She stepped within, and Jack closed the doors behind her. "And why do we need a mirror?" she asked with a raised brow and a leer on her face. Her voice echoed in the large space.

Jack laughed at the insinuation. "I know you can levitate objects, but I want you to try and do it when you're disoriented. The mirror is there to mix you up.”

He led her to sit cross-legged on the carpet, facing the mirror, and set the feather and rock a distance behind her on her right. She could see them, but it was a reflection and therefore disorienting. She'd relied a lot on her sight to accomplish these tasks in the past. Obviously, Jack knew that and wanted to break her reliance.

"Levitate them both at the same time," he said, leaning back against a wall. "Do it so that they're held at equal levels in the air.”

She blew a strand of hair away from her face, her expression grim. This was going to be tough. Not only had she never levitated objects of such varying mass at once before, she'd never done it using a reflection.

He read her expression. "It's important that you gain full control of your abilities. Hopefully, you'll never need to use them to defend yourself, but if you do, you need to be ready. You're a strong witch. You don't want to end up like Marcus, your fate in the hands of more powerful warlocks.”

Mira thought of Marcus for a moment. She'd never even met him, but she felt a kinship with him because they were both air witches. He'd ended up dangling from the end of a makeshift rope, alone and used up. "No, I don't want that.”

He nodded at the stone and feather. "Then levitate.”

Mira drew a thread and manipulated it under the two objects. Creating air movement was fairly easy, but fine work like using wind to levitate objects was much trickier. Several times she blew the feather too far away and had to carefully draw it back using little puffs of air. She regulated the air currents to what she needed for each object— much, much stronger and tightly contained under the rock and hardly a breath for the feather.

It took all her concentration and several false starts, but she finally got the right recipe and very slowly lifted both the rock and the feather at the same time, then set them back down. Perspiration sheened her forehead by the time she'd finished the task. She had no idea how long it had taken her. Time had slipped from her as she'd worked.

"Good job," said Jack. "I'm impressed. You've taken to your magick well.”

She had. To go back to who she'd been before her power had nestled, purring, in the center of her chest would be like tearing off an arm or leg.

"Now do it again," said Jack.

She glared at him.

"Go ahead," he prompted.