Unveiling Magic

by Chloe Garner

  “By that logic, anyone in the school might merit suspicion,” Lady Harrington said. “They all dislike her presence.”

  Ethan hadn’t been sure how aware of that Lady Harrington might have been.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”

  She frowned, then stood.

  “Come with me,” she said, walking around her desk.

  “Where are we going?” Shack asked.

  “A young man who suspects his brother of such treason, sincerely or otherwise, realistically or otherwise, deserves to know, if only to heap coals on his own head for his misjudgment of his sibling’s character,” she said, opening the office door. “I told you to go down to the visitor cottages,” she said more loudly, and Mrs. Young looked over, then shook her head.

  “You invaded your brother’s living space without invitation, and I expect you to apologize to him personally,” Lady Harrington said. Ethan sighed.

  “Seriously? You didn’t even have the heat turned on at the visitor cottages, did you? We were just supposed to sit down there and shiver while the upperclassmen did whatever they feel like, like always?”

  “It is not for you to question my authority,” Lady Harrington said, opening the door to the office and leading the way down the hallway.

  If it weren’t for, like, everything, Ethan would have been having the time of his life.

  Shack followed along behind, hands in his pockets, unconcerned as he ever was when Ethan was about to get in big trouble. It didn’t matter how many times Shack got in trouble with him, Ethan always took the brunt of everything because no one could actually believe that someone who acted as not-guilty as Shack did had any real hand in what had happened to merit punishment.

  Which meant that Shack was - almost - always on the loose to spring Ethan when he got himself grounded or sent away or whatever.

  Ethan had been a hard kid on his parents, as he looked at it. Not that they hadn’t been hard parents on him.

  They walked across the lawns, the chill in the air tolerable now with the sun overhead. Ethan realized he’d missed lunch in the intensity of searching for cottages with cellular service.

  Lady Harrington glanced at Ethan, and he pointed at Elvis’ cottage.

  “It’s not him,” Shack murmured. “We both know he wouldn’t do that.”

  Ethan nodded.

  He did know.

  He knew.

  But Merck has given Elvis a mission. An honest-to-goodness Council-mandated mission to spy on Valerie Blake. And Elvis had blown it because he couldn’t stand that Valerie had been allowed in at Survival School.

  Ethan had never known his brother to pass up an opportunity like that.

  Lady Harrington knocked, and one of the other roommates opened the door. She took a step back and raised an eyebrow at Ethan.

  So.

  The cover story was actually the one they were running with.

  “Um,” he said. “We were…”

  “No,” she said sternly. “You need to assemble all of the roommates from this building to apologize to them.”

  Elvis’ roommate grinned and stepped back.

  “Guys,” he called. “Guys, Lady Harrington is frog-marching him.”

  Ethan rubbed the side of his face, and the rest of the cottage emerged.

  “Um,” he said again. “I’m supposed to…”

  “No,” Lady Harrington said again. “Do it right.”

  He looked back at her and she raised her eyebrows.

  She was good.

  “Right,” he said. “I’m sorry I talked everyone into coming up here instead of going down to the visitor cottages like we were supposed to. If you want help cleaning up or anything…”

  “Kitchen needs cleaning,” Elvis said. “And the bathroom.”

  Ethan dropped his shoulders.

  That was real, for what it was worth.

  He was going to have to go clean his brother’s bathroom.

  Probably for real.

  He sighed, then looked back at Lady Harrington, who raised her eyebrows higher at him.

  He dropped his head and shuffled through the group of young men, looking back once.

  “Where do you keep your cleaning stuff?” he asked.

  Shack and Lady Harrington followed, and Shack rolled his jaw to the side then went in with Ethan to get a basket of cleaning supplies from under the sink where Elvis showed them. Lady Harrington crossed her arms, and Ethan tipped his head to the side.

  Was she really going to make him do this?

  Couldn’t she just do her magic check-’em thing and let him off the hook?

  She tipped her head the other direction.

  Did he deserve this?

  For suspecting his brother of sabotage? Of being willing to let students - Ethan’s friends - die?

  He was being ridiculous.

  Elvis wouldn’t do that.

  No matter how much he loathed Valerie.

  He nodded and turned, going back to the bathroom and setting to work.

  Thing was, he’d never cleaned a bathroom before, and he spent the next fifteen minutes staring at the bottles and glancing at the words printed on them like they were going to tell him what he needed to do without actually reading them.

  “Mr. Trent,” Lady Harrington said, and Ethan stuck his head out of the bathroom.

  “Yes, Headmistress?” he asked.

  That was laying it on thick, and felt wrong even as he said it, but she shook her head.

  “The Elder Mr. Trent,” she said. Elvis shoved himself off of the table where he’d been watching Shack clean up drinks from off of the counter.

  “Yeah?” Elvis answered.

  “This is your room, is it not?” Lady Harrington asked. He walked quickly past her to close the door.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry. I didn’t… I would have cleaned if I’d known you were going to be here today.”

  “The warding on the door is quite… unusual,” Lady Harrington said. “Especially for a Light School graduate.”

  He shrugged.

  “My dad has been teaching me how to ward a door since I was a kid.”

  “No one helped you with it?” Lady Harrington asked, and he shook his head.

  “No. That’s all my casting.”

  Ethan felt his stomach start to sink.

  “I see,” Lady Harrington said. “You need to come with me, I’m afraid.”

  Elvis started to say something off-putting, jovial even, and then Ethan saw his brother realize it.

  Realize what he’d just admitted.

  To Lady Harrington.

  He shook his head and bolted past her, making for the front door.

  He made it three steps before Shack flattened him.

  Fallout

  As long as they sat very, very still, no one asked them to go back to their room.

  So Shack and Ethan scarcely breathed, sitting there in the office as an ever-quickening stream of the who’s-who of the Council-controlled magic community arrived at the school and went into the main conference room.

  They should have moved to the cafeteria or one of the classrooms by now, but the shouting coming out of the conference room suggested that no one was really thinking about pragmatic things like that.

  Mr. Tannis and Mr. Benson had shown up early, but things had been loud on the other side of that door - reframed, since Shack had broken it down - ever since Merck Trent had shown up with half the council. Apparently they’d been in session.

  It was dark outside by now, and Ethan was occasionally aware of just how hungry he was after two skipped meals, but he wasn’t moving.

  He wasn’t moving until someone told him what his brother had done and why.

  And who was after Valerie.

  And what the Council was going to do about it.

  He kept his fingernails clipped short, but he still had fingernail marks in his palms from how tight his fists had sat, clenched, all afternoon and all evening.

  He was seething, a
nd he couldn’t even speak for fear that Mrs. Young would look over and shoo them away.

  The door opened once more, and Mr. Benson lifted his chin at Ethan and Shack.

  “We need to speak with you,” he said, taking a step back against the door and putting out an arm. It was the motion of invitation, but nothing about the way he moved suggested this was voluntary. Ethan looked over at Shack, and Shack nodded.

  “You might have to hold me back,” Ethan said under his breath, and Shack snorted.

  “He’s only got a problem if someone has to hold me back,” Shack answered. “He killed my friends.”

  Ethan nodded, and they walked past Mr. Benson and into the packed-out conference room.

  Elvis sat at one end of the table, haughty as ever.

  “Why?” Ethan asked.

  He hadn’t planned on speaking, but the word was out the same way his foot was going to catch him on the next stride forward. His body compelled it just to keep him from falling.

  Elvis looked over at him dismissively.

  Exactly the way Elvis had looked at him any other given day.

  “You aren’t here to discuss any of that,” Lady Harrington started, but Ethan was still falling.

  “Like hell,” he said. “He got our friends killed, and he’s got people out there hunting Valerie. She would be here if it weren’t for him.”

  “We are all concerned for Miss Blake’s safety, as well as Miss Mills,” Mr. Tannis said. “It’s why you are allowed to be a part of this conversation at all.”

  Ethan looked hard at Lady Harrington, trying to figure out how much she might have told the Council.

  She still thought that he was on the Council’s side, after all, didn’t she? What other side would there be?

  Before he found his next words, Shack answered Mr. Tannis.

  “You may be concerned about them, but we aren’t going to help you until we get some answers. We aren’t chesspieces.”

  “You have no right,” Yasmine’s mom said. “I lost my daughter to this animal. You have lost nothing. You make no demands here.”

  Ethan looked at Shack and they agreed wordlessly, turning back toward the door.

  Mr. Benson was standing there with his arms crossed.

  Mr. Benson was a tall guy, stout in an in-the-classroom-all-day kind of way, but sturdy if by force of will alone. Shack could go through him, but it wasn’t going to be neat.

  “Do better,” Mr. Benson said. “This isn’t the time for ultimatums.”

  “Sure it is,” Shack said, once more before Ethan could speak. “You’ve been going around behind closed doors, behind locked doors, keeping everything away from us about the war, about how it was going on right in our own school, because we’re just students. We aren’t real people who deserve to know what’s going on because this is our lives you people are talking about. We graduate, and you’re going to toss us into the wood chipper right along behind all the rest of them, and you’re hoping if we don’t find out about how bad it is, we’ll get caught up in the glory and the potential for power plays and we’ll go right along with it. I’m done with their brand of evil, and you just go along.”

  Ethan didn’t turn to stare at his friend.

  In his head, he certainly did, but he kept his eyes forward.

  Shack.

  Dude had passion.

  He just didn’t bring it out very often.

  “That’s enough, Oswald,” Mrs. MacMillan said. Shack turned his attention to his mother.

  “No,” he said. “We’re just starting. Last time you were here, you threatened to send us into the darkness for not being willing to help you find Valerie. You turn up that one of the Council brats - the heir apparent, no less - is behind multiple deaths, and you expect us to just fall back in line? No.”

  “Hell no,” Ethan echoed.

  “I expect you to behave like the soldiers and like the proper children of Council leaders that you were raised to be,” Merck said. Ethan gave his father a cold look, and Lady Harrington stood.

  “I expect you to put others’ lives ahead of your own anger,” she said coolly.

  The room went still.

  She nodded.

  “You are right that there are people trying to find Miss Blake, and that none of us like to consider what would happen to her if the Superiors managed to catch up with her. If she is with her mother, she will likely die, both of them will. Her mother is compromised so long as Valerie is not somewhere safe, and that place should be here.”

  “She should be in a safehouse,” Yasmine’s mom said. Most of the Council members nodded agreement.

  “No,” Ethan started to argue, but Lady Harrington held up a hand that felt particularly intended for him.

  “You are being short-sighted,” Lady Harrington said. “You believe that you can make the most out of her by keeping her nearby and under your direct influence, and I certainly understand the environment that has evolved those thoughts. You think much the same of Susan Blake. But I have spent more time around either of them than anyone else in this room, save the two young men, and I believe I have ample authority to tell you that that is the wrong way to handle either of them. You don’t tell them what to do. You don’t try to contain them. You feed them information - coherent and good faith information - and you hope like hell that they see things like you do, at the end of it. You lie to them once, you put your own interests ahead of theirs, ahead of your responsibility to consider theirs, they will walk away and they will not look back.”

  “Easy thing for a schoolteacher to say,” Ann’s dad said.

  “Watch your mouth,” Mr. Benson answered, and Ethan clenched his jaw to control a smile.

  “If you want Susan to work in your interests, giving her compelling cause. If you want Valerie to join your efforts, give her compelling cause. But freely, and with all the knowledge you can safely offer her. Anything else is destined to blow up in your faces, much as it already has.”

  “You’re laying the blame for this at our feet?” Yasmine’s mom asked, outraged.

  “You had a student working with our enemies under your nose for almost six months,” Merck said. She looked at him with a chilling lack of defensiveness.

  “Would you like to have a conversation about how and why he came to be enrolled at my school?” she asked.

  “I deserved to be here more than she does,” Elvis said.

  “She is a hundred times the magic user you will ever be,” Lady Harrington said without looking at him. “And that is not without significant respect for the work that you are capable of doing.”

  “I put a hole in your defenses that you are never going to repair,” Elvis said casually. “There’s no way to do it. I watched Mr. Tannis and Mr. Jamison work at it for months now, and neither of them made a dent in it. Even your precious Valerie couldn’t eliminate it. You may as well just close down the school. It isn’t like you’re teaching anyone anything, anymore.”

  Shack shifted, and Ethan put his hand on his friend’s elbow.

  Yes.

  That.

  That deserved to be punched in the mouth over it.

  But.

  Ethan was watching Lady Harrington’s face, and she didn’t look beat.

  “A school is not a building,” she said. “It is a collection of knowledge and those with the interest to seek it.”

  “Only if you can keep everyone inside from getting dead,” Elvis said.

  Ethan looked at his brother.

  Elvis had always had an ego. And he’d been a lot more motivated by power than idealism. But Ethan had identified with both of those. It had been unquestioned in Ethan’s mind that he would have been exactly like Elvis if he had had the combination of his brother’s superior looks and his superior birth order.

  “Is this what you are, when the hope of running the Council slips away from you?” Ethan asked. “Because I’ve never been that, whatever it is.”

  Elvis sighed.

  “Do you know why Dad pick
ed me over you?” Ethan’s brother asked.

  “You got here first,” Ethan answered, and Elvis shook his head.

  “He didn’t tell me that I was going to take his spot on the Council until I was a teenager. He picked me over you because you were a whiny brat and you weren’t ever going to do anything but whine and rebel. But he couldn’t have ever picked you because you and your dark magic weren’t ever going to get within a mile of the Council. The Council is the best magic, and it isn’t you and it isn’t her.”

  “It’s funny how the Council is packed out with a bunch of purists,” Shack said. The temperature in the room went ice cold, and Ethan had a half a second where he wasn’t sure who he was supposed to be looking at to not give away that he knew exactly why.

  Lady Harrington.

  Better than anyone else in his range of vision, or the table.

  “You took lives, and you will answer for it,” Lady Harrington said. “You coordinated with the Superiors, and you will answer for it. This conversation, I remind all sitting at this table, is not about Elvis Trent. Or Ethan Trent. Or the Council. It is about getting Miss Blake and Miss Mills someplace safe.”

  “Into protective custody,” Yasmine’s mom said again.

  “We will discuss what happens to her after we have her,” Merck answered, looking at Ethan.

  It was supposed to - supposed to - signal to Ethan that there was wiggle room to maybe leave her at Survival School instead.

  It was a ploy.

  It didn’t matter how right Lady Harrington was - and Ethan knew she was dead on the money - the Council wasn’t going to give her up. They were going to try to get in her ear and get her to play whatever games were going on, on their side of the closed doors.

  “I’m not going to help you,” Ethan said. “I told you that.”

  “You’d rather she be out there?” Mr. Tannis asked.

  Ethan scratched the back of his head.

  “If it were in my power - and it isn’t - but if it were, I would go get Sasha and bring her back here. She deserves to be here. But Valerie? I’m not going to try to help the Council find or control her. No way.”