by A. L. Knorr
The chime to move stations came before she was finished and she had no choice but to leave pitch undone. As she headed for station four, Kendall went in the opposite direction for station two.
In the fifteen seconds between chimes Dr. Price fished the lumps out of the basin and dumped them into a canister on the floor, a wrinkle between her brows.
The next station for April was the climbing wall, which was monitored by Professor Palmer. Dar met April there and as they stepped onto the mat, he gave her an encouraging smile.
The climbing wall was for isolation, slow-burn, and metastasis. While April strapped into her climbing harness, I took a peek across to station six to see who would be meeting April at foreign fire, the one after the wall.
My heart sank.
Ryan and Gage were currently working station six. Gage had started at station five, which meant he’d be moving to station one, while Ryan moved to station five and would have to partner with April.
I shook my head at the pure irony of it. I couldn’t tell if I was feeling more smug about Ryan’s plans backfiring on him, or frightened because April would have to partner with the worm who’d shattered her heart less than twelve hours ago.
The chime sounded and Dar and April took hold of the grips. They weren’t to conceal their fire for this part because the professors wanted to see how well they metastasized.
Dar’s back was aglow with his smoothly migrating fire.
The dim glow of April’s fire seemed stuck underneath her left shoulder blade while she quivered and coaxed it to migrate. Two minutes in Dar was cresting the top of the wall as April still clung to the holds a few feet off the ground.
“Come on, April,” I clapped and called to her, trying to infuse my voice with encouragement. “You can do it!”
I heard her sniff and my stomach gave a twist. Was she crying? For a moment, my gaze bounced back and forth between April where she drooped on the wall unable to go any further to where Ryan was unleashing a gorgeous series of roaring fireballs at station six.
As soon as April saw who her partner was to be for foreign fire, she’d fall apart completely. Basil must have known that the odds of April and Ryan meeting up at foreign fire were one in three.
The chime sounded. Time’s up.
Dar’s feet hit the mats and he sprinted toward Price’s station before April had even disentangled herself from the harness. Her pigtails were all askew. Brushing herself off and sorting out her hair, she made her way out of the ring, gaze on the floor.
“April. Water.” I held out her bottle, delaying the inevitable shock for a moment longer.
She took a drink and handed me back the bottle before turning toward the next station. When she saw who was waiting for her, she froze.
Ryan stared back with a look of bald challenge. He crooked a finger at her, eyes aglow and his upper lip curled.
Her face was a stiff mask of fear, her eyes so wide I could see the whites of them. She looked like a frightened rabbit. I stepped in front of her.
“Look at me.” I took her hands. “In five seconds, I’m going to let you pass. For the next four minutes, Ryan is not your enemy. He’s not even Ryan. He’s just a mage, and he’s your partner. He has as much to lose as you if he doesn’t perform well.”
She opened her mouth to say something but only a dry wheeze came out.
I squeezed her hands, peering into her face. “Repeat after me: he’s my partner.”
April’s pale lips trembled. “My partner.”
I nodded, the skin on my arms marbling with goosebumps for what she was about to face. There was nothing I wanted more in the world than for April to rise to this challenge. My own brow and armpits were sweaty from the tension. As she moved toward her doom, I stepped aside and lay my hand against her lower back.
Without making the conscious decision to do it, I jetted fire into her body with all the power of a stampede of wild horses and all the emotion of a standing ovation.
Thirty-Four
Hot Mess
April gave a kind of lurching step as she felt what I had done. She looked at me, wide-eyed. Only this time her lips and cheeks were pink, her gaze sharper. That odd glow of a mage with her fires burning filled her eyes. She was feeling what I had felt when Basil had endowed me, my fire taking up the lead in a secret dance with hers.
The corners of her mouth twitched as her expression filled with wonder. I pinched my lips together and gave the subtlest shake of my head, hoping she shouldn’t visibly react.
“Brown!” Ryan barked from the middle of the station, making April jolt. “Chime. Three seconds. Hello?”
April advanced into the ring as Basil flipped screens on his tablet. The chime sounded as the headmaster pointed to a screen installed in the panel to his right.
“Follow the commands as best you can.”
I stood on the border with my arms crossed, one finger hooked through the handle of April’s bottle. A combination of guilt and hope did loops around my heart. I hadn’t meant to, but I’d just forced her to break the rules. We were cheaters. If Basil ever found out—
The panel flashed: Ryan to April.
Ryan lifted his hands and with a little snarl, fired a blast of flames straight at April’s head.
April made a squeak of surprise, but her hands came up and sucked Ryan’s fire out of the air with such force that his flames sped up as though fueled by a high wind. The surprise on Ryan’s face was so satisfying that I had to hide a smirk.
As Ryan’s fire disappeared, April fought to keep in the amazement and shock I knew she must be feeling.
The panel flashed a new command: April to Ryan.
She squared her shoulders and released two thick blasts of my fire. One would have flown over Ryan’s right shoulder and the other should have jetted past his left hip, but he caught the flames like a pro, absorbing them into his body. If he was still surprised at April’s ability, he tucked it away. His expression flattened as he focused on the task at hand.
Clockwise, the screen instructed.
Ryan and April made eye contact and I wondered what passed between them. My own body was as tense as though I was made of wire. Simultaneously, fire shot from their left palms, while their rights reached out to receive a stream. The station lit up with flickering red-orange light as two thick snakes of fire circled between Ryan and April. It was beautiful and looked as though it could go on forever. Goosebumps rose on the back of my neck.
Switch places bodily, the screen flashed.
Moving as one, Ryan and April circled one another, fire still pouring from their left hands and into their rights. When they reached the opposite side of the ring from where they’d started, the panel changed again.
Counter-clockwise metastasis. No concealment.
They stepped forward, closing the gap between them like a couple of dancers in a Jane Austen novel. Fire continued to pour from their palms until they grasped one another’s hands. Their arms, shoulders and upper back illuminated as their fire showed through their skin and glowed through the fireproof fabric of their uniforms. The subtle flickering of the light divulged that the fire traveling between and through them like an underground river, and was moving counter-clockwise.
The chime sounded.
Ryan and April broke apart as if waking from a trance. Shoulders heaving gently, they looked at one another. Then Ryan turned smartly, and without a backward look, headed for station four. As he passed me, he shot me a look so full of hate it was like a physical blow. I refused to break eye contact, and glared back at him until he had no choice but to break it himself.
“Well done, April.” I heard Basil murmur.
I stepped into the ring to guide her toward the next station. She looked dazed but in a good way, like someone had surprised her with cake.
“You were amazing,” I breathed as we moved toward station six. I could feel the muscles of her shoulder quivering under my palms.
“How did you do that?” April whispered ba
ck through a sideways crack in her mouth.
I looked around for the nearest camera, wondering if anything incriminating was being captured.
“Focus. Next station is drawing and throwing, that’ll be a snap after what you just did.”
Alfred greeted us with a smile as April stepped into the ring along with Kendall. I crouched at the sideline and waited for the chime. I didn’t know how long the endowment I’d given April would last. Did I dare endow her a second time? Would Basil be able to deduce what I’d done from the footage? A second injection of fire would increase the odds of getting caught, but she might need it to finish strong. I’d already cheated once, would doing it twice make me feel any more guilty?
The chime went off and Kendall and April began a series of tossing fireballs through hoops, followed by the dragging of fire from one end of a trough to another and back again. From the look of her fireballs, April still had some of my fire, but by the time the chime sounded again, the color in her cheeks had waned.
The next station was manned by Wanda and tested ignition, combustion, and extinguishing. April was joined in the ring by Dar. As April moved through the assignments, it was clear my gift was dying away. The moment she ran out completely happened with a soft pop, like the sound of a Bunsen burner going out. I was barely able to keep my expression deadpan. I hadn’t been expecting any outward signs of her endowment ending, there hadn’t been any sound when Basil had endowed me.
Dar and Wanda looked toward April with expressions of surprise at the strange noise but then the chime sounded. Dar headed for his next station and Wanda fiddled with her tablet. I hoped they wouldn’t remember the sound later, and that the cameras hadn’t picked it up.
As we moved to the last station, my heart began to sprint. April and Ryan would meet again, and this time they weren’t required to cooperate. When April saw who reached the next ring before her, she almost tripped. Her hand gripped mine, her fingers downright cold, which was another shock I had to try not to react to.
“Help me.” She whispered as she turned her face into my shoulder and pressed her lips against my shirt. “Please.”
Ryan’s eyes were on us, so were Professor Hupelo’s. We must look strange with her kind of melting into my shoulder like that.
Indecision nearly ripped me in two right there, but the fire within made the choice for me. It surged down my arm in an outpouring of consolation and encouragement. I barely had my hand placed before fire poured out of me and into her. April’s eyes drifted closed and her cheeks and lips pinked up like she’d gotten too much sun.
She squeezed my other hand in thanks and headed for her last station, her back straight and her chest up and out. She put on a good show. Professor Hupelo’s station tested detonation and concealment, two of April’s weakest skills. She knew it as well as I did.
I took a swig from April’s water bottle to hide my anxiety.
Ryan’s eyes were glued to April as she entered the ring. Tyson was fiddling with his tablet, preparing for the test.
“Last station, guys,” Tyson said in his best captain’s voice. “Keep it concealed at all times and leave it all in the ring. Take your places in front of the pads. Remember, proper sequencing means higher PSI.”
Ryan brought his fists up and took a fighting stance, his eyes narrowed as he focused on his victim: the padded punching panels capable of measuring pounds per square in upon impact and in rapid succession. I wonder who’s face he’s imagining on the pad?
April arranged her skinny limbs into a reasonable and somewhat amusing fighting stance. When the chime sounded they each attacked their pads with all the fury of a pack of rabid dogs.
A series of blinding flashes went off like old-fashioned photo bulbs. I put my hand over my eyes and couldn’t stop a groan of disappointment.
“Keep your UV to yourself, Ms. Brown!” Tyson belted.
“I’m trying,” April wailed as she flailed at the pad, her punches and kicks landing awkwardly but still making the pad resound with loud thuds.
More flashes coming from her joints brought shouts from Tyson and a few from other students who were upset at being temporarily blinded. Ryan added a few yelled epithets as well as the flashes threw him off his game. Black spots exploded before my eyes whenever I looked at the ring.
“You’re not helping her,” I screamed over the ruckus. Time was running out. I couldn’t see their reaction to this as my vision was all polka-dots and swirls, but they did shut up.
Pressing my fingertips into my aching eyeballs, I sent a mental command to the fire I’d sent into April. I had no idea if it was going to work but I was desperate to stop the blinding explosions of light. Conceal yourself. I know I sent you into a host who has no idea what she’s doing, and I’m sorry, but please—
After a few more flashes, they finally stopped. Tyson and I let out audible groans of relief.
The thudding sounds of Ryan and April beating the crap out of their punching pads continued. My vision reluctantly cleared and the expression on April’s face swam into focus. There was only one word for it: euphoria. As she whaled gracelessly into the pad with super-charged, concealed fire-power she took on the appearance of a saint in a kind of righteous ecstasy. Tears actually misted in my eyes at the sight of her and I brushed them away with a sniff.
The chime sounded. Ryan and April came to rest, their chests heaving and brows beaded with sweat. He looked over at her screen where the cumulative total of her PSI had been tallied. His jaw dropped. Her score was only a few hundred beneath his own. Astonishing considering her lack of coordination and power.
“Yeah, baby!” I screamed and punched the sky, losing the fight to keep in the emotion filling me.
My shout was drowned by many screams and whoops of celebration as the most harrowing exam of the semester came to an end. The rafters nearly shook with the sound of raised voices, but it still wasn’t loud enough to drown out April’s exultant cry of victory and retribution as she faked a punch into Ryan’s face.
“Eat that!”
He recoiled from her with a sneer.
“That’s enough, Ms. Brown,” Tyson chided, but it cost him effort to hide his grin. I supposed even the instructors at the school took some pleasure in a bully getting his arse handed to him. He had scored higher, but her close second-place was enough to knock his cockiness down a peg or two. He looked ticked off and deflated.
Leaving him standing there with thunderheads growing in his eyes, April headed straight for me. I opened my arms in time to catch her in a hug. She wrapped her spindly arms around my waist and squeezed hard.
“Well done,” I said as I held her, patting her back.
“Get me out of here,” she said into my shoulder, sounding exhausted.
Looping an arm around her shoulder, I walked her out of the gym, not meeting the eye of any student or professor.
Excited conversation buzzed again as people discussed the things they’d done or seen. April’s body trembled as we left the test circuit behind. The gym doors closed behind us and a sob April must have been choking on shook her. She leaned forward, hands on her knees.
“It’s alright. You’re alright,” I murmured, stroking her back. “Don’t fall apart on me here, girl. They’ll start coming out soon.”
April swayed for a moment and I wondered if I’d have to carry her. But then she straightened and put her hands over her face, tears squeezing out between her fingers. I escorted her like that, blind and weeping, all the way to the girl’s corridor. She fished her room key out of her pocket and gave it to me so I could unlock her door.
Sprawling on the bed face-down in the pillow, April burst into full-blown, heart-wrenching sobs.
Sitting on the side of the bed feeling awkward but not wanting to leave her, I folded and unfolded my hands while wondering what I could say that might help.
After several minutes, her sobs turned into what sounded more like laughter as her ribs and shoulders heaved, the odd sounds muffled in her pil
low.
“You’re freaking me out a little,” I murmured, patting her on a shoulder blade.
After another minute of her strange laugh-crying, or cry-laughing, April turned over. She got her weeping under control and slid herself up to sitting. I handed her a tissue and she dabbed at her puffy eyes. Blearily, she peered at me from under wet lashes and heavy lids. Relief coursed through me as she gave me a smile.
“What the hell just happened?” April croaked, honking into a fresh tissue. “How did you do that?”
Double checking that I’d closed the door, I bit my lip. There was no hiding what I’d done from April, no point in even trying to cover it up.
“It’s called endowment, but April, you can’t tell anyone. Not a soul.” I squeezed her knee.
“Of course I won’t.” Her eyes went wide and her voice hushed. “Do you think I’m crazy? That was cheating. But, I don’t understand how you did it. I’ve never heard of endowment and I’ve read all the manuals. I have a perfect memory. I wouldn’t have forgotten it. Where did you learn to do that? And, how?”
I shifted on the bed and cleared my throat. “Please don’t ask me. I only did it because we were desperate.”
“I was desperate,” April corrected, some of her old sharpness returning. She straightened and took my hand. “I owe you big time. After the way I treated you? I’m disgusted with myself. You put all that aside to help me in the end. You’ve been my only true friend. How can I repay you?”
I smiled and savored her words as they washed over me.
“Just promise me this is our secret. That’s all I need.”
April nodded and lifted a hand. We gripped one another with an arm-wrestler’s hold, eyes locked.
“I swear,” she said. “I’ll take it to my grave.”
Thirty-Five
