by Chloe Garner
“No,” Ethan said. “This can’t wait.”
“I’m actually kind of thinking about what I need to do in order to keep up with the classes here,” Hanson said.
“Mostly hopeless,” Ethan answered without looking at him. “Valerie has a natural gift, and she’s working harder than anyone I’ve ever known has, and it isn’t helping. The only reason she can do magic is because she’s a natural, and I bet everything you aren’t.”
“How do you know?” Hanson asked.
“Two naturals at the same time…” Shack said, shaking his head. “And her parents were Susan and Grant Blake. I’ve never heard of your parents.”
“Apparently neither have I,” Hanson said.
Ethan grinned.
“I know how to do the tests,” he said. “If you want to try it and see whether or not you can even do magic.”
“Is it possible I couldn’t?” Hanson asked.
“It runs in families,” Ethan said, going to a drawer and pulling out a box. He glanced up at Shack, over his head, and shuddered. “Going to take a minute to get used to that. Anyway, if your parents weren’t both really strong in it, it’s always possible that your talent is going to be minimal.”
“I’ve never tried,” Hanson said. “My mom never offered to teach me.”
Shack leaned out over the edge of the bed to watch as Ethan mixed things - if the thing was going to fall, it was probably going to be now - and then Ethan handed Hanson a glass bowl with a half a cup of oil in it and a bunch of stuff floating in it.
“What do I do with that?” Hanson asked.
“You drink it,” Ethan answered, going back to mixing.
“Do what now?” Hanson asked. “What’s in it?”
“Do you really want to know?” Shack asked. “You’re drinking it either way.”
“Am I?” Hanson asked, looking at it. Shack watched, unwavering, and Hanson sighed, putting the bowl to his mouth and tipping it back.
He’d probably eaten stupider things.
Ethan straightened and handed him a cup.
“Rinse your mouth out with that,” he said, watching Hanson. “How do you feel?”
“How am I supposed to feel?” Hanson asked, shifting.
“He’s not a strong dark user,” Shack said, and Ethan glanced up at him.
“Didn’t know you knew the tests.”
“Seen ‘em done enough times to tell them apart,” Shack said. Ethan shrugged, then held up a q-tip, waiting for Hanson to drink the salty water.
“Open,” Ethan said, and Hanson went with it. Ethan swabbed the inside of his mouth, then dipped the cotton into a little vial of clear goo. The cotton turned dark green, and as Ethan swished it around, the green swirled around the cotton just a bit in the goo.
“What does that mean?” Hanson asked.
“Only fair we both do it, too,” Shack said, shifting to hang his legs out over the side of the bed.
Now was when it was going to fail, for sure, if it ever would.
“I’ve only got enough for a couple more,” Ethan said, not hesitating as he continued mixing.
“I’ll get you replacements the next time they let us out to wander,” Shack said. “Lottie keeps them in bulk in the lab.”
Ethan finished mixing, standing up to hand another bowl to Shack. They tapped the two bowls against each other and downed them. Shack twisted his head to the side, rubbing his tongue along the roof of his mouth like the mix was bitter, but Ethan closed his eyes, taking a deep, slow breath. Shack watched him and nodded.
“Yup,” he said. “Knew that, didn’t I?”
“Shut up,” Ethan said, opening his eyes and taking the cup out of Hanson’s hand and pouring a portion of the salty water into it. He swished it through his mouth and handed the cup up to Shack as he swallowed, then went to get more q-tips.
“Do me first,” Shack said, taking one of them to swab his mouth and handing it back. Ethan nodded, dipping the cotton into clear goo and holding it up for Hanson to see.
The cotton turned just a shade of light green and did nothing as Ethan stirred with it.
“Trophy?” Ethan asked, handing it up.
“Thank you,” Shack answered.
“What does it mean?” Hanson asked.
“Just wait,” Shack said. Ethan shook his head and swabbed, dipping the q-tip one more time into a vial of fluid the consistency of glue.
He let go.
He didn’t even have to stir.
Dark green, almost black, seeped out from the cotton, dyeing the entire vial an increasingly dark shade of green.
“Whoa,” Hanson said and Ethan nodded.
“I’m the black sheep of my family. Quite literally.”
“Shouldn’t tell people,” Shack said. “Just so you know. People around here are almost all light magic.”
“So I have more magic than you?” Hanson asked. “Is that what that means?”
“Just wait,” Ethan said, squatting and mixing once more. He came up with three wooden bowls, a thinner mix this time, and he handed one up to Shack. They tipped them back all at once, and Hanson sucked on the inside of his cheeks.
It had a sweetness to it, and a heat. He blinked, surprised at how subtle and significant a flavor the mix had. It wasn’t that he was tasting it in his tongue. It was like he could taste it with his very blood.
“Whoa,” he said, only becoming aware of the room again after a moment. Ethan and Shack were watching each other.
“Let’s do it,” Shack said, and Ethan nodded, holding up a needle and a lighter.
“What?” Hanson said.
“There are other ways,” Shack said, holding out a finger as Ethan heated the tip of the needle to red. He dipped the needle into a cup of pinkish liquid and pressed the point of it against Shack’s finger until it beaded blood. Lifting the blood on the needle itself, he put it back into the liquid, where the blood hit the surface like oil spreading across water, swirling and forming patterns.
It was really cool, actually.
Bright, bright red.
It covered the entire surface of the liquid for several more moments, then formed balls and fell through to the bottom of the glass.
Ethan handed the glass to Hanson and heated the needle again, dipping it quickly into the cup and pressing it against his own thumb. Once more, the tiny drop of blood touched the pink, but this time it hissed and boiled, turning black and scattering something like ash across the surface, sinking almost immediately.
Ethan sighed.
“Someone without any ability at all, it doesn’t react. The blood just falls through,” Shack said. “He has light magic; the test just hates the dark magic in his blood.”
Ethan nodded, then put the lighter to the needle once more.
“You ready?” he asked.
Hanson nodded, indicating his fourth finger.
At least the needle wasn’t intended to be scalding hot when it punctured him.
Even having watched Ethan do it twice before, and even knowing it wasn’t a big deal, it was hard not to jerk his hand away as Ethan squeezed his finger and pushed through the skin with the needle.
Blood.
It sprung up in a bead and Ethan lifted the needle, but the blood had crawled across Hanson’s skin, and Ethan twisted his mouth to the side.
“Sorry, man,” he said, switching fingers and doing it again.
“Oh, come on,” Hanson said, and Ethan grinned.
“It’s not like I do this for a living,” he said, getting the bead of blood on the needle this time and dipping it into the cup.
The patterns, the colors, weren’t quite as vibrant as Shack’s, but it was…
Hanson watched with awe as his very own blood shone red on the surface of the cup, swirling and twisting, almost like pictures or symbols.
He waited.
And he waited.
Almost thirty seconds later, the blood started to form the tiny balls, dropping one by one through to the glass below.
“Wow,” Ethan said, watching. “Did not see that coming.”
“He could have gotten through to Light School,” Shack said.
“If they wouldn’t let you in, they wouldn’t let him in,” Ethan answered. “But, yeah, he’s got the power.”
“Tell me what it means,” Hanson said, still watching, awestruck.
“You aren’t as pure as Shack,” Ethan said. “Where he’s got power all the way up through to one hundred percent light, you’re probably, what, ninety-five?”
“Like that,” Shack agreed.
“He’s going to be able to do anything with light magic. But you? When you actually get this figured out, you’re gonna be a beast to be reckoned with.”
Shack nodded.
“Welcome to the team.”
There was a knock on the door and Ethan hastily stashed everything under his bed, going to open it.
It was Franky Frank.
“Dinner,” he said, pointing his thumb down the hallway. “Straight there, straight back.”
“This is going to be killing Val,” Hanson said. “She doesn’t like being told what to do, and I’ve never seen her sit still for more than like fifteen minutes straight.”
“She spends all her time in the library,” Ethan said, and Hanson grinned.
“But have you watched her? She’s got fidgeting down to an art.”
Ethan frowned thoughtfully, then nodded.
“Maybe.”
Hanson felt a little bad, showing Ethan up like that, but whatever. It was true. Val was going to be going nuts.
They were almost all the way to the cafeteria before Ann saw them and came running over. She whispered something in Ethan’s ear, looking smug for a moment, then glanced at Hanson with narrowed eyes and dashed away.
Ethan stopped walking, then started up again, much faster now.
“What?” Hanson asked.
“The girls are gone,” Ethan said, rounding into the cafeteria and stopping.
It was full of girls.
Like, as much as it had been at lunch, at least.
Hanson scanned for Valerie and Sasha, and then the words sunk in.
“Where are they?” he asked. Ethan shook his head.
“I haven’t got a clue.”
They got up before the sun, the building intolerably cold and the blankets no longer holding it off. Valerie rubbed her arms, watching as her dad packed up a backpack and pulled it up onto his shoulder.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Susan was sweeping the building, collecting things that looked an awful lot like trash to Valerie’s eye, which she stuffed into a backpack.
Sasha looked like she might be reconsidering her resolve from the previous night, but she didn’t complain.
Valerie felt like complaining just to make up for how willing Sasha was to keep her mouth shut.
“Do we get breakfast?” Valerie asked.
“Don’t always get every meal, when you’re out here doing this,” Grant answered. “Always ought to eat like you may not get food in the next day.”
“We aren’t on a desert island,” Susan scolded. “We can stop and get something.”
Valerie looked at her dad, and he shrugged.
“Doesn’t make it untrue. We have to avoid anywhere we might have people see us, and sometimes that means avoiding food.”
“You had a house,” Valerie said. “With a kitchen.”
“Which I had to abandon because they were watching too close as I went there, and they found it,” he said. “It’s lucky they didn’t figure out who I was, that morning.”
“Right. How are you two together?” Valerie asked. “I thought if anyone found out that you were alive…”
“That someone important would be in an uncomfortable position?” Susan asked. “It took some work and some planning, and a couple of felony-level forgeries, but I’ve put together a record that ought to hold up under pretty intense scrutiny that says that your dad went to New Mexico and lived under the radar just like we did, the whole time. If anyone asks, I was the one who came and talked to you the day of the first demon attack, but you didn’t leave with me.”
“Okay,” Valerie said slowly. “So… Are you two together now?”
Susan licked her lips and looked over at Grant, then shrugged.
“We weren’t ever not together,” Grant said as she started to say something. Susan looked over at him, then nodded.
“It’s okay if you aren’t ready for us to be a family,” she said, licking her lips once more as she looked hard at Valerie. “And if you’re angry with me for how it happened, I understand, but… There was never anyone else. For either of us.”
That was…
Okay, that was both the best thing Valerie had ever heard, and deeply disturbing. There was sex in the look her dad gave her mom.
“Okay, that’s… no. Just.” Valerie put her hands up to block what she could see of her dad, and her mom laughed.
“Sorry.”
“I’m hungry,” Sasha said, and Susan nodded.
“We need to walk back out to the car and check it, and so long as no one has pinged it, we’ll go get some breakfast and see if we can’t get you to school on time.”
“You’re serious?” Valerie asked as they started toward the doors. The cold air outside hit her hard enough to take her breath away.
“What do we do?” Sasha asked. “If something happens?”
“Fight,” Grant said without looking back.
“Run,” Susan said, louder. “We can find you, wherever you end up.”
“How?” Valerie asked.
Susan cleared her throat, and Grant sighed.
“I met an old witch, a couple of years out of school. First time I’d met a magic user who wasn’t one of us.”
“And by ‘one of us’ you mean…” Susan prompted.
He looked back, annoyed, and Susan smiled brightly.
“The magic community that we are a part of, as big as it seems…” Grant started, pausing with a tone of resignation. “It’s only a fraction of the magic community that exists. We think that we are alone, but we simply have managed to avoid contact with other magic users. I think that it’s denial, myself, but I don’t have a good explanation for it. It’s actually part of the reason that we want you to see Ground School. The hubris of both sides of this fight…”
“Jumping ahead of yourself,” Susan said, teasing.
“It’s the important part,” Grant said. “Scrying is the least important part.”
“But it was the question,” Susan said.
“Right,” Grant said. “Fine. I met a witch, and she had significant magic that I’d never seen before. She knew about our fight, and she hated it, hated seeing magic users tearing each other apart over differences that were all…”
“Grant,” Susan interrupted.
He sighed again.
“She taught me some magic that the community had never seen before,” Grant said. “She wanted me to use it to stop the war.”
“And you did,” Susan said. “You just kept it all to yourself, because you like the power of being able to do something no one else can do.”
“I didn’t see you volunteering to go to Light School and teach them,” Grant muttered.
“They couldn’t learn it, at Light School,” Susan answered, and Grant laughed.
“Wait, why not?” Sasha asked. “Is it dark?”
Susan looked over, then frowned.
“You’re freezing. Grant, you didn’t tell them to take their jackets?”
“Field work means planning ahead. Only way to learn how to plan ahead is to fail a few times.”
“Mom sent me to school to live in a dorm without a pillow,” Valerie said, and Susan shot her a sharp glance that was deeply humored.
“She did what?” Grant asked.
“I…” Susan started. “Did that. I did that.”
He stopped, turning around to look at Susan with exaggerate
d dismay, then shook his head and took off his coat, handing it to Sasha.
“Fine.”
Valerie smiled.
“Why would the people at Light School not be able to learn the magic that you learned?” Sasha pressed.
“Natural selection,” Grant muttered. Susan shrugged an agreement.
“It was beginning to happen, there by the end of the war, and I can only imagine it’s getting worse. It used to be that Light School and Survival School were interests, not aptitudes. Anymore, the admission process is so… It’s more political than I would have even guessed. I’m kind of stunned that Roger managed to get Valerie in.”
“They needed you that badly,” Grant muttered. Susan nodded.
“They still do. Anyway, at this point, they’re restricting admissions so tight and screening so hard, they only end up taking the kids with the pointiest skills. I probably wouldn’t have gotten into Light School, if I’d applied today, and I know for a fact that Grant wouldn’t have.”
“Why not?” Sasha asked. “Your entrance exam is still part of the curriculum at Light School. Both of my brothers talk about it.”
Susan rolled her eyes.
“Because I can do dark magic. I mean… It doesn’t help anything that the Council ended up getting taken over by perfect light magic users.”
“Didn’t used to be that way,” Grant called back. “Just so you hear her.”
Susan nodded.
“Used to be, the first generation of the Council, they had a dark magic user sitting, just because they wanted the broadest skillset possible.”
“Purists,” Grant muttered.
“Sour grapes,” Susan retorted.
“No, wait,” Sasha said. “You can do dark magic?”
“Of course I can,” Susan said. “How do you think I stayed alive all this time? And Grant? He’s strong at light magic, but it’s his weakest discipline.”
“Wait here,” Grant said, setting down his backpack and taking something out. Susan nodded, going to lean against a building that Valerie wouldn’t have touched, before all of this.
“So why couldn’t they do the witch’s magic?” Sasha asked once more. “Is it dark?”
“It’s natural,” Susan said, taking out a knife and using it to clean out her fingernails.
Valerie couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
