Ordinary Magic

by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway

  I slammed into something then—right across my middle. It hooked me into the air and my stomach practically flipped inside out. I focused on not throwing up on Trixie’s leather boots. “Not so fast. Did you lose something?” she teased as Barbarian Mike jogged over.

  “Thanks, babe.” He wasn’t even breathing hard. She tossed me over to him, and he caught me with one arm like I was a package.

  Stomach still lurching, hate making my chest burn, I sucked in a deep breath, and screamed as loud as I could. I tried to sound like the girls in horror movies. Trixie jabbed an angry finger in my face. “Quiet, you, or I’ll quiet you myself.” I snapped at her finger, and she snatched it back. Barbarian Mike took the opportunity to tie something thick around my mouth and nose.

  CHAPTER

  18

  I realized later that I should have been counting the streets. You know, counted the turns, tried to keep track of where they took me. But by the time I thought of it, we didn’t have much farther to go.

  We were in an abandoned building, something suitably dark and ramshackle that even the homeless probably avoided. The light outside the windows was turning into a rosy pink sunset. Inside, it was all dusty shadows and broken boards. A space had been cleared in a corner, where rubble and broken stones had fallen away to form a sort of alcove. Two worn travel packs were slumped against the wall, and there was a scorch mark in the middle of the floor.

  I expected them to grab the packs and go, expected that I’d have to scream and strain to catch someone’s attention, or hope someone noticed them carrying me over their shoulder like a rolled-up carpet. But they stopped inside the alcove and set a shield sizzling. With a pained “you have the boniest knees,” Barbarian Mike let me drop to the floor; I tugged off the gag and started yelling. I tried to run, too, but Barbarian Mike caught me—he barely had to move, he just reached over and snagged me—and then held me down while Trixie roped my wrists and ankles together. Magic rope, which slid in and out of loops like a snake, but it felt strong enough. There was a devilish little smile on Trixie’s face as she guided the knots tight. I wanted to tell her it wouldn’t work on me, at least the magic part, but I didn’t think she would care.

  Trixie went to throw a loop around my neck … and then paused and crouched down in front of me. She slung the rope over her shoulder. “What’s this, then?” Her fingers brushed Alexa’s charm. I felt it weighing down my neck like a boulder. “Looks like a collar.”

  No. No-no-no-no.

  She closed a hand over my mouth when I tried to scream again, her focus still on the charm. “And here I thought your family was the one so against selling their darling baby child.” Trixie snorted.

  “What is it, babe?”

  “This ord’s collared.”

  Barbarian Mike cast his glamour off, shaking free the last clinging traces of magic. “Get out. Isn’t this the one from Lennox? Where they put up that huge fuss?”

  “The one that should have been ours in the first place? Yup.” I smelled an acidic flash of magic, and felt the chain disintegrate against my skin. “Guess we just didn’t offer enough,” Trixie said, tossing Barbarian Mike the charm. “Take a look at that.”

  Barbarian Mike held it up to catch the faint streetlights coming through the dirty windows. “Looks pretty sophisticated. Must have sold her someplace nice. Should we break it?”

  Trixie eyed the iridescent glint of the shield arcing over us. There was a muted buzz where it touched the ground and it gave off a cool scented sting, like the soap we used to scrub the kitchen floor. I knew it would cover up everything inside the shield—all of the sights and sounds. All of the magic, too, so that anyone walking by could never guess that there were people hiding there.

  She shook her head. “Nah. Better not take any chances. We’ll sell it off down the road. That looks like a pretty fancy piece of casting, which means whoever had her first is going to be on the lookout. It’ll be safer to get it out of our hands. Let some other sap deal with it.”

  Clapping the last traces of magic off her hands, Trixie edged away to the scorch mark on the floor and cast up a small fireball, just enough to keep us warm. Barbarian Mike pulled his pack over and started methodically checking his gear. So there was time, then. Time to think and figure something out, or try to. Time for my family to tear the city apart. I thought about that moment when Becky and the others would have had to go meet up with my family and tell them what happened. My mom would storm every police station in town, and throw such a fuss she’d have every detective in the city looking for me by now. My dad would—he’d get on a carpet, I decided. He’d fly up and down every single street looking for me. I tried not to think about how many blocks, how many buildings. Jeremy would have to stick with the parents, probably Mom, because he was good at reports and organization and stuff like that. But Gil and Olivia were old enough to go off on their own. And Alexa. She would head straight to King Steve, because he was her friend and friends helped each other, and he would get all of his people out there. It was only a matter of time. They were coming, they would find me, and every second they got closer. I would remember that.

  So I screamed. Or I tried screaming. I tried to make it solid and shrill and shrieking, the kind of scream that you can’t not hear, that could in no way be a happy scream, that could only ever mean help me.

  And as I screamed I strained against the ropes. Of course, if I got free, then there was still the problem of two big adventurers who’d chase me down, but first things first. From what I learned in school, adventurers’ ropes were either enchanted to make you go numb or zapped you with an increasing pulse each time you tried to unknot them—not that those spells would work on me, but the ropes were still tight enough that every twist was like fire around my wrists. They’d had ords before; I guess they had practice with imprisonment.

  At first the adventurers ignored me. They were probably used to the whole “screaming in terror” thing. Barbarian Mike calmly polished the runes on his sword, and Trixie paced back and forth in our little protective bubble. It was like she couldn’t stand still. She’d take a few quick strides, then abruptly turn back and head the other way, her movements jerky and impatient. Every now and again, Barbarian Mike would glance at her when her back was to us.

  Trixie turned on me, so abrupt and fierce my next scream squeaked to death in my throat. Her hand blurred with movement, and I felt the sting before I realized she’d chucked a stone at me. “Stop that,” she hissed, and turned on Mike. “Where’s the gag? Why did you take it off her?”

  “Relax, babe. Nobody can hear her.” He paused in his polishing and tossed a glance around the shield. Then shrugged. “Probably.”

  “Don’t call me babe,” Trixie bit off. “She’s giving me a headache.” She crouched down in front of the fireball, and a second later popped back up and started pacing again.

  I sucked in a deep breath and let out another one. My lungs were starting to burn with the effort; I wasn’t sure how many I had left.

  “Hey, hey.” Barbarian Mike snapped his fingers at me. “Chill out. No use screaming your head off. Nobody can hear you. Nobody’s coming for you.”

  “My parents are,” I croaked. “And when they find you they’re going to obliterate you. And then Alexa, she’s going to piece you back together so that Olivia and Gil and Jeremy can do it all over again.”

  “No, they’re not,” Trixie purred. “And no, they won’t.”

  I’d never hated anyone as much as I hated her in that moment. If I were free—well, I wouldn’t be able to do anything, because I was twelve, and she was bigger than me, which meant that she would win.

  “Listen … what’s your name again?” Barbarian Mike asked.

  “Abby,” I said.

  “Really?” His eyebrows quirked, making him look serious and thoughtful for a second. “You don’t look like an Abby. Julie, or, I don’t know, Zoe maybe,” he decided.

  Trixie scoffed. “She’s not a Julie.”

 
“What do you want to call her, then?”

  “Call her ord. That’s what she is.”

  Barbarian Mike shrugged. “Listen, Zoe, don’t be scared. We aren’t kidnapping you. We’re recruiting you for a noble quest. For the good of mankind.”

  “And womankind,” Trixie snapped.

  “And womankind,” Barbarian Mike echoed. “And also other-species-kind.”

  “I’m not going to help you with anything,” I said, pulling at my bound wrists. The rope held as fast as cold iron. I ordered myself to calm down and remember what Becky had taught us. These weren’t anything special. For me they were just ropes, and ropes I could deal with. If I could get them loose enough, maybe I could get a hand free or reach the knots to pick them apart.

  “Don’t be so selfish,” Trixie said. She watched me struggle for a minute and sighed. “Oh, training this one is going to be a joy.”

  “Training doesn’t worry me,” Barbarian Mike said. “There’s plenty of time for training later. We should be grateful we got one.”

  “We should have gotten two,” Trixie corrected him. “We should have waited until that other one circled back.”

  Other one. “Who?” I demanded, even though I knew.

  Barbarian Mike lifted his eyebrows, surprised. “Is that what’s freakin’ you out?” He grinned at Trixie. “And you say ords don’t get attached.” To me: “We doubled back to try and grab him, but you showed up first. Don’t look a genie in the bottle, right? Too bad, though. It might have been nice for her to have a friend, eh, Trix?”

  “Ords don’t have friends.” Trixie dropped into a sitting position next to Barbarian Mike, her shoulders slumped. “I can’t believe we’re even talking about this, like it’s a person. Six years ago—” She stopped.

  “You want to leave?” he asked.

  “What?” Trixie seemed to snap back and shot up, away from him.

  “Do you wanna leave? Now? Not wait for sunup. We can do that.”

  She hesitated before tossing back, “That would be stupid. We should wait, and leave with the rest of the tourists. It’ll be … easy.”

  “What if someone is coming—”

  “No one’s coming,” Trixie said.

  “Someone might,” Barbarian Mike said, sorting the potion bottles in front of him. “You know how valuable they are. Collar like that, somebody’s not messing around. The longer we wait, the more time they have to find us.”

  “No one is coming!”

  Barbarian Mike waited until her shriek died away. “The festival’s still going on, so it’s still crazy out there. We don’t need to wait for cover.”

  Trixie shook her head. “The festival’s at the palace. Everywhere else’ll be quiet. We’ll stick out.”

  “We’ve got everything we need to recharge the glamour right here, babe.”

  “A good glamour takes time, babe. A rush job’ll just get us more attention. People will think we’re trying to rob a bank. No, we stick to the plan. We’ll wait until all those tourists finish brunch and start clogging the streets, and then we just stroll out. Even if someone is looking for us, they wouldn’t be able to find a hungry red cap in that exodus.”

  I stopped at those words; I stopped moving, maybe stopped breathing. If they wanted to sneak out in the crowd—if Mom and Dad didn’t find me first, I reminded myself—then maybe that was my best chance. Getting away on the road would be harder. They’d know the road better. I didn’t know how well they knew the city, or even how well I knew the city since I’d been stuck in school the entire time. But a crowd would give me a chance. If I could get away, I might be able to hide in the crowd. If they’d let me walk. They’d have to let me walk; they couldn’t very well head out with me slung over their shoulders like a carpet, could they? That would get attention. I wouldn’t even have to get my hands free. I’d just run. Because running worked so well last time. And I told my brain be quiet, be quiet, be quiet.

  “If you say wait, we’ll wait. I trust you.” Barbarian Mike stood and set his pack against the wall. “But you’re still nervous, and that ain’t like you, Trix.”

  She didn’t answer for a minute. When she did, her voice was quiet and her eyes flickered everywhere except at him. “We had to steal an ord, Michael. Steal one. Because we couldn’t beg, or buy, or borrow.” She jabbed a finger at me. “Look at her. Defiant ones always burn out the fastest. We’ll get a year out of her, at the most—and that’s if I don’t push her off a cliff first. What happens when she wears out?” Trixie stopped pacing and looked at Mike, and for once she didn’t look angry. “Then what are we going to do?”

  “Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it,” Barbarian Mike told her. “Together.”

  Trixie looked over at him, startled naked emotion on her face. Then she turned away, and Barbarian Mike cleared his throat.

  “I think you should leave now,” I said. They both looked at me, heads snapping over in unison. “King Steve. He’s my friend. Alexa’s friend—my friend too. He likes me, and he is going to be so angry—”

  Trixie looked angry, and Barbarian Mike looked amused, but underneath that they both looked worried. “Lesson number one,” Trixie said, picking up a rock and tossing it in her hand, “never lie to your mistress.”

  “I’m not lying. My mom taught me not to lie.” Exaggerating was completely different. “So you’d better leave now. Get out while you can. If you run fast, he might not catch you. Because if he catches you—”

  Barbarian Mike gagged me.

  CHAPTER

  19

  It was only one night, but it didn’t feel like that. To be honest, it didn’t feel like anything. There wasn’t any time there, just tiredness pulling at me like an undertow, with me fighting it every second because I had work to do. There was twisting at the ropes until my wrists were on fire, then more twisting until they finally went numb. There was my stomach gnawing at me because Trixie demanded a “please, mistress” and “thank you, mistress” for every bite and I couldn’t, I wouldn’t say it.

  There was no hope of escape during the night. Barbarian Mike and Trixie were up for hours, measuring and casting, reinforcing the thin, clinging coats of magic in their glamours that would conceal their identities.

  It was very late (or very early) when they finished up and did a test run. It was good work—clean, simple—but it didn’t cheat ord eyes. Satisfied, they double-checked their equipment and settled down on either side of the fireball, Barbarian Mike offering to take the first watch. It took Trixie time to calm down enough to sleep, though, and for a long while they sat in silence, watching the flames.

  In the dark and the quiet, Barbarian Mike said, “I want you to promise—”

  “Don’t.”

  He kept his eyes on the flames. “I want you to promise me, if anything happens—”

  “I can’t believe you’re letting it scare you.”

  “If it gets messy,” he continued doggedly, “you’ll get away.”

  “If you’re afraid—”

  “I am. For you.”

  Trixie stared at the floor. “I can take care of myself.”

  At some point the ropes slacked enough that I could reach the knots and start to pick at them with my fingernails.

  Toward the morning, when light started to smudge the shadows at the window, I thought about their previous ord, who didn’t have friends and family coming for him (mine were coming) and I thought, he hadn’t fallen.

  Trixie shook Barbarian Mike awake, and the two of them had a quick, cold breakfast. It was mostly quiet, except for when Mike nodded at me and asked, “What about her?”

  Trixie tossed a strip of meat more like leather in my lap with a smirk. That earned her an exasperated “babe.” “Oh, I’ll help her eat,” Trixie replied. “When she asks nicely.”

  They cleaned up and cast their glamour, and Trixie undid the ropes around my ankles and jerked me to my feet. My legs had fallen asleep during the night; I stumbled and fell a bit before they woke up and re
membered how to walk straight.

  “All right, since we’re so worried about damaged goods, let’s patch you up proper.” She pinched the fabric of my sleeve, rubbing it between her fingers, and the green coloring seeped out of my dress, puddling on the floor and leaving the fabric a generic yellow. She rubbed my face clean and raked a comb through my hair, then spun me around. “My, my, haven’t we been busy. Here, let me get that for you.” Trixie slipped a finger under the ropes at my wrists and the knots fell away. For a second the feeling rushed back into my hands and I almost cried out. And then she yanked the ropes tight, and knotted them again. “There, that’s better.”

  Trixie jerked a cloak over my shoulders, long enough to reach the ground. It had a hood that she pulled low over my face.

  “I can still see the gag,” Barbarian Mike said. “We should take it off. Gags get attention.”

  “If we take it off, she’s going to scream.”

  “Then we’ll just have to convince her not to.”

  “I could break her jaw …,” Trixie offered.

  “Um, no. That’d get attention too.” Barbarian Mike pulled the gag off, clapping a hand over my mouth before I could make a sound. “People worry when they see a kid with bruises.”

  “Bruises won’t show up for hours.”

  “Trixie, enough. Okay, here’s the deal, Zoe. We’re not going to gag you. We’re going to be nice, but in return you’ve got to be nice and not scream or nothing. You scream, you’re going to make Trixie angry. I have seen Trixie angry and you don’t want that. Understand?”