by Chloe Garner
He sat up, bleary, and nodded.
“I’m up.”
“Good. Get dressed and meet us out in the living room.”
He nodded.
“Don’t go back to sleep,” she told him.
He nodded.
He was going to go back to sleep.
“Get up,” she said again, pulling him by his arm out of the bed. “Go wash your face or something.”
“I’m awake,” he said, his eyes closed. She got him up onto his feet and waited for a moment. He didn’t sit back down again.
This was the best she was going to do.
She left him, going back out into the small front room.
Frowned.
Looked into the kitchen again.
Yes.
There was a stooped old woman in there in a black blouse and a green skirt, washing her hands at the sink.
“Are you here to kill us?” Valerie asked.
“No,” the woman answered without turning around. “I’m here because you called me. You’ve been sending up signals for days, but you finally sent out the beacon I needed to find you.”
“I’m capable of defending myself,” Valerie said, and the woman chuckled softly.
“I should say you are. This place is a fortress.”
“Who are you?” Valerie asked. “What do you want?”
The woman turned off the water and shuffled around to look at Valerie.
“I need to tell you some things.”
“Okay,” Valerie said slowly, and the woman shook her head.
“I thought you’d be older,” she said. “But you’re just a child.”
“Am not,” Valerie said, knowing she sounded insolent.
“You are up against things you don’t understand,” the woman said. “Things I barely understand. And I need to tell you some things, because you may be the only one who can beat them.”
“Who are you?” Valerie asked. “Why are you following me?”
“I’m following you because you called me,” the woman answered. “We’re tied together, you and I, and you called me here. I came because I’ve already lost everything at home. If I can help you salvage some of your life and your world, maybe it won’t all be for nothing.”
“I didn’t call you,” Valerie said.
“You called me the moment you killed the silverthorn,” the woman said. “I knew that you were the one I had to find.”
“What about it?” Valerie asked. “How do you know that?”
“You called me,” the woman said, brushing past Valerie to go sit on the couch.
Valerie…
… was at a loss.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I am Daphne Leblanc,” the woman said. “I am among those who spoke with Merck Trent over the past summer, and had pledged my support to help turn back the tide of interest in segregating magic from non-magic.”
“You’re on our side?” Valerie asked. The woman shook her head.
“Oh, no, child, you aren’t on anyone’s side any more than I am. Which is why I’ve come to you. You have the skills to destroy the powers that each side is using, and they both fear and covet you. I hope I’ve come early enough to give you what you need to resist such things.”
“You want to help me?” Valerie asked. The woman nodded.
“I thought that I could throw my weight behind Merck’s coalition and keep the worst of the killings from happening, but they came to me, to my own halls, and they killed my people. It was only by luck and wit that I survived.”
“You’re the one with the other… Ethan saw the mark on the wall at your house,” Valerie said, and the woman nodded.
“I didn’t find any way to close that door, and that was the opening that they walked through to come to me.”
Valerie licked her lips.
Daphne seemed to be remembering things that were far, far away, and it made Valerie feel cold. That she could have felt that way about school… There was something kindred to it, in a way she couldn’t have expressed if she’d tried.
“What do I do?” she asked. “I won’t go back to the school until I know that everyone is going to be safe.”
“There is a cast that I can teach you now that will purge the dark magic that mars the defenses,” the woman said. Valerie shook her head.
“No. Thank you, but that’s not enough. Someone there is helping them. Getting rid of it once doesn’t keep it from happening again.”
The woman nodded slowly.
“You are so young,” she said. Valerie frowned. There was so much in Daphne’s voice.
“What happened, when they came?” she asked.
“A bomb,” the woman answered after a moment, her face turned away. “It tore through my home and laid waste to every life and all magic within. I have nothing left but a shell where once lived five-hundred years of history and everyone I cared about.”
“I know that bomb,” Valerie said. “They tried to set it off at school.”
The woman nodded.
“Your Council hunts you, does it not?”
“Yes,” Valerie said. The woman nodded.
“They are as bad as the villains who want to kill us. I sensed a magic stronger than my own, one that went against the very casts that destroyed me, and I have been searching for you ever since my life ended. I did not think you would be so young.”
“I don’t understand why you keep saying that,” Valerie said. The woman sighed.
“Because I am torn, putting such knowledge and responsibility on such a child. I had a granddaughter your age.”
Valerie gritted her teeth, refusing to let that hit her.
“Then tell me,” she said. “Let me go after them because of your granddaughter.”
The woman nodded, looking around the house.
“The magic here isn’t yours,” she said. “But it is deceptively similar. Whose is it?”
“My mother’s,” Valerie said.
“And where is she?” Daphne asked.
“I don’t know,” Valerie said. “We got separated and I was hoping she would look for me here.”
“I see,” she said. “Perhaps it is not one, but two that I seek. Your mother shares your spirit?”
Valerie nodded.
“She doesn’t think either side is right, either.”
Daphne nodded, looking at her hands and then licking her lips.
“There is a woman. In North Carolina. She is called Samantha Angelsword, and while her existence is not something that any of us know, for reasons that escape me, she is among the strongest of the magic users and one who might help your cause.”
“Why?” Valerie asked.
“Because she cares about justice and freedom and the lives of the civilians. Explain to her what is going on and ask her plainly for help, and I believe she will give it to you, though I will warn you that you will never see our ways the same again.”
“I don’t understand,” Valerie said. “Who is she? Why don’t you go?”
“You should not rush into it,” Daphne said. “You are so young and so… green. If you can find another path, you should take it. But when you find yourself without another option, she may be the one who can help you end this war.”
“Why would I take another path, if I could end the war?” Valerie asked, and Daphne shook her head, then lifted her eyes.
“Because it may very well kill you instead, and… I don’t want another death on my conscience. Even now, I hesitate.”
“They’re killing people,” Valerie said. “Trying to kill people I care about, and might be coming to try to kill me.”
“Oh, they’re coming,” Daphne said, nodding slowly. “They’re coming and they have big plans for what they intend to do with you. If I read them right, they’ll just kill the two standing back there in the hallway.”
Valerie spun on the couch. She’d forgotten Sasha and Hanson, who were hiding in plain sight; the hallway wasn’t that long.
“They
shouldn’t know I was here,” Daphne said, standing. “I need to go.”
“Help us,” Sasha said, stepping forward. “Please.”
Daphne sighed.
“The roots of my magic were in my home. You wouldn’t understand, with your new country and your flying around from place to place. I have nothing to offer you but my knowledge, and that knowledge will only help you if they don’t know you have it.”
Valerie closed her eyes.
“All right,” she said. Daphne went to the table and produced a roll of paper in the same way that Valerie had seen Roger do it in her apartment, back before all of this had started. She still didn’t know how to do that.
She wrote for about a minute, then turned the paper to Valerie.
“Can you do this?” she asked.
“I think all of those are words,” Valerie answered. Sasha edged around the table, nodding quickly as she ran her finger down the page.
“Yes. I can help her do all of that,” she said. Daphne looked at Valerie quizzically.
“Was it you or not who called me this morning?” she asked. Sasha looked at Valerie, confused, and Valerie shrugged.
“I put up a protection spell,” she said. “If that’s what you’re talking about.”
“You could put up a protection spell that was that delicate, but you cannot so much as read this?” Daphne asked.
Valerie nodded.
“Seems to be the size of it, yeah.”
Daphne shook her head, then produced a second piece of paper.
“This is the address,” she said. “For the Angelsword. Do not go to her unless you are prepared to lose your life in this war. It isn’t for children to fight adults’ battles. I don’t like even giving you her name. But you… They fear you, for what you can do. If it comes to it…”
Valerie nodded.
“I want to stop the war,” she said, and Daphne shook her head.
“This will do much more,” she said. “I can’t even predict what. If it’s possible there’s another way, you should use it.”
She lifted her head again, like she could hear something Valerie couldn’t.
“You aren’t safe here much longer,” she said. “I need to go. I wish you the best of luck.”
“That’s it?” Sasha asked. “One spell and a name?”
“That’s all I have that’s worth anything to you,” Daphne said, then set her mouth. “I hope for you that you never have to use it.”
Valerie took a step back as Daphne started for the door. The woman looked back at them once but she didn’t speak, and then she was gone.
Valerie rolled up the cast and handed it to Sasha and then the address and gave it to Hanson.
“We need to move,” she said.
“Where?” Hanson asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Valerie said. “I don’t care that she said that she didn’t have magic, she knows something we don’t. And she tracked us down. Someone is coming, and we need to be gone by the time they get here.”
“What if it’s your parents?” Sasha asked, and Valerie shook her head.
“No. They wouldn’t be using magic to find us.” She looked out the window. “I don’t know what kept them from finding us the first time, but my hope was that they would know we were here and just… come get us. They shouldn’t be tracking us down.” She nodded, feeling chilled. “This is something else.”
The sun would come up soon.
Ethan knew it.
He could see it on Shack that his friend knew it, too.
Shack hadn’t looked up from a folder in the last hour, though, going from one to the next like a machine, putting the ones that he thought were interesting in front of Ethan and Ethan doing the same.
At this point, Ethan was resigned to having to do it all over again, breaking out, and only using this trip as simple reconnaissance, but he hated the idea of leaving the work half-done.
Also, they were going to have to put the folders all back again, or they were going to get busted for having been here, even if they did make it back to their room.
Lady Harrington knew Ethan’s magic.
He was getting blurry eyed, when Shack suddenly sat forward.
“Listen,” he said. “Expressed resentment at being tested, that he should have to compete with people with lesser magic pedigrees. Frequently absent during class. Absence. Absence. Absence. Reprimanded for stealing a student’s books and turning them into hay. Suspended for locking a student to a wall and practicing explosions casts. Both times, he said that he chose the student because he was first generation at a magic school. That he didn’t belong here.”
“Who is that?” Ethan asked, and Shack gave him a grim look, turning the folder to face Ethan.
Elvis Trent
Ethan felt his shoulders drop, and he took the folder from Shack to read it for himself.
There was more.
Elvis was popular. Everyone liked him, everyone wanted to be in his good graces, in much the same way that they liked Ethan. Elvis might have been more attractive, but he had a girlfriend at Light School, a senior, who he’d recently gotten back together with, so Elvis might have flirted a lot, but he didn’t have a casual flock of girlfriends at Survival School. Although, neither did Ethan.
He shook his head.
“It couldn’t be my brother,” he said. “Elvis is a jerk, but he’d never go against the Council.”
Shack shrugged.
“I know. I know. It’s just, we both kept skipping his folder, and…”
Ethan looked at it again.
“I see it.”
He closed the folder then stood, looking at what was left.
They’d gotten through almost the whole school.
“If they were any good at being a spy, they wouldn’t draw attention,” he said after a moment, and Shack nodded.
“We were both hoping we’d see something Lady Harrington didn’t, but there isn’t anything here that just screams ‘I let the demons in’. I don’t know what we do next.”
“We need to clean up,” Ethan said. “I don’t want them to know we were here.”
Shack nodded and started sorting through folders, handing them to Ethan in something that was more-or-less alphabetical order. Ethan started shoving them back into the drawers, knowing he had to have been making mistakes in his haste, but knowing it was better for the folders to be back and not where they went than not back at all.
They were late.
They were so late.
He put the last folder into a drawer and pushed it closed, then froze.
There were voices outside.
Lady Harrington talking to Mrs. Young.
He closed his eyes.
This was going to take the biggest bluff of his entire life, waiting for the right moment for both him and Shack to walk out of here like nothing was happening.
The door opened.
Ethan straightened, though Shack reclined deeper against the wall. No telling which was the better play, because neither of them were likely to work.
“I’m always amazed at how much the students at my school think they can get away with without me noticing,” Lady Harrington said. “I hope you found some interesting things, because I hardly think it will have been worth it.”
She stepped to the side, and Ethan reached down to help Shack up to his feet, walking past the headmistress. She pointed.
The conference room.
Well.
Nope, he had nothing redeeming at all about that.
They were in trouble.
Lady Harrington sat down at the conference table and lifted her chin.
“I think you should start with what you were doing in there, gentlemen,” she said.
It was just her.
Ethan didn’t know what to think of that.
He was used to balancing out whole committees asking him questions, trying to work one interest against another to weaken the resolve of the group.
Lady Harrington… Well, sh
e was just flat-out tough.
“Looking for the person who is sabotaging the school and trying to get Valerie captured,” Shack said.
Truth.
When all else failed, lead with the truth.
“And you think that you are more qualified to do that investigation than myself and the rest of the staff?” Lady Harrington. “You jump to sabotage awfully quickly.”
“We think we might know things that you don’t,” Shack said. “And that we might be more motivated.”
“More motivated?” Lady Harrington asked, raising her eyebrows. “You have been locked in your rooms for days on end, losing out on precious instruction time, as we have been hunting down answers to what has gone wrong with the school’s defenses. And then the two of you come trampling in on them and shut them down entirely, in the name of solving the mystery. I am… I am beyond words.”
“Valerie won’t come back until she knows that the school is safe,” Ethan said.
“She think she’s safer out there than here?” Lady Harrington asked, and he shook his head.
“No. She thinks we’re safer with her out there,” he answered.
Lady Harrington folded her hands on the table, watching the two of them.
“I see,” she said after a moment. “And did you find anything incriminating, pawing through my students’ personal files?”
“Nothing useful,” Ethan said, and Shack shook his head.
“People at this school are messed up,” he said, and she tipped her head at Shack.
“They are indeed a handful to manage, always presuming that they know best and that the things they can do are simultaneously things they may do.”
“You haven’t made any progress,” Ethan said. “Have you?”
The corner of her mouth twitched, and she resettled her shoulders.
“We are working on a great many important things,” she said. “Right now, everything says that it is life or death and that we should work on it first.”
“But you haven’t, have you?” Ethan asked.
“Not nearly so much as I would have liked,” Lady Harrington said. “No.”
“Do you have anyone you think it might be?” Shack asked, and Lady Harrington gave him a cold look.
“You insult me, asking,” she said. Ethan shook his head.
“We couldn’t get files on the staff,” he said.
“My school was attacked,” Lady Harrington said. “It is a great black mark on my record. And yet, it has happened not once but three times in the space of a single year. Under normal circumstances, I would be outraged that you would suggest that one of my faculty or staff might be disloyal, but I am in a position that should not be possible.”
