by Megan Crewe
“I can’t talk much longer. Our phone time is pretty limited, and I already used some to call my parents.” She sighed. A thread of longing crept into her voice. “I wish we could’ve had more time together last week. I just wasn’t…”
She trailed off as if she didn’t think it wise to finish that sentence. What had cut her visit short—or had she simply been debating whether it was safe to see me at all? I supposed this call meant she’d weighed the risk in favor of staying in contact.
I’d held on to those new, sharply clear memories of her like a touchstone ever since that afternoon. “Me too,” I said. I could at least offer her some small token of my commitment. “You know—I told my dad about you. Just a little, but, well, he knows you exist.”
Rocío laughed again, but it sounded a little nervous this time. “And what did he say about that?”
“I think he’s got the idea that you being Champion may cause some complications, in general. But he’s already invited you over for dinner whenever we want to take that step.”
“Oh.” Her voice was surprised but pleased. “Um. Maybe that’ll have to wait until I can actually talk coherently about more than five percent of my current life. But I’m glad. You could… When I have time off again, I’m sure my parents would be happy to have you over, if you’d want to. I mean, it’s kind of awkward even there, but considering… Am I supposed to be calling you my boyfriend now?”
My lips leapt into a grin I couldn’t have suppressed if I’d wanted to. “I suppose you can call me whatever you want. But that does seem to be the usual term for a male person you spend a significant amount of time kissing.”
“Okay. Boyfriend.” Suddenly she sounded a little shy. “I’ve never had one before, so I guess I’m a little out of touch. And it almost seems too ordinary after… after everything, doesn’t it?”
“It does.” A warm shiver passed through my chest, affection and the ache of missing her and the rawness of all the horrors we’d been through together condensing together. “But it works, since that’s what we’ve got. Girlfriend.”
She snorted and then muttered a curse in Spanish. “My time’s up. I’ll talk to you again next week. I promise.”
I wished she could make that promise and actually know nothing could stop her from fulfilling it.
“Next week,” I said.
The bittersweet ache stayed with me as the taxi growled along the highway into Newark. I held the sensation and the connection it gave me to Rocío until we pulled up outside the church. I handed the driver his cash and yanked my mind back to the present with the chilly blast of wind that hit me on the sidewalk.
It was our first get-together since last week’s protest, and the meeting room was buzzing with more energy than I could remember it ever having before. Not all of that energy was cheery, though.
“I can’t believe they buried the story on page fifteen,” one of the girls near the doorway was saying.
I ambled over to join her little cluster. “Hey. What’s going on?”
“The reporter that interviewed Luis and Tamara,” another girl said, making a face. “We only got some tiny article where they made it sound like we’re spoiled jerks wanting special treatment.”
“What?” I’d never gotten in the habit of checking the Dull papers—something I obviously needed to change. “Didn’t they take some film of the interview?”
“Noemi said she saw a clip the first night,” the first girl said. “But it was blink-and-you-miss-it. They just didn’t see it as a big deal.”
The guy next to her scowled. “I guess a couple hundred people getting upset about something doesn’t seem like that much in a city this large.”
That was all our efforts had amounted to in the eyes of the outside world? I didn’t let my disappointment color my tone. “We’re just getting started,” I said, catching each of their gazes so they could tell how much I believed what I was saying. “We’ll build up our numbers. We’ll grab more attention. It took two years from the time the Confed first started seriously discussing the Unveiling to it actually happening. But we still got there.”
“Right,” the first girl said, her face brightening a little. “Of course we’re not going to fix everything all in one go.”
I left that group feeling I’d done something right and offered similar encouraging words to the other League members who looked downcast. The next time I turned around, I found myself standing next to Luis.
He gave me a welcoming nod, his hands slung in his pockets in a relaxed pose, but there was a bit of tension in his broad shoulders, which I got the impression he was trying to hide. I was so used to watching him from something of a distance, his confident voice ringing out from the stage, that I kept forgetting our leader wasn’t that much older than I was. I’d never heard an official number, but up close it was difficult to imagine he was much past drinking age.
“Nice to see you keeping everyone’s spirits up, Finn,” he said.
“I think we’ve got a lot to feel good about,” I said, and found I wasn’t sure what else to say to the guy who’d brought us all together. “I— Thank you for giving me the chance to pitch in. In general, I mean. I really appreciate the chance to take on some responsibilities and contribute.”
He flashed me a grin. “Don’t be so quick to thank me. The responsibilities can pile up faster than you think.”
“I really do want to help any way I can,” I said quickly, though he’d sounded like he was joking. “It’s amazing how you’ve gotten so many people involved.”
“It is,” he agreed, still smiling, as he turned his gaze back to the crowd around us. He ran his hand over this thick black hair. “You know, I never meant to create some big activist group. I had a lot of friends in the Newark tutorial, and it was awful seeing how those bonds just fell apart after most of us were Dampered. I thought maybe we just needed a real space to vent about everything we were going through, where we made it clear it was okay to talk about that stuff. Five of us came the first time, but then more and more people heard, and, well…” He gestured to the room, which was teeming with figures now.
“Oh,” I said, unable to stop my eyes from widening. “Wow.”
“You never know when an idea’s going to snowball, I guess,” he said. “A lot of people needed something like this, and if they needed it, I wasn’t going to tell them there was no more room. We just found bigger rooms. I like that we have so many voices pitching in, trying to figure out how to get to someplace better. But keeping things on track can be a little overwhelming.”
The guy who’d been watching the new arrivals shut the door to the room. He motioned to Luis, who tipped his head to me and wove through the crowd to bound onto the stage.
“Let’s get started!” he said, the words resonating through the room with no trace of the vulnerability he’d given me a glimpse of. A hush fell over the crowd as everyone turned to look at him. “I know a lot of us are riled up about the way the Dulls reported on our protest, but let’s not forget the gains we’ve made. We’ve gotten a bunch of new people interested in joining us. First order of business tonight, I’d like to come up with a plan for keeping our group and the discussions here secure in case the Confed decides to interfere. Anyone with suggestions, please come up to the front.”
I ambled closer to the stage to hear what other members would offer.
“I think we should switch up meeting spots,” one woman was saying. “A different place every time, or at least mix it up some. It’s too easy to figure out when a meeting’s happening just by watching this place. The Confed authorities have probably already pegged this location.”
“Maybe we need more subtle ways of passing on the word too,” Floyd put in. “Anyone can see those flyers—people will start to be on the lookout for them. Could we set up a protected group to communicate over the internet?”
“Yeah, I think it’s time we got online,” Tamara said. “I’ll talk to Daniel and see if he has any bright ideas for keepi
ng it on the down-low.”
Luis assigned a few volunteers to scope out possible meeting spots. Ary hopped onto the stage and stalked over to him, her long black hair swaying, its streaks an electric purple today. She leaned close to say something in his ear. He stepped to the side of the podium.
“Next, Ary has a new proposal.”
Ary raised her hand in the air with a fierce smile, and I know down to my gut that I wasn’t going to like whatever she was going to say.
“Freedom of Magic people!” she called out. “We made a smash last week, didn’t we? Let’s hear it for us!”
A cheer rose up, one I had to join in on, even if I was wary of the person expressing that sentiment. She’d suddenly decided that Tamara’s plan had been a wonderful success?
“We can learn from the parts that didn’t go so well,” she went on. “It’s obvious the Dull media isn’t going to give us the time of day. Fine! We don’t need them. We’ve got to keep pushing while we’ve got a bit of the Circle’s attention—another protest, bigger and more powerful than the last one, and this time focusing on messing with the Confed’s bigwigs directly. Don’t let them look the other way. Show them we’re a real force to be reckoned with.”
“Yeah!” Mark hollered from where he was standing not far from me, and a chorus of agreement followed.
Ary’s smile widened. “There are a bunch of head honchos from mage organizations around the world coming to town later this month for some sort of conference with the Confed. I say we find out when and where they’re coming in, and we blockade them. The Confed’s leaders shouldn’t get to speak to them on our behalf when they never listen to us.”
My stomach had clenched into a ball as murmurs of approval carried around me. She was talking about the conference Dad had been stressing over for the last several weeks—the one he was in charge of organizing. He’d said he was already having trouble with the Dull government over some of the representatives from our more tentative allies. How would they react if the event turned into chaos?
It was easier to speak up today than it had been the first time. “International relations are a very sensitive area for the Confed right now,” I said, pitching my voice to carry. “There are other ways we could get the Circle’s attention.”
“The fact that it’s a sensitive area for the Confed is exactly why we should target that conference,” Ary said, giving me a baleful look. “The Circle isn’t going to pay attention unless they don’t like the consequences of ignoring us.”
“I’ve got to agree with Ary,” Tamara said at the base of the stage. “This conference is happening now. We won’t get many opportunities like that.”
I suddenly felt the weight of a plethora of gazes turned my way. I’d swayed people in the direction I’d wanted before. They were waiting for my next argument, to see if I’d do it again.
Did I actually have a good one?
If I forgot who I was and who I thought Ary was, I couldn’t deny that I’d have made the same assessment Tamara had. Disrupting the international conference would force the Circle and other major figures in the Confed to take notice. When the representatives from the less strict mage organizations abroad heard us standing up for the right to keep our magic, they might even encourage their home countries to put pressure on the Confed too.
If my father hadn’t been involved, would I have hesitated even for a second? No. I knew that, the truth of it filling my mouth with a bitter flavor.
I hadn’t planned to go directly against my parents, but then, Luis hadn’t planned to find himself leading a group like this at all. He’d stuck with it because people needed it. Quite possibly we needed this protest too.
I was either in this or I wasn’t. Handing over a book to one Dull girl, sitting on the steps outside the College with my hat pulled low—those things were nothing. I’d wanted to take a stand… and Dad was part of the system we were standing against.
My throat clenched for a second, but I forced the words out, louder than the thudding of my pulse. “You know what? You’re absolutely right. Let’s target that conference.”
“Anyone else have objections to raise?” Luis called out. When no one spoke, he smiled. “Then it looks like we have our next project. All those who want to be involved in organizing, join Ary to the right of the stage.”
With feet heavy but chin raised, I set off to plan the greatest failure of my father’s career.
Chapter Fifteen
Rocío
A thin layer of snow coated the rooftop I was perched on—just enough for the chill to start to seep through the soles of my boots. Next to me, Joselin blew her breath into her cupped hands to warm her face. We’d been stationed there, overlooking the stone-block building we were waiting to storm, for a few hours now.
One of our mission’s targets was inside. According to our intel, the other should be joining him sometime tonight. She was the one the senior officials were pretty sure had orchestrated the conjuring of several monstrous creatures that had sliced and gouged their way through the employees in a bunch of government buildings a few days ago.
Twenty-four people dead. More than a hundred injured. With all the uncertainties still twisted tight inside me, I focused on the small bit of satisfaction I could take in knowing we might save more people this mage would have hurt in the future.
If we didn’t end up hurting the magic a whole lot more in our efforts to grab her and her associate.
How much was I risking if I tried to offset that damage? Brandt was here too, poised on the tiled rooftop on the other side of the target building. If he saw me—if Joselin decided to report some adjustment I made to our planned strategy…
I glanced over at her. She hadn’t laughed at me when I’d mentioned my theories about the magic before. But the decisions I made affected not just me and the people I cared about back home, but everyone here on my team too. Every time we went out here like this, we were putting our lives in each other’s hands.
It would be so much easier if I only thought about the staying alive part in the middle of a mission. Easier and maybe safer for everyone… except the magic.
The pressure of all those conflicting responsibilities sat like a boulder on my gut. I wasn’t getting any closer to sorting out my thoughts by just stewing in them.
“Sin que los oyera nadie,” I sang under my breath, bolstering the sound-shielding ‘chantment I’d cast around us when we’d first gotten into place. It still felt unnerving to speak up in the stillness that hung over this part of town so late at night. Music occasionally trickled to us from a bar open late a few blocks away, but otherwise, the neighborhood seemed to be asleep.
“This could be a pretty rough one,” I said to Joselin quietly.
The other girl shifted her weight, tucking her gloved hands deeper into the sleeves of her jacket. Beneath its hood, the heavy brown fringe of her bangs fell across her forehead to her eyebrows.
“Yeah,” she murmured. “The stuff this lady thought up…” She gave a shudder. Her gaze rose to meet mine. “I guess you’ve got other reasons to be upset about how she casts—from the things you were saying about the magic and all.”
Her comment wasn’t exactly a question, but the look in her eyes was. And this was the reaction I’d wanted to judge.
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “Even with this mission, it’s hard to see how our side isn’t going to end up hurt one way or another.”
“You don’t think we could take these two down without disrupting the magic?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how easy it’s going to be to try.”
She bowed her head. “How sure are you about all those things you said—about destructive spells damaging the magic? What have you really hearkened?”
My thoughts tripped back to the night two weeks ago now when I’d asked the magic for guidance—to the anguish it had sent wrenching through me with those impressions of devastation. Even remembering that world of torment sent horror resonating through my bones.
The magic’s pain and panic were so vast, and I was only one mage. Could any one mage be enough to champion it?
It had reached out to me… but maybe it was asking for more than I could give, no matter how much I wanted to.
I pulled myself away from those doubts. “Completely sure,” I said. “There’s… kind of a natural energy in everything, right? When we push the magic to shatter the harmony that’s keeping a body alive, or a wall intact, or whatever, there’s a rebound effect. The magic’s energy gets weaker, shakier, harder to conduct. At least, that’s the best way I can explain it, from what I’ve hearkened so far. I haven’t had much of an opportunity to figure it all out.”
“I’ve never felt anything like that,” Joselin said. “I’ve never heard anyone talk about it, even at the Seattle Academy. Why wouldn’t someone have noticed before?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think probably a few people have, but it’s been too inconvenient for them to want to really tackle the problem. But mostly… how many times would an ordinary mage be using magic to kill or destroy something? Even doing it on a small scale isn’t going to have much impact on all the magic in the world. It was only… in an enclosed setting, where there were a lot of awful things going on all at once…”
Joselin’s mouth tightened. She nodded, and I could tell without either of us trying to break the silencing ’chantment that she knew I was talking about the Exam.
“I’ve always had a strong connection to the magic,” I added. “And once I started noticing the effect, it got harder and harder to ignore, even outside of that place. It’s like I’m tuned in now to a frequency I had to learn how to hear.”
Also, the magic seems to have purposefully reached out to me for help and badgered me into listening. You’d just think I was really crazy if I told you that part.
“You got into trouble for the way you were handling the missions, didn’t you?” Joselin said after a moment. “That’s why they took you off duty.”