by Chloe Garner
“Well, we could go to the moon, too, just to see what’s there,” Sasha said.
“File under ‘hiding’,” Valerie said, and Hanson grinned wider. “Unless you think it’s possible that’s where my parents are.”
“Not funny,” Sasha said, and Valerie shook her head.
“I know it’s not, but I’m not hungry anymore, and that’s enough for me, right now.”
“Not me,” Sasha said. “I just signed on to the stupidest, most dangerous thing I’ve ever heard of, and we don’t have a plan. Or even a place to sleep tonight.”
“You can open doors,” Valerie said. It wasn’t intended to be dismissive, but it came out that way. “We’ll find someplace that isn’t populated at night and we’ll sleep there. I’m not sleeping in an alley again tonight.”
“You slept in an alley last night?” Hanson asked, looking down at Sasha. He had his arm around her and it was disgusting how cute they were, even with everything.
“Didn’t sleep,” Sasha muttered, and Valerie nodded.
“We… They were chasing us and we just got away. I think. Whole thing is kind of blurry and afraid. But. We aren’t doing that again.”
“My mom can track magic,” Hanson said. “If she’s close enough.”
“Okay,” Valerie said. “Explain that to me. Mr. Jamison could tell that my dad had been the one to cast on my door, at one point…”
“When did your dad cast on our door?” Sasha asked, and Valerie shook her head.
Too much for one night.
“Doesn’t matter. And Lady Harrington scanned all of us to see if we’d been involved with the silverthorn thingy. Does that mean that you have to know someone’s magic to track it?”
Sasha paused for almost a full minute, considering.
“If you really knew specifically what kind of magic they were casting, or if you had an alarm net set up in the area already, I think you could do it without, but I think that, if we’re just off somewhere that they don’t already have magic set up, and if they weren’t aware of really precisely what kind of unlocking spell I was using… Yeah. I think we should be safe.”
Valerie nodded.
“Good. Then that’s what we do.”
“But it’s illegal,” Sasha said.
Valerie stared at her.
“You want to sleep outside?” she asked. “We don’t have the money to get a hotel. Not for long. And we don’t have any friends we can go stay with… We don’t even know anyone around here. So we can turn ourselves into child services and go into foster homes or something… I can’t even imagine how that would work. But I bet that they could find Hanson’s mom, and then… Yeah. None of that makes sense. We won’t make a mess. We’ll just sleep there and leave in the morning.”
“And what about brushing my teeth?” Sasha asked. “What about showers?”
“You’re freaking out, aren’t you?” Valerie asked, and Sasha frowned.
“Maybe.”
“We’ll find a convenience store and buy toothbrushes,” Hanson said. “And soap.”
Valerie glanced at him and he gave her a half a smile.
He wasn’t afraid.
Maybe he should have been, but he wasn’t.
“Are we running, or are we trying to find my parents?” Valerie asked.
Sasha looked up at Hanson, and he shrugged.
“I’m not sure those are separate options,” he said. “Why wouldn’t we do both?”
“Because if we’re looking for my parents, we go back to the beach hut,” Valerie said. Sasha gasped, and Valerie nodded. “It’s risky, because if Hanson’s mom keeps following us from Von Lauv, she’ll end up there eventually, but I can actually find it, it was comfortable enough for what it is, and maybe my parents come looking for us. The other place we stayed that I might be able to get back to is that warehouse…” She shuddered. “My mom said she cleaned it out for us. I can’t imagine what it would have been like, normally.”
“I’d rather sleep outside,” Sasha agreed.
“If we run, we just pick a direction and we run,” Valerie said. “But nothing changes until Ethan and Shack come up with something. We won’t do anyone any good.”
“No,” Sasha said. “That’s not true. We’ll have time to talk about what we saw with your parents and what it means, and I can teach Hanson at least a little bit about magic.”
“I shouldn’t be here,” Hanson said. “I’m used to being the bodyguard type, hit things hard when they need hit, but you guys are both better fighters than I am. And I’m not as smart as either one of you.”
“Shut up,” Valerie said. “I’m not having the ‘who’s smarter’ fight with you again.”
“You think you’re smarter than he is?” Sasha asked, and Valerie shook her head.
“Nope.”
Sasha blinked.
“I don’t get it.”
“She’s smarter than I am,” Hanson said. “Without a doubt.”
“He’s smarter than me,” Valerie said. “And I can back it up with numbers.”
He stuck his tongue out at her and she smirked back.
“What?” Sasha asked, then shook her head. “Okay, never mind. None of us are warriors. We’re not healers. We aren’t leaders. We’re kids. We’re at magic school to learn magic. Right now… Honestly, we’re just trying to out-wait someone at Survival School figuring out how everyone got in for the attacks, and then we’ll go back. Right, Valerie? That’s all it is?”
Valerie chewed on her cheek.
“I think so,” she said. “If they were able to figure out exactly what allowed all three attacks…”
“Two,” Sasha said firmly. “Your mom was the one who triggered the second one.”
“All right, fine, both attacks… Yeah. I think we could go back and do the rest of this from there. But… Sasha, they treat us like prisoners. There’s no guarantee they’d let us even see them, and I don’t think they plan on teaching Hanson.”
Sasha raised her eyebrows.
“You’d rather I sleep in the streets?” she asked. “We’re in danger out here. As soon as it’s safe at school, we have to go back.”
Valerie let her attention drift out the window, watching all of the normal going on out there. She’d missed it, and she had to admit that she didn’t like the idea of going back to campus, where everything was so blocked off and it was just her and her four-hundred closest critics.
“Valerie?” Sasha warned.
“Give her a minute,” Hanson said. “I know that look.”
“What look is it?” Sasha asked.
“It’s her better judgment having a good long talk with her impulse generator.”
“Okay,” Sasha said slowly.
Valerie was her mother’s daughter.
“My mom never comes in, either,” Valerie said after another moment. “I get it now. I thought… You know, she was out here fighting all these fights and just so busy that she couldn’t, but… Coming in means giving up being free.”
“Doesn’t have to,” Hanson said.
“Doesn’t it?” Valerie asked, turning to look at him. “If we go back, how do we get out again? My dad had to come break us out in the middle of the night.”
“Why don’t we just leave?” Hanson asked.
“I don’t have a car and neither do either of you,” Valerie said.
“My parents were going to get me one, but I didn’t want to take care of it,” Sasha said, ducking her head. Valerie tipped her head to the side to look at her roommate, and Hanson shrugged.
“All three of us have money, apparently. And Shack does have a car. And I live with him, you know.”
“They won’t stand for it,” Valerie said. “They want to tell us when we can go and where, they want to know who we’re with. They’ll follow us if they don’t think we’re telling them the truth. Out here, now? No one knows anything and no one can control us.”
“Valerie,” Sasha said. “We’re kids.”
“They exp
ect us to fight their war,” Valerie said. “And they don’t even tell us the truth about what it’s about.”
“We have to go back,” Sasha said. “I won’t stay with you after they figure it out.”
“If you go back and I don’t, they’ll put you… wherever Ethan said, the bad place, for not telling them how to find me.”
“You won’t stay out here by yourself,” Hanson said. “And… Val. Please. Let the better judgment win. You’re just fighting with us because your impulse doesn’t like losing.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I know. I just can’t stand it. Every minute, they get to say where I am and what I’m doing. Because magic.”
“It ends,” Sasha said, and Hanson shook his head.
“No it doesn’t. It’s the same thing the Council is doing to the adults. And that’s what she sees.”
“And what I’m fighting. I’m not saying that The Pure should be allowed to keep killing people in the name of keeping magic in the right hands, and I’ll get to that, someday, if my mom doesn’t first, but… The Council are just right there. Pushing against me, asking for the fight.”
“Val,” Hanson said. “If we can find your parents, that’s great, but if we can’t… We can feed ourselves for a long time on this money if we’re careful, but we have to think about everything. Coats and toothbrushes and bags and transportation. Unless you can come up with a way to make more money, this is going to run out. We need a plan for when it does.”
She nodded, folding her hands and looking down at her wrists.
“I know. And I’ll go back. Dr. Finn has been helping me figure out how to control my powers, and Mr. Tannis was working with me on how to structure my classes to get the most out of the school as a natural. Lady Harrington actually conspired with me to get Shack and Ethan out of there unnoticed, and Mrs. Reynolds is the coolest teacher I’ve ever had. Mr. Jamison… he’s just great. All the time. I don’t hate everyone there. I just…”
“Not yet, Val,” Hanson said. “You can’t be out here on your own yet.”
“You’re going to, though, aren’t you?” Sasha asked. “The first opportunity, you’re going to ghost us and we’ll never see you again.”
“I don’t know,” Valerie said. “Maybe.”
Yes.
“We won’t let her,” Hanson said quietly. “We’ll figure it out.”
Sasha didn’t look entirely convinced, but she nodded. Hanson shoved her with his ribs.
“I showed up here out of nowhere, didn’t I? I think it’s looking like she can’t wander off without us, no matter what she wants to do.”
Valerie gave him a look of mock-dismay, and Hanson grinned.
“I don’t want to ditch anyone,” Valerie said. “That’s not what it’s about. I liked my life before this. My friends, my school, my home. I just…”
“I know,” Sasha said. “It’s just… I don’t know. You’ve got a new look in your eye, and it’s scaring me.”
“So?” Valerie asked, changing the subject. “Are we running or are we taking a risk in hopes of meeting up with my parents again?”
“I want to meet your dad,” Hanson said. “I can’t believe he’s still alive.”
Sasha nodded.
“I… I don’t want to think about what happens if they catch up to us again, but I really want to not be on our own anymore.”
“I think what’s most likely to happen is that my mom catches us,” Hanson said. “And, yeah, that’s bad, but it’s not bad like the other side finding us. She’s just going to take us back to school.”
Sasha nodded and leaned against him.
“Yeah. Okay. Let’s do that.”
“All right,” Valerie said. “Do you remember what city we were in?”
Lady Harrington had shown them back to their room wordlessly. As far as Ethan could tell, no one even knew they’d left the building. If Franky Frank was in on it, he didn’t say anything.
“So,” he said to Shack the next morning after breakfast. “How do we find out who’s working against us?”
Shack shrugged, leaning so that he could hang his elbows off the side of the bed.
“When the teachers haven’t managed it,” he said, and Ethan nodded.
“When the teachers haven’t figured it out. They are busy.”
“Yeah, but at the same time,” Ethan said. “They’ve locked everyone in the dorms for days now, and they haven’t managed to do anything.”
“How do you know?” Shack asked.
Ethan frowned.
“That’s a good point,” he said thoughtfully.
“Uh oh,” Shack said, grinning. “The last time I saw you make that face, I ended up grounded for two months.”
“Oh, that’s only if they catch us,” Ethan said, wiggling an eyebrow at him. “You up for making another escape brew?”
Shack sighed dramatically and swung his legs over the edge of the bunk.
“You know eventually they’re going to plug all the holes and keep you locked down in here, right?” his friend asked, and Ethan grinned.
“That’s why we make hay while the sun shines, man,” he answered, going to his desk and starting to dig out ingredients.
They could have stolen a car.
Valerie couldn’t stop thinking that maybe that would have been the easier way to do this, but no, they’d walked for six hours to get to a bus station, where they’d slept in the lost-luggage room and caught a bus the next morning that was headed to the right city.
The trip via bus was fine; Valerie had ridden on one before, but on the other end they were left on foot once more, with just a tourist brochure for a map on how to get to the coast.
They could have stolen a car, but they walked. They stopped for lunch and then again for dinner, and Valerie marveled at the number of vehicles they’d ridden around in, while her parents were in charge, the number of places she’d stayed with them. The work it must have taken to set all of that up, the money, the energy to maintain that.
Being a spy was a serious investment.
She wasn’t sure she was really interested in that level of focus and attention to detail.
She just liked being the recipient of the benefits of all that work.
Meanwhile, as she worried over whether her shoes were going to make it long enough to make it back to school, Hanson and Sasha talked.
They talked about their personal stories. They talked about the things they saw. They talked about politics and their parents. They talked about magic.
Hanson couldn’t get enough of listening to Sasha talk about magic, deep in the dopey early-on stages of attraction, and Sasha couldn’t find enough air to pour out all the words she wanted to say.
Early on, Ivory Mills had said that Sasha was quiet until you got to know her, but Valerie had never found that to be the case. Now, she felt like she understood what the contrasting option was.
It was actually possible that Hanson was retaining some of what he was hearing, based on the questions he was asking; it was possible that he was going to learn how magic worked just based on the torrent of information Sasha was giving him.
“Do you even know if you can do magic?” Valerie asked at one point.
“Ethan measured me,” he said, and Sasha’s eyes went wide.
“What was your result?” she asked.
“Strong light magic, really weak dark magic,” Hanson said. “Not as strong on the light magic or as weak on the dark magic as Shack, though.”
“I’m not strong on either,” Sasha said. “I can do both, but I think I’ve got capabilities that the testing doesn’t capture.”
“Yeah, you do natural magic,” Valerie said over her shoulder, and she heard Sasha gasp. Valerie turned to walk backwards. “What?”
“I do natural magic,” Sasha said. “That’s why I don’t test strongly on either light or dark.”
Valerie spread her fingers without raising her hands.
“Thought we knew that,” she said. Sasha sho
ok her head.
“I hadn’t put it together yet.”
“Okay,” Valerie said. “Were you worried that you weren’t good at anything? Because literally no one else was.”
“Maybe,” Sasha said. “I could do enough light magic to get in at Light School, I think, and I test really well, but I thought that maybe I had too much dark on my light-dark balance…”
“Nope,” Valerie said. “Every single person has always asked you why you were slumming at Survival School. Every one of them.”
“I do natural magic,” Sasha said. “You know, I can live with that, knowing that it isn’t just dark-tainted light magic.”
Valerie turned to walk forwards again, shaking her head at Sasha’s constant insecurities. She actually had an ego the size of the city, Sasha did, but it was really, really specific. If you asked her was she sure that those two ingredients would do what she said…? Oh, the wrath of Sasha was intense. The rest of the time, it was like she was never really sure if she measured up to anyone’s standards for anything.
“So your result was strong?” Sasha asked. “What test did Ethan use?”
Valerie listened to Hanson describing the details he could remember from the event, with Sasha filling in the blanks, and Valerie realized quite abruptly that Hanson had had experiences that she - Valerie - hadn’t. Experiences with magic.
“No one’s ever told me how I test,” Valerie said, not intending to sound sullen, but coming across that way anyway.
“I expect you’re off the charts,” Sasha said, not covering the jealous tone in her voice. “You certainly cast like you’re off the charts.”
“But I don’t know,” Valerie said. “And I never know what I’m doing.”
“The tests aren’t there to capture your knowledge,” Sasha said. “Obviously. They’re there to capture your capability. And you’ve got so much capability packed into you that it just explodes out any time it gets a chance.”
Valerie frowned.
She knew she was good at magic. She did things no one else she’d met at school could do, save Dr. Finn. She worked almost the same way her mother did, if she understood the clues right, and her mother was one of the best of the best. She didn’t doubt that she would test high.