Page 29 of The Mating Fire
The spider vanished, replaced by the child. Sonia frowned. “I tried to make myself into a tiny spider to hide better, but I can’t do that. My thoughts go all over. Does that ever happen and you can’t control your magick?”
“All the time,” Harper said dryly.
“What kind of magick do you have? I can do all sorts of things.”
Harper stared at her hands. “I think I can make blue flames come out of my hands. I’m still uncertain if this is some kind of weird dream and I’ll find myself back at home, waking up in my bed.”
“Let me see. Please! Before you wake up. I wanna see your powers. Drust can make blue flames come out of his fingers, but he’s a dragon. Are you a dragon?”
Good question. Harper went over to the fireplace. “Stand back,” she warned the girl.
She imagined fire coming out of her fingertips. Nothing. Harper licked her lips and tried again.
“Sometimes it helps to think you’re in trouble. My magick works best if I do,” Sonia encouraged.
“I’m in real trouble,” she muttered as she turned around. “I mean…”
Streams of blue fire hissed out of her fingertips, hitting the little girl. Harper screamed and ran over to her.
“Oh no, I’m so sorry, I warned you to stay back, I have to get Jared, you’re hurt…”
But Sonia stood before her, not even a burn mark upon her horrible clothing. She shrugged. “It must be coldfire. Coldfire doesn’t hurt me because I’m immortal like mommy and daddy.”
Coldfire? Harper examined her hands. “How can fire be cold?”
“It’s not really cold, it’s a magick fire that burns everything in its path, especially mortals. Only Drust can produce it and he’s an immortal wizard. You must be a being of great magick! Try it on the furniture.”
As the child sat near the bed, Harper glanced at a high back chair near the fireplace, thought about Jared’s sensual suggestion of tying her up, and flung out her hands. Blue flames shot out of her fingers, enveloping the chair. It burned for a moment and then nothing was left but ash.
Sonia clapped her hands. “Wicked! Do it again!”
“I don’t think so. Or there won’t be any place left for me to sit.” Harper stared at her hands, still in disbelief. How had shecome to possess such amazing power, when only immortals had that claim?
Immortals? Now she was beginning to believe in this dream/nightmare.
The letter from her birth parents surely had not been her imagination, nor the large, imposing man who delivered it.
“You say only this Drust can do something like this?” she asked Sonia.
“I think so. Though Caderyn might, ‘cause he’s the eldest and the scariest of the wizards.” Sonia grinned. “But he doesn’t scare me ‘cause he likes to put me on his shoulders and give me rides through his castle. It’s more fun than learning.”
Curious, she leaned against the fireplace. “What do you know of Jared? And this castle?”
Sonia suddenly looked impish. “Things I shouldn’t say. Anyway, I’m not even supposed to be here. I have lessons with Tristan on conjuring poisonous insects.” She tilted her head. “Or was it how not to conjure them? Daddy says I need to learn to control my powers better so I don’t accidentally hurt anyone. But I do love playing with spiders.”
“Spiders are not insects.” At least here she felt on familiar territory. “They eat insects. Spiders are arachnids.”
Sonia’s blue eyes grew round. “You know about them?”
“I’m a scientist, well, I was studying to be one, before I landed here.”
“Really?” Sonia propped her pointed chin upon two small fists. “If I conjure myself into a spider, can you tell me what kind of spider I am?”
“My specialty is rocks,” Harper quickly added, before the little girl turned into a black widow.
“What kind of rocks?”
“Volcanic. I’m studying pyroclastic flows and past eruptions to help predict when volcanoes will erupt in the future to give people time to escape the danger.”
