2. And for My Next Trickā¦
"Warp what?" Joe looked at his wife in confusion. Even after training him for almost two years, she still tossed random terms at him that threw him off. She had made him a short cheat sheet of basic terms and Latin commands, but it had been a while since Joe had looked at it. He thought he was far enough in his training to not need it anymore. Apparently, he was wrong.
"Warp illusions. I've told you about them before. It's time you learned how to do them." Sydney stared at Joe expectantly, as if this should all second-nature to him by now. To her credit, it should have been.
"Okay, but what am I doing exactly? And how do I do it?" Joe went ahead and let his magic build up and swirl around inside him, the warmth and feel of it familiar to him now.
"Think of a warp illusion like a half-warp. You can project the image of being in a certain time or place without actually being there. It takes more control to do a warp illusion than a full warp because you can't allow yourself to get sucked away." Sydney grabbed Joe's hands and led him into the center of her dance studio. "You do it just like you would a normal warp, but the moment you feel it start to pull you away, you need to pull back, then push it away, but not too far. Got it?"
"I think so." Joe understood what she was saying, but putting the words into practice wouldn't be so easy.
It took him months to learn how to warp, and he still messed that up. Sydney always brought a pocket watch along just in case something went wrong, and there had been plenty of times something went wrong. He'd tried to warp them on a romantic getaway to Hawaii once and ended up warping them two hundred feet above an active volcano. Joe could smell the putrid sulfur just thinking about it.
"This is like any other warp, the more you know about the place and the better you can visualize it, the easier it will be to get there."
Joe grinned, the perfect place coming into his mind almost instantaneously. Connecting to time and pulling it into him had become as easy as walking by this point.
Green fog slowly built up around the two of them, spinning in circles until they were completely covered. Joe felt a slight tugging, and began to pull the other way, just like Sydney had said to do. Time fought back, continuing to attempt to warp them away. Joe gave one final pull, then pushed away all the time energy that had gathered around them. He could still feel it surrounding them, but held it far enough away that it wouldn't take them anywhere. His body buzzed from the use of magic.
He was greeted with the salty scent of the sea and the sounds of waves crashing into the shore. White sand spread out before him leading to a crystal blue cove.
"Corfu?" Sydney chuckled. "Why am I not surprised?"
Joe shrugged, throwing her a smirk. "What can I say? This place means a lot to me."
Sydney smiled and rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm impressed. You actually got it on your first try."
"I am a wizard at this stuff, you know," Joe teased, wrapping his arm around her waist. "Now, about that reward..."
"You heard about the part where we're not actually here, right? It may look like Corfu, but we're still in the third floor of our house." Sydney kicked her foot in the sand. Instead of spraying everywhere like Joe expected, her foot simply went right through it. "See? We can see, smell, and hear everything, but we can't feel any of it. It's like a hologram."
"Oh." Joe frowned and studied their surroundings more intently. Everything seemed real, but Sydney had just proved that it wasn't. "Then why do I need to be able to do this? It doesn't seem very useful."
"We really need to work on this creative thinking of yours." Sydney shook her head. "Just because you know it isn't real, doesn't mean your opponent will. Put yourself in an environment with lots of trees, knowing you can walk right through them, and you can make the perfect getaway, leaving anyone else trapped in an illusionary jungle."
Joe tilted his head, picturing himself in a situation where he would need to run away from an enemy like that. When they had first learned of Joe's Warp Wizard status, Sydney had said they had a lot of enemies besides the time gods. So far, they hadn't run into any, but it's not like Joe was out there traipsing around with his Warp Wizard mark exposed to the world.
"Jade will be home soon. Care to get rid of all this?" Sydney gestured around the room. "Or are you planning on leaving my studio this way?"
Joe laughed and said sarcastically, "I like it better this way actually. I'm getting a much better feng shui vibe. Won't it go away on its own anyway?"
"In a few hours, but I'd prefer for it to be back to normal before I head out tonight." Sydney folded her arms. "Just push the time energy farther out and it will scatter and fade away."
"Head out?" Joe asked. He did as he was instructed to do and the room faded back to normal. "Oh yeah, it's the first Friday of the month. I almost forgot."
The first Friday of every month the girls, meaning Sydney, Kairi, Cade, and sometimes Anna, went out and had a girls' night. The boys did the same thing the next Friday night. They had agreed to alternate nights so that someone was always home to watch their kids.
Joe and Fred had come up with the idea a while back. Since everyone's lives were changing so much, getting married, having kids, they needed an excuse to get together every so often so that they wouldn't lose their long-standing friendship. It had worked so far and every night turned into a fun time.
Sydney nodded and headed downstairs to greet Jade as she got off the school bus. Jade would be finishing kindergarten this month and starting first grade in the fall. She loved school and couldn't wait to tell Joe and Sydney about everything she learned that day. Her favourite part was getting new books to bring home to practice her reading skills, which were very impressive for her age. Not surprising considering how often she had her parents read to her.
"After Jade gets home, can you drive over to your mom's to pick up the twins?" Sydney glanced at Joe over her shoulder and continued to head towards the front door. "I'm going to need to start getting ready for tonight and won't have time to drive over and do it myself."
"Sure. No problem." Joe grinned at her even though she couldn't see it. "Have fun tonight. Be safe."
"Safe?" Sydney turned to look at her husband, a bemused glint in her eye. She kissed him on the cheek and chuckled softly at him. "What do you think is going to happen? It'll be like any other girls' night out."
"I know," Joe gave her another kiss, this time on the mouth, "but you can never be too careful."
Kairi hurriedly walked down Tenth Avenue, which was no easy task in her white, strappy wedges. She had overslept and was now late to meet Cade and Sydney at a local bar for their girls' night out. She was only about twenty minutes late, but Kairi still felt the need to rush. She could have taken a cab, but the bar was close enough that it wouldn't take that long to walk there at the speed she was going.
She mentally prepared her apology to her friends for being late on their one night out. She'd make it up to them by buying them each one of their favourite cocktails.
She would have left her house on time, but just as she was about to leave, she had to help Fred put Jesse down for the night. Her daughter had been uncharacteristically fussy and was refusing to go to sleep. Kairi tried to soothe her by holding and cuddling Jesse in her arms, but it only made Jesse even more unsettled. She even tried to push away from her. Fred took hold of Jesse and she'd eventually calmed down enough to go to bed, but Kairi couldn't help but think how odd the whole situation was. Fred had suggested she was just tired and cranky and that this behavior was normal. But Kairi knew her baby better than anyone else, and her baby was definitely acting weird, not normal. She had never tried to get away from Kairi so desperately like that before.
The nap had helped to shake off her weird feeling from earlier in the day, but the moment she stepped outside to walk to the nearby bar, it all came flooding back. Kairi couldn't figure out what in the world was wrong with her. Despite the warm night air, chills ran up and down her spine and the hairs on the back of her neck were standing straight up.
She wrapped her pink jacket tighter around herself, but it wasn't doing much good. Kairi hadn't felt this type of persistent coldness since she was dead. She had gotten used to the chill after about a year or two of not being alive. But now that she was alive again, her body had gotten used to the comforting feeling a warmth and blood flowing through her veins. At the time, she hadn't realized how much she missed it, the feeling of being alive. It was a pleasurable feeling that she would never take for granted again.
And still, she had that feeling of being watched, like someone was consistently following closely behind her. But every time Kairi turned around, no one was there. She scanned the whole area around her and saw nothing. The dark feeling gnawed at the back of her mind. It only added to her unease and urged her to the bar that much quicker.
She shook her head to clear thoughts and pushed on to the meeting place. She'd be there soon enough. It was only two blocks away. She could see the vibrant neon sign from here. If she listened closely enough, she'd hear the sound of laughter and all the good times going on inside. She just needed to have a few drinks, chat with her girl friends, and she'd get over whatever this haunting feeling was. Kairi forced herself to believe that.
A black shadow dashed across her peripheral vision, interrupting Kairi's thoughts. If she had blinked, she would have missed it. Kairi froze, a sudden breeze flowing across the back of her neck. She was standing in front of an ally. All the lights had burnt out and she couldn't see farther than ten feet in, but at first glance, it appeared to be deserted. She peered closer. She had definitely just seen something move in there, but had no idea what it was.
Just when she was beginning to think it was only a feral cat and maybe she was starting to go insane, she saw it. A pair of wide, glowing red eyes staring directly at her from the back of the ally, watching her very carefully. Even from here, Kairi could see an amused look in the eyes as if it knew exactly what would happen next. And no matter what Kairi did, it would always be a step ahead of her.
Kairi knew only a select few people with eyes like that. People she knew without a doubt that she did not want to see.
Kairi felt her heart stop, her chest clenched, and she momentarily forgot how to breathe. "Oh no," she said breathlessly.
She ran to the bar, refusing to look behind her.
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