The Gate of Bones Read Online Free

had not sensed the abrupt flow of energies.
    He stood for a long moment, feeling the surge of great power running through him, and ebbing away, as though it sank into the very floorboards of the unfinished building about him, as if the academy grounded him. Then his heart did a double beat, and he inhaled again, and his crystals stilled in his hands.
    Trent waited another moment before saying gruffly, “C’mon. We’ve got a lot to do today.”
    â€œAlways,” Jason agreed. He looked up at the sky. “Maybe a roof in a few more days?”
    â€œMaybe. Although I think I’d rather have hot water.”
    Jason snorted. “What do you think I am? A magician?”
    Trent tackled him and they wrestled with laughs and snorts and grunts until the sound of shouting for them drew them apart and into a long day of hard work.

3
    Sparklies
    W AKING MEANT more than just prying the eyes open. It also meant finding the nerve to stick one’s arms out from under the covers into the cold morning air and then putting one’s bare feet on chilly wooden planks. So Bailey eased out of her warm cocoon of a bed gingerly, her face all screwed up in an expression of intensity as she woke and then dashed to the cupboard, flinging clothes every which way till she found the warmest combo she could find and dove in headfirst. Once dressed and with her feet shoved into a pair of fleece-lined boots, she could work on the niceties of dressing . . . like ties and belts and tucking in her blouse. She turned around, pulling on her lacings, to see Ting’s brown eyes peering over the tops of her blankets with amusement sparkling in their depths.
    â€œIt’s cold,” muttered Bailey.
    â€œAnd likely to get much colder!” Ting agreed. “Do you realize we might get snow?”
    While snow had sounded like the epitome of winter fun in sunny Southern California, here . . . far away and someplace strange . . . it sounded . . . well . . . cold.
    â€œI dunno,” answered Bailey dubiously.
    â€œYou’ll love it! We’ll have the chimneys working by then, and this place will heat up. Gavan and Tomaz promised.”
    Bailey arched her back and looked at the wooden structure encompassing them, and their sleeping room just a small part, one day to be a classroom. Iron Mountain Academy (IMA wizard school, she added mentally) was no longer a dream, it was nearly a reality. One without a top floor and roof and indoor plumbing, as of yet. “First,” she commented, “we have to finish building it.”
    â€œNot on an empty stomach!” Ting threw herself out of bed then, scrambling for her clothes in much the same hurried fashion as her best friend. Bailey would have crawled back into her still warm blankets to wait, but her boots hadn’t been cleaned, and she had no intention of pulling them off just to sit on her cot. So she paced back and forth until the vibration of her boot heels set off an irritated chattering in the corner. A small whiskered mouse face poked out of a wooden barrel that had once been a nail keg but had now been appropriated for her home. As if also anticipating the return of the Ice Age, the little pack rat had promptly filled it with as many scraps of paper and fabric as she could find and drag in for her nesting.
    Bailey squatted down and put her hand out, palm up. “Morning, Lacey.”
    The little creature stopped chittering, put her paws to her whiskers for a quick scrub, then hopped into the hand. Bailey swept her up and deposited her in her bodice pocket as Ting gave one last brush through her gleaming blue-black hair.
    They looked at one another and said, in unison and emphatically, “Breakfast!”
    As they headed down the inner, spiraling stair, they could hear the sounds of others who were already awake and about. Workmen’s voices rang through the air, along with the thump of hammers and the noise of handsaws. The smell of a wood-burning