by Chloe Garner
She just wanted to see it happen.
“So what does it mean if he tested strong light?” Valerie asked.
“If he’s got weak dark, but more dark than Shack, it probably means he’d have a hard time getting in at Light School. They just… all they want is pure light users, if they can get them.”
“But they’d take you,” Valerie said. Sasha ducked her head.
“I don’t know. They wanted me to take their entrance exam. Maybe they would have let me in. I don’t know. I just… My skills were always only what I could prove. I’m just really good at proving them, I think. My mom was a really good teacher.”
“I bet,” Hanson said. Valerie rolled her eyes.
“You smell that?” Sasha asked. “That’s the ocean.”
Valerie nodded. The air had been changing for blocks, now, and they just had to get far enough out of town that the property values dropped and the houses began to shrink.
They were actually close.
“We should keep our eyes open for a grocery store,” Sasha said. “It’s going to be a lot safer and a lot cheaper if we buy our own food rather than going to restaurants to eat.”
“Do you cook?” Hanson asked, an honest question.
“Some,” Sasha said.
“Valerie’s a good cook,” Hanson said. “She and her mom used to cook dinner together a lot.”
Boy, that thought, that memory hurt a lot more than Valerie would have expected.
“I can do stuff that you boil out of a box and then put stuff on it,” Valerie said. “And I can chop vegetables and fruit and put them in a bowl. Other than that, I need a recipe, and we got all of our recipes off of our phones.”
“Now there’s irony,” Sasha said, and Valerie frowned.
“Why is that?” Hanson asked.
“She can’t cook without a spellbook,” Sasha said. Valerie shook her head. She’d seen that coming.
“Come on,” she said. “There ought to be a strip mall along here somewhere with a grocery store in it. We need to get enough food to last us maybe a week. Keep in mind that the cottage doesn’t have power. No fridge, no stove.”
They did find one, and they loaded up with more groceries than were likely going to fit in the tiny beach hut’s kitchen, but Hanson was more than willing to carry the bulk of them, and they went on.
Maybe an hour later, they found it. Tucked in between two untended lots, with greenery threatening to engulf it at any moment, Valerie hadn’t ever seen anything more beautiful.
All the same, they waited another hour, until after the sun had set, to go in, trying to figure out if anyone might be watching it.
Sasha let them in and they put the groceries down on the table, then went to watch out the front window, kneeling in a row on the threadbare carpet.
Nothing happened.
Nothing happened.
A car went past without slowing, but all three of them watched it until it was out of sight.
“Do we go to bed?” Sasha asked.
“I think we have one of us stay up,” Valerie said. “If someone comes, it would be better if they didn’t catch all three of us asleep.”
“Do you have anything to cast on the house or around it or anything to help defend it?” Sasha asked, and Valerie emptied what was left of the spellcasting ingredients onto the unstable kitchen table.
She looked at them, running her fingers across them, then shook her head.
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s tell weed, isn’t it?” Sasha asked, and Valerie nodded.
“I think so.”
Sasha smiled and picked it up.
“Let me see what I can do,” she said, and Valerie frowned, taking a step back.
“Be my guest.”
She and Hanson leaned against the kitchen counters to watch as Sasha worked. She was using a lot of spoken casting and a lot of patterns, and at one point she went outside to get a handful of sand - which made Valerie cringe, because that stuff was gonna get everywhere - but Valerie could feel the subtle power of the cast as Sasha worked on it. She glanced at Hanson and nodded.
“You getting this?” she asked, and he shook his head.
“What language is she speaking?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” Valerie said. “I’ve only learned a little bit of a few languages, so I’m a bad person to ask. I do most of my casting in English, which she says is really hard.” She paused as Sasha shot her a look. “Oh, and we aren’t supposed to talk while she’s working.”
“Sorry,” Hanson whispered, and Sasha shot him another look.
He put his hand over his mouth.
The entire cast took maybe twenty minutes, then Sasha threw the majority of the sand back outside, coming back in to brush her hands over the sink.
There wasn’t some giant aha moment, like when Valerie had put up the red protection bubble in class, but she suspected that that was the point. No one driving past the house would notice anything about it.
“Who wants to stay up?” Valerie asked. “Four hours, then come and get one of the others.”
“I assume that means you want to sleep?” Hanson asked. She smiled.
“You’ll recall we missed a night, three nights back.”
“But we all slept in the luggage locker at the bus station,” Sasha said. “And on the floor at the clothing store. I’ll go first. I need to think about where we can go to get some more spellcasting ingredients that will do us any good, anyway.”
“I’ll do it,” Hanson said. “I was just teasing. Val loves to sleep.”
“I know,” Sasha said. “But I’m not. I need to think. We have nothing left, so we need to figure out how to get more, without access to the lab.”
“How does everyone not at school get their stuff?” Hanson asked.
“Markets,” Sasha said. “And dealers. Neither of which we have access to, either. Which means we’re stuck with natural collection and dual-use civilian goods.”
“Look, you two can duke it out for who’s most willing to make the sacrifice. I’m going to go fall face-first into my pillow, and you can either wake me up midway through the night or you can not. With any luck, we’ll have a little bit of time here to see if my parents come to find us, but we need to rest up while we can, because if they don’t turn up, we need to keep moving.”
Hanson nodded and waved.
“Sleep well, Val,” he said. She gave him a tight smile and turned her attention to Sasha.
“I feel better,” her friend said. “We’ll talk in the morning, if I come up with anything clever.”
Valerie nodded, turning to walk down the short hallway that lead to the two bedrooms and the bathroom.
“We could just both stay up,” she heard Hanson say, and she shook her head.
They were going to do it, and they were going to spend the entire night talking and grinning and feeling happy and alive because they were together.
She’d never seen Hanson act like such a puppy dog.
It would have made her happy - it did make her happy - except that she’d just sent Ethan back to school, and she was genuinely afraid that she was going to wake up to people who were there to kill anyone in the house who wasn’t Valerie, and to take Valerie prisoner.
She should have had the hardest time going to sleep, knowing that. And yet. She laid her head down on the pillow and her mind turned off gratefully and easily.
“So, the question is,” Ethan said as they finished the last of the breakout brew potions, “who has access to external communication and how do we prove it?”
“Opportunity,” Shack said. “I was going to go looking for motive. Who would want to let demons into Survival School?”
“Means, not opportunity,” Ethan said. “Anyone could have opportunity, because we’re all alone at some point around here. It’s the question of how. And everyone could have motive. One of the students could decide that Valerie really doesn’t belong here and cast that first seed cast, and then ha
ve completely lost control of it for the second attack. A teacher could think the same thing. Or it could be someone who is actually working for The Pure and trying to help them get leverage on Valerie’s mom. Or it could be about not her, entirely. Actually. I don’t even care. I just care about how they got the information out.”
“Anyone with a car could leave after school is out,” Shack said. “Just go drive out until they hit cell phone reception again and send a text.”
“So we look at people’s phones,” Ethan said. “Next?”
“I’ve heard that some of the cottages have spotty reception where the upperclassmen have been picking at the warding for years and years.”
“Still a cell phone,” Ethan said. “But now anyone with a car and anyone who can get into a cottage.”
“Just the upperclassmen cottages though,” Shack said. “I think the visitor cottages are still locked down.” He paused, lining up the potions. “Tell me again why we’re breaking out?”
“Because no one is going to consent to let us hack into their phones, especially not someone with incriminating texts there. So we’re going to go break into the office and see what the files there have to say.”
Shack pursed his lips, nodding.
“I thought that the explosion there was looking like overkill, but if you’re breaking into the office, too, that might not even make it.”
“I’ve got a redundant breaking spell, over here,” Ethan indicated. “I’m worried about the damping spell.”
“And the tracking spell,” Shack said. “You know she’s going to have that buried under everything else.”
“I’m hoping the damping spell will hold her off,” Ethan said. “If we can get it situated just right, her spell won’t report back strong enough to wake her up, and maybe we can get in and out without them noticing.”
“You know the first time we did this was the night of the first attack,” Shack said. “You have to at least think about that.”
“What, consider that maybe we were the ones who let in the let in the demons? Sure. Thought about it.”
“And?” Shack asked.
“There’s still someone who planted the seed, who got past everyone to get in and to get out, with everyone awake, and there’s no reason to think that someone would have chosen that specific night, when we had the defenses down, to come try their attack. I didn’t tell anyone we were going to do it, unless you found a way to let them know.”
“This wasn’t supposed to be me telling you to treat me like I might have done it,” Shack said, and Ethan shrugged, grinning.
“Just proving I thought about it. I know you wouldn’t bring demons in here any more than you would your own house.”
“I just feel bad,” Shack said. “If we’re doing the right thing, we shouldn’t have to be defeating the defenses to do it. I mean, we are creating risk, doing this.”
“And if Valerie’s right, it won’t matter, because she isn’t even here.”
Shack sat back to lean against Hanson’s bed.
“I don’t buy it, actually,” he said. “I didn’t want to say it in front of her, because it obviously bothers her so much, but I think they’re after the Council kids.”
Ethan tipped his head.
Something about that tickled.
“Keep going.”
“Right, so, they killed Yasmine in the first attack. They were all over the place, down there, if you listen to what the girls say, dragging them up and down the hallway, trying to get them all in one place, and Valerie was there, pulling them off into her room so that the demons couldn’t get to them, good for her, but… Yasmine was dead before they left. Like… Are we sure that that wasn’t who they were looking for, and once they killed her, they bailed? Why else would they leave?”
Ethan had an answer to that, but also a promise to keep it a secret. He just nodded.
“Where was Ann?” he asked.
Shack shook his head.
“I don’t know. She wasn’t in the room that Valerie was guarding, I know that, but I asked her about it and… She doesn’t like to talk about it. She and Yasmine were close. I’m not sure she remembers a lot from that night. I know she saw Yasmine…”
Ethan shuddered, shaking his head.
“Okay, so they killed Patrick and Conrad in the second attack, but they also injured Kit…”
“Kit was with them in the bathroom when the demons teleported in. They were… Well, you remember.”
“I was with Valerie,” Ethan said. “Down out of the building. I wasn’t up here at all.”
Shack frowned.
“I thought I could have sworn you were here when it happened. Weird. Okay, so… They were blowing up doors and pulling people out into the hallway, a lot like what the girls say, throwing people against walls… People were fighting back, people were trying to hide… But then two of them went into the bathroom and there was this big… noise. I don’t know how to describe it. And Kit survived because he was in a shower and didn’t hear it, so whatever it was… it just didn’t hit him as hard as it did Patrick and Conrad.”
Ethan closed his eyes, remembering that night.
“They put a bomb in the girls’ hallway,” he said. “I can’t imagine it was an assassination, with as close as we came to the entire school blowing up.”
“I know,” Shack said. “The details don’t all add up. But, as you say it, maybe we can rule out everyone who lives in the dorms? I mean, would you sign up to be a spy when they’re going to try to bomb the place out from under you?”
Was anyone not here when it happened?” Ethan asked. “Other than Valerie and me?”
“Tell you what, you’re looking better and better as a suspect, actually,” Shack said, scratching his head. “I don’t know. I thought you were here. We were talking, and then there was all of this yelling and the first door blowing off the hinges…”
“Hanson was here,” Ethan said. “Are you thinking of that? Valerie came up here to talk to us, give him her blessing with Sasha, right?”
Shack frowned.
“Maybe that is what I’m remembering. Anyway, I don’t know who else was here and who wasn’t. We were just hanging out, you know? Not paying attention to what was going on in the hallway, especially not enough to count.”
“Yeah,” Ethan said. “I just… Maybe you’re willing to burn your own spy and just blow up the whole building. Maybe they didn’t know. I just… If I knew they were capable of that, and I was helping them pick a day, that would have been a good time to be out looking at the stars.”
“Is that what you were doing?” Shack teased.
“Where was Ann the second time?” Ethan asked. “Were they looking for you, too?”
“Dude, the wards on that door are ones my mom taught me herself,” Shack said. “They couldn’t get it open.”
Ethan nodded.
“Is Ann a part of this?” he asked, and Shack shook his head.
“I know she rubs everyone the wrong way, sometimes, but she would have come with us, if she was trying to help them. She’s just got her own agenda, and it isn’t about getting along.”
Ethan nodded.
“What about Milton?” he asked. “Where was he?”
“Again, don’t know,” Shack asked.
“You didn’t ask him?” Ethan asked. “Everyone wanted to talk to everyone about where they were when it happened.”
“Milton keeps his own counsel,” Shack said with a shrug. “I don’t think I’ve ever known him to volunteer anything.”
Ethan nodded.
“So it could be him.”
“Are we seriously looking at Council kids as potential spies who are working with the Superiors to try to kill the rest of us…” He paused. “That actually does sound in character for us, in general.”
Ethan nodded.
“And then there’s the theory that Valerie is still at the center of this, because of her mom.”
“I know,” Shack said. “Does it have to be
one or the other? Kill off some of the Council kids, try to grab her and run?”
“No,” Ethan said, shaking his head. “No, it could be both. Probably would be both, if they were hunting us. No reason not to go after Susan Blake’s daughter, while you’ve got her cornered.”
“Well, there is good reason not to go after her,” Shack said with a sideways smile. “But they didn’t know that at the time.”
Ethan grinned.
“No kidding.”
Shack smiled, then shook his head.
“I’m down for this,” he said. “I do think someone is helping them get in. And I think that you’re right that it wasn’t us, the one time, though I can’t prove it and I don’t like it. I just had the thought, and didn’t want to let it wander off without talking about it.”
“I think that going after Valerie is great cover for killing off the Council kids,” Ethan said. “And if you add in the curse…”
Shack frowned.
“I hadn’t thought about the curse.”
“If they think that we are the ones who are going to take down The Pure… Wouldn’t you come after us?”
“Why wait until now?” Shack asked.
“Dude, would you want to try to figure out how to break into your parents’ house? Or Yasmine’s? Or Milton’s? They’re all fortresses. Maybe they didn’t know how old we were or when we were starting school. Maybe it was just that they didn’t want to make a move until the war was already going again…”
“They were getting other things ready,” Shack muttered. “We were so flat-footed…”
“Can’t change it now,” Ethan said. “Regardless, we’re all grouped up in one place, now, and they’ve got someone on the inside casting holes for them that are apparently really hard to close…”
“Means,” Shack said. “Who could cast that?”
“A silverthorn?” Ethan asked, then shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe that will be in the files?”
“I just want to know what we’re looking for before we risk getting suspended over it,” Shack said. “I mean, surely none of the underclassmen could do it, right?”
“None of the ones in my classes,” Ethan said. “Unless you count Valerie.”
Shack nodded.
“She could, couldn’t she? No. It’s got to be… an upperclassman. Someone who doesn’t live in the dorms… or a teacher.”