by A. L. Knorr
“Look, Jade.” I held the tablet out.
She took in the numbers and the variations between the sequence I’d programmed and the one she’d outputted. Her eyes widened and she looked up, amazed. “But, I’m almost bang on every time!”
I nodded. “My guess is that you’re capable of near perfect pitch, but you’re getting in your own way. You can match the temperature from one hand to the other, but you have a harder time clocking the actual numbers. Let’s do it again, this time keep your eyes open. Do what you just did, but watch the numbers.”
She nodded and flexed her fingers, looking hopeful. “Okay.”
We ran the exercise a second time. Jade’s eyes were glued to the digital panel as her hands did their work. As she mimicked the heat of the last in the sequence, her eyes widened again.
“I get it,” she breathed. “I understand how the temperatures feel but I had no way of correlating them to the numbers. I get it now.”
The look she gave me was pure gold.
A warm feeling ribboned through my insides. “Well done, Jade. Shall we do it one more time, then try straight pitch again?”
She agreed and I set a new sequence for her. The readouts this time were even more accurate than the first. Tension fell away from her with every passing exercise.
“Ready to try pitch again?” I asked when the round ended.
She shook out her hands. “Lay it on me.”
I set a fresh sequence for her. She put her hand on the spindle and closed her eyes. As she called the numbers, I recorded them next to the sequence in the tablet. She was never more than fifteen degrees off. An incredible improvement.
When I showed her the tablet I half expected her to screech with the joy I felt pouring out of her, the burgeoning self-confidence. To my dismay, her eyes misted up. She rubbed a hand over them, brushing away the tears.
“What’s wrong?”
“Thank you,” she whispered, her bottom lip wobbling.
Her emotions seemed an overreaction to me. I touched her shoulder. “It’s no big deal.”
“Yes, it is.” She sniffed. Her blue eyes were glassy. “I’ve been an arse to you since day one, and here you are helping me.”
Jade seemed transformed from haughty vixen to frightened, insecure mage. She was acting as though I’d just saved her life. I was startled into speechlessness and a little embarrassed. I almost wanted to ask her who she was.
“I’m sorry, Saxony,” she went on. “Truly. I had no reason to be so nasty to you other than jealousy. Especially when I knew Ryan faked that whole thing last semester.” She was misting up again.
“Wow,” I replied. “Vindicated. Thank you for that. What made you come to me now, though? Everyone has been aware of my status for months now. What’s changed?”
Her chin tucked closer to her chest and she looked up from under her lashes. “April.”
“I don’t get it,” I replied. But I did, I just wanted her to be more specific.
Jade’s words came out in a rush. “When April lost her fire, it left me at the bottom of the totem pole. What if I’m next? April’s skills weren’t good. My skills aren’t good, either. What if I caught whatever April had? What if—”
I cut her off gently. “You’re making a lot of assumptions. I don’t think you’re in danger of going the way of April. She had despised her fire since birth. For all we know, she manifested the situation. A self full-filling prophecy.”
But Jade shook her head. She put her hand on my forearm and stepped closer. “It happened to a friend of my parents, too, and she never despised her fire.”
I stared at her, the words pinging around inside my brain. “You know someone else it happened to?”
“Yes, my mom’s friend. Maggie Parker. She used to babysit me. She was an accomplished, third-degree mage. She could even qualify for a job here at Arcturus if she’d been interested. Her fire vanished the same night as April’s did.”
The gym tilted. “I have to sit down,” I rasped.
We left our ring and found a couple of chairs along the wall where we drank from our water bottles. Her words buzzed around my head like a swarm of flies.
I turned to her. “This isn’t some sick joke? You’re not cozying up to me just to pull the proverbial rug out from under me?”
She shook her head, gripping my forearm again. Only then did I notice the lack of a bond passing between us. I hadn’t paid attention to it the first time she’d touched me.
“It’s not a joke. I swear. Maggie Parker lost her fire the same night as April Brown. It hasn’t come back for Maggie either. She told my mom it’s just gone. She’s devastated. So it can’t just happen to mages who don’t want to be mages, or mages who are incompetent.”
I couldn’t resist a dull barb. “Yet, here you are getting tutoring.”
Her mouth quirked. “I needed it anyway. I figured it couldn’t hurt. Plus, you’re Burned. I thought you might know something I don’t know.”
I bit my lip, watching other students practicing various skills around the gym. Blazes flared and fireballs flew, sparks tumbled across the neoprene floor. “Sorry to disappoint but I don’t know anything. Have you told Headmaster Chaplin?”
She shook her head.
“You need to tell him. He’ll pass it on to the Agency and they’ll investigate. They’re our best hope of understanding why some fires went out on the same night, in all likelihood never to rekindle.”
“I’ll tell him,” she promised.
I stoppered my water bottle and put it on the floor. “Good. Then let’s get back to work.”
Sixteen
Dreams Revived
Tuesday afternoon on my way back to my room after class, I poked my head in April’s room. Her empty luggage lay open on her bed. Her clothes were folded in piles, hanging over her chair still with the hangers in them, or stuffed partly into a garbage bag. Dance music played from a small speaker on her desk.
April emerged from her bathroom with arms full of toiletries and cosmetics. A hair straightener dangled from her elbow by its cord. Her focused expression brightened when she saw me standing in the doorway.
“Come on in.” Dumping the goods on the bed she began to sort them into a collection of glitzy looking cosmetics bags.
“When are you leaving?” I sat on the edge of her bed where there was still space.
“Taxi picks me up in two hours. I’m catching the red-eye.” She rolled her eyes and made claws with both hands. “I cannot wait to get out of here.”
“That bad, huh?” I tried to read her mood and picked up a nervous energy.
She nodded, taking a sip from the cola sitting on her desk. Setting it down, she went back to the washroom for another load of goods.
“How was it at the agency?” I asked.
She emerged again, this time with a fluffy polka dotted towel, matching bathrobe and hair turban. “Tedious. They poked and prodded. Took more blood. Did scans. Interviewed me. Polygraphed me.”
I started with surprise. “They thought you were lying?”
She shook her head. “It was just procedure. They were very nice, treated me like a queen. Still, it’s not fun to be a lab-rat, even if they feed you surf ’n’ turf.”
“What did they tell you? Anything new?”
Her eyes sparkled. “They confirmed what Dr. Price said. I’m human.” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, this time in an expression of exultation. It was like she was soaking in sunshine. It struck me that I’d never seen her so joyful. She wasn’t in shock. She wasn’t in denial. This was what she’d wanted, truly and deeply.
“I’m happy for you,” I said, with a certain level of wonder.
She looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time, then melted, her shoulders sloping and her eyes growing soft. “You have no idea how nice it is to hear someone say that. Finally.”
“I guess you got a hold of your parents?”
She blew out her cheeks. “Yeah, that was a mixed bag
, let me tell you. My mom is upset. Furious, actually. She thought I somehow made it happen with my mind. Ha! It’s kind of nice to have her overestimate my mental powers for a change.”
“Did you tell her that you’re not the only one it’s happened to?”
April wrapped up the cable to her curling iron and put it into a sack along with the rhinestone-studded straightener. “Yes, that’s what cranked her down from livid to just upset. To believe that I’d done it, she’d have to think that I had the power to snuff a bunch of other fires, too.”
“And your dad?” I pulled my legs up to sit cross-legged and began to fold and sort the clothes into piles.
“My dad isn’t a mage so he was cool with it. Shocked, but cool.” April transferred the folded clothes into her luggage. “He’ll meet me at the airport. Mom made some excuse why she couldn’t be there, but I know she’s secretly punishing me.” April shrugged. “She’ll have to get over it, because this is me now.”
“I’m sad you’re leaving.” I handed her a stack of frilly underpants. “I’ll miss you.”
“You can visit me any time, but I know how these things go.” She looked sly, which made her look older, certainly too old for frilly underpants. “Not every friend comes into your life forever. If we stay in touch, I’ll be happy. But I have a feeling your life is going to go somewhere exciting. Our roads will diverge, Saxony Cagney.”
I suspected she was right and admired her for saying it straight. “And where will your road take you?”
She made a squeaky sound of excitement. “That’s the beauty of it. The possibilities are endless. There are so many secret desires I’ve had, those future potential paths I never let myself hope to walk because of what I was. Suddenly, I have that all back. The things I used to fantasize about when I was a kid have all come rushing back. Photography, make-up artistry, animal medicine, architecture, even accounting.”
I laughed. “Well, you’d be amazing at that.”
“I know. Right?” April looked authentically blissed out at the thought of being an accountant. She sighed. “The worst thing that could happen now is my fire coming back, but the agency assured me they didn’t think that was possible. The burns you gave me prove it.”
Cringing, I gave her an apologetic look.
Her eyes widened. “Don’t be sorry! I’ll cherish the scars because they’ll always remind me of the night I was set free. I was a slave to my fire. A life of pain and bondage was what I had to look forward to. While I know you didn’t put out my fire, you verified that it can’t be put back in. For that, I’ll always be grateful.”
I felt a little tight in my throat, so I switched subjects. “You don’t even seem that upset about Ryan.”
She rolled her eyes as she balled up pairs of socks and tucked them into the corners of her bag. “I’m fed up with him. I tried to make it work. I forgave him for being a record-breaking jerk. I would have let him pop my cherry and everything. But now I know he was just using me. Good riddance.”
A weight lifted from my shoulders and I let out an exhale. “I’m happy to hear you say that. I was trying to figure out a way to tell you but I couldn’t figure out how—”
Her expression turned crafty. “You mean without sounding like an arrogant prat? It’s okay. I know he was using me to get to you. And if you two want to be together, you have my blessing.”
I choked on a single word. “What?”
“It’s okay, I figured it out. He always claimed you were in love with him, but it’s been the other way around this whole time. He’s in love with you.” She flounced over to her desk and grabbed a stack of magazines. Bringing these back to the bag with a self-satisfied glance, she tucked them into the front pocket of her luggage.
I rubbed a hand over my forehead and stifled a frustrated groan. “You’ve got it so wrong. Ryan isn’t in love with me. He doesn’t even like me, and I certainly don’t like him. He’s been blackmailing me since the end of last semester, trying to make me take him through a Burning.”
April’s expression rippled through a variety of emotion: shock, disbelief, then a kind of disgusted understanding. She sank onto her chair, sending a cardigan sliding to the floor, gaze fixed on me. “Of course he was,” she said softly. “It’s power he’s been after. Always power.”
I nodded, holding out both hands, palms up, in a gesture of relief and gratitude that she finally understood. “He figured out my status last year and has been relentless ever since. First he threatened to reveal what I’d done—”
“That’s why the headmaster outed you publicly.” She was awestruck. “I wondered why he hadn’t told us from the beginning. It’s not like going through the pure torture of a Burning is actually appealing.”
I nodded, happy it was sinking in, even if she didn’t realize the number of magi who were tempted to try the ritual, in spite of the pain.
“Basil thwarted that plan, so next he was going to use you as leverage,” I explained. “Something horrific, I’m sure. Like threatening to mail your sex-tape to your parents.”
April’s peaches and cream complexion became a remarkable shade of green. She crawled onto the bed amidst her piles of clothes. “I have to lay down for a minute.”
“At least now he can’t do anything to you. This is the second time his plans have come to nothing. I’m hoping he gives up.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” April moaned, half buried in a pile of t-shirts.
My stomach lurched. “Why do you say that?”
April rolled onto her back, looking at me with something akin to pity. “It’s not in his personality to give up. Your best bet is to treat him like an angry cobra and stay well clear. I’m glad the headmaster is on your side, but in my opinion, he shouldn’t have even let such a snake into the school.”
“He had to.”
She came up to sitting and waved a hand. “Yeah, I know. Godfather. Still. This is Basil’s school. I wonder if he knows what he’s risking by having Ryan here.”
I looked at her with surprise. “Boy, are you ever singing a different tune.”
“Fool me twice,” she said with a shrug.
“Yeah, and keep your enemies closer,” I replied. “Ryan is a thorn, but it’s better to have him here where family can keep an eye on him.”
She wobbled her head. “Maybe.” She sighed, glancing around the mess of her room. Looking at her watch, she shot me a hopeful grin. “Help me finish up the rest of this disaster?”
“Absolutely.” I pulled her largest case closer. “Does this one fit all your makeup, or do we need the duffle bag as well?”
She threw a facecloth at my head.
Two hours later, Gage, Tomio, April and I stood in front of the villa helping a taxi driver load her bags into the trunk of his car.
Gage tucked her final bag into the backseat and closed the door. He shot a frown up at the school as he came around the vehicle. “No one else is coming out to say goodbye?”
April pulled Gage in for a hug. “I said goodbye to the professors and headmaster already.” She moved on to hug Tomio.
“What about the students?” I asked as she swept me up next in a too-tight embrace.
Pulling back, she looked up at the second floor windows. “There are a few saying goodbye in their own way.”
I followed her gaze up and saw the majority of the first-year students looking down from the lounge’s window-seats. April waved to them and they all waved back.
I scowled and shook my head. “Cowards.”
“It’s alright. Makes it easier to leave knowing that most of my class is too frightened of me to say goodbye in person.” A shadow passed over her face as she turned her back on the school.
Gage leaned toward me and murmured under his breath, “It’s not contagious, right? They’re just being idiots?”
“Of course, they’re just being idiots,” Tomio replied, equally under his breath and sounding like he was trying to convince himself as much as Gage.
We stood
back as April got into the rear seat. Closing the door, she rolled down the window. “Nice knowing ya.”
She put her arm through the open window and banged on the door. The taxi rolled away and she waved until she was out of sight.
“So ends the fire career of one of our class members,” said Tomio, still waving.
“So begins some as-yet undetermined career that will make our class-member happy,” I replied as we walked back to the villa.
“That’s one of your strengths, Saxony,” observed Gage as we ascended the front steps and passed into the front lobby.
“What’s that?”
“Finding the silver lining.” He wrapped an arm around my waist.
I smiled. To everyone in Arcturus Academy, what happened to April was a tragedy and a horror, something to be feared. But not every supernatural was happy to be so, and while it might be a disaster for the others who had lost their fire, for my friend it was emancipation.
Still, I hoped the Agency or some other body had the means to root out what had caused it. Otherwise it would be like the black plague among our species. Fear and desperation would run rampant and magi might do all manner of crazy things in the name of self-preservation. That was a world I didn’t want to imagine.
Part Three
Who Holds the Reins
Seventeen
Let Me Tell You a Story
One spring day was so warm that lunch hour and any spare minute between classes and mealtimes had students sunbathing on the grass in the back garden or studying at the stone tables which graced the flagstones near the exterior walls.
I parked myself at one of these tables with my laptop and textbooks. Basil had been correct about needing to keep my spares for homework. I pulled my hair up into a ponytail and shoved it through the back of the Arcturus baseball cap I wore to keep the sun out of my eyes. A delicious breeze cooled my skin and flicked the collar of my jacket against my neck. Birds twittered and chirped from the nearby trees and shrubs, sounding as happy about the sunshine as I felt.
