Unveiling Magic

by Chloe Garner

  “No,” Valerie said. “No, that’s not what happens next. I’m not going to be the reason that everyone at school dies. I can’t live with that.”

  There was another very long pause.

  “Then why are you calling me, young lady?” the woman asked.

  “I need you to get Ethan Trent,” Valerie said. “I need to talk to him.”

  “You can’t be on the phone that long,” Lady Harrington said, and Valerie shook her head.

  “No. I can’t. But I can call back in about fifteen minutes.”

  “You know who his father is?” Lady Harrington asked, and Valerie nodded.

  “I do.”

  “They’ve been here several times this week, leaning on him for information to help find you,” Lady Harrington said.

  “He doesn’t have anything useful to tell them,” Valerie said.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Lady Harrington said. “Again, if you will tell me where you are, I will come get you personally. I don’t like the idea of you out on your own like this.”

  “I need to talk to Ethan,” Valerie said. “Please.”

  Lady Harrington sighed.

  “All right. He will be here when you call back. But I hope you reconsider.”

  Valerie nodded.

  “Thank you.”

  She hung up the phone and went to sit next to Sasha.

  “You okay?” Valerie asked, and Sasha nodded.

  “There are guards with guns,” she said. “I know in my head that that isn’t going to stop a magic user from coming in here and… I can’t even imagine what they would do, because it scares me so much, but just seeing them…”

  “Does your mom have a phone?” Valerie asked.

  “Yes,” Sasha answered. “Why?”

  “Do you have the number?” Valerie asked. Sasha nodded.

  “It’s memorized.”

  “Do you want to call her to come get you?” Valerie asked.

  Sasha paused.

  Licked her lips.

  “What’s going on Valerie?” she asked.

  “I’m going to call Ethan Trent back in about fifteen minutes and I’m going to convince him to bring Shack, Ann, and Milton out here. The five of us.”

  “And then what?” Sasha asked. Valerie shook her head.

  “That isn’t your problem. You can go, if you want to. I won’t tell anyone where you went, so no one should come try to get you to tell them where I am. We’ll just let them all believe that you’re still with me. That I’m hiding you away for a bit. But… You’d be safer with her and you’d be happier with her.”

  “What would happen to you?” Sasha asked.

  “It isn’t your problem,” Valerie said. “You have been… amazing to me. I mean, beyond what I could have ever hoped for, if I had even known what to hope for. You’re smart and you’re fun and you have kept me not just sane but alive. And I owe it to you to return the favor. You need to stay alive, and I am not the person to keep you alive. If my parents had turned up by now… It would be different.”

  “If I call her, they can trace it,” Sasha said. “This isn’t a warded phone, and hers will only cover where she is and what we talked about. They could be hoping that I’ll call her and they’ll know where we are immediately.”

  Valerie nodded.

  “So we’d tell her where to find us and then we’d run. And she would come and get you and… And it would be over, Sasha. I know you’re being brave, talking about needing to do this, but I actually do need to do it. No one else can. You don’t have to. You can go.”

  “Do you want me to go?” Sasha asked.

  “No, and yes,” Valerie said. “I don’t know. I don’t want you to be unhappy and I don’t want you to die. I mean… I don’t think I could live the rest of my life knowing that you died because I kept you with me. It’s dangerous out here, and you should be someplace safe. That’s why you went to Survival School. I remember. Because you wanted to be the one who helped people, not the one who fought the wars.”

  “But I don’t want to leave you,” Sasha said. “I…” The girl straightened. “Do you think that I could just run off with my mom and pretend like that was okay? Knowing that there are people out here who are trying to find you, that you might end up dying? Maybe I could help. I know more about magic than you do, when it comes to books, and I want to help. I just…” She looked around. “I’m so scared.”

  “You’re allowed to be scared,” Valerie said. “I know you are. I am, too. But… This is your moment. After this, I don’t think I can find a way to get you out of it. Not until we find my parents again or something. Even then… I don’t know the rules well enough. I don’t actually know how they found us last night. Until… You aren’t going to be safe again, Sasha. I don’t know when you would be safe again.”

  “I’m staying,” Sasha said, setting her chin and nodding. “I’m staying as long as you are. I’m not leaving you alone.”

  Valerie blinked, finding that she had sprung tears of relief, and she sat back in her own chair.

  Sasha wasn’t leaving her.

  She could do this.

  Sasha wasn’t leaving her.

  A man came over.

  “Can I help you ladies?” he asked.

  “My dad is back in one of the offices with… someone,” Valerie said. “We’re just waiting for him.”

  The man nodded.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “Do you have a water?” Valerie asked. “Or two?”

  “Sure,” he said, leaving and returning with two bottles of water.

  He gave them a quick nod and went back to his desk.

  “How do you do that?” Sasha asked.

  “Do what?” Valerie answered, opening her water. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was until it was in her hand.

  “Just make up a story. I would have stuttered and blushed and they would have thought we were here to rob the bank.”

  “I don’t know,” Valerie said. “It was just… the story that came to me as we walked in the door.”

  She shrugged and slouched in her chair, drinking her water and thinking about what she was going to say to Ethan.

  It wasn’t unlikely that the hard part was yet to come.

  Fifteen minutes passed and Valerie sat up again, taking out the same three ingredients and crushing them in her fingers.

  She had enough for one more call, but that was it. After that, this trick wouldn’t work anymore. And she was saving it for in case Sasha changed her mind and Valerie could find a phone again.

  She sat down at the empty desk again, picking up the phone.

  She wasn’t bad at numbers; it was possible she could have memorized the school’s phone number, but she was using magic to dial it again. She suspected that knowing the school’s number was a burden she didn’t want to carry, and she was shocked to find that the number had changed. She was certain it hadn’t had three threes in a row the first time.

  “Hello?” Lady Harrington asked.

  “Ethan,” Valerie said.

  “You haven’t changed your mind,” Lady Harrington said, and Valerie shook her head.

  “No.”

  “All right.”

  “Valerie,” Ethan said. She put her hand to her forehead, blinking fast.

  “Ethan.”

  “Where are you?” he asked. “How are you? Is everything okay?”

  “I need you to listen,” Valerie said. “The cast I’m using to keep them from noticing that I’m using the phone doesn’t last very long. I need you to get Shack, Ann, and Milton and find a way to come to me. You can’t involve anyone else. No drivers. I assume one of you has a license.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because we need to talk. The five of us. There’s stuff going on that I know about that you don’t, and… Secrets. There are secrets that you guys need to know.”

  “Milton went to his dad and told him about us,” Ethan said. “I won’t bring him.”

  Valer
ie paused.

  What did that mean?

  That only left four.

  There had to be five of them.

  Didn’t there?

  “Are you sure?” Valerie asked.

  “Certain,” Ethan said.

  “But you’ll come?” Valerie asked.

  “All you have to do is tell me where, and I’ll be there,” Ethan said. “No one will stop me.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Okay. How long will it take you to get organized?”

  “I can leave as soon as I get Shack and Ann,” Ethan said.

  “How?”

  “Shack has a car,” Ethan said.

  “On campus?” Valerie asked.

  “Yeah. In the parking lot.”

  There was a parking lot.

  She seriously needed to take out the campus map and look at it at some point.

  “Okay,” she said. “Don’t write it down and don’t tell Lady Harrington or anyone else. Don’t even tell Shack and Ann.”

  “Why is it so secret?” Ethan asked. “Are you okay?”

  “There are people trying to catch me,” she said. “They want to use me as leverage on my mom, I think, but it’s possible some of them just want to kill me. I can’t tell anymore.”

  He took a slow breath.

  “Okay,” he said. “Tell me.”

  Checking one of the business cards on the desk to find the city, she gave him the address of one of the buildings she’d passed that day. It had looked empty. She hoped it was empty.

  “Tell me again,” he said.

  She said it once more.

  “I’m running out of time,” she said.

  “I’ll be there…” He paused. “I’ll be there at normal speed.”

  He wasn’t giving Lady Harrington a clue about how far away it was.

  “You should leave the car at least a half mile away,” Valerie said. “They can track it. Maybe. I don’t even know.”

  “I know a lot of the Council’s tricks,” Ethan said. “We’ll do our best to be there without anyone following. Is Sasha okay?”

  “She’s freaking out, but she’s going to make it,” Valerie said. She hoped.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

  “I… See you,” Valerie said, hanging up. She stood and quickly walked away from the desk as her spell dropped off. Sasha stood and Valerie nodded, heading for the door. Sasha followed.

  It was obvious her roommate didn’t want to go out again, but there wasn’t an option.

  They had to keep moving.

  Shadows

  The building wasn’t entirely empty, and it was locked up better than Valerie had expected, but Sasha had a spell that she could cast that would get her past a rudimentary lock - her brother had taught it to her in preparation for school, because breaking into each others’ dorm rooms and playing pranks was a part of the experience, apparently.

  The door never stood a chance.

  Valerie went in, finding herself in a two-story building with a lot more rooms than it had looked like outside. There were four of them off of a single hallway - three of which appeared to be occupied at least some of the time.

  It had to be the weekend.

  Beyond the rooms, there was a two-story open space with crates stacked up to the ceiling along most of the walls, and a metal staircase that led up to more rooms. None of these were in use, and Sasha broke them into the one at the end of the hallway.

  They closed the door behind them and re-locked it, then went to sit on the floor.

  Valerie was beginning to get hungry, having missed her breakfast, but it was warm and out of sight of the street, and that was a win in her book.

  “So talk to me about how you track someone,” she said quietly after several minutes.

  “I’m not sure,” Sasha said. “I mean, it’s not something my mom taught me, and it isn’t something you need for Survival School…”

  “So just… talk it through with me,” Valerie said. “Do you track… who they are? Do you track something about their magic? Do you track something they’re wearing or something they’re carrying? I had a moment where I was pretty sure I could track you by your fear, if I wanted to.”

  Sasha stared at her in the dim light through the square of glass in the door.

  “You could?” she asked, and Valerie nodded.

  “I don’t know how to do it anymore, but there was just a minute. You know?”

  Sasha shook her head.

  “I don’t.”

  “I’m trying to make sure that it was dumb luck that they found us. If they’re tracking us, then I’m bringing our friends into an ambush.”

  “If any of those things were possible, shouldn’t they have found us days ago?” Sasha asked.

  That was a good point.

  “What if they just found out that we were out here?” Valerie asked.

  “The Council has known for days,” Sasha said. “I bet The Pure know, too.”

  “Maybe my parents were warding things so that they couldn’t track us, and the wards wore off or broke or something.”

  Sasha narrowed her eyes.

  “Maybe. But we were outside on our own at the market. Warding is typically attached to something solid and stationary.”

  “We weren’t outside for long,” Valerie said. “Maybe they couldn’t get there that fast.”

  “Okay. Maybe. But why haven’t they come for us yet? We sat outside all night last night, and no one found us. Why haven’t your parents come for us? They could have even walked in at the bank and it wouldn’t have been a big deal.”

  That.

  That was a very good point.

  “There’s barely anything that The Pure could do that my parents can’t, right?” Valerie asked.

  Sasha nodded.

  “I think so.”

  “So if my parents haven’t found us, The Pure, or whoever is looking for us, shouldn’t be able to, either, right?” Valerie asked.

  Sasha nodded, encouraged.

  “Yeah, I think that’s right.”

  “And no one is going to be looking for us harder,” Valerie said. “So it isn’t like they’ve just stopped paying attention.”

  Sasha nodded once more.

  “Right.”

  Valerie sighed, leaning back against the wall.

  “Lady Harrington wanted to come get us,” she said. “I said no.”

  “Because you don’t want to go back to school and put everyone at risk,” Sasha said.

  “I could have let her just come get you, but if I had, they would have come and tried to make you tell them where I am,” Valerie said, then put her hand over her eyes. “It’s all so much. I don’t know how my mom does this. I mean, to be thinking like this all the time?”

  “Yeah,” Sasha agreed. “I just want to cry, and it isn’t even because I’m scared or whatever. I’m just… it’s so overwhelming. And scary. You know. That, too.”

  “You just wanted to go to school,” Valerie said. “And my mom pulled strings for you to be in my room. You would have been better off with anyone else.”

  “No,” Sasha said after a minute. “I would have been safer, a little bit, and I probably would have pitied whoever did room with you, but… no. This is… You can’t say I would have been better with anything else happening. This is meaningful. People are killing each other and you and your parents are trying to do the right things to make it stop.”

  “But you could have…” Valerie said, and Sasha shook her head.

  “Please don’t tempt me. All I can think about is how bad I wish I was in my bed. But I want to be here. I’m glad that it gets to be me. I get to be the one who sees how the end of the war is going to start. That’s… Just knowing how much of it is lies, and then getting to be here to actually witness something like this, so that it isn’t just knowing the truth, but seeing the truth? No. And you’re my friend, so shut up and stop feeling sorry for both of us. It’s… It’s fine.”

  Val
erie bit her lips between her teeth and nodded.

  “Okay.”

  She rested her head against the wall, then she sat up and started emptying her pockets.

  “I just want to see what we have,” she said. “It was all moving so fast when it happened…”

  Sasha emptied out the spellcasting ingredients that she’d carried, and Valerie sat on the floor looking at them, picking up one and then another, as if they were going to speak to her.

  “Anything?” Sasha asked, and Valerie shook her head.

  “I don’t want to cast anything,” she said. “I’m afraid that opening the door to cast the alarm spell into the hallway is what made them come, last time.”

  “You know it isn’t, right?” Sasha asked. “They had to have already been there, as fast as they came.”

  “Still,” Valerie said. “It felt like I caused it. And all of this.”

  “I told you to shut up,” Sasha said. “I think I’m going to take a nap. I didn’t sleep at all last night.”

  “You can sleep?” Valerie asked her, and Sasha smiled.

  “Traveling with my mom, I got used to sneaking sleep whenever I could. If I just let myself get sleepy… I think I can, yeah.”

  Valerie nodded, scooting back over to sit next to Sasha.

  “You won’t sleep, will you?” Sasha asked.

  “Not without waking you up first,” Valerie promised. Sasha nodded, and leaned over to lay on the floor.

  The carpet, while it was dense and flat and cheap, at least didn’t smell dirty. They’d sat on the ground all night, the night before. It was hard to say that this could be worse than that.

  Valerie tipped her head back against the wall once more and just breathed.

  Things were happening.

  Things she could control and things she couldn’t.

  All she could do now was wait.

  At three and a half hours, Valerie went back downstairs.

  She hadn’t heard anything the entire time she’d been upstairs, but she wanted to check to be sure no one had come in to work while they’d been hiding. It was mid-afternoon by now, and the light from outside was turning golden as the sun began to set.

  Short days, these days.

  She sat against the wall, reviewing all of the self-defense spells she’d figured out or learned while she was staying with her dad in the caves, then the doorknob twisted.