the spell is broken.” I wanted to tell him that watching “the enemy” die was not the picnic he seemed to imagine, but if in fact we had to go into battle, he would find that out soon enough for himself.

In just under two weeks I had done what Nurse Florence was pretty sure no spell caster before me had ever done—forge a connection between magic and technology. Would that, together with six magic swords, four of which we hoped Carrie Winn knew nothing, be enough? In just a couple of days, we would know.

CHAPTER 19: SAMHAIN

Halloween at school was one long headache. I dimly remembered enjoying it in some earlier years, but this time all the adolescent lets-see-how-much-I-get-away-with costuming just annoyed me. Probably my attitude was colored by the fact that I didn’t know whether I would be alive twenty-four hours from now, but either way I still longed for the day to end. You would have thought, given what I was heading into, that I would have wanted exactly the opposite, but what would have been the point? Even if I had the power to stop time, why be the moth frozen forever in flight, just half an inch from the flame? No, I had been haunted one way or another since that night when Stan had uncovered my secret. I had been haunted by Carrie Winn before I had any idea who she was. Yeah, maybe I would end up dead, but maybe I would end up free, and there seemed little reason to think I could be free by trying to avoid the inevitable.

Despite my aversion to all the Halloween festivities at school, I spent a lot of time at home on my costume for the party. I had decided on Zorro because the black outfit might be good for stealth, it gave me freedom of movement, and the cape would help hide White Hilt even from Carrie Winn, or at least make it hard for her to tell it wasn’t just a prop sword for the costume.

Dad just seemed thrilled I was attending yet another Carrie Winn function. Mom, on the other hand, seemed a little apprehensive, almost as if her maternal instincts were telling her something was wrong. I insisted everything was fine, but when I kissed her goodbye, I could feel an odd tremble in her lips. Just as well she didn’t know what was really going on. If she felt this shaky over a premonition, imagine how overwhelming the truth would be for her.

I popped down the street to get Stan, who had, with eminent good sense, picked Merlin. “I needed something loose fitting in case I need to wield David’s sword, and, well, you know.” In other words, if Stan needed to raise his sword and suddenly had to double in muscle mass, he needed a costume with room to grow into. Merlin’s robe made for a wise choice, all things considered.

“So,” Stan continued slyly, “Are you ready for our trip to Cougar Country Safari?” Despite myself, I blushed a little.

“Stan, you’re making me sorry I ever told you about that. I should slap you silly for bringing it up again.”

“Too late. I’m already silly.”

Much to my relief, Jackson picked us up in the band van at that point. We were the last pick-up, and since the whole band was together, we went over the details of our upcoming performance, leaving Stan pretty much on his own. He was staring out the window, and I noticed how worried he looked.

And that was about the last time I noticed him until we got to Awen. It wasn’t just band business. It was Carla Rinaldi, costumed in a revealing white gown as Venus, the goddess of love. Apparently, she had been waiting for me to make a move and had gotten tired of waiting. She put one arm around me while we were talking about music, and her grip was surprisingly tight. Slowly, but unmistakably, she was pulling me closer, and I could feel my body respond to her with surprising intensity. My heart was racing, and my blood felt as if it were burning hotter than White Hilt. The strength of this reaction came as such a surprise to me that I had to glance over at Carla to make sure magic was not somehow involved. How sick is that? My first response when I felt drawn to a sexy girl who was clearly totally into me was to wonder if the situation were somehow being manipulated by Carrie Winn.

I looked into Carla’s eyes but did not see Ms. Winn looking back out; nor did I feel anything unusual beyond my own raging hormones. Carla looked back into my eyes with an expression that suggested that she wished we were alone.

“Uh, guys, get a room,” said George, our keyboardist, with a smirk. Carla now had both arms around me, and, having followed Carrie Winn’s earlier advice, even if unconsciously, I was glad I had gone with loose fitting pants.

“Carla,” I whispered in her ear. “I’m loving this, but, uh, maybe now is not the time.”

“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today,” she whispered back.

A normal guy in a normal situation would have found some way to be alone with Carla some time that night. Too bad I wasn’t, and it wasn’t. I was so aroused by that point that I feared I might miss some hint of a threat until it was too late. Using our upcoming performance as an excuse, including a very convincing “everyone else is depending on us” speech, I managed to scrape her off of me. I even managed to extricate myself without offending her. Yeah, I needed to be alert right now. At the same time, the absolute, overwhelming undeniability of my reaction to her suggested I had misread my feelings for her. Sure, she was hot, and I was fast upgrading her from volcano to solar flare, but she had always been hot, and I had never felt her presence so powerfully. I now realized that being with her would not be just a process of trying to get over Eva. For the first time in four years, I felt that I might be able to get out from under the shadow of what might have been and move into the light of what could be.

Well, if I managed to live through the night, that is.

In just a few minutes, we arrived at Awen. This time we were directed around back to the service entrance, mostly because there was an elevator that would make getting the instruments and equipment upstairs much easier. We normally used acoustic, not electric, guitars, and they were pretty easy to move around, but the keyboard was a little more challenging, and the drums even more so, to say nothing of the sound system. Unloading the equipment, however, gave me the perfect opportunity to work the first part of my magic. Humming as I worked, I reached out with my mind, stretching my thoughts further and further, twining them around every gun throughout the complex, and then one by one I rendered the gunpowder inert. The operation was almost suspiciously easy—but of course, if Carrie Winn had not visualized such an attack, she would not have known to protect the guns from my magic, if such a thing were even possible for her.