by Chloe Garner
Valerie looked at Grant, who frowned.
“All right. I’m driving.”
Gemma sighed, but she nodded, going back out the door. Grant looked at Valerie and sighed, shaking his head.
“I have so much I’ve wanted to tell you over the years, all of these things I’d planned on telling you and teaching you… But it’s never time, is it?”
“Who is she?” Valerie asked. “Do you have another wife?”
“No,” he said. “That’s your aunt. My sister, Gemma.”
“I don’t understand,” Valerie said as they got into a huge black truck and drove out of the garage. “Mom never said you had a sister.”
“Nice to meet you,” Gemma said from the front seat. “No hard feelings about you being alive, right? It’s a war.”
“I don’t know yet,” Valerie answered. “I mean, you did say he should have let me die. Hard to get past that.”
Had they really planned on killing her?
She’d had a hold on the door.
It hadn’t felt like she was slipping, had it? Could she have held out until Lady Harrington or Mr. Benson got there?
She felt like she could have.
Right?
“Gemma is with The Pure,” Grant said. “Close personal friend of Lan Wellington himself.”
“May his body feed the magic,” Gemma murmured.
“I don’t know who that is,” Valerie said. “Sorry.”
“The first of us,” Gemma said. “Leader of The Pure until his death pushed the resistance underground.”
“The leader who cursed the Council kids,” Valerie said with recognition, and Grant turned back to look at her.
“What do you know about that?” he asked.
“I know that they had an awful lot more kids all at once than any governing body should ever expect to,” Valerie said, and Gemma snorted.
“We called them the council bunnies, there for a while. The bed swapping that was going on back in those days…”
Grant cleared his throat, and Gemma shrugged.
“She’s a woman, Grant. Not your baby girl. Don’t care what daddy lenses you’re using to look at her through.”
“I understand why my mom didn’t ever mention you,” Valerie said, and her dad laughed quietly.
“No,” Gemma said. “We didn’t get along. She never saw a problem she didn’t think she couldn’t fix it by killing someone.”
Valerie’s attention jerked back to her dad.
“So she was an assassin?” she asked.
Grant looked over his shoulder at her, then back at the road.
“I don’t like that word for what she did,” he said.
“What she’s doing,” Gemma said. “She’s back in the game, isn’t she? I told you.”
“Why are you here?” Valerie asked. “Why are you helping her?”
“Because I’m the only friend you’ve got in the world,” Gemma breathed, looking out the window. “You and the rest of the human race.”
“What?” Valerie asked.
“You shouldn’t hint at stuff,” Grant said. “Not unless you’re willing to back it up.”
“I’m allowed to say whatever I want,” Gemma said. “She’s your problem. We just need to get underground. Now.”
“What is she talking about?” Valerie asked.
“Stuff that you shouldn’t know,” Grant said, still gruff at Gemma. “Secrets.”
“Why are you helping her?” Valerie asked.
The countryside whipped past outside; they were driving down two-lane country roads with huge trees and fields to either side of them.
“Who’s coming for us?” Valerie asked.
“That’s a valid question,” Grant answered. “What did you hear?”
Gemma was silent for a moment, then turned to press her shoulders against the car door as she looked at Grant.
“I heard that they knew that Susan was out in the field again, doing her thing, and that that meant that your spawn would be unprotected. They’ve all been racing to come up with the best plan to be the first to snag her, as a weapon to use against your wife. And Vince’s crew struck some deals and put it into action first.”
“I thought it might be them,” Grant said. “I might have recognized one of the demons.”
“Did you kill them all?” Gemma asked. Grant snorted.
“If I had, they’d have known it was me.”
“Yeah, because they don’t recognize that it was you who came and snatched her out from under their noses,” Gemma said.
“I used Pure casting,” Grant said. “Old stuff, none of the new stuff.”
“You’re trying to cast doubt on the Old Guard,” Gemma said with some appreciation.
“Why didn’t you stop it?” Valerie asked. “If you knew? People were in danger.”
Gemma snorted, glancing back at her.
“Because I didn’t know long enough in advance to lay a plan,” she said. “I just barely gave your dad enough heads up to be there before they filleted you.”
“So that’s it?” Valerie asked. “He walks in the door and takes me out, and neither of you even care what happens behind us?”
“I care,” Grant said. “I just know that you have to play the long game, not the short game.”
“And students dying is okay, in your long game?” Valerie demanded.
Gemma sighed at her.
“You have no idea the tradeoffs we have to make day-in and day-out, child. Don’t speak that way to us.”
“Where are we going?” Valerie demanded. “I want to go back to school.”
Maybe her dad was one of the bad guys.
Maybe he was lying to her.
He was her father. She knew him. But she didn’t know him. Had never actually known him.
“I need some time,” Grant said. “I need to know that you’re going to be okay, going back to them…”
Gemma interrupted him with laughter.
“You think you can protect her from all sides wanting her as leverage with a couple of days of daddy-daughter tutoring? We can’t keep her. You know that as well as your wife did. She’s a liability out here. And that school can’t keep her safe.”
“Lady Harrington is a powerful woman,” Grant said. “I think she can do it.”
“Failed once,” Gemma said.
“I still don’t see how,” Grant said. “They teleported in eight demons. How did they get them in?”
“Something was burning,” Valerie said. “In the hallway. It left a mark on the wall, and there was a silver… thing… growing in it… silverthorn. There was a silverthorn growing in it, and I killed it. Or stopped it. Or whatever.”
Gemma looked back at her, twisting hard in her seat.
“They grew a silverthorn in Survival School?” she demanded. Valerie shrugged.
“Unless everyone got it wrong. Or I’m remembering it wrong.”
“You’re remembering it wrong,” Gemma said. “There’s no way.”
“Susan didn’t teach her any magic,” Grant said. “She’s doing her best.”
“She what?” Gemma asked, twisting again. “Grant, we can’t keep her. And you can’t teach her enough to survive them… I’m sorry, brother. I really am. But we… More merciful to just drop her off a cliff.”
“She’s a natural,” Grant said, sitting up to look at her in the rearview. “Think carefully, Valerie. The silverthorn. Describe it to us.”
“Like a pea plant,” Valerie said. “Growing up in the middle of bright red blood foam. Made of mercury.”
Gemma put her hand over her mouth.
“How did they get a silverthorn to grow?” the woman asked.
“How did you stop it?” Grant asked.
“I told it that that was enough,” Valerie said. “I think. I don’t remember the exact words.”
Ethan had seen something just like it in Europe. She thought about telling them that, but she still wasn’t sure what side either of them were on, nor whether Ethan
had told her in confidence.
“You told it…” Gemma started, and Grant grinned.
“I told you,” he said. “She’s a natural. You should have felt the lock she had on the door when I got there. Would have done better trying to go in through the wall.”
“What happened when you stopped it?” Gemma asked.
“It kind of wilted and died, and then the teachers came and sent us all to our rooms.”
Gemma and Grant exchanged glances, and Valerie sat forward in her seat.
“Something happened,” she said. “Didn’t it? What happened?”
Gemma looked back at her.
“The Pure,” she said. “They went to a shopping mall in the middle of flyover country and they killed about three-hundred people. The Council didn’t have enough people there to try to fight it, and it ended up getting about a dozen magic users on the Council’s side killed. They can’t afford to lose that many people, and they’re on their heels. The Pure think they can strike a decisive blow against the Council itself and end the war before it even gets going again.”
“Was mom one of them?” Valerie asked.
“Your mother doesn’t do battle front,” Grant said. “If there’s a fight everyone knows about, she won’t have been there. No one will know, the day something goes wrong with her.”
“She’s going to die alone and no one will ever know,” Gemma agreed, sitting back against the door again.
“She’s unkillable and you know it,” Grant answered.
“Why do you hate her?” Valerie asked, and Gemma looked at her innocently.
“Me? Oh, how about the fact that she abandoned me to the dark side and never cared if I lived or died? How about that she turned her back on everything that we were fighting for in order to protect one child? How about she never even looked for your father, never asked how he was doing, just took you and disappeared one day?”
“She thought he was dead,” Valerie said.
“No she didn’t,” Gemma said. “She might have lied and told you he was dead, but she knew. She knew that if one of The Pure got hold of him, they’d torture him for a year, more, before they’d even consider letting him die. He knows too many valuable things.”
Valerie queased, squeezing herself against the seat back, and Grant looked over at Gemma.
“I think I’m about done with you,” he said. “If you want to stay in this truck, I think you’re done talking.”
“Just saying the things no one else is going to tell her,” Gemma said, then turned her face away again.
“Where are we going?” Valerie asked.
“A cave network,” Grant answered. “We used to use it for cover, a long, long time ago, but at this point almost everyone has forgotten it exists. So we use it to hide out as a last resort. It’s not very comfortable, but magic doesn’t work right there, so no one uses it for fear of hurting themselves.”
“And what then?” Valerie asked.
“A very good question,” Gemma said.
“Well, Gemma is going to go back to work,” Grant said pointedly, “and we’re going to train.”
“Train at what?” Valerie asked.
“Self-defense, mostly,” Grant said. “A little bit of test magic, to make sure that if something happens, you have the best chance of seeing it coming. Maybe some offensive magic, if we get going.”
“You think she’s going to be ready?” Gemma asked.
“They don’t let me touch potion ingredients at school, because of what happened,” Valerie said.
“And what happened?” Grant asked.
“I made a neurotoxin and a bomb,” Valerie asked.
“Simultaneous or separate?” Gemma asked, looking at her with interest once more.
“A neurotoxin bomb?” Valerie asked. “No. They were separate.”
“Oh,” Gemma said with a shrug.
“Not surprising that they have no idea what to do with you,” Grant said. “Teaching a natural is notoriously difficult.”
“How are we supposed to train if we’re inside caves that make it impossible to do magic?” Valerie asked.
“There are holes in the effect,” Grant said. “Your mom and I mapped them, a long time ago. If you don’t know where they are, you’d never be able to find them on the fly, but I know where we’ll be safe.”
The casual mention of her mom… of a time before Valerie had even been born… It hurt her chest. She still didn’t trust him, though.
“I think I should just go back to school,” she said.
Gemma snorted, but kept her thoughts to herself.
“I understand,” Grant said. “That’s where your mom put you, and I’m basically a stranger. But you have my magic. And no one is going to know how to train you to use it like I will. And I’d love to say that, if you insist, I’ll just take you back to school, but I’m not taking you back until I know that you have some chance of surviving it. That’s just… how it is.”
“Your daddy is kidnapping you,” Gemma said cheerfully.
“Are you enjoying this?” Grant asked, and Gemma nodded.
“Immensely.”
“Are you evil?” Valerie asked.
Gemma looked at her sideways, not hardly as bothered by the question as Valerie had hoped.
“No,” she said. “I just know what it looks like.”
Grant turned off of the little road onto a strip of gravel that wandered through thick, overgrown forest. Eventually he pulled off of that and turned off the engine.
“You have supplies?” Gemma asked, and Grant nodded.
“I keep it topped up, here,” he said. “Checked it a month ago.”
“All right.” The woman leaned across her seat to hug Grant with real affection, then Grant looked back at Valerie.
“We’re here,” he said. “We need to let Gemma get back before someone notices she’s gone.”
Valerie looked at the woman, who gave her an odd look.
“I know you think I’m just… terrible. I’m not. It’s just… hard… It’s hard to do the right thing when it means people are going to die. You don’t come back from that. And the longer you do it… the less you recognize yourself in the mirror. I get why your mom ran away. I just… I thought that she would be out here, doing the right thing, long after the rest of us gave up. Shook me, down deep, that she’d do it when things were… They weren’t easy, because it’s never easy, but… It was as close as we ever got. And she gave up and ran away… For you.”
Grant came around to open Valerie’s door as Gemma slid across the front bench to sit at the driver’s seat.
“You’re just going to let her drive away and leave us here in the middle of nowhere?” Valerie asked.
“Way it has to be,” Grant answered. “She’ll come back as soon as she can.”
“When will that be?” Valerie asked.
“Probably a couple of weeks, at least,” Gemma said. “Have to wait for everything to cool down again before I sneak off.”
“Weeks?” Valerie asked, but Grant had already shut her door and Gemma was backing back onto the road again. “Weeks?”
“How long did you think it was going to take to train you?” Grant asked. “An afternoon seminar?”
“You… No,” Valerie said. “No. Make her come back. Call her. I can’t be out here for weeks. I have classes and homework and studying to do. And… That’s where Mom sent me. They’re good people.”
“They are, actually,” Grant said. “I know a lot of them personally, though it’s been a long time.”
“They’re going to be worried about me.”
He grinned.
“There, you underestimate me,” he said. “Come on. We need to get underground before the shade deserts us.”
Valerie followed him, feeling more exposed and alone than she had even the first day of school.
Was her father crazy? Was that why her mother had let Valerie believe he was dead?
Was he on the wrong side?
Was h
e going to hold her here forever, just stretching it a little bit at a time, letting her believe he would let her go soon, just not now?
He glanced back at her once, but the undergrowth was thick and the trees overhead covered the ground with roots that would take you out if you lost focus.
Eventually they came to a glorified hole in the ground, dark and the size of a large animal den. Grant knelt, looking down inside it, then nodded.
“It’s just the way I left it,” he said. “Come on.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Valerie asked, but he was already moving, crawling on hands and knees down into the earth. Valerie squatted, then leaned back to walk on her heels and her palms, scooting down the steep entrance.
After the bright light outside, even in shadow, the dim of the cave was blindingly dark.
Grant pulled her up onto her feet, putting his hand on top of her head.
“It’s still a little low here,” he said. “Don’t stand up tall until you’re sure you don’t have something above you.”
He spoke a word, and a small gold flame appeared in his palm that lit the entire room.
For a moment, Valerie was devastated that his ‘cave system’ was just a dug-out little hole in the dirt, that her father was delusional and dangerous, then she saw the small gap in the dirt, there in the floor, and she followed him over, sliding once more down a steep floor and into…
One of the most beautiful places she’d ever seen.
The gold of the flame turned slightly silver and choked off, but the light was still enough to reflect on a room of solid blue crystals. The floor under her feet had once been a part of them, but it had been walked to dust. All around them, the walls, the ceiling, the floor were covered in the blue crystal growths, and they radiated an energy that Valerie didn’t have words for.
“Wow,” Valerie breathed.
“Welcome to the dark gardens,” Grant answered. “The Pure think that all magic is the same, that there are those who can use it and those who can’t. And that those who can’t are inferior to those who can.”
“The Superiors,” Valerie said. He sighed.
“Yes. It’s such a simplified view of their philosophy, though. They think that those who have the ability to do magic, who actually cultivate that ability… that they are the only ones who deserve it. That embracing magic is what makes them superior. Not that their superiority makes them able to embrace magic, you see?”
