by Chloe Garner
“I hate to say it but the fact that he doesn’t have any way to get in touch with you and that everyone knows it, because everyone knows the rules at the schools for freshmen… Maybe that keeps him safe.”
“They tried to kill me,” Valerie said. “And they could have killed him just as easily by mistake. He was standing right next to me. They aren’t going to not hurt him, just because it isn’t guaranteed that I’ll know about it and do something about it. They’ll do it in case I find out.”
Sasha frowned.
“You have to tell Lady Harrington,” she said.
Valerie put the back of her hand to her mouth.
“They’re going to expect an answer,” she said. “I’m supposed to tell them what I want to do.”
“What do you want to do?” Sasha asked. Valerie looked over at the basket of ingredients, sitting up on a shelf, and she shook her head.
“I can’t imagine saying no to that,” she said. “But what if I kill someone?”
“One, you’re not going to kill someone because they won’t let it happen,” Sasha said. “They’ve been around kids doing stupid things with magic for a long time. It just isn’t going to happen. And two, if you know that you aren’t going to say no, then you have to say yes. Don’t you?”
“I don’t even know if I should be here,” Valerie said. “I’m putting everyone in danger.”
Sasha sat back on her bed again, leaning against her own wall and putting her legs out in front of her, crossed at the ankle.
“Magic puts you in danger,” she said. “That’s why your mom ran away, I bet. She saw it more than anybody, what magic can do. But it’s part of who you are. You aren’t putting any of us in any more danger than we already were.”
“I am,” Valerie said. “You don’t have people coming after you trying to kill you.”
“It’s a war,” Sasha said. “Of course we do.”
Valerie sat, silent and stunned for a moment, then Sasha folded her arms and shook her head.
“It’s a war,” she said. “And you’re just finding out about it, like, today, but the rest of us have known it was coming for months now. Some of the upperclassmen might have known it was possible for years. It started just like the last one did, with everyone hoping that we could prevent it, but we can’t. And that’s why they need your mom. She’s the one who knows how to end it.”
Valerie looked at her knees, wanting to argue with this, but not able to find anything wrong with what Sasha had said.
“You have to do it,” Sasha said. “If you say no, they won’t teach you magic, and… Valerie, if you’re dangerous, the only way to stop from being dangerous it to learn how to control it. If you’re dangerous, not learning magic doesn’t make you any safer.”
“I never blew up anything before,” Valerie said sullenly, and Sasha smiled.
“Yeah, but that was before. Now you’re taking refuge at a magic school, and you’re surrounded by magically potent objects. Imagine you sitting in here one day, fidgeting with some of my stuff, and accidentally forging a magic knife that cuts through all of the defenses and lets in everyone who wants to hurt us?”
Valerie looked at Sasha with a frown.
“That was oddly specific,” she said, and Sasha grinned.
“I know. I was just imagining what trouble you could get yourself into with tell weed if you were really good at managing it and had no idea what it could do.”
“And that’s possible?” Valerie asked. Sasha nodded vigorously.
“I can actually build the spell in my head, but I’m not quite good enough with tell weed to get it to work, I don’t think. If you were good enough… Yeah, it could happen.”
“Then I have to say yes,” Valerie said, and Sasha nodded.
“You do. You have to say yes.”
Valerie sighed, standing and hopping down off of her bed.
“I’ll go tell Lady Harrington, and then I’m going to make her let me talk to Hanson. I need to know he’s okay.”
“Are you like… together?” Sasha asked, and Valerie shook her head.
“No, he’s just been my best friend forever, and if he got into trouble because of this…”
She shook her head, then waved.
“I’ll let you know how it goes.”
The office was locked and Mrs. Young was gone by the time Valerie got back there, but she could see a light on in an office down the hall, and when she knocked on the glass door, Lady Harrington came out of the office, coming to open the door for Valerie.
“Have you made a decision?” the woman asked, turning and leading the way back to her office.
“Yes,” Valerie said. “I have to learn how to control my magic, which means I have to learn. It doesn’t matter how hard it is.”
“A commendable decision,” Lady Harrington said, sitting back down at her desk and picking up a stack of papers and a pen. “I will let Mr. Benson known in the morning.”
“I need to talk to someone back home,” Valerie said, and Lady Harrington tipped the papers back down, adjusting her spectacles lower on her nose so that she could look at Valerie over them.
“Has anyone explained to you our policy on such things?” she asked, and Valerie nodded.
“Yes, but he is in danger,” she said.
Lady Harrington set down her papers and dropped her glasses to the string around her neck, then folded her hands on the desk.
“What makes you think that?” she asked.
“When Roger came to get me,” Valerie said. “Someone smashed the sidewalk, trying to hit me and kill me. It was…” She hadn’t even been afraid at the time. It was surreal, remembering it, how she’d known that it was possible and been unfazed, even as she should have run screaming.
“Yes?” Lady Harrington prompted.
“They were trying to kill me,” Valerie said. “And I’m afraid that they may be trying to kill Hanson, my friend who was with me, or catch him to use him as a hostage or…”
Lady Harrington nodded slowly, raising her woven fingers to rest under her chin.
“Miss Blake,” she said slowly. “Any other year out of the past fifteen, I would have told you that you’ve been watching too many movies. This year, I’m glad that you are thinking cautiously, and I won’t scold you, but I’m very sorry to tell you that Roger… He has a history. If he knew that you were not familiar with magic, I would not doubt that he would be quite happy to use his own skills to motivate you to cooperate, even if it meant intentionally frightening you. He is a very… pragmatic man. Firmly on our side, but… pragmatic.”
“You think he might have lied?” Valerie asked. Lady Harrington sighed, looking down at her desk for a moment and nodding.
“Tell me what happened,” she said. “As specifically as you can.”
“He was asking me to get in a car with him, and I didn’t want to,” Valerie said. “I was going to walk home. And then the sidewalk… just right in front of me, I mean right in front of me… it just… poom, like something huge, shaped like a gigantic baseball bat or something, hit it hard enough to shatter it, and there was this… dent, but big, you know? Huge. There in front of us, and Roger told me that they missed, but that if we didn’t get in the car…”
Lady Harrington swallowed and nodded, lifting her eyes.
“And from there he drove you directly to the building where you were staying with your mother?”
Valerie nodded. Lady Harrington lay her hands out flat on her papers and shook her head.
“I know that our foundation of trust is quite tenuous, just now, and I hate to challenge it by putting doubt in your mind, but I’d rather put your mind at ease and be the one who tells you the truth. I don’t think that the Superiors were involved. The kind of magic that you’re talking about, one that causes significant physical damage to the world around you, it isn’t something that you cast sight-unseen. And if a Superior had been there when Roger was coming to get you, there is no way that man would have led them directly ba
ck to your mother. That is the last thing he would have done, in point of fact. I believe that your friend is quite safe, and that you were never in danger. Roger was simply motivating you, once when he came to get you out of a sense of his own importance and the importance of his time, and once again when he was trying to make your mother make the decision to return to the war. If you were in danger, your mother would be much more likely to cooperate.”
Valerie felt her stomach turn sour and she looked away.
“I’m sorry,” Lady Harrington said. “But it does at least mean that your friend is okay.”
“I want to know for sure,” Valerie said, and Lady Harrington nodded, picking up the phone handset from her desk and offering it to Valerie.
“Dial nine-nine for an external line,” she said.
Valerie looked at it for a moment, then dropped her shoulders.
“I don’t know his number,” she said.
“Do you know why we are so careful with our phone usage?” Lady Harrington asked. Valerie bit back her first and second sarcastic responses.
“No,” she finally said.
“Because a phone connects you to the world that is firm, traceable,” the woman said. “Give me his name.”
“Hanson Cox,” Valerie said, and Lady Harrington nodded, taking Valerie’s hand and wrapping it around the phone. Murmuring some words that Valerie didn’t catch - very likely because they weren’t English - Lady Harrington took Valerie’s other hand, grabbing her index finger and poking the buttons on the phone base with rather more force than Valerie felt was necessary.
After a moment, the phone started ringing, and Lady Harrington picked up the papers off of her desk again to resume reading them.
“I assume I don’t have to tell you not to tell him where you are,” the woman said, and Valerie shrugged glumly.
“Not like I even know,” she said, sitting back in her seat. Lady Harrington shot her a sharp look and Valerie nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
Hanson answered.
“Hello?”
“Hanson,” Valerie said.
“Val,” he said, his voice a surge of relief. “Where are you?”
Well, it got there fast.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Where are you?”
“The guy who came for my mom,” Valerie said. “Look, I can’t tell you what’s going on. But I’m okay. And I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Dude, I’ve been freaking out since you went with that guy,” Hanson said. “I shouldn’t have left. And my mom is freaking out. She went to file a missing person’s report today, but they said that you were probably just with your mom, since both of you were missing.”
“I’m not missing,” Valerie said. “I’m okay.”
“Are they making you say that? What’s my jersey number?”
“Fourteen,” she said. “I’m fine. Things are complicated right now, but… Do what you can to keep your mom from involving the National Guard, okay? I’m fine and my mom is… fine. Okay? Are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” he asked. She nodded.
“Okay. I’m going to try to get back to come see you as soon as I can, but I don’t know when that’s going to be.”
“Where are you?” he asked. “Are you in witness protection? Did they come and relocate you? Do you have a new name?”
“No,” Valerie said, though for a moment she considered that she should have said yes. It was a thorough explanation, apart from the sidewalk, which he appeared to be in complete denial over.
“Val,” he said. “What’s going on?”
Valerie looked at Lady Harrington, but the woman was at least pretending to be engrossed in her paperwork.
“I want to tell you,” Valerie finally said. “But I can’t. It’s kind of dangerous, and so long as you’re safe and I’m safe, I need to just… leave it alone.”
“Are you sure you don’t want the national guard?” he asked, and she nodded.
“I’m sure.”
“Because my mom will get them out,” he said. “You have to believe that.”
“I know,” Valerie said, smiling. “I miss you.”
“Should I bring home your homework?” he asked, and Valerie froze.
This was it.
No going back.
“I’m at a new school now,” she said. “I’m… I’m sorry, Hanson. I really am.”
He sighed.
“You’re calling to say goodbye, aren’t you?” he asked. “Can I e-mail you?”
“Not right now,” she said. “I don’t have my computer, and they don’t have internet here.”
“There are like four places in the known universe that don’t have internet,” he said. “Whose phone number is this?”
She shook her head.
“Please,” she said. “I’ll be in touch when I can. I don’t know when it’s going to be, but it’s best if you just let it be. You have to let me go.”
“We’ve been best friends since we were eight,” he said, his voice hard to cover over an edge there. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“I know,” she said. “I didn’t… It all happened really fast. And I would tell you, if I could. I swear I would tell you everything if I could. But I can’t. There are good reasons, and… I’m sorry.”
“Are you happy?” he asked after a minute.
“No,” Valerie said easily enough. “But I’m working on it. I think I can be.”
“And you will keep in touch with me?” Hanson asked. “You’re not ghosting?”
“I swear, as best as I can, I will keep in touch,” Valerie said.
“Okay,” he said.
“I miss you,” she said. “I’ll talk to you as soon as I can.”
“Bye, Val,” he said.
“Bye.”
She set the phone back down on its base and Lady Harrington glanced up at her.
“You understand that it will be some time before I can let you call him again,” the woman said, and Valerie nodded.
“I don’t understand why,” she said. “But Mrs. Young made it pretty clear that it isn’t something you just let people do.”
“We spirited you away,” Lady Harrington said. “When the Superiors hear that Susan Blake is back, the first thing they are going to do is come looking for you. We cannot allow you to leave traceable paths along which they can find you.”
“All it takes is getting the phone number off of Hanson’s phone and they can trace it,” Valerie said. “You’re talking about a land line like it’s some kind of secure thing.”
“Oh, that’s not a land line,” Lady Harrington said. “It’s much more complex than that. But you are not well enough educated for me to expect you to understand it. And so, tomorrow you will see Mr. Tannis for the first of your potions tutoring sessions. He intends to test your capabilities on a number of concepts. I would caution you that he is very willing to see what happens, regardless of the more undesirable outcomes something might have. Work slowly, so that he has a chance to intervene at the last minute.”
Valerie paused.
“You’re serious,” she said, and Lady Harrington returned to her paperwork.
“Completely,” the woman said without looking up again.
Valerie went back to the room, sitting down on her bed and looking over at Sasha, where she had a textbook open and suspended over her face. Nothing magical about it, just a girl reading a textbook in a position where, if she fell asleep, it was going to fall on her face.
Valerie frowned.
“That doesn’t look like such a good idea.”
“What did he say?” Sasha asked.
“He didn’t like it, but I don’t think he’s going to call the police,” Valerie said.
“And what about Lady Harrington?” Sasha asked.
“She said I’m going to have to work really hard,” Valerie said. “And that Mr. Tannis might not stop me in time to keep me from doing something dangerous.”
Sasha
nodded, still reading.
“He’s known for letting students take their own risks.” She twisted to look at Valerie. “Which is fine for upperclassmen, I guess, but I would hope he would warn you earlier.”
Valerie gave her friend a glum look and lay down.
“So who is Elvis Trent?” Valerie asked. Sasha finally put her book down, using her forearm as a bookmark as she rolled over onto her side.
“He’s a special upperclassman,” Sasha said. “Graduated the School of Light Magic last year and decided to come here. His dad is on the Council, and he knows everything about the war because… Well, I don’t know for sure how he knows, but there are a lot of guesses.”
“He’s older than twenty?” Valerie asked, and Sasha nodded.
“Well, he’s right around twenty,” she said. “And he’s hot.”
Valerie shrugged.
She hadn’t missed that.
Still.
“Why is he hanging out in the cafeteria?” Valerie asked. “Doesn’t have, like, cooler places to be?”
Sasha shrugged.
“Everyone eats in the cafeteria unless they’re doing a part-load of classes and have time to go out to one of the cottages, or they have a teacher they’re working for during lunch. A lot of the older class do one or the other, but Elvis has a full classload. Him and the other four of them who came from Light School this year.”
Valerie tucked her arm up under her head.
“How do you know all of this?” she asked. “I mean… it was the first day of school.”
Sasha shrugged.
“There aren’t that many of us. We all kind of know what’s going on with everyone else.”
“How?” Valerie asked.
Sasha shook her head.
“I don’t understand.”
“You spent all day yesterday with me,” Valerie said. “And before that, you just got here.”
“We talk,” Sasha said, frowning thoughtfully. “They aren’t always talking to me, but everyone talks, and everyone hears. I knew when Elvis got in at Survival School the same way I knew when they put out the final list, day before yesterday, for freshmen. Someone called my mom and told her, and my mom checked that I’d gotten in and then we read the list.”
“Do you know everyone?” Valerie asked. Sasha shrugged.