by Chloe Garner
“You did,” Shack said, shifting and looking over at Ethan. “I know I gave you a hard time, but everyone at school, at all the schools, feels like there are only two paths, and they both head straight to war. Maybe the right answer is that we need to be fighting both sides…”
“How?” Ethan asked. “I’m with you, but Hanson’s right. We don’t have any opportunity, we don’t have any leverage…”
“When you throw a party, who shows up?” Shack asked.
Ethan frowned.
“Everyone. But it’s because my dad is on the Council.”
“So don’t cut ties,” Shack said. “Just start talking about the Shadows again, tell them that they’re spreading rumors about the way the Council structures teaching on magic, how they keep saying that there’s a better way to understand it… That the war isn’t about killing civilians, it’s about people being allowed to use magic how they want to…”
“That’s good,” Hanson said.
“It’s not true,” Sasha said. “No one is arguing that everyone ought to be able to use magic however they want.”
“Maybe the Shadows are,” Shack said. “Maybe they aren’t. The point is to get people to talk about the rules. To actually see them.”
“The teachers know that the structure they’re teaching is wrong,” Valerie said.
“How?” Ethan asked, and she shrugged.
“They didn’t say. I guess they know people who know.”
“Then why are they still teaching this way?” Shack asked.
“Because light and dark is simple,” Ethan said, shifting to lean his shoulder against Valerie’s. He wove his fingers through hers and looked out at their feet, thinking. “Light is good, dark is bad. It means that anyone who doesn’t fit into the standards that my dad and the rest of the Council are pushing, they are all trying. They’re chasing after approval. You can’t get in at Light School if you have too much dark. They’re all trying to prove they’re worthy. If it was three and none of them had moral weighting to them…”
“I didn’t say that,” Valerie said. “Dark magic is still dark. I just…”
“We don’t know what that means,” Sasha said.
“My dad uses dark magic. He told me that much. But he said it was a personal choice, and that I was lucky because I have a choice.”
“Not everyone does,” Ethan said quietly.
“I know,” she answered. She sighed. “I don’t know what I’m doing, guys. I don’t want to be in charge. I was supposed to eat pizza until I fell asleep on the couch last night, but… That didn’t happen, and now…”
“We’re out here on our own,” Sasha said.
“Not anymore,” Hanson said, and Shack shook his head.
“Not anymore.”
Ethan squeezed her hand, and she nodded.
“Right. So. I don’t know what we should be doing. If we even should do something. I just… This is our team. We needed to look each other in the eye and know it.”
“And you needed to hold still long enough for Hanson to catch up,” Shack said. “Still not over that.”
“I can’t do magic,” Hanson said. “I have no idea what I’m doing here.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Valerie said. “Sasha’s a good teacher, and… You belong here. Same as the rest of us.”
“We need a way to find you again,” Ethan said, and she shook her head.
“If we need you, I’ll find a way to call you,” Valerie said. “If you know how to find us…”
“Not a good idea,” Shack agreed. “We have to walk away and they need to run.”
“We don’t have any money,” Sasha said.
“I have some,” Hanson said. “I stole it from my mom this morning.”
“They’re magic users,” Ethan said. “They don’t need money.”
“Maybe you don’t,” Valerie said, mock-indignant. “Or maybe you’ve just never had to go without.”
“No, you just…” Ethan said, frowning. “People with magic never need money. They don’t.”
“How do they get it?” Valerie asked. “I’m all ears.”
Ethan looked at Shack, and Shack shrugged.
“Council,” he said.
“How does the Council get its money?” Valerie asked. “I mean, apparently they paid both my parents a whole bunch, but where do they get it? Is it from the schools?”
“No,” Sasha said. “The schools don’t begin to cover the budget that the Council has.”
“Taxes?” Valerie asked, looking at Ethan. “Do they collect taxes?”
“Access,” Shack said after a minute. “I can’t prove it, and I’m probably mostly wrong, but I bet at least some of it is for political access.”
“And draft dodging,” Ethan said. “The Council’s friends don’t have kids who go off to war the minute they graduate.”
“No, they get in at Survival School for upperclass studies,” Shack said, and Ethan nodded.
“Yeah.”
“That doesn’t help me,” Valerie said. “Though… Seriously, who thinks it’s okay for a group of unelected men and women to have so much power that they can extort enough money from people voluntarily to be able to fund a war? I mean…”
“I don’t think that’s all of it,” Ethan said. “Though I’ve never thought about it. Possible they’re selling stuff, same as everyone else.”
“Selling what?” Valerie asked.
“Healing,” Sasha said quietly. “Among other things.”
“Does your mom sell healing?” Valerie asked, and Sasha shook her head.
“No. My dad’s business brings in enough money. My mom just does it because that’s who she is. But… I know there are people who do.”
“Well, I don’t have any marketable skills, so that’s out,” Valerie said. “How are we supposed to feed ourselves?”
“I’ve got… a thousand dollars,” Hanson said, counting through a stack of bills.
“You’ve what?” Valerie asked. He shrugged.
“I told you I stole it from my mom’s purse when I left this morning.”
“You never had money,” Valerie said. “What is she doing with all of that?”
“Apparently we did have money,” Hanson said. “We just had to act like we didn’t as long as we were stalking you. Now that we’re out in the open about it, she can stay at nice hotels and carry a thousand dollars in her wallet.”
“Does everyone have money but me?” Valerie asked, and Shack nodded enthusiastically, then grinned.
“We need to meet again,” he said. “Here’s hoping you catch up with your parents, but color me skeptical. The Council can’t find them with all of their resources; I don’t know what chance you’ve got with nothing.”
“Our one advantage is that my parents will be looking for us,” Valerie said, and he shrugged.
“We need to do this again. Take some time, make some plans. You guys need to figure out what you’re going to do with yourselves. I mean, you can’t stay out here forever.”
“I can until they get rid of whoever is trying to help the Pure abduct or kill me,” Valerie said. “Are they making any progress on it?”
“No one says,” Ethan told her. “But we’re still locked in our rooms. I think the Council is behind it, anymore, but what do I know?”
“Someone is trying to kill you,” Hanson said. “You think it’s someone on campus. And no one is looking for them?”
“There we go,” Shack said. “There’s a project.”
“You think that we can make progress on that where Mr. Tannis, Mr. Benson, and Lady Harrington didn’t?” Ethan asked, and Shack nodded, then grinned.
“And you know why?”
“No, why?” Ethan asked dryly, and Shack grinned wider.
“Because people talk to us.”
Ethan paused, apparently looking for a rebuttal and finding none.
“All right. So we… stir the pot. Spread some rumors about the Shadows being back, get people asking questions, and
in the meantime, we figure out who would want Valerie dead. Or at least who is willing to betray her to get rid of her.”
“What about us?” Hanson asked.
“We move,” Valerie said. “Maybe… I mean, it’s a terrible season for it, but if we go south, maybe we can scout some naturally-occurring magic ingredients and start stocking up…”
“I know some about that,” Sasha said.
“I don’t,” Hanson said. “I don’t know what I’m doing here, Val.”
“Bankrolling us, for one,” Valerie said. “Shack is right. This is all completely un-thought-out. We need to take a beat and work through what we want to do and then start forming plans. You think Lady Harrington will let you break out again?”
“I’m shocked she let us do it once, frankly,” Ethan said, and she nodded.
“Can you sneak out?” Valerie asked, and he shook his head.
“I don’t know. Not if you’re going to have to call us and tell us where you are.”
Valerie nodded slowly, an idea coming to her like a seed germinating.
“So if you could find us on your own, is there any way for you to get out of there?” she asked, and he looked at Shack.
“It’s not a prison. We could just… walk out.”
“Could get us suspended,” Shack said, “but, yeah, that would work.”
“So we just walk out,” Ethan said. “I’m willing to have that fight when we get back.”
Shack nodded.
“But we don’t know how to find them.”
Valerie stood, pulling three strands of hair from her head one after the other. She went to Sasha and pulled three long red strands from her friend’s head - one at each temple and one from the crown of her head - then she went to Hanson and did the same. She sat down on the floor, reaching into her pocket to find… things… and then she tied the nine strands in a knot. It wasn’t a good knot, and Hanson’s hair was very much on the verge of falling out of it, but she mixed a bit of this and some of that together, forming a paste in her palm. She closed her hand around the knotted hair, waiting for it to set. Her skin was clean when she opened her hand again, and she handed the tangle of hair and globby stuff to Ethan.
“Set it on fire…” she said, then looked at Sasha. “Bright pink fire?”
“Strontium chloride,” Sasha said, nodding quickly. “They can get it in the lab.”
“See,” Valerie said, shaking her head. “Burn it in that stuff, and breathe the smoke. It will bring you to us exactly once.”
“Breathe the smoke,” Ethan said. “You know, if it was anybody but you, I’d give that one a hard pass.”
“It will work,” Valerie said. “But just once.”
“Good design,” Shack said.
They sat for a moment longer, then Valerie shook her head.
“I feel like something started today,” she said. “I don’t know what it is, and I don’t feel like I’m in charge of it…”
“This is crazy,” Sasha breathed.
“Look, I’m sorry, but this is awesome,” Shack said. “We’re doing something. Everybody goes to magic school with these big ideas of all of the exciting things they’re going to do, and it’s just more school. We’re actually doing something.”
“I’d rather just be at school,” Sasha said quietly, and Hanson nodded.
“I’d like to learn magic, as it turns out,” Valerie’s best friend said.
“Shame Shack and I can’t stay with you out here and the two of them go back,” Ethan said. “I’d rather be here, too.”
Valerie shook her head, looking around the room.
“We’re going to be scavenging for everything. No place to go, no allies… This is going to be hard.”
“I’m up for hard,” Ethan said. “I just can’t do pointless anymore.”
Valerie nodded slowly, then looked around the room.
“Then let’s not be pointless.”
“To the Shadows,” Shack said. “Let’s get it done, this time.”
He stood and, after a long hesitation, so did Ethan.
“Give you a minute,” Shack said. “Then we need to get going. I want a huge dinner on the way home, and then we’ll turn up sometime after midnight so no one can tell how far we went.”
Ethan nodded, and Hanson scrambled to his feet, pulling Sasha up and following Shack out into the hallway.
Ethan took both of Valerie’s hands and rested his forehead against hers for a full minute.
“Don’t die,” he said. “And don’t disappear.”
“Take good care of them, if anything happens to me,” Valerie said. He shook his head.
“I just told you not to disappear. If you disappear, I’m giving Mr. Tannis that bundle of hair and letting him come find you. You know he’s angry you aren’t there to clean up his classroom anymore.”
“You don’t know that,” Valerie said, smiling. “And the cast only works if the three of us are together. It’s part of why it’s okay to give it to you. If you lose it, we can split up for a while and still stay secret.”
“I miss you,” he said. “I was so happy when I heard your voice.”
“You’re being dramatic,” she said. “We haven’t been together that long, especially if you don’t count the part in the middle where I wasn’t speaking to you.”
“You’re the first real thing in my life,” he said. “I’ve been playing politics for all of the rest of it. Don’t tell me that you’re not allowed to mean that much to me.”
She sighed.
Wrapped her arms around his waist and put her head down on his shoulder.
“I miss you, too,” she said. “Feels like we should be doing this together.”
“Sasha is not your wingman,” he said. “I’m a damned fine wingman.”
She snorted, turning her forehead down against his collarbone, then straightening and stepping away.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said. “But I’ll see you again.”
“I don’t like the idea that you might not,” he said. “I mean war is war and stuff, but… we’re freshmen at Survival School. This stuff is supposed to be years off. We’re just kids.”
“I know,” she said. “But… You figure out who’s letting them in, who’s trying to get rid of me, and I can come back. And we can just do classes and lunch and dinner and studying at the library and pretend all of this isn’t happening. I’ll do it if you will. But right now, I’m endangering everyone, being there, and I won’t do that. So I may as well do something else, out here. Just as soon as I figure out what.”
“Just run,” he whispered. “I’ll find them and Lady Harrington will turn them into a mound of cockroaches, and then you can come back.”
“Can she do that?” Valerie asked, quiet, and he shook his head.
“If I got to choose, she could.”
“No,” Valerie said. “I won’t just run. This matters. And you know it. We have to do better than our parents did.”
“Your parents did pretty well,” he said. “And they still are.”
“You believe that?” Valerie asked. “That my dad isn’t one of the bad guys?”
“I believe that Hanson Cox just walked in the door downstairs, of all of the places in the world, and if you told me that your dad was leading a battalion of green magic users, I’d believe you. I’d have questions, but I’d believe you.”
She closed her eyes tight and just breathed.
“All right,” she said. “This isn’t getting any easier. Go. Just go. You have things you have to do, and… and we have to run. We can’t stay here tonight, and I don’t even know where we will stay.”
“It’s cold out,” he said, and she nodded.
“Believe me, I know. But you were here with us. By the time you get back to school, we won’t be here anymore.”
“You could stay tonight,” he said. “I’m not going to tell anyone where you are, and neither is Shack.”
She nodded.
“I tr
ust you.” She paused, remembering something Mr. Jamison had said to her, about picking a middle path on trust, because she couldn’t trust everyone and being alone would make her crazy. “I trust Shack. I just don’t know everything that’s possible, with magic, so until I’m a lot more sure what can’t happen…”
“You’re going to be extra careful,” he said, nodding. He hugged her close again, then nodded.
“Okay. Okay. Just be safe and try not to freeze to death.”
“It’s not that cold,” Valerie said. “I’ll see you soon.”
He nodded, then let her go, looking back once as he opened the door, but not saying anything. Valerie covered her face with her hands and went to sit against the wall.
She didn’t want to be doing this.
She wanted to be back in her regular life doing regular things.
Only that wasn’t how she met Ethan, was it?
No.
She had to be in magic, and if she was involved in magic, this… this was her world.
She put her head back against the wall as Sasha and Hanson came in.
Neither of them seemed to know what to say, so they sat quietly for a few minutes, then finally Valerie stood.
“Well, Sasha and I haven’t eaten since last night,” she said. “Let’s go get food and figure out what happens next.”
New Targets
It was amazing how much clearer Valerie’s mind was with food in her belly.
“Okay,” she said around a mouthful of burger. “Here’s how I see it. We can hide. We can look for my parents. We can fight.”
“Who would we fight?” Sasha asked. “And how? And why?”
“See, that was the first one I eliminated, too,” Valerie said, nodding as she swallowed. “Right. So, we don’t know where the fights are going on, or who’s on what side, and they’d probably all stomp us anyway.”
“So why even put it on the list?” Sasha asked.
“Completionism,” Hanson said with a grin. “You have to find all of the options before you can be sure you’re eliminating the right ones.”
