Free Divided against Yourselves (Spell Weaver) by Bill Hiatt Page A

hon. What do you think is different?”
    Mom suddenly looked embarrassed. “Well, I don’t know really. It just feels different.”
    Oh, no! She can feel the protection spell!
    At the power level on which she was functioning, she probably shouldn’t be able to feel something environmental like that unless she was actively looking for it. However, at the risk of stating the obvious, magic was not always an exact science.
    “I read somewhere that our subconscious is always picking up on little details we aren’t consciously aware of, Mom. Who knows what’s giving you that feeling? There’s nothing to worry about, I’m sure.” I put a little magic into the last sentence, just enough I hoped to dull whatever worry was picking away at her, and she seemed to relax, though I sensed she was not entirely convinced.
    I excused myself quickly, grabbed my backpack, walked over to Stan’s house and then walked the rest of the way to school with him. (Yeah, I could have driven, but school was really close, so I usually just walked, and then stopped by after soccer to pick up the car for the drive to Carla’s hospital.)
    I automatically checked to make sure Stan was armed. Sure enough, he had remembered his sword, just as I had remembered White Hilt. Naturally, the swords were invisible to others, courtesy of a spell by Nurse Florence. Later I had added a twist that made them invisible to security cameras as well. In a pinch I could even make them go unnoticed by metal detectors, but our school didn’t have metal detectors, so I only added that extra touch when needed. Ironically, the very concealments that made our swords less visible to ordinary people made them more conspicuous to spell casters, but that couldn’t be helped, and anyway, the swords were quite visible enough on their own to those who knew how to look for them.
    I probably shouldn’t have worried about an attack this morning. Surely Morgan wouldn’t attack without further negotiations. Still, there was something about walking down my artificially lush, pretentiously built and outrageously under-priced street that still gave me the creeps. Now that I knew that Ceridwen had developed the whole town of Santa Brígida for the sole purpose of luring my parents to settle here so that she could more easily launch her plot against me when the time came, the place seemed less like home and more like an elaborate trap where danger lurked in every shadow.
    Yeah, I knew how paranoid that sounded, and Ceridwen was dead anyway, but I still couldn’t make myself comfortable. I would have moved if I had the choice, but my parents really were happy here; I would have to hit them with pretty major magic to get them to move, and using that kind of force would risk injuring their minds. My being uncomfortable certainly didn’t justify that kind of risk. Besides, I wanted to stay close to my warriors now, and I couldn’t very well get all of them to move. The new, complicated situation with Morgan made me glad that I had people on whom I could depend.
    Speaking of which, at that point I remembered I needed to talk to Stan about whatever was bothering him. I tried asking, but his response confused me. He looked around as if he expected someone else to be listening. That would make sense if we were talking about Carla’s situation, which I had no intention of doing in an unprotected place, but I couldn’t imagine what he could possibly have to say that would be of interest to Morgan or any other potential threat.
    “Tal, there isn’t time, really, and anyway, I don’t want to risk someone else hearing. Let’s wait until later.”
    He looked so worried, so haunted really, that I wanted to press him, an impulse strengthened by the fact that later would be a lot later, since after school I had soccer practice, and Stan had wrestling practice. Still, I decided I had better let him tell me in his own way, so I reconciled myself to waiting until evening, or at least until after