Bella powerforce's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

The headlights on the ridge turned out to be a delivery truck, not Cyndi. Bella stood in the yard until it passed, then went back inside. The scanner sat on the kitchen table. She locked the back door and put the kettle on. The phone rang before the water boiled. It was Heather. "I had a full one," Heather said. "The board wrote it out this morning. Goldie and Sierra together on time. Silver over the realms. It named them." Bella held the receiver against her shoulder and looked at the ceiling. "When," she said. "It didn't say when," Heather said. "But it's them." Bella thanked her and said she would call back. She hung up and sat down at the table. Goldie could hold five counts. Sierra caught tails. Silver had drawn borders on a napkin. None of it was ready. She would keep training them. She would not hand anything over yet. She was still at the table when Goldie came in from the field with grass on her boots. "Something's wrong at the house," Goldie said. "Sierra just called. Mom's in the back room." Bella stood. The back room at Cyndi's house was where Bella kept a spare pull of her own magic, sealed in a small case behind a loose board. Only Cyndi knew the board was loose. Bella had left it there decades ago and forgotten to move it after the rejection. Bella drove. Goldie sat beside her with the scanner on her lap. When they reached the house, Sierra was on the porch with her arms crossed. "She's got it open," Sierra said. "I couldn't stop her. She pushed me out and locked it." Bella went in. The back room door was shut. Bella heard her sister on the other side, breathing hard. Something inside the case clicked. Bella did not knock. She told Goldie to pause the air in the hallway and told Sierra to slow the second half. The girls linked hands the way they had with the leaf. The hallway thickened. Bella opened the door in the slow. Cyndi stood with the case open and Bella's pull half-drawn into her palm, a thin cord of light bent toward her wrist. In the slow, Cyndi could not close her hand. Bella walked up and took the cord back. She shut the case. She stepped out and the girls let the air go. Cyndi came out of the slow already talking. "You left it here," she said. "That makes it mine." Bella said it did not. She told Sierra to pack a bag. Sierra was coming home tonight. The monitoring was over. On the porch, Bella held the case against her ribs and understood two things at once. Her daughters had worked cleanly under pressure. And Cyndi was stronger than yesterday, and would try again.