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He released her and moved away several feet leaving the circle. She glanced at him, her anxiety rising all over again. Her heartrate kicked up.
You can do this. The deep tenor of his voice, even inside her mind, strengthened her resolve.
She turned away from Landris and invoked the invisibility spell.
“Good.” The wizard said. “You’ve got the spell down perfectly. Now, as you access the future, keep part of your mind fixed on the spell.”
She nodded, though the soft glow told her he couldn’t see her. If he was serious about showering her with an electrical charge, she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. She levitated twenty feet away. Looking back, she could see he hadn’t moved and kept his gaze where she’d last seen him.
She watched him as she began to open the gate to the future. She struggled to hold the spell, but it slipped away from her the moment the back-cramping began and the future opened. She could see the clock on the shelves behind the tall client chair of her studio.
The next moment, she was hit hard and landed face down in the sand. Painful shards of electricity bit into her skin. Somebody was shouting.
She drew up enough to lean back on her knees then realized Grant was trying to punch Landris.
“You hurt her. You bastard.”
“She’s not hurt. Stunned, maybe. But you don’t have a lot of time. She’s got to learn this, and pain is great teacher.”
As the shouting continued, Natalie chose to remain where she was. She could have intervened, but decided Grant was going to have to deal with his own feelings this time. She had to figure this out and fast.
With her palms on her thighs, she closed her eyes and reviewed what had happened. Landris had been right about one thing. Holding onto the spell while opening her futurism seemed impossible.
She accessed her invisibility and allowed herself a moment to feel the spell. She created a box within her mind and settled the spell within. Her wolf began to stir. She’d almost forgotten about this aspect of her new gifts and allowed her to come forward.
Though her eyes were still closed, she could now feel the iridescent wolf running along the backs of her hands. Holding the spell within the box, she let her wolf fill her body. She suspected she would need this kind of amplification to accomplish a lot of things over the coming nights.
With her wolf part of her, she slowly approached the future.
The moment she began to access it, however, her wolf yipped, the spell slipped out of her mental box and a shower of electrical fire rained down on her.
She went invisible immediately and levitated off the sand and away from Landris’s punishment.
At a considerable distance and still invisible, she settled onto the sand once more. She rubbed her arms, face, neck and legs to get rid of the charged sensation. It hurt, but it only made her want to figure things out faster.
When she was back to herself, she could feel her wolf diminish.
She chuckled. Her wolf did not like the electricity either.
But what did she do wrong? She focused on both her wolf and her mental spell-box. She edged sideways toward her futurism.
Her wolf growled, and she pulled back.
Her heart slammed in her chest. She knew she didn’t have a handle on what she had to do, and she did not want to experience the electrical fire again.
“Landris? We need to talk because I need more information. I’m going to leave the spell, so don’t hit me with those firecrackers again.”
“Done.”
Natalie didn’t even speak the word ‘end’ aloud. She thought it and became visible. She glided through the air back to Landris. He had a red mark on one cheek and Grant was rubbing his jaw.
Grant scowled. “Are you all right?”
She rolled her eyes. “You can keep fighting with Landris if you want, but I wish you’d stop. I don’t want your protection, at least not in this situation. The fiery electrical rain hurts, but I need it. Okay? So, let it go.”
“Are you sure? Because we can stop this now.”
“Like hell we’re going to do that. Besides, if you think this little bit of discomfort is anything, I suspect Kryder will throw a lot worse at us. What I don’t need is you losing your cool every time I get hurt. Got it?”
