by H G Lynch
She tried to glare him down with metallic, shining eyes but when she saw he wasn’t going to budge, the colour rippled at last, and he knew he’d won. “Fine. No hand-to-hand combat. Magic only.” She folded her arms across her chest and pouted like a sulky child. She was not happy about not getting to snap some wrists or kick in some kneecaps, but she knew he’d keep her out of the fight somehow if she didn’t agree to a compromise.
He nodded at her, then turned to Ricky, who looked ready to rip his hair out. “Ricky?” One word. All he said was one word, but he knew Ricky understood what he was asking.
The brunette boy fixed his gaze on Reid and clenched his jaw for a moment. Then he sighed through his teeth and nodded once.
“We still need to do perimeter sweeps,” he said shortly.
Reid agreed on that one at least. “We’ll go in a minute. Just let me talk to Ember first…in private.” Then he added in a low voice, for Ricky’s ears only, “You should probably talk to your own girlfriend. She looks severely pissed at you right now.” He chuckled as Ricky’s eyes widened and he glanced to Sherry.
The green-eyed girl had her arms crossed and a steely glare pinned on Ricky. Oh, yeah, she was ticked.
“Good luck, man,” Reid clapped Ricky on the shoulder, then turned to Ember and nodded for her to follow him down the hall. With only a momentary hesitation to show she didn’t like being ordered to play follow-the-leader, she strode after him.
***
Reid stopped in the back room and turned to face her as she followed him in the door. He was looking at her with a glint in his eyes that she didn’t understand. Maybe it was just because she was too riled up to focus properly; the minute Ricky had started acting like she was just another helpless female in need of rescuing, all her helpless feelings had burned away. She didn’t think he’d known his words would have that effect, but she was kind of glad he’d said it. It was nice to stop feeling like a scared little girl, and feel more like herself again. Nightmares or no nightmares, she wasn’t going to stand on the side-lines in a bullet-proof vest while her friends took arrows for her.
“What did you want to talk to me about? Or did you just want to stare at me for a bit?” She sighed, shoving her hands in her pockets.
Reid smiled, but it wasn’t the kind of smile she would’ve expected; it was oddly gentle and full of admiration, with, of course, a devilish edge. Abruptly, he strode forward and grasped her up in a bone-melting kiss, squeezing her tight against him.
It took her so by surprise that it was a moment before she could make her stunned mind communicate to her lips to kiss back. Her mind supplied her with one word as Reid’s mouth moving on hers made heat spill through her: Wow.
Finally, when he let her go, she was gasping and flushed and totally at a loss for an explanation. “What-what was that about?” she asked, putting her hand over her heart as if she could physically hold her heart in her chest that way. She felt it hammering against her palm through her t-shirt. Holy crap.
He grinned boyishly with his hair mussed and falling into his eyes. “That was for being yourself again. And because you are outstandingly attractive when you go all vampire-rebel and your fangs pop out,” he chuckled.
She put her hand to her mouth, just now realising her fangs were out. How had she not felt that? “Oh,” she said, not sure what else she could say. She was blushing. Which was ridiculous really, but it couldn’t be helped.
Reid flashed her a grin and ruffled her hair as he went past. “Glad to have you back, Firefly,” he murmured, and then left to go collect Ricky to do a perimeter sweep.
Ember touched her lips lightly as she smiled after him. It felt really good to be herself again.
***
The next day, they were all up bright and early. Reid and Ricky were out scanning the area around the house, in particular, the woods, while the girls kicked off another training session for Sherry. Hiro sat on the snow-covered bench and watched them with his fluffy ears pricked up.
As far as Ember could tell, he was really taking his job as her guard-fox seriously. He followed her around like an incredibly attentive, very dangerous puppy whenever Reid or Ricky wasn’t around to ensure her safety. Ember had told him she didn’t need protecting while she was in the house, but he’d simply tilted his head in an odd, fox-version of scepticism. Ember hadn’t bothered to argue it with him, because she honestly didn’t mind being trailed by a fox. It was kind of cute, even if she knew that fox could turn into a snarky teenage boy whenever he felt like it.
Reid hadn’t been pleased when she’d told him about Hiro’s magical pledge of loyalty. He’d been sarcastic and cynical to start with, then he’d moved on to being irritated, and when she’d finally convinced him that Hiro was on their side and fighting to stay there at the price of gaining a heavy responsibility to protect her, he’d settled on something akin to jealousy. He didn’t like the idea that Hiro was magically bound to his girlfriend, for any reason. She did explain to him how the link worked, that it didn’t give Hiro access to her head, nor did it let her read his thoughts, but just gave her an impression of his feelings —and allowed her to dispel any lies he told. Reid had frowned at that, but said nothing more about it.
Currently, Hiro was supremely bored because for the past ten minutes, he’d been watching the girls float snowballs and slip in and out of magic trances. Ember didn’t need to trance to grab at her power, but Sherry did, so Ember waited patiently for her friend to tap into her magic.
“I’ve got it,” Sherry said abruptly. Her eyes were closed, her hands held out in front of her at waist height, palms turned up. Ember, once again, instructed Sherry with endless tolerance, though they’d tried this three times already. Sherry just couldn’t seem to grip onto her power for long enough to suck the cold air into her body.
“Okay, you know what to do. Pull it in toward yourself. Slowly. Then drag it, very carefully, into you. It’ll do the rest of the work from there,” Ember said quietly, serenely.
Then she waited while Sherry tried to do as she instructed.
***
Come on, come on, don’t you dare slip up now, Sherry commanded her magic as the invisible net pulled a heaving load of cold air toward her at an agonisingly slow pace. It was getting easier each time she tried it, but it was still like dragging a fifty kilo sack of potatoes through quicksand. And every time she started to bring the power into herself, the net snapped or she got a sudden migraine that would’ve incapacitated an elephant.
So close. The magic net touched her skull again, and she tried to pull the cold air in past the solid bone. This was the stage where, usually, everything stopped cooperating with her. Not this time though. This time, she felt a coolness encase her head as the cold air seeped into her skull. Excitement trilled through her, and she felt the magic-limb shudder in response. It’s working!
Slowly, more and more chilled particles of air poured into her head, and hummed with a strange sort of electricity. The particles felt more like energy, and they were spreading through her body, slipping their way down her neck and arms to her hands, where they settled at a comfortable buzz. Her palms tingled coolly, like the feeling you get when you wash scraped hands with antiseptic spray.
“Ember…I think I’ve got it,” Sherry said quietly, prying one eye open cautiously to peer at Ember.
Ember stared back with wide, enthusiastic eyes, grinning wildly. “Really? Seriously? Oh my God, awesome! Okay, okay. Next…next you have to…” Some of Ember’s excitement died away as she pondered over what exactly the next move was. She frowned, which wasn’t very encouraging really. Then she shrugged casually. “I usually just click my fingers and the magic does the work. You can try that,” she said.
As if to illustrate, she snapped her fingers and a tiny flame sprang up on the end of her index finger. It was impressive every time, even though Sherry had seen her do way cooler stuff. Like throw a lightning bolt of fire straight through a guy. Yeah, that was both cool and totally scary.
Holding firmly to her magic, Sherry closed her eye again and took a deep breath before putting her fingers together and…click.
She didn’t feel any change. The cool tingles still ran over her palms, and when she opened her eyes, she was disappointed, though not surprised, to see that nothing had happened.
Ember looked thoroughly disheartened. “Damn. I can’t say I’m hugely surprised, but that does suck. Since fire can be ignited with friction, clicking works for me. I don’t know how to externalise something like ice except get it really, really cold,” she said, sounding a little scholarly.
Sherry just frowned at her, though she still had a firm grip on her magic. Now that it was in her, it wasn’t going anywhere until she let it. And she wasn’t going to let it escape without first figuring out how to externalise it like Ember’s fire.
She wondered, not idly, just how cold she would have to get before ice crystals would form on her hands. Well, here and now was the perfect time to test it, seeing as she was surrounded by snow. So, very carefully, she sent out another mental net to capture some more of the cold floating about, and sucked it up. It was twice as easy as before, now that she knew what she was doing and knew what to expect.
The cold shivers ran down from her head to her toes and back up to join the tingles in her hands. Her fingers suddenly felt like ice, but she supposed that was a good thing.
She opened her eyes to glance questioningly at Ember. “Any ideas for how I might ‘externalise’ the coldness? And fast. My fingers are numb,” she said, looking down at her hands. They weren’t turning purple or anything, but she was sure if she held this much power for long enough, she’d lose a finger to frostbite.
Apparently, Ember found her comment both fascinating and highly amusing. She started laughing, but at the same time, she reached out tentatively to touch Sherry’s spread fingers. Still giggling, she pulled her hand back and gave Sherry an odd look. “Your hands are freezing. Like you stuck them in a snow mound for an hour. Your power is definitely there, and there’s plenty of it. It takes a lot of heat build-up for my hands to start feeling all warm and fuzzy to the touch. You’ve got some serious juice flowing right now, Sherz. We just need to tap into it…” Ember put her finger to her lips and looked around the garden for something.
After a second, she beamed and strode off toward one corner of the garden. She picked up a plastic bucket and carried it back over. When Ember settled it in the snow at Sherry’s feet, she saw it was half-full of frozen-over water. The significance was lost on Sherry and she looked questioningly at Ember, puzzled.
But Ember was busy crouching in the snow and holding her hand over the bucket. Slowly, Sherry saw the layer of ice on top melting away to reveal a slightly murky pool of rainwater. Ember straightened and put her hands on her hips. “There we go. I melted the ice. Now I want you to ice it over again,” she smirked knowingly.
Sherry felt her brows push down as she said, “How am I supposed to do that? I can’t even make a magic snowball, and I thought you said it was harder to transfer energy without contact?”
Ember nodded. “It is. But you’ll be touching the water. Just stick your fingers in it and see what happens,” she looked perspicaciously at the stale pool of water with narrowed eyes, as if it were a mystery in a bucket.
Sighing, not convinced that anything would happen, Sherry knelt down and put the fingertips of one hand in the bucket, feeling the icy water encase her fingers. She stared down into the water, willing it to freeze over. Her magic still prickled in her hands, cool shivers running under the skin, but it seemed to be trapped there. It wasn’t escaping, wasn’t doing anything. The water remained liquid, though cold.
Sherry felt her shoulders slump, looked up at Ember with a disappointed expression. “See. I can’t do it. What good is having power if you can’t use it?” She was about to take her hand out of the water, when Ember, glaring defiantly at the water, told her not to move. Locking herself in place, Sherry stopped moving, her fingertips brushing the water’s surface.
Ember dropped down next to her, landing on her knees and ignoring the snow quickly melting into her jeans. She reached out and held her hand flat out over the bucket, palm down, and frowned. Sherry had no idea what on earth Ember was doing, but she waited patiently in the hopes Ember might feel compelled to explain what was going on.
Sure enough, after a long few minutes of glaring at the harmless bucket of water, occasionally swirling her hand over it or stirring the water’s surface to make it ripple, Ember looked up at Sherry and blinked her big, blue eyes expressionlessly. Then she said quietly, “Put your hand back in the water.”
Sherry opened her mouth to ask why, but Ember just tilted her head slightly in that way that Sherry knew meant ‘just-indulge-me-for-a-second’. Their little silent language came in handy sometimes, but it could also be irritating when Sherry wanted an explanation, rather than a meaningful glance.
Repressing the urge to mutter to herself, knowing Ember would hear exactly what she said, she put her fingers back in the near-glacial water, and suddenly, the tingling in her hands jolted up a few notches. “Whoa,” she gasped, turning wide eyes on Ember, who was persistently tilting her head slightly from side to side, watching the water.
“Sherry, look at the water,” she said calmly, without taking her eyes off the bucket. Sherry, frowning, did as she was told and glanced down at the bucket. Then tried not to stumble out of her crouch in surprise.
The water was, very slowly, freezing over. A thin layer of glass-like frost was crawling across the surface of the water, making faint crackling noises as it went, like a bowl of Rice Krispies when you pour the milk in. And now that she was paying attention, Sherry could feel herself, her magic, doing it. That buzzing tingling sensation in her hands was weakening again, but she could feel the way the coldness of the magic was seeping from her fingertips, into the water.
Leaning in, she peered closer at the crust of ice forming around her fingers, seeing how it was thicker, whiter around her skin, then it spread from there. Oddly, she felt colder than before, much colder, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It didn’t raise gooseflesh on her arms or make her want to shiver. It was…pleasant. Refreshing. Like standing in the rain after a hot day.
“Holy hell, it’s cold out here without fur.”
A voice nearby made Sherry jump in surprise, and her fingers jerked out of the water without her permission. The magic snapped a split-second later, but that split-second delay was long enough to make something truly awesome happen.
As her fingers came out of the water, the spray of water accompanying her skin past the layer of ice froze instantaneously. The result was a layer of ice with four spiky, crystalline pillars reaching out of it. It was a beautiful and amazing effect.
“Awesome!” Ember breathed, grinning as she reached out to delicately touch the upward spray of frozen water. Hiro was standing next to her, in human form again, and staring at the unintentional ice sculpture with a look of appreciation. He was obviously impressed. It made Sherry smile to herself to have impressed her best friend and the ever-cynical Kitsune.
“Now that, I believe, is the definition of cool,” Hiro said, his brows raised into his messy, crimson hair. His lips quirked at his own bad pun, but Ember giggled.
“Well, Sherz, I think we’ve just confirmed you have an affinity for ice. This is fantastic. Brilliant. And this is just the start! Once we figure out how to externalise your power without the aid of contact to something to freeze, you’ll be able to do all sorts of rockin’ stuff. Maybe you’ll be able to make actual ice-sculptures come to life or something. That would be too damn cool.”
Sherry grinned, proud of herself and ecstatic with her new-found power. She wasn’t any old dark faery, but an Elemental dark faery! She wondered if she was the first of her kind in history or if there were others like her out there?
It’d be kind of cool to be utterly unique, but while Ember could help her with her ice ability, she cou
ld really use help controlling the other aspects of her powers, like her shrinking ability —which just happened sometimes, if she spent too long amongst trees — or her damned wings. She’d learned that her wings and her shrinking went hand in hand; she could only bring out her wings when she shrunk to Barbie doll size.
But maybe, now that she knew how to control one part of her power, she could learn to control the rest. How hard could it really be?
Chapter Eighteen
Ember spent most of the rest of the day with Sherry, melting and then having her freeze puddles of water. Even spraying the hose up to create something like rain to see if Sherry could make it into snow or hailstones. That one, she admitted after several failed attempts, was perhaps a little optimistic at this stage. But Sherry was doing brilliantly. She could absorb the cold air and use it to freeze the whole body of water in the bucket, turning it into a giant ice cube.
While Sherry played about with the snow and the water, practicing over and over, Ember watched her and tried to think of a way to turn that ice magic into something tangible without those physical aids. Something like Ember’s fire. But she was drawing a blank so far. It seemed that Sherry’s ability simply couldn’t be externalised any other way.
It was dark outside now, and Ember was pondering the possibility that they could all have a magical snowball fight once everything was off red-alert —since now they all had magical mind-limbs, capable of moving objects without the need to touch them. It’d be pretty damn funky, and the girls would totally have the advantage — when Reid and Ricky came rushing into the garden, all but flying down the steps in one multihued blur. Raphael was with them, trailing behind them, somewhat more calmly, but clearly agitated. He was wearing his jeans-and-shirt combo again, but his hair was loose and falling carelessly into his deep, very worried eyes. That was a bad sign.