Part 15 (1/2)
”Okay.” He remembered Arra creating golden lines of power as she called on light to banish shadow. ”I don't actually know how to do that.”
”Everything in here is about energy. There's just nothing specifically about energy.”
”Well, that's useless.” Leah pushed a curl away from her face and tried to shove Tony away from the laptop. ”Look up drawing.” Tony flicked the same curl away from his face and refused to be shoved as he scrolled up the file list.
Drawing, of the Dark.
Vaguely familiar but not helpful.
Drawing, Down the Moon.
Also familiar. He opened the file.
This is woman's magic. You don't need to know it.
Then why the h.e.l.l did you list it, you crazy old...
Drawing, Blood.
”What did she think she was training,” Leah snorted, ”a wizard or a paramedic?”
”So she was a bit rushed when she put this together.”
”A bit rushed? Da Vinci was a bit rushed when he was finis.h.i.+ng the Mona Lisa. This wizard of yours seems more like a complete incompetent.” Her breath hit the side of his head, warm and impatient. ”You scroll; I'll stop you if I see anything useful.”
Storms, Calming.
Poison, Checking for.
Water, Purifying.
Demons, Banis.h.i.+ng.
”Hold on. Right there.” One fingertip tapped the screen. ”You have a spell to banish demons.” The fingertip moved to tap him on the forehead. Hard. ”You think maybe you should have mentioned that? Just in pa.s.sing, perhaps?”
”I forgot it was there.” He jerked away before she could tap him again and opened the file.
Calling demons is among the stupider things you can do with your power. I am inclined to allow stupidity to be its own reward; however, it is possible that someday you may need to clean up another's mess. Begin by drawing six drops of blood from the idiot who called the demon. Do it quickly before the corpse cools.
”This is useless.” Leah straightened, turned, and dropped onto the edge of the table. ”These demons weren't called, they're being sent. There's nothing we can use in there...”
”It says we should use an unnatural rope to hold the fiend.”
”And then do what with it? Why don't I just kill myself and save them the bother?” Dragging both hands back through her hair, she began to pace. ”I can't believe this wizard of yours would leave out something so basic.”
Tony scrolled up and down the list one more time and frowned. ”h.e.l.l, if it's all that basic, maybe there's something about it in the instructions.”
The sudden silence was so complete, he could hear the traffic pa.s.sing on the TransCanada six stories down and almost a half a kilometer away. He twisted around on his chair to find Leah staring at him from across the room. ”What?”
”There's instructions?” ”Yeah. I didn't read them, but...”
”You didn't read the instructions? Of course you didn't,” she continued before he could answer. ”You just opened the spell list and started trying things out, didn't you?” While he was thinking about denying it, she closed the distance between them and smacked him on the back of the head. ”Men!”
”Hey!”
Leaning back she flashed him a narrow-eyed glare. ”Hey, what?”
”Nothing.” It just seemed like a bad time to go into the whole gender stereotyping thing.
”Good. Now then...”
He could feel every one of those thirty-five hundred years leaning over his shoulder with her.
”... let's have a look at the instructions, shall we?”
Power, Responsibilities of.
Power, the Focusing of.
Her finger touched the screen. ”That's got subdirectories.”
”On it.” The next layer down had been divided into basic, intermediate, and advanced. As Tony moved the cursor onto advanced, Leah's hand closed around his wrist and moved it back to basic. ”I thought we were in a hurry.”
”We are. But as much as I don't want to be killed by a demon, I'd also rather not be killed by you. Start at the beginning. Read fast.”
Fortunately, the lesson was, well, basic and it seemed he'd been instinctively doing most of it already. The rest of it seemed simple enough. When he mentioned that to Leah, she snorted.
”Lots of things seem simple when you read the instructions, but it's an entirely different story when you actually try to hook up the DVD player.”
Fair point. ”It doesn't seem that complicated, though. Mostly, I just have to s.h.i.+ft my internal focus to external.”
”Do you even know what that means?”
Tony pushed his chair out from the table and stood, forcing her to take a couple of steps back. ”It's sort of like choking up on the Powershot.”
”Choking up on the Powershot?” Muttering under her breath, she moved around until she stood behind him. ”Your keen grasp of description fills me with confidence.”
”I need to practice.”
”You think? Make it fast and don't destroy my apartment.”
”Your faith is underwhelming,” he muttered, bouncing lightly on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet and shaking the tension out of his arms. He could do this. He called things to his hand by knowing where they were, by being aware of the s.p.a.ce they defined. According to Arra's notes, focus meant being aware of the s.p.a.ce he defined and pulling in energy to fill it. That was the part he'd been doing instinctively.Once he had the energy, all he had to do was pick a spot outside his body, s.h.i.+ft the focus to that spot, and re-form the energy in his chosen pattern. Like writing with sparklers only the images would stick around longer. Arra's notes suggested he practice with a neutral symbol, something that could only be what it was.
Okay.
Right index finger extended-best not toss the scar on his left hand into the mix until he had a better grip on what he was doing-he picked a point about halfway to the window, refocused until his right eye started to water, and began burning his chosen symbol onto the air.
Leah's curtains caught fire.
c.r.a.p! That wasn't supposed to happen. Glancing down at the laptop, he checked the screen. No, definitely not supposed to happen.