Thief

by Sadie Moss

  He flips me so he’s on top again. I hear Asher sigh. “Guys, could you please…”

  I headbutt Dmitri, which sends him reeling, and I gain the upper hand again. “Look, either you don’t care about me and you don’t pull your punches, or you do care and you least admit you’re pulling them. It’s not fucking rocket science!”

  Dmitri’s breathing hard, his gaze locked with mine as his chest rises and falls. I’m practically straddling him, and I realize with a jolt that I can feel him a little hard against me, between my legs. I’m panting, a bit wet, and it’s not the first time I’ve gotten turned on while sparring with Dmitri—because, you know, God forbid I not get turned on in public where all my classmates could notice and make fun of me, right?

  But as I stare into his eyes—

  A horrific scream, like nothing I’ve ever heard before, fills the room.

  I whip my head around, going limp in shock, and Dmitri uses the opportunity to grab me and yank me underneath him, crouching over me like someone’s about to launch themselves at us.

  But nobody’s fighting.

  Cam and Asher are staring in horror, and so is everyone else, as another student collapses and writhes on the floor. His name is Tom, and he’s a second-year like me with gravity manipulating powers. His body jackknifes with convulsions, and the sounds tearing from his throat are terrifying.

  I can’t tell what’s happening to the poor guy. There’s nothing attacking him, yet he’s screaming like he’s on fire.

  Professor Tamlin runs over to him, going to her knees beside him and putting her hands on his chest. He’s still panting and twitching, crying in pain.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Cam murmurs hoarsely. “What the fuck?’

  “Tom.” Professor Tamlin looks rattled for the first time since I’ve met her. She takes the guy into her arms like he’s a child even though he’s bigger than she is, shaking him gently. “Tom, talk to me. What’s going on? What happened? Tom!”

  “It… it’s gone,” he moans, clearly still in pain. His red hair is damp with sweat, and I can see his body trembling from here. “My—it was just… oh, God, it hurts so fucking bad… help—help me… it’s gone.”

  “What’s gone?” Tamlin asks, but Tom just keeps groaning, muttering half-formed sentences. She looks up, eyes wide, dark skin a little ashen. “Kendal, get the medics.”

  Kendal nods and rushes out the door.

  Dmitri helps me to my feet. His arm goes protectively around my shoulders, and for once, I don’t try to push him away or question what it means. We’re both still staring at the man in our professor’s arms, shocked and wary.

  “Tom,” Tamlin repeats, smoothing his hair back from his face. Her tone is calm but commanding, and if I hadn’t had her as a teacher all last year, I might not notice the slight panic underlying her words now. “What’s wrong? Help is coming, but you have to tell me what’s wrong.”

  “My magic,” Tom groans, his voice rising with each word. “It’s my magic. It’s… it’s been taken. It’s gone… My magic. My magic’s gone!”

  My heart skips a beat, and Dmitri’s arm tightens on my shoulder as I turn to look up at him, our horrified gazes meeting.

  What the actual fuck?

  Chapter 7

  Kendal rushes back a few moments later, healers right behind her.

  “Everyone stand back,” Cam says, gently moving people out of the way. Dmitri tugs me to the side as the healers hurry to Tom.

  “I don’t understand,” Tamlin says, her voice shaking a little as she stands back to let them work.

  I’ve never known Tamlin to be anything other than put together and sophisticated. Now, she looks like she’s seen a ghost, her face tense and eyes wide, the tips of her fingers trembling minutely.

  Tom is whimpering in agony and terror, and it’s awful.

  I remember when Maddy was little, one time Mom and I stayed up and watched Nightmare on Elm Street, and Mads woke up and crept downstairs and saw some of it. She was terrified for ages, and she cried and whimpered in fear the exact same way Tom is now. It tugs at my heart and scares the shit out of me at the same time, because he’s a twenty-one-year-old man.

  If he’s scared like a five-year-old, whimpering inarticulately like a child, then how bad is this? How horrific must losing his magic be to reduce him to this state of fear?

  The healers are trying to get him to calm down, but he’s not responding, just repeating what he told Tamlin over and over again.

  “Holy shit,” one medic says softly. “His aura is—it’s gone. It’s really gone.”

  “We’ll have to sedate him,” another man says, holding Tom’s shoulders while the first speaker grabs some medicine out of a kit.

  Tom finally passes out as they inject him, and when he stops jerking and shaking, they get him onto a stretcher. Once he’s strapped into place, it rises up to float about three feet off the floor, and they carry him out toward the infirmary. Everyone around me is shaking, even Alyssa. I’ve never seen her look anything but smug or pissed off, but right now, she looks like she might lose her breakfast.

  Even those of us who hate being Unpredictable would rather be that than have no magic at all.

  Tamlin clears her throat and pats her hair, making sure nothing’s fallen out of place. It hasn’t, because she’s Tamlin. Even in the midst of chaos, she’s one of the most poised, elegant people I’ve ever met. She’s already gathering her wits about her, doing a better job of recovering from the shock than I am. I’m still trying to decide if I should throw up or cry first.

  “Well. I think in light of that, we should end class a little early, don’t you?” She gives us a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes at all. “Good work today, everyone. Remember, we have a test next Friday.”

  Everyone immediately books it for the door. Half of them—Alyssa for one—are talking, blurting out theories and opinions. The other half are eerily silent.

  Dmitri’s still got his arm around me as we join Cam and Asher. I keep thinking I should put some distance between us, but I can’t bring myself to do it. His hand on my shoulder, the feel of his body beside mine, is the only thing keeping me upright at the moment.

  I just can’t get over how Tom looked. The way he screamed. How… how broken he looked. How utterly destroyed.

  The whole reason I came to this school in the first place is because Aurora, the representative from the Circuit, told me it was that or have my magic stripped away from me. I didn’t care too much about my magic at the time; I was more worried about being cut off from Maddy.

  Magical society and non-magical society don’t really mix. Most ordinary humans don’t even know magic exists, and the people from magical families who end up without any powers tend to sort of fade into a weird middle ground between the magical and non-magical worlds. And I didn’t want to leave Maddy with this whole part of her life that she couldn’t really share with me. I didn’t want to be on the outside of her world like that.

  So instead, I opted to keep my magic.

  Now that I’ve had it and used it for a year, it’s hard to imagine my life without it. Yeah, my powers have been a pain in the ass most of the time, but… I’ve grown to accept them as a part of me. I used to hate my sonic boom for how it could hurt people, for the dangerous things I could do, but now I’m oddly attached to it. If anything, Johnson’s crazy ramblings at the end of the Trials made me determined to stay an Unpredictable and to be proud of that status, not to let some asshole convince me I’m a freak.

  I mean, I am a freak, but not because of my magic.

  …that joke sounded better in my head.

  Now I can’t help but wonder—is this what Aurora and the Circuit would’ve had in store for me if I’d decided not to go to school and to get my magic removed instead? Would I have been left screaming in agony, terrified and hurt like a small child?

  What the actual fuck?

  “Jesus,” I whisper as we step out of Wellwood Hall into the cool fall air.
“Is that what having no magic feels like? Is that what the Circuit wanted to do to us?”

  My stomach churns. I’m pissed. I want to find Aurora and get in her face and demand to know what the hell she was thinking even offering that to me or any magic user. But more than that—I’m scared.

  “No. It’s not supposed to be like that,” Asher murmurs, though his face is pale and his voice lacks conviction. “There are ways of removing it gently, or dampening it so much that it basically becomes non-existent. But both of those options don’t destroy the root of the magic. They don’t affect your soul.”

  “Yeah. Tom’s magic was—ripped out of him.” Cam looks like he wants to barf as he says the words.

  The sun is shining brightly, and the day isn’t all that cold, but a shiver works its way down my spine anyway. My footsteps slow then stop.

  Ripped out?

  “You okay, Sin?” Cam whispers, slipping an arm around my waist.

  Dmitri lets go of me, but he’s still standing right next to me as Asher takes my hand, squeezing it gently. We all huddle together like that as we watch Tamlin leave Wellwood Hall and walk quickly toward the infirmary.

  “That’s—” I swallow, needing to hear it again to be absolutely sure. “That’s not how the Circuit takes people’s magic?”

  “No,” Cam says, shaking his head. Dmitri and Asher are quiet, but neither of them look all that happy. “There’s a much gentler way to do it. What happened up there… that was like someone performing surgery with a butter knife instead of a scalpel.”

  “It never feels pleasant,” Dmitri adds shortly. “My family wanted me to get mine removed at first. They talked to several people who’d had their magic taken away. They said it doesn’t feel good no matter how carefully they do it. It’s like losing a piece of yourself; you feel this empty space inside. You’re fine, but you’re not the same, and you can tell.”

  “But how did it happen to Tom? That’s what I want to know,” Cam says. “How did someone do that? I mean, shit, the process of removing someone’s magic, something so intrinsically tied to their essence? That’s not only delicate work—if it’s done gently—but it’s not easy. It takes incredible power, incredible strength, and someone just—did that.”

  Someone just did that.

  I shudder.

  Who could even be capable of doing magic like this? And who would want to?

  And who could be next?

  Chapter 8

  I try not to talk about what happened to Maddy, but she ends up getting it out of me anyway a week later during our usual phone call.

  We try to talk on the phone at least once a week so we can stay up to date on each other’s lives. The past two semesters, I had a lot of crazy stuff going on. Maddy’s school life is exciting, but it’s more of a regular kind of exciting. You know, big exams and parties and who’s dating who. That kind of thing.

  “So…” She sounds hesitant. “I’ve heard some… rumors…”

  Ah, crap. I suppose I should be grateful they’re not rumors about Roman and me? Or me and the other three guys?

  “Are you okay?” she asks, concern clear in her voice. “I heard that—that it happened in your class, to one of your classmates. The stories…”

  “It wasn’t fun,” I say, because there’s no reason for me to beat around the bush, but I’m not going into details either. “It was more the fact that it came out of nowhere that made it so scary. Nobody was bleeding or anything; it wasn’t gruesome. It’s just that… someone stole magic from a student without being caught or even noticed. There were over thirty people in that room, and none of us saw anyone acting weird. Whoever it was got away scot-free, and I don’t even know how they did it.”

  There’s a pause while she absorbs that, and then she asks, “Has it happened to anyone else?”

  “No. The professors are on alert, and we were all interviewed by Hardwick about it. But nothing.”

  “How’s the student doing? The guy whose magic was taken?”

  “Tom. I hear he’s okay.”

  That’s… a bit of a lie. I haven’t heard much, actually. I just know his parents have come to visit him, and that he’s being dosed up by the medical staff with painkillers and potions to help keep the pain at bay. I’m not sure whether it’s because of all those things in his system, but apparently, he’s been quiet, not really talking.

  “It could’ve been a freak accident,” I venture, trying to reassure her. “Our magic sparks to life inside us suddenly, so maybe his just… unsparked somehow. I’ve never heard of that happening before, but as my Theory of Magic professor always says, our understanding of magic is far from complete. It can still surprise us. Case in point—Unpredictables.”

  “Yeah.” Her voice is quiet, and I can picture her nose scrunching up in my mind’s eye, the way it always does when she’s not buying my bullshit.

  I sigh. “Even if it was a deliberate attack, Mads, it’s possible it was just a one-off. Some experiment gone wrong or something, even. Nobody has any suspects.”

  “I suppose,” she says slowly. Nope. She’s definitely still not convinced. “Just… I hope you’ll be careful.”

  “Of course I will be. Promise. I’m… I’m sorry that I’ve seemed pretty reckless the last few months,” I say, forgetting for a moment that the last few months were actually the least reckless I’ve ever been, considering I spent them unconscious in bed. It was the months before those that were the problem. “You know I’m not going to do anything to risk myself on purpose, right, Mads? I’m always going to be there for you, okay?”

  “I know.” She makes a little noise that tugs at my heart. “I’m not—I’m not worried about you, Ellie. I mean, I am, but not about what you’ll do, more like… everyone else.”

  “What’s that mean?” There’s a layer of worry underneath Maddy’s tone that sets my internal alarm bells ringing.

  She sighs, filling the phone with static. “Over here at Neptune, people are starting to talk. The students are really divided. At first, everyone was really against what Johnson did, calling him a psycho and saying he was unhinged. But now, some people are starting to say he might’ve had a point, that maybe there are problems with Unpredictables…”

  My chest constricts.

  Ah, fuck. I mean, it’s bad enough to know there’s a portion of the magical population out there who despise people like me. Whoo. Fun. But to have my sister have to listen to that…

  Helpless anger makes my jaw clench. “You know you don’t have to say anything, Mads. Just ignore them.”

  If Maddy gets bullied because of me or gets into a fight because she feels like she has to defend my honor, I don’t know if I could forgive myself. Even though I know it wouldn’t be my fault, exactly. Not directly, anyway. But my sister’s the only family I’ve got left, and I promised Mom I’d take care of her no matter what.

  “I don’t care about me!” she blurts out, sounding much younger than her nineteen years. “I care about you! I want to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I’ll look after myself, Mads, I promise. You know me—I always keep my wits about me.”

  “Yeah, I know you do.” She giggles, and the tightness in my chest loosens a little. She’s heard stories about all the bar patrons I had to put in their place over the years, and she knows I always kept mace and a taser on me when I walked home alone at two in the morning.

  “No comas this time,” I promise her. “We’re both going to be okay.”

  But her classmates sure as hell won’t be okay if I get ahold of them. Fucking assholes. Unpredictables are just as good as anyone else, and making my sister so worried and upset just gives those douches extra bad points in my book.

  “Okay.” Maddy sighs. “I just worry.”

  “Well, I worry about you too, so it’s even. I think maybe that’s how families work.”

  She laughs. “Yeah. Maybe so. Um, hey, I gotta go. I’m going out with some friends, but let me know if anything else crazy happens, okay
?”

  “Of course.”

  “And say hi to the guys for me.” There’s a definite teasing note in her voice, and I remind myself I’m going to have to grill the men over what exactly happened with them and Maddy over the summer.

  In other words, I want to know exactly how many embarrassing stories she told them about me while I was passed out and couldn’t defend my honor.

  “Har, har, har,” I reply. “Say hello to all your very annoying friends for me.”

  “You don’t know they’re annoying.”

  “They’re friends with you, aren’t they?”

  “Har har, very funny. I love you.”

  “Love you too, Mads. To the moon and back.”

  We hang up, and I toss the phone aside, just lying in my bed and taking a few deep breaths. Fucking hell. I never asked to be an Unpredictable, or to be the target of Johnson’s bigoted, violent behavior. Now I’m like some weird spokesperson for Unpredictables, like the poster child for “our kind”, and I don’t like it.

  I especially don’t like what it could mean for Maddy.

  The door to our dorm room opens, and Asher steps in, shrugging off his backpack. I prop myself up a little. “Hey. Where are Cam and Dmitri?”

  “Stuck at the library working on their exegesis of the Necronomicon.”

  “Let me guess. They procrastinated, and it’s due tomorrow.”

  “Maybe.” Asher gives a lopsided grin that tells me I nailed it and comes over to sit down next to me. “How’re you doing?”

  “I should ask you the same thing. You were in that class with me.”

  “I didn’t mean that, I just meant… with everything.”

  “I’m not going to faint on you, don’t worry.”

  “Worrying is kind of a part of the package.” He catches my ankle with his hand when I try to poke him with my foot, his thumb brushing back and forth along the thin, delicate skin there. My breath catches as tingles race up my leg. “I’m finished with my homework, if you want to relax or something.”