Mags & Nats 3-Book Box Set

by Stephanie Fazio

  Since I was a kid, whenever I was sick or had something to celebrate, Ma had been there with delicious homemade food, advice whether I wanted it or not, and hugs. I hadn’t realized until this moment just how much I’d missed her.

  She didn’t say anything about how long it had been or ask me why I’d stopped coming over, and I wondered what excuse Kaira had given her family for why I was constantly around one day and then gone the next.

  “Good lord, look how handsome you’ve gotten.” Ma smiled up at me. But as she searched my face, her smile turned to a frown. “Too skinny, though. Come.”

  I managed to exchange a quick grin with Kaira before Ma took my hand and dragged me toward the kitchen. Kaira’s two cousins, Cora and Desiree, were sitting at the table.

  The Hansleys were originally from Atlanta, where the Slaughters had been fierce and terrible. Ma’s brother and his wife—Cora and Desiree’s parents—had been killed in the Slaughters when their kids were babies, along with Kaira’s dad and grandpa. Ma and Grandma Tashi had managed to get what was left of the family out of Atlanta and, eventually, to Boston where her in-laws lived.

  “What’s he doing here?” Desiree, the older of Kaira’s two cousins, demanded. She even sniffed and turned her head, like I smelled.

  “Hello to you too, Desiree,” I said, giving her a pleasant smile.

  Desiree rolled her eyes at me.

  Kaira lightly smacked the back of her cousin’s head. “Don’t be a such a—”

  “Maaaa!” Desiree whined. “Kaira punched me!”

  Kaira gave me an exasperated look.

  Desiree was now fifteen, but she’d been a bratty teenager since she was about six. She was a Rain Maker like Valencia, and they were known to be a moody bunch. Desiree was certainly no exception. Her long, black braids had been dyed so that they went from different shades of purple at the bottom to blue at the top. She clicked inches-long purple nails against the top of the table. Even that small motion conveyed her irritation. Kaira and I had always joked that Desiree’s real magic was being constantly pissed off.

  The light over the table buzzed and flickered as moisture started to condense around the bulb.

  “Desiree Hansley, if you make it rain in here and get my lasagna soggy, I swear it’ll be the last thing you do,” Ma called from the stove, where I caught the smell of tomato sauce simmering.

  I couldn’t help but smile at the familiar routine. I remembered Ma and Desiree’s epic fights, which began with a downpour and ended with Ma feeding Desiree homemade donuts or something else sugary and delicious.

  “Hey Graysen.” Cora, Kaira’s youngest cousin, gave me a shy smile.

  “Hey Cora, whatcha working on?” I asked, coming over to look at the book she had open in front of her.

  “Studying for my Test.” She turned the book so I could see the magical transfiguration diagrams on the open pages.

  “Isn’t it a little early to be studying for that?” I asked.

  Cora was thirteen, which meant her Test wasn’t for another five years. Besides, it wasn’t exactly an exam one could study for.

  “I’m not very powerful,” she said, looking ashamed, “so I need to work harder. And I want to go to a good college.”

  “You’re plenty powerful, and you’ll get into whatever school you want,” Kaira told her.

  Cora was an Inanimate Illusionist like Ma. Unlike Ma, though, she had to be looking at the object and concentrating on it to keep the illusion.

  Ma’s ability to create an illusion and maintain it when she was somewhere else—like the garage door at Kaira’s house that appeared to be a brick wall—was much more difficult. Ma had once told me that only a professional multitasker, aka a mother, could keep up illusions indefinitely from afar.

  It was even more complicated for Animate Illusionists, since their magic had to account for changes and movements in the subject they were manipulating. Kaira and I had tested her range once. It was over a mile.

  “Where do you want to go to college?” I asked Cora.

  “If I could go anywhere, I’d want to go to the BSMU like you.” Cora gave me another shy smile.

  “He doesn’t go there anymore,” Desiree said before I could reply. “They kicked him out for being a murderer.”

  “Shut your mouth, Desiree,” Kaira warned.

  “Make me,” her cousin muttered under her breath.

  Kaira lifted a shoulder. “Challenge accepted, Cuz.”

  A fat, hairy baboon was now sitting at the kitchen table.

  Cora pointed and started to laugh until tears poured down her face. I tried to hide my own grin and failed.

  “What?” the baboon demanded in Desiree’s voice. “What the hell did she do to me?”

  Kaira smirked.

  Cora slid a makeup mirror that was on the table to her older sister. The baboon picked up the mirror and looked at herself. She screeched, which was oddly just the sort of noise I would have expected from a real baboon.

  “Bitch, make it go away!” Desiree screamed, lunging at Kaira, who hid behind me and used my body as a shield between her and her cousin-turned-baboon.

  A freezing rain started to fall right above my head.

  “Your butt is blue,” Cora gasped, holding her side.

  “That’s enough, girls.”

  Grandma Tashi stepped into the kitchen. At one look from her, Kaira’s illusion fell away and I stopped getting rained on.

  “Hi, Grandma.” Kaira, dripping wet and shivering, stepped out from behind me to give her grandma a kiss.

  I gave Grandma Tashi a little wave. Unlike Ma, Kaira’s grandmother had always slightly terrified me. She was tiny and birdlike, with sharp bones jutting everywhere. She had the look of someone who had seen the worst that humankind had to offer and had come out the other end. Grandma Tashi had lost her husband and son in the Atlanta Slaughters. Still, she had communicated with her newly-deceased family and used the information they gave her to get what was left of their family to Boston. She was as much a parent figure in Kaira’s life as Ma.

  “So,” Grandma Tashi said, giving me a hard stare, “we’re letting murderers into the house now, are we?”

  “Don’t I always tell you not to believe everything you see on the news?” Kaira asked her grandmother.

  “Don’t you talk about my G-Baby like that,” Ma called from the kitchen. She pointed a wooden spoon at Grandma Tashi, ignoring the tomato sauce that dripped onto the floor. “This boy doesn’t have a murderous bone in his body.”

  “That’s not what Penelope says.” Grandma Tashi raised her pointed chin and glared at me.

  “With all due respect,” I began, but Tashi interrupted me.

  “Boy, don’t you be playing at respect when Penelope done told me herself that you’re her killer!”

  “You’re gonna throw your blood pressure all outta whack again if you keep hollerin’ like that,” Ma said, coming over to the table with two plates balanced on each arm. “And if you keep throwing around accusations, I’ll leave you lying on the floor after you give yourself a heart attack. See if I don’t.”

  The two older women glared at each other.

  “Penelope said—”

  “How many times have I said no talking about dead people while we’re trying to eat?” Ma shot back. “Put the poor boy off his appetite, and he’s skinny enough as it is.”

  I was desperate to know what Penelope had told Tashi. Maybe she knew something that would offer me a clue about who the real killer had been. But one look at Ma told me I wasn’t learning anything until after we’d eaten.

  Ma slammed the plates down on the table. She stood with her hands on her wide hips, glaring until we all sat down.

  I looked down at my plate and saw a huge slice of Ma’s homemade lasagna with two pieces of buttery garlic bread.

  “You didn’t have to do this,” I said, touched that she had remembered my favorite meal and feeling bad that she had put herself out for my sake.

  “Afte
r everything you’ve been through, the least you deserve is a home-cooked meal. Now, dig in. That’s Ma’s soul food right there, and you’ll feel better once you eat.”

  I had no appetite, but I forced myself to eat enough that I wouldn’t offend Ma. A heavy silence gathered around a table that was usually full of chatter and good-natured arguing. I glanced at Kaira, who just shrugged and rolled her eyes.

  Desiree got up and switched on the tiny TV on the counter.

  NBC was showing a live feed of the front of the Alliance building, where a single dark rain cloud hung over the building. It was raining fiercely, even though the screen showed it was sunny everywhere else except for the Alliance building.

  Valencia Stark, self-proclaimed leader of the UnAllied, was standing on the Alliance steps. She was a sight to behold, with her wild, cherry-red hair and zebra-striped dress plastered to her skin from the downpour. The rain streamed down the thick, round lenses of her glasses, which made Valencia look perpetually bug-eyed. She clutched the over-sized leopard-print purse she was never seen without as she shouted to the small group of angry-looking people surrounding her.

  “My follow-ahs and I will nev-ah stop fighting for Mag rights,” she shouted at the camera. She had the thickest Boston accent I had ever heard, which somehow made her seem even crazier with all the dropped R’s. “We’ve let Nats think they can control us. We need to take back this country and our lives. We will not live in fear!”

  The small group surrounding her shouted and raised their fists in solidarity.

  “Penelope Heppurn was a dah-ling. ‘Mags get out’ he says? I say Nats get out!”

  The spectators roared in agreement. I felt sick.

  “That’s enough,” Ma said, switching to a different channel. “We don’t need any of that nonsense in this house.”

  “She’s kind of got a point,” Desiree said, moving noodles around on her plate.

  “You bite your tongue,” Ma told her. “Valencia wants a war. How many times do I got to tell you that any time there’s a war, both sides lose?”

  “I just don’t get why the rest of you pretend like Nats are our equals,” Desiree persisted.

  “They are,” four female voices replied at once.

  This argument was a familiar one, but I sensed there was more anger behind Desiree’s words than just her usual teenage, Rain Maker angst. She wasn’t just trying to get under my and her family’s skin anymore. She looked like she really believed what she was saying.

  “Valencia’s crazy,” Kaira told her younger cousin. “And the only ones who follow her are criminals and outcasts.”

  “Nuh-uh,” Desiree argued. “Ever since Penelope,” she gave me a look that could kill, “kids at school are saying—”

  “That’s ignorant folk talk,” Ma said. “And I didn’t bring you up to be ignorant.”

  Dark clouds appeared in the kitchen. “I think Valencia’s got a point,” Desiree said again. Her eyes turned gray with the impending storm.

  “That is not how this family does,” Grandma Tashi told Desiree. “And put that rain away, you hear? You’ll give your old grandma pneumonia.”

  Desiree wasn’t dumb enough to cross Grandma Tashi, but I could still feel the anger radiating off her as we all turned our attention back to the TV.

  Ma had switched to CBS, which was covering one of Director Remwald’s press conferences. He was standing at a podium, flanked by the BSMU’s dean and other important Alliance members I recognized.

  “…make it clear the hateful, despicable acts of one individual will not tarnish the progress that has been made in this administration….”

  I watched numbly as my hero looked into the camera and condemned me.

  I felt a strange mix of emotions. I was angry at the real killer for what he’d done to Penelope and the position I was now in as a result. And underneath that anger was guilt. I knew it was irrational, since I hadn’t done any of what they were accusing me of, but I still felt badly for putting the BSMU and the Alliance in a position where they needed to defend themselves.

  I had always wanted to enhance the peace and goodwill between Naturals and Magics. Now, I had somehow been dragged into an unspeakable crime that was causing irreparable damage between the two. I hated that the institutions I believed in were threatened because of a crime tied to my name.

  There was clapping and the flash of cameras as reporters in the audience shouted questions. One of the reporters stood up.

  “Director Remwald, have the authorities identified whether Graysen Galder is working alone or with accomplices?”

  Remwald leaned into the microphone. “The murders seem to be connected, but we don’t yet know if Galder is acting alone or if—”

  Ma switched off the TV with a huff.

  “Murders? As in plural?” Kaira asked.

  “Haven’t you heard?” Desiree gave Kaira and me a smug smile, pleased to know something we didn’t. “Jonas Meddlesworth was found dead in his house. The murderer wrote ‘Die, Mags’ in his blood.”

  I stared dumbfounded at Kaira.

  Desiree continued, “Everyone assumes Graysen did it, since the crime scene looks like what happened to Penelope.”

  “Two murders in two days,” Ma said, shaking her head. “What is this city coming to?”

  I was stunned. There hadn’t been a single magically-motivated murder in Boston in years. Now, there had been two murders in two days. And not just any murders. First Penelope, and now—

  “Jonas Meddlesworth,” Kaira said. “Why do I know that name?”

  “My dad’s old boss,” I managed, my mind still racing.

  “That prick Level 3 Alchemist at the holiday party?” she asked me.

  “Don’t speak ill of the dead,” Grandma Tashi snapped.

  I nodded at Kaira. It was the last winter Kaira and I were together, and my dad had thrown a party at our home for his bosses, since he was up for a promotion. I had convinced my dad to invite the neighbors, which conveniently included the Hansleys.

  Everyone had pretended to be impressed while Meddlesworth spent the first half of the night breathing into open wine bottles and claiming he had transformed them into the most expensive wine in the word. He’d spent the other half of the night hitting on Kaira, even though the man was in his fifties. It was the closest I had ever come to actually committing murder.

  Kaira pulled her phone out of her pocket and started scrolling through what looked like a hundred texts.

  “We’ve gotta go,” she said, her eyes still scanning the texts.

  “Could you tell us what Penelope said to you?” I asked Grandma Tashi.

  Kaira looked up from her phone at that.

  Grandma Tashi sat back and folded her bony hands on the table. “Penelope came to me last night. That poor angel had her throat cut. She said she left the party early because she had a headache. She said Graysen caught up with her as she was crossing the quad, and that he said he needed her help with something.

  “She went back to his dorm room, and when he closed the door, he turned to her and said, ‘This isn’t personal.’ And then he killed her.”

  I couldn’t speak. This murderer, whoever he was, had used Penelope’s trust in me to lure her to my dorm. My room. The thought of her, locked inside my room with her killer, was too much for me to bear. I stood up, not seeing anything except for that frozen expression of horror on Penelope’s bloody face as the EMTs wheeled her away.

  I was dimly aware of Ma shooing Grandma Tashi and Kaira’s cousins out of the kitchen. When it was only Ma, Kaira, and me still there, Ma took my shoulders and forced me to look at her.

  “This is not on you, G-Baby. You hear?”

  I just shook my head.

  I felt Kaira’s hand on my back, a silent show of support.

  “I was there when she had her premonition,” I said, my voice scratchy. “She sounded so scared. I should have—”

  “What?” Kaira asked, fury and challenge radiating from her voice. “Turn
ed into a Clairvoyant yourself and figured out that some psychopath was going to murder her? Sat around your room and twiddled your thumbs just in case someone stopped by needing you to rescue them?”

  I didn’t know. All I knew was that Penelope, one of the kindest people I’d ever met, had died a horrible, brutal death at the hands of someone who had convinced her it was me. I should have done something…even if I had no idea what that something might have been.

  Ma tucked me more firmly into her embrace, forcing me to divert at least some of my attention to getting enough air.

  “You can’t go back in time and change something you never couldda seen coming,” Ma said. “I’m grateful Kaira got you out of that hellhole prison, and I know that the two of you have the brains and determination to find the real killer.” She tapped my nose. “No one messes with my brilliant boy and gets away with it.”

  “Thanks, Ma,” I managed.

  “If you need any help, you just say the word,” she said. “Lord knows I don’t usually get involved in Kaira’s work, but this is different. You’re family.”

  She kissed my cheek before releasing me. “Now, before you go….”

  Ma went over to the counter and handed Kaira three huge, covered trays. I took two out of her hands before she collapsed under their weight.

  “Top one’s A.J.’s. I used tofu crumbles to get a little extra protein into him,” Ma said.

  “Thank you for everything,” I told Ma as she followed us to the door.

  She gave me another hug, which was awkward with the giant dishes in my hands. “Keep your chin up G-Baby,” she told me. “The truth has a way of coming out, eventually.”

  Grandma Tashi, who was coming down the stairs, frowned at Kaira and me.

  “If Penelope visits you again, could you please ask her if she remembers anything else about that night?” I asked Kaira’s grandmother.

  “Boy, I don’t get to ask the dead nothing. They come when they wanna come, and they say what they wanna say.”

  ✽✽✽