Free Divided against Yourselves (Spell Weaver) by Bill Hiatt

compared to, well…pretty much any of my friends except Stan. I had always had two settings: pale and burned. I guessed it was the Celtic ancestry. I just never tanned. Dan and Gordy both had nice tans, and Carlos and Shar were both naturally darker. I wasn’t insecure enough to think I was ugly, but, at least as far as looks were concerned, it didn’t seem to me that I stood out that much.
    And yet there was something going on. When I started emerging from my loner phase in late summer and early fall, I had certainly generated interest, even from high-status females like cheerleaders. At first I had deflected that interest because I still secretly loved Eva. (She was my childhood sweetheart, but now she was Dan’s girlfriend—you can see why I was keeping those feelings pretty much to myself!) More recently, everyone understood that I was devoted to Carla, and I didn’t even need to deflect. Nonetheless, I didn’t have to read minds to know that interest still existed. Don’t get me wrong; I had no intention of moving on, no matter what happened to our efforts to revive Carla from her coma, but I wouldn’t have been human, and I certainly wouldn’t have been a guy, if I hadn’t been a little pleased that girls found me desirable. Some day I would take the time to relish that feeling.
    Yeah, some day, when I didn’t have to worry about Carla’s body being seized by Alcina, when I didn’t have to worry about Morgan murdering my parents in their beds because I had double-crossed her, when I didn’t have to worry about some other supernatural menace popping up. The last one was perhaps the hardest one to deal with. We might well beat Morgan, but what was to prevent someone else from coming along and making trouble later? Nothing really. Once word got out that Santa Brígida had a powerful caster just waiting to be awakened, Morgan would not be the only one to see some advantage in awakening that caster.
    The only way Carla was ever going to be safe was if I could bring her into the same state of balance I had achieved—with her present self in charge, but with access to all of her previous skills and knowledge. Once Carla became the kind of spell caster Alcina evidently had been, she and I together could certainly deter attacks. Until she reached that point, not so much, but if I could get her out of the coma, I had every confidence I could give her that balance. After all, I had succeeded with Stan, hadn’t I?
    Well, except that something about his situation was clearly bothering Stan. I sighed and put talking to him on my mental to-do list. If his situation was not as good as I thought, then I needed to know what the problem was, and soon—both for his sake and for Carla’s.

     

     
     

CHAPTER 5: “THEY COME NOT SINGLE SPIES”
     
    I was up slightly before dawn, but I often got up pretty early, so my parents wouldn’t be particularly alarmed. I showered, dressed, and had the house under a protective spell, all in record time. Someone like Morgan could probably break through the protection if she really put her mind to it, but at least not without my knowing about it, and the high school was only a few blocks away if trouble started during the day.
    After finishing my magic, I put on my happy face and did convincing small talk for Mom and Dad over breakfast. Having gotten at least a little sleep last night, I had no difficulty selling my “everything is fine” image. Mom seemed a little fidgety, though, and was still putting out weak but discernible psychic energy. That was a good reminder to talk to Nurse Florence when I got the chance. I was sure there was some logical explanation for Mom’s sudden development of powers, but I would worry until I discovered what the explanation was.
    “Is there something…different…about the house?” said Mom, looking directly at me. Logically, I would have expected her to look first to my dad. So did he, apparently, since he answered.
    “Nothing I can see,