by Rebecca Hall
“Hi,” Belle said, sticking her head around the door.
“Hi Belle,” Mitch said. “Mindy is still in the dining room.”
“I know,” Belle said sitting opposite him. Mitch rearranged his food slightly and slid one of the cartoons over to her. He’d never be able to eat all of it on his own.
“Sorry,” Mitch said, “I don’t have any...” Nikola was laughing; Mitch glared at him and then followed his gaze to the knife and fork Belle had pulled out of her pocket.
She smiled at him, “Clairvoyant.”
“Right,” Mitch decided that he’d be better off not talking for the rest of the meal. Nikola finished first, somehow managing to cram everything in despite being built like a stick insect. He chucked the empty cartoons in the bin and slipped away without a word.
“Where are you going?” Mitch asked, almost choking on a mouthful of crumble. He hadn’t finished his vegetables but no one was here to scold him for it and he wasn’t about to let apple crumble go to waste.
“Bed.”
“It isn’t even eight yet,” Mitch said hastily checking his watch.
Nikola shrugged, “I have a headache.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve seen something terrible happen to him,” Mitch asked, pretending not to notice Belle swiping a mouthful of crumble.
“How would you like it if I told someone else what I’d seen about you?” she asked.
“Good point.” He squeezed in one more mouthful of crumble and slid the rest across to her.
“He’s going to take a couple of painkillers and go to bed,” Belle said after a moment. She stabbed at the crumble viciously. “The teachers like to have me practise on him. Powerful magicians are easier to see and they don’t want me practising on them.” Another stab, she was going to put a hole in the carton soon.
“What do you do?” Mitch asked, rescuing the crumble from her before she could put a hole in the carton and leak cream all over the table.
Belle shrugged, “Mostly I just tell them that he’s studying or he’s going to get sick.”
“Mostly?”
“Mostly, sometimes they try and make me change things but I’m not very good at that.”
Mitch shivered; that sounded a lot like compulsion, a branch of magic that was universally banned. Belle was limited by her understanding of cause and effect but she could still exert a terrifying amount of control over people.
“Maybe you should practice making Mindy do her homework,” he suggested. Surely her sister would be easier to understand than Nikola.
“You don’t want any help with yours?” Belle asked. She reclaimed the crumble but this time she seemed intent upon eating it so Mitch let it go.
“No thanks,” Mitch said. He wasn’t sure what bothered him more, Belle manipulating his actions or his grade improving because of her work.
“Thought so.”
“See if you can get me to turn my alarm clock off instead of hitting the snooze button,” Mitch offered. It seemed harmless enough, he even managed to do it himself on occasion.
“It’ll make you late to class,” Belle grinned at him. Mitch shrugged, Bates would drag him out of bed it he had to. Bates never let him sleep in.
SIBLINGS
“Hey, mind if we join you?” Mindy asked, jogging up to him with Belle in tow.
“What?” Mitch asked. He had thought that Mindy was in detention all weekend along with most of the school. Dr Dalman had not been impressed with the dinnertime riot and weeks later there was still no sign of her relenting.
“Me, you, hang out,” Mindy said, gesturing wildly, “and the rugrats of course.” Belle glared at her and she pretended not to notice, or perhaps she really didn’t, Mindy a blind spot you could drive a tank through when it came to her sister. “I can’t believe I actually got her away from Angel Girl.”
Mitch wasn’t sure he could believe it either. Belle was usually glued to Hayley’s side but if Mindy had locked her in a broom closet Belle wouldn’t be nearly so sanguine. Mindy looked over her shoulder, probably checking for teachers, and Mitch sighed.
“Come on then, I’ll find Cullum and we can go around the lake.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Belle asked as they resumed the walk down to the primary campus.
“Don’t you want to spend time with people your own age?” Mindy asked.
“Cullum is a person, not people,” Belle said, “you just don’t want to get caught cutting detention even though they’ll know you’re not there.”
“No one’s forcing you to come Miss Goody Two Shoes,” Mindy said. Mitch sniggered, she was still dragging Belle along.
‘Someone has to keep her out of trouble,’ Belle mouthed when their eyes met. Mitch grinned.
There was one major flaw in their plan, beyond the fact that Mitch didn’t think they actually had one; Cullum wasn’t in his room.
“What is it with you two?” Mindy asked. “You always seem to be losing him.” Mitch bit back a dozen retorts about her own lacklustre efforts regarding her sister, knowing that they would only spark a fight with Belle caught in the middle and focused on his brother. He hoped that the blood bond didn’t lead him to another pile of rubble. It led them to a classroom instead.
“What the Hell are you doing?” Mitch demanded. Cullum was carefully pouring a bottle of something onto the teacher’s chair at the front of the class. Since it was a science lab and Cullum was being careful not to get any on himself he was prepared to bet that it wasn’t glue. He snatched the bottle out of Cullum’s hand and held it up. Hydrochloric acid. It was pretty dilute but he had no idea how long Cullum had spent pouring acid over the chair. Mitch pulled a face. After the two hours he’d spent immersing his hand in the stuff at the start of the year he’d developed a healthy dislike of it. Cullum looked as if he’d just been deprived of his favourite toy.
He set the bottle aside and studied the chair. Cullum seemed to have been focusing on the legs and back, trying to make the chair fall apart the next time someone sat on it. Mitch doubted he’d considered the possibility of someone other than his intended target sitting on the chair. Or that his victim was likely to hit their head on the wall or a workbench when they fell.
Mitch closed his eyes for a second and inhaled deeply. Yelling at Cullum would not help. Even if it did prove to be immensely satisfying it would probably get them all in trouble. Cullum deserved to get in trouble for this but it would undoubtedly get back to their parents and then he would have to explain why he hadn’t kept his brother out of trouble. Sometimes he really wished that he was an only child.
“Why were your pouring acid on the teacher’s chair?” Mitch asked calmly, he didn’t raise his voice at all.
“Because,” Cullum muttered, staring at the floor.
“And I thought Belle was a brat,” Mindy said from her position just inside the door where she couldn’t be seen by any passing teachers.
“I heard that,” Belle protested from outside where she was keeping watch.
“I know,” Mindy called back crossing her arms. Mitch winced, was she trying to get them caught?
“Because what?” Mitch growled. He wasn’t angry, he was just disappointed and confused. He wanted to know why his baby brother had decided to become the class vandal. And he had no idea how adults managed to pull that line off with a straight face. Even in the privacy of his own head he didn’t believe it.
“I don’t like Miss Band,” Cullum grumbled. Mindy laughed. Mitch resisted the temptation to yell at her as well. He was sure the Academy had brought them up better than that.
“And why don’t you like her?” Mitch asked through gritted teeth. Cullum muttered something unintelligible.
“Cullum,” he growled, glaring down at his brother. The hand Mindy had over her mouth was almost enough to muffle her laughter.
“She was making us balance chemical equations.” Mindy doubled over. Mitch just stood there, completely pole-axed. How did balancing equations equate to sabo
taging a chair? That had been his favourite part of chemistry. Was there some underlying logic he was missing or had Cullum’s medication made him go completely crazy?
“Break the chair,” Belle said suddenly, slipping inside and ignoring Mindy’s glare.
“What?”
“Just do it,” Belle said, “it’ll be really bad if you don’t.”
Mitch sighed, arguing with a Clairvoyant didn’t seem likely to get him very far and even if he didn’t dob Cullum in he still couldn’t leave the chair here for some poor sod to sit on. For a second he seriously considered dobbing Cullum in anyway, he didn’t want to encourage him, but he decided against it, this time.
He eyed the chair critically; he’d been taught how to break a block of wood with his bare hands, an acid-eaten chair couldn’t be that difficult. And it would have to be his hand, he hadn’t mastered the finer points of acid-proof clothing yet. He brought his hand down on the chair and it collapsed. Mitch awkwardly shoved the pieces in the bin and poured fresh water over where it had been, further diluting the acid before it could start eating into the floor.
“What did you do that for?” Cullum whined, stamping his foot.
“To keep you out of trouble,” Mitch snapped. There was no mop in the room so he grabbed some hand towels instead and used them to soak up the water. They joined the chair in the bin. “God Cullum, do have any idea how much trouble you could have got yourself into?” Mitch tried not to think about how much trouble he would be in if anyone ever found out that he had destroyed school property.
“I don’t care,” Cullum said glaring at him. “She deserved it.” Mitch resisted the urge to throttle him; Cullum could have at least waited until his thirteenth birthday to start acting like a little shit, it was expected then.
“Whatever,” Mitch said, putting the bottle of acid back where it belonged. He wished that the Academy believed in locks but he knew that a lock wouldn’t have stopped Cullum if he was really determined. “Let’s go.” He seized Cullum’s hand and dragged him out of the room before he could try to sabotage anything else.
“Where are we going?” Cullum whined. His tone set Mitch’s teeth on edge, he probably thought Mitch was dragging him to the teacher’s office. Mindy and Belle took the lead and they made it to the secondary campus without incident. With the fence safely between Cullum and his unsuspecting victims Mitch let go of his arm. Cullum rubbed it theatrically though it wasn’t even red. Mitch urged him forward, the last thing he wanted was for Cullum to drop back and fill the whiteboard markers with acid. He hoped Cullum hadn’t done that before he arrived but there was no way to ask without giving him ideas.
They began to plod across the snow and Mitch raised a hand to shield his eyes from the glare. It was quiet, no chirping insects or fluttering birds, not even the occasional car. The desert road was closed, trapping those of them not on detention within the confines of the Academy. Mitch hesitated when they reached the lake, Cullum had done enough rule breaking for one day, but Mindy and Belle had already slipped out and Cullum was following. Mitch sighed, he was beginning to think that Nikola had a point, staying angry at his brother was just too much effort.
They wandered aimlessly across the snow until a gunshot shattered the silence. It was followed by another and a third a second later. Mitch scanned the desert but he couldn’t see anything.
“Weapons testing?” Cullum asked, “can we go watch?”
“No,” said Mitch and Belle at the same time. Belle was rubbing her ears.
“We don’t know where they are or what direction they’re shooting in,” Mitch continued, hoping that Cullum wouldn’t realise that Belle could probably tell them if they were likely to get shot. Besides, sound carried a long way over the desert, there was no telling how far they would have to walk. Watching the poor suckers in the army have to run a marathon in full kit regardless of the weather was fun, finding a place to watch them practise with live weapons wasn’t.
“It could be a cull,” Mindy suggested. Belle looked at her sideways; Mindy didn’t love horses but she didn’t need to sound so happy about them getting shot. Mitch shrugged, it was more or less the right time of year but he thought that they preferred to adopt the horses out rather than shooting them. The gunfire was almost continuous now.
“We should head back,” Mitch said; there was nothing to stop a stray bullet heading their way and no reason why they wouldn’t switch to artillery once they got bored. They didn’t usually come near the Academy but Mitch wasn’t sure where they were in relation to the edge of the training grounds.
“No way,” Mindy said, “we should make a snowman for them to shoot at.”
“Come on Mitch, it’ll be fun,” Cullum said, lobbing a snowball at his head. Mitch ducked and got another one full in the face. He scooped up a snowball of his own and hurled it at Cullum who yelped and dodged clumsily, stumbling on the snow before fleeing.
“Get back here,” Mitch yelled, running after him. Two more snowballs got him from behind and he turned to glare at the suspiciously innocent looking Belle and Mindy. Before he could retaliate Cullum got him again. Mitch was beginning to feel like he had a target on his back that no one had bothered to tell him about before luring him out here to his doom. Shielding his face behind his arms he made a break for it and took cover behind a scrubby bush. It wasn’t much but it offered some protection while he made snowballs of his own.
It didn’t take him long to exhaust his ammunition but by then the others had turned on one another and Mitch was able to take revenge on Cullum. Cullum fled again and Mitch chased after him, grinning, a snowball in each hand. Cullum tripped and then he screamed, scrambling away on all fours.
“Cullum,” Mitch yelled, dropping his snowballs and running up to his brother. “What’s wrong?” Belle and Mindy converged on them, Mindy had bits of snow caught in her hair but Belle had managed to dodge everything. Mitch suspected she was cheating.
“It’s just a dead horse,” Mindy said, studying the snow where Cullum had fallen. “It probably starved to death,” she continued. She knelt and started brushing snow away from the corpse. Mitch swallowed, he knew she was a necromancer but that was no reason to go disturbing the poor dead thing as it was decomposing. Or freezing he supposed.
“Nothing to be afraid of see,” Mindy said, rising to her feet. The horse rose with her, its eyes grey and vacant and its coat glittering with hoarfrost. It shook itself and made a harsh wickering sound, stamping one hoof.
“What did you do?” Belle cried, staring up at the dead horse with round eyes.
“It’s alright?” Cullum asked in a tiny voice.
“Yep,” Mindy said patting it on the shoulder, “right as rain.”
Had she come completely unhinged? Reanimation was one of the dodgiest types of magic around. It wasn’t illegal provided you didn’t use human corpses, but it was still considered deeply immoral. Mindy could well be suspended for reanimating a horse outside of class while she was supposed to be in detention. At least she lacked the spark of celestial magic needed to bring the skeletal horse all the way back from the dead. She had to make do with a zombie horse. Mitch didn’t find that thought at all reassuring with a zombie horse staring him in the face. Cullum scrambled to his feet and approached the horse slowly. The horse didn’t react, it was going to win the prize for the hundred yard stare soon.
“Stop it,” Belle said, “it’s against the rules.”
Mindy laughed. “So, you’re not going to report your big sister are you?”
“But it’s wrong,” Belle insisted. Mindy laughed again and Mitch silently resolved that he would report her to the first teacher he saw once they got back to the Academy. It would get all of them in trouble, Mindy wasn’t likely to keep quiet about Cullum’s attempted sabotage, but he’d prefer detention to the zombie horse. Cullum reached the horse and started stroking it, hoarfrost cracking and melting under his touch.
“Do you want to ride it?” Mindy asked, ignoring Belle’s contin
uing protests.
“No,” Mitch said, advancing on the horse. “We’re going back to the Academy now.”
“I’m going riding first,” Cullum said. The horse knelt, its legs bending at unnatural angles and places. Cullum scrambled on before Mitch could grab him.
“Get down Cullum,” Mitch ordered. Cullum ignored him and wrapped his hands in its mane as the horse trotted in a slow circle. “Mindy stop it,” Mitch said, “this isn’t funny.”
“But it is fun,” Mindy giggled. “You act like such a tough guy Mitch but add a little dead horse and you come all undone.” A little dead horse? That thing was bigger than he was and no dead horse ever moved like that, he was pretty sure live ones didn’t either, not if they wanted to keep moving. The horse’s motions were smooth and sinuous, there was almost something snakelike about the way its legs bent in soft curving angles that bore no relation to where its joints were.
“I want to go faster,” Cullum said, kicking the horse in the sides. A live horse probably would have thrown him for that, the dead horse didn’t even bat an ear and it seemed to take an age for the dimples of flesh to slide back into place. Mitch fought the urge to laugh hysterically; his brother wouldn’t go to bed without a night light but a frozen zombie horse was no problem.
“Ok,” Mindy said. The horse started to trot, or canter, either way Mitch was certain that it was only a matter of time before Cullum fell off.
“Stop it Melinda,” Belle begged, “I’ll... I’ll tell Mum if you don’t.”
“Little brat,” Mindy snapped. “You always have to be Mummy’s little girl don’t you? So adorable with your big round eyes and perfect curls and special gift. Tell me little girl, what good is clairvoyance? Well? What’s the point in seeing a future you can’t change? Did you see this? I bet you did and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
The horse had accelerated again and Mitch was certain that Cullum would soon be sent flying and break his neck. Mitch had never wanted to hit someone more in his life but he made do with resting his hand on her sister’s shoulder instead.
