I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “What? Are you out of your mind? You’ll ruin it if you don’t know what you’re doing!”
“What else am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Are you going to teach me?”
I turned back to the beautiful Mustang. “Yes,” I said adamantly. “If that’s what it takes to save it from you.”
“I can show you too,” said Eddie.
Adrian ignored him and focused on me. “When we can start?”
I ran through my school schedule, knowing I’d have to make talking to the Alchemists about the Warriors of Light my top priority. Then, the obvious hit me. “Oh. When we see Wolfe this week. We’ll take this out there.”
“Is that really to help me?” asked Adrian. “Or do you just want to drive the car?”
“Both,” I said, not embarrassed to admit it.
Angeline’s clock at school was ticking, so the rest of us had to leave. I’d driven three blocks away when I realized I’d left my purse on the grass. With a groan, I looped around and returned to his building. My purse was there, but the Mustang was gone.
“Where’s the car?” I asked, panicked. “No one could have stolen it that fast.”
“Oh,” said Jill from the backseat, sounding slightly nervous. “I saw through the bond. He, um, moved it.”
It was handy having the bond as a source of information, but her words made me panic more than if the car actually had been stolen. “He what?”
“Not far,” she said quickly. “Just behind the building. This street’s got weird overnight parking rules.”
I grimaced. “Well, I’m glad it won’t get towed, but he should’ve had me move it! Even if it’s not far, he could ruin the transmission.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” said Jill. There was a strange note to her voice.
I didn’t respond. Jill was no car expert. None of them were. “It’s like letting a toddler loose in a room full of china,” I muttered. “What was he thinking? About any of this?”
No one had an answer for that. I got us back to Amberwood in time for Angeline’s curfew and retreated to the sanity and calm of my room. As soon as I was satisfied my friends were safe and secure for the night, I e-mailed Donna Stanton-a high-up Alchemist whom I’d inexplicably developed a good relationship with-about the hunters and what we’d learned. I even took pictures of the pamphlet and e-mailed those as well. Once that was done, I sat back and tried to think if there was anything else at all I could provide her with that might help.
It was only when I’d exhausted all options (and refreshed my inbox a few times to see if she’d responded already) that I finally moved on to homework. As usual, I was pretty much caught up on every assignment-save one.
Ms. Terwilliger’s.
That stupid book was on my desk, staring back at me, daring me to open it. I still had a number of days before her spell was due, time during which I could continue to procrastinate. I was beginning to accept, however, that this assignment wasn’t going to go away. Considering how long some of the prep on these took, maybe it’d be best to bite the bullet and get it out of the way.
Resolved, I brought the book over to my bed and opened it to the table of contents, scanning some of the spells she’d gone over with me. My stomach twisted at most of them, every instinct telling me how wrong it was to even be attempting these. Magic is for vampires, not humans.
I still believed that to be true, but the analytical part of my mind couldn’t help but apply some of the defensive spells to various situations. Much like my decision to give blood, recent events had made me look at the world differently. Was magic wrong? Yes. But that blindness spell would have certainly been useful in the alley. Another spell, one that temporarily immobilized people, could’ve been used if I’d wanted to flee from the hunters at the café. Sure, it only lasted thirty seconds, but that was more than enough time for me to have escaped.
On and on, I went down the list. They were all so wrong and yet… so useful. If I hadn’t seen the fire charm I’d made ignite a Strigoi, I wouldn’t have believed any of these were possible. But by all accounts, they were.
So much power… the ability to protect myself…
Immediately, I rebuked myself for such a thought. I had no need for power. That kind of thinking was what led freaks like Liam to want to be Strigoi. Although… was it really the same? I didn’t want immortality. I didn’t want to hurt others. I just wanted to protect myself and those I cared about. Wolfe had a lot to teach me, but his preventative techniques wouldn’t help if determined vampire hunters cornered Sonya and me again. As time went on, it was becoming clear that the hunters were very determined.
I returned to the table of contents, finding several that would be useful and well within my capabilities to make. According to Ms. Terwilliger, someone like me had excellent potential for magic because of inborn talent (which I didn’t entirely believe) and the rigorous Alchemist training in measurement and attention to detail. It wasn’t difficult to figure out how long it would take me to produce any of these likely candidates.
The question was which spell did I make? Which did I have time to make?
The answer was eerily simple.
I had time to make all of them.
CHAPTER 17
ADRIAN’S CAR DROVE LIKE A DREAM.
When I got behind the wheel, I nearly forgot to check for any pursuit. In fact, I nearly forgot that I was supposed to be taking us to Wolfe’s and showing Adrian how to use a stick shift. Instead, I was caught up in the way the engine hummed around us and in the scent of the leather. Leaving his neighborhood, I had to restrain myself from flooring it in the crowded streets of downtown Palm Springs. This was a car screaming to be let loose on the open road. I had admired Brayden’s Mustang, but I worshipped this one.
“I feel like I’ve just crashed someone’s date,” Adrian remarked, once we were getting on the highway. No one had tailed us out of downtown, making me feel much safer. “Like I’m intruding on you two. If you want to drop me off somewhere, I’ll understand.”
“Huh?”
I’d been paying careful attention to the way the car built up to higher speeds, both through sound and feel. The Mustang was in stunning shape. People often have the idea that classic cars are expensive. They are-if they’re in good condition. Most aren’t. When something’s sat around for years without care, it inevitably falls apart, which is why so many older cars are fixer-uppers. Not Adrian’s. This had been maintained and restored throughout the years and had probably never left the state of California-meaning it hadn’t faced harsh winters. That all added up to a high price tag, making it that much more ludicrous that Adrian had bought something he couldn’t drive.
I groaned. “I’m sorry… I don’t know what I was thinking.” Well, I kind of knew. I’d been wondering what my odds of a ticket would be if I broke the speed limit to see how fast we could go. “I should’ve been walking you through this as soon as I started the car. I promise I will when we leave Wolfe’s, all the steps. For now, I guess we can recap the basics. This is the clutch…”
Adrian didn’t seem annoyed by my neglect. If anything, he looked amused and simply listened to my explanations with a small, quiet smile on his face.
Wolfe looked just as disreputable as he had last time, complete with the eye patch and what I suspected were the same Bermuda shorts as before. I hoped he’d done laundry since then. Despite his appearance, he was ready to go when our class assembled and seemed competent in his subject matter. Although he reminded us again about the importance of avoiding conflicts and being aware of one’s surroundings, he quickly moved past those points and focused on actually practicing more physical ways of protecting oneself.