Real Magic

by Chloe Garner

  Susan led the way up the driveway, walking slow, and Valerie fell back to walk next to Ethan.

  “You have any guesses?” he asked, and she shook her head.

  “None.”

  He put his fingers around her hand and she shifted, trying to help support his back. There wasn’t anything she could do, so a few steps later she quit, just holding his hand. He didn’t seem to like her actively noticing his limp, anyway.

  They got to the first sweeping bend in the road, the point where you couldn’t see either the road behind them or the school ahead, and Susan stopped.

  Valerie looked around, trying to see what Susan might cast on next, but Valerie’s mother just went to lean against a tree, arms crossed across her chest and legs crossed at the ankle.

  Valerie looked at Ethan and he shook his head.

  A few minutes later, Lady Harrington came walking down the driveway, by herself.

  “You do know how to make an entrance,” Lady Harrington said. “Is everyone okay?”

  “So far,” Susan answered. “You’ve heard from the Council?”

  “You’re lucky you waited until this afternoon,” Lady Harrington said. “They’ve had agents here at the school all the way up to this morning.”

  “I need help,” Susan said.

  “Of course you do,” Lady Harrington answered. “Though I won’t blame you for the whole mess, it certainly has your fingerprints all over it.”

  “Valerie is the one who blew up the installation,” Susan said, pointing her thumb.

  “Are you trying to tell me that those aren’t your fingerprints?” Lady Harrington answered without looking over.

  “Just thought you might be proud,” Susan said.

  “I’ve never stopped being proud of either of you,” Lady Harrington said, and Susan snorted.

  “Don’t you try to tell me that you were proud of her the day she showed up here with no skills and no knowledge,” Susan said, and Lady Harrington crossed her arms.

  “You’ve come here for a purpose,” she said. “I was in the middle of things of importance when you triggered the defenses.”

  “I need you to take her,” Susan said. “I’m not done out there, and she’s not safe anywhere else.”

  “I believe we’ve been through this,” Lady Harrington said. “It worked the first time, but the two of you have such a propensity for burning every bridge you ever go over, I’m afraid there’s no way to make it work a second time.”

  “I know,” Susan said. “That’s why we’re going to change the rules.”

  “They ruled you an unfit parent at the Council meeting,” Lady Harrington said, and Susan paused.

  “I’m still her guardian,” Susan said. It was a question.

  “I believe that you are still her guardian, so long as you are physically present,” Lady Harrington said. “But the moment you are gone, they are going to sweep in and take her.”

  Susan shook her head.

  “I know. That’s where you aren’t listening to me. I need you to take her.”

  Lady Harrington frowned.

  “Be more specific, Susan.”

  “I’m assigning you custody,” Susan said.

  Valerie gasped.

  “Mom,” she said.

  “Temporary,” Susan said, putting a hand out toward Susan. “She won’t need it for that long, because she’ll hit majority soon, but for now, I need you to take care of her, so the Council can’t.”

  Lady Harrington considered this.

  “It will bring up our historical relationship,” she said, and Susan nodded.

  “I know. It will remind everyone, and then when the Council challenges you, if they’ve managed to forget, you’ll remind them, and, yeah, my mom runs Survival School,” Susan said.

  “And you can bear that, after you disowned me?” Lady Harrington asked.

  “I didn’t,” Susan argued. “You refused to bless my marriage. That’s all I wanted.”

  Lady Harrington raised her chin.

  “I will admit that that doesn’t appear to have turned out as catastrophically as I might have predicted,” she said, and Susan nodded.

  “He’s a good man, I don’t care what family he comes from.”

  Lady Harrington sighed.

  “I do not care to discuss it any further,” she said.

  “Then you’ll do it?” Susan asked. “You’ll take custody?”

  “It’s the only way to keep her away from the Council, other than forcing her to suffer through yet more of your lifestyle,” Lady Harrington said.

  “It isn’t that bad,” Susan said.

  “It is,” Lady Harrington said. “She blew something up as a result, and I had to rescue her from a siege. Here, she simply has classwork to catch up on.”

  Susan nodded.

  “Ethan needs political cover, too. What have you got?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re suggesting,” Lady Harrington said.

  “Oh, yes you are,” Susan said dismissively. “You keep Merck out of here all day every day, and it means you have political capital to spend. Ethan saved her life, so we’re going to spend it on him.”

  “I’m afraid that isn’t how it works, Susan,” Lady Harrington said. “I keep Merck Trent from running the school through the backing of the faculty. Perhaps any other student, I could assert authority, but he has special authority over Ethan, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “I don’t want it,” Ethan said.

  “Pardon?” Lady Harrington said, and Ethan shrugged, going to lean against a tree.

  “I’ll disown him,” Ethan said. Lady Harrington straightened in the faint moonlight, then motioned.

  “Even out here, there are ears,” she said. “Let’s walk a ways so that we can speak candidly, because I don’t think you’ve thought this through entirely.”

  Valerie looked over at Ethan who shrugged, turning to follow Lady Harrington into the woods.

  Valerie had never seen the woman further outside of the building than the front steps, but Lady Harrington actually looked perfectly comfortable tromping through the woods, like the plant life was simply going to get out of her way by her force of will. Valerie kept getting caught up on sticker vines, but she managed to end up where Susan, Lady Harrington, and Ethan gathered in a small open space under a pine tree.

  “You may not disown your father,” Lady Harrington said. “I see no legal path forward to do so, but more importantly, I have never before been more optimistic for the future of the Council. With Elvis out of the picture…”

  “He isn’t,” Ethan said.

  Lady Harrington paused, then folded her hands at her waist.

  “Go on.”

  “Elvis isn’t out of the picture,” Ethan said. “I went home a few weeks after they frog-marched him out of here, and he was lounging by the pool with my mom. It’s supposed to be this big secret for a while, until the Council comes up with a story to justify bringing him back, how he was doing the right thing in spite of appearances, but they didn’t throw him into the darkness. They sent him to my mom.”

  Lady Harrington shook her head.

  “I find it difficult that any of the bereaved parents would go along with that,” Lady Harrington said, and Ethan shrugged.

  “I wasn’t there,” he said. “I don’t know. All I know is that Elvis still plans on running the Council someday, and if I wanted to do it, I’d have to fight him for it. Against my father’s blessing. But I don’t even want that.”

  “You are the only chance we have of turning the Council’s course. That you and Oswald take on those responsibilities…”

  “No,” Ethan said. “We’re the cursed. The Council won’t let us in because we’re dark, and…”

  “If you believe that nonsense about children being cursed,” Lady Harrington started, taking a breath.

  “I was there when it happened,” Susan cut in. “Valerie is one of them.”

  Lady Harrington’s mouth snapped closed and
she looked at Valerie.

  “I need more specifics,” Lady Harrington said, and Susan shook her head.

  “I don’t know what it means,” Susan said. “They all have dark magic. They’re all mages. They’re strong. And they’re drawn together to go against both the Council and the Pure.”

  Lady Harrington crossed her arms.

  “You know I won’t have you using language like that on this campus,” she said, and Susan shrugged.

  “I need you to keep them safe,” she said. “Then I’ll go and you won’t have to deal with me anymore.”

  “I can’t,” Lady Harrington said. “I can take formal custody of Valerie, but there’s nothing I can do for Ethan.”

  “You can declare my father a threat to me and claim custody through the school,” Ethan said. “I’ll say in front of witnesses that he’s threatened my life on more than one occasion, and that I genuinely fear that he means it.”

  Valerie looked at him, and he shrugged.

  “It’s true,” he added quietly.

  Lady Harrington’s lips tightened as she considered this.

  “You are asking me to go up against your father in open rebellion,” she said.

  “Maybe it’s time,” Susan said. “They’ve been forcing you to muzzle your faculty, they’re stealing your students from under your nose and shoving them in the middle of a conflict where they have no business being, and they are determined to skate as close as they can to the edge of losing the war so that they gain as much control over the magic community as they can in the meantime. People don’t want to align with the Pure to go against the Council, but the Pure and the non-propagationists have set themselves up so there isn’t an alternative. Maybe it’s time for us to step up and lead, Mom.”

  “And by us, you mean me,” Lady Harrington said. “You’ll just slink off again with your husband and do whatever you feel like doing, once more.”

  “That’s what shadows do, Mom,” Susan said. “We blend into the darkness. But you want us on your side. Everyone does.”

  “Of course I don’t want to fight with my own daughter,” Lady Harrington said. “But you would leave me without allies.”

  Susan snorted.

  “You’re being crushed between two enormous powers, and so is everyone else. You step up and withstand the both of them for six months? The entire magic community is going to rally to you. All you have to do is prove that it can be done.”

  “And how do you expect me to keep everyone safe, when I haven’t been able to keep one child safe?” Lady Harrington said.

  “I expect you to expel every Council brat in the place who isn’t one of Valerie’s friends…”

  “Shadows,” Valerie said. “We’re Shadows, too.”

  Susan looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded.

  “Yeah, I guess you are. So you keep the kids out who would go against you, you add magic defenses for internal attacks, and then you let Grant and me do what we’re good at. I can even give you Gemma Alexander, the strongest mage I’ve ever heard of in detecting deception.”

  “That would be interesting, come test-taking season,” Lady Harrington said, shifting. “I can’t make a decision of this significance on my own.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to,” Susan said. “You’re not a dictator.”

  Valerie thought about registering dissent, there, but she kept her mouth shut.

  “Very well,” Lady Harrington said. “Ethan, I need you to go to the cottages and rouse the faculty and their families. We will meet in the cafeteria in fifteen minutes.”

  Ethan looked at Valerie with wide eyes, then started off up the hill with a gimp that Valerie couldn’t have been the only one to see it. He wasn’t going to get to everyone in fifteen minutes. There just wasn’t any way. Lady Harrington looked at Susan and held out a hand.

  “I’ve missed you, daughter,” she said.

  Susan came to put an arm around Valerie and went to hold her mother’s hand. Lady Harrington closed the loop, putting her free arm around Valerie’s back, and Valerie felt the way the ground tensed under them. The power of the three women…

  “The hair piece that you gave me,” Valerie said. “It saved me.”

  Lady Harrington let her go and took a step back.

  “What hair piece?” Susan asked, and Valerie pulled the top layer of hair back to show them were she’d woven the braid.

  “My, my,” Lady Harrington said. “Isn’t that remarkable?”

  Susan shook her head.

  “I bet she hasn’t even seen it.”

  “Seen what?” Valerie asked, and Susan reached forward, taking a lock of hair and running her fingers under it so that Valerie could almost see it in her peripheral vision. She shook her head, and Susan smiled.

  “You ought to check that out, once we’re all done with all of this.”

  “What happened?” Valerie asked, and Lady Harrington smiled, taking Susan’s hand once more and squeezing it, then turning and folding her arms across her chest to head uphill toward the school, following the direction Ethan had taken.

  They crossed the wide lawn and went up the stairs into the school. Lady Harrington went into the office and Susan leaned against the doorframe, holding the door open as Lady Harrington went further into the main office, to her personal office.

  “So strange to be in here and not be in trouble,” Susan said with a sideways smile. “I was always sneaking around in here, but I was always afraid of her catching me.”

  Valerie shook her head, then took a step to the side. The hallway had enough light for her to have a clear reflection in the office glass. She pulled her hair aside again, turning her head to the side to see the braid.

  The brass clamp at the top of it was still there, but as she stepped forward to try to see more clearly, she recognized that the dark streak and the gray streak in the braid now followed her own hair all the way up to her scalp, and all the way to the ends of her hair.

  “I expect you could invoke whatever magic you used, with that, but without the base braid in there at all,” Susan said. “Don’t know when you’ll get a chance, and you shouldn’t try it until you’re either certain it will work or certain you’ll survive if it doesn’t, but… It’s pretty cool.”

  “Yeah,” Valerie said, running her fingers along the length of hair. She let it fall and put her hand around the necklace from Hanson, feeling the slowly-rebuilding power there.

  She had people who loved her, and that was powerful.

  “This way, come, come,” Lady Harrington said, bustling past again. “We have much to prepare and not many minutes.”

  “Why does it have to be in the middle of the night?” Valerie asked. “I get why we had to sneak here in the middle of the night, but why do you have to go get everyone out of bed for this conversation?”

  “Because this is the only time that there won’t be students around to report back to their parents,” Lady Harrington said. “We have many of our most important assemblies in the small hours of the morning.”

  Valerie frowned a concession, following the two other women through the quiet hallways and into the cafeteria.

  “You’re going to have to wait outside,” Lady Harrington said, and Valerie shook her head.

  “No. I’m a part of this. We started it.”

  Susan snorted.

  “I started it before you were born,” she said.

  “And yet,” Lady Harrington said. “The founder of a movement is often not the leader. If anyone is going to step forward to be the leader of the Shadows, it will be me.”

  Valerie didn’t like it, and she could see that her mother didn’t like it much, either, but Susan didn’t argue. Valerie still really didn’t like being told she couldn’t be a part of the final argument, but the look on Lady Harrington’s face told her that it wasn’t up for negotiation.

  “It’s going to be a very long fight,” Susan said quietly. “And I don’t want you to think less of your teachers for not going alo
ng at first or at all. So long as they are willing to support the final decision, they’re still going to be your teachers.”

  “You just assume that it’s going to happen,” Valerie said, and Susan smiled.

  “Of course I do. The same way that you assume that your magic is going to happen. When I know something is right, it’s only a matter of time.”

  Susan Blake winked at Valerie, then turned the corner to go into the cafeteria, leaving Valerie to sit against the wall a ways down the hallway.

  A few minutes later, the teachers started to trickle in wearing bathrobes and pajamas. Mr. Tannis wore his gray suit, and Valerie wondered if he didn’t sleep in that thing.

  Mr. Jamison turned the corner with a pretty blond woman walking next to him and Valerie stood.

  “Mr. Jamison,” she said.

  “Should have known you were a part of this,” he said, friendly enough. “Glad to see everything is at least okay enough that you’re in one piece.”

  She nodded.

  “Yeah. Um.”

  She looked at the woman.

  “I don’t know you,” Valerie said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you hadn’t met. This is my wife, Cathy. Cathy, this is Susan Blake’s daughter Valerie.”

  The woman offered Valerie her hand, and Valerie paused.

  “Um,” she said awkwardly, shaking the woman’s hand belatedly. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Alan talks about you a lot,” Cathy said with a warm smile.

  Valerie looked at Mr. Jamison.

  “My mom didn’t ruin your life,” she said.

  Obviously - obviously - she needed more sleep. It was… She hadn’t even realized it was in her head until the words popped out, but she’d been worried about it for months, now. He shook his head, laughing.

  “No. Of course not. I love Susan Blake. Always will. But I was never cut out for her life, and I knew it even back then. Cathy and I have been together since before you were born.”

  Valerie looked at Cathy, appalled at herself.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and Cathy shook her head.

  “Don’t be. He and I got over what happened with your mom a long, long time ago.”

  The woman smiled, then turned her head.

  “We should go get seats. I want to catch up with what everyone else thinks is going on.”