Interlude I — A Year in the Life of Hailey Winscombe

This chapter has been split into two parts due to Scribblehub limitations on post size.

I.

A warm evening in May at Hailey Winscombe's apartment in Rallsburg.

  

  Hailey Winscombe hurried to the table just as a knock came at the door. She swapped the positions of the corn chips and the punch bowl. The chips had been too far from the dip — their natural partner. It would have made the snacks much more annoying to pick up and enjoy. Everything needed to be right for this party. It was a special occasion, after all. She had a new roommate to introduce to her tightest circle of friends, and she was determined that everything would be just perfect.

  A second knock sent her scurrying upstairs to the door.

  "Come in!" Hailey announced, beaming out onto the walkway of the apartment complex. At the door were her four closest friends, chatting away the evening as they trooped in and followed her back downstairs to the living room. Ian, the funny one, already with the group in stitches at a joke he'd told just before she'd opened the door. Jessica, the smart one, wide glasses affixed permanently to her face, a hood covering her hair and a thin smile on her lips. Hugo, the talented athlete, punching Ian in the arm, jostling his best friend good-naturedly.

  Weston, the yang to her yin, always cool and detached. Her polar opposite, her worst enemy and her constant irritation. Her boyfriend.

  She threw her arms around Weston and planted a kiss on his lips. He smiled, but gently pushed her away. "Hey."

  "You're not getting away with one-word answers around my new roommate, Wessy," Hailey admonished, wagging a finger at him. He grinned.

  "Where is the new meat anyway?" Hugo asked, plopping himself down on the couch with the bowl of chips. Hailey tsked at the dissolution of her perfectly arranged table of snacks.

  "She's been up in her room all afternoon buried in a book. Studying, I think." Hailey looked up at the second floor of her apartment, frowning. "Hey! Gang's all here! You promised you'd come say hello!"

  There was no response.

  Ian raised his eyebrows in exaggerated shock. "Shyer than Jessica? That's a new record."

  Jessica blushed pink behind her thick glasses and burrowed deeper into her jacket.

  Hailey shook her head. "No, she's cool. I don't know what's up. She's the nicest, she's just a bit of a bookworm."

  "Shy and a bookworm? Jessie, you've got competition."

  "At least we'll finally have someone smart besides her in the group," Hugo quipped. Ian chucked one of Hailey's many pillows at him, which he deftly caught and sent sailing right back into Ian's chest with a thump.

  "She's cool," Weston chimed in.

  "The king and queen have spoken!" Ian declared with a flourish. "Come down, yonder maiden!"

  They all looked expectantly at the staircase, but still no response came back. Not even a shuffle of movement. Hailey was starting to worry.

  "Guys, wait here a sec?" She started up the staircase, two steps at a time.

  "Don't take too long, I can only stand Ian for ten minutes at a time," said Hugo.

  "Ten minutes longer than you could stand Nikki Parsons," Ian shot back.

  "We had a difference of opinions."

  "I heard she kicked you out because you threw up on the sofa," Jessica interjected quietly.

  All heads turned to Jessica, who suddenly seemed determined to melt herself into the couch.

  "Hugo Gonzales, star high school quarterback, can't hold his liquor?" Ian said with a grin.

  "Like you're one to talk, Mr. Root Beer."

  "I'm satisfied with soda, I don't need to stumble around like an idiot at parties."

  "'Cause you're so lightweight you'd pass out after one cup."

  "Guilty as charged," Ian replied. "Hey Weston, what about you?"

  "I drink sometimes," Weston answered, still gazing at the staircase and clearly ignoring most of the conversation.

  "What's your drink of choice?"

  "Whatever's being served."

  "Come on, man. We gotta know your taste so we can judge you too."

  "Whatever Hailey's having."

  "Hailey would drink us all under the table no sweat though. Then she'd go jump off a cliff with a parachute and be totally fine, while we'd all be dumber than Rachel on test day."

  "I like vodka," Jessica put in. Even Weston looked around at her in amazement. "What?"

  "Just didn't see that coming, Jess," Weston replied.

  "You haven't heard her drunk singing," muttered Hugo.

  "No kidding. Jessie has us all beat," Ian conceded. "How do you even get vodka at nineteen?"

  Before Jessica could answer, they heard a thump from upstairs.

  "Hailey?" Weston called, rising to his feet.

  Hailey's voice rang back down after a brief pause. "I'm fine! Just tripped on something. But…"

  "...But what?" Ian filled in.

  "I don't know what," Hailey shouted back.

  Ian gave them all a significant look before bolting up the stairs. The rest followed, still chatting away without much concern.

  "Well? Where's this fabled roommate?" Hugo asked, standing in the doorway of a tidy, but rather impersonal room. For all they could tell, the furniture may as well have just been assembled. There was no evidence anyone actually lived in the room, except for a piece of old, cracked parchment paper that lay on the desk, and a few duffle bags scattered around the bed.

  "I don't know," Hailey repeated. "I came up here and she was gone, but she didn't come back down and it's not like she's gonna jump out the window…"

  "Says you," Ian retorted, peering out the window to the hard concrete three stories below as best he could. The building was only two floors, but it was built into the side of a hill overlooking the forest and the back was a good deal lower than the front, leading to both great views and a dizzying sense of vertigo out the bedroom windows. Hailey loved the place just for the view.

  "Eww, Ian. Don't say that," Jessica squealed, her hands to her mouth.

  "I'm not saying she did. I'm just saying we don't know her very well. Maybe she booked it."

  "You did say she was shy," Hugo added, also straining to look out the window.

  "Not run-away-from-friends shy," Hailey shot back. She picked up the piece of paper from the table. "All she left was this, but I can't read it."

  "What do you mean you can't read it? Is it in a different language or something?" Ian asked.

  Weston took the paper from Hailey, glancing down it with vague interest. "Huh."

  "Huh, what? Stop being so non-specific." Ian reached out for the paper, but Weston held it away from him and passed it to Jessica.

  "Anything, Jess?"

  Jessica adjusted her glasses slightly and brushed her long hair out of her eyes as she peered down the cracked paper. "I-I don't know. It's like I can't focus on any of the letters. My eyes get all fuzzy." She handed it back to Hailey. "I don't want to look at it anymore."

  Hailey took it back, ignoring the protesting Ian, and strained her eyes to read the letters. "It kinda looks like English…" she murmured. She could see the vague outline of a letter A at the beginning of the first sentence, and the next few letters following. "Abrec tes minneard desve seln-"

  Hailey's voice caught. She coughed hard, looking away from the paper.

  Her friends stared at her, dumbfounded.

  "Hailey?" Weston asked, genuinely concerned for the first time in months.

  Hailey shook her head. "I'm good. That was a rush," she added, looking at the page again. Her blood was thudding through her skull, and she could taste adrenaline on her tongue. It was the feeling she'd always chased. She loved it. She needed more.

  She began reading again, and Hailey Winscombe felt a sensation burning through her. A rush of wind that felt like it originated inside her, like air flowing underneath her skin and making her light as a feather. Hailey thought she might simply start to float then and there, and nothing appealed to her more. The idea of flying — of taking to the skies like a bird and experiencing that freedom — had been her dream since she'd been a child. She'd come close to it in the past. One year, for her birthday, her friends had pooled their money to buy her a trip up in a glider with a wingsuit. It had been the greatest sensation of her short life.

  Reading the page, Hailey felt something even stronger. Instead of simply sliding across the air, swooping but still slowly descending as gravity refused to let go, Hailey felt herself float, completely free of the earth's pull. As she made it further down, the paragraphs running together as her voice sped up, it took hold of every sense. The world faded away and Hailey Winscombe was in a void, where the air was her friend and gravity her willing partner. She took hold and swung herself around, dancing and twisting through the air effortlessly. She could fly, and it was every bit as joyous as she'd ever believed it could be.

  Then Hailey reached the end of the page, and her eyes snapped back into reality. The wind was sucked out along with her breath, knocking out her legs from under her. Her vision was searing red as blood rushed through her skull, far too much of it having blown up into her eyes and her brain. She fell heavily against Weston, who'd leapt to her side the moment she'd started to drop.

  Hailey felt like she'd just woken up from a dream she'd been stuck inside her entire life. Her eyes were wide and on the verge of tears, as she'd never felt such a pure expression of joy and feared she might never again.

  "Hailey?"

  Hailey Winscombe wasn't one to give up so easily. She grinned, struggling to her feet with a great deal of support from Weston.

  She was going to fly someday, for real, and that piece of old parchment had just shown her the way.

 

 

 

II.

A warm day in May, one week later, in Hailey's apartment, just past noon.

  "Yeah, but what do you think it actually is?" Ian asked, as he casually tossed a ball of fire from one hand to the other. Hailey might have laughed at the image if it hadn't become so commonplace of late. Here they were, five normal college kids, and they could do magic! It was still mind-blowing to her every single day since they'd first discovered the page in her apartment.

  "It's dangerous, that's what it is," Hugo said darkly, his eyes following the fire bouncing between his best friend's hands with abject suspicion. He'd been the only one of their group not to read from the page. He'd regarded it as something demonic, and told them all they were making a dangerous mistake.

  None of them had paid him any mind. Not even Weston, who usually respected Hugo's opinions quite a bit.

  "It's okay Hugo, see?" Jessica said. "It's just energy, same as everything else in the universe. We just have a new way to manipulate it. Like all the things we've been able to do with electricity over the last century."

  "Right," Hailey said with finality. "Just like electricity. I mean, computers are practically black magic, aren't they? Do you have any clue how a computer works?"

  "A bunch of transistors that flip rapidly from off to on when a current is applied and make calculations that get output," Hugo shot back. "Just because I don't have as good of grades as you two doesn't make me ignorant."

  "So this is something else like that. Something's doing calculations somewhere with what we give it and making an output."

  "Hugo, don't be that guy. Look," Ian said, pointing at Weston. "Weston, show him what you figured out."

  Weston frowned. "Not really a show kind-of-thing."

  "Oh come on, it's cool as shit. You figured it out, you should be the one to demonstrate."

  "Figured out what?" Hailey said eagerly. She was always looking forward to the next bit of magic they'd managed to deduce. Ian and Weston tended to be the most creative of the four, while Jessica had the most raw ability. Hailey was neither talented nor creative, but she liked to think she made up for it with enthusiasm and dedication.

  Weston stood and rolled his shoulders before he continued. "Goes like this, right? I kinda feel out the whole room, like it's a part of me." He closed his eyes and furrowed his brow, murmuring under his breath.

  Nothing happened for a few moments. Hugo shot a look at Ian, but he just shook his head. Hailey knew better. Magic took time and effort for all of them, even Jessica. Nothing was instant, especially not something that apparently affected a whole room.

  A full minute went by. Jessica checked her watch impatiently. Hailey curled up on the sofa, watching with interest as Weston relaxed his muscles and opened his eyes. He let out a slow deep breath. They all gasped.

  His breath (and their own) was suddenly quite visible. In fact, the entire room was ice cold, like it was suddenly a winter night despite being the middle of May.

  Hailey burst into applause. Jessica and Ian laughed aloud. Weston flashed his trademark smile — just barely visible at the corners of his lips — as he sat down again.

  "Free A/C for life!" Ian cried.

  "Wes, can you make it warm too?" Hailey asked excitedly.

  "Probably," Weston answered, dabbing the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. "Cold was just easier for some reason. It just feels like I'm drawing it in. Maybe if I try pushing instead—"

  "That sounds right. I think you're just moving energy around," Jessica interrupted. "Temperature is just lots of energy in particular objects. So you're moving that energy into yourself, dropping the energy of the room and making it colder, while you get warmer." She reached out and touched his forehead. Hailey felt a brief rush of jealousy at the sight of the girl's hand on her Weston. Then she dismissed it as ridiculous. Her Weston? He'd be angry at the thought of it alone. She didn't own him. They weren't even really dating, even if they were sleeping together regularly. "You feel like you have a fever. Might be dangerous. Maybe you should find a way to redirect the energy into another object instead of yourself."

  "Nah, I'm good," Weston replied easily. "Just feels like sunshine." He smiled at Jessica, who just rolled her eyes.

  "Still, cool shit right?" Ian said, his breath still clouding the air, though the temperature was noticeably rising as the warm spring air floated in through the open windows.

  "Awesome," Hailey said, beaming. "Wes, you gotta show me how to do that later."

  "You got anything new, Hales?" Ian asked, looking at her with interest.

  Hailey took to her feet, eager to show off what she'd been working on. "I'm still working out the kinks, but Jessica gave me a good idea. I've been trying to figure out a way to jump higher, right?"

  Ian rolled his eyes. "Jump higher," he mumbled sarcastically.

  "Better than your little fire tricks," Hailey shot back.

  "What did you figure out?" Weston interrupted before they could start bickering.

  Hailey cleared her throat. "Well, I was watching Jessica play a game, and the game had a thing in it where they could jump twice without touching the ground, right?"

  "Double-jumping," Jessica supplied.

  "Yeah, double-jumping. So I decided to look into a way to just jump again. And I thought, well, that's a lot easier than trying to fling an entire me through the air right? No awkward coordinating trying to move my whole body at once."

  Hailey planted her feet and tensed. She'd been preparing for this all morning, while Jessica looked on and offered encouragement. She stretched out. They weren't sure at all if being limber and loose was actually beneficial to performing magic, but it didn't seem to hurt, and definitely helped make it less painful when experimenting.

  "Get on with it," Ian catcalled. Jessica shot him a dark look, and he quieted up. Hailey didn't mind though. If anything, she was determined to get it right just to shut him up.

  Hailey grinned at him, then jumped straight up. As she did, she focused her mind on the air around her feet. She could feel it brushing against her socks, and suddenly wished she'd taken them off. She felt as though she could sense and control the air more directly if it were against her bare skin. Still, the sensation she felt was enough.

  Hailey began to gather the air together with a quick murmur, pushing every element closer together into a dense pocket. There was a whoosh as the rest of the air in the room pushed inward to fill the gaps from what she'd taken under her control.

  As Hailey reached the top of the arc of her leap, she shifted the tightly packed air she'd gathered to rest directly under her feet. Every time she'd attempted it that morning, she'd lost control, sending her pant legs fluttering as the block of air burst and her feet back to the ground ignominiously to stumble around.

  This time, her feet touched the suddenly solid air. For a moment — for a brief, glorious moment — Hailey appeared to be standing on thin air. Ian gasped. Weston gasped. Jessica let out a squeal of delight.

  Hailey promptly lost control. Her foot suddenly found nothing to grip, and her legs twirled out in odd directions. She fell forward, face first into the sofa.

  She felt like she'd just sprinted a mile. She was panting heavily, finding it exhausting to even turn over on the sofa to face the ceiling. It didn't matter. Hailey could have been paralyzed and she'd still have felt utterly exhilarated by what she'd just experienced. She'd stood on the air itself. She might not have been able to jump off of it like she'd planned, but it was far more than she'd ever managed before.

  Hailey burst into laughter. Joyous, intoxicating laughter. Her friends, who'd been looking deeply concerned by her tumble and subsequent collapse, let smiles break across their faces as well. Hailey was infinitely grateful that she'd stumbled across such a discovery as magic alongside her four closest friends.

  She only counted three faces floating above her. Someone was missing.

  "Where's Hugo?" Hailey asked, struggling up to a sitting position on the couch — though she quickly adjusted that to a leaning position against the stack of pillows at the end. She still felt too drained to even support the top half of her own weight.

  The other three glanced around, confused. "I guess he left while you were jumping," Weston said.

  "He seemed really mad," Jessica said doubtfully. "I should go talk to him."

  "Nah, he's just confused," Weston said. "He's afraid of it. The rest of us dove right in and he's just being cautious. It's not that unreasonable. The whole page reading thing was a bit much."

  "You got scared of a bit of paper, Wes?" Hailey said, laughing.

  "Hey, when you start muttering in languages you don't know, it's a bit creepy."

  "Fair enough."

  "Still, is this going to be a problem?" Ian asked, his brow furrowed.

  "Problem how?" Hailey asked.

  "We know how to use magic," Jessica answered quietly. "A lot of people would kill for that. A lot of governments too."

  The thought sobered them all up a bit. They were silent, the last bit of chill from Weston's earlier spell still tangible in the tension that permeated the room.

  "Hugo wouldn't tell anyone," Ian said emphatically.

  "No, of course not," Hailey agreed.

  "He knows how important staying quiet is. Even if he doesn't want to use magic himself, he's not going to turn in his friends."

  "What if someone else does?" Weston asked.

  "Like who? There were only five of us there. No one else even knows magic exists."

  "We sure about that?"

  "Well I'm not going around tossing fireballs down the street, are you?"

  "No."

  "So let's just assume no one else knows about magic. Keep it to ourselves," Ian declared.

  "Yeah," Hailey agreed. "Keep it to ourselves."

  They all sat down with her, a group of four friends sharing the biggest secret they could possibly imagine. Hailey put one arm around Jessica and Weston both and gave them a hug. She smiled.

  "I want to try that again."

 

 

 

III.

A warm night in late June, a few weeks later, in Hailey's apartment.

 

  Try as she might, Hailey simply couldn't feel it.

  "It's like there's a fabric completely surrounding you, Hailey. Just feel for it and try to grab onto it."

  "I can't, Wes. There's nothing there," Hailey cried, frustrated.

  "Well, how do you make your air pockets?" Jessica said.

  "I push air together until it becomes solid."

  "Right, so how do you feel out that air?"

  "I don't? It's just there. I know where it is and I push it around."

  "And you don't feel the room? The environment?"

  "No!" Hailey cried again, plopping herself down on the couch.

  Ian coughed. "Face it, Jessie, she's just not gonna pull it off. Still can't even do her double-jump thing properly."

  "This is a clue though," Jessica said excitedly. "Of the theory I was working on."

  "What theory?" Weston asked.

  "That Hailey's terrible at everything except air tricks," Ian said snidely.

  "Of specialities," Jessica answered, ignoring him. "Everyone seems to have one and they cover different types of magic."

  "So you think we all have different specialties?" Weston prompted. Hailey sighed and curled up on the sofa, pulling a blanket over herself. Weston seemed to be practicing messing with the temperature of the room while they carried on their conversation. She wasn't sure he was even doing it consciously anymore. It was a measure of his skill and focus that he could affect the room while carrying on a conversation.

  "Exactly. There's gotta be different branches of magic that different spells fall under and we each got a particular specialty. Something we're born with, I suppose. You're good at the stuff with the environment, Wes." Wes? Hailey noted with jealousy. Only Hailey called him Wes. Jessica was getting a bit too comfortable around him. "Hailey and Ian are both good at manipulating the elements. Ian likes fire and Hailey likes air, but they're both pretty good at either one if they really try at it."

  Hailey had to concede the younger girl was right. Even though she favored playing with the air and the flowing, dancing sensations it gave her to move it around, she was pretty equally skilled at messing with fire. She didn't have anything like Ian's finesse or deep bag of tricks, but she didn't find it as taxing as Weston or Jessica did.

  "And you, Jessica?" Weston prompted.

  "Well, I dunno," Jessica started, her face falling a little. "I'm able to do all the stuff you guys can, but not easily. So I'm not specialized in natural or elemental magic. And I find telekinesis harder than all of you apparently. I can't even lift a piece of paper."

  "What did you feel, Jess?" Hailey asked, a flash of inspiration jogging her memory.

  "Huh?"

  "When you read the page. What did you feel?"

  "You actually remember that?" Ian asked. Hailey shot him a look of disdain. It was one of the most powerful and life-changing moments she'd ever experienced. How could she possibly forget?

  "My mind," Jessica answered quietly.

  "So maybe you can do something related to your brain?" Hailey wondered aloud.

  "No, not like that. It was like, knowledge was flowing into my brain. Things I couldn't possibly know," Jessica trailed off.

  "Divination," Weston said. Jessica nodded.

  "Huh?" Ian asked.

  "Finding out things through magic," said Jessica. "I think I could summon knowledge through magic."

  "Like what?"

  "I dunno. I haven't tried anything yet." Jessica sank back into her chair, half-hidden behind a pillow.

  "So that's at least four branches of magic so far," Hailey said thoughtfully, trying to distract from Jessica and give her a moment to breathe. "Elemental, Environmental, Move-uhh… movemental?"

  "Kineticism," Jessica offered.

  "That breaks my whole -mental suffix pattern, but sure," Hailey said, grinning.

  "You're mental enough as is," Ian muttered.

  "And then we've got Divination with Jess. Four. There's gotta be more though, right?"

  They all sat back, thinking.

  "Conjuring something," Weston said. "Making things appear from nothing. We can't do it, but I'd bet it exists."

  "Wouldn't that just be elemental again?" Ian pointed out.

  Weston shook his head. "I mean something concrete and permanent, or at least relatively permanent. Physical stuff."

  "Ah, okay."

  "But the energy for that would be insane," Jessica mused aloud. "It's already a lot just to create something insubstantial like fire."

  "For you," Ian quipped.

  "Doesn't make it impossible, Jess. I'd say it has to be real," Weston said, ignoring Ian.

  "I guess so," Jessica said, picking up a notebook and writing down the ones they had so far. "So we'll call that Creation, I guess? Make sure it's distinct from Elemental?"

  "Sure."

  "Five branches?" Hailey asked.

  "What about making yourself stronger or lighter?" Ian asked. "That doesn't really fit anything so far."

  "Could be a weird use of movement?" Weston pondered. "Moving your limbs faster or lifting yourself?"

  "No, it feels totally different," Ian said. "It's more direct and permanent than moving something around. Like you're actually growing or shrinking things, or making muscles more dense and strong. Or when we figured out how to change the color of someone's fingernails."

  They all smiled at that memory. Jessica had panicked when she saw her array of rainbow-colored nails and begged them to help her change it back before her parents noticed.

  "Self-Enhancement?" Hailey proposed.

  "What if it's not enhancing something though?" Jessica said crossly, pointedly showing her (now quite normal) fingernails. They laughed.

  "Self, then. Until we think of something better," Weston said.

  "So, six branches then. Movement, Elemental, Nature, Self, Creation and Knowledge. That's gotta be enough, right?" Hailey asked.

  "Remember the star?" Jessica said. They all looked at her in confusion. She sighed. "Hailey, do you still have the page?"

  "Of course." In fact, Hailey hadn't let it more than a few feet away from herself since Hugo had left town. They still didn't think he would do anything to expose them, but she felt a bit more secure with the source of all magic safely where she could reach it at any time. She pulled it out and looked at it again, with Weston peering over her shoulder.

  As Jessica had said, there was a curious star-like symbol in the corner of the page, with eight distinct points. They weren't evenly spaced or even the same length, and the shape was oddly distorted, but there was clear significance to each one.

  "Eight," Jessica said triumphantly.

  "Eight," Weston agreed. "But what would the other two be?"

  They would have continued discussing the possibilities all night, but a low rumble rolled through the room. The glasses on the coffee table rattled just a little, the ajar door to the bathroom visibly quivering.

  "Earthquake?" Jessica asked nervously, clutching Hailey's hand tight. She'd never felt one before, having lived in Rallsburg her whole life.

  "Nah," Weston said, puzzled. He stood up and walked to the window, peering out into the inky black of Rallsburg at night. Hailey could barely make out the spires of the old abandoned library a few blocks away, where she could have sworn she spotted a flicker of light.

  Another rumble followed, deeper and stronger than the first. Light flashed from the top of the library spire, illuminating the whole town in a burst of color.

  "Something's going on outside."

 

 

 

IV.

A cool morning in mid-August, about six weeks later, at Hailey's apartment.

  "What's this, Hailey?" Jessica asked, looking at some of Hailey's jewelry on her desk and holding up a ring.

  "Diamond ring my dad gave me way back."

  "And this?"

  "Sapphire ear studs."

  "And the one you're wearing?" Jessica asked, landing on Hailey's bed with a thump and pointing at the necklace currently entwined with a bit of Hailey's wavy blonde hair.

  "Polished tourmaline," Hailey answered absently, her focus entirely dedicated to writing a note with a pencil on her desk — from ten feet away. It was as though she had an invisible third hand grasping it from afar, one that was composed entirely of thumbs and with severe Parkinson's. Every tiny movement felt like she was weighted as if she were pushing through thick sand, and her arm shook as though she were weak with hunger, but Hailey was stubborn. She kept writing.

  "You want me to stop talking?" Jessica asked, finally noticing what she was trying to do.

  "You're fine," Hailey answered, still slowly and deliberately moving the pencil with her mind. She could barely make out the scratches from her distance, which made her handwriting something awful, but she'd be satisfied if it was legible at all.

  "What are you writing anyway?" Jessica asked, her head propped up on her hands. She strained to see the page from her angle.

  "Something I should have told him ages ago," Hailey grumbled.

  Jessica sighed. "Are you and Weston fighting again?"

  "Me and that arrogant good-for-nothing control freak? No, of course not, what gave you that impression?"

  "He's just trying to keep us safe," Jessica said, giving her a pained look.

  "Jess, you do know that as my bestie you're supposed to support me against any guy unconditionally, right?"

  "Oh. I am?" Jessica answered, sounding genuinely confused. Hailey mentally reminded herself that Jessica hadn't really had any friends before she'd met their group in college and had definitely missed many of the important finer points of being a best friend. Still, over the past few months they'd bonded over so much, Hailey couldn't possibly be annoyed with her. Jessica was simply the best, kindest, and most genuine person she knew.

  "Nevermind. It's okay. You're right, he is. He could just be a bit nicer about it."

  "I guess so," Jessica answered. She watched the pencil rattle about her desk, quivering as it slowly delivered each stroke. Hailey didn't have nearly as strong control as Ian, but it vastly outstripped Jessica on the bed next to her, who couldn't do much more than the strength of a gentle breeze. The younger girl was staring longingly at the pencil, a mixture of jealousy and sadness plainly stamped on her face.

  "I've decided to call it a 'diffinity'," Jessica spoke up suddenly, still watching the pencil twisting around the desk. "Like how we call it an affinity for Elemental magic, like what you've got. I've got a diffinity for Movement magic."

  "I like it," Hailey said encouragingly, splitting her focus for just a moment to smile at Jessica and letting the pencil wobble and fall. She managed to catch it before it hit the table, keeping her personal goal alive of maintaining it upright until she finished writing her note.

  "Doesn't make me feel much better, but at least it makes it easier to talk about," Jessica went on, turning away to stare at the window. "Anyway, when are the guys getting here? It's bright enough outside, they should be okay getting here."

  "Ian said he might be a little late. Weston should be here any minute now."

  As if on cue, the door buzzed. The pencil clattered to the desk as Hailey lost her concentration.

  "Should we go?" Jessica asked.

  "Nah," Hailey said. "Wes, we're in here!" she called, refocusing once again on the pencil.

  "But we're in your bedroom," Jessica said, her face turning pink once again.

  "It's not like he hasn't seen it before," Hailey said absentmindedly, determined to keep writing her note.

  Jessica turned an even brighter pink. "Oh!"

  "Oh? Something going on in here?" Weston asked, opening the door and wandering in. Jessica shook her head frantically, her face bright red. Weston looked as casual and unconcerned as he usually did. They all knew now that it was an illusion though, and that behind the mask of detachment was a tightly-wound paranoid clock.

  "Just finishing up an important bit of business, Wes," Hailey said, as her pencil scratched out the last stroke of the message. She let the pencil fall and lifted the page up into the air, floating it gently toward them so it would be readable. To her satisfaction, it was messy and angry, but still legible.

  STOP BEING A DICK

  Weston plucked the page out of midair and examined it carefully. His eyes slowly traced every single letter as if he were contemplating something deep and complex. After a full minute or so of deliberation, he looked over the top of the paper at the two of them, staring Hailey directly in the eyes.

  "I deserve this," he said calmly.

  "No kidding," Hailey growled. "You practically leapt at Ian's throat the other day just for voicing the possibility of considering going to the police with what we saw. And you've been nagging everyone way too much about keeping stuff indoors and away from anyone."

  "I just want us all to stay alive."

  Hailey sighed. "We're gonna be fine, Wes. We can still do magic, after all. And it's not like any of us have broken any laws or done anything seriously dangerous."

  "What about jumping off the radio tower without any safety equipment?" Jessica chimed in.

  "You did what?" Weston asked sharply.

  "Jess, remember, besties?" Hailey said, giving her an exaggerated look of disappointment before rounding on Wes. "It's fine. It was the middle of the night, no one was around. No one saw anything besides her."

  "Are you all right?" Weston asked, and for a brief moment Hailey remembered why she used to sleep with him.

  "I'm sitting here talking to you, aren't I? See any bruises?" In fact Hailey had gotten a pretty hefty bruise on her leg from the awkward way she'd landed, but that was hardly related to magic and mostly due to her own clumsiness.

  He frowned. "Fair enough, but that was still stupid and reckless."

  "My two middle names," Hailey Aurora Elizabeth Winscombe retorted, quickly reminded of why she'd stopped feeling any affection for Weston.

  "She was amazing," Jessica said excitedly. "The way she bounced and swerved all the way down. It was like she had wings."

  "You watched from here?" Weston asked. Jessica nodded. He turned to Hailey. "Getting better, then?"

  "Yeah," Hailey answered. "I can control how I glide by moving around the air pockets as I go down. It's still not flying, not even good gliding, but it's progress."

  "Cool." Weston sat down in her desk chair. "Ian show up yet?"

  "No. Said he'd be late. Can't be much longer though, it's plenty light out now." Hailey relaxed back on her bed, still feeling a bit of the exertion of moving the pencil around so much. It was strange to her how movement was so much harder for her to pull off, when her work with elements — her actual affinity, to use Jessica's term — was all about helping her move. Yet they seemed totally unrelated in how they were accomplished magically.

  "What about the double-jump?" Jessica asked, looking over from her spot on the end of the bed, curled up like a cat basking in the sunlight streaming through the bedroom window.

  "Still no good," Hailey replied, disappointed. "I still can't keep it solid long enough to actually push off." They both looked at her sympathetically, but — neither being Elemental affinity and Weston having particular difficulty with the branch — they couldn't offer much in the way of ideas. Only Ian really understood how her process worked, being the same affinity as her.

  "Want to give it another try while we're waiting?" Jessica asked eagerly. Hailey admired her. The girl (and Hailey decided that she really ought to stop thinking of her like that. Jessica was nineteen, only two years younger than herself) could barely perform most magic outside of her own experiments with knowledge divination, but Jessica was determined not to let that slow her down. She had forced herself to achieve basic telekinesis by manipulating the air around an object, since she had felt like she was pressing up against a brick wall moving them directly. It took her more effort and was never as easily controlled as simply picking something up with her mind, but Jessica pulled it off all the same by sheer force of will.

  "Sure, why not?" Hailey said, infected by her enthusiasm. She took to her feet, feeling mostly recovered from the effort of writing the note earlier. More importantly, this was her magic. Something about the air felt like she belonged to it, and it to her. The air was her friend and her ally unconditionally. It was happy to do what she wanted, so long as she was willing to give it some help along the way.

  She loosened her muscles as best she could, then concentrated and began gathering her pocket of air once more. Hailey started gathering the block together long before she jumped now, operating on the theory that if she could just land on it after putting it in place it might be easier to keep it around long enough to push off of. It hadn't worked yet, but she believed she'd gotten it to last a tiny bit longer. It was progress, however minute. She clasped her hand to the stone around her neck for luck as she tensed to jump, muttering under her breath.

  Her closed fist felt a breeze push through where there should have been none.

  Hailey looked down at her hand in shock, still clasped around the polished tourmaline gemstone at the center of her necklace. She could feel it thick with energy, like a vast hurricane gust were somehow contained within the stone. If she reached for it, she felt she could shape it and redirect it, even relocate it where she needed it to go. She was so startled she let go of the block of air she'd been gathering, which dissipated into the room as a gentle breeze.

  Instantly, the feeling of the wind vanished. Hailey was once again grasping a simple stone in her hand. She stared at it in wonder.

  "Hailey?" Jessica asked, confused. Weston had stood up, concerned, but Hailey waved him back to his seat.

  "Watch this," she said, grinning.

  She called the air back together, forming the brick in mid-air — only this time she used the vast depths of wind somehow contained within the tourmaline. The brick became solid and steady, more stable than she'd ever been able to manage before. Hailey held tight to the tourmaline in her grasp and leapt for the brick.

  She was off-target, but a quick mental adjustment moved it underneath her feet once more. For a full second, Hailey was standing on mid-air once again, but this time she didn't fall. She simply hovered, floating on a gust of air of her own creation, and she let out a laugh of pure, unrestrained joy. With her eyes twinkling, she leapt off the brick, letting it vanish in a puff of wind as she jumped off air itself.

  Hailey promptly knocked her head against the ceiling and fell back onto her bed, laughing uncontrollably.

  Jessica leapt atop her, looking horrified. Once it became clear that Hailey was choking out laughter and wasn't in any real pain, her expression turned to awe.

  "How?" Jessica asked breathlessly. "You couldn't even get it to stick around for an instant before, and now you can stand on it freely?"

  "Hailey, what happened?" Weston said, his voice equally thick with excitement.

  "Found out something new," Hailey said proudly, opening her fist and displaying the tourmaline for them to see. They leaned over her in awe, looking down at the gemstone.

  "It made you more powerful?" Weston asked.

  "It had the power, I just used it," Hailey said, trying to process what she'd just experienced. Jessica plucked up the stone from her chest and looked at it carefully.

  "Hailey, it's kinda dark now."

  "Huh?"

  "Look, see?" She held it up and pointed at a spot.

  "Can't see too well with you on top of me, Jess," Hailey said dryly.

  "Oh!" Jessica squeaked. She scrambled back to the other end of the bed and held up the gemstone again. Hailey propped herself up, still winded from her trip through the air. "It wasn't black in this spot before, was it?"

  "No," Hailey said, and indeed some of the purple edges of the gem had turned a dark, charred ash color. She rubbed at them experimentally, but they didn't go away. She took it back from Jessica and tried to summon the air once again, pulling at a breeze wafting in through the window. She couldn't be sure, but the strength of the gale inside the gem might have been a bit weaker. It was too slight to tell if it was just her imagination.

  "So they get used up," Jessica said confidently. "I wonder what other gems do? Rubies probably for fire things, topaz for lightning, obsidian and onyx for earth—"

  "Sapphires for water?" Hailey guessed.

  "Actually no, sapphires are usually associated with the air," Jessica said. "Water's probably aquamarine, emeralds, maybe pearls."

  "And they all can be used to enhance magic," Weston said. "Probably more than just the elements, too."

  "Probably," Jessica said excitedly. "Oh, I'd love to get on my hands on some amethyst right now. It's supposed to be the mind stone. It might help me out a lot with some of the things I've wanted to try. You don't have any, do you Hailey?"

  She shook her head, amused. "Sorry, Jess."

  "It's okay, I can just order some online."

  "Hang on now, isn't it going to look weird if you start ordering tons of gemstones out to Rallsburg?" Weston asked, concerned.

  "I'm a bored girl in the middle of nowhere who wants to look at pretty things," Jessica said dismissively. "No one would think twice."

  Hailey laughed and nodded. "She's got ya there."

  He laughed. For a moment they felt excited again, just as they had when they'd first started experimenting with magic. Of course, it was bound to be interrupted — and as if on cue once more, the door buzzed, trying to interrupt their reverie.

  "Come in, Ian!"

  So it was that Ian arrived to the three of them giggling like idiots, enjoying the moment, and promptly killed the mood. He had a frown permanently affixed to his face ever since the incident in July.

  "What's going on?"

  "Oh nothing, we just revolutionized magic again," Hailey said, still giggling.

  "We?" Jessica said pointedly. "This was all you, Hailey." Hailey grinned and didn't disagree. She was immensely proud of her discovery, having contributed so little to their projects up until then.

  "We need to talk," Ian said darkly. "They're still looking for culprits for the library being destroyed. I was asked by the sheriff yesterday if I knew anything."

  "Jackie asked you herself?" Jessica said, surprised. They all looked at her, the only real local amongst the group. "Jackie doesn't get that involved, is all I'm saying," Jessica continued. "She's pretty hands off most of the time, likes to take it easy."

  "Well, she's getting involved now."

  "She didn't suspect you though, did she?" Weston asked.

  "'Course not, what's there to suspect?"

  "We were witnesses."

  "Don't remind me," Ian snapped. "I'm doing my best to forget that night."

  "I just want to make sure we're all on the same page here, Ian—" Weston started.

  "On the same page about what, Wes? The guy who could run a hundred feet in a millisecond and had an army of goddamn lava monsters at his back? Or the other guy, Wes? The one levitating plates of metal through the air and throwing giant bolts of lightning from his hands? What are we on the same page about?"

  Ian was starting to get hysterical. Hailey put a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off.

  "No, Hales. I want him to be clear. Why aren't we talking to the police about the two people who obviously need to be stopped before they burn down the entire town and us along with it? You've seen what's happened to the library. The entire third floor is gone. The wall looks like it was kicked in by a giant."

  "We weren't involved," Jessica said feebly.

  "We could help them catch the guys though," Ian shot back.

  "If those are even 'guys'," Weston replied. "As far as we're aware, we're the only ones with our particular type of magic, and those two were clearly way beyond us. Who's to say they're even human?"

  "What are you saying they are?"

  "Gods," Weston said simply.

  Ian snorted. "Like hell."

  "We've got no friends in this, Ian. It's just us four, since Hugo's gone back home to California. If we're wrong, and we go to the police and one of these guys finds out and comes after us, what do you suggest we do?" Weston said calmly. "Who says the police can even do anything about them?"

  "We can't just do nothing," Ian said firmly.

  "We can, and we should," Weston replied. "It's nothing to do with us, and we should keep it that way. No one's seen them since, right?" Hailey and Jessica both shook their heads.

  "No, and if I did I'd be sprinting the other way," Ian said, shivering.

  "So we're all in agreement then. We don't want anything to do with those two," Weston said, satisfied.

  "I just wish…" Ian said, trailing off. No one spoke up. They all wished the same thing, but none of them wanted to voice it aloud.

  They were all terrified since that night. Hailey was the only one of them brave enough to go out after dark, hence their current meeting in the bright sunny morning. Jessica had watched her descent from the radio tower from afar, using a bit of magic to amplify her vision and see in the dark more clearly. Hailey believed Jessica hadn't been outside a single time after the sun dipped to the horizon. Many of her nights were now spent in Hailey's room when she stayed too late, not daring to take a step over the threshold of the front door into the dark, unlit town.

  "Well, I've got to go. Hugo and I were gonna play some games online and I don't want to leave him hanging," Ian said awkwardly.

  "Have a good time," Hailey called as he walked out, and Hailey had the distinct impression it was the last time she was ever going to see him. She shook the thought away, and sat up straight in alarm, realizing how much noise they'd been making that early in the morning. "Oh crap, I hope we didn't wake my roommate."

  Weston and Jessica looked at her strangely. "Uhh, Hailey?"

  "What?"

  "What roommate?"

  Hailey looked around, confused. "I… don't know. Sorry. Bumped my head harder than I thought, I guess."

  Jessica looked at her thoughtfully. "I've been meaning to ask actually, do you want a roommate? I can't imagine it's easy to keep up rent here all alone. Plus I'd really like to move out of my parents' place…" Her cheeks turned bright red and she looked away as Hailey's face lit up.

  Hailey laughed and wrapped an arm around her. "You've practically been living here the last few weeks anyway. How many times have you slept in here, Jess?"

  "Too many," she said, rolling her eyes and pushing Hailey away gently.

  "Well, I'd love to have you around officially. If only to hear you sing more often. But first, let's go eat something while it's still light out. I'm starving."

  Weston and Jessica followed her out, letting the door swing quietly closed behind them.

 

 

 

 

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