by D J DuMont
“What’s the matter, Willow? Worried that this year is gonna be too hard for you? I wouldn’t blame you for feeling that way, since you struggled just to keep up in the first two years. You’re gonna fall way behind now that the pace picks up in the third year.”
Willow swallowed back a gulp of fear. She’d tried to ignore Anjali’s warning about the third year being their hardest year yet, but she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t a tiny bit terrified. There was no way she was going to let Locke see that terror, though, so she stuck her chin out at him defiantly.
“Of course I’m worried about keeping up. It’s not easy to stay on top of regular classes while also working on my mental magic skills. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
The dig had been petty, but it had its desired effect. Willow saw Locke’s eyes flash as he fixed his gaze on her. He might be able to beat her in every single one of their classes, but he would never have mental magic abilities. That was something you were either born with or weren’t, and he couldn’t stand the fact that Willow had a magical power he didn’t have.
“You think you’re so special,” he seethed. “But what good is mental magic if you can’t control it? I saw you struggling when we were up above the island fighting Stein. Even after an entire summer of private tutoring, you couldn’t get your mental magic spells to work. No wonder your dad hasn’t been rescued. He’s never going to get away from Stein if he’s relying on you to save him.”
Gasps rang out from Sylvie and Cara at these words. Locke wasn’t known for being kind, but he’d never been quite this heartless.
And Willow was not in the mood to play nice.
Before she could consider the fact that attacking a fellow student probably wasn’t the best idea, she had raised her magic ring to point it straight at Locke.
“Ventus!” she yelled. She’d learned the spell in Earth Magic class last year, and it had immediately become one of her favorites. The spell, when performed correctly, sent a wall of powerful wind shooting out from a wizard’s magic ring. Willow had watched Anjali demonstrate the spell, gasping in awe as desks, chairs, and even a heavy table were sent flying across the room.
Now Willow was attempting to send Locke flying backward across the grass where they stood, but he reacted with lightning speed. Before the force of her spell could hit him, he had raised his own magic ring and shouted “Integumentum!”
His words immediately raised a strong magical shield all around him, deflecting the power of Willow’s spell. He sneered at Willow, then raised his ring to cast a counterattack.
“What are you two doing?” Cara yelped out. “Stop it! You shouldn’t be fighting each other like this!”
“She started it!” Locke yelled, moments before yelling out a spell that sent an electric beam shooting straight from his ring toward Willow.
Willow’s eyes widened as she quickly reacted, sending a magical shield up around herself nanoseconds before the electric beam would have hit her. Anger burned in the pit of her stomach. It was one thing to attack Locke with a gust of wind that would knock him backward. It was another thing entirely for him to attack her with electricity. He could have killed her!
“I didn’t start it! You did! You insulted me!” Willow snarled in Locke’s direction. “Aggredior!”
A purple laser shot from her magic ring. If Locke wanted to play dirty, then she would, too. She was tired of being nice to him and putting up with his constant insults. If it was a real duel he wanted, then a real magical duel he would get.
Never mind the fact that he was, in fact, a much better magical fighter than she was. Willow was just angry enough not to care about details like that right now. When he cast his own laser spell to block Willow’s laser, the two of them instantly began what amounted to a laser sword fight. They slashed at each other, fencing back and forth with the lasers shooting from their rings like a futuristic saber.
Somewhere to her side, Willow could hear Cara screaming at them that they were going to kill each other. Willow ignored the screams and kept slashing. She doubted either of them would actually kill each other. They both had shields up, and all of the students knew basic medical magic spells. But Cara freaked out about every little thing, so it was no wonder she was hyperventilating about a little laser fight.
At least, Willow tried to tell herself that it was a little fight. But as the seconds passed by, the raging look in Locke’s eyes started to worry her. He looked like he was just angry enough to truly harm her. Willow could feel sweat dripping down her back, and she focused on strengthening the magical shields she’d cast around herself, just in case.
She could feel herself growing tired, and she wondered if Locke was getting tired as well. She considered trying to step back and say that the fight had gone on long enough, but she couldn’t bear the thought of being the first one to give in.
Now Willow could hear Sylvie screaming as well, although she couldn’t quite make out what her friend was saying. All of Willow’s concentration was going toward holding Locke back, and she was regretting ever antagonizing him this badly.
Why weren’t any of the senior Agents who’d been hanging around stepping up to put a stop to this? Surely, they didn’t think it was alright for two students to go at each other like this? Willow felt angry at them for not stepping in to save her, but at the same time she realized she only had herself to blame. Her own stupid pride had gotten her into this mess, and her own stupid pride was keeping her from calling off the fight.
Locke must have seen the panic growing in her eyes, because he let out a maniacal laugh as he swung his laser beam sword back and forth. “What’s the matter, Willow? Worried that you can’t hold your own against me? You should be. I have a lot more magical abilities than you do. Just because I can’t do mental magic doesn’t mean you’re stronger than me. I can tell you right now that—”
Whoosh.
Locke went flying backward several feet. He grunted loudly as he hit the ground with a thud, and moments later the laser beam that had been shooting out of his magic ring disappeared.
“Locke!” Cara screamed, running toward him.
Willow stood motionless, uncertainly holding her hand up to keep her laser beam sword in front of her. What had just happened?
Locke was moaning on the ground, yelling something about how his arm was broken. Sylvie had run over to him as well, and was speaking the words of a medical magic spell. Cara was crying hysterically, and the senior Agents who had been remarkably uninterested in the students’ spat until that moment were now running over.
Willow frowned, and finally ended the laser beam spell from her magic ring. Sylvie was standing now, and walking back toward Willow with an exasperated look on her face.
“What were you thinking, Willow? You could have killed him!”
“I…I…but he attacked me with electricity first.”
Sylvie frowned. “You two are both hopeless.”
Willow stared over at Locke, then looked back at Sylvie. “I don’t understand what happened. Did one of the senior Agents knock him backwards like that?”
Sylvie looked back at Willow, her eyes widening. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
Willow frowned. “Kidding? No, I’m not kidding. I’m really confused. One moment I was in a magical sword fight with Locke, and the next he’s on the ground moaning like he’s dying. But I never hit him with my laser beam, I swear.”
Sylvie shook her head. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?” Willow felt a slow sense of dread unfurling within her. She felt horribly confused, but she had a sick feeling that whatever had just happened here wasn’t good.
“Willow, you did that to Locke. Not with your laser beam, but with an Ignis spell.”
“But I didn’t…” Willow started to say. But she caught herself and stopped talking as understanding hit her with the force of a freight train. “Oh.”
“Exactly,” Sylvie said, sounding even more exasper
ated than before, but seeming relieved that Willow finally got it. “You accidentally did an Ignis spell using mental magic. You have no idea how powerful you actually are.”
“I didn’t even mean to do that,” Willow said weakly.
Sylvie sighed. “You have to get your powers under control before you accidentally kill someone. Or get expelled. Or both.”
Willow looked down at her hands, as though they had somehow betrayed her. But it wasn’t her hands that had cast that spell, even though she wore a powerful magic ring on her right hand.
It was her mind. Her mental magic was out of control, and if she didn’t figure out how to master it, she was going to end up in a lot of trouble.
“Willow Ember! Come with me. Now!”
Willow looked up to see Anjali marching toward the group, her eyes on fire with anger.
Willow shivered. Correction: she wasn’t going to end up in a lot of trouble. She was already in a lot of trouble.
Anjali looked like she was out for blood, and Willow was out of ways to defend herself. After a worried glance back at Sylvie, Willow turned to follow Anjali to certain doom.
Chapter Six
Willow had never seen Anjali’s office in the main Dragon Heart building looking like such a mess. Normally, the books and papers on the shelves were perfectly sorted, and the few knick-knacks that Anjali had as decorations were neatly arranged on the windowsill. Today, however, piles of books and paper covered every available surface, including the desk and floors. The windowsill was piled high with papers as well, and the knick-knacks had been cast aside in a small pile on the floor next to a cauldron that was covered in rust. A crystal ball sat atop a pile of books on Anjali’s desk, and it still glowed purple, indicating that it had been used very recently. Somehow, Willow didn’t think that Anjali had been using the crystal ball just to prep for divination class.
Anjali was trying to get information about something, but what? What could have been so urgent that the first thing Anjali did when she returned to her office after a summer away was to attempt a divination spell?
Willow knew better than to ask questions. Anjali tended to get annoyed when Willow pried into her personal business on the best of days, so Willow had no doubts that any attempt to ask Anjali about the crystal ball right now would be met with staunch resistance.
“Sit,” Anjali ordered. Her back was to Willow as she rearranged a few piles of paper that were sitting on a bookshelf behind her desk.
Willow looked around, unsure of where to sit. The two guest chairs were piled high with papers, and one of them even had an old broomstick lying across it. Gingerly, Willow decided to move the papers from the chair that didn’t have the broomstick. She set the piles on the floor, trying to keep the papers in the same order they had been as much as possible. When she finally managed to clear a space, she sat down and waited in silence.
Anjali still had her back toward Willow, muttering under her breath as she sifted through more piles of paper. Willow felt uneasy, and not just because she knew she was in trouble. She’d been in trouble plenty of times before, but she’d never seen Anjali acting so disorganized. Something was very, very wrong.
Willow felt her chest tightening with fear. Had Anjali learned something about Willow’s father? Ever since Willow had realized that her father’s screams had stopped in the middle of Stein’s attacks, she hadn’t been able to shake the worry that the reason he’d stopped screaming was that Stein had finally killed him off.
Tears prickled at the corners of Willow’s eyes. No! It couldn’t be. Her father must know that she was out there searching for him. The Dragon Heart Agency had been trying to track him down, and he’d left them S.O.S signals to try to help them locate the spots where Stein was hiding him. As long as her father was still leaving behind calls for help, he was holding out hope of being rescued. And as long as he had hope, he wouldn’t let Stein kill him. Willow’s father might be a prisoner, but he was strong. He would fight to stay alive and to make it back to the safety of Dragon Heart Agency Headquarters.
He would fight to make it back to Willow.
As Willow waited for Anjali to turn around, she closed her eyes and remembered the words her father used to always say to her. Be brave, be kind. You have magic inside of you, and you can do anything.
He’d said these words to Willow ever since she was a little girl. She hadn’t known until two years ago that he’d meant the words literally, and that she had actual magic inside of her. But now, more than ever, she held onto his promise that she could do anything. Anything meant anything, right?
Anything meant she could find him, and rescue him. She could do it. She just needed to keep trying. She just needed to keep fighting for him.
And she just needed to keep from getting expelled.
Anjali finally turned around, her eyes looking more tired than angry now. Willow let out a small, almost imperceptible sigh of relief. She’d take tired over furious any day. Again, a wave of guilt washed over her as she realized the pressure that Anjali must be under. Willow wasn’t doing her favorite professor any favors by defying orders and picking fights with Locke.
Well, technically, Locke had picked that fight. But Willow certainly hadn’t needed much encouragement to lash out at him. She had to get her temper under control, and she knew it. Before Anjali could tell her this, Willow decided to own up to her part in the situation and apologize.
“Anjali, listen. I’m sorry for fighting. I didn’t mean to go off on Locke like that. It’s just that he insulted my father and—”
Anjali held up a hand and gave Willow a stern look, clearly not interested in hearing what other excuses Willow might want to make.
“I don’t care who he insulted or how mad he made you. You have to get your anger under control.”
Willow hung her head slightly. “I know, but—”
“No,” Anjali said, sharply interrupting her again. “I don’t want to hear any ‘buts.’ This isn’t the first time that you’ve lost control of your mental magic because you’ve gotten angry. You’re going to end up accidentally killing someone, and I don’t think even the President will save you then.”
Willow looked down at her hands, unsure of what to say. When she finally spoke, her lip quivered with emotion. “I wish I didn’t have mental magic capabilities. Everyone says it’s an amazing gift, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. It feels like a burden I have to carry. I have to be extra careful with my emotions in case I accidentally set off mental magic spells, but then when I want to use mental magic, like when I flew up to try to rescue my father, I can’t get any of the spells to work. It’s so unfair.”
Anjali sighed. “You know what else isn’t fair, Willow? Life. We don’t get to choose the hand we’re dealt. We only get to choose how we play it. I know some of the cards you’re holding right now don’t feel very useful, but I think that in time you’ll see that they are. In the meantime, you have to do the best you can with what you have.”
“I understand,” Willow said, then looked up at Anjali meekly. “If I promise to try harder, are you still going to punish me for fighting with Locke?”
She wanted to say that it wasn’t fair that she was in here alone answering for the fight when Locke had been just as much a part of it as she had. But since Anjali had just told her that life wasn’t fair, Willow figured that would be a waste of breath.
Anjali narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t bring you here to punish you for fighting with Locke. In fact, I didn’t know you were fighting with him when I went out to look for you. I should punish you, but at the moment I’m so frustrated with you that I just want to tell you what I brought you in here to tell you and then send you over to the Birch Point Campus to lie low for a while.”
Willow swallowed hard. “I understand. I’m sorry.”
The apology sounded pathetic, but she didn’t have the energy to figure out anything more elaborate to say. Thankfully, Anjali seemed more interested in moving past the fight than in hearing
any elaborate apologies. She leaned back and eyed Willow carefully as she spoke.
“I brought you here because I have some news about your father.”
Willow felt the tightness in her chest returning. She’d been right. Something had happened to her dad. She tried to squelch the panic rising within her, but it bubbled up and overflowed before she could stop it. “What happened to him?” she asked, her voice desperate and tears instantly filling her eyes.
“I don’t know whether anything has happened to him or not,” Anjali said, her tone becoming gentler. “But I do know that he wasn’t there at the island when Stein attacked.”
Willow frowned. “But he had to have been. I heard him screaming, and I know his voice! That was definitely him.”
Anjali shook her head. “It was his voice, but he wasn’t there. Stein seems to have realized that the Agency is very interested in rescuing your father. He recorded your father crying out for help, and used that recording as bait to draw Agents up near the magic shield when he attacked the island.”
Willow felt like her whole body was going numb. “But…how did he get my father to scream all those things out in the first place?”
Anjali’s expression softened. “We don’t know, Willow. And in all honesty, you probably don’t want to know. It’s no secret that Stein has been torturing your father. As far as we can tell, your father has remained strong, and has refused to give any information away no matter how much he’s been tortured. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t screamed out in pain or distress.”
Willow considered all of this, feeling colder by the second. “You’re sure my father wasn’t there?”
Anjali nodded. “After you were in the bunker, several senior Agents chased down the Dark Sparks that had been attacking the magic shield. In the process, they managed to capture a few of them. We were hoping to be able to interrogate them and get information on Stein’s plans, but unfortunately their jetpacks are equipped with a self destruct sequence.”