shrugged. "I feel pressure in my ears, too. Depending on the amount of magic in the circle, it's like an electric charge in the air." I set my chair upright and sat again, extending my incubus senses. When I focused on the tingling sensation, it flooded back, nearly overwhelming me. It wasn't unpleasant, just weird.
"Do you feel it?" Bella asked.
I opened my eyes, maintaining my link. Usually when my demonic senses were active, I saw the ghostly, glowing auras of the people around me and sensed their emotions. Looking at Bella and Elyssa, I saw them now, both glowing and healthy with positive emotion. In addition, I noticed a smoky haze in the air and motes of bright light, some drifting lazily, others zipping past like little stars. A bright ball of white the size of my head rotated around a similarly sized ball of glowing black, their twin orbits carrying them down until they vanished into the ground. Tiny capillaries of light pulsating between black, white, and gray ran through the floor and the walls as well. The lines zigged and zagged in places, sometimes broadening into finger width streams before narrowing into a line so thin as to be almost invisible.
I reached my hand for a hazy puff of gray floating before my eyes. It swirled around, insubstantial as a cloud, feeling like nothing to my hand. A spark of flickering ultraviolet passed through Bella's head and out the other side. I snatched at it, but my hand closed on nothing.
"What are you doing?" Bella asked, dodging away.
"The magic. It's all around us!"
She quirked an eyebrow. "Yes, that's generally true."
"And it's like little clouds shooting stars, and lines."
Her other eyebrow climbed even with the first. "What are you talking about?"
"The energy!" I swirled a little cloud with a finger until it resembled a miniature tornado. "This is freaking awesome."
"Justin, you can't actually see the magic around us, although you can feel it."
"Are you sure?" I looked at her through my incubus senses, watching her aura cloud gray with doubt. I shrugged. "Maybe it has something to do with the way I'm sensing the magic."
"And how is that exactly?"
I explained it to her.
"You never described it like that before," Elyssa said, frowning ever so slightly after I finished. "I mean, I guess we've never sat down and talked about it."
"Intriguing," Bella said, tapping her chin. "Arcanes have a sixth sense for magical energy. It is possible your incubus sixth sense is entwined with your arcane sense, and it is this which grants you the ability to see the magical energy, or at least a representation of it."
I felt elated. Magic suddenly went from boring and pointless to something I could actually do and see. I flicked my senses on and off, looking at the magical energy. "Maybe I have a sixth and seventh sense. I mean, why does everyone always call it a sixth sense anyway?"
Bella waved my question away with a flick of her hand. "This is fascinating, Justin, it truly is. But whatever it is will have to wait further study. First, you need to learn to store the energy in your well. Otherwise, it really does you no good."
"Can't I channel it straight out of the air? Does it really need to go into storage first?"
"You need to concentrate the energy inside so you can focus and bend it to your will. You can't do that without filling your well. It's the same as making a circle. The more concentrated the energy, the more powerful your spells will be. This is why Shelton and I had you practice blowing out candles and lighting them first. Such a feat is possible even without storing any energy, though we had hoped you might stumble your way into it as many new practitioners do, without us explicitly teaching it."
I looked at her. "You mean most newbs can store energy instinctually?"
She nodded. "Just like your incubus senses triggered without you controlling them. I believe your primary instincts as an incubus have overshadowed your magical abilities. It's really no surprise. In fact, I would surmise from how similar you are in appearance to your father that you inherited more from his side of the family than from the Arcanes on your mother's side."
"I agree," Elyssa said. "He has his mom's nose, judging from the pictures I've seen of her, but everything else looks a lot like his dad."
I touched my nose, trying to remember the shape of my mom's before she