Page 39 of Spring L.A.W.
30 Minutes Later…
Katie was sweating. Not the sensual, social media workout kind of sweat, but the “help, my armpits are raining” kind. She stood in a loose fighting stance. Feet too wide, arms too floppy, facing what appeared to be a magical Roomba.
It hovered six feet away, glowing menacingly.
“That’s the attack?” Katie asked. “I think I liked it better when you were coming at me with plastic lightsabers.”
Lioness pressed something on a tablet. The Roomba whirred, clicked, and promptly launched a stun spell directly at Katie’s face.
Katie yelped and ducked. “ARE YOU SERIOUS?”
Joell called from the sidelines, clipboard in hand. “Rule one: Don’t wait for your magic to show up. Act like it’s already there.”
“What does thatmean?” Katie yelled, diving behind a pillar as the Roomba zipped after her, blasting battle music.
“It means believe you’re dangerous,” Lioness shouted. “You need the Gray to believe it, so you have to.”
“Great, love that for me,” Katie muttered, crawling across the floor like a lizard who’d just done hot yoga. “Also, did anyone consider I might just be normal? Like, regular with trauma?”
The Roomba rounded the pillar.
Katie threw up her hands by instinct, and the orb in her pocket flared to life, sending a pulse of raw, uncoordinated energy from her hands. The Roomba shuddered, sparked, and spun in a confused little circle before ejecting glitter and collapsing.
There was a long pause.
“Did I just Tinkerbell a death drone?” Katie asked.
Joell checked her readings. “You disrupted its enchantment field. That’s not bad for a first timer.”
Lioness walked over, impressed. “You didn’t aim it, you didn’t shape it, but girl, youshoved.”
Katie slumped against the wall. “That’s because I thought it was going to shatter my face.”
“Fear is an excellent training motivator,” Lioness said, casually sipping her green sludge. “Ask anyone who’s ever dated a Scorpio. Or ask me! I’m a tiny little thing, and I love nothing more than striking fear in the eyes of my enemies. Mwuahahaha…”
Katie let her head thump back. “So now what? You train me to shoot lasers from my eyeballs and speak Latin backwards?”
Joell knelt beside her. “Now we help you own it. The Gray’s not done with you. It picked you for a reason. Maybe you’re easier to imitate, or maybe you’re the crack in the wall it’s trying to widen. Either way…”
“You need to stop being a soft target,” Lioness finished. “Because if that thing figures out how tobeyou before you figure out how to protect yourself, we’re all screwed.”
Katie swallowed. “No pressure.”
Joell offered her a hand. “You don’t have to be perfect. Not right away. You just have to keep showing up.”
“And so will we,” Lioness added.
Katie took Joell’s hand and hauled herself up, shaky but upright. “Okay. Fine. But I’m only doing this if someone brings me iced coffee after every session.”
“Done,” Joell said. “But it may come with a side-eye and unsolicited advice.”
“I can live with that,” Katie said. “What now?”
“Now we brainstorm with the team. We need to know more.”
Katie satat the long table, feeling deeply underdressed in her yoga pants and sweat-stained T-shirt while around her a gallery of high-functioning weirdos gathered: Joell at the head of the table, Lioness, with her wild mane of wheat-colored hair, to her left, Crystal, a blue-eyed blonde with a British accent, to her right, Rayna, a fellow red-head, with a mug the size of her face, and Brianna practicing sketching protective runes in the corner of her notepad like it was casual doodling.
On the giant wall monitors: Victoria, in Montreal, looking like a stylist dressed her this morning; Magda, in Australia, a brunette this time, casually reclining on a couch; and Sahara in Egypt, covered in dirt, or maybe her hair was dirty blond, looking like she was calling in from the middle of an archeological dig, because she was.
