Real Magic

by Chloe Garner

  “Will you call Jason and tell him?” Samantha asked, and Sam nodded.

  “I’ll do it from the road. He’ll be down in less than an hour. Gives you guys a chance to get up and get dressed.”

  “Where is the kid?” Valerie asked. “The one who told us that he was an angel?”

  Samantha looked at Sam and shook her head.

  “I swear, one of these days he’s going to figure out when to keep his mouth shut.”

  “Jason had already told them angels existed,” Sam said. “For what that’s worth.”

  Samantha snorted.

  “Where is he?” Ethan asked.

  “He went back where he came from,” Samantha said. “He doesn’t stick around very much anymore.”

  “I think Jason misses him,” Sam said, and Samantha nodded.

  “What a strange pair.”

  There was a rolling thunder of noise coming down the stairs, and Valerie looked over as Carson came down with two huge bags over his shoulders.

  “Ready to go,” he said cheerfully.

  “You know those won’t fit in the car,” Samantha answered.

  “I’m going to put them in with Jalice,” Carson said. “It’ll annoy her.”

  “Please don’t push her past the breaking point until after this is done,” Samantha answered. Carson grinned wider.

  “Evangeline says she’s on her way,” Sam said, looking at a phone.

  “How can you have a phone?” Valerie asked, and Sam shrugged.

  “Your relationship with them is actually very interesting,” he answered. “Sam won’t carry one either.”

  Samantha held up two empty hands, then shook her head at Carson.

  “I’m going to go load up the Mustang,” she said. She looked at Valerie for a moment. “If you’re still here when I get back, I hope we get more time to talk. None of this is fair, but all of it is necessary.”

  She walked backwards for two steps, then turned. Sam knocked on the counter, just a sort of farewell, putting the phone to his ear and walking for the front door.

  Ninety seconds, no more, and the house was empty, save for Valerie and Ethan, as far as either of them could tell.

  Ethan blinked at her.

  “Okay, so, seriously, what did I miss?”

  Jason showed up right on time. Not a minute earlier than the hour Sam had promised them. Valerie took another hot shower, putting on the same clothes she’d been wearing for three days now, then brushing her hair out and brushing her teeth with a toothbrush straight out of the package and a brand new tube of toothpaste.

  It was more refreshing than it should have been.

  Ethan raided the refrigerator, the pantry, the cabinets, and he came up with a selection of foods, leaving them out on the counter in hopes that Jason would be able to tell them where to find a cooler or something to pack them in.

  Optimist.

  Valerie ate another bowl of cereal, then poured herself a glass of orange juice and went to sit at the couches in the front room, there under the tall windows where she could see upstairs, going through the tool box one slot at a time.

  The potential of the ingredients there made her fingers sweat. It was akin to being in Mr. Tannis’ classroom, surrounded by everything, but it was like Samantha had gone through and found everything her subconscious mind had ever wanted to cast using and put them all in one place.

  She could do anything with those. Combined with the ingredients still stashed against her skin in the various magic-user wraps…? She could conquer the entire world, it felt like.

  Ethan came to sit down next to her and she gave him the pieces of the story that Sam had told her. He listened quietly, nodding slowly as she spoke.

  “You believe it?” he asked. She shrugged.

  “Do you not?” she answered.

  “Who are we fighting then?” he asked. “Who runs the schools? Who makes the plans? If they’re all doing different things, who is the Council up against?”

  “I don’t know,” Valerie said. “Maybe it’s always the same group. I mean… Fact Alexander is, you know. We know that he’s a real person and that he is the head of… something. Maybe it’s like the United States, with a president who’s in charge of everything, but two political parties and fifty states that all do their own thing all the time anyway, you know? Like, sure he’s in charge, but of what? And when his goals and the goals of the sub-factions go against each other? Who wins?”

  Ethan shook his head.

  “It was simpler when it was just the Superiors.”

  Valerie nodded, and he put his arm across her shoulders.

  “But it’s all going to be over, soon,” he said. “Right?”

  She looked at him.

  “Nothing is going to be over,” she said. “You heard him. You were here for that part. There’s still going to be a war. The Council is still going to think that they can jerk me away and put me in some black hole and try to use me to get to my mom. I still can’t go back to school. All that’s going to be over is the single threat to all of humanity that we didn’t even know existed until yesterday.”

  The big black SUV rolled up to the house and Jason got out, coming to stick his head in the door.

  “You guys ready to go?” he asked. Valerie closed the tool box and stood.

  “I’m driving,” Ethan said, standing next to Valerie.

  “Nope,” Jason answered. “I looked that sucker up on my phone and there are like three of them in the country. If you want to be able to get in and get out without anyone recognizing you, you want a car that no one knows to look for.”

  Valerie looked at Ethan, who clearly didn’t like it, but Ethan nodded.

  “Okay.”

  Jason gave them a firm nod.

  “I’m not stealing that car,” he said. “I’m just holding onto it for a minute.”

  He looked past Ethan.

  “Provisions,” he said. “I like it. Let’s get these loaded up.”

  Valerie watched as Ethan and Jason worked, then she followed them outside, going to sit in the back seat and settling in low.

  Jason glanced back at her and then at Ethan.

  “You guys set?” he asked, grinning. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  The hotel rose high above the rest of the city. They rode the elevator up floor after floor after floor, the three of them, Valerie holding the tool box from Samantha Angelsword pressed against her chest.

  Valerie glanced at Jason, realizing that she was going to have a heck of a time explaining him.

  Explaining any of this.

  As the elevator doors opened, she realized - belatedly - that it was entirely possible that they were in danger, coming at her parents unawares.

  “We should probably be careful,” she said. “They aren’t expecting us.”

  Ethan looked over, realizing what she just had and nodding.

  “It’s a public hotel,” Jason said. “They aren’t going to shoot us through the door.”

  “Might shoot you,” Ethan said. “Adult guy shows up at the door with their teenage daughter?”

  Jason snorted.

  “You aren’t wrong,” he said. “I’ll just stay back a step, what do you say?”

  Valerie nodded, then motioned at Ethan.

  “You, too,” she said. He twisted his mouth, amused, and stopped a few steps down the hallway from her as she went to the door number on the note from Sam.

  She knocked softly, taking a step back and wrapping her arm around the toolbox again.

  There were muted voices inside, and the door opened.

  “Valerie Blake, what on earth are you doing here?” Susan Blake asked. Valerie ducked her chin.

  “I’m okay, mom,” she said. “But…” She looked over at Jason and Ethan. “Can we come in? I kind of have a lot that I need to tell you.”

  Susan stepped into the hallway and put her hands on her hips.

  “Ethan Trent, you get in that room and you sit on the couch and do not spea
k until spoken to, is that clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ethan said meekly, slipping past and out of sight. Susan raised an eyebrow at Jason.

  “Who are you and what are you doing with my daughter?”

  “You know a guy named Carter?” Jason asked.

  “You aren’t Carter,” Susan said, and Jason grinned.

  “Oh, good, that makes this so much easier. I’m one of Carter’s people. This is actually my region.”

  Susan narrowed her eyes.

  “This region belongs to a black man named Bane,” she said. “I met him once.”

  Jason’s eyebrows went up.

  “Well,” he said. “You’re more big-time than Sam let on. Bane died a while ago and I took over for him. My name is Jason.”

  “Prove it,” Susan said.

  “Um,” Jason said. He sighed. “Fine.”

  He drew the sword from over his back - how had Valerie missed it again? - and held it out in front of him, angled toward Susan but without a sense of aggression.

  “This is Anadidd’na, and I am the Dragonsword.”

  “Where did you get this?” Susan asked, stepping forward to look at the sword side-on.

  “Hell,” Jason said. “I got her from Hell.”

  Susan looked at him full in the face.

  “An audacious claim if it isn’t true.”

  “Audacious if it is,” Jason said. He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a bright white scar on the inside of his arm. “You know anything about being hellside?”

  Susan shook her head, looking at the scar.

  “May I?” she asked, and Jason nodded, putting the sword away in a familiar motion and holding his arm out for her.

  Grant came to stand in the doorway. There was something about him that Valerie needed to look at, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the way that Susan was looking at Jason’s arm.

  Valerie’s mother put her hands under Jason’s forearm, holding it firm and pressing her thumbs against either end of the long scar.

  Jason’s head jerked, twisting off to the side, and he closed his eyes.

  “Yup, I remember that,” he said.

  “It’s still in there,” Susan said. “I have a friend who might be able to take it away.”

  “No,” Jason said. “It won’t ever go away. It’s part of the price of the sword.”

  Susan looked up at him again, letting his arm drop.

  “All right, I believe you, but it doesn’t explain why you’re here with my daughter.”

  “No, that’s her job,” he said. “I’m just their ride here and back.”

  Susan turned away.

  “There is no way you are leaving here with my daughter,” Susan said, going into the hotel room. “But you may come in and explain what she was doing with you in the first place, and then we will wish you safe travels.”

  Jason tipped an imaginary hat and followed Susan into the room. Valerie lingered in the hallway. Susan turned, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Grant in the doorway and her parents looked at her.

  “What is it?” Susan asked. Valerie shook her head.

  “I didn’t know how to find you,” she said. “You didn’t know if I was alive or dead until you asked Mrs. Mills to check on me, and even then, I had to defend myself from four men from the Pure who tried to attack your house. How is everything just going to be okay?”

  Susan shrugged.

  “Because that’s just how it goes,” she said. “War is war. You hope for the best when you can’t see it with your own eyes. If you spend all of your time worrying about what you can’t control, you’d never get anything else done.”

  She turned to the side.

  “And now it sounds like you owe us a significant explanation,” Susan said, motioning with her arm. “Presumably one that is not fit for hallway conversation.”

  “Neither are swords and hell,” Valerie muttered, and Susan smirked.

  “Get in here, young lady, or I will drag you in by your ear.”

  Valerie dipped her head and went into the room.

  The pieces had come out slowly, at first. The attack at the hotel and the cast that Valerie had done to stun the men and women who had come. Running away. The dumpster and the night in the cold. Walking and the bank.

  “I can’t find you now,” Susan confirmed. “It was a spectacular cast.”

  After around Hanson, though, things started to speed up. The beach house and Daphne and Lady Harrington, going back to school and doing casting work for Mr. Tannis, the woman from the Council and appearing in front of the Council.

  Here, Susan and Grant got much more interested in the details - details Valerie hadn’t caught the first time by - and Ethan stepped in to tell the story. Jason produced a granola bar from out of his pocket and ate it.

  Stealing a car and going to North Carolina was barely a breath, and then Valerie got stuck, trying to explain Sam and Samantha and the angel and the other man who she didn’t even know why he was there and the dark woman upstairs who had never even said anything…

  Jason sat forward.

  “My brother is a psychic and his wife is a mage. One of the most powerful people alive, after Carter in New York. They’re on their way to New Orleans as we speak to mop up a mess that doesn’t concern me, whether or not I’m concerned about it, so my brother rounded up as much information as he could give you guys, and I’m here to get the kids here and back to the house again.”

  “She isn’t going with you,” Susan said, and Grant held up a hand.

  “We’ll discuss that in a minute. She isn’t alone.”

  “Merck Trent’s wayward son doesn’t count as not alone,” Susan answered, and Grant shrugged.

  “Far be it for me to be the first father of a teenage girl who approved more of her first boyfriend that her mother did.”

  Susan shot him a dark look and she sat forward, taking the piece of paper that Valerie offered her.

  “That’s the laboratory where they’re working on the cast to get rid of people’s magic,” she said. “Samantha Angelsword… Sam… said that you can’t do that. That it’s always going to kill people. So if they make it contagious, they’re just going to kill everyone.”

  “We’ve suspected that,” Susan said. “I stopped it, the last time they got this close, too.”

  “You did that?” Valerie asked, and Susan nodded.

  “Yes. She was a friend, back from before everything got stupid. Older than us by a bit, but still… a nice girl who was only interested in figuring things out. I had to cast it on her myself, knowing it would kill her…”

  Susan shook her head at the memory, and Grant put his arm around her.

  “So, there’s a demon involved somehow,” Valerie said. “I didn’t really understand that part, but Sam said that the demon is going to go after them in New Orleans, and that once he was gone, you had a chance to destroy the laboratory.”

  Susan nodded, looking over at Grant.

  “This is the moment we’ve been waiting for,” she said. “I thought we were just going to have to go in after them, with or without Tridium, but if they can get him out…”

  Susan nodded and Grant shook his head.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You heard what they said. The Council knows about Gemma. I have to go check on her.”

  Susan looked at Jason.

  “How long is it going to take them to start making waves in New Orleans?”

  “Could be a few hours yet, could be a couple days. Depends on what they find when they get there.”

  Susan nodded, looking at Grant.

  “After everything, I’m not going to leave her hanging. Not if we can help it.”

  “Where is she?” Valerie asked, and Grant nodded at the paper.

  “She’s there,” he said. “That’s where her office is and that’s where the prison is. If they don’t know anything is wrong, she’ll be hanging out there dealing with everything that’s going on right now, and if they do know something is wrong an
d she’s still alive, they’ll have her down in the prisons so that Fact can interrogate her.”

  “He would interrogate his own daughter?” Valerie asked, and Grant looked from her to Ethan and back.

  “Sorry,” Valerie said. “I told him. I have friends and I trust them.”

  “I thought I made it clear…” Grant started, but Susan put her arm out across him and lifted her chin at Ethan.

  “You’re Merck Trent’s son,” she said. “And you have a quite poor reputation among anyone who matters in the magic community. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “I met your daughter,” Ethan said, not defensive. “She made an impression.”

  Susan nodded slowly.

  “You got her out of them claiming her,” she said. “I’m willing to say that that’s enough proof for me. Though, having a reputation of being a clown may come in useful for you, from here.”

  Ethan nodded.

  “It always has.”

  Susan smiled and looked at Grant, her face growing serious again.

  “We don’t have much time,” she said. “How do you communicate with her?”

  “In person,” he said. “There’s a cast that I put on the building that only she can sense and she’ll answer it, whether she can talk to me or not.”

  “You people really, really have the thing with phones, huh?” Jason asked.

  “You carry a phone?” Grant asked, and Jason produced it casually. Grant recoiled as though Jason had pulled a viper out of his pocket.

  “Talk on it most days, too,” Jason said with a playful sense of morbidness.

  “Our people have developed great skill with phones, as they’ve come along,” Susan said. “They aren’t safe.”

  “So I hear,” Jason said. “Thing is, people most always know where to find me. Kind of the point, anyway.”

  Susan shook her head, then shrugged, looking at Grant again.

  “We may only have a few hours to plan. If we go right now, we might be able to sneak her out before everything happens.”

  “Mom,” Valerie said. “Sam gave this to me for us to use.”

  Valerie opened the tool box and set it on the table in front of Susan, who sat forward with a sharply straight back, her fingers hovering over the box like she was working a spell in midair.