The Fiery Heart (10 page)

I looked at the cup mournfully. “Mint tea.”

“There, there,” said Ms. Terwilliger, after she'd cruelly ordered her triple cappuccino. “You couldn't have had any caffeine anyway.” It was true, seeing as I'd likely be experimenting with magic later. “Stay strong.”

“That's right,” a voice behind me said. “Nothing builds character like a test of self-control.”

I spun around, thoroughly unprepared for who had joined us in line. “Wolfe?” I gasped. “You . . . you leave your house?”

Malachi Wolfe, instructor and proprietor of the Wolfe School of Defense, gave me a withering look from his one eye. “Of course I do. How else do you think I get supplies?”

“I . . . I don't know. I figured you ordered them in.”

“I do for some stuff,” he agreed. “But I've got to come here in person to get whole-bean French roast. The dogs love it.”

While I supposed it was reasonable that he'd get out of the compound he called a home, showing up at a hip coffee shop just wasn't what I'd imagined. Adrian and I had taken a self-defense course with Wolfe a couple months ago, and despite how bizarre it had all been, we'd picked up some useful tips. Wolfe himself was quite a sight to behold, with his long grizzled hair and eye patch.

“Ahem,” said Ms. Terwilliger. “Aren't you going to introduce us, Sydney?”

“Huh?” I was still floored by the fact that Wolfe was in jeans rather than his usual Bermuda shorts. “Oh. This is Malachi Wolfe. He's the man Adrian and I took a self-defense class with. Wolfe, this is my history teacher, Ms.—er, Jaclyn Terwilliger.”

“It's a pleasure,” she said.

Ms. Terwilliger extended her hand to shake his, and instead, he bowed grandly and kissed the top of hers. “No, no, believe me. The pleasure is all mine.”

To my complete and utter horror, she didn't withdraw her hand when he continued to hold it. “You're a teacher too, eh?” she asked. “I thought I sensed a kindred spirit when I first saw you.”

He nodded solemnly. “There's no loftier goal than educating and shaping young minds for greatness.”

I thought that was a stretch, considering at least fifty percent of his teaching methods involved regaling us with stories of how he'd escaped from pirates in New Zealand or fought off a pack of hook-fanged ravens. (When I'd pointed out no such bird existed, he insisted the government was covering them up). Adrian and I were currently trying to put together a time line of Wolfe's alleged adventures because we were pretty sure there was no way they could've happened the way he claimed.

“What brings you ladies out today?” asked Wolfe. He glanced around. “And where's your boy?”

“Who? Oh, you mean Adrian?” I asked casually. “He's probably still in class. He's an art student at Carlton.”

Wolfe's eyebrows rose. “Art? I always thought he was a little flighty, but I had no idea he was that far gone.”

“Hey, he's very talented! He just got a lot of acclaim for a mixed-media project he worked on.”

“What was it?” Wolfe didn't sound convinced.

“A piece using the monolith from
2001
as a symbol of mankind's evolution to a world of advertising and social media.”

Wolfe's contemptuous snort told me what he thought of that. “Goddamned idealistic college kids.”

“It's brilliant,” I insisted.

“Sydney,” said Ms. Terwilliger. “It
is
a little over the top.”

I couldn't even formulate a response to her traitorous words. Wolfe, however, wasted no opportunity. “You want to see art? You should go see this exhibit down by the San Diego shipyard. They re-created a Civil War battle scene completely out of Bowie knives.”

I opened my mouth to respond, couldn't think of anything to say, and shut it.

Ms. Terwilliger's eyes lit up. “That sounds fascinating.”

“You want to come see it with me?” he asked. “I'm going again this weekend. Fifth time.”

As they exchanged phone numbers, I glanced over at Brayden, who was staring openmouthed, holding our drinks. At least I wasn't alone in my reaction. I took out the Love Phone and texted Adrian.

Ran into Wolfe. He asked Ms. T out.

Adrian's response was about what I expected: . . .

I then delivered the coup de grâce:
SHE ACCEPTED.

Adrian was still unable to get past symbols:
?!?

I was at a loss for words on the way back to Amberwood, made worse by Ms. Terwilliger's dreamy expression. “Ma'am,” I said at last. “Do you think going out with someone like him is a good idea? At last count, he had eleven Chihuahuas.”

“Miss Melbourne,” she said, reverting to her old nickname for me, “I offer no critique on your dubiously sound romantic choices. Don't question mine.”

Flirting with Wolfe had eaten into more of our time today, but to her credit, she didn't delay in making use of our remaining twenty minutes. We pulled some desks together and huddled over one of Inez's books, along with a small bowl of dirt. She pointed to a diagram in the book that depicted a palm with four small clumps of dirt arranged in a diamond.

“There's no real incantation for this,” she said, sprinkling the dirt on my palm in the appropriate pattern. “It's one of those that's more meditative. Only you aren't trying to accomplish any concrete result so much as connect with the dirt's essence. What do you think of when you think of dirt?”

“To not wear white.”

Her lips twitched, but she stayed on track. “Shift yourself into a casting trance and think of all that earth is in the world and even the role it plays in the spells you know.”

I was familiar with casting trances, but simply using it to commune with a substance was a bit more difficult. Nonetheless, I closed my eyes and focused my breathing, entering an odd state where my mind felt both clear and concentrated. The dirt was cool in my hand, and I envisioned damp, mist-covered forests, like one of the redwood parks up north, where trees anchored themselves in the earth and the smell of wet dirt hung everywhere. Dirt itself wasn't always present in spells, but many things that hid within it were: jewels and plants and—

“Open your eyes,” said Ms. Terwilliger softly.

I did and saw a faint luminescence surrounding my hand holding the dirt.

“Try to put it in your other hand and hold it.”

The light had no substance, and I had to contain it with my mind. I tipped my hand, and it poured into my other one. The glow began to slip out between my fingers, dissipating into the air as it did. I closed my hand, trying to grasp those last shreds of light.

The door to her classroom opened, and I jumped, losing all mental hold of the remaining light. It vanished.

“Sydney?” Zoe stuck her head in.

“Come in, Miss Ardmore,” said Ms. Terwilliger coolly, shutting the book without looking down. “Although, please, next time, do us the courtesy of knocking.”

Zoe flushed at the rebuke. “I'm very sorry, ma'am. I was just excited to see Sydney.” She wasn't offended so much as embarrassed. Like me, she'd been raised with very strict rules of etiquette and politeness. Her eyes lighted on the desktop. Ms. Terwilliger had made sure the book's unmarked back cover faced upward, but my dirty hands were right there in the open. “What are you doing?”

Ms. Terwilliger scooped up the book and bowl and walked over to her desk, as I wiped my hands together. “Being silly and sentimental. I collected some dirt outside the Parthenon on my trip to Greece last summer and saved it as a souvenir. I was enchanted with the idea of holding on to something that had been present throughout the advancement of a great civilization.”

It was far-fetched but a lot less weird than using the dirt to extract the magic of earth's essence. I swallowed and tried to run with the story. “Yeah, and you know how I want to go to Greece, Zo. I wondered if maybe touching it would give me some connection to history.” My laugh was brittle. “But it just felt like dirt.”

Ms. Terwilliger joined me with a chuckle of her own. “You and I are both given to romantic flights of fancy, Miss Melrose. Someday you'll just have to visit for yourself. For now, this will simply return to my collection.” She reverently set the bowl on her filing cabinet. I'd seen her fill it with dirt from one of Amberwood's flower beds when we'd come inside earlier.

Zoe had a frown on her face, but she finally nodded because really, what else was she going to do? “Okay . . . well. Since school's over, I wondered if you wanted to go run errands with me. We haven't been able to hang out much, and I need new shoes for PE. The ones I brought are worn out. No one else needs us tonight.” The subtext was clear to me. There were no feedings at Clarence's, and Jill was staying at the school, safely ensconced.

I could sense Ms. Terwilliger watching me, waiting for my cue. If I claimed I had to do some project for her, she'd agree. But Zoe was right about one thing: We hadn't spent much time together. Not only was that making my time away suspicious, it was also hurting my relationship with Zoe. She was still my sister, after all, and I loved her. I wanted to have a good relationship with her. I wanted things to be like they used to be, though that seemed to become increasingly unlikely with each passing day. At least a trip to the mall seemed normal and sisterly on the surface, even if it didn't feel that way in my gut.

“You're lucky,” Zoe said as we neared the mall. The car's blind-spot detection had just chimed. “It always tells you when there's a car there. In driver's training, we always had to check blind spots ourselves. Those cars were junk.”

I couldn't help a laugh. “You should always check, whether you're driving junk or not. I usually see the other cars before it warns me.”

She gave a mournful sigh. “I wish I could drive. I just got my permit back in Utah.”

“You can't drive without a parent there or in California,” I reminded her.

“Yeah.” She slouched into her seat, looking very much like an ordinary girl, not one part of an ancient and world-spanning organization that covered up the supernatural. “Maybe someone could mess with the paperwork and get you legal guardian status. I mean, how else am I supposed to get a license? Unless someone just makes ‘Zoe Ardmore' a fake one. I'm a good enough driver.”

“You'll have to ask Dad,” I said, feeling a pang of guilt. It actually wouldn't be that difficult to work some Alchemist connections to make that kind of thing happen. If we did it without checking with our dad first, we'd probably be chastised, and if we did ask . . . well, something told me he'd probably think it was superfluous. “If he hasn't brought it up, then he probably just wants you to focus on learning other stuff. Our job takes priority.”

She couldn't argue against that. After a long moment of staring out at other cars, she said, “Speaking of priorities . . . have you ever thought that maybe what you're doing with Ms. Terwilliger isn't appropriate?”

I flinched, even though I knew she couldn't possibly be talking about magic. “What do you mean?”

“I don't know exactly. It's just, you've already finished high school. You're here to do Alchemist business, but you seem really into your classes—especially that thing with her. It seems personal too, like you're just hanging out as friends. I mean, talking about her vacation? It wouldn't be a big deal if it was just inside class hours, but you're always doing work for her that doesn't seem like work. Nothing wrong with wanting friends or social time . . . but you can't do it at the cost of the assignment. What would Dad say?”

I kept myself very still and thought for long moments before my answer. “You're right. I do have to be careful. It's just hard when we talk about Greece, when I want to go there so badly. I love her stories. Still, that's no excuse. I guess I just forget that when everything's so quiet with Jill and the others. I've got to do something to pass the time, and I certainly can't spend it with them.”

“You could spend it with me,” she said hopefully.

I glanced at her long enough to give her a smile. “I will. We'll do more things—not just talking about the assignment. Getting out like this is good. I'll try to make it happen more often—though I don't want to act
too
uninterested in my classes. I can't risk getting in trouble for slacking off.” In truth, my teachers thought so highly of me, I could probably skip the rest of the semester.

My story was good enough for Zoe, though, who looked delighted at more sisterly bonding. Most importantly, she didn't mention our dad again. Like her, he wouldn't suspect magic, but he also wouldn't like me having any sort of personal life. I sealed the deal when I told her, “We should stop for ice cream after we get the shoes. See if we can find some praline pecan.”

She grinned at the reference to an old restaurant near where we'd grown up. The menu had always said, “Ask about our daily ice cream special.” But every day, it was always praline pecan. When my dad had pointed this out to the elderly owner, she'd shrugged and said, “I can't find anything more special. Why change it?” It had become a joke with the rest of us and even a sort of family tradition.

To my amazement, the ice cream at this place was almost as good, and we took our cones out to sit on the curb. As we ate, an idea suddenly came to me. “Are you serious about driving?” I asked her.

The light in her eyes answered before she did. “Yes! Will you try to get me a license?”

I munched on a pecan, my thoughts spinning. “Well, you know, the whole point of a permit is so you can practice before the license.”

“But I don't need to—”

I gave her a stern older-sister look. “Rules are rules, and there's a good reason for them. I can't expedite the license, but if you want to practice, you could do it on private property—parking lots and things. With a licensed driver,” I added.