Inhibition

Chapter 25

After Cat nearly killed Aidan (by accident), she was put on lock down. Again. She got to be the person people threw things at, not the person doing the throwing. It made her twitchy, standing there while someone did bodily harm to her. Or at least when they tried to.

Most of the people in her group had graduated to throwing boulders and creating relatively strong winds. Those that couldn’t were ridiculed until they did. They learned quickly.

It didn’t matter if they could or couldn’t to Cat though; he magic took care of it.

The first to have a go was, of course, Priscilla. Cat hadn’t seen her since the beginning of the year. She knew Priscilla had been at the gatherings (ball was so . . . old sounding), but Cat hadn’t noticed her. Cat hadn’t even gone to all of them. Something about the ill-timed death of a friend and all that pesky mourning. Cat gave a mental shrug.

Priscilla walked out, her gait confident and what little hips she had swinging. Her skin tight suit showed off her well defined ribs and lean legs. She came to stand near to Cat, towering over her even with feet between them.

Coach Will looked at each of their faces. “Are you ready?”

Cat grinned. “We READ-y.” She made sure to exaggerate the syllables and singsong the words.

Priscilla just gave a prissy toss of her hair over her shoulder.

“Ah, wise foe, I accept your challenge.”

“Freak.”

“I know.”

“If we’re done socializing,” Coach Will reprimanded. And then gave a dramatic pause.

“START!”

Priscilla was already moving. She threw small boulders at Cat without looking, running back to stand fifteen feet away. While running, she threw every rock she came across, no matter the size, behind her. Still facing forward, she came to the one boulder she was actually supposed to throw. Priscilla sent out her magic, wrapping it around the boulder, and swung around. Her momentum and circular motion flung the boulder back at Cat.

Satisfied, Priscilla turned to face a (hopefully) dead Cat.

“That was so secret agent man of you!”

Cat stood, in the center of a sphere of compressed magic, the rocks and boulders stuck in the air at the border of her magic. She peered around a rather large one to smile at Priscilla. The largest boulder, the one that Priscilla had thrown last, was hovering in the air, only a couple of inches from the point of Cat’s nose.

“So close!” Priscilla cried. And her meanness ate through her soul and body and left her in a dissolved pile of icky-ness.

Or not. That might have just been in Cat’s head.

Actually, Priscilla stomped away glaring. She flicked her fingers irritatingly at her friends in the crowd, commanding them to come out to face Cat.

Cat’s gestures of glee were hidden by the blur created as the rocks, now freed from Cat’s magic, rained down around her.