Psychic

There was only one place to go where I could possibly get some answers about what had happened after school with Magnus.

“Sleepover!” Bella squealed as she pulled me in the door.

Amy and Rick were excited when I told them I would be sleeping over at Bella’s tonight. They thought it would be good for me to get out of the house. To have fun with kids my age. And, besides, I would only be down the street.

Bella dragged me up to her room almost immediately, ignoring her father’s calls for me to come into his office. She told me that he could ask questions in the morning, when we wouldn’t still be hyped about staying up all night. We had a lot of sleepovers rituals that we had to do according to Bella.

“So,” Bella commented as she painted my nails red, “any crushes?”

“What?”

Bella sighed, “You know, do you like anyone?”

I thought about it for a moment. “Isn’t that question a little unfair? I already know who your crush is. I can’t get anything out of it.”

Bella smiled maliciously, “You have to tell me your crush, it’s what people do at sleepovers, Liv.”

“Then I don’t have a crush.”

Bella’s thoughts screamed out at me, the new kid! Magnus! Magnus!

“And, no. I do not like Magnus.”

Bella pouted. “But you two would be so cute together. You guys would be that couple that bickers all the time about small things, so cute, Liv. That’s how Superman and Lois Lane started out, always bickering, and now they’re like the best power couple ever. And the fact that you can’t read him, I think it’s a sign. What fun would it be if you knew what was on your boyfriend’s mind 24/7?”

“Umm, it would be very fun.”

Bella groaned and tilted her head up. “You are a hopeless case, Olivia Chase, I hope you know that.”

I smiled, gladly dodging that question for now.

I had never really ever had a boyfriend before, so I never thought about how it would be if I could read him. Moving around a lot didn’t leave time for long-term crushes to develop, and I was mostly a loner whenever I switched schools.

(Plus, I feared that if I did get too attached, I would be moved to a new home and they would leave me forever. I wouldn’t be able to take it if someone I really liked left)

But it would really be boring if I could read my significant other. I mean, surprises? You can throw those out the door. I would know if they were planning anything like that the moment they thought about it. Keeping a secret gives a person a lot of pent up energy, and whenever they thought about it, their thoughts would be extra strong, breaking through any barriers I had created beforehand.

Maybe Bella did have a point.

“Fine, if you’re supposed to talk about boys during a sleepover, then let’s talk about Bryce.” I didn’t really want to talk about him, but if Bella wanted to and if it steered the conversation away from Magnus for now, I was fine with it.

Immediately a shirtless image of Bryce pierced through my brain from Bella. “Oh my god, when did you see Bryce shirtless?”

Bella blushed a deep red as the image replayed in her mind. She hated when memories popped to the front of her mind and I saw them immediately. “I kind of stayed a bit after school today, since I didn’t have to drive you home. I went back by the dance room to ask Mrs. Clancy a question about the new routine when Bryce and a couple of his friends walked out of the weight room, shirtless. It was a dream come true, trust me.”

I laughed, “So you were stalking him?”

“I was not!”

“Well, did you tell him that you saw him? Did you watch him for more than thirty seconds?” I questioned.

Bella frowned. “Well, he’s my boyfriend now, I should be allowed to see him shirtless anyways.”

“You’re avoiding the question, Bella.” I said in a sing-song voice.

“Shut up!” She wailed, stuffing her head into her pillows to avoid my accusing stare.

While our nails dried, we watched The Notebook, in which Bella cried more than once and I just marveled at how easier the whole story could’ve gone if her parents weren’t so prestigious.

Despite Bella’s enthusiasm on staying awake past midnight, she crashed at around eleven. She’s like a small child on a sugar high all day and then she sleeps like a rock when the sun goes down.

I myself couldn’t sleep. I was worried about having another dream. I still wasn’t sure if they were real or if I was crazy, and I would rather not be proven crazy. I mean, the voices are one thing, but having dreams about the new kid (who I may or may not have imagined doing magic earlier today) trying to kill me was a little far-fetched. I did not want to go crazy anytime soon.

By the time it was midnight, I had been staring up at the pink ceiling of Bella’s room for almost an hour. I had nothing to do and I was too afraid to sleep without answers.

I needed some answers now.

I quietly got out of my side of the bed, making sure to make as little noise as possible. I tiptoed over discarded clothes on the floor from our attempted fashion show after the movie and exited out into the hallway.

Mr. Sprinkles was waiting for me though.

Mr. Sprinkles and his big slobbery face stood in between me and Mr. Barnes’s study. There was no way to get there without awakening the loud and crazy-eyed animal.

I stepped lightly forward and Mr. Sprinkles twitched. I took another step and his legs started pawing at the air. I took one more giant step to the study door and Mr. Sprinkles sneezed. I waited a minute, but after it was clear he hadn’t woken up, I slowly turned the door knob and slid into the study.

I let go a giant breath that I’d been holding and turned on the lights to the lowest setting. Nothing had changed since I’d been here last, except there might’ve been more paperwork covering his table.

I started with the bookcase. Any or all of the books Mr. Barnes had collected could explain the Magnus situation. I hoped for my sake that at least one of the books here would. I needed to know what the hell was going on.

And then I saw something strange. There was an extra book in the shelf. Mr. Smith hadn’t been thinking of any new books when I arrived at the house, which was uncharacteristically strange of him if there was a new one on the shelf. He was always excited when he discovered new books that might help him figure out the mystery of me.

It was an old book leather bound with no title. I quickly flipped through it and saw that it was kind of like a Beastiary, or Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them. It sited mythical creatures and long descriptions of each.

Maybe he thought I was one of those creatures.

(The thought of being some mythical creature just stunned me for a moment there.)

I sat down in the ruined arm chair by the door and started to flip through the book until I got to the middle, where there were a couple missing pages. I flipped back to the beginning and the table of contents to look at which description was missing, but the table of contents was gone as well.

Someone didn’t want someone to know about one of these creatures.

This intrigued me. Was this book meant to be found by me? Was the missing entry what I was?

Or maybe they were just torn out by a little kid a long time ago. I’m not always the center of attention in these things. The book was old enough to have had a couple pages fall out over the years.

I flipped back through the book, looking for something that might give an inkling of what Magnus might be, or what I might be. I knew enough to know that he wasn’t normal, and my dreams supported that conclusion if they were true.

I stopped on a page that had a picture of a necklace with an amulet at the end. It looked almost exactly like the one Magnus wore, but in black and white I couldn’t see the color of the stone.

Special stones like this are called potentia Source, or power source. They are from where witches and warlocks obtain their power. A warlock cannot use another’s stone for each stone is only active with a specific warlock. If another were to use one that wasn’t their own, it would backfire tremendously.

Each stone comes with a protection against some form of magic or a built in alarm whenever other supernatural creatures are near. Each stone protects against only one other form of magic or magical creature.

But just the stone is not enough, for the warlock or witch still has to mutter a spell or incantation to activate the magic that lies within the potentia Source.

Be wary, for warlocks and witches carry these stone in many ways. They can be worn as a necklace, bracelet, or ring.

Destroy the potential Source, and you take away their ability to manipulate magic.

I remember Magnus muttering the Latin under his breath and his red amulet flashing. Was all that Latin actually a spell? Were his powers connected to that red amulet?

I also remembered his first day at school, the amulet under his shirt flashed a bright red when I went to touch it and he suddenly got all panicky and distant. Did he do some sort of magic? Is that how he knew I was the one Scar wanted?

Whoa. I can’t be thinking like that. The dream weren’t real. Magnus isn’t a warlock. I cannot be going crazy. It has to all be just one huge coincidence.

But what if it was all real? It would make sense. It would make total sense. The only way to make sense of any of this is to believe that it all happened and it all was real, but am I ready to admit that to myself?

Am I ready to say that stranger things exist in this world than a mind reading orphan?

And then the world went dark. I opened my eyes and I was no longer in the study. I was . . . I didn’t know where I was. Everything around me was white and had a blurry edge to it, like it didn’t really exist. I felt like I was in the scene from Harry Potter where he dies and ends up in a sort of ‘heaven’ before coming back to life.

Oh, God. Don’t tell me I actually just died or something.

“Sorry about that, but I couldn’t wait forever for you to fall asleep.”

I turned around and was faced with a woman. She looked to be around forty, but her eyes told me she might have been older. She had red hair like me, but it was longer and a darker shade. She had red marks around her wrists and ankles like she’d recently been tied down.

“Where am I?” I asked.

She laughed. “Where we are is in your consciousness. It is quite bare, isn’t it?”

My consciousness? Was she crazy?

She wasn’t the one having this dream, my thoughts replied back.

“But that doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that you understand who I am and who you are because of that.”

“Then who are you?”

“I’m . . .” Her voice trailed off as the room shook. She smiled at me and winked, “I’ll be back soon, just remember not to trust the boy. He’s . . .”

“Liv?” I was shook awake by Mr. Barnes.

It was now light outside and Mr. Barnes was standing above me, a concerned and fatherly expression on his face.

“Sorry, I must’ve fell asleep here.”

Mr. Barnes smiled. She must’ve had some dream, she looks spooked, he thought.

“I’m making breakfast downstairs, so you can come down when you’re ready. Bella’s already awake and watching Disney channel in her room.”

I nodded and tightened my grip around the book. The book! Bella’s father was very protective of his books, and he only ever let me see them with his supervision. Why was he not freaking out about me having it?

“What did you fall asleep reading?” he asked offhand. I handed him the book, he flipped through it and then shrugged. “It looks interesting enough, but remember not to fall asleep next time. You could seriously hurt your book here, it looks old.”

He handed me the book back and left the room, leaving me to question my dream.

Who was the red haired woman and why did I need to know her?

Was the boy she warned me of Magnus? And if it was, than why warn me of him?

And finally, was she the person I kept seeing my other dreams through? Scar told her she would never escape, and the red marks around her wrists and ankles suggested that she’d been kept prisoner somewhere.

And then an even more important questions came through my mind. When Magnus looked at her and said I wasn’t like her, it was because Scar was inferring I was. Did that mean the woman was a mind reader like me?

Was I no longer the only one?