Unveiling Magic
Page 32
“You think that I haven’t been in the crosshairs, young lady?” he asked.
She frowned at him.
“You were in the war?”
Of course he was.
She knew that, even, if not factually, by circumstance. They’d come to him for support, first thing. He knew about how to fight.
“I narrowly avoided fatal casts more than once,” he said. “I don’t know what happened out there, but if you need to sit and talk it through with someone, my door is open. Can’t imagine your faculty advisor not being available to you for such a thing.”
He gave her a dry but genuine smile, then held up the envelope.
“I’m going to go analyze this,” he said. “I will see you Monday.”
“Monday,” Valerie muttered, then turned to find Sasha once more.
“Monday?” Sasha asked, and Valerie shook her head.
“Everyone is all set for me to just pick back up where I was when I left off.”
“Well,” Sasha said quietly, then shook her head, glancing the length of the hallway where the teachers were still clustered and clumped, numbers of them going to poke at the wall where Valerie had just eradicated the spellwork there. “Come on.”
Valerie followed Sasha back into their room and they each sat down on a bed.
It wasn’t home.
Valerie still resented how she’d been dumped here and wouldn’t let it be home.
But it was nice to be back.
Sasha looked at her bracingly, and Valerie went to lean against the wall, her feet out in front of her.
“Okay, what?” she asked.
“Are you going to do what the lady said? From this morning?” Sasha asked.
“Daphne?” Valerie asked. “What do you mean?”
“The woman,” Sasha said. “In North Carolina. Are you going to go see her?”
Valerie shrugged.
“I don’t know yet. I mean…” She chewed on the inside of her lip. “I want to talk to my mom.”
“But you don’t know when you’ll get to,” Sasha said.
“Do you think I should?” Valerie asked. “Go?”
“No,” Sasha said emphatically. “I think we should stay here and let the grown-ups do their jobs. Today…” She shook her head. “But we can’t, can we? I mean, if the five of us… Hanson just showed up. That has to mean something, right?”
“Yeah,” Valerie said. She wanted to challenge it, but there was no other explanation than that he belonged with them. “What did you guys talk about last night?”
Sasha blushed, looking away.
“Everything,” she said. “Just… magic and school and you and Ethan and the Council and the beach and… Everything.”
“He kissed you,” Valerie said abruptly, and Sasha ducked her head. Valerie rolled her jaw to the side and nodded. “He did. He kissed you.”
“Yes,” Sasha said, blushing furiously.
“He’s a student here, now,” Valerie said with no small amount of astonishment. “He actually goes here.”
“Yeah,” Sasha said softly. “And you don’t hate him or anything.”
“Nope. I don’t hate him or anything.”
Sasha wound her arms together in front of her and twined her fingers, sitting with her knees against her shoulders and her chin on her arms.
“Can’t we just… everything is perfect, now, right? Can’t we just…?”
Valerie sighed.
“I don’t know, Sasha,” she said. “My parents are out there, fighting this, and maybe if I can help.”
“Would your mom want you to go out there?” Sasha asked. “I mean… They came and took us. So. Yeah. They wanted us to see, but was there a lot more they wanted to show us, or was Von Lauv really kind of it? And then… you weren’t safe here, and there was no way for us to come back, and so we kind of got… stuck?”
“I don’t know,” Valerie said again thoughtfully. “I want to ask her that. But… I mean, there’s this whole world she never told me about, and when I did ask her, even when we were with her… Did she ever really answer anything directly? It’s like, they’re so tied up in their secrets that they can’t ever give me a straight answer about anything, either of them.”
“They did tell us a lot,” Sasha said, tempering it, and Valerie nodded.
“And I’m grateful. I am. The Shadows…”
Sasha nodded.
“Yeah,” the redhead said. “Yeah.”
“Just. They had to show us, not tell us, and it was complicated. I just want a simple answer. Should I do this or shouldn’t I?”
“I think if life were that simple, there wouldn’t be wars,” Sasha answered.
Valerie gave her a dour look and put her elbows on her knees.
“Wish you would stop sounding so smart,” Valerie said. “You make me feel dumb.”
There was a knock on the door and Valerie straightened. Sasha got up and went to open it.
“Let us in,” Ethan hissed. “Before Mrs. Gold sees.”
“Are you kidding me?” Sasha asked, moving out of the way as Ethan, Hanson, and Shack crept in. “We just got back and you three are willing to risk suspension? For what?”
Ethan threw himself onto the bed next to Valerie, who shifted away from him and gave him a sideways look.
“She has a point,” she said. “You shouldn’t be here. Say what you came to say and get out. I don’t want to get in trouble today.”
“Are you kidding?” Ethan asked with an easy smile. “You’re the school’s hero. Last night, my dad was threatening to shut the whole school down because of that cast, and you just got rid of it with the entire faculty watching. You’re untouchable.”
“But Hanson isn’t,” Sasha said, standing under Hanson’s arm.
“They aren’t going to catch us,” Shack said. “We put up the right casts on our way down.”
“Yeah, at midnight,” Valerie said. “It’s almost dinner time. Everyone is out.”
“What did they say?” Ethan asked, sitting forward and putting his hand on Valerie’s knee.
His eyes were earnest, so she didn’t mock him.
Wanted to, but didn’t.
“They said… see you Monday. Why? What?”
“Lady Harrington said she would post teachers at the end of the dorm wing and outside of your classes,” Shack said. “Only way she could get Ethan’s dad to agree to let you come back here at all.”
Valerie drew her head back.
“Oh, I’d like to see them try to make me go anywhere else,” she said. Ethan grinned.
“That’s what I told them,” he said. “And Lady Harrington, too.”
Valerie shook her head.
“No. If you guys are in danger, I’ll do what I have to do, but…”
“No,” Ethan interrupted. “No. Don’t say that. It’s a lever, and my dad will use it. Okay? He’ll threaten to do all kinds of terrible things to me, and you know what, he may even be willing to go through with it, okay? But don’t do it. Anything that he has to make a threat to me to make you do? I’d rather I go through it than you, because I promise, what he’s asking you to do is worse. Okay?” He dodged his head to the side, trying to get directly into her eye-line. “I’m serious. Promise me.”
Valerie shrugged.
“I don’t…” she said slowly.
“Me, too,” Shack cut in, easy enough. “Every word of it, me too.”
She looked over at him, shaking her head.
“No. I won’t carry that. I… I cast at someone and tried to kill him. And I… I still am not over it. I can’t. Sometimes I can’t even look at my hand because I can’t believe I did that. I’m not going to be the thing that puts the two of you in danger. I don’t care…”
“Promise,” Sasha said softly. “You have to. You have to promise.”
It was almost Valerie’s mom’s voice. Almost.
She had to promise.
“Because if I don’t promise, it will work,” Valerie said softly. Sasha nodded.
/> “If we all know, if we all believe that you wouldn’t trade our safety for your cooperation, there’s hope that they won’t go through with it. It’s the only hope.”
“If what you have to do is worse, I don’t want you to do it, Val,” Hanson said.
“You don’t have any idea what they could do to you,” Valerie said, and Hanson shrugged, pulling Sasha closer against his side.
“Neither do you,” he answered.
“But they do,” Valerie said. “Especially Ethan and Shack.”
“Exactly,” Ethan said. “We know. And you have to promise. You have to.”
Valerie shook her head, then moved back against the wall, putting her forehead against the knuckles of her closed fists. This time she didn’t resent it when Ethan came to put his arm across her shoulders.
“It’s war,” he said softly, loud enough for the room to hear it. “You didn’t ask to be a key player, but you are. What you decide matters. We don’t want to be the reason that you make the wrong choice. None of us do. Promise. You’ll do the right thing, and you won’t let our parents push you around. We are something else, Valerie. You said it, and we all agreed. Don’t let them own you.”
She lifted her head, tears spilling down her face.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come back,” she said. “This is a Council school. Maybe this is too close.”
Ethan shook his head.
“The Council sponsors the school, but this is Lady Harrington’s school. As long as she’s here… She’s more than I thought she was.”
“She’s my grandmother,” Valerie said impulsively, and the room went quiet for a moment.
“That explains some things,” Shack said after a minute.
“A lot of things,” Ethan agreed.
Sasha was looking at Valerie with piercing eyes.
“What are you going to do?” her friend asked, and Valerie shook her head.
“Mr. Tannis wants to talk about my curriculum for next semester,” she said. “That feels like a lifetime away.”
“What do you mean?” Ethan asked Sasha, sensing that there was more to her question than the words indicated. Sasha intensified her look at Valerie, and Valerie sighed, giving Ethan and Shack the short version of what had happened with Daphne.
“She didn’t want me to go,” Valerie said. “And I don’t want to go, either. I want to stay here and actually learn to do magic. The things my parents can do, guys… It’s…”
“We grew up with it,” Ethan said.
“We did,” Sasha agreed, “but they’re next level.”
Valerie nodded.
“I thought they might be. I want to be like that.”
“They’re next level because they understand magic so much better,” Sasha said. “Understanding the alignments and the configurations, I was learning stuff just in a few lectures in one day that might have taken me months to master, here or with my mom.”
“Could you figure it out on your own, now?” Shack asked. “Knowing what you know now?”
Sasha shrugged.
“Maybe.”
“Can you teach us?” Shack pressed, and Sasha stiffened, looking at the floor for a moment as she considered that.
“Yes,” she said abruptly. “That’s exactly what I have to do. I need to… my notes. I need to go through my notes…”
She went digging through her bag, getting out her binder and threw herself onto her bed, poring over it for a moment. Valerie looked at her roommate with great appreciation for a moment, then she nodded.
“So that’s what I’m going to do,” she said. “Unless anyone has any arguments, I’m going to stay put. For now. I’m going to learn, you’re going to learn, we’re going to get stronger and better, and… Truth? I’m going to go. Someday. I don’t know when. But not tomorrow.”
“Library,” Sasha said, not looking up.
“Need more than that,” Hanson said, and Sasha glanced up so quickly she couldn’t have seen anything.
“Library on lab days, Wednesdays, we meet. I’ll put together… stuff… curriculum. We’ll go through our classes for the week and we’ll… figure it out. Figure it out with natural magic and… It changes everything.”
“Gonna take your word on that,” Ethan said. “I’m not sure I can use natural magic. I’m too dark.”
Sasha looked up at him with real exasperation.
“Don’t you get it? They’re independent. It isn’t a balance that tells you how good or bad you are. They’re families of magic, and we have never discussed how natural magic even fits. You could still be strongest in natural magic, Ethan.”
Something about his posture changed, like a weight had come off of him, and Valerie looked at him, trying to read him.
He was blinking at Sasha, not even seeing Valerie.
Which didn’t happen very often.
“All right,” Shack said. “So. We’re all staying. Nobody is leverage. We get to be the best of the best of the best, and then we go back out there and we own them all. All of them everywhere. Settled?”
“Yeah,” Hanson said. “If I even can.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Sasha said dismissively without looking up. “I’m in.”
“Yeah,” Ethan said softly. Valerie nodded.
“Me, too.”
“You didn’t promise yet,” Shack said, and she frowned.
“Right,” she said. She considered this with real weight, trying to figure out if she could ignore threats to any of them and keep doing her own thing. She had to. Susan Blake said she had to. Valerie nodded.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Right. I promise.”
“Good,” Shack said with an easy smile. “Who’s hungry?”
Real Magic
Book 3 of the School of Magic Survival Series
Valerie doesn't like counting on her luck to get her out of bad scrapes, but so far that seems to be all that's keeping her alive.
That and her natural abilities as a magic user, which she isn't ready to trust, either.
Once more, Valerie and the rest of her friends are back at school, but this time she knows something that no one else does. She knows the name of someone who might be able to help them. Might be able to help her stop the war, stop the Pure, stop the magic that could very easily wipe out the entire world.
The problem is that there's no guarantee she survives another encounter with serious magic. Even the woman who came to help her thought that she was better off not doing anything. She should let the fighters fight while she learns whatever she can. She's not strong enough to fight the Pure. None of them are.
Is her luck going to hold out long enough? Or will the Council's machinations and the Pure's ambition finally force her into a confrontation that she might not make it out of?
Class is in session, and Valerie is scrambling to get herself ready for a fight with real magic.
Jump back in now! Click now to buy Real Magic.
Other Work by Chloe Garner
Anadidd’na Universe
-Rangers
-Shaman
-Psychic
-Warrior
-Dragonsword
-Child
-Gorgon
-Gone to Ground
-Civil War
-Book of Carter
-Gypsy Becca: Death of a Gypsy Queen
-Gypsy Dawn: Life of a Gypsy Queen
-Gypsy Bella: Legacy of a Gypsy Queen
Other Urban Fantasy
-Hooligans
Science Fiction
-Portal Jumpers
-Portal Jumpers II: House of Midas
-Portal Jumpers III: Battle of Earth
Space Western
-Sarah Todd
-Sarah Todd: Rising Waters
-Sarah Todd: Clash of Mountains
About the Author
Chloe Garner is a wanderer with a host of identities in her head fighting each other to get out. Chloe writes about the things that go bump in the night, the future, and all things f
antastical. Find her on Twitter as BlenderFiction, on Goodreads and Facebook as Chloe Garner, or at blenderfiction.wordpress.com.
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