Semua Bab Leesa's Advent: Bab 271 - Bab 280

Leesa could not remember ever being happier than she had been these last two days alone with Rave in New Hampshire. She had been overjoyed, of course, when her mom had been cured of the grafhym bite and when her brother had been released from the vampire caverns, but those were different. They were momentous events, to be relished and cherished, particularly as both of them recovered from their long traumas and slowly returned to normal. Her joy in both cases was a reaction to the wonderful occurrences.Her time with Rave was happiness of a different kind. So steady and constant was her elation that she felt almost as if someone had opened one of her veins and somehow inserted an intravenous drip of vitamin Joy. Except for hour or two each day when they separated so she could practice her magic and Rave could work on Rammugul, they were together constantly, undistracted by anyone or anything. She fell asleep in his loving arms and awoke the same way. During the day, he carrie

The three agents watched her closely, expecting some kind of denial, but looking for signs she could be lying. Judy’s response surprised them.“Why yes, I did. Many years ago. Nobody ever believed me, though. How on earth did you know?”“Just a feeling I had,” Rome said, brushing off her role in detecting the magic. “Tell me about it, please.”“It happened more than eighteen years ago, when I was pregnant with Leesa. I got bitten by a vampire—a one-fanged vampire.”“You were bitten by a grafhym?” Smith asked, surprised.“Yes, by a one-fang, while I was hiking in Sleeping Giant Park. You know about one-fanged vampires?”“I’ve heard of them, yes,” Smith replied. “After all, the supernatural is our business.”Judy smiled a weak smile. “I wish you’d been around back then,” she said. “Maybe someone would

Leesa sat on the cavern floor, her back resting against the rock wall, about twenty-five feet from the cave’s entrance. Normally, she wouldn’t be sitting in the darkness on such a beautiful afternoon, but she needed the dimness right now. Rave had just left to fetch Dominic, so this was the perfect time for her to experiment with a trick she had been thinking about trying for some time. With her magic working so well, she thought she just might be able to pull it off. If she did, she would have a fun surprise in store for Rave when he got back.She warmed up with an ordinary illumination spell. She had gotten so good at this spell that it took her no more effort than flicking the tip of a lighter to create her light. Once the golden glow was hovering above her right palm, she held out her left hand. With a single thought, she made the light leap from her right hand to her left. Technically, it didn’t really leap—she simply replaced the sphere above her

Dominic smiled proudly down at Leesa from his perch up on a rock ledge four feet above the ground, where she had deposited him with her telekinesis just a moment before. Although he had used his levitation spell to lighten his weight by half to increase her chances of succeeding, he was still pleased by Leesa’s performance. His objective had been for her to gain an image of herself lifting a person with her thoughts and then putting him down in a place of her choosing. Leesa’s smile was proof that she had done just that.“Well done,” Dominic said.Leesa’s smile widened. “Thanks. One of these days I’m going to lift you without you having to lighten yourself.” She turned and looked at Rave, who was sitting cross-legged on the ground, watching her practice. “You hear that, mister? Once I master that little trick, you’re going to have to behave yourself, or I’ll be moving you around with just a look.”

Sitting cross-legged on her sleeping mat, Leesa thought she was as ready as she would ever be to try to summon a dream about the xenorians and her mom. With the aid of her illumination spell, she had spent almost an hour pouring over the dream chapters in her book of magic. Even after an hour, her magical light had shown no sign of weakening, but she had pretty much memorized every word about dreams in the book, so she let the light fade out. She hadn’t needed it to practice the visualization techniques described in the chapters.For the past two hours, she had been working on those techniques and now felt comfortable and confident with them. There was just one problem: despite the late hour, her body and brain were so keyed up she didn’t think she was going to be able to fall asleep. Talk about a Catch-22, she thought—without sleep there would be no dreams, but her urgency to dream was preventing her from sleeping.She turned toward Rave, who had spe