by Chloe Garner
Finally, they lay down the rope and started getting out other things, trying to attack her magic from other angles.
It wasn’t perfect.
It had been hasty and it was literally cast in sand.
She was moving again, going through the house and looking for things to shore it up.
“We need to go after them,” she called out to Martha. “If we don’t, they’re just going to keep trying.”
“Don’t know what you expect to do,” Martha called.
Valerie went through the front room, checking the window there, but it wasn’t ever opened, and it didn’t have any sense that it would let someone through the way the front window and the kitchen window did. Not that people ever came through it, but just that it was a point of entrance or exit of any kind. She glanced at Hanson as he sat in the bathtub on her way past, and he frowned. She didn’t remember hearing him move.
“I feel silly,” he said.
“Stay in there,” she answered, going into the bedroom where she and Sasha had slept and looking at that window.
The window faced the ocean, and it had that sense of coming and going, of sitting and watching the outside world, bringing it in.
“Sasha,” she called over her shoulder. “Sand.”
Sasha showed up a moment later with another handful of sand, and Valerie spread it, using a different set of markings. These were ones she’d seen her father use, though it shocked her that she could remember them.
They were… pointier.
They were going somewhere, but Valerie had no idea where.
She thought of going through the obstacle courses that Dr. Finn had set up, one step at a time, solve one problem at a time, look for the intuitive solution that got her to the goal by the most direct - if least obvious - path.
She needed to run them off.
The way to do that was to prove to them that they were more likely to die than capture her.
Right?
Or was there another way?
Was undefeatable possible?
Could she get them to give up by show of defensive force?
She smiled.
No.
Not by show of defensive force.
By making it impossible for them to beat her defenses.
She went back to the front room, looking at the array of casts the men were setting out, trying to break through her layered defense.
It took her almost no energy to hold her position, and they were exhausting serious resources trying to chip away at it.
Defense was easier.
Her dad had taught her that.
She could just hold, withstand, and let them exhaust their energy, and it would cost her almost nothing.
And then she could go after them, if she still had the resources.
That was the core tactic of the School of Magic Survival, even if no one had explicitly said it yet. That was what they were teaching her to do.
Except it wasn’t.
Dr. Finn never told her to sit back and let the magic casts in a practicum room wind down or wear out or expire. He sent her in to go after them.
And Valerie didn’t want to sit and watch and wait to see if they were going to succeed at breaking her defenses.
They were good.
They would hold.
Right up until they didn’t.
No.
She wasn’t going to wait.
She had a plan and she was going to do it, because she wasn’t going to play to not lose.
She was going to play to win.
Her mom taught her that.
“I need those,” Valerie said, going back into the kitchen.
“No, Martha answered.
“Ma,” Hanson called. “Give her what she needs.”
“No,” Martha answered, louder, for Hanson’s benefit. “I have my casts ready.”
“That one isn’t going to work,” Valerie said, pointing. She didn’t know why. Didn’t even know what it was. She just knew that it was defective somehow.
Martha frowned and poked at it, pushing something back into alignment, and it popped in some way that Valerie didn’t yet have the vocabulary to describe it.
She nodded.
“Okay, it will now. But they’re draining. If my defenses hold up long enough, your casts are going to be done before they even get in the door. Let me use what you have.”
Some of it was spent.
A lot of it was spent.
But there were things she could disassemble and use, still, if she worked quickly.
“Come look,” Sasha said. “Look how hard they’re working to get through what Valerie has up.”
Martha looked down the hallway at Hanson.
“Ma,” he called. “Please.”
Finally, Hanson’s mother stood, walking cautiously to the window.
“Careful,” Valerie called. “At least one of them has a gun.”
“And they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot me,” Martha murmured, going to stand next to the window and peeking out through the curtains.
She watched for almost a full minute, shaking her head.
“Those are serious casts going on out there,” she said, looking back at Valerie. “They’re leaving scorch marks on the grass already.”
There wasn’t much grass, and the short scrub grass that was growing out front wasn’t exactly the kind to catch fire easily.
Valerie nodded.
“Let me go after them,” she said.
“What are you planning?” Martha asked, coming back to the kitchen.
Valerie shook her head.
“That’s not how I work. I just put my hands on things and they do things, and it works.”
Martha frowned.
“Naturals are weird,” she said. Valerie shrugged.
“You’ve met Dr. Finn, then,” she said. Martha pursed her lips sarcastically.
“When I knew him, he was just Gregory,” she said. “And he was all the way weird, even without magic.”
“Still is,” Valerie said. “But he’s a really good teacher and a really, really good magic user. Probably better than anyone else at school, for what he does.”
Martha shook her head, then threw up her hands.
“If we all die, I guess it doesn’t change much,” she said, and Valerie slid quickly into the chair, pulling things apart and reorganizing them, sorting them the way she’d done in class and in Mr. Tannis’ room, letting her hands put things where she wanted them to be.
She didn’t know where she was going until she got there.
Piece by piece, she started assembling things, then she frowned and sat up.
“Hanson,” she called. “Is there a pair of nail clippers on there? In one of the drawers, maybe?”
Hanson scrambled out of the tub as the house shuddered, and Valerie looked up at the ceiling.
It was not much of a house.
Seriously, she wasn’t sure how much there was holding down the roof. If it weren’t for how beautiful the days were, day after day, it would have been a dreary little place, and it wasn’t meant to hold up under that kind of physical force.
She’d wondered, once, how it survived that long against hurricanes, but figured that was a Susan Blake trick and not something she needed to worry about.
“If you’re planning on using fingernails, they tend to be more potent if you peel them rather than cut them,” Martha said from the counter.
Valerie looked over her shoulder and nodded.
“Thank you,” she said, realizing immediately that Martha was right.
She put her fingers into her mouth, one after the next, settling on her ring finger. She bit through the fingernail and tore it off, then dropped it on the table, continuing to work.
The cast came together in… seconds.
It was just sitting there, waiting for her.
She put it all together, then put her index finger back in her mouth and drew a circle around it in saliva.
Which was outright g
ross, truly, but…
That was what she was supposed to do.
She put her hands down on the table, to either side of the cast, and she looked up.
Sasha was watching her with an intentness that suggested she would have been taking notes if she’d had paper sitting out.
Hanson was leaning against the wall in the kitchen.
Should have been in the tub, but she wasn’t going to remind him.
Besides, he deserved to be here. The tub was only going to save him if the roof collapsed, and even then…
Nevermind.
Martha was leaning against the sink with her arms crossed.
Skeptical, but not completely dismissive, just now.
Valerie nodded.
This had an all-or-nothing feel to it.
Between the ingredients that had already expired by the time she got to them and the ones that she was consuming for this cast, there wasn’t much left.
If this failed, she could continue layering some defenses, with what she had for spoken casts and written casts, but the potions were exhausted.
And if the men outside had unlimited time and unlimited resources, they were going to make it through.
That much was… inescapable.
She could wait.
But it wasn’t her instinct.
And so far, and everything that Dr. Finn had taught her, what she knew was to trust her instincts.
She spoke.
Six different languages, none of which she’d been able to speak or read before she’d come to school, diction like moving through a mechanical routine that simply allowed no other options, words that she would never be able to speak again unless she needed them for a cast.
It took thirty seconds, and then the walls popped and the whole house swayed. She closed her eyes and pressed down on the table, feeling the surge of power as the spell caught and rolled out, not a bubble like it had been in Mrs. Reynolds’ room, but a flame front, burning and consuming any magic that wasn’t hers, wasn’t her mothers. She felt the tatters of Sasha’s spellwork burn away, then the dark magic out front.
It had no hope.
No defense against the rage of magic coming at it.
Defensive magic that ate everything in front of it.
There were yells, and Sasha and Martha both ran to the front window to watch.
“There’s a car,” Sasha said. “Another one.”
Valerie shook her head, still holding the spell, still consuming the casts that were set, the ones that were in progress, the ingredients themselves.
It was going to burn out.
Quickly.
The instant she let it go.
So she had to be sure she got it all.
She forced it out another foot and another, and Sasha yelled.
“It’s Ethan,” she said. “And Shack.”
Valerie’s head flew up.
Four men from The Pure, driven by Valerie’s own magic, straight at Shack and Ethan.
“We have to help them,” she said, holding the spell for one more moment. “We have to get them in the house somehow.”
“No,” Sasha said, a smile in her voice. “No, Lady Harrington’s with them…”
“Wow,” Martha breathed. I didn’t realize.”
There was an awed pause, and Valerie let her cast go, standing.
“There’s a reason she’s headmistress,” Sasha said. “I guess.”
“Wow,” Martha said again.
By the time Valerie got to the window, all she saw was Lady Harrington leading a very astonished-looking Shack and Ethan across the lawn, through the prone bodies of the four men.
“Are they…?” Valerie asked, and Sasha shrugged.
“Don’t know.”
“How did she do that?” Valerie asked. “She doesn’t have anything.”
“You…” Sasha said slowly. “You missed it.”
Valerie went to the side door and opened it, going to stand out in the sand.
Ethan rushed up to hug her and she held on to him for a long time as Shack and Lady Harrington went inside.
“You’re okay,” he said.
“You’re here,” she answered.
“Would have been here earlier, but there was a crash on the interstate in Atlanta,” he said, squeezing her hard.
“What was that cast we saw when we drove up?” Lady Harrington asked. “Was that yours, Mrs. Cox?”
“It was Valerie’s,” Martha answered.
“I thought as much,” Lady Harrington said, and Valerie felt Ethan laugh silently.
“That woman is a beast,” he said, just for her, and she sighed.
“You found the saboteur?” she asked, finally pulling away and taking his hand to go into the house.
“My brother,” he said. She looked over at him, and he shrugged. “I didn’t think he could, but he did.”
She shook her head and tipped her temple to rest against his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“We still have the issue of the cast that started all of this,” Lady Harrington said as they closed the door behind them. “The school is compromised, and there is only so much I can do with that burr in our defenses.”
“It’s my job to take her to the Council,” Martha said, stepping forward.
“No,” Lady Harrington said. “I am taking her back to school.”
“I have my job,” Martha said. “And I found her.”
“No,” Lady Harrington said again. “I will not permit it.”
There was something even stonier in her voice than Valerie recognized, and Ethan let go of Valerie’s hand to put his arm around her in a motion that was somewhere between protective and supportive.
It had been a long day.
She let it go.
“She is the path to Susan Blake,” Martha hissed. “And the Council needs Susan to fall in line. If we don’t win this war, everyone could die.”
“Frankly, I trust Susan and Grant more than the entire Council combined,” Lady Harrington said, then pinched her mouth slightly. “Actually, I trust any member of the Council more than all of them combined, as I say it.”
Valerie took a breath, then nodded.
“So everyone at school is safe if I go back?” she asked. “There isn’t anyone there feeding information to the… the Superiors?”
“As far as I am aware, no,” Lady Harrington said. “But we are going to increase our security on you, personally, until we get the cast settled out.”
“Oh,” Valerie said, just figuring out what Lady Harrington was talking about. “Oh, I can fix that.”
Lady Harrington raised an eyebrow at her, and Valerie nodded.
“Yeah. Just. Can we go back, now? I’m tired.”
“I expect you are,” Lady Harrington said, collecting Sasha with a sweep of her arm and starting for the door again. Shack waited until the headmistress was past and then followed, like a rear guard of some sort.
Valerie was glad he was there.
“Are you coming, Mr. Cox?” Lady Harrington asked without looking back.
“Am I invited?” Hanson asked in return.
“You have a place at the school, if your mother chooses to send you there. As a student, not as a ward. I’ve heard a rumor that you have potential.”
Valerie swallowed again as Ethan pivoted her around and opened the door.
“I will make a full report to Merck Trent,” Martha called after them. “And you had better not lose her, in the meantime.”
“Lock up when you leave,” Valerie called over her shoulder as she went out once more into the cool air and the sunshine.
Headed back to the School of Magic Survival.
The mark on the wall just vanished.
Sasha had had to help her figure out all of the pieces that went into the spell, but sitting on the floor in the dorm hallway with all of the pieces - not just casting elements, but tools as well - with half the teaching staff gathered behind her and most every door on the hallwa
y open despite Lady Harrington’s repeated demands that the girls close their doors or face being sent away while Valerie worked, her hands knew what to do without Sasha needing to read out any more than the first instruction.
The mark had no chance any more than any of the casts at the beach had.
She turned her head to look back at Dr. Finn and Mr. Jamison, where they stood just off to the side behind her, and Dr. Finn nodded.
“Well cast, Miss Blake. We will resume our work on Monday.”
He gave her a quick little smile and turned away, brushing through the crowd of teachers who were still trying to work out what Valerie had done. Mr. Jamison watched her for another minute, then nodded.
“You’re just like her,” he said quietly, then gave her a much more sincere smile and nodded again. Valerie pressed her lips and nodded back, turning back to the cast to dismantle it and make sure that it didn’t go off again.
Strange thought, but she felt the potential in it just as the thought occurred to her, that the cast still had way too much power in it, and if she wanted to… she could take aim and use it on something else entirely.
What? She had no idea.
And that was why she was tearing it down.
But Daphne Leblanc had taught her a new tactic that she’d never used before, and a new method for employing the wand that Mr. Tannis had given her the previous semester.
Boy, what she wouldn’t have given to have the wand with her in the beach shack…
She tucked the wand away in a pocket and stood, squatting to pick up the remains of the cast and brush the final bits onto a sheet of paper that she folded over and turned to Mr. Tannis to hand it to him.
“You can do whatever you want with that, but I would burn it,” she said, and he nodded.
“We should have a conversation about what classes you want to take next semester,” he said, looking at the impromptu envelope thoughtfully. “I think we may need to plan a curriculum around you, and now is the time to get started on that.”
She wrinkled her nose.
“Do I have to be special?” she asked and he sighed at her.
“Don’t underestimate how much everyone around you wishes they could do what you do. Not excluding myself.”
She sighed.
“Tell me that when everyone’s trying to kill you to get someone else’s attention.”
His brow creased just a fraction and the corner of his mouth came up.