Page 120 of Magical Academy for Delinquents
Then I turned to face my next foe—lasers. I hadn’t even practiced with lasers. I’d only learned about them today.Thanks, Dad.The sarcastic thought rolled through my head before I could suppress it. I knew Dad struggled with his memory.Focus, Hayley. Focus.
I had extra power thrumming through me from spending time last night with Evan and Malcolm. But still … I’d already disguised our entire group as we’d flown through the sky. I’d already taxed myself taking out a radio and then the hall cameras.
I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and glanced at the little norm laser boxes as if I was a cowboy and this was a showdown. Me versus them.
As I stared at the thin red beams that crisscrossed in front of the hole in the floor—to keep magicals from unknowingly plunging to their deaths—My chest vibrated like a guitar string. If I’d had time, I might have sat down and figured out a spell I could write to trick them. But I didn’t have time. I just had to use my natural powers and hope they were enough. But seeing Gray struggle to bring us up here, after he’d practiced and practiced, knowing how strong he was and how good his control was, that shook me.
I raised my hands toward the boxes, letting red beams shoot from my fingertips. Laser lights were more concentrated, amplified. They took a lot more power to create than a broad-spectrum light. At first, my beam pulsed. It wasn’t a continuous wave. I stared up at it, punching despair so that it couldn’t grab me and tug me down.Shit, try harder, Hales. Don’t suck so much,I pulled up a phrase Matthew had often used on me, one that pissed me off and made me work harder. I stared at the beam and cracked my neck. I had to make it steady. I had to make it stronger. I tried to close my ears to the noise of the guys shuffling behind me. I craned my neck up and pushed my beams harder.
A bright, unconcentrated beam of light shot from my hands, bright white and rainbow around the edges.
Shit.
“Is that supposed—” Andros started to say but someone shushed him.
I clenched my fingers and reigned the light in again until I had a narrow beam of red. It wavered for a second, like icing lines on a cake. But then it grew steady. Part one. I separated my hands and shot a laser beam at each of the transmitters on either side of me. My beams connected with theirs and I painstakingly lined my hands up so that the light met and reflected back at exactly the right angle.
“Okay, I’m gonna try to arc the light. Then we move.” I took a deep breath and started to lift my hands.
But Dad popped up in front of me, startling me, forcing me to step back. I almost lost the light.
I could see, as if it were happening in slow-motion, the light beam start to break. I moved as fast as I could—but it still felt like I was running underwater. I shoved my hands back up and reconnected the red laser by shooting two beams from my right hand, one beam toward either sensor. I shoved out my left and felt for the connections inside the sensors, those mechanisms that would go off if they sensed a lack of electricity. I shoved light into them, letting the electrons fill them so they didn’t notice any gap in coverage.
I did all that in milliseconds, though it felt like years to me. When I finished, I was breathing hard. I looked up at Dad and snapped, “What?”
Dad shook his head. “You have to hurry. I made my guard trip. But the guard another level down heard him in the stairwell. He’s on his way up.”
Fuck me with a damned sequoia redwood.
I froze. “New plan. I’m gonna get low. You all are gonna walk over me.”
“What?” Z asked behind me. “Why’s there a new plan?”
“My dad says a guard is headed this way right now.” I said as I took a knee on the edge of the floor, just before it dropped off. “Get over there. See the fridge? Head toward it. Once everyone’s past me, I’ll walk around,” I glanced over—I’d have to take the beam without any crossbeam supports. I’d have to walk across it like a balance beam. “I’ll take the other beam, get ahead and disable the other laser.”
Nobody protested. They stepped over my right shoulder in single file and shuffled out onto the large steel beam just as I felt sweat start to bead on my forehead. Lasers were harder than I’d thought.
Once Andros had edged across to the first crossbeam, and could hold onto something with his hands, I carefully started reducing the laser beam from my hands, backing up and slowly letting the original beam get closer to reconnecting. It felt like I was handling my grandmother’s Fabergé egg. Or some tiny glass figurine. Delicate. Finally, my beam was only inches wide. I slid back on the floor further, retracing my beam millimeter by millimeter.
I heard footsteps.
Shit.
I retracted all at once. The light beams reconnected, and I reached out with my hand shoving more light at the sensors as I ran to the right, toward the beam without any guys on it. My guys were already at the far end of the construction zone, waiting for me to come repeat the process and let them past.
But I stared at the narrow beam in front of me. It was a good twelve-foot drop to the floor beneath. And I’d never been good at gymnastics. I sat down on the beam and started to scoot.
“Are you kidding me?” Andros said.
“Shut up,” I muttered as I scooted along, quick as I could. It was not quick. Not quick at all, considering I could hear the guard whistling as he opened and closed doors, checking out rooms behind us.
“Stay there,” Andros growled at me. Then, in a move that would have impressed any jungle cat or ballerina, he jumped from his beam onto mine. He hardly even had to waver his hands to regain his balance. I stared up at him in slack-jawed disbelief.
That only lasted a second before he scooped me up, threw me over his shoulder and crossed the beam in three steps before shaking me loose and setting me down. “Here. Go.”
I shot my hands out and interrupted the laser beam on the other side of the hole. Andros climbed over me. Then I let the beam reconnect as I hurried over to do the same for the other guys.
But I was too late. The plastic curtain that cordoned off the construction zone wavered and crinkled. I saw a shadow moving behind it.
