by Brian Olsen
He starts. My question obviously surprised him. He narrows his eyes at me. “What about them?”
“What will happen to them?”
“Nothing. They’ll stay where they are.”
“They’re inside those artifacts, aren’t they? Are they literally inside them, or are the objects a gateway to some other place?”
He’s expressionless. “I’m not giving you any information on the magical species.”
I put my hands up. “I’m not threatening them, Mr. Liefer. I’m worried about them. It doesn’t seem right, locking them away from the world.”
“They’re fine. They’re safe.” He stands. “I’m not saying any more about them. If that’s going to be a problem, if you’re going to fight me on this spell because of them—”
I wave for him to sit back down. “No. No. All right. I’ll trust you on that, I guess.
He watches me warily, waiting. He stays standing.
“What about Mr. Miller?” I ask.
He grimaces. “Obviously, Miller is my primary concern. We can’t cast this spell until he’s taken care of, or he’ll distort it again. I came here specifically to confirm that you’re not going to challenge me, as the Common King or well-meaningly as Chris Armstrong, so that I can focus on finding Miller and his associates and ending their threat.”
I grip the sheet, twisting it in my hands. “Ending their threat? What does that mean, exactly?”
He looks down at the floor. “I didn’t mean…Miller is the real threat, obviously, but we can’t ignore his allies—”
“You want my permission to kill my mother?” I laugh. “Forget it.”
“We can recreate her! We…” He groans. “This sounds horrible. I’m sorry.” He sits on the end of my bed. “Please, hear me out. When we recreate the Moment, we can recreate your mother, but without any past as the servant of the Common King! You’ll never have to worry about her recovering her memories and trying to turn you to her side. Won’t that be better? Isn’t that what you want?”
I want to burn his face off but I take a breath and calm myself down.
“Oh. Okay.” I nod. “I’ll agree to that, if you’ll agree that we can kill you, and then recreate Mr. Liefer afterward. I mean, it’s the same, right?” I shrug. “What’s the difference?”
He stares at me for a long moment. I don’t look away.
Finally he breaks. He stands. “I take your point. But your mother is actively working against us. She’ll kill us all if we give her the chance. I don’t see any way to—”
“Find a way. I don’t care what happens to Mr. Miller or anybody else he’s working with. But you find a way to stop my mom without hurting her. Cast your spell. Bury our memories again. Give me my family back. And you’ve got a deal.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “This means you stay out of our way. Let us handle Mr. Miller. You stay quiet, go to school, and live your normal life. And that goes for your friends as well.”
“If he attacks us, we’ll have to defend ourselves.”
Mr. Liefer nods. “But otherwise, no magic. None at all.”
I hold out my hand to shake, but then pull it back. “Why?”
He tilts his head. “Why don’t I want you to use magic? Isn’t it obvious?”
“No, I mean, why come to me with this at all? Why have you stopped wanting me dead?”
He folds his arms and looks out the window. “I never wanted you dead, Chris.”
“Prom night suggests otherwise.”
He nods. “It was what we decided, before the Moment. If you used magic, we’d end the threat. But our new lives, our new feelings, they’ve complicated things. I can’t help but see you as one of my favorite students.”
“Favorite? Really? I didn’t know that.”
He smiles wanly. “It’s not professional to show favoritism. Still, I would have ignored that to fulfill my responsibilities and do what needed to be done. But my allies…” He trails off.
I get it. “Right. They’re not as murdery as you. Lily, Mr. Ambrose, Andy—”
His shoulders tense. “Lily and Mr. Ambrose convinced me to give you a chance, yes.”
Oh. Yeah. Andy’s not likely to take my side.
I hold out my hand. “Okay. You’ve got a deal, Mr. Liefer.”
He shakes it. “Good. You’ll hear from me when Miller is dealt with and we’re ready to recreate the Moment.”
“Sounds like a plan. Stay out of my bedroom until then. I think the board of trustees would find this inappropriate.”
I actually get a small laugh out of him. He steps away from my bed, but pauses to pick my pillow up from the floor. “Seems like you were having a nightmare when I arrived. Everything all right?”
I force a smile. Thanks to Lily, I know this is not as casual a question as he’s trying to make it sound. “Oh, yeah. I’ve had this recurring nightmare about being trapped in an enclosed space since I was a kid.” I shudder. “Closets. I’m done with them.”
“No new nightmares, then?”
“No. Why?”
“No reason.”
“You look like you haven’t been sleeping very well yourself, Mr. Liefer. You afraid of closets, too?”
“There’s only one thing I’m afraid of Chris.” He puts the pillow on the end of my bed. “Same thing as you, I think. Good night.”
He disappears.
I pick up the pillow and hug it to my chest.
I believe what Liefer said, about recasting the Moment. But I’m sure he also came here to see if he could stop checking up on me. To see if he felt confident enough to leave babysitting duty to Lily. And I think I passed.
I get why he doesn’t want to tell me about the magical creatures. The Common King wants them all dead. Can’t blame him for that.
But I don’t want them dead. I want to help them. And I’m not going to stop. It should be easier now, with him focused on Miller instead of me.
I don’t feel too terrible about lying to him about that. He lied to me too, after all. About Lily, and the Nightmare Queen.
As for recasting the spell and taking a mulligan on the Moment…that sounds pretty good. Mostly. Getting my mother back. That sounds great. And being free from the threat of turning into the Common King? That sounds fantastic.
But losing my magic? Forever?
I summon a small jet of flame around my finger.
We’ll see about that.
Seven
“I’m so exhausted, you guys.” I lean against the locker next to Alisa’s. “I couldn’t get back to sleep after Liefer left.”
“It’s disturbing that he was in your bedroom.” Alisa cups her hand protectively around the tree necklace she never removes. “Do you think he’s been spying on all of us?”
Nate dodges a passing student. It’s still a while until the first bell and the halls are crowded with students arriving for school. “Probably. Pervy old man.”
“What if he did something to us?” Jasmine narrows her eyes. “Something evil, like cast a spell to make us fail all our classes?”
Alisa closes her locker. “Jasmine, you can’t use magic as an excuse not to study for your chemistry test. Sorry.”
Jasmine pouts. “Why couldn’t Mr. Purcell have been an evil logomancer who had to go on an evil sabbatical?” She dodges a few passing students to get to her locker, almost directly across from Alisa’s. She spins the combination. “I mean, are we sure he’s not working with Mr. Miller? His tests are pretty evil.” She opens her locker. The inside of the door is almost entirely covered with pictures of her and Nate. She rummages through the piles of junk she’s accumulated over the course of the school year. “Oh my god, I have to clean this out.”
“You always say that,” Alisa says. “But you know you’ll wait until the last day of school.”
Nate takes out his phone. “So what’s the plan? Are we really gonna lie low, like you told Liefer?”
“No way,” I answer. “The magical creatures are still imprisoned. I at
least want to see for myself if they’re as safe as he says they are.”
“Did he drop any clues about where he stashed the book?”
“No.” I bite my lip. “I’m sure he’d keep it close by, probably wherever they’ve been hiding out. Maybe we can convince Lily to tell us where they are? We could sneak in?”
“Fat chance of that.” Nate checks himself out with his phone’s camera app, stroking the faint stubble on his chin approvingly. “Jaz and I hung out with Lily last night. She’s happy we’re all friends again, but she clams up if you mention anything magic.”
Alisa twirls the tree medallion, pinching the necklace’s black cord. “I might have another way of finding the book. Maybe.”
“Awesome!” I tap the medallion, sending it swinging between her fingers. “Something to do with this?”
She catches it. “Maybe. I need a little more practice, but—”
Jasmine squeals in horror and drops a heavy book to the floor. She stares wide-eyed at her locker door.
Nate pushes a sophomore out of the way to get to her. “What? Babe, what?”
Alisa and I rush over as Jasmine points a trembling finger at something taped to the inside of her locker. We lean in to look. It’s a printout of her class schedule.
“What?” I say. “What’s wrong?”
“You print your schedule?” Alisa says.
“Yes!” Jasmine shouts, her voice quivering. “Yes. I print it at the start of every term and tape it up so I’ll see it every morning. I’m afraid I’ll forget about a class.”
“Okay.” Nate shoves his phone in his pocket and rubs her back. “Okay. So what’s wrong?”
“Look!” She taps the schedule. “Look, Nate! Third period!”
He squints. “Biology? You’re not taking biology, are you?”
Alisa looks closer. “You’re free that period on Tuesdays. We both are.”
“Apparently not!” Jasmine hugs herself. “Oh my god! I’ve been missing a class the entire term! I can’t make it up now! And Mr. Finlay hates me! I’m going to fail! I’m going to fail out of school!” She sobs and collapses into Nate’s arms.
“Jasmine,” I say. “This can’t be right. You take chemistry or biology junior year, not both. And Mr. Finlay would have talked to you months ago if you were supposed to be in his class. You wouldn’t find out about it like this.”
“Chris is right, babe. I’m in that class. It doesn’t even meet then.” Nate takes her by the shoulders, pulling her back so he can look her in the eyes. “Somebody got into your locker and played a dumb joke.”
“They did a good job.” Alisa pulls at a corner of the schedule. “The overlapping pictures are taped over the schedule. They must have taken almost everything down and put it all back up again so the schedule would look like it was in the exact same place. It’s a well-done prank, but still just a prank, Jaz.”
Jasmine sniffs. “You think so?”
“Yeah.” Nate wipes at a tear with a finger. “Yeah, of course. Think about it. How would you only be noticing this now if it’s been on your locker since January? You look at it every day.”
She nods, and smiles. “Okay. You’re right.” She huffs. “What an awful trick to play. Missing a class all term because I didn’t know I had it is, like, my worst nightmare come to life.”
A scream makes me turn. No, not a scream. A hoot. Somebody’s whoo-hooing. Other people join in, whistling and laughing. It’s all directed at Kenny Pillman. My friend, the captain of my former lacrosse team, who doesn’t remember he’s a logomancer, is walking down the corridor towards us with a bright smile on his face, his shaggy red hair falling down over his eyes as usual.
He’s completely naked.
His bare feet slap on the old polished wood of the schoolhouse floor as he walks. The freckles on his white skin extend down his arms and down his chest, stopping at the thin wisps of red hair there.
Someone, a boy, puts his hand up for a high five. “Nice lacrosse stick, Kenny!”
Kenny slaps his hand in return, then stops walking. He finally notices all the attention he’s getting. His smile doesn’t drop, but it tweaks at the corners, giving him a puzzled look, as if he’s assuming that he’s the butt of some good-natured joke he hasn’t clued in on yet.
“Kenny Pillman!” Alisa screams. “Have you lost your damn mind?”
He looks over at us and tilts his head. He scratches his chest idly, then starts in surprise. He finally look down at himself.
His face turns as red as his hair. His eyes widen in horror and he covers his lower parts with his hands. The students around him continue to point and laugh as he pushes through them. He ducks into a boys’ bathroom, out of sight.
Nate and Jasmine fall on each other laughing. “I always wondered if Kenny was a natural redhead,” Nate says.
Jasmine explodes with a renewed burst of laughter. “Stop, Nate, stop, I’ll pee!”
I feel a laugh building but I swallow it down. Kenny’s my friend. This isn’t funny. Most of the students in the hall are still laughing, though, as are Nate and Jaz.
“Knock it off!” Alisa smacks them both on the back of the head. “What’s wrong with you?”
I push through the gathered students and rush into the bathroom. It looks empty, but one stall is closed tight and I see bare feet underneath.
“Kenny?”
“Chris?”
“Yeah.”
He opens the stall door a crack and peeks out. “I was wearing clothes! I swear! I had them on two seconds ago!”
“I believe you.”
“Oh, man. I have this nightmare all the time.”
“I think we’ve all had it at some point.”
“But it’s real! How could my clothes disappear?”
“Kenny, this is a weird question,” I say. “But can you still feel your clothes? Like, they’re not invisible, are they?”
He pauses for a second. “That is a weird question, but it’s no weirder than me having clothes on one second and none the next.” I hear the sound of a palm slapping against skin. “Nope. Definitely naked.”
The bathroom door opens and Kenny slams the stall shut. A couple of guys come in, including Nate.
“Kenny?” Barry Kep is on our lacrosse team and is pretty good friends with Kenny. He was out there laughing with the rest, but now he looks worried. “Kenny, we’re really sorry. I don’t know why we were laughing.”
“Yeah.” Nate mouths the word ‘magic’ at me before continuing. “It’s like we couldn’t help it. Are you okay?”
“Not really!” Kenny shouts. “Still naked in here!”
Another guy asks, “But how come you took off your clothes, anyway?”
“I didn’t!” Kenny yells. “I don’t know what happened!”
“Maybe somebody drugged you,” Barry suggests. “We should tell Mrs. Kumar.”
“Oh,” Nate says, “I’m pretty sure somebody’s already told Mrs. Kumar by now.”
Kenny groans in misery. “Could somebody go down and get me some clothes from my gym locker?”
Barry passes his phone under the stall door. “Gimme your combo, man. I got ya.”
I nod to Nate and he follows me back into the hall, where Alisa and Jasmine are waiting.
“Is he all right?” Jasmine says. “I couldn’t stop laughing! I didn’t want to! I didn’t even want to look!”
“I did.” Nate whistles. “Damn, what they say about the tall skinny kids is true.”
Alisa smacks him again. “Jasmine has a class she hasn’t been to all term. Kenny shows up to school naked and everybody laughs at him.”
“Nightmares,” I say. “Nightmares, coming to life.”
Nate slumps. “Nightmares as in the Nightmare Queen?”
“Living nightmares.” Jasmine hugs herself. “It’s not just an illusion? Mr. Miller?”
“No,” I say. “He’s definitely naked.”
“Unless…” Nate furrows his brow. “Mr. Miller put an illusion on Kenny
this morning when he got out of the shower to make him think he was getting dressed but really he was naked the whole time!”
We’re all silent for a moment.
Nate shrugs. “Or not.”
Alisa snorts. “If that were true, it’s even creepier than Mr. Liefer watching us sleep.”
“An illusion couldn’t make everybody point and laugh,” I say. “Alisa and I had some resistance, because we’re logomancers. You two didn’t.”
“But…” Jasmine furrows her brow. “Kenny’s a logomancer.”
“Resistance, not immunity. Kenny was the target of the spell. We were peripheral.”
Alisa raises an eyebrow. “You know a lot about the rules, all of a sudden.”
Those nightmares I’m having of the Common King’s life are terrifying, but they also give me some useful information sometimes.
I shrug. “Educated guess. Putting some things Miller and Liefer said together. And the way Zane could resist your truth spell a little.”
Another scream from down the hall. No laughter this time, just terror. The four of us run towards the girl screaming. It’s Shonda, another friend of ours. I was closer friends with her in junior high before we drifted, but she and Alisa hang out sometimes. Her locker is open but she’s backed up flat against the opposite bay. Her dark brown eyes are wide, she’s gripping her long black hair in tight fists, and she’s almost hyperventilating in fear.
“Shonda!” Alisa says. “What—”
But we all see it. See them. Shonda’s locker is full of snakes. They’re all the same type. Two feet long maybe. The scales are colored in alternating stripes, greenish-brown and golden-brown, running the length of their bodies. A few have already fallen onto the floor, but as we skid to a stop the rest tumble out in a huge pile.
Jasmine screams and covers her mouth. Passing students scatter with howls of fear.
Shonda is paralyzed with terror, but Alisa pulls her away. Once they’re at a safe distance, Shonda collapses into her arms, shaking.
I take a step towards the writhing pile.
“Dude!” Nate shouts.
I bend over and pick up one of the snakes, just behind its head. “Garter snakes. They’re not dangerous.”
“How do you even know that?”