More than Magic: Semester Aboard (27 page)

"Yeah. It was feeding off of my energy
instead of oxygen like a normal fire would. It'll go out in a few
minutes without me taking care of it."

By the time I had finished drying off and
brushed my teeth the flame was no bigger than a candle flame. I got
dressed in clean clothing for the morning and got ready to get into
bed.

"So, now that we've showered together,"
Charlie said with a wink from the middle of the fire on the floor.
"This one will start to go out once I'm not touching it too. It is
going to get pretty cold in here in a couple of hours...if you want
to share the bed, I promise I'll behave."

I considered it for a moment. He always felt
like he had a fever to me, so I assumed his body temperature was
abnormally high. I figured that sharing a bed would result in a
nice, warm night.

"I trust you," I said.

As we settled back to back in the amazingly
warm bed I realized that even if Charlie hadn't been gay I would
have trusted him. I'd always gotten the impression that he liked me
and that we could be good friends, but after today it seemed like
we were really starting to bond. Not only that, but we'd been
through a lot together, stuff normal humans could never imagine,
and I knew that I could rely on him. It wasn't long before I fell
asleep. I was confused when I woke up and it took me a moment to
remember I had decided to share a bed with Charlie. It took another
second for me to realize that he had an arm and a leg flung over
me.

"Charlie?" I hissed. When he didn't react I
elbowed him in the side. "Charlie!"

"What, Dan?" he muttered sleepily. "Oh! Oh,
ashes, Jen! I'm sorry!" He quickly rolled off of me and sat up.

"It's ok."

"Sorry," he repeated, blushing bright red. He
stood and stretched. "I guess we should get ready. It's a long bus
ride, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

I went into the bathroom to change and came
out in time to see Charlie settle down on the bed with a log from
our woodpile. It burst into flames in his hands and he closed his
eyes with a content sigh.

"Are you...eating?"

"Yeah."

"How does it taste?"

"Like chicken."

I laughed and started putting on my coat and
extra clothing. By the time I was done the log was gone and Charlie
was wiping the ashes off of his hands.

"That was good," he said, sounding
pleased.

"Can you actually taste it?"

He shook his head. "Not literally. But I feel
full when I'm done and more satisfied than if I had, say, burned
newspaper."

"Can you eat newspaper too?"

"Yep. If it's flammable I can consume it.
Well, in theory. Some things are better than others of course."

We headed out and got on the bus with the
rest of our group. The heater on the bus had broken and everyone
was cold. After a couple of minutes Charlie scooted closer to me
and I started feeling warmer. In seconds I felt like I was sitting
in the sun on a hot day. We settled back and watched the desert fly
by. Soon we found ourselves way up in the mountains. Our group
spent the day exploring canyons and ancient ruins, and saw all four
types of camelids that inhabit South America and a condor. I
couldn't wait to email Shannon pictures of the animals; she'd love
them. Our last stop was a massive dune. We spent nearly twenty
minutes hiking up the top. Then we all found spots on rocks and
lined up along the edge, looking out over the desert, to watch the
sunset. I leaned against a large one with Charlie. While we waited
for the sun to set Charlie started playing absently with the sand.
I just looked around and took pictures of the landscape, not really
watching him until he nudged me.

"Here," he said, handing me something.

I held out my hand and he set a strange flake
of something in it. I picked it up with my other hand to examine it
and it shattered into a million pieces. Charlie laughed.

"What was that?"

"Glass."

"Glass? From where?"

He picked up a handful of sand and started
rubbing his palms together. I watched curiously and a moment later
he opened them to reveal a large drop of liquid. Amazed, I reached
out for it with a finger and he moved his hand out of the way.

"Watch out, it's hot
,
" he warned, then rolled his eyes playfully. "Did you
really just try to stick your finger into a puddle of molten
sand?"

"You just
melted sand
?

"And now it's glass. Well, it's not very good
glass since it's just sand...but sort of glass," he said smugly.
"All you need is something hot enough to melt it."

"How hot can you get?" I asked curiously.

"Hot enough to melt sand."

I glared at him. "I think you've been
spending too much time with Dani."

"You mentioned earlier that you took a
ceramics class, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I have too, but I never needed a kiln.
I hate doing glazes though. They seem to always drip onto my hands
and it's a pain to chip them off." I could tell he was elaborating
for shock value now. He laughed again and the lifted the tiny flake
of glass out of his palm. "There we are, cooled into glass." He
flicked it off of the dune and settled back against the rock with a
chuckle.

We sat in silence as I tried to accept the
fact that the guy next to me was essentially a walking kiln. Soon
the sun began to set and we watched in awe as the sinking sun
turned the desert a deeper and deeper purple as the shadows crept
across the sand. I glanced at Charlie and saw that he looked almost
wistful as he watched the sunset.

"Kind of reminds me of home," he said
softly.

"New York?"

"Arizona. Grew up there."

"Why would a fire elemental leave Arizona for
New York?" I asked.

"Because a fire elemental will be fine in
most climates if he's careful. A water elemental won't be. I'd
choose Dani over the desert any day, so New York it is. My parents
are still back home though, so I visit pretty often."

"That's good."

He nodded and looked back out at the sinking
sun. "This is a pretty amazing sunset though, I'm not sure I've
ever seen one this incredible in Arizona." He pulled out his phone,
then rolled his eyes and tucked it away. "I was going to send Dani
a picture, but that idiot hasn't bought a new phone yet."

"Does he like sunsets?"

"Yeah, he loves them. I do too, but I prefer
sunrises. Something to do with the fact that there's a giant ball
of fire in the sky I think," he added with a chuckle. "I'm not sure
Dani's ever dragged himself out of bed early enough to see
one."

We both laughed.

"You seem like total opposites," I said. "I
mean, aside from the whole fire and water thing."

"We are. It works though." His smile faded
and he sighed. "Jennifer?"

I turned to him nervously. His tone worried
me and he never used my whole name. I was even more concerned when
I saw his eyes. They were such a deep red they almost looked
black.

"The other night...if something had happened
to him, I..." Charlie sighed heavily. "Thank you. I don't think I
can ever express just how grateful I am. Thank you."

"But if it hadn't been for me he wouldn't
have been hurt in the first place."

He shook his head. "Quit beating yourself up
over it. You kept your wits in a really dangerous situation. All
things considered, you should be proud of yourself."

"That's sort of what Dani said."

Charlie smiled and I saw a very tiny spark of
orange flicker in his eyes. "Then you should listen. Don't tell him
I said it, but he's usually right." He turned back to the sunset
with a sigh.

"How long have you and Dani been together?" I
asked. I figured how long you'd been happily dating someone was
usually a happy topic.

To my relief, he instantly smiled and his
eyes flared. "Twenty-four years next week."

I had heard him wrong. I must have. "Four
years?"

"Twenty-four."

No way. If Charlie was twenty-one like I had
thought it wouldn't be possible. It wouldn't even be possible if he
was twenty-four. He'd have to be older. A
lot
older. I
swallowed hard and felt my heart racing.

"How...old are you?"

He grinned. "Just turned sixty."

Chapter 16

Sixty. I gaped at Charlie. He was
sixty
? He didn't look a day older than twenty-one. If he was
really sixty...

"Are you immortal too?" I asked in shock.

"Yes!" He looked surprised and then frowned
in confusion. "Thomas said he told you."

I had assumed Thomas was immortal because he
was a vampire, but I realized he hadn't actually said that. If
Charlie was immortal then all elementals probably were, so Dani was
too. But then...Mariana and TS weren't human either...

"He didn't tell me everyone is!" I cried.

"I'm sorry! When he told me he'd told you, I
assumed that he'd been thorough about it."

I shook my head. The sun had completely set
and all around us people were standing up and getting ready to hike
back down the dune. I glanced around to make sure nobody was
watching, and quickly pulled out my wand and cast my night vision
spell. This time I was positive that it was stronger. I could see
Charlie clearly enough to know that he still looked irritated. I
studied him while we waited for people to walk past us. Sixty.

I hadn't been able to figure out exactly what
bothered me so much about the fact that Thomas was in his sixties,
but now that I knew Charlie was too I figured it out. Sixty, in
general, wasn't really all that old. I had friends with cool
parents in their sixties. A couple of my professors that I
considered friends were in their sixties. I had spent hours after
work talking with Betty, a sweet woman in her mid-sixties. I
thought of her as a friend too. But those were all different kinds
of friends. I was technically an adult, but I still thought of
parents as 'grown-up’. They were in a different generation.
Granted, Betty and I had had some great heart-to-hearts, but as
close we were she wasn't the sort of friend that I'd explore Chile
with. People the same age as Charlie and Thomas weren't supposed to
look and act like college students. They were for giving advice and
provided a different kind of friendship. The fact that Charlie was
sixty was strange because I was starting to think of him as the
sort of friend who was my age.

Then it struck me that if they were all
immortal then
I
was the odd one out. I had been worried that
it must be hard for Thomas to be a good forty years older than
everyone else, when I was the one who was apart in age. I thought
back to our conversation in the port as Charlie and I started down
the dune.

"Did you mean it when you said age is just a
number?"

"Of course I did."

"I'm twenty-one."

"I know. So?"

I looked at him nervously. "Doesn't that make
me like...I don't know, a kid to you?"

"No!" He slung an arm around me. "No. You're
an adult, Jen. A young one," he added with a laugh, "but you're
still an adult. Non-magics tend to mature a little faster than
magics. I suppose it's the mortality thing. So, you're pretty
mature as far as magics your age go and that's what matters. It's
how you act, not when you were born. You're mature, you're smart,
you're good in a crisis. More importantly, I enjoy spending time
with you." He smiled at me. "While we're on the subject, I hope you
plan on keeping in touch after the voyage. It would be a shame to
lose contact."

"I do," I said, slightly surprised. It was
nice to know that Charlie wanted to stay friends after the voyage
was over.

"Of course," he chuckled, "it's a lot easier
to stay in touch now than it was when I was your age."

"Right," I muttered. The fact they were all
so much older than me, not to mention immortal, was going to take a
lot of getting used to.

I hoped Charlie meant it when he said age
didn't matter. Of course, none of them had been treating me like I
was a lot younger, which was a relief. Dani sometimes had his big
brotherly attitude, but it didn't bother me. Although it was sort
of weird knowing that it was because he was so much older than me.
Then again, he seemed to irritate Mariana when he did that with
her. In fact, they all tended to treat Mariana like she was
younger. For the first time the fact that Mariana was an intern
with MES, but everyone else was an agent stuck out at me. I had
assumed that they were all in their sixties, but Charlie had never
said that.

"How old is Mariana?" I asked.

"Twenty-seven."

She was younger than them. If it weren't for
the fact I had guessed it based on how they treated her, it would
have been nice to know she was closer to my age. I sighed.

"I thought you would have liked that,"
Charlie said. "I know she's thrilled."

"But you treat her like she's a little kid
and I'm even younger than she is."

"Ah. Mariana's different."

"How so?"

"Dani started babysitting Mariana when she
was a just a toddler. For a long time she
was
a little kid.
Dani's always thought of her as a little sister and when you watch
someone grow up it's sometimes hard to remember that they are an
adult. It drives poor Mariana nuts, but Dani can't help it. I think
we're all guilty of that, really. And I helped raise my niece.
She's almost thirty-one and I still have to remind myself sometimes
that she's not my little girl anymore. Didn't you say you have a
little sister?"

I nodded. "Yeah, she's nine."

"And you still sometimes treat her like she's
five, right?"

Actually, I did. Charlie laughed before I
could even answer out loud.

"See? It's a habit. Everyone does it. Now
you're already an adult. None of us are going to start babying you,
because we never knew you as a kid. Granted, we're probably all
going to be a bit overprotective because you're still learning
about magic, but other than that..."