by Martha Carr
The girls stared at each other. Wesley squeaked, the sound tense and high-pitched, and stretched his wings briefly. This is so weird.
“Okay, Raven. Can I be perfectly honest with you?”
“Sure.” I’ll sit here and listen as long as she doesn’t start badmouthing me in my room.
“Remember that blood spell we did in Bixby’s class?”
“Yeah. I remember it.”
“Well, you and I had a few…similarities in our family trees which were kind of hard to ignore.” Although the dark-haired mage in training tried to hide it, she didn’t miss the little grimace that passed across Bella’s face. It disappeared again as quickly, though. “You know what I’m talking about, right?”
“The fact that both of our moms were war mages. Yeah. It’s kind of hard to ignore and even harder to forget.”
“A little.” Bella’s familiar shifted his tiny clawed feet on his perch when she rolled her shoulders. “I don’t normally guess, Raven, but I can only guess that that journal came from your grandfather.”
She pays more attention than I realized. Absently, she moved her hand slowly to the top of the worn leather journal behind her on the bed and she drew a little more comfort from feeling it there. “It’s a good guess.”
“Thank you. I also guess that somewhere in there might be something about…” Bella took a deep breath, glanced at the ceiling, and sighed. “About your mom and probably about mine too given that we come from relatively similar backgrounds as far as war mages for moms go.”
Despite her shock at this unexpected visit, Raven chuckled. “I’d say that’s a little more than relatively similar, but I get where you’re going with this.”
“Good. I thought you might. And honestly, that last part was less of a guess and more of me hoping there’d be something in there that might, you know—”
“It’s okay, Bella. I get it.” Raven nodded with a small, sympathetic smile and picked the journal up again. She won’t come right out and say it but she doesn’t have to. Neither of us had the chance to know our moms. She set the journal in her lap and glanced at it. “You know, I’ve hoped the same thing, actually—that I might find something in here that tells me more about my mom than anyone’s willing to say otherwise. Especially about her as a war mage.”
“Yeah. That makes it more interesting.”
They shared a tense, slightly uncomfortable laugh, and she looked up to meet the other girl’s gaze before Bella glanced away. Okay. Do it already. “Look, Bella, I’m not really into reading between the lines or trying to work out what other people are thinking, so if you want to come to take a look at this journal with me before class—”
“Yes. Thank you.” Bella moved quickly across the room, her eyes wide with anticipation as she stared at the journal.
Raven smirked and waited for the girl to sit beside her. Her visitor bit her bottom lip and stopped a few feet in front of the bed. “Can you read upside down?” she asked and tried not to laugh.
“What?”
“If you can’t, it’ll probably be hard to read anything from where you’re standing.” She patted the edge of the bed beside her and shrugged. “You might as well sit.”
Bella studied the other young witch’s face with a tiny, confused frown.
She thinks I’m kidding.
“Only until we have to get to the main hall before classes.” The words tumbled out of the girl’s mouth in a rush.
“Right. I don’t have an excuse for being late since I live here. For now.” Raven watched her one real competition at this school consider this mutual truce a little longer before Bella spun and plopped onto the mattress.
“I’m never late. So.” The girl tilted her head and stared at the journal. “Are you gonna open it or what?”
“Uh-huh.” She hissed a laugh, opened the journal, and flipped quickly through the first few pages. From the corner of her eye, she saw a tiny smile bloom on her companion’s face as she leaned toward her for a better look. She shifted it closer to the center point between them and shrugged. “There’s not anything very interesting in the first quarter of these pages.”
“But you found something good?”
“Yeah, I think it’s good.” I never thought I’d show Bella Chase a secret spell used by the best mages and dragon riders during the Great War. But here we are. She flipped through the pages again, more slowly this time, and finally found the underlined title of the Magic Meld spell above the step-by-step instructions. “Have you ever seen this before?”
Frowning, the girl leaned a little closer and her eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”
“That wouldn’t be very funny, would it?”
Forgetting their rivalry altogether, Bella snorted and scanned the spell. “I can’t believe this. I’ve heard so many stories about the Magic Meld and how useful it was before the war. During the war too, probably. I began to think everyone had made it up.”
Biting her lip, Raven gazed at the spell before them. It doesn’t sound like she knows about the last time the veterans used it. “It’s definitely real. I’ve…seen it used.”
“Seriously?”
She nodded. For the next few minutes, the girls sat in silence while they read through one of the most powerful spells either of them had seen and committed the entire thing to memory. If that’s what I’m doing, there’s no way Bella isn’t memorizing it too.
Finally, her visitor pointed at the page with an eager nod of her own. “I’m finished if you are. Have you read past this point?”
“Not yet.”
“Then turn the page, Raven. Come on.”
Raven glanced sidelong at the girl and smirked. Knowledge. That’s what she wants. Exactly like me. Slowly, she separated the next page of aged, yellow parchment paper and turned it so they could keep reading.
“Woah.” Bella’s eyes widened. “Who wrote this?”
“You know, I’m starting to think it wasn’t only one person. The handwriting’s completely different on this page.”
“Well, it had to be someone who fought in the Great War. I mean, look at this.” The girl pointed at a footnote on the left-hand page. “Everything else is written like a historical account. Then there are pieces like this. Personal reactions.”
Raven read through the footnote following the retelling of the moment the dragon riders used the Magic Meld on the Swarm—when it won the war and obliterated the creatures but backfired on the mages and their dragons at the same time. The footnote finished with a set of initials, and that was it. “Any idea who PR might be?”
“No. You?”
Shaking her head, she continued to read onto the right-hand page. “This is a little hard to follow. Some mages lost their dragons with the Magic Meld and some lost their lives. I knew there were survivors, but this talks about the war not being over after that. I thought that’s what finished it.”
Bella looked at her rival turned conspirator and frowned. “You’ve heard about this before.”
“I’m not merely a goat-farmer, Bella. Neither is my grandfather.”
The other girl fixed her with a startled look. “He talks to you about the war?”
“Only once, really. When he gave me these journals.” Raven grimaced when she thought of them and Connor Alby in the same sentence. “Which, by the way, I promised I wouldn’t take out of our house. No one’s supposed to know I have these. So…I guess I have to trust you to keep this a secret and only between us. Can I do that?”
For a few seconds, her companion stared at the pages of the journal they’d already read, then she looked at her and shrugged. Wesley adjusted his footing on her shoulder and dragged some of her thick, dark hair with his razor-sharp talons. “I know how to keep a secret. And I know what it’s like to have secrets kept from me.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” Grandpa told me more about the war then he might ever tell me about Mom. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone about these.”
Bella scoffed. “You have my wor
d, Raven. And the word of a Chase is not something we throw around whenever we feel like it.”
She lowered her head in acknowledgment. “That’s good enough for me.”
“Besides, who am I gonna tell? None of the other students here are remotely interested in what’s inside these journals. Not like we are. And if words get out that you have powerful historical documents on the grounds, I wouldn’t put it past Professor Gilliam to storm into your room and confiscate them. Then where would we be?” Bella raised an eyebrow for emphasis, not worried at all about whether the two mages in training would be caught with something they weren’t supposed to have.
It sounds like something I would say. This is getting weirder by the minute.
“That’s a good point.” She shrugged and glanced at the open door to her dorm room. “What about Teresa? She’s the one who told you I have these.”
“Don’t worry about Teresa.” The girl waved dismissively and shook her head. “She’s trying so hard to be important. Which is not to say that she doesn’t belong at Fowler. She’s definitely talented. Not like us, but that can be said about anyone else at this school.” She looked at Raven, surprised by her confession. “Teresa also told me what you had for breakfast yesterday and what kind of bag you packed your clothes in. I’ll tell her the journals are yours. Like for writing in. And if I say it doesn’t matter, she’ll forget all about it.”
“Okay.” It’s kind of a big step for us, isn’t it? “I’m gonna hold you to that, Bella.”
“You won’t have to. It won’t be a problem.” The girl nodded at the journal again. “Turn the page. We have another ten minutes, at least. Let’s make the most of it, right?”
“Uh-huh.” Raven widened her eyes and turned the page. I could get used to this. Conspiring with Bella Chase to keep a few secrets so we can both learn what they won’t teach us.
The girls skimmed the next page, which chronicled the actions of the war mages during the Great War. Someone had started a list of the war mages themselves, their names and ages, the year they graduated from Fowler Academy, and their weapon of choice on the battlefield. Among those names was Sarah Alby, and Raven slammed the journal shut without thinking.
“What are you doing?” Bella glanced briefly at her, then gestured at the journal again. “I wasn’t finished.”
“I am. We should get to class.”
“We still have enough time, Raven. I was reading through that list. My mother was a war mage—”
“Yeah, I know. Mine too.” She pulled the journal closer in her lap and stared at the floor. “I’m not ready to see that yet.” Not with Bella reading over my shoulder and looking for her past.
“Fine.” The girl stood from the bed and brushed the front of her tunic. Her familiar spread his wings to keep his balance on her shoulder, then settled again. “I’m sure it goes without saying, but I assume that when you’re ready, you’ll let me know.”
“Sure, Bella.”
“And don’t forget that I know about the journals now. I hope, for your sake, that you don’t try to keep them from me.”
Raven looked quickly at the girl and resisted another scowl. It looks like our little bonding time is over. “And I hope for your sake that wasn’t a threat.”
“No.” Bella’s smirk looked more like an irritated sneer. “Merely a friendly reminder.”
“Well, consider me reminded. I’ll see you in class.”
Without another word, Bella turned on her heel and stormed out of the dorm room. Wesley released an aggravated shriek but it didn’t slow their progress.
Raven sighed and stared at the closed journal in her lap. “We’re right back where we started.” She’s disappointed that she didn’t get to find anything out about her mom. That’s all it is. And I’m not ready to share anything that personal with Bella Chase.
She stood from the bed and slipped it into Connor’s oilskin bag with its twin and the fully red glass orb, then buckled it tightly and went to the dresser beside the desk. Once she’d shoved everything into the mostly empty bottom drawer, Raven glanced through the open door to be sure no one else stood in her doorway. “Clausura.”
A dull orange light glowed around the drawer, and she double-checked by trying to open it. “That’ll have to do for now,” she muttered, satisfied when the drawer wouldn’t budge.
Brushing her pants off, she stood, snatched her satchel, and headed out of her room to start another day at Fowler Academy. Whatever’s in those journals about Mom will have to wait a little longer. But I won’t let it go.
She closed the door firmly behind her and hurried down the hall.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The students who filtered into Professor Bixby’s classroom carried more excited and nervous energy than Raven expected.
“Do you have a date for the gala tomorrow?”
“Of course I do. Aren’t you on that planning committee?”
“I can’t wait to see how they decorate this one.”
“I’m going with Bryan Ranger. He’s a second-year, and I heard Annie Callam expected him to ask her instead.”
Henry rubbed his hair vigorously before he drew the strap of his shoulder bag over his head. He set it down with a sigh and gave Raven a wide-eyed glance. “Is everyone like this? Simply because of a dance?”
She shrugged, placed her satchel at the desk beside him, and slid into the seat. “I don’t get the hype.”
He snorted. “Of course you don’t. You have a dragon for a familiar. It doesn’t get much hypier than that. I only hope they put on a serious spread tomorrow night.”
“It’s not a real party if you can’t eat, right, Derks?”
“You got it. I still can’t believe you told Daniel Smith you’d be his date.”
“Well, it was that or risk Leander breaking through his pen to give the guy a piece of his mind. I had to choose my poison.” She gestured widely with her arms and grinned when he shook his head in disbelief.
He pulled Maxwell gently from his shoulder bag and set the toad on his desk before he retrieved a small, plain blue box with a blue satin bow pinned to the top.
“Who’s the present for?” Raven asked.
“What present? Oh, this?” He jiggled the box a little. Maxwell watched the movement with his toady eyes but didn’t budge. “Good work staying still, Maxwell. No, this is my meaningful object, I guess.”
“The box or what’s inside?”
Henry wrinkled his nose. “What’s inside. My mom gave it to me when I asked. It wouldn’t have been my first choice, but whatever.”
“Huh.” She took the black drawstring bag from her satchel and placed it on the desk. Through the thick fabric, she could feel the outline of the shrunken skull. This is gonna be epic.
“Morning.” Murphy joined them, sat on the other side of Henry, and waited for him to acknowledge her. Instead, he rummaged through his shoulder bag, leaned far over his chair, and grew steadily more frustrated.
“Morning, Murphy,” Raven said with a smile. The other girl returned it and nodded, then glanced quickly at Henry again when he grunted and hauled his entire bag into his lap.
“Here, Murph. Hold this for a second, will you?” He slapped the blue box onto her desk, stuck Maxwell on his shoulder, and thumped his bag on the desk to give him better access.
Murphy froze for a moment before she opened the box slowly. When she saw the plain silver wedding ring inside, her eyes widened and she blushed furiously.
Raven bit her lip and pretended not to notice.
“Here it is!” Henry retrieved a huge quill from the bottom of his bag, the feathers mashed and mangled but the long, hollow quill itself still intact. “Someone needs to make bags with pockets.” He stretched his hand toward Murphy and the box with a little laugh. “That was my grandma’s. Hey, come on, Murphy. I asked you to hold it, not take it to keep.”
Startled out of staring at the ring, she shoved the lid on and gave it to him. “Why do you have a ring?”
Completely oblivious, Henry gestured vaguely toward Bixby’s desk at the front of the classroom. “Meaning and magical significance, right? I didn’t even know where to start, so my mom shoved this box into my face and told me it would work. I guess we’ll see.” He shrugged and shifted in his chair before he lowered Maxwell to the desk again.
Murphy swallowed a few times, took a deep breath, then leaned forward to look past Henry at Raven. “What did you bring?”
She patted the drawstring bag in front of her and grinned. “It’s a surprise.”
“Yeah, you’re full of those, aren’t you, Alby?” He punched her shoulder playfully.
“I guess so.”
The other students filtered in and took their places at the closest desks. Bella moved toward the front of the room and took her usual place on the right. She glanced at Raven once, then eyed the black bag on her desk and turned her nose up before she drew out her item for their assignment.
So she’s back to shooting me looks, huh? I guess being frenemies is a step in the right direction, anyway.
“Quiet down. Quiet down!” Professor Bixby shuffled through the chatting students toward the front of the room and clapped loudly to give fair warning of her approach. Her frizzed copper hair bounced as she walked between the rows of desks and she reached the front and climbed onto the platform behind her desk with a little grunt.
“Now, without even having to listen to all the gossip and the drama that is so prevalent this morning, I know you’re all excited for the gala tomorrow. I am too.” The short woman tittered and raised a hand to her hair that looked like she’d just woken up and rolled out of bed. “It’s quite fun, and I know you’ll all enjoy yourselves. But for the love of magic, students, pay attention in class. You might learn something, which is why you’re here in the first place. Leave the gala for tomorrow night and focus. Understood?”
No one said anything, but the professor looked quite satisfied all the same.
“Very good. I’ll start by asking who didn’t manage to find a personal item to bring in today?” The students looked at each other, waiting for someone to raise their hand. When no one did, she responded with another high-pitched chuckle and clapped yet again. “This might be a record. Every mage in training followed the assignment. Excellent. I’m flabbergasted by the few students with magic running in their family and their veins who can’t think outside the box and find something worthwhile.”
