Page 45 of Road Trip with a Vampire
The clothes I’d worn that day had been warm enough earlier, but once I stepped outside, I realized the temperature had plunged. My jacket was enough to keep me from completely freezing, at least. The chilly air was probably a good thing anyway. It calmed my nerves by forcing me to focus on something other than what I was about to do.
As I moved through the parking lot I gave my car a wide berth, just in case Peter was in there. The field behind the motel was barren and vacant and seemed to stretch on forever as I walked towards it. It was as good a place as any to get this done. I couldn’t do a big spell right outside the motel. Other people might see things and ask uncomfortable questions.
The motel’s flashing neon sign and the stars above kept me from walking in total darkness, but the night was otherwise black as pitch. There were no streetlights anywhere, not even a passing car’s headlights to see by. But for what I had planned, the dark suited my purposes well.
With just a thimbleful more power than I’d used to conduct the wind spell, I called up a small ball of light in the palm of my hand. It was light as air, and I held it up to my eyes so I wouldn’t trip in the darkness as I walked. The relief I felt from even this small expenditure of power was immediate. My jangling nerves eased just enough for me to breathe again. I let the light grow by degrees, feeding more of my power into it as I walked. The bigger the light grew, the more the tension in my body floated away.
The wind kicked up, the cold air cutting through my too-thin jacket and blowing my hair into my face. I tossed up a wind shield that was large enough to keep the elements off me but small enough that I could still move freely.
The shield used up another small fraction of my power. Another small knot of tension in my bones floated free.
Once I was far enough away from the motel that its sign was no longer visible, I stopped walking. It was time to take full stock of how I felt. My hands no longer shook. I feltgood. And despite the extra magic use, I was suffering from no wild urges to run away and return to my old chaotic life.
I closed my eyes and sent my awareness deep, deep, deeper inside myself. The wellspring of my magic was hot to the touch but not burning. Good. That was good. Casting this ball of light had, for now, done what it was supposed to do.
Perhaps I’d just hit on the perfect amount of magic I could use without everything going sideways. If I was wrong and I woke up tomorrow morning feeling awful again, I’d just have to try a larger spell next time.
This system could work.
I would make certain it did.
I opened my eyes.
In the distance I saw the silhouette of a person walkingstraight towards me. All my hard-won calm dissipated in an instant.
It was Peter.
Shit.
I shoved the power I’d just tapped into down deep and shrank the light I still held in my hand to the size of a golf ball. Peter knew I had magic; he knew the general shape of my current magic-related problems—but he didn’t know specifics. He’d likely guess at some of them now, seeing me outside, underdressed, in the middle of the night, casting spells in the freezing dark.
Whyelsewould I be out in that field making balls of light if things weren’t dire?
Peter was worried that he might have been a bad person in his old life. Meanwhile, Iknewthat I had been awful. Explaining the reality of my situation to him would leave me open and exposed and full of shame over what I used to be.
If I could have teleported back to the motel before Peter reached me and wiped his mind so he wouldn’t remember seeing me out there, I’d have done it. But I couldn’t teleport anything, including myself, without the powder I’d left back in the motel room with my otherjust in casesupplies. And memory wiping was a power strictly in the wheelhouse of vampires.
Peter stopped when he was just a few feet away. I braced myself for a barrage of questions I wasn’t prepared to answer.
“Zelda?” He blinked at me. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” I hedged.
“I was out finding something to eat,” he said. “Like I told you.”
“And…and did you?” I suspected he had, but I was flailing, grasping at anything that might distract him from more questions.
His frown deepened. He clearly knew I was deflecting. I was too frazzled to care.
“I did,” he acknowledged. “Took me longer than I expected, but I did.”
“Good,” I said lamely. “No one saw you?”
He shook his head slowly from side to side. “No.”
“Good,” I said again like a fool.
He stepped closer until there were just a handful of inches separating us. I could see his face clearly now, and my breath caught.
