Spell Bound (companion teaser!)

Spell Bound (companion teaser!)

By your college graduation, you tend to have certain expectations. You’re ready to be independent, get a job (freelancing like Jenna Acario, I was definitely going to do that), and you expect without doubt that your family will deal with that splendidly.

My expectations were not being met.

So far I had managed to avoid Mother and Sam, but who knew how much longer I’d be able to escape one or the other of them and their meddlesome spell casting. I could have left, I suppose, but four years wasted at this place and not even a degree to show for it would have been pathetic. Then they would both insist that I finish my education at the University where seven thousand generations of our family have gone (I’d rather have demon chipmunks with blunt teeth devour me alive, thank you). Frankly, I had no choice but to wait another four hours.

They couldn’t get to me once the whole ridiculous ceremony started. I’d be safe as long as I was on the stage, and the second I had my diploma I’d dash to Iceland. From there I could head back and all the magic floating around in the country would confuse them enough to put them off my trail. Or so I hoped.

I couldn’t count on luck anymore. My particular brand of magic was excellent for quick-draw but not entirely reliable. If I wasn’t doing spells near constantly, the power had an annoying tendency to build up and work on its own. I had to store it in charms I made myself. I used up five over the past month alone, and the one I was wearing around my neck today was nearing the breaking point. There was just too much of the stuff lately.

Mother and Sam, as per usual, refused to admit that my methods of magicking were anything but orthodox. Mother tried without success to get me off the charms years ago (said I was being anal retentive, if you’d believe it), but gave me free reign with them after several incidents in which visiting relatives offered to pay for my treatment at a rehabilitation center.

I was thinking about them as I looked out over the school grounds from my window, but I had to stop. The trees were starting to bend into odd shapes. Frustrating. Normally my control was perfect, if I wasn’t under the influence of excessive magic. Only Mother and Sam could do this to me.

Jenna keeps telling me I should take up yoga. If I thought I could manage it, I’d certainly try. Apparently it’s relaxing.

The door clicked open, and I had to pretend I was busy with packing (I really hadn’t finished, as a matter of fact) so that Damon would stay calm.

Too late. He was already in a twitchy mood. “Oh, hi, Crider. You’re…still here, are you?”

I never should have agreed to room with a paranormal science major. They were all crazy. Bad posture, odd speech habits, weird experiments and tinfoil hats—some of them even wore the sort of thick glasses that were going out of style in the fifties (who knows where they found them). Damon fit in every category but the glasses.

“Of course I’m still here,” I told him. “I’m graduating today, too, remember?”

“Yeah, but, I thought…” He twitched some more and rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “Hey, maybe you could…you know…”

“I don’t.” How many times was I going to have to correct this misconception? “I can’t read minds, incidentally.”

He cringed, an action which, combined with the bad posture, made him hunchbacked enough to try out for Quasimodo. Shame the drama club did that one last year. “Okay,” he offered by way of apology. “Could you…not do anything, uh, you know…weird…today?”

And he was off again with the twitching and cringing. How could he keep that up and not give himself heart failure? It had to be exhausting; I was getting tired just looking at him. “Stop that.”

He rubbed his nose. “Stop what? Whatever it is, I will, okay? Just don’t turn me into a newt!”

“When have I ever turned you into a newt?” I demanded. There was that one time when he set my textbooks on fire during his famous spontaneous combustion experiment in sophomore year…but it was a salamander, not a newt. And anyway, I’d managed to bring him back after a few days. That was nowhere near as bad as the polliwog incident.