Chapter Seven

The small nap I had ended pretty quickly, the moment I pulled into a dream I could see her standing over me, shorter than I was, her hair curly and almost a black brown, and her eyes veiny in the way I knew of hunger.

My eyes flew open, my heart already going a mile a minute as it futilely to escape from my body through my throat. My breath came in fervent pants and even in my attempts to calm myself were doing nothing.

Breathe, I kept telling myself. Slow, even breaths.

It took a few minutes, but I finally managed to slow it down to the point that my mind worked as it should.

The walls around me were a dull blue, no posters on the wall; a small bookcase in the corner to my right along with a desk and a laptop; the closet door was to my left, the window on the wall right next to it, looking out to a stretch of trees that gave me chills as I looked at them with the clear notion that I couldn't protect myself.

She could be right there. Standing amidst the shadows of the night, looking towards the house. Only stopped by the thin protection of being unable to get into the house. But if I were vampire I would already have thought of countermeasure to ensure that the magical protection was rendered redundant, after all it didn't take a lot to compel a guy with a gun to take out an entire family save for the one I wanted…

You're not doing anything in calming yourself down, Micah, I thought as I felt my stomach doing flips. By Nature's will, please don't let her think of that.

I lay back on my bed, staring at the ceiling. What had felt like a short nap was the entire day gone, my dad must have moved me from the living room to my room when they'd noticed I wasn't about to wake up any time soon. Had I been that tired? I tried to remember but I came up with nothing, the only thing my mind could focus on was that I had cast a spell before falling asleep.

"Correlation does not mean causation," I muttered to myself. The event which had passed today had been draining, mentally if not physically, it made sense that I would be tired, never mind the times I'd cast spells today.

I couldn't help but wonder what had happened to Bonnie calling Jeremy when she'd found out I was asleep. I felt an amount of guilt knowing he had wasted gas coming here for nothing, but at this point there was no use crying over spilt milk.

The mystery I thought, as I felt my mind slowly creep back towards the girl. Focus on the mystery. The Tomb. Stefan knew about it or he at least knew enough that he wasn't curious when Noah mentioned it. He would be my go to guy, if I knew what the girl wanted from inside the tomb, then I had leverage. Why I needed leverage was something I wasn't entirely sure on yet, but it never hurt to have a vampire on my side.

That mystery was going to get solved pretty quickly, I thought letting out a huff of a breath. But then I knew the future, it went without saying that when I got into the swing of things and I'd effectively had, more or less, things would get easier.

A small weight left my shoulders and with this I managed quite quickly to fall asleep again.

Grams had a real flare for the dramatic, I thought as I sat in one of the two chairs settled in the lonely room. Bonnie sat beside me, both of us staring at a table that sat in front of us, two jars filled with water and thin straws tied together atop it. The room around us was bear, I knew it as being a study, but Grams must have packed away all her book the previous day; a circle of salt surrounding both Bonnie and me, candles giving a low red glow from outside the circle.

Chagrin touched my features as I glared at my jar. Grams hadn't hidden the Boundary Spell from us, she'd deposited the mound of salt and quickly said the spell, words leaving her lips so swiftly that the moment one word had entered my memory most of the others had already left.

How did she remember such a long spell? And how was it said so quickly?

"This spell is simple," Grams said. She stood outside the circle, the only protected between her and our bursts of magic. What protected us from each other I wasn't really sure, but I could trust that Grams knew what she was doing as she had trained our mother in witchcraft.

"One of the spells most widely known by witches as it evens the playing field with supernatural creatures. I don't know if you've noticed this, but the spell both of you know, The Spell of Motion, has one constraint that makes it unviable for a fight. The spell does not work on weight in the normal means, instead it weighs in the standard of magical weight. Objects infused with power will draw more power from you, and the more power that they hold, the more power it will draw from you to move them."

My thoughts on the matter. If that was true, then moving Stefan was about the worst idea possible because he was both a doppelganger and a vampire.

Live and learn.

"This spell works on a whole different principle. Its works by focusing small bursts of power into the brain, bursting blood vessels until those who fall prey to the spell are incapacitated."

I shuddered at her words and Bonnie was doing the same beside me. "Isn't that dangerous?" she asked, something in her voice. Uncertainty perhaps, but I couldn't say for sure.

"To the mundane, yes," Grams answered. "But this is a weapon against the supernatural. Vampires and werewolves. Beasts that outmatch us in sheer strength and speed. This is our equaliser. They will eventually heal, but until then you will have time to either run or…run. Always run. Now. Both of you. I want you to focus on one straw. This exercise is about precision, not power. The darkest magic is the one which takes away a life, even from the undead. As witches it is our duty to respect all forms of life."

Focus. I took a breath and chose one straw, but beyond that I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to do.

"The power of this spell is born of anger," Gram said, her voice eerily calm and soothing. "Remind yourself of an experience that brings you the most amount of anger and channel its power, directing it into a single straw."

That helped. My mind flit through memories of something that would make me angry, unadulterated anger that had made such an impact on me that even now the emotion would still be vivid. Memories of my past came to the forefront, feelings of anxiety the first time Bonnie and I had been separated in our classes, being forced to make new friends. The first time I'd been bullied in high school, being made a spectacle in the halls only to be saved by Matt.

My thoughts were broken by the sound of glass breaking and water splashing everywhere. The jar to the left, my jar, had broken into small pieces, water coating the table and the straws lying dangerously close to the circle of salt.

"Too much anger and not enough direction," Grams said, before she took a breath and changed into Latin. Again I tried to hold onto the words but they slipped my mind the moment I focused on another. When she was done, my jar was as it had been, on the table with the water and the straws within.

I tried again, this time focusing slowly on the memory that brought me anger for some reason: Matt saving me. I took a breath, my focus on a single—

I was interrupted by the sound of breaking glass and a splash of water on my face. Bonnie's jar had shattered as well.

This time Grams didn't need to repeat her spell. She blew between her thumb and middle finger and the jar was as it had been, no point of it fixing itself, just the jar going from being shattered into pieces, to being on the table again. I couldn't remember seeing any spell in the series that had that effect, but then again Vampire Diaries had focused too much on the vampire aspects and not enough on the witches. The Originals though had been more to my liking, it was a pity because of my death I had missed season two, from the looks of it, it would have been exciting to watch.

Back on the spell. We repeated, going over the spell over and over, not with much success. It was weird, but it seemed that Bonnie and I had a lot of anger because breaking the jars was the easiest thing, it was the direction that was the problem. I didn't have enough discipline that I could feel angry then focus on something else. The moment I felt angry, that anger overwhelmed me and the result was destructive.

An hour passed before we took our first break and I felt exhausted. Bonnie too by the way she threw herself on the couch.

"Here was me thinking this would be easier," she muttered before taking a large gulp of orange juice.

I hummed in agreement. "What did it take, two tries before we had the Motion Spell down cold?"

"Right?" Bonnie agreed. "What's so special about this spell? How does it work?"

"Incantation?" I said thinking out loud. "The Motion Spell had an incantation and maybe that was what made it easier. It puts less effort on us to focus and direct the spells, and does it automatically?"

"I call ass-pull."

"It totally was," I said with a slight chuckle. "What do you think about that spell Grams was casting?"

"Not much except that it's awesome," she said. "How long do you think before we're able to do something like that?"

"Ten years, give or take," Grams said, striding in from the kitchen. She carried with her a tray of muffins; Bonnie flicked her hand and a muffin flew into her outstretched hand.

"Motus," I tried, pulling with my mind, but all I got from the muffins was a little jerk. I pouted ruefully at having to wait until Grams put the tray on the table and having to reach to get a muffin.

Grams tsked, shaking her head. "As I was saying. Boundary Spells are a complicated piece of magic, more so when you're adding additional properties to the original spell."

"What properties did you add?" I asked, leaning forward and curiosity seeping into my tone.

Grams pulled out a small golden watch from her pocket, the old fashion kind often seen in old movies. The hands though seemed stuck to a point, unmoving.

"Every inanimate object within the boundary is linked to a certain point in time. The spell I said was an activation sequence, the state of every object then returns to the point it was linked to."

"Time travel?" It goes without saying that my tone was filled with awe beyond anything I had ever tried. "Time travel?" my voice was a slight bit higher. "Grams, you can send things through time?"

"It's not time travel," said Grams, she was much calmer than me. Great power must come with the greater power to not be surprised. "Nothing, to my knowledge, can travel through time. Except moving forward, that is," she amended.

"Can anything be linked to a point in time?" I asked. "Or does it explicitly have to be inanimate?"

Grams, who had been smiling a little, sobered. "You're treading dangerous ground, boy," she said. "I know what you're thinking. Many have had similar thoughts, but it only leads to darkness."

The words felt like a slap to the face, a rebuke that I didn't entirely deserve. It wasn't as thought I was thinking about immortality…okay, I was thinking along the lines of not dying. Imagine such a feat, making it so that each times severe damage happened to my body, the spell would activate and I would be alright again. But there would be logistics issues: Who would be the one activating the spell? What about the memories I would have acquired that would be lost because of a reboot? But the possibilities.

"Micah." I jerked from my thoughts, my eyes opened wider in question. "You have that look," Bonnie muttered.

"I was just thinking," I said before taking a bite out of my muffin. "Oh, right. I finally found my affinity," I said. "Earth. At least I think."

"How did it feel?" Grams asked.

"Like this second heartbeat roaring beside mine," I told her. "I might have imagined it, but there might have been a warmth there as well."

"Earth," Grams said, a look of consternation on her. "A sturdy element. More fit for defence than attack. Most who were adept at channelling earth have been known to be the greatest Boundaries."

I grinned. "That's an exciting prospect. Can I assume you'll teach me about the circle?"

"I'll be teaching you both all that I know," said Grams.

"What about you, Bonnie? I'll be good with Boundary Spells, what's fire often linked with?"

"Offensive spells and curses," said Bonnie. "Spells which, when given momentum, can inflict a lot of damage." I didn't get the feeling she was proud of that. I sure as hell would have been. Destruction was one of the most fun things to exist. Well, controlled destruction anyway.

"But that's not important yet," said Grams. "Eat up. The fastest way to get back your strength is with sugar. You have five minutes before you get back to practising the spell."

Five minutes quickly went and we were back in the room, in the modified boundary that filled me with excitement every time I considered the possibilities the modifications housed.

Unfortunately that excitement soon died because watching glass jars explode got boring after the fiftieth time.

When we left, we hadn't made much progress.