ideas and this was a good time to try them out. Each pipe was two inches long and I quickly fastened them to the arms of Tami’s girl with wire. Then I respelled the arms and poured enough dirt for the pipes to be fully covered, except I left the ends open by the dirt girl’s hands. It made her forearms bulky like Popeye but Tami didn’t protest and Zuzanna had drifted over to see what we were doing. Snapping a fire starter in half, I put a piece in each tube.
“Okay, fire her up and let’s see how that works,” I said. Tami moved her avatar to an open space and raised both arms. A full foot of flame shot out both pipes, burning hot like a propane torch. She directed it at the soil in front of her dirt doll and little sparks of organic matter flared into light as the flames washed over the ground. The whole class stopped to watch, eyes wide.
“That’s so not fair,” one of the telepath kids said.
“No, that’s awesome,” Zuzanna said. “I want that too.”
The pipe was from a piece I’d liberated from a pile of junk in the far corner of the basement. The head maintenance guy had lent me a little pipe cutter, so my only cash outlay was for the box of fire starters. I cut enough pipe for both Zuzanna’s and my avatars, fixed them both up, and told the girls where I bought the starters.
By the time I was done, most of the class was playing king of the hill, with Delwood most often the winner, probably from sheer aggressiveness. Then the robo-spider crawled up there and no one could dislodge it.
“Technology is the future, bitches,” T.J. said as his creation held high ground.
“Teamwork time,” Aunt Ash suggested and the werewolf pack instantly stopped fighting amongst themselves and with the help of Jetta, Mack, and Caceco, jointly assaulted the bot, tossing it off the concrete ridge.
“Okay, that’ll be fine fer tonight. Next week, we divide up into teams and play capture the flag. I’ll be assigning the teams and the captains,” Aunt Ashling said. “Study the spells you’ve learned tonight if yer inclined to the Craft and all of you should be practicing using yer avatars between now and next week. That’s it. Good night.”
A couple of kids thanked her and the rest joined in, even Delwood. I helped her clean up while the others sent their dirt people off the course and onto the long wooden bench where we lined them up.
“You’ve got a bit of a teacher inside you, Declan. You were quick to figure out how to get the kids linked up with their dollies,” she said to me.
“Maybe. If so, it’s because I’ve had good teachers,” I said.
“Ahh, there’s the blarney coming back. It’s good you can speak again, although the blessed silence was nice, too,” she said with a wink. I hugged her and then helped her with her stuff, walking her out to her car. This time, she hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek, leaving with a cryptic, “Stay on your guard.”
Chapter 30
A pattern settled in of classes and work. I saw no more elf princesses or mysterious men in dark clothes, but I did see a lot of computer code, English essays, math problems, and I continued to build out my website assignment. Survival class was always interesting and when Jenks had a three-lane pistol range built in the basement, it got actually fun. The range was only twenty-five yards and built as far from the Wytchwar course as possible. As the basement matched the full size of the Arcane building, that put it pretty far away.
After spending one morning going over safe gun handling in class and using dummy weapons for practice, Jenks started to take three people at a time to the gun range. Caeco would put the rest of us through hand-to-hand drills while Jenks oversaw the target practice. Each of us got to shoot at least once a week and a competition of sorts developed.
Oddly, the three highest ranked shots were my friends. I did fine, having been trained to shoot by Darci and Levi, but I wasn’t going to win target matches against Jetta and her brother, who’d grown up shooting, or against the surprise deadeye of the group, Ashley. In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been a surprise: her grandfather had been an ex-DEA instructor and her father was a crack