Lance flubbed it. I mean, that sucker wasn’t even in the same hemisphere as the wastebasket. I grinned in triumph at Lance.
Beside him, Eli picked up another tennis ball, and then with a casual gesture sent it soaring across the room and right into the basket as easily as if he had used magic.
Show-off. Go figure that the new guy, the I-can’t-even-do-magic guy, would pass the quiz when I didn’t.
After class, Mr. Ankil asked me to stay behind. I waited near his desk while the other students left, trying not to look nervous about whatever I must’ve done to warrant an after-class lecture.
Mr. Ankil said, “Lance picks on you a lot, doesn’t he?”
I blinked at him, surprised. “Well, yeah, but Lance picks on everybody.”
“So I’ve noticed. I went to school with guys like him. Wizards have a tendency to be full of themselves, arrogant to the point of stupid.”
I grinned in total agreement.
Ankil grinned back. “How ’bout I show you a little trick you can use on the trickster?”
“Okay.”
He turned and walked to the closet, pulling out one of the head-and-hand dummies. The dummy was a mannequin of a man’s head and upper body that we sometimes used to practice more difficult skills. Ankil set the dummy on his desk and wedged a pencil into one of its hands.
“I was picked on a lot when I was a kid,” Ankil said. “Shocking, I know, considering how cool I am now.” He winked. “But seriously, psychics are often regarded as lower on the food chain than other witchkind.”
I nodded. There were all kinds of tiers and levels among magickind based on their obsession with perceived power.
Ankil said, “The attitude stems from the belief that because mind-magic must obey the laws of physics, it is somehow weaker than spells that only obey the laws of the spell itself and nothing else.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Yep, and utter nonsense. Mind-magic simply requires more practice, and a basic understanding of physics. When you’ve got that, you can do lots of things with it that spells can’t. For example, you can use what I like to call the ‘snatch-and-smack.’”
He faced the dummy then flicked his wrist. The pencil flew out of its hand, spun like a boomerang, and hit the dummy in the forehead.
“Did you see what I did there?” Ankil asked.
“Not really.”
“Aha, but that’s why it’s so effective. As you well know, The Will wouldn’t let you use magic to perform any act of violence against someone else. The Will can anticipate nearly all of our actions, both physical and magical. But if you break up the action, The Will can’t guess your next move or prevent the laws of physics from doing their part. What I did was yank the pencil out but not hold on to it. As soon as it started to fall, I struck the tip of it, causing it to spin and then wham!”
He demonstrated the move again.
I watched more closely this time, catching on. “So it’s like serving the ball in tennis or volleyball.”
“A little, I suppose. But it’s very tricky. You have to learn the right amount of force to get the object to move how you want it to when you hit it. Very effective if done right. Especially if the object in question is, say, a wizard’s wand.”
“Oh,” I said, brightening. “Are you’re saying I can use this on Lance the next time he does something crappy?”
Ankil smiled. “I’m not giving you permission to do anything. I’m simply pointing out that it can be done. And trust me, nothing unnerves a wizard more than losing his wand. Or being attacked by it.”
I laughed at the mental image of Lance being chased down the hallway with his wand pelting him repeatedly from behind.
“So,” Mr. Ankil said, “I want you to practice this technique for me as extra credit. Master it and you’ll have a guaranteed B minimum for the quarter. Deal?”
“Deal.”
I left Ankil’s class a moment later. He was the coolest teacher ever.
But once again, my joy was only temporary as Eli was in my math class and then in alchemy after that. I was going to have to see him every day, all day long. Not to mention the thrice-weekly dream-sessions.
By the time I reached the girls’ locker room before gym, I was feeling completely dejected. “Why are they doing this to me?” I asked Selene as we changed into our gym clothes.
“Who?”
“The school administrators, the Magi Senate, the powers that be.” I threw up my hands. “Everyone.”
Selene sighed sympathetically. “Maybe it has something to do with the way the dream-seer stuff works. Maybe you’ve got to spend a lot of time with the person to get a feel for it.”
“Sure, like spending my nights with the guy won’t be enough.” That sounded dirtier than I intended, and Selene grinned as she pulled her blue-and-gray Arkwell T-shirt over her head. The image of our school mascot, Hank the Hydra, smiled at me with all seven heads from the emblem on the center of the shirt.
“You could always ask your Nightmare trainer,” Selene said.
“I suppose so.”
Not that it would change anything.
I finished tying the knot on my sneaker and stood up. “What I don’t get is why they have him taking magic-based courses. He’s not capable of doing any magic, right?”
Selene tugged on the front of her T-shirt, making sure it wasn’t too tight. “Well, it’s not that uncommon. There are halfkinds at this school that can’t do magic, either, but they’re still required to take the same courses. They just have to do a lot more textbook work and written exams than the rest of us, and all practical examinations are simulated. I think the idea is there’s some value in learning the theory of magic even if you’ll never use it.”