by Chloe Garner
Ethan did think about it.
But every time he did, Valerie came out of nowhere raining fireballs on everything and dragged him back to safety.
He wasn’t defenseless. But Valerie…
“She’s good, dad,” he said. “I know they all tell you, but I’ve seen it and you haven’t. It’s not right for you to own her.”
Mrs. MacMillan looked at Merck.
“I can’t tell which one he’s talking about.”
Merck was watching him with cool eyes.
“Ethan has never met Susan Blake,” he said. “He thinks that the girl is going to be important in her own right.”
“Damned straight,” Shack said, going to lean his back against the wall.
“Mom won’t let you pull me,” Ethan said. “You can withdraw your support, but she’ll pay my tuition, because she doesn’t want to see me dead, I don’t care how much tension it makes at dinner over break. And Lady Harrington won’t bounce me, because you never did own her. You can threaten me with a draft, you can threaten to stuff me at the front lines, but let’s face it, that’s where I’d choose to be, because it’s as far away from you as I can get. It isn’t a coup. It’s a revolution. We’re declaring our independence, and what’s more important is that we’re declaring our allegiance. We’re loyal to each other.”
“Isn’t the first rebellion I’ve squashed and won’t be the last,” Merck said. “And Lady Harrington may think that this school rides on her coattails, but I have more influence here than you’d think.”
Ethan looked his dad in the eye, then shook his head.
“If she’s in danger, you tell me how to find her and I’ll go help her. But I’m not going to help you lock her up or use her. And we both know that she’s really the path to her mom. So I guess you don’t get her, either, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Her father is alive,” Merck said. Ethan frowned.
“So?”
“He’s an agent for Fact. Always has been.”
“Maybe that’s who she’s running from,” Ethan said. “Trying to keep Valerie away from her dad. And maybe you’ve got so many spies in the Council that, helping you find her, it would help him find her, and be worse for all of us. Maybe, you think?, maybe her mom knows what’s best for both of them.”
“I don’t care what’s best for both of them,” Merck said. “Better that the girl die and catalyze Susan to action than this nonsense.”
“And there it is,” Ethan said. “The legendary Council concern for the common man. Yes. I recognize that anywhere. I have studying to do.”
“You don’t have class,” Merck said. “I can keep you as long as I like.”
“Have to keep me,” Ethan said, starting for the door. Shack shoved himself off the wall and started to follow, when Mrs. MacMillan stood.
“That will be enough,” she said, making a motion with her hand. The door clicked, and Ethan didn’t have to check to know that it was locked, though he did anyway.
Ethan turned to face her, and Mrs. MacMillan raised her chin, spreading her fingertips across the smooth surface of the desk.
“Oswald,” she said. “Do you intend to rebel from under the authority of the Council?”
Merck looked up at her, and Ethan could see how badly he wanted to put Mrs. MacMillan back into her place, but apparently he was more interested in what Ethan could tell him about Valerie than he was in keeping his lieutenant in line.
“Ma’am,” Shack said, turning to face his mom. “I’ve been spying on my friends to you my entire life. So have all of them. Got a third guy living in my room this semester whose mom used him the same way. Then this girl turns up and she’s shocked and angry that we treat her like that, and it makes me think. Maybe the way we are isn’t the only way it could be. So if you’re willing to stop asking me about my friends, only ask me stuff that might actually be important to the Council’s work defending magic users and civilians, maybe I stay. But if you’re going to keep asking me to talk to you about things that only matter for power and politics? With respect, ma’am, I’m not going to do it anymore, because Valerie’s right.”
“You know what happens if I disown you, son?” Mrs. MacMillan asked.
“I do,” Shack said, his voice still soft. Gentle. Ethan had only seen him properly angry a couple of times, and he feared his friend, in those moments.
“Do you understand that I will disown you if you rebel from under the Council that I represent?” she asked. “I cannot have a son who does not respect my authority, and that of the Council.”
“I respect your authority,” Shack said. “I just won’t answer questions simply because you want to know the answers. You don’t have that authority.”
“We do,” Merck said.
There.
Right there.
That was a threat, and Ethan heard it just as clearly as Shack.
Ethan didn’t actually know what would happen if Shack’s mom disowned him. It sounded personal. But Ethan’s dad was threatening them with prison.
Magic prison wasn’t like civilian prison. The threats came from the jailers, not the other inmates. There were lots of levels of prison, depending on how much of a threat you were and how much trouble you’d gotten yourself into…
“You suggesting you’re going to put political opponents into the darkness?” Ethan asked. “You said you wouldn’t do that ever again, when you took over.”
“War has special rules,” Mrs. MacMillan said. “People understand that.”
“Do they?” Ethan asked. “When you put your teenage son into that? They’re going to stand behind you? You might make it through the war, because people are afraid of changing leadership in the middle of it, but you’d never stay on after.”
The Council might not be elected, but the power they held represented the people behind them. Ethan knew it was true enough that he was right.
“We won’t be making the mistake we did last time,” Merck said. “Declaring a simple victory after the Superiors lost their ability to wage open war. We have lots of time to talk. By the time the conversation is over, your stand will be meaningless, and you will regret losing our good graces.”
“You’re going to keep the war going to stay in power,” Ethan said, then whistled. “You know, that’s good. I wouldn’t have even thought of that one.”
“Don’t make this mistake,” Mrs. MacMillan said. “Don’t make an enemy of me.”
“I love you, Mom,” Shack answered, then turned to the door and, without twisting the knob, put his shoulder into it once, twice, three times, then walked through, out into the office. Ethan looked back at his dad, trying not to look too elated - that would have sparked a fit of temper that he didn’t really want to experience - then followed his friend back toward their room.
They huddled against a wall three blocks away, sitting behind a dumpster that, while it reeked, was blocking the stiff breeze that had kicked up since they’d been out.
“They’ll find us,” Sasha whispered, and Valerie nodded. Sasha hadn’t stopped saying it since they’d found the spot, and Valerie knew from context that she was talking about Valerie’s parents, not the people who had come for them at the apartment.
Valerie had an instinct that they needed to get further away, but she didn’t want to be so far away that her parents wouldn’t be able to do whatever it was they did to track her down. Just in case it was distance-based.
That might be real.
It seemed realistic.
She closed her eyes and tucked her face against her shoulder, trying not to think about how cold she was or how stunned she was.
An hour ago - less - she’d been sitting with a box of pizza in her lap watching a silly movie.
Comfortable.
Happy.
Had it been the phone call? Had she stayed on the line too long?
Her mom hadn’t seemed to think that it was too big a risk, given how casually she’d given her instructions…
What had sh
e done wrong?
She wanted to put up a defense of some kind, in case she actually managed to fall asleep, but she didn’t know how, with what she had in her pockets. It wasn’t that she was missing anything specific, and more that she didn’t know how to do anything with what she had in her pockets on a wet and dirty ground. Any spell she tried to cast would be compromised by that ground, and just that moment, it was a hurdle she couldn’t get over.
So they shuddered and tucked in tighter and tighter against each other, just hoping for dawn.
She’d been as good as her word.
Martha had sat with him and tried to teach him magic.
Hanson got the impression that it really wasn’t his skills that were lacking, so much as her ability to focus, because she kept getting up and going to get papers or to pace around the room, pointing at the walls as she worked out something in her head.
Those habits, at least, were comforting to him. He knew what his mom was like when she was agitated, and she preferred to be moving.
So did he.
He didn’t learn much, but just the idea that his hands, his words, his mind were capable of the things he’d been watching her do his entire life, the things that Valerie and Shack and Ethan talked about… It was mesmerizing, and it was almost enough.
It really was.
Almost.
The problem was it wasn’t enough.
She’d left him.
And it wasn’t about forgiving her or punishing her.
It was about trusting her.
The past five days had done nothing to give him the impression that leaving him had been a last resort, an act of desperation.
No.
She’d been defiant about it, proud. She would have done it again, for the right opportunity. All she cared about was the war and Susan Blake, and she thought that that was all that mattered.
He did not.
And he loved Valerie too much to just dog her around with this woman that he failed to recognize.
He didn’t know what he was going to do.
He was six hours away from the School of Magic Survival, at least, and he had no money.
No friends.
Maybe he could have called one of his friends from his civilian school and they could have borrowed a car to come get him. Maybe from there he could have hitchhiked his way back out to Survival School again, but then it would just start over, wouldn’t it?
His mom would just come get him again, try to talk him into helping her.
He knew about how stubborn she was.
He was just as stubborn.
Maybe he would have tried to get in touch with his dad, look for another path there, but he’d never known how to get in touch with his dad.
He wanted to go back to school.
Survival School.
The thought of not seeing any of them again, not seeing Sasha again, not seeing Valerie Blake again… It was painful.
But he couldn’t just go wandering around the country with his mom hoping to trap his best friend as the best possible outcome.
He couldn’t do it.
He went to get her purse off of the dresser as she was in the shower and he took out her wallet, emptying it of cash.
She had credit cards, of course, but she’d long mistrusted them and she preferred to do all of her transactions in cash, so she had a not-insubstantial stack of bills that he folded over and put into his back pocket.
He zipped up his bag, pulling it up onto his shoulder, then looked at the back of the room, toward the bathroom, once more and shook his head.
It was all broken.
He didn’t know what to expect.
What to hope for, even.
But it wasn’t this.
He left.
They got up the next morning, stiff and terrified and freezing.
They were alive.
No one had found them.
But no one had found them.
Valerie looked at Sasha and evaluated her friend for a moment.
“I need to know what you want to do next,” she said finally, and Sasha nodded.
“I want to go back to school,” she said.
Valerie nodded, pressing her mouth.
“If I had a way to do that, I would,” Valerie said. “We can either keep running and hope that my parents catch up with us or we can go back and hope that no one is watching for us.”
“Oh,” Sasha said. “Where… They have to find us, Valerie. I don’t know how else to be.”
Valerie nodded.
“I know. But… We have to plan like they aren’t going to.”
“We don’t have anything,” Sasha said. “No food, no money, no place to go… We have to go back.”
“If they catch us,” Valerie said slowly, hating the words she was about to say. “I’m afraid they’ll just kill you, Sasha. I’m really worried. I think we should have left you at school. You would have been so much safer there.”
Sasha nodded, shaking.
“But…” she said, then shook her head. “I never imagined this is what it would be like. But this is your mom’s whole life. And your dad’s. And maybe it was my mom’s, once, too. I don’t know. I don’t ever want to do this again, but… I needed to, once. I needed to see it. I think. I don’t know. I’m so cold.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Valerie whispered.
The problem was that she knew what she was going to do.
She couldn’t go back.
Not unless she was certain that her mom and dad were there and that they would be able to keep Sasha safe.
And there wasn’t any way to know that…
Maybe the attack had scared off her parents. Maybe. Though she doubted it.
More likely, her parents were at or around the apartment, waiting for Valerie and Sasha to come back. Just like the people who had come to the apartment were waiting for Valerie and Sasha to show up. And it was, what, a dice roll?, who was going to find them first.
Could she get there fast enough that her parents would at least be able to fight for them?
Did she want that?
At this point, she was certain that her mom didn’t have the resources to find her. Susan Blake would have been here hours ago, if she knew where Valerie was.
They needed to move on.
And what maybe upset her even more was that she knew what was going to happen from there.
“Come on,” she said, to Sasha, putting an arm around the girl’s shoulders and walking toward the mouth of the alley.
“What are we going to do?” Sasha asked, and Valerie nodded.
All night she’d been thinking about it.
Doing the what-ifs.
All night.
She knew the answer.
Knew it cold.
She just couldn’t believe that she was the one who was about to do it.
They walked.
And walked.
And walked.
There had been boys at one point, proving that it was a weekend or a really bad part of town, but Valerie had given them a look over her shoulder and somehow that had been enough. She’d wondered for two blocks what they’d seen on her face that they’d all just turned back around.
Sasha leaned against her long after the sun’s presence warmed the air enough to be comfortable in their coats. The girl shuddered from time to time, and eventually Valerie had to ask.
“You were so much better, the last two times someone threatened your life,” she said. “What’s going on?”
“My mom doesn’t know where I am,” Sasha said after a moment. “And I haven’t got a door that’s mine.”
Valerie nodded, not entirely understanding, but having some intuitive sense of what Sasha meant anyway.
“We’ll go as fast as we can,” she said. “Okay? As fast as we can.”
“Where are we going to go?” Sasha asked, and Valerie shook her head.
“You remember the bar my parents were talking about, back at the beach?”
“The one where your dad was too drunk to remember it?” Sasha asked, and Valerie nodded.
“We’re not legal to drink, but I’m about to go find that bar again.”
“They never said where it was,” Sasha said, and Valerie nodded.
Ahead.
There.
It was a bank.
She could work with that.
They went through the doors, and Sasha sat down on a chair, seeming like a huge weight came off of her.
Valerie looked around, trying not to look suspicious, then took a selection of things out of her pocket - her fingers found them by touch - and she crushed them together, spreading the powder across her lips and licking it off.
Two, maybe three minutes.
She went to sit behind an empty desk and looked at the phone.
Lady Harrington had done it for her, last time. This time it was up to her.
She picked up the phone and breathed words as they occurred to her, licking her finger and putting it above the buttons.
She dialed.
The phone rang twice and then stopped.
Valerie waited.
“Who is this?” a voice asked.
“Lady Harrington, this is Valerie Blake,” Valerie said.
There was a very, very long silence.
“Valerie, where are you?”
“I need you to not ask me that,” Valerie said. “People are looking for me, and… If I come back to the school, they’re just going to know where I am. You know that and I know that. The kids there are in danger, if I come back.”
“Who took you?” Lady Harrington asked.
Valerie considered that.
“I was with my mom until last night, and then something happened,” Valerie said. “I’m on my own, now.”
“Where is Miss Mills?” Lady Harrington asked.
“She’s with me,” Valerie said. “Honestly, she’s not taking it very well, but she’s okay.”
“Tell me where you are,” Lady Harrington said. “I will come for you myself.”