by Chloe Garner
He grinned wider, and she smiled back.
“Why don’t you tell them that you’re a natural?” he asked after a moment, settling lower in his chair and digging into his backpack.
“It’s none of their business,” Valerie answered.
“It would make your life so much easier,” he said. “I mean… I don’t know if any of the Council kids are ever going to be okay with you being here… But a lot of the other kids would be nicer to you if they knew that you were really good at magic.”
Valerie knit her eyebrows.
“Why would I want that?” she asked. “Sasha was nice to me from the very beginning, even before either one of us knew, and you… The jury’s out, but if you can keep it up a while longer, I might actually buy into this reformation story of yours.”
“I’ll see how long I can hold out,” he said, and she smiled again.
“But I don’t see why I want to try to impress a bunch of pretentious jerks into liking me because I have some special power. An idiot who likes me for what I can do isn’t my friend.”
“You’re really smart, aren’t you?” he asked, and she shrugged.
“I get by. But I lived…” She paused. The words as they had been about to come out of her mouth had been casual, and then she’d heard them. “I lived alone with my mom my entire life,” she finally went on. “And she was really emphatic about learning everything I could, and figuring out how things worked, and knowing how to take care of myself. We used to sit at the table at night and just… talk…”
It hurt.
She nodded, swallowing.
“So. Anyway. High expectations. You know.”
“I do know about those,” Ethan said, glancing at his book. “Speaking of, I have a month’s worth of schoolwork to catch up on.”
“And I have sixteen years, apparently,” Valerie answered. He smiled.
“You’re going to shock them all when you get it,” he said. “I just hope I’m there to see it when Elvis lands on his butt.”
“Oh, I’m looking forward to putting him there,” Valerie said with a nod. “In the meantime… pall-plants.”
Valerie got back to her room a little after midnight, happier than she’d been since before Roger had shown up at her apartment in the city. Sasha appeared to be asleep, so Valerie grabbed her bathroom kit and went to brush her teeth and wash her face, then came back and changed into her pajamas in the dark, getting into bed as quietly as she could.
“The Trents are…” Sasha said after a moment. “When Elvis liked you, the first day, I thought that you were going to have an ally and I thought it was great, but they’re just as fickle and unreliable as I thought they were. I thought maybe I was wrong, what I remembered about them. The way his dad talked to my mom at the ceremony, like he was only giving her the medal because he had to…”
“I don’t think Ethan is like his brother,” Valerie said.
“I hope not,” Sasha answered. “I had all these ideas, what the School of Magic Survival was going to be like, and then…”
“And then you got me as a roommate and it ruined them all,” Valerie said.
“No,” Sasha said. “No. That’s not what happened. It’s that they’re all so stuck in paying their dues and proving they belong, none of them can even think about what you’ve been through, or how important the war is, or anything. Mom talked about the terrible things that she tried to help people get through, because one side or the other let the war spill out onto civilians. People died… innocent people, and our side killed them. Probably not as many as the Superiors, but plenty. Everyone’s all excited about the war because they have no idea what it means.”
“Are they?” Valerie asked. “Excited?”
“You don’t know?” Sasha asked. “It’s all anybody can talk about. They think that the Council is just going to sweep in and destroy the Superiors and it’s going to be this big show of force… Anymore, that’s what they think they’re here at school to learn. War. It’s the kind of thing that, if you let it keep going… that’s what magic becomes. A tool of war.”
“I don’t know because no one ever talks around me,” Valerie said. At least she knew that Sasha still had friends who were talking to her, when Valerie wasn’t there.
“They’re so immature,” Sasha said. Valerie snorted.
“Sorry,” she said quickly. “It’s just strange to hear you say it. You’re always so positive.”
“I didn’t like you with the Council brats,” Sasha said. “They’re the worst of the worst. They hope that the war lasts long enough for them to graduate, so that they can be a part of the big power grab when we win. They all just assume we’re going to win.”
“We are,” Valerie said softly. “We don’t have a choice, do we?”
Sasha was quiet at this for a long time, when a new thought occurred to Valerie.
“Hey, Sasha, how many people are there on the council?” she asked.
“Thirty,” Sasha said.
Valerie frowned.
She’d been envisioning hundreds.
“How is it that there are six of them all born in the same year?” Valerie asked.
Sasha paused.
“There are eight that were born the same year as us,” she said after a long consideration. “But five of them are cursed.”
“Come again,” Valerie said. She heard Sasha shift.
“They don’t know which five of them, but there are five of them who are tied together with a curse that… Okay, I don’t actually believe it, but it is hard to explain how all of them were born the same year. They say that there’s a curse that was set by the head of the Superiors when he died. He was killed, but we don’t know specifically how. Anyway, when he died, he launched a curse at the Council, and… They all had kids at the same time who were bound together, cursed with dark magic.”
“Dark magic,” Valerie said. Sasha shifted again.
“It’s why they can’t get in at Light School,” she said softly. “They all have too much dark magic in them to qualify.”
“Ethan told me he was here because of Elvis,” Valerie said. She looked over as Sasha rolled onto her stomach and wadded her pillow up under her head.
“I think Ethan can do some light magic,” Sasha said. “Maybe even enough to get in. I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t lie to you. Maybe it’s all wrong. It’s just what I heard.”
Valerie lay lower in her bed, looking up at the ceiling in the darkness.
“It just felt nice to have a friend,” Valerie said.
“I’m your friend,” Sasha answered and Valerie shook her head.
“You’ve been more than a friend, but you didn’t choose me. My mom chose us together, and your mom went along with it. You could have bailed on me, no doubt, but… Ethan was nice to me all on his own.”
“Be careful,” Sasha said, her voice drifting. “You can’t ever guess what the Council brats want. It’s all a game to them.”
Valerie closed her eyes, letting the hour and the day weigh on her.
“You’re a good friend,” she answered to the darkness, not sure if Sasha heard her or not.
The Attack
Valerie was in the library again after classes - she had three with Ethan, and people just moved out of his way when he told them that he wanted to sit next to her - when Sasha came in with an alert expression, like a bird on a wire.
“Sasha, when do I get to learn actual defensive magic?” Valerie asked, exasperated at her book. “This is beyond boring.”
“You need to come with me,” Sasha said, picking at Valerie’s elbow and looking around again.
“What?” Valerie asked. “What is it?”
“Now,” Sasha said, her voice low. “Please?”
Valerie looked at her books, but Sasha was tugging at her with an urgency that suggested the packing up process was out of the question.
“What’s going on?” Valerie asked as she followed Sasha into the hallway.
“You have to see,”
Sasha hissed. “But don’t say anything to anyone.”
Sasha dragged her back to the dorm hallway, where a small group of girls was growing in population even as Sasha and Valerie approached.
“Have you been doing magic?” Sasha asked as they were still out of earshot of the gathering.
“No,” Valerie said. “I don’t think so. How would I tell?”
Sasha frowned at her, then shouldered her way through the line of girls to look down at a scorch mark on the floor.
The way everyone was whispering, Valerie had no problem figuring out that this was not normal. The scorch mark was in the corner by a doorway, a big black mark on the floor, but a much more interesting shape up the wall, like the wall had split open, rather than just had a burn run up it.
The weirdest part was definitely that it was bleeding, though.
Valerie turned, going back through the girls as she passed Mrs. Gold in the hallway. The dorm matron was too focused on the girls and whatever else she knew of what was going on to stop Valerie, so Valerie ran upstairs to Mr. Jamison’s room without interference.
His door was cracked, and she heard him speaking.
There was a rule to magic - spoken magic, especially - that you didn’t interrupt it, because you risked breaking the cast.
But there was a bleeding scorch mark in the hallway where Valerie planned on sleeping that night, so she went in anyway, keeping silent as Mr. Jamison held up a finger at her, his eyes closed in focus.
Still unsure how important either of the things going on were, Valerie slid into a chair as noiselessly as she could to wait, and about a minute later, there was a sense of power, like the lights had brightened or the floor had vibrated, and then Mr. Jamison opened his eyes.
“What can I do for you, Miss Blake?” he asked.
“There’s something downstairs you should see,” Valerie said. He raised an eyebrow and looked around his room briefly.
“What is it?” he asked as he went to open a drawer in his desk and got out a small wooden box.
“Black scorch mark on the wall oozing blood,” Valerie said.
He hesitated, then brushed past her at a faster walk than she’d used coming up.
Maybe she shouldn’t have waited.
She followed him back downstairs, where virtually the entire dorm had turned out. Valerie passed Ethan and Shack as she waded through the students behind Mr. Jamison. Mrs. Gold was barking at the girls, demanding to know who had seen what.
“Please go get Mr. Benson,” Mr. Jamison told her. “And Lady Harrington.”
He knelt in front of the mark, looking back at Valerie.
“Who found it?” he asked. “Was anyone here when it was cast?”
Valerie looked back for Sasha, but she didn’t see her. Ann the Council brat stepped forward.
“We think she did it,” she said, pointing at Valerie. “We all know that she’s out of control. She doesn’t belong here.”
Valerie was stunned. She hadn’t seen that coming - the fact that she was capable of magic at all was still a secret within the school. The reactions of the students around Ann begged to differ, though. Shoulders turned toward her, eyes darted.
Sasha made her way back into view, but stayed out of the front ring of students, her eyes begging Valerie to forgive her.
“Were you here?” Mr. Jamison asked Valerie.
She shook her head.
“I was in the library,” she said, her voice quiet. There was no way in hell she was going to get defensive because Ann the brat pointed a finger at her.
He nodded, then straightened, looking around.
“I need everyone to back off,” he said. “The cast is still active, and I need to shut it down. Was anyone here when it happened?”
There were whispers, but no one spoke up. Valerie suspected that Sasha would know who had done it well before Mr. Jamison did.
“Valerie,” Mr. Jamison said as she found herself entranced by the way the blood was oozing out of the wall. “Please take a step back.”
She shook her head.
“It isn’t blood,” she said. “It’s too thick.”
“I know that,” he said, putting his arm out, but it was like the oil and tell-weed on the back of the door. Valerie slipped around his hand, kneeling next to it.
It was…
It was blooming.
Opening up.
Like a bomb in slow motion, almost, but beautiful, floral in the way it unfolded, layer upon layer.
The flame had burnt the floor and the wall. That was unquestionable.
But it had germinated a seed of some kind, and that was what was doing the rest, first a long line of red… foam, dark past the point of crimson, and now a thread of silver erupting out from the foam, beading and reflective, growing up the wall…
Valerie put out her hand, touching the spot it was headed for, almost a foot above it.
“No more,” she said. “Begone.”
Mr. Jamison said something in a language that Valerie didn’t know, still trying to pull her back, but the activity of the spell stopped and the silver thread cascaded down onto the floor like mercury.
He finished his cast and pulled her harder away.
“Valerie,” he said.
“See, she did it,” Ann said. “She’s the one who shut it down, too.”
Mr. Jamison looked Valerie in the face as she backed away, then Mr. Benson and Lady Harrington were in the way, and Sasha grabbed Valerie’s elbow and pulled her into the crowd. It wasn’t much cover, because the students split around her to avoid being too close, but it was something.
“I was in the library,” Valerie protested. “I couldn’t do that.”
“I know,” Sasha said. “It… They won’t believe Ann. It’s just her being petty. How did you do that?”
Valerie shrugged.
“I don’t know. It just…”
“You used verbal spellcasting,” Sasha said. “In English.”
“So?” Valerie asked. Sasha shook her head.
“That’s really hard… The force of will it takes to make English into spells…”
Valerie shrugged again.
“I don’t know that I did anything,” she said, though it was mostly a lie. If Mr. Jamison had turned around at that moment and told her that he’d been the one to shut down the silver line, and that it had just been coincidence that she’d spoken at the same time, she would have been relieved to believe him, but… Barring that, she knew better.
The four adults were talking, and Lady Harrington turned around to look at the students.
“Everyone is restricted to their dorm rooms tonight. We will come and let you out in shifts to eat your dinner, but you must go straight to the cafeteria and come straight back, after. No socialization and no detours.”
“My books are still in the library,” Valerie said, backing away. She’d just run and get them…
“I need a word,” Mr. Jamison said, striding through the crowd and motioning for Valerie to follow him.
Valerie sighed.
Her books were sleeping in the library tonight.
Mrs. Reynolds and two of the other teachers were hurrying down the hallway. The herbs teacher gave Valerie and Mr. Jamison an alarmed look as she went past, but none of them spoke. When they reached the end of the hallway, Mr. Jamison turned, dropping his head to speak to her.
“Why did you do that?” he asked. Valerie widened her eyes.
“I have no idea what I did,” she said.
“You topped a silverthorn and spoke it out of existence,” he said. “It was neatly and admirably done.”
“Was it wrong?” Valerie asked.
“No,” he said. “And it was a better job than I would have done. I would have spent the next five minutes working up a cast to go against the root, and you… You equated its growth with the main stalk of a plant and topped it, killing it. I didn’t even know you could do it that way. Mrs. Reynolds is going to have a field day when she finds out about it
, because she’s been arguing that silverthorn has plantlike qualities for years, now.”
“None of that sounds bad,” Valerie said.
“No,” he said. “But you didn’t know that you were doing the right thing. It could have been like before, and you could have been building a poison or a bomb. You just did it, without stopping to think.”
“You say it like I made a choice,” Valerie said. He lowered his head a fraction further.
“What are you telling me?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“I didn’t decide to go do it. I just did it. More like breathing than talking, not quite a heartbeat.”
He blinked, looking back down the hallway. The girls were staring. Ethan was approaching with Shack.
“About time they knew what you could do,” Ethan said as he went past. Mr. Jamison straightened, watching the two boys until they were partially up the stairs.
“You need to restrain yourself,” Mr. Jamison said. “I don’t know what you’re capable of, and I don’t know what’s leading you to do what you’re doing, but you need to figure it out. You put yourself and everyone else in danger, until you know what it is you’re doing.”
Valerie nodded.
“I’ll try,” she said. “I didn’t mean to do it. It’s just… It was like in class, or in Mr. Tannis’ room. I just knew how to do it and I did it.”
He pulled his mouth to the side, then looked up as Mr. Benson and Lady Harrington arrived.
“Looks like a prank,” Mr. Benson said. “Are you sure she wasn’t involved?”
“She says she was in the library,” Mr. Jamison said. “I believe her.”
Mr. Benson looked at Valerie for a moment.
“I don’t know who did it, but we’re going to find out. Magic has fingerprints to it, if you know what you’re doing, and Lady Harrington is one of the best magic readers I’ve ever known.”
“I hope you do,” Valerie said, trying not to be so sarcastic that she got herself into trouble. “It wasn’t me.”
He nodded and glanced at Lady Harrington, who put her hands onto Valerie’s shoulders and looked her in the eye.
