Wounded Magic

by Megan Crewe

  But she’d heard hints that they might be called in to help with a big plan—maybe the big plan they were coordinating with the Bonded Worthy. Commander Revett was hoping we’d get more details on that tonight. The squad was going to bug the theater so we could listen in on future meetings too.

  Polina shifted her weight from one foot to the other. The magic stirred around me, equally restless, but it pretty much never felt calm these days. I wished I could tell Polina that she could take off if she wanted, that she’d done enough, but now that she was here, Sam had wanted her around for further questioning after the meeting. She wasn’t bound to a chair, but the Confed was restraining her all over again.

  The wind blew harder. Polina brought her hands to her face. I was about to offer to add a little warmth to our conjured bubble when she murmured in singsong Russian and patted her palms together. A wisp of heat grazed my face from where it had bloomed between her hands. My jaw went slack for a second before I could catch it.

  Why was I surprised that she was a mage? She’d been hanging out with mages, had dated one. Back home, mages and the nonmagical didn’t mix very much. I just hadn’t thought about it.

  I didn’t really know much at all about her, did I?

  The guard on the left—the taller guy, with blond hair slicked to the side—threw back his head to laugh at something his companion had said.

  Polina grimaced. “That one,” she said quietly. “He’s the one I was with. He thinks he’s so special, being a tough guy, but they don’t even want him in the meeting. Just stick him out here.”

  “He doesn’t look too worried that anyone might try to sneak in,” I said.

  She shrugged. “No one would have tried before.”

  Sam’s voice carried through my earpiece. “Everything stable out there, Lopez?”

  I ducked my mouth closer to my mic and pressed the button. “All’s well. How’s it going in there?”

  “From what we’ve heard so far, the meeting is almost over. You might not be out in the cold long. They’re talking, but it’s hard to follow without having heard what they were discussing before. We’re taking it all down, though.”

  Great. Another excuse for Brandt to mutter about how Polina’s tips hadn’t delivered any terrorists right into our laps. I rubbed my arms.

  “I’m surviving. No need to rush back.”

  Polina’s ex and the other guard might have been standing out here for a while, then. I guessed I couldn’t blame them for getting restless. Anyway, if they’d gotten complacent, then better for us.

  Their voices rose again, the shorter guy ribbing Polina’s ex with a teasing tone. The blond guy waved him off with a scoff and said something that made Polina wince. They tossed a few more comments back and forth, and her ex moved his hands through the air, tracing an hourglass shape.

  Polina was frowning furiously now. The magic in our little bubble jittered, even though as far as I could tell, neither of us had cast. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  “What are they talking about?” I ventured, even though I could make a stab at the answer. Maybe she’d feel better if she could vent a little.

  “They are joking about me,” Polina said tightly. “He is saying I was only good for—for—” She gritted her teeth. “He wasn’t good for anything. So, who should be laughing?”

  “Sounds like he’s a jerk,” I said. “It’s a good thing you broke up with him.”

  “Best thing I ever did,” she grumbled. She didn’t look any calmer than she had before I’d asked. Her hands were clenched in front of her chest. The magic twitched against my scalp, and I thought of Lacey again—of Lacey with her eyes flashing as she hurled a wave of vicious electricity toward the rest of us on her team.

  The signs that Lacey was getting erratic had been there for a while. I just hadn’t recognized them or done enough in time.

  She’d been pushed to her breaking point by the Confed—and now she was lost, a Burnout sent back to the little town where the guy who’d bruised her was waiting. What would happen to Polina if we kept pushing her around?

  “He played sweet when we first met,” Polina said, her gaze still fixed on the blond guy. “I should have known better. He cares about nobody except himself and impressing these…” She waved her hand toward the building as if indicating everyone inside it.

  “You got out,” I said. “That’s what matters.”

  She made a rough noise in her throat. Then a haunted look came over her pale face, something pained and vulnerable. The magic quivered around me.

  “I never told anyone,” she said in a whisper. “But you won’t tell anyone who knows me. There was… We must have made a mistake. I was going to…” One of her hands dropped to her belly. “That was what let me decide. To have a child with him—it was too awful. I took care of it, and I left him.”

  Her eyes jerked to me as if daring me to judge her. I didn’t have a clue what to say. Dios mío, somehow I’d ended up in a total minefield. My mouth opened and closed and opened again. She shouldn’t have to hear his jokes. We were torturing her, making her stand here and listen to him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. “That you had to go through that.” What could I add? I’d have liked to radio Sam and ask if Polina could wait for us somewhere farther away, but I didn’t think he’d go for it. And I didn’t really want to explain that request in front of Polina. I knew from experience that saying a person was reacting badly was only going to make them more upset.

  She looked away, her expression hardening again. “It is over. Maybe he will be over soon. The way he treats people—everyone—I hope he gets blasted to pieces by one of your spells.”

  Her vehemence unnerved me and seemed to upset the magic too. It wriggled distractingly around the collar of my jacket and nipped at my jaw.

  “I don’t think that’s likely to happen,” I said, as gently as I could manage. “I wouldn’t blast someone unless it was the only way to save someone else.”

  “Hmm. Could save a lot of people a lot of trouble.”

  I had no answer at all for that.

  We stood there in silence for another few minutes. Polina hugged herself and then released her arms to tug at her braid. The magic kept jabbing at me as if it couldn’t handle her apparent frustration. A weight settled in my stomach.

  Was there something I’d missed that I should’ve said to her? Should I go against Sam’s orders and tell her to just get out of here? But he’d already warned me the last time I’d let her go. If he reported that infraction to the senior officials, it might be all the evidence they needed to conclude I was a traitor after all.

  A yawn tugged at my jaw. I hadn’t slept well since I’d gotten back—too many worries, too much whirling in my head. For a second, my head felt hazy.

  I snapped back to sharper alertness when the guards started laughing again. Polina stiffened. A harsh phrase fell from her lips.

  “What?” I couldn’t help asking.

  “He’s bragging about how he cheated some of the shops around here out of money,” Polina said. “I know those people—they’re good people. He thinks he can take whatever he wants.”

  The magic flinched between us. Then the two-way radio on the blond guy’s belt crackled. He raised it to his ear.

  At the same moment, Sam spoke through my earpiece. “It looks like they’re about to move out, Lopez. Hang tight where you are. We’ll need a few minutes to finish setting up the surveillance equipment.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  Polina leaned forward as her ex hooked the radio back on his belt. He clapped the other guy on the shoulder in what looked like a farewell gesture, and that guy disappeared into the shadows. The blond guy took one last look around before heading in the other direction around the theater.

  Polina’s lips moved, her fingers curling. The energy in the air clamped around me with a frantic yank. My heart flip-flopped, and her hand shot up.

  “No!” I said, smacking her arm down
before the verse had finished leaving her mouth.

  Polina whipped around. “What are you doing? Why did you stop me?”

  The magic was upset, I thought, and also, Who will you be if you hurt him? My tongue stumbled. I wasn’t totally sure who I’d been trying to protect. “You can’t— It doesn’t matter what he did. There are other ways to stop him. You can’t just…”

  Her cheeks flushed red. “What did you think I was going to do to him? It was just a trick, to take him down from his high horse a little. You think I would—what… Attack him? Kill him? Like I am a criminal too?”

  “No,” I said, but my guilt must have shown on my face. I had thought she was about to attack him somehow. “Polina—”

  She jabbed her finger at me. “After I helped you so much… That is what you see. A criminal. Maybe the people in there are a little bit right. Maybe none of you Americans can look at us except from your high horses.”

  She pushed herself away from me and took off down the alley. Out of the sphere of silence I’d conjured, the thudding of her footsteps echoed through the night.

  Before I could decide whether to chase after her or stay put, more footsteps thumped back toward us from the other direction. The blond guy burst into the courtyard, his head swiveling as he scanned the area. “Who’s there?” he hollered in Russian, one of the phrases I could now recognize. He snatched up his radio.

  ¡Mierda! I hurled out a casting, my vice to pin him to the ground. The radio clattered from his hand, inactivated. But just then a woman appeared in the doorway on her way out. She saw the guy falling and stumbled backward with a cry.

  I clutched my mic. “Rojanwan, they know something’s wrong. Get out of there!”

  Before I’d even finished my warning, shouts and a crackle that made the magic flail against me filtered through the walls. A pained yelp pierced the night, but no answer came from Sam.

  They were fighting. I bobbed on my feet, now unsure whether I should ignore his orders.

  He’d given them before the rest of the squad had come under attack. I clenched my jaw and dashed toward the theater.

  A flash of magical light seared my vision. A thump sounded, like a body hitting a wall. I wrenched open the door to see Brandt staggering toward me down the back hall. He had Joselin with him—had the taller girl’s arm slung over his shoulder. Her head hung as limp as her ponytail, her feet dragging on the ground more than they were supporting her weight. A streak of blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth.

  “Rojanwan’s coming,” Brandt barked at me. “Help me get her to the chopper.”

  With my pulse rapping out a painful beat against my ribs, I grasped Joselin’s other shoulder and fled toward our landing spot.

  They didn’t bother with the men in the jeep or the locked white room this time. I was just shaken awake from another unsettled sleep by Tonya, who scowled at me without speaking as she led me down the hall to one of the base’s smaller conference rooms. The moment I saw Commander Revett, Colonel Alcido, and one of the officials who’d interrogated me last time sitting in a row at the table inside, any hope I’d held onto fell away.

  “Is Joselin—Stravos—okay?” I asked as Tonya left. The door thudded shut in her wake.

  Joselin hadn’t been breathing when we’d made it back to the base last night, despite Sam’s best efforts at first aid. The staff on site had rushed her to the magimedical ward and sent the rest of us to our dorms.

  “I’m sorry to say that Operative Stravos succumbed to her injuries,” Commander Revett said in a weary voice. She motioned to the chair across from them. “We’d like to ascertain what circumstances led to last night’s unfortunate events. Would you please sit down?”

  They’d called me in because they thought I was the circumstances. A lump filled my throat. I couldn’t even say they were wrong.

  Joselin was dead. Brash, music-loving Joselin who’d tried to turn our missions into an adventure. Who’d believed she deserved to be here as some kind of penance.

  She’d deserved better than this. From the Confed—and from me.

  The chair squeaked on the floor as I pulled it back. My knees gave, and I sat faster than I meant to. I propped my elbows on the table. “What do you want to know?”

  “We have the report from your mission leader,” Colonel Alcido said, his knobby hands resting on a file folder in front of him. Was our Dull military representative calling the shots on this subject too? “As he understands it, the target meeting was breaking up peacefully, no one had suspected your squad’s presence, and then all at once, you were warning him from outside, just before one of the insurgents raised the alarm. It appears you knew something was wrong ahead of the rest of the squad. How is that?”

  I wet my lips, queasiness roiling inside me. “There was… A local girl led us to the building where they were meeting. You know that already. I was waiting with her, watching the guards outside. And when they were leaving…”

  I tried to break down why I’d gotten nervous—the way Polina had been talking, the energy I’d picked up from her. I’d been the one who’d encouraged the senior operatives to trust her. I’d been the one who’d encouraged her to trust us. No matter what Prisha had been saying the other day, it’d been my responsibility to keep everyone there safe, hadn’t it?

  But somehow the whole situation had fallen apart with one interrupted casting.

  After I finished my story, the three officials took turns asking me questions. Double-checking the details of my conversation with Polina. Confirming the orders I’d received.

  “The only time I went against anything Rojanwan told me, it was to go to the building to try to help the squad,” I said. “Maybe if I’d done that sooner, we could have gotten Joselin back here sooner…”

  One more mistake I suspected was going to haunt me for a long time.

  Commander Revett frowned in a way that looked almost compassionate. “I don’t think there was any way she was going to make it after the castings that hit her,” she said, and glanced at the other mage official. “I don’t see any sign of treason here.”

  Treason. What might they do to my parents, to Finn, if they decided I’d broken my word to them after all? Wouldn’t that be horrifically ridiculous—if I failed the people I cared about not by how I’d defied the Confed but through a total accident that hadn’t served the magic or anyone else at all?

  The other commander made a rough humming sound. “No, I have to agree.”

  Colonel Alcido looked from one mage to the other. “It seems to me it’s of concern that this is the second time you’ve found issue with Operative Lopez’s performance in the last three months. Why was she given a pass before? Her judgment and emotional stability are clearly not sound enough for her to work in the field.”

  Revett’s jaw tightened. “She’s met every training standard we have. She hasn’t faltered once during the ongoing training sessions.”

  “A classroom or a gym is a hell of a lot different from active duty.” Alcido cut his gaze toward me. “Why don’t you wait in the hall while we discuss what we do with you now, Operative Lopez?”

  It might have been phrased like a question, but I knew a command when I heard one.

  In the hallway, I leaned back against the dingy beige wall with nothing to distract me from the growing ache in my chest.

  It didn’t take long for the officials to call me back in. All three of the faces waiting for me were solemn.

  “Operative Lopez,” Commander Revett said. “We’ve determined that your actions showed no deliberate malice, but a worrisome lack of forethought. For the time being, you are relieved from active duty. You will continue your training and fulfill your debt to the Confederation by assisting with the base cleanup currently underway, until such time as we feel you may be fit to re-enter service in the field.”

  She set her hands down on the table with a thump of finality that echoed through my core.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Finn


  If there was any balm for having suffered a beating and then total ostracization from one’s friends, helping another person had to be it. Tucked away in my little cubicle in the Media Outreach office, I left behind the strain of the last few days, if only momentarily. It didn’t even matter that the help I was giving was with the most ridiculous things.

  “The Records workers are rather strict about access,” I said into the phone. “You won’t get permission to roam freely. But for a request like yours, I’m sure they’d pull the appropriate files and walk you through whatever data they have. I can even call them up myself to give them a heads-up to expect you.”

  “Thank you so much,” the guy on the other end said. We’d been chatting for almost half an hour, mostly about mages’ pet-keeping habits. I gathered he was doing some sort of research on how closely folklore about witches’ and wizards’ familiars aligned with real-life magical associations with animals. “It’s a relief having an idea where to start.”

  “Just remember I can’t say for certain they’ll have records on that subject,” I said. “But we do seem to keep track of an awful lot of unusual data, so I wouldn’t put it past them. If none of those leads get you anywhere, call in again, and we can brainstorm some more. I’m curious to hear what you discover.”

  “If I get this report written, I’ll send an early copy your way,” the guy said brightly.

  As I hung up, my supervisor for my trial placement stopped by my nook.

  “It sounded like that went well,” she said. “You really know how to talk to them.”

  Her voice dipped slightly on the word “them.” She meant Dulls. They were people, and I talked to them like I talked to any human being. I supposed her discomfort wasn’t much different from the discomfort of the Dulls who were bizarrely comforted by the thought that the mage they were speaking to couldn’t actually cast any magic.