Wounded Magic

by Megan Crewe

  Even the examiners know, I wanted to say. They admitted it right to my face. But that secret was locked away behind the silencing ’chantment. No wonder they’d pretended to care. They’d known I wouldn’t be able to call them on their false promises.

  At least not yet.

  For now, I took Sam’s openness to the idea as progress. “That’s why I try to avoid destructive castings on the missions,” I said. “I think we could change our approach so that we defend ourselves without damaging the magic in the process.” Or maybe we could back out of the conflict completely and focus on healing the damage that had already been done. But that was probably too much to propose at this point.

  “I’m fine with you using whatever strategies work best for you, as long as they do work,” Sam said as the helicopter started to descend. “Never breaking or hurting anything… That’s not going to be possible in every situation. But if you have a new idea, and there’s room for us to implement it, go ahead and share it. Then we can all draw our own conclusions.”

  Brandt made a skeptical sound, but I decided que me vale what he thought. If I won Sam over, he was senior enough and respected enough that other operatives would follow his lead.

  The chopper landed in an empty parking lot between several looming concrete apartment buildings. We’d been sent to a city this time—according to the mission briefing, a militant who’d helped plan the attack on the base might be living here. We were to bring him in by force if we found him and gather any information we could if we didn’t.

  “The housing unit we’re supposed to check out is on that street,” Desmond said, pointing without even looking. His other hand was drumming out a faint rhythm on his knee as he cast. “Just a quarter mile from here. I don’t hearken any major magic being worked in the area or any other suspicious movements, but there are quite a few people in the building. If one of them does make a move, I might not be able to sound the warning before they’re on you.”

  “Keep a close eye from here, and we’ll be cautious out there,” Sam said, giving Desmond’s shoulder a quick pat.

  “Thanks,” I murmured as I passed my old teammate. He shot me a quick grin and a thumbs-up before turning back to his enlarged screen. Sometimes I got the impression he actually kind of enjoyed the work he was doing. It must be easier to focus on the skills and not the meaning of what we were doing when you could stay at more of a distance from the actual people involved.

  We all hopped out onto the cracked asphalt. The street Desmond had pointed to was completely dark, only a gleam of a streetlamp at least a block in the distance. The sour smell of days-old garbage laced the chilly air. The kind of people we went looking for never lurked in the nice parts of town.

  We hustled down the street with quick but wary steps. I winced when broken glass crunched under my boots. Sam had murmured his distraction ‘chantment to keep attention off of us, but it wasn’t going to protect us from anyone in the building we were about to breach.

  The housing unit we arrived at was a smaller version of one of those concrete apartment buildings, only three stories tall. We couldn’t give the courtesy of a knock when we were hoping to catch one of the occupants by surprise. I braced myself as Sam stepped up to the door. He sang softly to the lock—not breaking it, just unlocking it, like I had on our first time out, I realized with a flicker of satisfaction—and shoved the door open.

  He strode into the hall on the other side, shouting out a few phrases in Estonian and then Russian: a call for everyone to come out and present themselves. A tired family spilled out of one door: grandparents, parents, and three young kids. Two couples emerged from the other, rubbing sleep from their eyes. None of them matched the description or photos we’d been given.

  Sam motioned Brandt and me toward the stairs and back door at the far end of the hall. “Check all the apartments; don’t let anyone leave.” Joselin and Prisha hung back with him as he started questioning the inhabitants with our translator’s help.

  Brandt and I were halfway to the stairs when two figures bolted down them with a scrabble of hard soles against rough concrete. Brandt snapped out a casting that heaved the first figure into the wall so hard that the woman dropped to her knees, her hands shielding her scraped face. The magic shuddered around me.

  I flung out my own casting: the same vice-like blanket of energy I’d conjured during the attack on the base. It smacked into the second figure just as the guy reached for the doorknob and pinned him to the floor.

  “What have we got here?” Sam said, coming up behind us. He took in the woman with her now-bleeding nose and the guy I’d captured without injury. Neither of them was our mission’s target either.

  “They must have something to hide,” Brandt said. “They were running like bats out of hell.”

  “Check the upper floors for the target, and then we’ll question them,” Sam said, and paused. “And if they’re just running, not attacking, let’s try not to batter them around. Lopez’s technique is sound.” He tipped his head to me. “You should show the rest of us exactly how you cast that conjuring when we’re back on the base.”

  The flicker of satisfaction danced higher in my chest. Brandt grimaced but didn’t argue. He charged up the stairs ahead of me.

  No one else ran, but no one else we called out of their apartments—which looked to be made up of no more than a shabby room or two—matched the guy we’d been hoping to catch. We asked all the residents to come downstairs, checking each room as they left. Then we returned to guard the back door while Sam and the translator continued their interviews.

  The residents shifted in the now-crowded first-floor hall, their faces pinched with worry and exhaustion. My uncertainties crept back in. Who the hell were we to come into a country that wasn’t even ours and drag all these people out of their beds to interrogate them? Didn’t the Confed interfere with enough lives back home?

  A face caught my eye as I scanned the crowd—pale and snub-nosed, with fawn-brown hair pulled into a tight braid and the collar of a scuffed jean jacket turned up to the base of her jaw.

  It was the girl who’d been watching Brandt and me tackle the explosive ’chantment a few days ago. What was she doing here? The town where I’d seen her was a hundred miles away.

  What were the chances she’d been both right by the explosive site and here simply by coincidence?

  Our gazes met. She eased through the crowd toward me, stopping by the two runners we’d stopped, who were now magically bound to chairs against the wall. I went to join her, a lyric ready on the tip of my tongue.

  “That one you did,” she said, pointing to the guy. Her accent wasn’t as thick as the boy we’d questioned my first night out. “The spell—it doesn’t hurt him?”

  I’d meant to question her, but I couldn’t see why I shouldn’t give her an answer first. “No,” I said. “That’s not what I’m here to do. If I had things my way, no one would get hurt.”

  The girl gave a faint snort. “Never works like that when you people come in, does it?”

  I wasn’t sure if she meant specifically the special ops team, or all of National Defense, or any Americans at all. I offered a tight smile. “I try. I’ll keep trying.”

  “I know. I’ve seen you,” she said, in a tone that made me wonder how often she’d watched and I hadn’t noticed. She grimaced. “So many people wanting to hurt and not caring much whether they hit the ones who deserve it. On your side and right here. Sometimes I think from here is worse. They should care more, but they don’t seem to.”

  “Do you know something about the people here?” I said delicately. “You can tell me. I know you’re just trying to help.”

  She studied me for a long moment. “I am,” she said. “I don’t want more getting hurt. Maybe you can help with that. Please.”

  She reached into her pocket. I stiffened automatically, but all she pulled out was a small digital recorder. She pressed it into my hand in one swift motion and then darted between two other figures in the
crowd, pushing into one of the apartments.

  “Hey!” Brandt said from where he’d stayed by the back door. He barged over, and I leapt after the girl instinctively. I dashed into the apartment in time to see her clambering through an open window.

  In that moment, in the space of a breath, I could have stopped her. I could have cast to knock her to the floor and locked her in place like a criminal. But her please and the look in her eyes when she’d handed me the recorder were still resonating through me.

  She’d trusted me. She’d asked me to do right by her and everyone else here. One quick casting could shatter that trust forever.

  Brandt barged in just as the tip of her braid vanished beyond the glass. He pounded past me to the window, but I could tell from his face when he peered out into the night that she was gone.

  “You let her go!” he said, spinning around.

  Sam appeared in the doorway. “What’s going on?”

  “There was a girl,” Brandt said, his face flushed with the same anger that colored his voice. “She gave something to Lopez and ran for it. And Lopez just stood here.”

  “I came after her,” I protested. That much, at least, was true. “I wasn’t fast enough.” Which was also true, as long as I didn’t explain that it’d been my thoughts and not my feet that had slowed me down.

  Sam looked between the two of us. He grasped Brandt’s shoulder. “Whatever happened, she’s gone now. Keep holding the back door.” As Brandt hustled off with a frown, our mission leader turned to me. “What have you got, Lopez?”

  I handed the recorder to him. “She said she wanted to help us stop… well, she wasn’t totally clear about who, but it sounded like she meant the Borci or people like them. I don’t think she’s on their side.”

  “It still would’ve been good for us to question her now to see what else she might know,” Sam said. From his expression, I could tell he suspected I might not have put every possible effort into stopping her. “I’m not going to write this up, since you were attempting to follow orders—but next time run a little faster?”

  I hoped my cheeks didn’t show the heat that had risen in them. “Got it.”

  “All right. Now let’s see what we’ve got here.”

  Sam leaned out into the hall and motioned our translator into the apartment. He pressed the play button on the recorder. The translator leaned close.

  A voice trickled from the speaker, mid-sentence and partly muffled. Maybe the recorder had been hidden in a pocket or under a jacket when it’d caught this conversation. I’d been on this assignment long enough to recognize the words as Russian.

  Then a thin voice piped up—speaking a different language, one I didn’t know at all. The translator went rigid. Sam’s eyebrows drew together, his shoulders tensing too.

  A third voice said something in the same unfamiliar language, and the thin voice from before seemed to pick up the thread in Russian. Going back and forth, like our translators always did between English and Russian or Estonian when we questioned people.

  Oh. Because that middle voice must be a translator too.

  “That’s a member of the Borci Za Spravedlivost talking with a representative from the Bonded Worthy—the insurgent network that’s been launching attacks throughout the Middle East and Asia,” our translator said, her face pale. “They’re discussing a possible temporary alliance—as a way to take down the Confederation.”

  Chapter Ten

  Finn

  I’d never felt all that connected to my parents’ stories of pushing forward the Unveiling. Those had been tales from another time before I or even my older siblings had been born, when there’d been clear injustices to rally against. I’d imagined that any conflict that called for heroics on my part would involve enemies from abroad. I’d gone so long without realizing how many injustices still existed right here at home, waiting for me to rally too.

  Right now, rallying consisted of a meeting in a café in Queens, where we were nailing down the details of the more vigorous rallying to come five days’ time.

  “Along with the three obvious entrances to the college, there’s a fourth one for maintenance here.” Tamara pointed to the markings on the blueprint she’d set on the café table. Her fourteen-year-old son had a knack for combining magic with computers, two elements I hadn’t thought would ever bond, and he’d managed to dig up some records we could consult. “No unexpected access points that I can see. We’d want to be in place at each entrance before any students arrive.”

  “The college officially opens at seven in the morning,” I said, gulping my now-lukewarm coffee. The bitter flavor jolted me even more alert. I glanced at Floyd, a Dampered guy in his early twenties who’d joined our little planning group. “What did you see from the security patrols?”

  He smiled eagerly. “Their last patrol of the morning is around five-thirty.”

  “Then I think we’d want to get in place around six-thirty. Early enough to get there ahead of the students, but not so early someone might sound the alarm and remove us before we have a chance to make our point.”

  “How many of our Dampered members think they could help hold off security?” Mark asked beside me.

  I checked my notes on my phone. I’d spent part of our last meeting circulating and chatting up every Dampered mage in the church rec room. “Eight have volunteered so far who feel their remaining talent will make at least a small difference. There’s a guy with an affinity for shielding, and a woman who can work temperatures—not that I think we should try to burn them, but she could make getting close to us uncomfortable. That sort of thing.”

  “With eight we can place two of them at each door,” Tamara said. “One stronger and one weaker at each, so we don’t leave any entrance poorly defended. If anyone new comes forward in the next few days, that’s a bonus.”

  “There are ways we can make it harder for them to move us that don’t take any magic, right?” Noemi said, leaning her elbows on the table. “Digging in our heels, if you know what I mean?”

  Tamara smiled. “Both of my grandfathers were very active in protests that had nothing to do with magic, back in the day. I’ve heard all their stories—I’ve got plenty of ideas there. We can have a little teaching session at the meeting before the protest.” She turned to me with a click of her beaded braids. “Any word from Ary?”

  I shook my head. Ary had taken a few of her friends to supposedly do some additional scoping out of the college building. It might have been an excuse not to have to work directly with us. She’d agreed to approach this protest Tamara’s way, but with a frenetic enthusiasm and a sharp little smirk that seemed to suggest she was simply waiting to crow when the protest failed and we saw how wrong we’d been to argue with her.

  “She hasn’t messaged me,” I said. “I’m not sure how much she’d want to share any information she came across, anyway.”

  “She’d better get with the program,” Tamara said. “What we need more than anything is a united front—she’s got to accept that most of us aren’t ready to tear the whole Confederation down just yet. There’ll be plenty of time for that later if moderate measures don’t gain us any ground.”

  Noemi winced, and I suspected she was thinking of that library again—burned down before she had a chance to delve into its books. “I don’t think that will be necessary,” I said quickly.

  “Force has its place. But I’m hoping we won’t have to go there.” Tamara reached to fold up the blueprint.

  “What should we be focusing on until the meeting tomorrow?” Floyd asked, his gaze on me. Tamara was technically taking the lead here—her experience trumped anything I could offer—so I glanced toward the older mage to show I deferred to her opinion if it differed from mine. Even so, it gave me a little flush of pride that many of the League members had started turning to me for input.

  “I’m thinking recruitment is key right now,” I said. “We’ve got a few more days to reach out to friends, family, neighbors, colleagues—any Damp
ered or Burnout mages who might be willing to stand up to the status quo—and encourage them to show up at the meeting. Strength in numbers?”

  “Dulls too,” Tamara said with a tip of her head toward Noemi. “They can clearly be an asset. And we all know the Dull government can put pressure on the Confed themselves if they’re getting hassled by their constituents. I’ll be calling the major news channels to see if I can spark some interest in covering the protest.”

  “Is your family going to get involved?” Noemi asked her as we got up from the table.

  The wince Tamara tried to suppress suggested that was a painful subject. “My son and husband, yes, and maybe some of the in-laws. My younger brother-in-law took his own life a decade ago, and we all know his depression came on at least in part because of his Dampering, so feelings run pretty strong there… They’re just also a little cautious. My folks, you won’t see at all.”

  “They want to stay out of it?” Mark said, his tone suggesting he had experience with that sort of attitude.

  “They don’t even want to hear about it, most of the time.” She sighed. “It’s funny how fighting one type of prejudice doesn’t make you immune to participating in other kinds. My parents aren’t so keen on the whole magic situation, even though, for all we know, they might have tested magical if they’d been young enough for the Confed to bother checking in the Unveiling.”

  That didn’t seem likely to me. After all, the whole reason the Confed had only tested those sixteen and under back then was that anyone who could hearken magic generally showed it before they reached puberty. These days, the Confed simply tested every newborn for potential, to have them already on record and so those with a talent could start training early.

  I didn’t see the need to point any of that out, though. I just made a face in sympathy. “I hope they come around eventually.”

  She shrugged. “It’ll be what it is. I’ll touch base with Luis and fill him in on where we’re at. If you do hear from Ary, keep me in the loop, all right?”