by Nicola Marsh
Crane cleared his throat. “Now, for our practical session today, we’re using amethyst wands and seeing their effect on the third eye.”
I perked up at the mention of the third eye and inadvertently swiped a hand across my forehead.
“There are many of you here who have an intuitive gift. Precognitive powers, psychic, what have you.” Crane held up a tiny mauve crystal the size of my pinkie. “For those of you with the gift, this amethyst wand is a vital adjunct to gaining control over your ability.”
Crane held it aloft so we could all see. “The amethyst wand is the perfect tool for opening your third eye—” He pointed to his forehead. “—And stimulating intuitive visions by activating the pineal gland.”
He waved it overhead. “Powerful stuff. Other uses include healing a weak aura and providing protection.”
Stimulating visions? Protection? I needed one, now.
“That’s enough show and tell for one day.” He tapped the wand into his opposite palm like a conductor’s baton. “Turn to page ninety-nine of your divination text and list other crystals used to balance the third eye. Choose one you’d like to experiment with. Have your partner take notes. Remember, those with precognitive powers, concentrate on mastering the amethyst wand today.” He placed the wand on his desk and clapped his hands. “Get to it, people. Once you’ve chosen your crystal, come see me for a sample.”
“This is so lame,” Raven muttered, but she flicked to the appropriate page in the textbook as fast as I did.
The list of crystals to stimulate the third eye blew me away: garnet, kunzite, azurite, moldavite, sodalite, lapis lazuli, royal sapphire, atacamite, azeztulite, and the list went on.
“I’m jealous.”
I glanced across at Raven. “Of what?”
“Psychic stuff and crystals are way cooler than moving stuff around.”
I grinned. “I thought it was lame a second ago?”
She shrugged, sheepish. “Makes me feel better to diss it.”
“Hey, at least you can learn to do some of this stuff. I have no chance of learning telekinesis.”
“True. Not everyone has the raw talent to move Crane’s precious crystal bag out from under his nose.”
“Don’t you dare. I want to have a go at this wand thing.”
“Teacher’s pet,” she mumbled.
I chuckled, my attention already snagged by a paragraph on amethysts.
Amethysts are a protective stone with a high spiritual vibration, guarding against psychic attack and enhancing higher states of consciousnesses. A powerful stone, amethysts enhance spiritual awareness and, used at a high level, open the door to spiritual and etheric realms.
Amethysts were so my stone.
Amethysts open intuition, enhance psychic gifts, are excellent for meditation and scrying, and can stimulate the third eye if placed on it. They can also facilitate out-of-body experiences and bring intuitive visions.
I hadn’t been this excited about anything in ages. Had I found the key to unlocking control over my visions and ultimately finding Arwen?
But if amethysts were so powerful, I didn’t want to try out the stone in class. What would happen if I spontaneously teleported? Or opened a communication channel to Joss? Or did something equally stupendously freaky?
Raven nudged me. “Everyone’s gone up and picked their stone except us, and Crane keeps giving us the evil eye. You go grab your amethyst while I quickly choose something.”
“Okay.”
I dragged my feet and trudged to the front of the class. Speaking to Crane one-on-one wasn’t high on the list of my favorite things in the world at the best of times; compounding my worries about what amethysts could do for me had me silently freaking out.
When I reached the desk, Crane stepped around it, effectively shielding us from the rest of the class. “Are you ready to unlock your potential, Miss Burton?”
“Uh, yeah, sure, but—”
“You’re worried about what might happen.”
“Uh-huh.” Now I was even more suspicious. Why was he acting human?
“Amethysts are powerful for students with a gift like yours. Your fear is understandable.” He handed me a small amethyst wand, and I cradled it in my palm, surprised something so small, so insignificant, had the potential to provide answers I so desperately sought. “For today’s experiment, make sure you hold this in your hand while you press the amethyst to your forehead.” He pressed a small black stone into my other hand. “Black obsidian will ground you and whatever spiritual forces you unleash.”
Yikes! I didn’t want to unleash anything I couldn’t control.
“It’s protective. It will repel negativity.” He paused, glowering at me. “You may need it.”
Now I was seriously spooked. Was Crane generalizing, or did he know more about me than was safe? Before I could question him, he turned back to the class, dismissing me, so I took my amethyst and my obsidian back to my desk, passing Raven on the way as she mouthed, “Kyanite, woo hoo.”
All around me, students were in various stages of experimentation, pressing odd-shaped rocks of various colors to their foreheads, eyes closed, talking softly or not at all while their partners scribbled in notebooks.
I wanted to really try it, but had a problem. I didn’t want Raven to take notes on anything I said. I was too scared of what I’d blab, so I hurried to my desk, intent on starting the experiment before she got back. I could always feign misunderstanding the instructions when she returned, though my stomach churned at perpetuating yet another deception on my friend.
With every lie I told, with every truth I withheld, my guilt unfurled, spreading through me like a slow-killing poison. Raven and Quinn stood by me, and how was I repaying them? By telling lies that would surely rip our friendship apart once I told them the truth. And that time would come. I had no doubt that at some point in the future my worlds would collide and the resulting fallout would be catastrophic.
I slipped onto my seat, clutched the obsidian tightly in my left fist, took a deep breath, pressed the amethyst to my forehead, and waited.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I stand in a cave.
Different from the others I’ve seen.
Larger, darker, older, with a mystical aura I can almost see, a black haze suffocating me like thick smog.
Joss is behind me, Cadifor and my mom facing us.
He wants Arwen. Mom, too. Malice radiates off them, washing over me, making my skin crawl with fear.
I stand my ground.
I don’t move a muscle, don’t blink, even when the malevolence rolling off my own mom makes me want to fall to my knees and curl into a protective ball.
Celtic symbols cover the walls, pulsing with a strange light that beckons. I put my hand out to touch and …
A blast of light from a hole in the ceiling illuminates the cave, bathing it in an eerie glow.
We watch, transfixed as the thin stream of light travels to the floor of the cave, inching toward a stone altar covered in spiral symbols. Symbols I’ve seen somewhere before …
The moment the light hits the stone, an explosion blinds me.
I plunge into terrifying darkness.
I gasped and my eyes opened, the amethyst burning my forehead. I dropped it onto the desk, blew on my hot fingers, and poked it away with a trembling hand, terrified that what I’d just seen would somehow follow me back.
Had I just foreseen my confrontation with Cadifor for Arwen?
If I had, my faint hope that Mom was being held there against her will? Blown sky high. I clamped my teeth shut to stop them from chattering. She’d stood next to him, alongside him, craving Arwen as badly as the monster she’d hooked up with.
I guess I should have been grateful I’d stood up to them. But what was that explosion of light about? And was I blinded by it? That freaked me out as much as the rest of it, the fact I could be left powerless and not be able to see in the presence of those two. At their mercy …
I focused on the crystal and struggled to get my breathing under control. It lay on the desk, an innocuous piece of purple, as benign as a curled rattlesnake.
A shadow fell over my books and I sucked in a breath, another, quelling the waves of nausea that were making me feel lightheaded.
“Well, Miss Burton? Anything to report?”
Some seriously freaky stuff, not that I’d tell Crane. When I’d taken enough breaths to ensure my voice wouldn’t wobble, I said, “Honestly? I’m not sure if it was part vision, part revelation, or part nonsense.”
He folded his arms and didn’t budge. “Perhaps if you care to share, I can shed some light on it.”
Here I went again with the lying thing, but I had to. No way was I about to tell him I’d just had a frightening glimpse into the future, my future. “There was a faceless figure, on the school grounds I think, down by the river. Evil. A guy with an accomplice. They were building some weird altar with the rocks.” I shuddered. “They scared me.”
Crane’s stare could’ve cut glass it was that sharp, but I widened my eyes and gnawed on my bottom lip, doing my best impression of a nervous kid who didn’t have a clue what she was dabbling in.
“Hey, Mr. Crane, is it true kyanite doesn’t hold negativity, so it never requires cleaning?”
Crane swung toward Raven, and I silently mouthed “thanks” at my friend for saving my butt yet again in his class.
Another kid claimed his attention after Raven so I was in the clear. Until Raven imitated Crane’s death glare.
“Why didn’t you wait for me?”
Just when I’d gotten my queasy stomach under control, it rolled again, this time with the increasing guilt of lying to my friend. “Sorry, thought we had to just do it and write notes later.”
Her eyes narrowed, shrewd and unforgiving. “What’s going on with you?”
Uh-oh, she’d echoed Quinn’s words from the other night. Could I use the pseudo-boyfriend excuse to put her off too? Hating myself more by the minute, I said, “I’ve got a lot going on. Nan, mastering stuff here.”
“Nothing else?”
As much as I wanted to trust her with the truth, I couldn’t. The evil in that vision lingered, infusing me with the certainty that whatever I’d face would be bad, really bad. Bad enough that Joss would be there. No way I needed to worry about the other friends I cared about too.
Realizing I was still clutching the obsidian so tight it hurt, I unfurled my fingers and laid it on the desk next to the amethyst wand. “Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know … ” She trailed off, her smile patronizingly sweet. “Something along the lines of Quinn knowing a big fat secret I don’t?”
“He told you?”
Her expression changed from curious to indignant in a second. “So that dork does know something? I knew it!” Glancing over her shoulder to make sure Crane had moved a good distance away, she muttered, “He’s been acting superior and condescending all week. I knew something was up but I was only fishing just now.” She paused and picked at a hangnail. “I had no idea you’d share something with him and not me.”
I felt lousier by the minute, especially after she’d saved me twice in class. “It’s no big deal. He was giving me a hard time, so I told him about this guy I kind of like.”
“You have a boyfriend?”
She made it sound like the possibility of that ranked right up there with my mastering telekinesis, pyrokinesis, and pyschometry all in one day.
“Nothing that serious. It’s just a crush.”
“Someone here?”
Her hand waved toward the rest of the class and I shook my head. “No, someone I met around.”
Someone who made my heart beat faster just by looking at me, who made me want to curl up in his arms and stay there, who made me want to go the whole way when I hadn’t even had a first kiss. Someone who infuriated me one second with his stubborn nobility, then made me melt the next with his deep voice, someone who gave me goosebumps with a simple touch, someone who made me feel so good about myself when I was with him I felt invincible.
God, I missed him.
“Ooh … I get it. He’s some guy at the hospital, that’s why you’ve been spending all that extra time with your Nan.”
I hated lying, I really, really did, but corroborating her assumption would get them both off my back and explain my continual vanishing act. Playing coy, I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Sneaky. I like it.”
Crane glared at us from across the classroom and we stopped the chatter.
Fine by me. Whatever the amethyst had revealed to me, it was significant.
Now I just had to figure out how to use the knowledge.
After Raven’s two saves in class, Crane’s dislike for me increased. He’d save the hardest questions for me, he’d call me up to demonstrate labs, and he continually glared at me like he expected me to teleport on the spot.
It unnerved me. Like I wasn’t nervous enough with everything going on. And it didn’t help that Raven came up with nefarious ideas to get back at him in class.
“It’s time we pranked Crane.”
Quinn and I stopped scribbling notes. It wasn’t the first time Raven had suggested this, but it was the first time I was willing to listen after the way Crane had patronized me for my lack of knowledge in front of the entire class ten minutes earlier.
Quinn shook his head. “A few weeks before end of term? You’re nuts.”
When Quinn resumed studying, Raven reached over and slammed his textbook shut. “The guy’s a superior jerk. He needs a shakeup.” She jerked a thumb in my direction. “Look how he treats Holly.”
“Hey, keep me out of this.” I held up my hands.
Raven promptly high-fived them. “Great, you’re in.”
I laughed and Quinn joined in. “You’re insane, but you’re right. He’s got it in for Holly and needs to be taught a lesson. What did you have in mind?”
Raven grabbed a pen, pulled a notepad in front of her, and started writing. “Something totally inspired, of course.”
“Of course,” Quinn said, rolling his eyes. “As long as this ingenious plan doesn’t get us caught and consequently expelled.”
Raven’s derisive snort spoke volumes. “I was the prank queen at my last high school. Never caught.”
“Impressive.”
When Quinn tried to sneak a peek at her writing, she flipped the notebook shut. “Nuh-uh, no peeking. We brainstorm first and then I’ll set out logistics.”
“Okay maestro, what’s the plan?”
As we huddled and Raven outlined the basics, asking for our input occasionally, I couldn’t help but admire the cleverness of it.
“We all clear?”
Quinn and I nodded, our matching grins making her chuckle.
“You guys are naturals,” she said, opening the notebook and swinging it around so we could see. “Here, check it out. Any potential problems leap out at you?”
I quickly scanned her list, amazed at her brilliance. “Looks good.”
“Quinn?”
“A-okay.”
Raven rubbed her hands together. “Then we’re in business. Let’s get to it.”
While their excitement was infectious, I’d never played a prank on anybody in my life. Blending into the background and being a model student didn’t exactly endear me to the pranksters at Wolfebane High. In fact, I was probably the last person they’d tell for fear I’d tattle. Yeah, I was that much of a goody-goody. So while being part of this had me excited, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling I’d be lousy at it.
“What if I let the team down?” I blurted, absentmindedly doodling sunbursts surrounded by spirals on my notebook.
“You won’t.” Raven refuted my concern by pointing at her book. “We have a foolproof plan. What can possibly go wrong?”
Famous last words.
Our plan was simple.
Crane had clued us in to tomorrow’s lesson. Candles. Not particularly exciting o
n their own, but if used correctly a great aid to focus and increasing energy in spells and divination.
Thanks to Raven’s extensive research, we were aware of what each color represented for the candles, what they could enhance, and what they could do. Throw in Ms. Morris performing a Wiccan ritual in front of the class with the aid of Crane’s candles, and we had the perfect stage for a little hocus pocus of our own.
Quinn would ask questions to distract Crane—nothing out of the ordinary there. I would volunteer to participate in the experiment. And Raven would perform a little of her telekinetic magic, swapping candles at the last second and seeing how Crane—who we all thought had a secret crush on Ms. Morris—reacted when the spell using white, silver, and violet candles for enhanced psychic work became a spell using green, pink, and red candles for love, romance and lust.
It worked like a charm—no pun intended—the candles switching flawlessly as both teachers had their eyes closed, chanting some weird rhyme.
We expected Crane to moon over Ms. Morris in front of the whole class and make a general ass of himself—more than usual, that is, while she belittled him. What we didn’t expect was Ms. Morris being affected too and both of them indulging in a serious makeout session in front of the whole class.
The result? Brigit being drawn to the classroom by our raucous hoots, catcalls, whistles, and foot stomping, barging in like a stormtrooper and demanding the culprits behind the prank.
We’d relied on safety in numbers to save our butts. What we hadn’t counted on was two of the other telekinetic students being ill with food poisoning, leaving Raven and one other dork who sat in the front row under Crane’s nose and practically drooled over every assignment as the obvious masterminds.
And considering Quinn and I were Raven’s buddies … well, we all received an interrogation of monumental proportions.
None of us talked. Brigit had no proof. So we walked free.
Crane knew. We could see it in the way he glared at us with barely disguised venom once the spell had been reversed and he’d come storming into Brigit’s office.