Read Online Spell Robbers by Matthew J. Kirby - Free Book Online Page B

here.”
    She left the room, while Peter and Ben remained, seated on the floor.
    Peter rolled his gaze around the room. “Can you believe this? And that’s not a rhetorical question. I mean, can you believe this?”
    “Yes. But I don’t think I really believed it until I saw my mom. She didn’t know me. At all.” The memory charged at him hard, but Ben held it back by reminding himself of the deal he had made with Agent Spear. “What they did to us was wrong.”
    “You saw the Dread Cloaks.” Peter leaned close. “These are the good guys, Ben.”
    “Are they?”
    “Yes. They are.”
    Ben scratched at his bandage. “This thing itches like crazy.”
    “Poole’s the one that hit you.” Peter sat back. “The League saved you.”
    “Hmm. Maybe.”
    “Maybe?”
    Sasha came back into the room. “Here we go.” She carried a small cardboard box that rattled as she sat down. “These are some things the League has collected and used in the past if someone needed a Locus. Look through it and see if anything grabs you.”
    Ben took the box in his lap and peered inside at an odd assortment of objects. There were toys, mostly metal soldiers, large marbles, crystals like the ones that hung from chandeliers, dice, magnets, balls, and other stuff. Ben rummaged through it.
    “See anything you like?” Sasha asked.
    “Nah.” But then Ben spotted a curious rock. It was flat, polished smooth with rounded edges, in the shape of a long oval that fit nicely in the palm of his hand. In the middle it had a spiral fossil. Some kind of snail shell. Ben looked at it for a few moments and folded his fingers around it, gripping it in his fist. “This. I like this.”
    “Why that?”
    Ben opened his fist and bounced the rock in his palm. “I like the weight. And the fossil shell kind of makes me think of actuation. Like a thought spiraling out from me.”
    “Sounds good.” Sasha took the box and leaped to her feet. “Let’s try it.”
    She took Ben to one side of the room, and positioned Peter behind them.
    “Let’s go for something simple,” she said. “What were you particularly good at with the augmentation?”
    “Rain,” Peter said from behind them. “He made a rain cloud his first day.”
    Sasha looked at Ben.
    He nodded.
    “Rain it is,” Sasha said. She gestured to the area in the middle of the room. “When you’re ready.”
    Ben held out the Locus. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
    “Imagine the stone is a lens, and your thoughts are rays of light passing through it. Or think of that fossil. Imagine your thoughts hitting the stone, and spiraling out from it.”
    Ben tightened his grip around the Locus, the rock warming up to match the temperature of his hand. He closed his eyes, and summoned the thoughts he always had to actuate rain. He saw the atoms, he combined them, he collected them, and a water vapor formed. He condensed it to where it formed a cloud. He opened his eyes.
    Nothing. Nothing but a padded room and two people looking at him, expecting him to do something he didn’t think he could do.
    “Try again,” Sasha said. “The Locus is an extension of you. It will work.”
    Ben’s sigh was half growl. He closed his eyes again, and went through the same rain thoughts. But this time, he held the Locus out in front of him and imagined his thoughts passing through it. He squeezed his hand tightly around the stone. Tight enough he worried about how fragile it might be. Tight enough that his arm started to quiver after a few moments. But he kept his thoughts flowing, from his mind to the rock, through the spiral, radiating outward in waves.
    “Open your eyes, Ben,” Sasha said.
    Ben opened them.
    A small cloud churned in front of him. A cloud just like those he had made before.
    “Nice,” Peter said behind him.
    Ben watched the cloud, and then looked at the Locus in his hand.
    “Plenty of Actuators use them,” Sasha said. “It’s just a mental trick, really.”
    “A trick that