Living with Your Past Selves (Spell Weaver) Read Online Free PDF Page B

have called if they turned out to be alive. Anyway, Stan, even groggy as he apparently was, would certainly have noticed if his ever-hovering mother was not around. And there was still the problem of the shifter, who was running around loose at school, with at least one particularly dangerous piece of equipment.
    The bell starting class rang, but I ignored it. I couldn’t chance the shifter getting away with what it had stolen. I moved down the hall as stealthily as I could; even at that, I had to convince a couple of teachers that I was supposed to be out of class. As I looked around, I tried to figure out how to find the shifter. It hadn’t waited for me in the nurse’s office, which suggested its mission the whole time had been to steal from me. Its mission accomplished, it would probably get as far away as it could with its loot. Logical enough, but what good did any of that do me unless I knew in what direction the thing was moving or at least what its destination was?
    The Celts practiced a number of methods of divination in ancient times, but most of them were impractical right now. My best option was to get outside and look for signs in nature. The high school, also a Spanish colonial revival structure, featured an enormous courtyard in the center that was almost more forest than courtyard, but enclosed nature like that wouldn’t do me as much good as the real outdoors. Anyway, more people could potentially spot me, especially from the second floor windows, if I was out in the courtyard, and I didn’t want to have to magic every adult on campus. There was also a wooded area near the back entrance of the campus. It wasn’t a real forest, but an artifice of the developers. Nonetheless, the trees were real enough, and perhaps they would speak to me if I were patient. Patience was in short supply at the moment, but what choice did I really have?
    I got out of the back entrance of the school, across the parking lot, and almost ran toward the “woods.” In their own way, they looked nearly as out of place as the ubiquitous palm trees, but even I had to admit they looked as if they had grown there naturally, though some types of trees were not native to the area. Doubtless they, like the palms, had been brought in full grown.
    As soon as I hit the edge of the woods, I reached out and touched each tree in turn, trying to hear any message that it might have for me. I was expecting that this process could take hours, but the third tree I touched actually did speak to me, though not quite with the message I had anticipated.
    “HE’S HERE!” it shrieked, and the wind seemed to echo the cry. My body tensed into combat readiness, and I crept slowly around the next turn in the path.
    “Stan” was indeed there. Having tossed my guitar case down roughly on the ground, he was rummaging through the fencing equipment, tossing the foils on the ground one by one, clearly disappointed so far. Without hesitation I lunged for the guitar case. I was quick, but “Stan” was quicker, noticing my presence, charging in my direction and smacking me aside before I could get within ten feet of the instrument. I rolled and was back on my feet almost before I hit the ground. However, “Stan’s” blow had been much harder than Stan, or probably even Dan Stevens, could have administered, and it left me a little wobbly. Indeed, if the thing had pressed its advantage, I might have been dead, but instead it made a grab for the last foil in the bag and then gave a triumphant, un-Stanlike scream as it raised high above its head, not a fencing foil, but a real sword, its blade flashing in the sunlight as the last bits of the foil illusion that had surrounded it melted away.
    Why I felt the need for a real sword when I had never faced a serious threat until today, I never knew, but it is said, “A sword always finds a wielder,” and this one must have called out to me hard enough to get me to manipulate my parents into vacationing in Europe.