sigils, or
structured spells—just keep his mind sharp
and his thoughts clear. In terms of magic, he
was more Klide than human.
Something sharp and dark cut at
Daniel’s senses. He clenched up even
tighter, balling his knees into his chest.
It faded.
Daniel kept himself wrapped in his
blankets and his powers. He stared at the
clock on the wall. For thirty long minutes, the
wall-mounted device became a terrible
machine counting his time away.
Click. Clack.
Click. Clack.
Click. Cla-
The dark edge came again.
It was like the sheen of an oil slick at
night—black, but viewed at the right angle,
suddenly reflective, the colors oddly twisted
and warped. And there was a sort of stench
that hung over it, somewhere between bad
gas and old car engines, that made you think
you’d never breath fresh air again. An oil
spill on the fabric of reality.
And then it was gone.
Daniel couldn’t fall asleep, but he
wouldn’t want to anyway. He waited another
hour, eyes peeled, senses as keen as he could
make them.
Nothing happened.
He crawled out of bed and checked his
brother’s room. Felix was tangled up in his
comforter. His breath was the small, even
wisps of deep sleep. Safe and sound.
Daniel slipped back to his bed. He slept
in fits and starts, twenty minutes there, ten
minutes here. The ticking of the clock echoed
in his head. Even when he dozed, he could
still hear it, a constant, glaring clatter that
wouldn’t leave him alone. When his alarm
finally sounded, he felt like he’d been staring
at the wall all night.
The morning tumbled into an exhausted
blur. Hot water from a shower. Dressed.
Bowl of cereal. Then school. Lockers
slamming. Glaring fluorescent lights. Pale
yellow hallways.
History class came, and he finally
unloaded that paper on Mrs. Faldey’s desk.
He trudged to the back of the room and
slumped into his chair.
His classmates babbled. Everyone
flipped out notebooks and pens and pencils.
The normality of the sounds was like a
lullaby. He was half asleep by the time Mrs.
Faldey’s voice squeaked through the air.
"Good morning, good morning! Hope
nobody’s caught senioritis at the last
minute!"
For a moment, Daniel felt a flash of ugly
annoyance at being shaken back to the
present, but he couldn’t stay mad at her. He
rubbed his eyes, then blinked to clear the
bleary haze.
Mrs. Faldey had to turn sideways to fit
her love handles through the door; her bright
red dress was big enough to substitute for a
circus tent. Her eyes quickly found the
towering stack of history reports leaning off
her desk. "I see I’ve got some light reading
ahead of me. Everyone turned in their paper?
Anything after today is a letter grade off the
top!"
Daniel’s thoughts trailed back to
immediate concerns as she began her usual
lecture. Xik claimed he would need less
sleep, but apparently that hadn’t kicked in
yet. He was too tired to care.
But not even Mrs. Faldey’s vibrating
soprano could keep him awake for long. His
head bobbed, then nodded, then found a
lovely pillow in the form of his folded arms.
He was enveloped in a dreamless nap.
The bell clanged in Daniel’s ears. His
eyes shot open. For a moment, he wasn’t sure
where he was, and then his brain restarted.
School. History class. Tired.
Daniel peeled his face off a bit of drool
that had accumulated on his desk. He
automatically moved to jam his notebook in
his bag, but he hadn’t even gotten it out in the
first place. He shook his head to clear the
cobwebs, and after a slow recovery, he
ended up at the back of the pack leaving
class.
Mrs. Faldey cleared her throat as he
went by. "I saw you sleeping back there, Mr.
Fitzgerald. Have a late night writing my
paper?"
He shook his head. "No, something
else."
"Oh, really? I expect your usual
precision, then!"
Daniel started to turn away. Something
in him skittered. He blinked a few times,
hard.
A white haze surrounded her