by Chloe Garner
“Oh, it’s been a long time since I’ve been shopping in New York,” Susan said, smiling. She looked at Valerie. “Do you know what these are?”
Valerie shook her head.
“Just that I’m desperate to use them.”
Susan nodded.
“I imagine you feel about them much the way I do. You had to defend yourself at the beach cottage with almost nothing. You can’t imagine what you could have done with these. Like seeing old friends. I have my own kit, and I’m going to pack these away to look at when I get a minute, but I’ll leave enough for you to play with on your own time.”
Susan nodded, then looked at Grant once more.
“We need to go,” she said, and he stood.
“I’ll go get packed.”
“What about us?” Valerie asked, and Susan looked at Jason.
“You were already planning on going back to your home base?”
“Under orders,” he said. Would put up a fight if you told me I was going back alone. They don’t belong in the middle of this.”
Susan nodded.
“You’re right. I need to figure out everything else, at some point, but right now… Gemma Alexander was a dear friend to me, once upon a time, and I don’t turn my back on friends lightly. If you could keep them someplace safe, we’ll come for them once we’ve taken care of the lab.”
“Look for the paved road, not the dirt one,” Jason said with a wink, taking out a business card and handing it to her. “That’s where they’ll be.”
Susan nodded, coming around the table to hug Valerie.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said. “You are doing so much better than I ever could have hoped, given how little you had to work with.”
“Mom,” Valerie said. “I still don’t understand most of what’s going on.”
“You’re getting closer,” Susan said. “I doubt anyone understands all of it. Here. Let me get this packed out and you can take it with you. We’ll see you soon. Okay?”
She hugged Valerie again, then went and got a large duffel bag, opening it and taking out racks and boxes and trays, finding empty ones and portioning out the casting ingredients that Samantha had entrusted to Valerie.
“Be careful with that one,” Susan said with a laugh. “You barely have to look at it before it goes active.” And. “Oh, now this is a good additive to almost anything you use for wall markings. It’ll light fire underwater.” And. “Don’t breathe this. Whatever you do, don’t breathe it.”
She handed the box back to Valerie, then looked at Ethan.
“You and my daughter,” she said. “You aren’t her first boyfriend, no matter what Grant would like to believe, but you’re the first one who has mattered. That kind of thing matters. You think about it.”
“It’s the same for me, ma’am,” Ethan said, and she gave him a tight smile, looking over her shoulder.
“I have many questions, for another time,” she said.
“So do I,” Ethan answered, friendly, and then Jason cleared his throat.
“Let’s hit the road,” he said. “It’s going to be dark by the time we get home, and they’ve got work to do.”
Valerie looked after where her father had gone.
“Bye, Dad,” she called.
“See you soon, Valerie,” he answered. She frowned, unsatisfied, but Jason and Ethan were moving, and Susan was going to get the door.
They were leaving.
That was just how it went.
Very few questions answered, but at least her parents would know where to find her when it was all over, and they would actually turn up without alarms going off and people alerting the Council.
At least there was that.
Jason was going to drive them back to the house in North Carolina and… Well, that would be it. The grownups would take it from there.
She hugged her mother once more in the doorway, and then they were going back to the elevator and on their way out.
The sun set behind them as they drove down the country road toward Samantha’s home. Jason’s, actually, as Valerie let the information she’d been picking up all day sink in.
Jason and Ethan had talked most of the way home, sports and comic books and movies and fighting and things that Jason had seen and done… Ethan was in awe of the man, and Valerie would have found it amusing if it weren’t for how tired and out of place she was.
Ethan could go back to school. He knew where she was, but at this point she figured everyone knew he wasn’t going to tell, and… What was Merck Trent really going to do to his own son?
She couldn’t.
She couldn’t go anywhere, but to hide out at this house in the middle of nowhere - beautiful and comfortable as it was - and wait for everyone else to do everything.
It wasn’t that she wanted to be in the middle of everything, where there was almost no way she would be able to avoid hurting people, or even killing them. The thought was distasteful to her in every way. It was that she didn’t like doing nothing.
The war was going to stretch on. That seemed unavoidable. The people who wanted to separate humans from their magic were still going to want that, and the people who wanted to be left alone were still going to want that, and the Council was still going to be the Council. Hopefully if they set back the magic research far enough, the Pure would stop trying things and killing people for a while. Maybe the war would go underground, even, for a time. But Susan Blake was still out there, and the Council wanted to control her.
And it wasn’t like they were going to suddenly forgive and forget that Valerie had stolen Merck Trent’s car and taken off with it.
That just…
No.
She was stuck, without options, and she hated the inaction that was coming at her.
Maybe it was just one night. Maybe her parents would sweep through, blow up the lab, and waltz off to come get her in the morning.
That could happen.
That could happen.
She shook her head, focusing as the SUV turned onto the narrow asphalt strip, driving along the weaving path back to the house, invisible yet even in the darkness.
“So you’ll teach me to fight with a sword tomorrow?” Ethan asked.
“Don’t see why not,” Jason answered, pulling around a final corner where the house came into view, sort of tucked away in between two long slopes of an aging mountain.
There was someone sitting out front on the deck, and Jason shifted funny.
“You guys stay in here,” he said.
He opened the door, leaving it open as he walked toward the house.
“Identify yourself,” he called, and the woman stood.
“I am Gracie,” she said. “And you are required.”
“Yeah, people try that on me a lot, but it doesn’t really work. Why aren’t you up at the trailer?”
“This is much more comfortable,” the woman said. “And they say you are often to be found down here, anyway.”
“Look, I’m busy,” Jason said. “Scram.”
“They have Angelica,” the woman said. “They hold her for information and for retribution for past failures.”
Jason stopped moving and Valerie shifted forward, trying to hear in case he didn’t speak up clearly. Ethan was just as intent.
“Who are you?” Jason asked. “Really?”
“I am a foe to the Long Tooth clan,” she said. “I’ve simply been waiting for them to give me cause to send you to them.”
Valerie looked at Ethan, who shook his head. No, he wasn’t following either. Jason came jogging back to the car, a phone to his ear.
“Abby,” he said. “Need you to back this up or tell me that she’s full of it.”
He got into the car, nodding.
“Dammit,” he said and hung up. “All right. Change of plans. You guys are still safe here, but I need to head out yet tonight. I’ve got a friend who’s in trouble. I’m going to drive you up to the trailer so you can get your car, then you’ll follow me out and back in here.
You won’t make it down the road in between. I won’t leave you without a car for emergencies, but you have got to stay here - and inside - until someone gets back. Okay?”
“Who is she?” Valerie asked.
“Like I know,” Jason answered.
“But you trust her?” Valerie asked, and he shook his head.
“Hell no, but Abby says that there are some demons active where she said they were, and that Angelica… anyway, that she’s pretty sure Angelica is there. And if she’s there, she’s in trouble because of me. So. This is what I’m doing.”
“We could go with you,” Ethan said. “I’d love to see you in action.”
Jason shook his head.
“Hell no. I didn’t just take you away from your people to come get you tangled up with demons. I’d tell her to come back next week, if it wasn’t about Angelica.” He stepped back out of the SUV to call to the woman. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”
“You have something more important to do?” she answered, and he ignored her, getting into the SUV and starting the engine.
He looked back at Valerie.
“You good?” he asked, and she nodded.
“You go help your friend,” she said. “We’ll be fine.”
He nodded.
“The house is a fortress. You don’t have to worry about that. Demon could throw a bulldozer at it and it would hold up.”
“Do demons throw bulldozers often?” Ethan said, and Jason shook his head.
“No, but I’ve known a few who would have been willing to try.”
He drove up the winding dirt road a bit faster than they’d taken it down the night before - had that really only been one night ago? - and he stopped just long enough for Valerie and Ethan to get out. Valerie grabbed the tool box, and he rolled forward.
“Don’t go faster than you can,” he said. “I’m gonna go. Angelica knows things that I don’t want getting out.”
“We know about secrets,” Ethan answered.
“We can get into the house?” Valerie asked, belated, and Jason nodded.
“It’s never locked.”
He waved out his window and drove away. Valerie went to get in the passenger side of Merck’s car and Ethan took a moment, remembering how to start it.
Valerie looked up at the trailer on top of the hill, shaking her head.
One day.
Only one day.
Ethan drove gingerly out along the road then along maybe two hundred feet before he found the asphalt and turned onto it. He drove slightly more quickly, but it was really only one car width of pavement, and the trees were close on both sides. If one of his tires went off the pavement, they’d probably be stuck.
They got to the house, where the woman was getting into the SUV with Jason, and Jason waited long enough to be sure that Valerie and Ethan got into the house, then he took off again, and Valerie looked at Ethan, at a loss.
“My room had a big TV in it,” he said. “Wanna bet it’s got everything on it?”
“I think I’m hungry,” Valerie said, and he nodded.
“They’ve got everything.”
She nodded, smiling.
It was going to be okay.
They’d done their job, gotten help, and now her parents were handling it.
She was happy.
She let Ethan take her arm through his and they went scavenging the kitchen for food.
Stepping Up
She fell asleep on the bed with him.
It was just warm and comfortable and he had his arm around her and she was happy and he smelled… like himself.
She woke up sore in very weak dawn light, sitting up and stretching as he shifted away from her, rolling onto his side.
Maybe her parents would come this morning.
She startled.
Maybe her parents would come this morning.
She looked around the room, looking for any proof that she’d spent the night there, then went down the hall to her own room, going in and messing up the bed. She went and brushed her teeth, feeling strange and happy and guilty and grown up and very childish. She closed the door to her room and went in to take a shower, just repeating everything from the past couple of days to herself because it was too much, and this was how she made sense of it.
It was while she was washing her hair that the words came back to her, in a new order.
“So if we put out a false rumor that you were in danger, you’re saying they might materialize?”
So if they put out a false rumor… Valerie’s parents would turn up.
What if the rumor wasn’t false?
What if it was true, but you were still the one who put it out?
Would they guess that Valerie would have a method of getting in touch with her parents?
She forgot the soap in her hair and turned off the water, throwing a robe around her shoulders and running down the hallway to Ethan’s room.
“It was a trap,” she said.
“What?” he asked. He was sitting on the end of the bed with a toothbrush in his mouth. He stood and went into the bathroom, spitting and running the water, then coming back out. “What was a trap?”
“They fed to the Council that Gemma was in contact with my dad. They found out somehow, and they figured out that they could use it as bait to catch my dad and my mom. All they had to do was tell me that they knew about her…”
“And they did that by putting it right in your terms,” Ethan said, shaking his head. “And we walked the bait right to them.”
“How could they know that I would know how to contact my parents?” Valerie asked. He shook his head.
“They didn’t need you to do it. The Council is a sieve. Eventually someone who was in contact with your parents would hear about it, and they would say something to them. Even if it was just about you being in contact with Fact Alexander’s daughter. They wouldn’t have to know that she was your aunt for that to be worth mentioning.”
“And as soon as they knew the secret was out, they’d know that Gemma was in danger and…”
“They’d come rushing in to save her,” Ethan said.
“We have to go help them,” Valerie said, and he held up his hands.
“No,” he said. “No, we can’t do that. We have to stay here.”
“They’re in danger and they don’t know,” Valerie said.
“It… People like your parents are always going to assume something is a trap,” he said. “I bet they thought of it right off. It only took you a few hours. I bet… Yeah. I bet they guessed that it might be.”
“But what if they didn’t?” Valerie asked. “There isn’t anyone to help them. And if they get caught… There isn’t anyone to destroy the laboratory. This is the window. They said it. This is the one time that someone could get in to do it.”
Ethan frowned, holding up his hands, but not arguing with her for the moment.
“It’s dangerous out there,” he said. “We can’t just go running out there. We… Look, I get it. You’re not wrong. But we can’t do it on our own. We aren’t ready, Valerie. This isn’t our fight, yet.”
“Whose fight is it?” Valerie asked. She wasn’t defiant. She wasn’t angry. It was simple.
Like a door had opened and she knew that it was the one that she had been here for.
“Sam might not believe in fate, but I watched Hanson walk in without even knowing why he was coming. I know that every one of us has dark magic, and I know that they tried to kill us but they couldn’t. They killed all of the ones who might have been us, but they couldn’t kill us. It’s because we have a job to do.”
“Right,” he said. “Resist the Council, fight the Pure, unite the separationists. Not go fight a demon and destroy a laboratory.”
“We were put together because we are going to be able to do things that no one was able to do, last war. We’re going to end the war and we’re going to end the Pure, and we’re going to start by making sure that they don’t kill everyone, first.”
He turned his face slightly to the side.
“You’re making me nervous,” he said, and she nodded.
Her hands were queasy, and she didn’t feel right. Except that she felt exactly the way she’d been supposed to feel her entire life. She just hadn’t felt like this before.
“We’re leaving,” she said.
“Where are we going?” he asked slowly.
“School,” she said. “And to get a bigger car that isn’t your dad’s.”
His nostrils flared.
“And what then?”
“It’ll come to me,” Valerie said. “I only ever know the next step.”
“You think that Hanson is ready for this?” Ethan asked. “Or Sasha? Or any of us?”
She looked at him, a string in her back pulling her down the stairs, toward the car.
“Yes,” she said. “We’re as ready as we need to be.”
“I don’t see how,” he said.
“Sasha is a skilled healer,” Valerie said. “She might not admit it, but she’s been watching and learning from her mom for as long as she can remember. Shack is tactically strong and he’ll make sure we have the right plan before we walk through the door. You’ve got more magic in you than you realize, even if you know it, if you weren’t so scared of it and so scared of using it wrong. You don’t need a written spell to be able to do what you know how to do.”
“What about Hanson?” Ethan asked, sounding like a morbid curiosity rather than a challenge. She shook her head.
“I haven’t got a clue, but I know that he showed up when we got together, and that means that he needs to be there.”
“Val, you’re going to get someone killed. I’m sorry, but this doesn’t make sense. We’re students. We aren’t supposed to be involved in the war. And we’re talking about going up against not just adults, but adults who are really good at magic and who have been developing casts that are killing Council fighters for months.”
“I have, too,” Valerie said. “And I’ve been watching Mr. Tannis build the defenses against them. I can defend against any one of the bad casts they’ve been using, and I can build them such that anyone can use those defenses. Mr. Tannis isn’t building personal casts.”
Ethan paused.
“That’s true,” he said. She nodded.