Illusory

"Like this?" I asked, and with a cry of "Referio!" knocked back the many steak knives that were repeatedly jabbing in the direction of my face like the spastic pecking of a dozen starved chickens. They spun through the air as if caught in a hurricane-strength wind and tumbled to the ground with a cacophony of metallic clangs.

"Yes," Van said with a broad grin. "Perfect."

"What next?" I asked as I turned to him, breathless but beaming. We'd been at this for a while now. He'd made me repeatedly practice the shield spell from the forest — "The most useful and the most complicated of all the defensive spells," he'd said, nodding wisely — then we'd switched gears to this spell, the reflecting spell, without any break at all, and I needed a break. You wouldn't think that magic would leave you gasping for air, but it did. I felt like I'd just run a marathon.

"You practice some more," he answered, his smile growing. It was filled with a mixture of pride and mocking. He knew I was doing well, but he wouldn't let me move on to the fun stuff so easily. "Do you know how to make the shield from the shield spell larger, perhaps large enough to defend more than one or two people?"

"Would I just...think about it as larger?" I asked hesitantly, brow furrowed in an unsure frown. I didn't know any of this, not like he did. Of course, that was why we were here, now, in his study. He was teaching me all the things I didn't know.

"For the most part, yes," he said, and I grinned at my own minor accomplishment. "You also have to will out more of your energy, though. Be prepared for the drain." I nodded once, sharply, and Van's silky-smooth murmur of "Subrigo" had the knives rising into the air once again.

They flew toward me, toward us, and I imagined a larger yellow wall than before, squeezing my eyes shut to help sharpen the image — yards instead of mere feet, miles of shimmering yellow like spun gold. "Contego!" I cried, pushing more power from my mind with a feeling of flowing mud. I felt a whoosh of cool air and heard several loud pings, and when I opened my eyes, the wall before me stretched from one end of the room to the other, the yellow swirling slowly in the dim light. It was thinner, so much thinner that a couple of knives had managed to get their still-wriggling tips through a couple of inches, but for the most part, it appeared to be a sturdy barrier.

"Did I...Did I do it?" I asked, once again hesitant to hear the answer. I turned my face to Van's, and he smiled down at me.

"For the most part, yes," he said again, and the hovering knives dropped to the floor. The two that had poked their points through fell when I allowed the wall to disappear with a second rush of air, breaking the flow of energy from my mind to leave a heavy stillness in my head. "Just a little bit more power, and it would have been perfect. It was certainly impressive for your first try, though. Certainly."

"Thank you," I said with a happy bounce, a grin taking over my entire face.

"Now," he began, and my smile vanished at the sly gleam to his eye, "I want you to levitate those knives."

"I thought we were supposed to be using defensive spells, not offensive spells," I said, confused and just a tad bit worried. That expression was just not comforting. At all.

"This one's going to be a little mixture of both," he answered. When I opened my mouth to question his thinking further, he stopped me with a simple, "You'll see. Just levitate the knives."

"How?" I asked after staring at the cutlery for a moment. I remembered the word for the spell, but Van usually told me the rest of what I had to do. With the shield spell, I had to imagine a wall and will my aura and energy into the air; with the reflecting spell, I had to imagine the general direction that I wanted the object to go in; with all of the appearance spells he'd taught me during the first month of our partnership, I had to vividly picture the outcome that I was aiming for. This spell had to entail something of that sort, but what was it?

"Exactly how you would think," he told me before I'd had too long to wonder. "Imagine it. Guide the knives with the pictures in your mind. Will it to be as you desire." I gave him a single nod of understanding, then turned my gaze to the waiting knives, still strewn about the floor.

I took in a deep, slow breath, letting it out with a powerful shout of "Subrigo!" The knives instantly lurched into the air, but unlike when Van controlled them, they wobbled about unsteadily, as if shifted by some heavy draft that I couldn't feel. I urged them forward in my mind, and they responded by floating slowly forward, still trembling violently.

Suddenly, they became still, and no matter how much I willed them on, they wouldn't leave that spot. "Now," Van began matter-of-factly, and I really should've known that it was his doing, "try to take them from me."

I glared at the knives as I urged them forward once more, seeing them flying through the air toward Van in my mind; but no matter how hard I pushed or pulled or pictured, they wouldn't do more than wiggle a little bit and grow still again. I grunted and grit my teeth as I tried again, the energy spindling from my mind like liquid wool, but still, nothing but a twitch. I tried again, then again, until I was panting, gasping for air, breathless; I wanted nothing more than to go take a nap. You know, after I punched Van in the face for making this so hard for me.

"Can't do it?" he said after those long moments of struggle. He must have noticed that I'd let go of the knives. I shook my head solemnly, and he shrugged. "I didn't expect you to. I've developed my magic muscles much further than you have, so to speak. You didn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of getting them out of my hold."

"So why did you make me try?" I asked bitterly, dropping to the floor where I stood and sprawling on my back on the soft carpeting. I still couldn't quite catch my breath.

"I wanted to see how strong you really were," he asked, the knives dropping to the floor beside me when he released his hold of them. He sat down beside me, leaning back on his elbows with his long legs stretched out before him, and I was surprised he'd deigned to sink to my level, sitting like a commoner on the floor. He was so very refined, after all.

"And I wasn't strong enough for your liking, I'm sure," I said dryly, but he shook his head.

"You were stronger than I expected, actually," he said, nudging one of the knives with a socked toe. "You almost took them from me a couple of times. Almost."

"Really?" I asked excitedly, sitting bolt upright next to him.

He turned to me, an eyebrow quirked in mild surprise at my sudden burst of joy. "Almost," he repeated. "You have a knack for this sort of thing, it seems. I'm sort of surprised you didn't come from a magically inclined family like my own."

"I probably just got it from being around you so much," I said with a shrug, slowly lying back down on the carpet. "I've watched you work a ton of magic. I had to have picked something up by now."

"This isn't the type of thing that you learn through observation," he said, and lay down beside me, his arms folded behind his head to create a pillow of sorts. His eyes rested on the white ceiling above — thoughtful, ponderous, and I vaguely wondered if it was me on his mind. "This is something you're either born with or you work your ass off for."

"Were you born with it?" I asked, letting my head roll to rest on my cheek, my eyes on Van's calm face.

"Of course," he answered, turning his head just enough to see me out of the corner of his eye. "It runs in my family and has for centuries."

"How strong were you when you started?" I asked, genuinely curious. We never talked about how he had started out or when he'd started out or anything that happened before he got into the stage magician business.

He shrugged, his gaze drifting back to the ceiling. "Strong for my age, I guess. My parents started teaching me when I was four. It was mostly Latin lessons back then, but they occasionally let me try my hand at the actual casting on the weekends, when they wanted to show me off at their next dinner party or magicians' get-together or whatever it was they would be going to during the following week."

"Was it fun?" I asked, rolling onto my side and resting an elbow on the ground, my head lying on my palm. I was close enough to touch him now, but I refrained, even as his jaw clenched angrily.

"Not at all," he answered flatly. "I was treated like a circus act more than a child or a student."

I frowned. "I'm sorry," I said softly, finally going with the impulse to rest a hand gently on his cheek. His eyes jerked to me, slightly widened in shock, and, feeling my cheeks beginning to burn, I started to pull my hand back. But he caught it before I could retreat, a hand resting over mine and pinning it against his warm skin.

"It's not your fault," he whispered, searching my eyes for something that I could never fathom, and he was suddenly on his side, his body pressed to mine as he gently kissed me. I nearly fell into it, nearly let myself go, nearly stopped my raging thoughts and enjoyed it, but I just couldn't do it. A hand on his chest, I pushed him away, looking him sternly in the eyes. His eyes widened.

"No," I said simply. "No. We're not going to play this game. I don't know what it is you feel for me, and I don't think you know, either. So until you get your shit straight, no more of this," I explained with a quick waggle of my finger between the two of us.

He sighed, annoyance written all over his face. "I do know what I feel, and I would be even more sure of it if you would let this" — here, he mocked my little gesture, and I scowled at him and considered biting his finger off — "go on for a while."

"Well, then, take me out on a date or something first," I suggested. "Or let's discuss our feelings instead of you just assuming that I want to kiss you."

"You don't want to kiss me?" he asked, skeptical.

"Well...yeah, I do, but that's not the point," I said quickly, becoming more and more flustered by the second, my face burning ever hotter. "I just think we should take things slowly before we get to the kissing and the touching and the boob grabbing and such. We should actually talk."

"We've been talking for months," he sighed, rolling back into a lying position on the floor, his eyes once again on the ceiling. The ceiling didn't say no to his advances, so he probably liked it much more than he liked me right now.

"Not like that," I said. "Not romantically."

"Doesn't it count for something?" he asked, his eyes sliding back to my face for a short moment before returning to the ceiling. "We learned the same things about each other that we would have learned through going on dates and talking romantically." The word was cold, mocking, but I let it go.

"You don't get it, do you?" I asked, sighing as I rolled onto my back as well. There was no point in looking at him anymore, no point in wallowing in his scowl.

"What is there to get?" he asked, and I felt his eyes on me once more. "You said that we should talk; we've talked. What more is there?"

"You showed no interest in me before," I said. "When I flirted, you never flirted back. When I even came close to touching you, you moved away. Whenever I wanted to talk more in-depth about our relationship, you changed the subject. You weren't doing anything to make me feel like you wanted me, even though I made it more than obvious that I wanted you."

"You have a flirtatious personality, Ember," he said flatly, and I could almost feel his growing ire, a heat in the air brought about by his dark glare. "You acted toward me like you act toward everyone else you've ever spoken to except maybe your mother. I didn't know you were actually interested. I couldn't."

"So you couldn't even play along?" I asked, my own rage growing. I rolled back onto my side and glared right back at him, unwilling to let him overpower me in this. "You couldn't, oh, I don't know, take a freaking chance and actually show that you might want to pursue a relationship with me?"

"You know that's not how I am, Ember," he growled, his eyes boiling pools of hatred in a lovely olive green. "I don't pursue people. I don't touch people or flirt with them or talk about my feelings with them. It's just not how I am."

"So, instead, you choose to spring all of this on me out of nowhere and expect me to believe you?" I nearly shouted, pushing myself onto my knees so that I could look down at him. "Kiss me like we already had something without saying a damn word? Try to get me into bed with you without even a half-assed attempt at romance? Sloppy, messy, nonsensical, foolish — is that more you, Van? Is that how you are?"

"Why can't I just feel and do without having to explain?!" his voice raised in the first passionate shout I'd ever heard him utter. He rose to his knees as well, now scowling down at me from above.

"Because when men do without saying a damn thing, you don't know if they feel anything!" I screamed right back, leaning into his face now, into his space. "You end up wasting weeks with them because you just happen to be a good lay who believes, stupidly, that actions speak louder than words!"

"I said, God damn it!" he growled, screamed, roared all at once. "I said! I told you that I felt something for you! I said it! So why won't you believe me?!"

"Because you didn't say it soon enough!"

"So there's a fucking time limit on these things?!" My face blanked, and I could only stare at him for a moment. I'd never heard him say "fuck" before, not once in the three months that I'd known him. He must have been really pissed off.

"No," I said, my tone dropping to a conversational level and losing its anger, "there's not. There's more of a time frame. This feels too sudden now, but a month ago, it would have been fine. If you were really interested, I think you would have said something sooner. Now, I think you're just confused."

He rolled his eyes. They were still smoldering softly with rage, but they were no longer filled with a fire from the deepest, darkest, hottest depths of Hell. It was almost easy to look into them now. "I'm not confused," he said shortly, his words clipped, rushed out one right after the other. "I'm never confused. I know what I feel, whether I told you about it in the right time frame or not. You can't tell me that I don't."

"No, I can't," I said calmly, becoming somewhat resigned now that I knew this fight wasn't really going to get us anywhere. "But I can tell you how I feel about your supposed feelings, and I don't trust them. If you want to have something with me, you're going to have to work at it a bit harder than this. Otherwise, back off and let me do what I want, including going on dates with other men."

"Like Rick?" he asked, his tone positively scathing now.

"Yes, actually," I answered as I got to my feet. Somehow, my voice remained even, though I wanted to yell at him for bringing the man into the conversation and for once again acting like he could control me, like we already had some existing relationship instead of this maybe, maybe not bullshit we had going on. "Just like Rick. Now, I'm going to go get a snack. We've been working for a while, and I think I need a food break." I started for the door, saying over my shoulder, "Meet me in the kitchen if you still want to talk. Otherwise, just let me know when you want to start training me some more." I paused in the doorway, my hand resting gently on the handle, and without looking back, I added softly, "If you still want to train me, anyway." I turned the knob and walked out into the hallway, into a gust of cool air that was nothing like the tense room I'd just escaped. I closed the door softly behind me.

Instead of going to the kitchen like I said I was going to, I wandered down the hall to my bedroom. I didn't plan to stay long; I just wanted to check my phone for any new messages — Okay, I totally hoped I had something from Rick. I headed to my nightstand where the phone still lay beside the clock and, flipping it open, discovered that I did indeed have messages. Several, actually. Two were text messages from Jenna, one was a missed call from my mom, and a single voice mail was from Rick. Naturally, I ignored the texts and call from my mother for the moment and hurriedly navigated to the voice mail. My palms began to grow sweaty with anticipation, and by the time I had my phone to my ear with Rick's voice rumbling out, I could barely keep a hold of the damned thing.

"Hey, Ember, it's me," he said, then chuckled softly. "Of course, you already know that. Caller ID and all." He cleared his throat so loudly that it startled me, then he went on in a more serious tone. "I'm pretty sure that my friend's magically appearing new collection of books are filched goods, probably from your friend. Do any of these sound familiar?" He rattled off a few titles, most of which were in Latin and recited in a shaky, uncertain voice, many of them being stumbled through and totally butchered along the way. But with each hackneyed title, my eyes grew a little wider. Every single one had been mentioned by Van at one point or another. They were almost certainly the books that we were after.

"Sorry if I messed those up," Rick's voice laughed through the phone, the switch from serious Latin to lighthearted English almost jarring as excitement and dread warred within me. "Well, if any of them sound familiar, gimme a call and let me know. And I guess, even if they don't sound familiar, gimme a call, anyway, so I don't start barking up the wrong tree with my friend. Talk to you soon, I hope." And then, his voice vanished, replaced by a feminine automated one that left me feeling cold and empty as it carefully recited the message options. If you would like to repeat this message, please press…

I left my room with my open phone still in hand, nearly jogging down the hallway to Van's study. I burst in, pleased to find that he hadn't left to go sulk in his room or take a sulky shower or whatever it was he did when he was alone. He was picking up knives, and he looked none too pleased.

Knives plus an angry Van. I feel safe.

"Hey, uh, I know I said I'd meet you downstairs, but I think you should listen to this," I said, then restarted the message and held the phone to his ear. He didn't acknowledge me or refuse, but I could tell that he was listening. His face soured when he heard Rick's voice, but he didn't pull away. His face completely emptied of emotion after a few seconds, and I figured that he was listening to the man's terribly mangled Latin.

"Those are my books," he said, turning to regard me with a shock-widened stare, and I pulled the phone away and flipped it shut with a snap.

"I thought so," I said with a nod. "What do we do now, then?"

"You call Rick back and tell him to keep an eye on his friend." He turned a knife in his hand, an odd glint to his eye that had me preparing to get stabbed at any given moment. "We'll be up there in three days. We just have to finish your training first."