Avondale by Toby Neighbors

around him. He opened his eyes and looked at the apple, but it was just the same as before. He looked around him but there was nothing there. The feeling faded. He sighed in frustration, but then he took a deep breath, stared at the apple, and began chanting again.
    This time the feeling of movement happened more quickly. The swirl felt like wind, but it didn’t stir anything in the room, not even his hair. He stared at the apple, imagining the glossy red skin sealing back together. The sense of movement grew stronger. Nothing was happening to the apple, but something was definitely stirring in Ti’s small room. He kept chanting, and the feeling of movement grew so strong it began to push on him. It was like standing in a stream with a strong current. He reached a hand out toward the apple and continued chanting. Slowly the swirling magic around him began to move forward, along his arm. He focused on the apple and repeated the spell, over and over.
    Suddenly, the apple toppled over and rolled off the table.
    Tiberius jumped from his chair, his heart racing, the wooden chair clattering to the floor behind him. He rushed forward and picked up the apple. There was a bruise on the fruit where it had fallen, but the cut was gone.
    “Yes!” he shouted, then remembering himself, he calmed down.
    The last thing he wanted was for someone to come check on him. He felt so happy that he instinctively bit into the apple. It was cool and sweet. He picked up his chair and sat down, leaning it back on the rear legs and balancing there. He felt so good he wanted to scream. He had just cast his first spell. He may have broken the most sacred law in the realm, but he had cast a spell. He could do this, he thought to himself. He was on his way to becoming a wizard.

Chapter 8
Lexi

    Night was the best time. Anything was possible at night, especially when you were invisible. Lexi wasn’t actually invisible, but she was so comfortable in the darkness and so silent that she was like a ghost in the shadows. It helped that most people didn’t like the darkness. She had long ago grown comfortable in the dark. She could stay hidden most of the night, never moving, her breathing silent, her body completely under her control. Sleep could wait for hours with no need to eat or even move.
    She was just outside the home of a very wealthy merchant. The alley she was hidden in was littered with trash and smelled horribly, but that only made the chances that someone might notice Lexi, squatting down among the piles of odorous garbage, that much smaller. She was in complete darkness, not even the starlight could reach down between the tall buildings to shine on her. The lamps and candles in the home she was watching had all gone out hours ago. So had the lights that burned in the other building behind her. No one had passed on the street for over an hour. The cold night air made Lexi shiver, but it also kept most people home. Paladins still patrolled the city, but unless someone shouted for help, she knew they would never discover her.
    The window she was watching was dark. The lady of the house had dumped a chamber pot from that window and failed to latch it closed. At least there was a slight gap around the window that Lexi could slip her knife in and unlatch the window if she was wrong, but she rarely was about such things. The window was on an upper floor, and the occupants of the house obviously felt safe leaving the window unlocked. It made sense; a normal person would need a ladder to get up to the window and you simply couldn’t walk around the city with a ladder at night without drawing the interest of the Paladins.
    In Lexi’s experience, the Paladins were generally nice people. They had committed their lives to serving Addoni, and despite the rigorous demands put on them by the Priests, they did their job well. Still, the Paladins were a reactionary group, good at chasing down criminals, but miserable at actually preventing crime. And Lexi