Mage Catalyst by Christopher George Page A

anyway. I needed a non-fiction book – a how-to book. Fictional stories didn’t go deep enough into how these guys controlled their powers – and it was advice about control that I was desperately seeking. Unfortunately they don’t have A Dummies Guide to Magic in our library.  The internet too had proved to be a complete loss. There were a variety of groups that claimed to have magical powers, but I doubted that they had anything like this. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to advertise that they were this different from everyone else. They would instinctively hide. They would have had to, otherwise everyone would know about it.
No. After several hours of useless web surfing I came to the inescapable conclusion. There was only one person who could help me. I just had to find her and convince her to teach me what I needed to know. If I was honest with myself I’d probably have admitted that I might have had other reasons for wanting to see Renee again.
“Devon?”
I glanced around to see Tina Higgins gazing at me. She had a pile of books in her hands and a nervous expression. Tina and I had History class together. She was one of the nerdy kids who sat up the front of the class. She was also one of Sarah’s friends, but I hadn’t really spent that much time with her. I didn’t know her that well at all actually. She had curly dark hair and wore tight wire-rim glasses on her freckled face. She wasn’t one of the popular kids, but I wasn’t exactly going to win any competitions for class president either. We had sat together and worked on several group projects, but we weren’t exactly friends.
”What are you searching for?” she asked as she logged into the computer terminal next to mine.
“Just something for English.” I shrugged as I quickly minimised a webpage on Gandalf. “You?”
    “History,” she groaned. I didn’t even know we had something due for History.  I really should start paying more attention in class. We sat in uncomfortable silence for a few more seconds.
“I like your new contacts,” she began. “I didn’t know you needed glasses.”
That statement had come out of nowhere. Contacts? I wasn’t wearing contacts.  Where had that come from? I frowned at her in confusion, searching her face for any sign that she was making fun of me. If she was  – I didn’t get the joke.
My silence couldn’t have been helping with her nervousness as she began nervously twiddling with her hair.
“I was thinking about getting those coloured lenses too,” she stammered, “but I didn’t think the school would allow them. They’re making your eyes very blue.”
It finally struck home: she couldn’t see the blue particle lines, but she could see that something was strange with my eyes.
“Has anyone told you off?” she asked.
“Not at all. I need contacts for reading,” I said. “I got red eyes from the contacts at first,” I continued.
I was making it up as I went along and was amazed that it actually made some kind of sense. I’ve always been a bad liar but it looked like Tina was being taken in.
“I thought the blue contacts would help hide the red-eye,” I finished lamely.
“Well it seems to have worked.” Tina smiled, gazing into my eyes with a strange expression on her face. “Your eyes are completely free of red!”
“Yeah,” I said, getting nervous. “I’d better go now.” I shut down the computer.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Well, see you later Devon…” she murmured uncertainly as her sentence kind of trailed off.
The rest of the day finished without too much grief. No-one else mentioned my eyes. That was good. Mum had phoned me to say she was going to be late and that I’d have to sort my own dinner out. Mum was studying a business course at night school and so every now and then I had to fend for myself. I didn’t mind it actually – it was kind of nice to be self-reliant.
I fried up sausages for dinner. It was not the most appealing meal, but it