by Chloe Garner
“Come on, get your stuff together. We’ve got a fight coming to us, and we only get home-court advantage if we use it.”
“What are you talking about?” Valerie asked. “I don’t have any stuff. I don’t have any money. And I don’t know what stuff I’d have, if I did have money. And I wouldn’t know how to buy it, if I knew what to get.”
“I thought I trained you to be more resourceful than that,” Susan said. “What about your roommate? I bet Ivory Mills’ daughter keeps everything.
Valerie went to get Sasha’s basket of stuff, holding it out toward her mother with not a little bit of attitude and then going to her desk to unpack it more carefully.
“Who is coming?” she asked.
“Humans,” Susan said. “Probably non-propagationists, though they’re working with The Pure more and more these days. The Council is driving them together.”
“I met Gemma,” Valerie said, saying the words out loud a physical relief to her.
“And did you like her?” Susan asked.
“She wished me dead more than once,” Valerie said.
“If it helps, she started out on that stuff with me before you were even born,” Susan answered. “I think I broke her heart.”
Valerie straightened.
“What?”
“Oh, okay, what did she tell you, then?” Susan asked.
“That she’s my aunt and she works for the dark side,” Valerie said quickly. “What do you mean you broke her heart?”
“We were best friends,” Susan said. “I knew her because of Grant and we were really close for a few years. Really, really close. And then she was kind of called up into the big leagues early, while we were still at school, and Grant was staying in touch with her, surreptitiously… Anyway, I decided I wanted no part of playing that game in the long term and I bailed on them. Both of them. But what’s funny is that I expect your dad took it better than she did. She started telling me the first year of the war that if I wasn’t all-in, fighting the war, that I ought to be dead, so that she didn’t have to worry about me. She got really dramatic, seeing everything that was going on up close like that.”
“Should I just defend the door?” Valerie asked.
“If you want them to come fight you here in the room,” Susan said. “I prefer to fight where my back isn’t literally against a wall, if I can help it. But I’m quick. You feel like being quick?”
Valerie shoved the ingredients that felt useful to her into her pockets and went to stand next to her mother.
“Ethan told me that the cast they used to crack open the school showed up on a building in Europe,” Valerie said.
“Is that one of the Trent boys?” Susan asked. “I hear nothing but bad things about either of them, but maybe you know better.”
“I think he’s had a major change of heart recently,” Valerie said. Susan reached for the doorknob, as though feeling it out from a distance.
“You have that effect on people,” Valerie’s mother said. “You ready to move?”
“What does it mean, that the same cast was used in Europe as here?” Valerie asked.
“It means the European belief that they’re immune to our war and can play both sides against the middle has already blown up, and they just don’t know it yet,” Susan answered. “Are you ready?”
“As I’m going to be,” Valerie answered.
Susan nodded, pulling the door open and shouting words down the hallway. If there was anyone around to hear them, they didn’t give a sign. Valerie wondered if the entire dorm hadn’t emptied itself out into Hanson’s cottage.
Susan was moving quickly, facing the end of the hallway that met with the rest of the building, but walking backwards.
“Where’s the potions room?” Susan asked.
“You’ve never been here?” Valerie answered.
“Nope,” Susan said. “Not through the doors, anyway.”
“It’s upstairs,” Valerie said.
“Stairs are that way?” Susan asked, indicating the way she was facing. Valerie nodded.
Still nothing.
Apart from her mother acting like the world had ears, the hallway felt just like any other night after most everyone had gone to sleep.
“They’re testing the defenses on the school,” Susan said. “Can you copy a cast?”
“Maybe,” Valerie said. “It kind of depends.”
Susan got two red marking sticks out of her back pocket and handed one to Valerie, then turned and went to the last dorm room on the hall, putting a complex mark on it in a thick paint-like grease.
As though she’d been studying those shapes from Kindergarten, Valerie nodded.
“I can do that.”
“You get that side, I’ll do this side,” Susan asked. “They’ll have a heck of a time getting these girls out in the morning, but it will keep The Pure from using them as hostages while they’re chasing us down.”
“Why do they care so much?” Valerie asked. “This is the second time they’ve come here.”
“The new leader of The Pure,” Susan said, looking over her shoulder as she did the second door. “He and I have history, and he’s pretty sure that between the two of us - meaning you and me - that one of us would be the key to his loss. So he wants to kill us both, just to be sure he gets the right one.”
“Why would I matter?” Valerie asked.
Susan stopped, turning to face her, body unanimated for the first time since Valerie had opened her dorm room door.
“No one told you?” Susan asked. “No. I guess they wouldn’t have. How would they have known? Most of them don’t believe, anyway. The curse. You’re a part of it, as far as any of us can figure out.”
“What?” Valerie asked. “I thought that was just on council kids.”
“You do know about it,” Susan said cheerfully, turning to mark the next door. “Well, neither of us were on the council, but your dad and I both had close ties to it. And I was in the room when the curse was launched. Len hated me.”
“I have dark magic?” Valerie asked.
“Don’t be cute,” Susan answered. “You’re a mage. You have control of all three.”
Valerie didn’t see how that could be considered anything resembling cute. She marked the next door on her side of the hallway.
“I don’t understand,” Valerie said.
“Lady Harrington is an old traditionalist,” Susan answered. They were moving quickly, still, though it felt less like someone was coming to kill them and more like Valerie’s grandmother was going to catch them graffitiing the walls.
“That doesn’t help,” Valerie said. “Will you people talk sense, just for like a minute?”
“Mage,” Susan said easily. “A person who possesses the skill to control all three branches of magic.”
“How do you know?” Valerie asked.
“I’ve been testing you since you were five,” Susan said. “And you prefer the light, without a doubt, but you have deep strengths in all of them.”
“Does light magic kill people?” Valerie asked. Susan glanced back at her.
“You do see how there’s a natural conflict between light and dark,” her mother said. “Almost everything in dark magic has a light magic equivalent.”
They got to the end of the hallway and Susan pointed left and then right.
“This way,” Valerie said.
“Running is better,” Susan answered. They are going to be right on top of us.”
“Usually I can hear the front doors open,” Valerie said.
“Easy to overcome that,” Susan told her. Valerie was jogging, heading for the stairs up to Mr. Tannis’ room.
She’d never much liked running, and running up stairs when she would have preferred to have been in bed…
She didn’t mind when her mother stopped to mark the wall with a different design.
“Lady Harrington is going to be so mad when she finds that,” Valerie said.
“She’s mad all the time,” Susan
answered. “Not like I ever change anything.”
They reached the top of the stairs. Mr. Tannis’ room was the next one over.
Valerie tried the knob, but nothing happened.
“Here,” Susan said, jamming a wicked-looking black key into the lock and twisting it. Something in the door popped and hissed, and Susan shouldered the door open.
“Go to work,” she said.
“What?” Valerie asked.
“You said that you made a cast to kill someone with,” Susan said. “I need to order up a dozen.”
“What?” Valerie asked.
Susan glanced at her.
“You have a room full of weapons and an unknown number of people coming with the intent of killing you. I assume I don’t have to remind you about our conversations on how this works.”
“Mom, I don’t want to kill people,” Valerie said.
“Oh, honey, I know,” Susan answered. “And you aren’t warded any better than a baby seal. I’m leaving you in here and I’m going to fight them on my own. I just need your arsenal.”
Valerie went over to the boxes, collecting things.
She was reserved.
She could partially make them, and then refuse to complete them or turn them over. She was just making progress with the time that she had, in case she decided to actually make them.
As she sat at a desk, Susan was a blur of motion, going around the classroom and peering into this box and that, taking a little of this and the entire container of that and tossing them onto desks.
Their apartment had always been spotless and organized to within an inch of its life. Valerie had never seen this side of her mother before.
There were footsteps outside and Susan went back to the door, marking it in blue.
Valerie had a hard time focusing as she heard the voices out there.
“They’re human?” she asked quietly, and Susan nodded.
“Possible they have a demon with them, but not likely. Mostly the demons don’t care about you or me.”
“It was demons who came for me last time,” Valerie said, and Susan nodded, watching the door.
“Hired. They may not care, but they’ll take money or favors. And at the end of the day, they enjoy that sort of thing. Terrorizing teenagers? Sure. Hunting down Susan Blake? A lot less mercenaries for hire.”
The door thumped, and Susan went back to one of the tables, tossing things together and speaking over it in a low voice that kept Valerie from catching any of the specific sounds. For her part, Valerie was getting close, but watching her mother she realized she didn’t have to be anywhere near that precise, as long as she did it right.
It was a profound realization, that right and precise were… different for her.
And she went cold.
Her hands worked mechanically over the ingredients, always moving, often before the previous ingredient had finished settling on the table. It was something she could do by touch, even as she’d been doing it by instinct. She didn’t have to look carefully at the barra barra. She just needed to split it and twist it with the red thelp. Power built, she was good.
She went on.
The door thumped again, and the ceiling shifted overhead by enough that dust drifted down at them.
Susan shifted her table to avoid it. Valerie, mercifully, didn’t have to because of the specific alignment of the dust.
“Keep moving,” Susan said at one point as the door thumped again, cracking. “Whatever you do, keep moving.”
“What do I do?” Valerie asked, putting aside one of the full casts that she’d used on Mr. Tannis. It wouldn’t work in this room, if she understood it right. Susan had to use it before the people outside got in.
“I trust you,” Susan said, looking up for a moment. “I trust you more than anyone alive to have my back. I know I kept all of this from you, but you’ve always had such good instincts. Just go with them.”
Valerie frowned, then Susan gave her a tight-lipped smile and came over to take the casts Valerie had finished.
“Keep two,” her mother said.
“They won’t work in here,” Valerie said, and Susan nodded.
“You have to use them before anyone makes it through the door,” Susan said. “But I’ll drive them back. Okay? You only have to use them as a last resort.”
Valerie looked at her mother and nodded.
“I’ve missed you,” Valerie said, and Susan gave her a tighter smile.
“Not as much as I’ve missed you,” she said, then shook her head. “Bygones. We can’t have it back because that’s not the world we live in. Finish these. I may be back for them.”
Valerie nodded quickly and Susan went to stand in front of the door, putting both hands out toward it to form a diamond with her thumbs and forefingers. She shouted her cast, now, a language Valerie didn’t recognize at all, and the doorframe glowed red, first dully and then so brightly and with so much heat that Valerie had to look away.
There was an explosion and bits of wood went flying past Valerie, and her mother was gone.
There were shouts in the hallway and other noises - impact, hissing, thuds and clinks and groans - that indicated that the fight had successfully gone outside. Valerie looked over her shoulder at the door, then walked around the desk so that she could face it while she continued to work.
Keep moving.
Just keep making stuff. Some of it was bound to be right.
Maybe some of it would be a bomb. Literally. Maybe there were worse things in the world, right now.
Valerie went back to the bins, watching as cement dust floated into the room. Her hands worked mechanically and unemotionally, commandeering a new desk and setting off on a new cast that she couldn’t identify any more than she could identify any of the ingredients.
It didn’t matter.
She knew what she was doing and she did it, eventually soaking a papyrus rag in a purplish fluid and going to get a lighter out of one of the front bins. She walked to the back of the room, standing with her back to the door as she listened to her mother fight out there, completely outnumbered.
Assassins weren’t intended to fight even hand-to-hand. They were supposed to simply kill and vanish.
Her mother wasn’t an assassin.
She was special forces.
Valerie smiled at the thought, then lit the papyrus and tossed it out into the hallway.
What had she just done?
Not a clue.
But that was how you used it, so she went on, scavenging through boxes and bins that were beginning to fall on the floor with the intensity of the battle outside.
It was late enough that all of the teachers would be in their personal cottages, asleep. Valerie doubted that the magic going on out in the hall was well-enough warded that Lady Harrington didn’t know about it, but Valerie didn’t actually know where the woman slept, and she wasn’t sure that she was hoping Lady Harrington showed up. As fearsome as everyone made her out to be, the fight out there… it was lethal. Valerie could feel it, even as she stood in Mr. Tannis’ well-warded classroom.
Maybe the teachers would put together a rally of some kind to save Susan Blake. Maybe Mrs. Gold and Franky Frank - the boy’s dorm supervisor - would come storming in and get themselves killed.
There was no way of knowing.
Valerie kept working.
She mixed and cut and threw and painted and ate. She actually ate one of her own casts.
That was how strange the world had gotten.
And then there was a thud, one that her mind simply recognized was her mother’s body, and Valerie looked up from the table where she was working to find two men in view of the door.
It was smoky and dim out in the hallway, and it was possible they were teachers.
Possible.
Valerie picked up the two casts from the table, the ones she’d built for Mr. Tannis, and she walked slowly toward the door, watching as the men approached something just outside of her field of vision. The
y were afraid of it.
And then one of them turned his head and looked Valerie in the eye.
He grinned.
“Hello, little girl,” he said.
The other straightened.
“Is that her?” he asked.
The first man nodded, coming to lean against the doorframe.
“Can’t you tell, just looking at her?”
The second man spoke, opening his hand at her as though he expected something to happen.
Valerie felt it happen.
The warding stretched around her like a spider’s web, tensing with the effort it took to hold back the cast, breaking under the force. It hit her, but there was little enough of it left that she simple had to breathe a simple spell of healing and protection that put up a little invisible bubble around her and kept the rest of the cast from hitting her at all.
She held up the two killing casts in her palms as the men changed posture, preparing to come into the room.
Nothing to do but let them come in and physically beat her to death, or.
Or.
She launched them both simultaneously.
She hadn’t known it was possible, but it suddenly was.
It was her magic, and she controlled it, sending it at two chests, two rib cages, knowing where it would hit.
Knowing what it could do.
The second man, the one who had cast at her, was the first one to feel the hit. He grabbed at his chest and stumbled back, trying to rip at his shirt. The second man just slumped sideways against the doorframe, eyes wide at Valerie. His feet slid across the floor until they hit the other side of the doorframe, and there they stayed.
“Shouldn’t…” he said, then there was a gargle and a groan as he tipped over backwards into the hallway.
The other man was spinning in a circle, ripping at his shirt like he was trying to put out a fire, and then he, too, gurgled and fell to the floor.
She’d done it.
She’d killed two men.
The men who had killed her mother.
It all hit her at once, and Valerie staggered into a desk, trying to find the surface with her fingers so that she wouldn’t fall onto the floor.
“Don’t give yourself too much credit,” Susan said, coming around the corner. “Though it was a great assist. You didn’t kill them, daughter.”