Page 21 of Bonds of Magic (Vesperwood Academy: Incubus #3)

CORY

“ F eel the air on your face. Feel its coolness in your nostrils as you inhale. Feel it travel to your lungs, expand them. Feel it fill every inch of you.”

I cracked an eye open and looked at Rekha skeptically. We were standing in one of the alcoves in the first library, attempting our second lesson at her ‘ teaching ’ me magic. I’d gotten nowhere so far. Big surprise. I wished I could tell her, wished I could admit to someone what I really was.

But Rekha was the last person who should have that information, even if it would get me out of these torturous lessons.

“Eyes shut,” she snapped. “You can’t get in touch with your inner magical connection if you’re too focused on the outside world.”

“I can’t get in touch with it anyway,” I muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” I said with a sigh, closing my eyes. “Nevermind. I’ll try again.”

“Feel every corner of your body,” she said, picking up as if there’d been no interruption.

“Feel the tips of your fingers in the air. Feel the soles of your feet in your shoes. Feel yourself held by an energy that connects all things. Even inside of you. Feel that connection in the core of your being.”

I tried to do what she said, because what else was I going to do, stand here for an hour doing nothing?

But even if I hadn’t known it was pointless, it still wouldn’t have been easy.

How exactly do you feel the air on your fingertips in a room heated to seventy-two degrees?

It wasn’t cold or hot enough to feel anything.

And as for an energy that held all things, that connected to the core of me, I’d never felt anything like that. It must have been different for witches, because all I felt was growing embarrassment, plus a little thirst. I’d eaten a lot of fries at dinner.

Rekha’s instructions were more involved than Professor Kazansky’s had been, but they still boiled down to the same thing.

Empty your mind of distractions, concentrate on finding some connection inside of you to the net, the field, the fabric—the metaphor changed each time—of magic that surrounded you.

I wondered what it would be like to actually feel that.

“Feel the energy hum. Feel it grow. It wants to be used by you, wants to be shaped. Hold it in your hands and picture in your mind the ball of light you know it will be when you open your eyes. Feel your intention, feel the energy bend to your will. Feel that power, and say the word. Make it so.”

I held out my hands as instructed, trying to imagine a ball of light floating there.

“Light,” I whispered.

I opened my eyes. Nothing.

“Feel it,” Rekha instructed, her voice louder this time.

I sighed and closed my eyes, going through the motions and whispering ‘ light ’ again. But still, nothing. Not that I was surprised.

“Feel it, damnit!”

“I can’t feel anything,” I snapped back. “But I don’t think you yelling at me is going to help, do you? If you want me to empty my mind of emotions?”

“I wouldn’t have to yell if you would do what you’re supposed to. It’s not my fault you’re so incompetent.”

“Gee, thanks for the pep talk, coach.” I leaned back against a carved wooden column in between two bookcases. “I feel so much better now.”

“I don’t care how you feel. I care about success.”

“Mine, or yours?” I arched an eyebrow.

“Mine. Which is, quite unfairly, tied to yours at the moment.”

At least she was honest.

“Look, we’ve been trying for half an hour now,” I said, rubbing my forehead. I was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, despite not having done anything more strenuous than thinking really hard. “Don’t you think it’s time to call it a night?”

“I think that you’re trying to slack off because you don’t know how to work hard.” Her eyes were flinty. “But I’m not having that. By now, everyone knows I’m tutoring you in basic magic. Your failure reflects on me, and you are not going to ruin my reputation.”

“I’m pretty sure my failure rests on me, actually, but thanks for the solidarity, I guess.”

She gave me a withering look. “We’re going to keep working until the top of the hour. Stand up straight and we’ll try it again from the beginning.”

“It’s not going to work.”

“Well obviously it won’t if you have that attitude.” She put her hands on her hips.

“It’s not an attitude, it’s a conclusion based on observable facts. Can we at least try a different method this time?”

“This is the only method I know,” she said, “and it worked fine for me. My grandfather started teaching me when I was seventeen and I picked it up in no time.”

“I’m not you. Or your grandfather.”

“No. You’re hopeless.” She frowned. “I don’t understand why you can’t feel it. The magic. It’s right here.” She gestured around the alcove. “And in there, inside of you.” She pointed at my chest.

“I can’t even feel air in my lungs like you’re telling me to,” I complained. “How do you expect me to feel something like magic?”

“I don’t know. You just do.”

“No, but how .” I wanted to know what she actually meant. “How do you feel it? You specifically. What does feeling magic feel like to you?”

“It feels like magic.” She threw up her hands. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Try.”

She gave me a long look, then began to pace back and forth across the alcove. It wasn’t that big a space, and she could only take five steps before she had to turn back in the other direction.

“It’s like… It’s like this feeling in the air—”

“Don’t start with the air again.”

“Do you want me to actually explain it, or do you just want to complain?” she asked, stopping mid-stride.

I sighed and crossed my arms. “Fine. Sorry. Explain, please.”

She began walking again. “What I was going to say was that, it’s like how when you step outside in the morning, you can feel if it’s warm or cool based on how the air touches your skin.

Or how when you take a really hot shower and you breathe in, you can tell the air is humid.

Magic isn’t the air, but it’s like it’s a part of it, it’s another quality that you can sense. ”

That was actually kind of clear, even though it didn’t help me at all.

“But you keep saying I need to feel it inside me. How do you do that?”

“You just…do.” She shrugged. “You know how in chemistry, you learn that at the tiniest level, everything is made up of atoms? And even those atoms have smaller constituent parts? And they vibrate or hop around or do whatever they do, but there’s space between them?

So even though a table or the floor or your skin feels solid, it’s actually not? It’s actually full of tiny holes?”

I nodded. Chemistry hadn’t been my favorite subject in high school, but I got the gist of what she meant.

“To me, magic feels like it fills the spaces between the atoms. It’s everywhere, so it’s inside you too.

So when you can sense it in the air, and then connect that sense to what you feel inside yourself…

That’s when you realize suddenly that you can work with this thing, this energy.

You can shape it, because it’s part of you. ”

That sounded suspiciously like how Noah had described connecting to the dream world. But that actually made sense to me, because I could feel it. Magic, on the other hand…

“It’s the easiest thing in the world, once you can do it,” Rekha said.

“I mean, it’s really tiring. And more complicated spells take a lot of study and manipulation.

You have to build up your strength, and some people will never be very strong.

But connecting to it? It’s natural. It feels right in your body, and you feel right in your body because of it. ”

That sentence hit like a kick to the chest.

I’d never felt comfortable in my body. Most of the time, I preferred not to be aware of it at all. Even the times when my body felt good—I flushed, thinking of kissing Noah three days ago in his cabin—I still felt shame later. It was easier to ignore my body whenever I could.

God, that had been a stupid move. Kissing Noah. How dumb could I be? I could only blame it on the disorientation of seeing him leaning over me on the couch. The surprise of him touching my cheek. And the way he’d said my name. Like he needed me.

And it had felt so good. I wasn’t sure I was doing it right—the kissing part—and he’d been so still at first it was like kissing a statue.

But when I’d started to pull away, he drew me back in and it was just…

wild. Perfect. Intoxicating. Suddenly I got what people meant when they talked about feeling butterflies in their stomach.

He’d kissed me back. He’d wanted me. And I’d been crazy enough, been bold enough, to run my hands over his body, not even thinking about what I was doing, desperate to touch every inch of him. And I could have sworn that when I’d reached his waist, I’d felt his erection before he shoved me away.

But I must have been wrong. Or maybe I’d felt it, but it was an automatic reaction. From what he’d said, it was clear he didn’t actually want me .

That was what I got for feeling connected to my body. Ever since that night, I’d gone back to trying my best to disconnect from it entirely.

“Are there any other ways to get that kind of feeling?” I asked. “Of being aware of your body? Or connected to it?”

Ways that don’t involve throwing yourself at your combat professor and getting shot down so brusquely you come away bruised ?

Rekha cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“I think maybe I’m not very good at that part. At feeling my body at all. But maybe if I could work on that, it might help?”

It might give me something else to concentrate on, at least, other than ruminating about my stupidity like I’d been doing for the last three days.

“I don’t know. Take some deep breaths. Take a yoga class. Lie down on the grass or something.” She shook her head. “But do that later , because now, we have work to do. Close your eyes, and we’ll take it from the top.”

***

Things were largely the same a week later.