“Brilliant,” Mary-Beth breathed out.
I opened my eyes, and there it was. It looked like any normal pencil again.
Cautiously, Nathaniel grabbed it by the eraser. The second his fingers touched it, it looked crystal clear and glowed blue again.
“What does it look like to you?” Nathaniel asked, looking around.
“Like a glowing, blue wand,” Mary-Beth said with a smile of amazement.
“It’s a wand,” Borden concluded in agreement.
I just smiled at Nathaniel and nodded my head.
“Now we need to test it,” Nathaniel said, holding it firmly in his grasp. He turned for the bookshelves and the boxes discarded in the corner. He wrapped the sleeve of his shirt around the wand, and instantly, it looked like a normal pencil again.
Nathaniel touched it to the spine of the fire-starting book, and it faintly glowed blue, and looked somewhat opaque.
“Not the same reaction as touching an actual mage,” I said. “But still a change.”
Borden grabbed a handful of the books from the boxes and set them on the shelf next to the fire-starting book.
Nathaniel touched the eraser to the spines.
And it still looked exactly like a pencil.
He looked back at all of us in awed wonder.
He reached over and touched it to the book on altering and stealing memories.
Once more it changed, turning crystalline and blue.
“It works,” Nathaniel said breathily. “It works.”
“We need to test it on a person next,” Borden said.
“Come on,” I said, gathering up my things. “We’re going to my house. We can test it on my dad.”
“Won’t he wonder why we’re acting like lunatics?” Mary-Beth questioned as she gathered her things as well.
“Professor Bell knows everything,” Nathaniel explained as he carefully slipped the wand into his breast pocket. “We thought he deserved to know, considering what happened to his wife.”
We hadn’t told either of them what that meant. So on the walk over, I got to explain the whole painful backstory of how my mother disappeared. How the police thought my father did it, then had no explanation. And how all of us, Nathaniel, my father, and myself thought she disappeared because of something to do with magic.
I explained how I couldn’t keep it from my father. How Nathaniel and I told him everything.
Neither of them could complain. What would they say?
So, they didn’t hesitate when we got to my front door and I walked in.
Dad was in his usual place by the window, reading a book. I couldn’t tell what kind it was, but it didn’t matter. He read them all.
“I was wondering when you’d be getting home so I could go to bed,” Dad said as he lowered his reading glasses. And then he watched as the other three marched in. “I see you’ve brought company. Nathaniel.” Dad nodded to him in greeting.
“Arthur,” Nathaniel acknowledged back.
“Dad, this is Borden Stewart, who I was telling you about,” I explained. Borden gave a nod.
“And Mary-Beth Foster,” Dad said, recalling her name easily, even though he’d had thousands of students over his career. “It was a pleasant surprise to hear you were one of the select few.”
Mary-Beth just blushed and smiled, and for the first time, didn’t seem to know what to say.
“So, we’ve been working on something, and we need to test it,” I said, looking at Dad again. And my appreciation for him grew tenfold. I knew he’d do it, even though all we had to do was touch him. I knew he wouldn’t hesitate, and I knew how excited he was going to be. “Will you be our guinea pig?”
He looked nervous, because we hadn’t explained anything. But he shrugged. “Of course.”
Nathaniel handed me the pencil and I took it with my sleeve pulled down over my hand so I wouldn’t touch it with my skin. It looked like any ordinary pencil.
I extended it and touched the eraser to the back of my dad’s hand.
It stayed a pencil.
I then withdrew it and grabbed it with my other hand.
It glowed brilliant blue and crystal.
Dad jumped back just a little, his eyes wide as he looked at the glowing wand.
“It works,” I said in a breath, a wild smile spreading on my face as I looked back at the others. “We did it!”
Not a single one of them contained their excitement. There were whoops and cheers and smiles.
“We need to make more,” Nathaniel said, beaming down at me with excitement. “We need three others. And then we need to go browsing at Alderidge.”
Chapter Eight
We created more wands, and the very next day, we all met in the library after our classes.
“I work till nine,” Nathaniel said, looking around at the others. “I’ll be testing all afternoon with the books that come in. You all hit the ones that are on the shelves. You find anything, you take it to the McCallum Room, and we’ll all go over everything tonight.”
That sounded perhaps a little too hopeful to me. I wasn’t sure we’d find anything at all. But still, I gave a nod, and broke off with Mary-Beth and Borden.
“I’ll take the fiction on this side,” Borden said, nodding his head in one direction.
“I’ve got the non-fiction on the shelves,” Mary-Beth said, nodding to the shelves on the other side.
“I’ll make my way through the rooms,” I said.
We disbursed.
There were six rooms, all named after families that donated money or other significant things to the University. I made my way to the far room first, the Eidem room.
There weren’t very many books in here, even though it was a large room. Two large couches faced each other with a big coffee table in the center. A big fireplace sat at the opposite wall from the door, an ugly painting of a boat at sea hanging above it.
My hands were gloved as I pulled my wand from my pocket and went to the first shelf. I looked around to be sure no one was looking. They weren’t—rarely did anyone ever use this room.
With nervous anticipation, I tapped the eraser of the pencil to the spine of the first book. Nothing happened, so I slid over to the next book.
On and on, I lightly dragged the eraser over the spines of books. I went through an entire bookshelf of them, and my wand remained looking like a pencil. I moved on to the next shelf, and then the next. One by one, I watched my wand intently, waiting for it to glow a faint blue and turn crystalline.
I didn’t expect it. Really, I didn’t. I knew the odds were nearly zero, but still, I felt my stomach sink in disappointment when I came to the end of the last shelf in that room, and not a single book had revealed itself to me.
But I pushed it aside and moved on to the Clark room.
Book after book, and no glowing wand.
I shifted over to the Weir room. Nothing.
I felt like I was starting to go a little cross-eyed by the time I got to the Gavin room. All of the spines were starting to blur together, looking exactly the same. I told myself to pay close attention. I might just zone out and move on too quickly, not realizing when the wand began to glow blue.
I stepped into the Foster room and started running my wand along the spines.
My back was starting to protest a little with all of the up and down and bending over. I was getting frustrated. My hope fizzled out.