Though none of us said it, there was another reason for not just calling his name and moving on. He could be injured, unable to answer. Or worse.
“The rain is easing and Paige’s ball casts sufficient light for us all to search,” Lucas said. “I suggest we split up, each taking a ten foot swatch, and make a thorough sweep.” He stopped. “Unless…Paige? Your sensing spell would be perfect for this.”
“A spell?” Troy said. “Great.”
“Uh, right. The only problem…” I glanced at Troy. “It’s a fourth-level spell. Technically, I’m still third-level, so I’m not…” God, this stung. “I’m not very good—”
“She’s still refining her accuracy,” Lucas said. That sounded so much better than what I was going to say. “Could you give it a try?”
I nodded. Lucas motioned for Troy to follow him and start searching, giving me privacy. I closed my eyes, concentrated, and cast.
The moment the words left my mouth, I knew the spell had failed. Most witches wait for results, but my mother had taught me to use my gut instinct, to feel the subtle click of a successful cast. It wasn’t easy. To me, intuition always seems like some flaky New Age thing. My brain seeks the logic in patterns; it looks for clear, decisive results. As I move into harder spells, though, I’ve been forcing myself to develop that inner sense. Otherwise, with the sensing spell, if I didn’t detect a presence, I wouldn’t know whether it was because no one was there or because the spell had failed.
I recast. The click followed, almost as a subconscious sigh of relief. Now came the tough part. With a spell like this, I couldn’t just cast it and leave it on, like the light-ball. I needed to sustain it, and that took concentration. I held myself still and focused on the spell, measuring its strength. It wavered, almost disappeared, then took hold. I resisted the urge to open my eyes. The spell would still work, but I’d rely too much on what I was seeing instead of feeling. I turned slowly, and sensed two presences. Troy and Lucas. I pinpointed their location, then peeked to double-check. There they were, exactly where I’d sensed them.
“Got it,” I said, my voice echoing through the silence.
“Good,” Lucas called back as they headed my way.
“So how does this work?” Troy asked.
“If I walk slowly, I should be able to detect anyone within a twenty-foot radius.”
“Great.”
I inhaled. “Okay, here goes.”
I had two choices. Be led around with my eyes closed, like some wack-job spiritualist, or open my eyes and keep my gaze on the ground. Naturally, I went for option two. Anything to avoid looking like an idiot.
Lucas and Troy followed. After a few yards, I felt the spell waver. I told my nerves there was no need to panic, no pressure here. They called me a liar, but agreed to fake it for a while. I relaxed and the spell surged to full strength.
Weak presences tickled at the edges of awareness. When I focused on them, they stayed amorphous. Small mammals, probably rats. An image flashed through my mind: a novel a friend and I had “borrowed” from her older brother when we’d been kids. Something about rats going crazy and eating people. There was this one scene with…I forced the image back, my gaze skittering across the ground looking for rat turds.
The spell fluttered, but I kept walking. We finished one twenty-foot strip and started up the next. I weaved through a minefield of beer cans and around the black scar of a campfire pit. Then I picked up a presence twice as strong as the others.
“Got something,” I said.
I hurried toward the source, climbed over a three-foot wall remnant, and startled a huge gray tabby. The cat hissed and tore off across the field, taking the presence I’d sensed with it. The spell snapped.
“Was that it?” Troy said.
“I can’t—” I shot a glare at Lucas. I knew he didn’t deserve it, but couldn’t help myself. I stamped off to the end of the swath, grabbed a stick, and poked at a pile of rags.
“Paige?” Lucas said, coming up behind me.
“Don’t. I know I’m overreacting, but I hate—”
“You didn’t fail. The spell was working. You found the cat.”
“If I can’t tell the difference between a cat and a sixteen-year-old boy, then, no, it’s not working. Forget it, okay? I should be looking for Jacob, not field-testing spells.”
Lucas moved up behind me, so close I could feel the heat