Read The Spellbinder (Tom & Laura Series) for Free Online Page A

cylinder and was the only visible control. From the way they kept fingering their cylinders, they appeared very important to them.
    Carmichael was tired from casting the bind and exhausted from running. As he stepped into a leafy street near his school he felt his pocket become painfully hot. He pulled the smoldering parchment out of it and stuffed the bind under a cropped privet hedge marking the boundary of a small garden. No sooner had he put it down than it burst to flames.
    He looked around to make sure no one had seen the blaze. A constable at the other end of the street was yelling at some people leaning out of the upstairs window, but other than that the street was empty. Carmichael began to run towards his school. He would be safe there.
     
    From where she sat, Laura saw that she was only a few yards from a perfect circle of darker ground. It was as if a dusting of soot covered grass, trees, paths and benches. The circle was huge and appeared to be centered on the bench where she and Tom had been sitting. A breeze had sprung up blowing towards the city and her school. As she watched the darkness vanish she felt a gust of invigorating air blow into her face.
    She felt much better, but decided to stay sitting on the grass. Tom was sleeping beside her and she didn’t want to leave him. Constables, soldiers and a few elegantly dressed gentlemen stood in the area around her.
    A sergeant came up to her and knelt on the grass as he took her statement. He wrote her words down laboriously in a notebook. He appeared to have trouble spelling some of them. A couple of men with the longest tape measure Laura had ever seen started measuring the distance between the park bench and where she sat.
    A short well-dressed man sporting a large handlebar moustache stood a few feet away eyeing her up. He listened as Laura gave her statement and it was clear from his posture that he did not believe a word she said.
    “So you claim you ran from that bench to here?” he said, glaring at her, “All the while unable to breathe. Are you trying to tell me that you are an athlete?”
    “No, I said, if you care to remember, that I only made it about a third of the way. Then Tom picked me up and carried me here.”
    “He doesn’t look like he could carry you ten feet, Miss,” the sergeant said as he looked at Tom, who had sat up and was looking around in a daze.
    “Nevertheless, that is what occurred. My parents will be worried and Thomas’s school may have missed him by now. So would you be kind enough to let us go or send word to our respective residences?”
    “Already done that, Miss,” the sergeant said. “I’ve sent a couple of runners as we’ll likely be detaining you for a little while.”
    The man with the moustache stepped forward to ask more questions when a distinguished looking man wearing a monocle strode up behind him and clasped him on the shoulder.
    “I will take over now, Saunders. You start on the other statements, my good man.” It seemed like a mild request to Laura, but Saunders treated it as though it was a curt dismissal and stomped off. “I can handle this on my own,” the man informed the sergeant, who started in awe at him. The sergeant tugged at his forelock as he stood up and backed away.
    “Laura Jennifer Young and Thomas Merlin Carter, I presume?” the man asked in an amused manner as he consulted a clipboard. He flipped over a few pages to find the notes he wanted.
    “You,” he said nodding at Laura, “Are a 16 year old Class A Spellbinder.” Tom gasped, and Laura was puzzled. How could she be Class A without knowing about it? The whole idea was absurd.
    “And you,” he said looking at Tom, “Are a 16 year old Grade 3 Healer, whose tutor thinks might become a Grade 1 according to the latest report. That’s an unusual improvement in performance for a Healer.”
    “I can’t be a Class A,” Laura complained loudly. “Why didn’t someone tell me?”
    The man ignored her protest and