“Yes, you do,” I agreed, raising my eyebrows to silently press her.
Finally, she ran her fingertips over the strap of her purse. “Look, a guy named Glupin can help you. I’ll take you to him. He’s been studying Ancient Studies forever, and I think he might specialize in old magic.”
“Wait here.” I snapped my fingers and appeared back in front of Gwen.
“Where did you go?” Gwen asked. She held her hands out to her sides, brows raised. She and Julene stood in the foyer of the Practice Arena.
“You wished for Niera’s help.” I walked over and took her hand.
I felt a physical rush of energy between our hands and saw the flash of a memory of me holding her hand, running down the hallway with carefully silent feet. Her nightgown flowed behind her like ethereal smoke, and she covered her mouth with her free hand, stifling her giggles. Her long black hair had been released from its tight braids and tumbled down her back. Her loose locks bounced in gentle waves as we ran through the darkened corridor.
I looked over my shoulder at her, grinning just as widely as she, feeling nothing but excitement and passion for her.
We slipped out the back and into the gardens. The gorged moon glowed overhead, nearly blinding out the stars, and lighting our path to the furthest corner. There, I pressed her against the wall.
Breathlessly, she said, “Doren.”
I smiled and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Shh. We’re alone,” I whispered back.
“Doren.” Her breath hitched, but her forehead wrinkled, eyes wide in worry.
I took a deep breath, and the vision faded. I found myself standing holding both of Gwen’s hands with her back up against a wall. I quickly dropped my hands and stepped back. “I’m sorry.”
“What was that?” she asked, still breathless.
Thinking she was referring my pushing her back against a wall, I said, “I just wanted to take you to Niera. She knows someone who can help. His name is Glupin.”
Gwen grabbed onto my arm when I turned away. “I meant that . . . vision. Was it a memory?” she pressed when I didn’t answer right away.
I stared at her. How could she have seen everything I saw? They were my memories. She shouldn’t have been able to remember any of that. I gave her a dashing smile. “You must have seen something. Maybe a dream? We should go. Niera is waiting.”
I could tell Gwen was disappointed in my answer, because her lips tightened.
I took her hand again, and we quickly appeared beside Niera. I made sure to drop my hand from Gwen’s, not wanting to initiate another shared memory with her, especially if it actually involved me physically moving her again.
Niera nodded a greeting. “Follow me and keep up.”
Chapter 13
Gwen
I expected Glupin to be a large, round man based on his name. Instead, Glupin stood two feet taller than me, had long thin limbs and fingers—sort of like how I envisioned a reaper’s hands to look, with knobby knuckles and skin so thin you could see the blood vessels beneath—and blue-gray skin.
On the walk to his home, I’d done everything I could to try and process the vision I’d seen when Doren had taken my hand. I remembered the rush of excitement, the fear of getting caught, the joy of sneaking out with Doren in the middle of the night, and . . . how breathtaking he looked.
In that memory, or vision, or whatever it had been, Doren was a handsome young man with copper-brown eyes, and his shoulder-length black hair was in tight curls. His smile was bright, big, genuine, and full of nothing but joy.
Doren didn’t smile like that now.
Glupin had spent the first fifteen minutes of our arriving walking a circle around me, prodding my head and shoulders, before he finally stopped and bobbed his head up and down. “It’s true. She’s a magic user,” he concluded.
I folded my arms. “We told you that.”
“But your magic is old. Niera was smart to bring you here.”
“Now, I have to leave,” Niera said. “I trust you and your djinn can manage without me?”
I looked from her to Doren.
“I told her when I appeared in her house,” he answered.
“Thanks, Niera,” I said, smiling to her. “I appreciate it.”
Niera nodded and left the room.
“For your first lesson,” Glupin said, jumping right in. “We need to see what you can do.” He motioned for me to follow him.
Glupin’s home stood against the side of a cliff on Goblin Tooth Mountain—the tallest of the peaks of Wasatch Mountain Range. Blackwood University sat in a crook right at the mouth of a gusty canyon we called Icebreath. The house had been built to accommodate his size but looked on the outside like it had once been an ancient watchtower.
I suddenly felt very grateful for Doren’s presence as Glupin led us down a long hallway into the side of the mountain. Even though the walls changed from warm wood to stone, the corridor was still lit with bright lanterns far above my head.
The doors we passed were still wood, and Glupin stopped at one to push it open. He motioned us in first before he followed.
“I’m going to run a computer program to measure your energy output. It helps me understand what areas may be best to focus on first.”
I stood in the hallway and rubbed my hands on the butt of my pants, realizing for the first time how clammy they felt.
Doren put his hand on my lower back. “I’m here with you.”
I swallowed, but his touch was comforting. Why was he comforting? Why did I have that vision? I gave him a quick smile and stepped into the room.
Glupin put clear stickers on my temples, above my eyebrows, on either side of my neck, then at my shoulders, elbows, wrists, and hands. “That should do it,” he said when he attached the last one. “Let me turn this on.” He walked over to the computer sitting on his desk and pressed a button. “There. Now, I want you to start by creating a flash of light.”
He stopped in front of me and extended his hands. He touched the fingertips of the last three fingers, and then his thumbs together, leaving his index fingers pointed upward. He pressed his index fingers down until the tips peaked.
I imitated the hand motion.
He then quickly turned his hands, the tips of only his middle fingers touching, and then pushed his hands away from his body. Instantly, light flashed out from his hands.
“That’s amazing,” I gasped.
“You don’t need to speak the words aloud, just do the motion.”
I repeated the motion as best as I could imitate. Nothing happened. I licked my lips and took the first position again. “I must have done something wrong.”
Glupin put his thumb to my forehead. “You’re not believing it in here. You think this isn’t possible for you to have such a gift. Why?”
I shifted my gaze to Doren, who was leaning against a table with his hands on either side of him. “Because . . .”
Doren nudged his head toward me.
I swallowed nervously and met Glupin’s yellow gaze. “Because I’m supposedly a reincarnated sorceress, and that doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Ah.” Glupin removed his thumb from my forehead and backed up, still facing me. “Let’s help this along, then, shall we?” He entwined his fingers, flipped one hand opposite the other, whispered some words, then pulled his hands apart from each other and exhaled.
“No!” Doren shouted, suddenly bursting from his spot to sprint at the stranger.
But it was too late. The wave hit me hard enough my eyesight went white, and I felt weight on my chest like when you hold your breath too long under water.
I heard Doren yell to Glupin something about not knowing how many lives I’d lived and how this could be dangerous.
And then I didn’t hear anything.
I was sucked backward, and finally the weight disappeared from my body.
I peeled my eyes open, not realizing I’d closed them, a
nd found myself standing in the center of a sandy circle.
“Show me something exciting.”
I turned my head and saw a beautiful man with gold jewelry, dark-brown eyes, and white clothing. He stood in front of a pillar with a slave waving a fan up and down. Only then did I feel the heat. I looked around and saw a white palace to my right, a city in the distance to my left, and sand everywhere. I didn’t need to see the hieroglyphics on the pillars to realize I was in ancient Egypt. The pharaoh’s garb, lined eyes, and rich jewels told me as much.
I heard myself laugh and felt myself smile, but it wasn’t me. “Perhaps I should summon a snake for you?” My voice, yet . . . not.
My hands extended before me, my left hand with the fingers fanned out, and then I moved my index finger of my right hand in and out of the gaps between my fingers. A force field radiated from my hands, and the sand beneath my feet slithered into form.
The man scoffed. “Such basic magic. Prove to me that you deserve to be the sorceress of the pharaoh.”
I felt my eyebrows rise and the sting of annoyance at him thinking magic was easy. I gave him a pleasant smirk. “As you wish, my pharaoh.”
I curled all my fingers, turned my right hand opposite my left, locked the fingers, and then rotated my hands in a circle. I crossed my index and middle fingers on each hand and pulled them apart and then into a circle the opposite way.
A gust of wind sucked in toward us, gathering all the sand particles into a frozen tornado in front of me. With one more movement of my hands, the sand slammed together in front of me with a loud crack and bright flash of light. When the brightness faded away, a sheet of glass stood between the man and me.
He jumped to his feet, clapping his hands together loudly. “That is much better! Now, I must admit that this was all for show. I got the letter from your mentor and already have a room set up for you. Allow me to show you it.” He extended his hand toward me.
My hand slipped into his, and as soon as we touched, the memory faded.
I was once again pulled into another memory. I sat at a desk with an open book in front of me. A candle flickered nearby. The images on the page moved as I practiced the hand movements, and then I left that room to return to the same open space I’d just seen myself. There, I practiced the same movements I’d just seen.
Finally, the ache in my head disappeared, and I found myself lying on the floor, blinking away the vision of the desert kingdom.
Doren held my head in his lap and audibly breathed when we made eye contact. “I was worried. Are you okay? Any residual pain? Do you need to lie down for a while?” He stroked my hair.
I shook my head. “I feel fine,” I insisted, but I wasn’t about to push him away. “I saw a pharaoh testing me to see what I knew. I was in Egypt.”
Doran understood the pressure of my gaze and let out a sigh. “That was Pharaoh Taotin more than likely.”
“I knew him.”
“Of course. You were his sorceress.”
“No, I mean . . . I knew him more than that.” I licked my lips. Somehow, I knew the pharaoh’s face was more than just a memory, more than just familiar. There was something more, I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
Doren tilted his head.
I looked over at Glupin, who I had just noticed standing as a silent observer. “I saw myself study from a book. The images moved as I practiced them. I don’t suppose anything like that still exists?”
He tapped the side of his nose in excitement and ran from the room in long strides.
Doren lifted me into his arms as he got to his feet, completely unnecessary, yet I didn’t stop him. He sat us down in a chair, cradling me in his lap. He looked down at me with such sincere concern, I almost felt guilty for playing along.
Almost.
“I really feel fine, I promise. Just a little overwhelmed that this is real,” I said.
The corner of his lips twitched. “That is good.”
“Doren . . . did we have something before? Back then? You and I?”
A look of pain crossed his face, the same look I’d seen in my house when he’d confessed the truth about my past and who he was.
I studied his lavender eyes.
He cleared his throat, coughed a little, and shook his head. “Why would you think that?”
Before I could press the matter any further, and as was becoming common for our conversations, we were interrupted.
Glupin stepped into the room with a stack of books in his arms. “These are all different levels of magic, but they have similar learning to what you were describing. I think you should take them all and practice. Learning magic, however, is more than just looking at a book. Do you want to try the light magic again?”
I nodded quickly and untangled myself from Doren’s lap. Standing in the middle of the room like I had a few minutes before, I focused on the feeling magic had given me as I summoned it in my memory. And just like in the memory, the magic felt familiar in my hands and through my body.
This time, when I pushed my hands away, energy coursed through my shoulders and hands, ending in a blinding explosion of light like when a car’s headlights pass you in the dead of night.
I smiled. “Well, that’s a start!”
The next few days showed me just how difficult it would be to relearn magic.
I thought Glupin sharing the memory of my past would result in the magic returning to me like a gift or that I would remember a spell when I saw it and instantly be able to use it.
This was not the case.
After practicing for another couple hours, I had Doren return us to my old house and wished for some food, then wished for light that the neighbors couldn’t see so no alarms could be raised. Doren complied, like always, without hesitation. I wished for Doren to make the house clean too. None of us needed to deal with cobwebs in the corner or mice stealing Seymour’s food.
I sat on the floor and studied the books nightly until Doren convinced me to wish for a new couch.
And like that, nothing felt more important.
I had no desire to attend classes, write papers, or study for my finance exam. I started calling in sick to work too.
I was consumed by the magic. I wanted to know everything and learn how to use it.
One day, I licked my lips and turned my fingers into a new shape, and as I manipulated my fingers, I somehow knew this was a spell to start a fire. When I completed all the steps, a fireball exploded in the fireplace, making Seymour yelp in terror. I had to scramble to my feet and stomp on the embers settling on the floor.
“I think you need to work on your technique a little,” Doren observed, even giving a little chuckle from where he sat on the couch.
“I don’t exactly have a private tutor. Especially since you can’t help.” I put my hands on my hips.
He shrugged. “You can ask Glupin to tutor you. I do think he would be willing. Besides, I think you’re at that point now in your studies where you just can’t read about it anymore. You need someone to teach you.”
I sucked my lips in and bit them softly between my teeth. “In the least, I should be practicing somewhere safe, like the Practice Arena. The last thing I need to do is burn down this house. Any ideas when I can go back to my apartment?”
Doren shook his head. “I haven’t exactly been by to check on it.”
I tapped my chin. “Good point. I want you to check on that, and I’ll go talk to Glupin and see about him tutoring me.”
“Want me to just beam you there like a spaceman?”
I rolled my eyes with a grin. “You’re ridiculous.” I was feeling flirtier with Doren lately. It didn’t help he was feeding it. “But, yes, that would be nice. Seymour, want to join me?”
He jumped to his feet, tail wagging in excitement. “Pretty please?”
I looked at Doren. “We’re ready.”
He nodded to me, and with the snap of a finger, I found myself in the small forest b
etween campus and Glupin’s home. Doren wasn’t there. I’d grown so accustomed to having him at my side being alone without his protection worried me. My chest tightened. My mouth went dry. My heart began to race.
I swallowed, took a breath, and tried to push the anxiety away. The door trembled as I knocked.
A shrill beep made me cringe, and then I heard Glupin’s voice. “What do you want?”
“It’s Guinevere. I’ve been practicing and wanted to ask you about mentoring me?”
The speaker—wherever it was—made a static noise and then stopped abruptly.
“Is that a no?”
No response. But the door swung open.
“Does this happen every time?” Seymour asked, sniffing the air as he edged closer to the open door.
I stepped out of the light and into the foyer. “Glupin?” I called, rubbing my hands together. “Are you here? Was that you? Do I need to just go?” I paused. “I’ll just go. Sorry I interrupted!”
“Nonsense.”
I jumped and spun around.
Glupin was walking down the path toward us, his arms laden with boxes.
My eyes widened. “I swear your door opened when I knocked.”
“I know. I told the house to let you in if you came by. I assume you’re here to see about training?” A yellow-toothed grin spread across his face.
I nodded.
“And who is that?” He stepped around me and nudged his head down toward Seymour. “A clever boy, undoubtedly?”
“Very clever,” Seymour insisted. I wasn’t sure he knew what that meant.
Glupin laughed and started up the staircase to the left. “Come along!”
Chapter 14
Doren
I arrived down the street from Gwen’s apartment to avoid any chance of someone seeing me before I saw them.
I pulled the hood of my jacket up to hide my bright hair, then walked as casually as possible. Using magical energy taken from Gwen’s wishes, I tried to spot something out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, magic didn’t flash red and point with a line that read “bad guy” to warn me, and I also didn’t know any of the men by name or their faces.
Curse of a Djinn Page 9