The box contained a heap of loose paper with notes scribbled on them and a small journal. His grandmother’s handwriting was hard to decipher, but he started on the journal. He kept an eye on the time, and ten minutes before his dad would normally get home from work, he packed everything away and headed inside, where he hid the box again before his father got home.

A week later, he hadn’t learned anything much in the way of magic as the pages he’d read had mostly been information on people and places she had been traveling through when she started the journal. There was a reference to her stunning two men who were obnoxious but no information on how that spell worked. He made a note of it on his computer, packed up well before his father was due home, and started on his homework.

He made steady progress studying the stuff in the box every day over the rest of the school week, apart from Thursday when he just had too much homework to do. He did learn a few things, mainly mentions of things his grandmother had done or considered doing. She mentioned using a sleep spell lightly on a male pest at a party at one spot, while at another, she said she had been shielding herself mentally at one point, and at another point, after the same function, she had used a shield spell to protect herself from heavy rain and hail.

The biggest takeaway he got that week was her mention of how she could close her eyes and sense the people around her. Apparently, she could tell where people were around her and the difference between a normal person and someone with some magic genes. He had no idea of how to go about that, but he decided to close his eyes and see what he could achieve.

He let his consciousness settle, and he could “see” glows. Hmm. He moved his head and studied what he was sensing. There were two bright glows to his left, and beyond them, at what he felt was probably some distance, there was a whole group of dull glows. To his right, there were four dull glows fairly close. Beyond these nearby glows, which he could sense clearly, there were more glows, but he got the feeling they were all further away.

He considered where he was. The two bright glows had to be his mum and sister. The four to his right were the Kings, the people who lived next door. Interesting. In his mind’s eye, his mum and sister, who both had a fair number of the engineered genes, showed up brighter than everyone else nearby. He studied the Kings some more and noticed that two of the glows were a little brighter than the other two. Not by a lot, but noticeable.

Over the next couple of days, he practiced sensing others, and he also began noticing other things when he closed his eyes. There was a blueness that he found strange. And things that he could sort of see, maybe, that appeared to be just floating around. Hmm. He didn’t know what to make of them. He wasn’t even sure they were real and not something his mind was making up.