Ruthless Magic

by Megan Crewe

  “Do you think that’s what I want? Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve said?”

  “Finn...”

  “What about Prisha? What about every other novice who wasn’t Chosen even though they’ve performed better than I have?”

  Dad stiffened. “You don’t realize the complexities of the situation. If you’d just—”

  “No.” My hands balled into fists. “You don’t realize how simple this is. I belong with them. I should have to fight for my spot. I don’t care how difficult the Exam is or what it’s going to take. This is what’s right. You’ve always encouraged us to think about people other than ourselves. Why can’t you let me do this?”

  I felt drained, yet my body was also humming with determination as potent as any magic I’d ever hearkened.

  “Even I don’t know the full extent of the responsibilities that come with being made Champion,” Dad said. “And there are political factors. We can’t be sure how the Circle will interpret your rejection of their Choosing. You have to trust me on this, Finn.”

  I didn’t. I’d trusted him once, and Margo too, but how could I continue to when they didn’t trust me to know what I wanted and which consequences I’d rather face?

  “I am not rescinding my declaration,” I said. “This is my choice, and you have no right to take it away from me. If you try, I’ll... I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen, as loudly as I can, that I was denied the chance to prove myself—that the entire system is a farce.”

  The shock on Dad’s face cut me. Even after I’d declared, even after I’d snuck out this morning, he hadn’t truly believed I’d defy him.

  “I’m sorry,” I added. “If there’s fallout, I’ll take all the blame. This is on me, Dad. Let me have it.”

  Dad’s gaze held mine for a second longer. Then it slid away.

  “I have to talk to your mother,” he said roughly. He turned and strode down the hall.

  His answer hadn’t been an acceptance, but as I watched him go, I knew that I’d won.

  I only wished I felt a little more victorious.

  Chapter Four

  Rocío

  My dad parked our old Kia at the curb several feet shy of the gated entrance to the Rikers Island Bridge. Between the short stretches of trees on either side, the tall steel bars gleamed in the morning sun. The faint fizzing of a defensive ’chantment rippled off them. A man in a plain gray suit—he had to be a mage—stood guard out front.

  The hum of magic in the air was nothing compared to the tension buzzing through the car. The engine turned off with a sputter, and the silence blared. Dad’s shoulders sagged. Mom rubbed her mouth as if trying to work words out of it. Then they opened their doors to get out. Examinees were due at the gate by nine, and it was twenty to.

  On the sidewalk, Dad pulled me to him first. He squashed me against his solid chest.

  “I’m going to do whatever I have to,” I said. The reediness of my voice made me cringe. I added more firmly, “Whatever it takes to come out alive and with my magic. I promise.”

  “It’s your decision,” Dad said, using the same refrain he’d been giving me ever since I’d told him about that decision on Saturday night. “I believe in you, mija. All my love goes with you.”

  As he let me go, a black sedan cruised past us and glided to a stop right at the entrance. A boy—white, clean-cut—sprang out and headed straight for the gate with no time spent on goodbyes. Maybe old-magic types felt they were above dramatics.

  “Don’t push against them,” Mom said. “You do what they ask as well as you can, and that’s it.”

  “I know.” I wasn’t going to give the Confed a single reason to doubt that I fit their “requirements.” I just wanted this to be over so that I could get on with the life I’d been supposed to be building.

  She hugged me tight. “You know I’m proud of you and that my love goes with you as well. I want you to have this too.”

  She eased back and pulled a fine gold chain from her pocket. Dangling from the chain was a small, jagged sunburst charm.

  “When I was eleven,” she said, “and the Confed told my parents I was magical, there was a little while when it seemed I’d be able to do anything. I bought this as sort of a celebration, because it looked like the magic I felt inside me. Hold on to it, and maybe it will help you hold on to your magic too.”

  “Mom,” I said, choking up. I took the necklace and gave them both one last look, one last watery smile. Then, before I started full-on crying, I turned and marched toward the gate.

  The mage released the lock and let me through. “Proceed across the bridge and wait in the courtyard,” he said. “All casting is forbidden until you’re instructed otherwise.”

  “Okay,” I said. When he added nothing more, I hurried on.

  The tines of the sunburst charm bit into my palm. I raised my arms to fix the chain around my neck, and the charm settled just below the scooped neckline of my T-shirt. My sneakers slapped the asphalt in harmony with the magic in the air. That energy was always there, always with me.

  The trees fell away as the bridge veered up over the East River. The boy I’d seen getting out of the sedan was walking with a jaunty stride that would have made me guess he was old magic even if I hadn’t seen the car. I glanced back. Two pale figures were hustling after me: a boy with an aggressive swagger tugging a girl wearing a dress that looked a size too loose—new magic. Behind them, an East Asian girl with stiffly straight posture and a handbag that glinted silver in the sunlight meandered awkwardly, seemingly to avoid catching up—old magic.

  As the bridge slanted down, the white buildings I’d seen from the shoreline came into view. They stood in a tight semicircle around a concrete courtyard. The smaller buildings flanked a huge structure that, someplace else, could have been a mall complex.

  A few dozen people were already gathered between the buildings, some standing alone, some in pairs or clusters. The division between old and new magic was obvious even at a distance. Even the most modest old-magic kid had an air of nonchalance that no new-magic novice could match. Those from the established families had gathered on the left, while the scruffier, pricklier group I was a part of had taken the right side of the yard.

  I came to a stop at the end of the bridge, suddenly breathless. My gaze roamed over the courtyard. Only two of the buildings had a door: A wide black rectangle gleamed on the faces of the two on either side of the large complex. The other structures offered nothing but blank white. Sunlight glared off them at me from every angle.

  A prison, I found myself thinking. Shut people in and don’t let them out. A shiver crawled up my arms despite the heat.

  Javier had stood right here three years ago.

  The swaggering boy and the girl in the baggy dress reached the end of the bridge and stopped near me. He scanned the crowd, swiping his sweat-damp hair back from his forehead. The girl stood slouched by his side, her head tipped so her mousy waves shadowed most of her face. I wondered if they were boyfriend and girlfriend, or just friends, or maybe siblings.

  The boy’s gaze stopped on me, the closest body. He grinned in a lazy way that didn’t reach his eyes. “Is this everyone, then?”

  His entire attitude put me on guard. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so.” I looked past him to the girl with the silver-beaded purse, who was just stepping off the bridge. As she drifted to the left of the courtyard, a couple more figures appeared at the peak of the bridge. Some had left their arrival to the last minute.

  “Well, this bunch doesn’t look like much competition. The Confed might as well make me one of the Champions now.” The boy cracked his knuckles. His gaze zeroed in on me intently. “Or do you figure you can take me?”

  I resisted the urge to step back. “I wasn’t really thinking about it that way.”

  He barked a laugh. “Not thinking of it— Where are you from, noob?”

  “Here. Brooklyn.”

  He shook his head, still chuckling. “Welp, you�
�re about to get beat by a guy from the backwoods of Saskatchewan.”

  The mousy girl slipped her hand around his elbow. The skin of her wrist was marked with dull purple bruises—marks the shape of fingers that had grabbed too tightly.

  “Axton,” she said. It sounded like a plea.

  “Come on, Lacey. Let’s see what other dregs we’ll be stepping over.”

  She trailed after him. “So what’s your story?” I heard him demand of a guy with headphones looped around his neck.

  An athletic-looking girl with a short afro sidled over. “Well, isn’t he a darling?” she said in a dry drawl that I guessed was Southern sarcasm. “I can’t wait to make his acquaintance.” She held out her hand to me. “Shaleigh. Alabama. So you’re a native New Yorker?”

  “Yeah,” I said automatically, still turning over Axton’s words. He was the kind of guy my abuelo would have called “loco,” but competing was the essence of the Exam. I was only going to make Champion if most of the people waiting with me right now didn’t. If I took one of those spots at the top, it’d be because I’d earned it, but I’d also be leaving some other novice to lose their magic altogether... or die.

  No, I couldn’t think that way. There was a different number of Champions from year to year. If I passed, I passed. If someone failed, they’d have failed whether I was here or not.

  “Living in the city,” Shaleigh said, “did you hear much about what goes on in this place?”

  Oh. So this wasn’t just a friendly chat either. “Not any more than you’d hear in Alabama.”

  Javi’s voice swam up in my memory. We have to look for any edge we can get, Ro. No one’s going to just hand us anything. That was as true now as it had always been. I should be learning what I could from my competitors like they were trying to do from me.

  “Did you ever meet anyone who’d been through the Exam down there?” I added.

  Shaleigh grimaced. “Nah. No one else in my town was magical. The tutorial in Montgomery was pretty small, and ’cept for one kid a few years ago who got Chosen, all the novices ahead of me went for Dampering.”

  But she’d refused. I took in her tee and sweats: clean and neat but a cheap fabric with a plasticky sheen. Alabama was a long way to come. I’d never considered how lucky I was having been born in this city. Every complaint Javi had ever made was true, but we could have had it worse. There were only five magic academies in all of North America and only one Mages’ Exam, and the Confed didn’t give anyone a lift. Some of us just started with more than others.

  As if on cue, a laugh rang out from the old-magic side of the courtyard. The sound was so warm and relaxed it would have caught my attention anyway, but it was also unexpectedly familiar.

  My heart stuttered. My gaze darted across the crowd to snag on a lanky blond boy whose cheeks had dimpled with an easy smile.

  Seeing him jarred me back through time—to my little corner in the Manhattan Academy’s vast library, between the shelves of lovingly bound texts that no new-magic tutorial room had ever seen. Back to breathing in the smells of old oak and aged paper as I performed my quiet practice sessions on the hard chair-and-desk set, which the real students avoided in favor of the cushy armchairs near the fireplace on the first floor and in the discussion room on the third.

  From behind the wrought iron bars of the second-floor railing, I’d been able to look down over the front entrance and the librarian’s desk. And I’d seen that boy a few times a month, popping in and out, never staying for longer than it took him to pick up a book and offer a lighthearted remark to the librarian or to the librarian’s assistant, who was Dampered. He’d always treated that woman as if there were no difference, while most of the other Academy students I’d seen had addressed her with a subtle dismissiveness.

  He wouldn’t have seen me. I’d picked my spot carefully to avoid stares and interrogation. All the Academy students lived with magic just like me, but every careless aside and arch complaint I’d overheard had driven home how separate I was from them.

  But every now and then, my mind had gone wandering. I would find myself imagining what it might be like if that boy stumbled on my corner and turned that easy smile on me. As if I could be so sure he’d accept me when the others didn’t.

  As if he might even have seen something special in me.

  Could I call it a crush when I’d never spoken to the guy? Whatever word I used, it’d obviously been wishful thinking. I was hardly ten feet away now, and he hadn’t even glanced my way. Why should any of them be paying attention to this side of the yard?

  The boy was chatting with another guy and two girls as if they all knew each other—probably they were all from the same Academy. The other boy looked Latino, but with that uptown air he’d have stuck out on my street way worse than Axton. One of the girls, whose intricate henna tattoos wound from the backs of her hands to her forearms, was sticking close to “my” boy with a protective air. His girlfriend?

  I wouldn’t have expected to find him here. But then, it wasn’t as if I’d seen him doing any actual studying in the library. The whole group must have had weak skills by old-magic standards if they hadn’t been Chosen. None of them looked overly concerned. I wondered how much their confidence was put on and how much was earned. They’d all had the benefit of Academy training with instructors who were full mages rather than Dampered tutorial leaders.

  The boy with the smile was facing the center of the courtyard. His bright green eyes lit up when a stout white guy with a midnight-blue mohawk nearly as tall as his head strode into our midst.

  “Nice,” the boy said, gesturing over his own head. “Did you have to ’chant that?”

  Mohawk eyed him. His jaw twitched. “No magic involved,” he said gruffly.

  “Well, that’s even more impressive. Is it just a matter of enough gel or whatever, then?”

  “And getting the right cut.” Mohawk’s tone relaxed a little, even though his body stayed tense. The interest seemed honest enough.

  “I have a friend who’s very into, ah, extremes of style.” The boy tipped his head to the rest of his group. “Right up Will’s alley, don’t you think?” Then, to Mohawk again, he added, “Anyway, he’s never pulled off anything like that. My respects.”

  I hadn’t noticed Axton approaching, but all at once he was shouldering the guy with the mohawk to the side. “Hmmm,” he said, looking Mohawk up and down. “I gotta say, anyone trying that hard to look tough probably isn’t very.”

  “I like the style,” Mohawk said. “And I don’t give a crap how some random like you feels about it.”

  “This could get interesting,” Shaleigh murmured beside me.

  I didn’t think it would be interesting in any way I wanted to see. Axton was loco, all right.

  “Hey, hey,” the boy with the smile said. “We’ll have lots of time to discover who’s the toughest of the bunch in the next five days. Why start early?”

  Axton cocked his head. “You really think the trials haven’t started? All of this is part of it. Why else do you think they have us waiting out here like a bunch of idiots?”

  The boy gazed back at him mildly. “Point,” he said with just a touch of wryness. “I happily concede this round to you.”

  His maybe-girlfriend brought her hennaed hand to her mouth as if to hide a smirk, but Axton’s attention was completely focused on the boy. He shifted on his feet in the wake of his unexpectedly easy “victory.” A hint of a smile touched my own lips.

  Everyone nearby had fallen silent, watching to see how the first direct clash between old magic and new would play out. The meek girl with the bruises—Lacey—wavered a few feet away, nibbling at her lip behind her veil of mousy hair.

  “Good,” Axton said finally. “Expect to do it again.” He stalked back to our new-magic side of the yard.

  “I wonder if he’s right,” Shaleigh said, frowning at the buildings around us. “How long are they going to leave us out here?”

  Axton’s comment had stirred
up the examinees around us. The chatter took on a restless edge. It didn’t help that the pavement was starting to bake. The courtyard shimmered with heat, and sweat trickled down my back despite the light cotton of my shirt.

  The old-magic girl with the silver-beaded purse pulled out a bottle of water, and the back of my throat ached as I watched her sip from it. Why hadn’t I thought to bring something to drink? The instructions for the Exam had said all necessities would be provided, but I’d had no reason to trust that statement.

  “Are we supposed to do something out here?” a girl behind me asked her neighbor.

  One of the old-magic kids went up to the nearest building and knocked on its slab of a door. Nothing happened. The headphones guy tried the one on our side with the same result. The muttering rose.

  “We showed up on time. The least they could do is return the favor,” Shaleigh was grumbling just as a tingle brushed over my neck.

  A shift in the magic. I froze.

  No one was supposed to be casting. Was it the examiners? Part of the first test?

  None of the other examinees reacted as if they’d hearkened it, though. The tingling spread, a faint presence wrapping around me. It tugged, like a question.

  My breath stopped. Javi? I thought. The presence didn’t give me any clear answer, just another faint tug. Whatever or whoever it was, it wanted me to move.

  I eased away from Shaleigh and treaded cautiously from one blank building to the next. When I passed the one with a door, the prickle of a ’chantment emanating from it left a bitter taste on my tongue. I hesitated before crossing to the left side of the courtyard, but the clusters of old-magic examinees were too busy complaining to each other to pay much attention to me. The tingling sensation nagged at me. I walked on.

  The buildings on the left side of the courtyard looked identical to those on the right, down to the smooth black door and its bitter prickle. A metal circle marked the paved ground in the narrow alley stretching between that structure and its neighbor. I squeezed into the alley. Some type of manhole, I guessed as I prodded it with my toe. Did it still lead anywhere? The prison must have had underground workings—maybe the Confed made use of them too.