Real Magic

by Chloe Garner

  “I don’t want to kill anyone. But I’m going to blow up that lab. I’m going to do it, and I’m going to get my parents out of there.”

  “And if you show up and they’re in the middle of rescuing Gemma and blowing up the lab?” he asked.

  “They can ground me just as soon as they have a home to ground me to,” Valerie answered, and the corner of his mouth came up.

  “Okay, it’s not a plan, but it’s half a plan, and I’m willing to drive back to school based on that.

  “Now?” she asked, and he nodded.

  “Yeah, okay, now. But if your parents come here and we miss them because we’re off trying to re-save the world that they already saved? You have got to promise me that you’ll take all the blame, because I think that I’ve got my work cut out for me, getting them to like me.”

  Valerie nodded.

  “Come on. We need to be moving. Now.”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head, then nodded and motioned to the door.

  “After you.”

  She had no idea what she was going to do.

  They pulled up to the school during the middle of the school day, driving a stolen car, after they’d run away from the Council.

  They sat in the parking lot for a moment, both of them acutely aware that Lady Harrington had to know that they were there.

  “We just keep moving,” she said. “It’s after lunch. Where will they be after lunch?”

  “I have Diction with Shack around now,” Ethan said. “Sometimes I pass Sasha going into Botanicals after I drop you off. She might be there.”

  “Where’s Hanson?” Valerie asked, and Ethan shook his head.

  “Just get Sasha first,” he said. “She’ll know where he is.”

  Valerie smiled and nodded.

  “We’ll all fit in Shack’s SUV,” she said, and he nodded.

  “I’ll tell him to get his keys. If we don’t move fast enough, someone is going to try to stop us.”

  “I hope they don’t try, but I’m willing to deal with it, if they do. I’m going to send everyone out. You get them in the car and ready, pull up in front of the front doors.”

  “What are you going to do?” Ethan asked, and she shook her head.

  “You won’t like it.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a reason to not tell me,” he answered, and she got out of the car.

  “Sure it is.”

  She started walking.

  Lady Harrington was standing on the front steps.

  “The Council will have an agent here in fifteen minutes,” she said. “I hope you have a very important purpose for coming back.”

  “We’ll be gone in ten,” Valerie answered. Lady Harrington frowned.

  “You sound like my daughter at her most impetuous,” she said, and Valerie nodded quickly.

  “I’m just hoping I’m as good at everything else as I am at being headstrong,” she said, brushing past the woman and going into the school. Ethan took off for the Diction room, on the second floor, and Valerie ran for the Mrs. Reynolds’ room, hoping that they hadn’t messed up the timing and gotten the classes wrong.

  Sasha was, predictably, sitting in the front row.

  “… qualitative properties aren’t always finite,” Mrs. Reynolds said, pausing. “Valerie Blake. What are you doing here?”

  “Sasha,” Valerie said. “Quickly. Now.”

  Sasha looked back at her.

  “Was there a signal? What are you doing?”

  “Come on,” Valerie said, waving.

  “Miss Blake,” Mrs. Reynolds said sharply, but Sasha gathered up her things and stood, following Valerie out into the hallway.

  “Where is Hanson?” Valerie asked.

  “Beginning Rituals,” Sasha said.

  “I need you to go get him…”

  “Miss Blake,” Mrs. Reynolds said. “I had understood that you were in Council custody.”

  “Mrs. Reynolds, I’m doing the right thing,” Valerie said. “Please. Let us do it.”

  “You are a student, Miss Blake,” Mrs. Reynolds said.

  “And I’m a pawn,” Valerie answered. “But right now, I’m the one who has to make the move. Please, we need to keep moving.”

  She looked at Sasha.

  “Get him and take him out front. I don’t care who tries to stop you.”

  Sasha nodded and took off.

  “Do you need help?” Mrs. Reynolds asked, looking at Valerie with something between pity and exasperation.

  “I don’t know yet,” Valerie said, then pressed her lips into a smile and went to the door to the stairs. “I’ll let you know after.”

  Mr. Tannis’ room was one row of classrooms down from that set of stairs, and she ran it, going into his room and completely ignoring the test in progress. Someone was casting while everyone else watched.

  Valerie took an empty basket from the collection near the front of the room and started shopping.

  “Miss Blake, now is not the time for one of your interruptions,” Mr. Tannis said, as though she did this often.

  “Now is the only time for it,” Valerie answered, continuing to work.

  The basket would be big enough, but only just, and she needed to make sure that the wrong things didn’t mix. The tackle box solution was ingenious.

  “Miss Blake, please excuse yourself,” Mr. Tannis said as more of the room stopped to watch her.

  “I am working as fast as I can,” Valerie answered, and he started across the room toward her.

  She would have paused, except that walking from the front door to here and back would have normally taken her ten minutes. She had spoken to Sasha and Mrs. Reynolds, and every second here was time that she had to make up by running faster.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing, but it is unacceptable for you to disrupt my classroom in order to do it,” he said to her confidentially.

  “I’m saving the human race,” Valerie answered. “Thank you for equipping me to do it.”

  She glanced at him, hoping he knew that she meant it, then she nodded and changed to the other side of the room.

  He stood, watching her for a moment, then he put his arm over his head.

  “Magic is distractions,” he said. “You will continue your cast.”

  Valerie looked over at him once more, then went through the rest of his ingredients, packing out the basket and hitting the door at a jog, then the hallway at a run.

  Shack’s SUV was sitting at the doors, the engine running.

  Lady Harrington was still standing on the steps, and she grabbed Valerie on the way past.

  “Are you safe?” she asked, and Valerie shook her head quickly.

  “No, but no one else is either, and I might be the only one who can do anything about it,” Valerie said. “Keep the school safe.”

  Lady Harrington nodded.

  “I’ll keep them here as long as I can, as long as you get out before they see you leaving.”

  Valerie nodded, looking up into her grandmother’s face for a moment, then giving her a taut smile and running down the steps. Ethan slammed the door after her and got into the front, and Shack put his foot down.

  “So where am I going?” Shack asked, and Valerie shook her head.

  “Ultimately, Atlanta, but we need to make a plan before that. And I have got the world’s biggest prep session to do, first.”

  “That’s not an answer,” Shack said, going down the driveway at speed and only barely hesitating at the main road before he turned toward town.

  “We can go to my apartment,” Hanson said. Valerie looked at him and he shrugged. “My dad still has all his stuff there, so they’re still paying the rent. I just couldn’t stay there by myself after I ran out of food.”

  She frowned.

  “Doubt anyone would look for us there,” she said.

  “How long are we hiding?” Shack asked, and Valerie looked at the shopping basket on her arm.

  “Less than twelve hours,” she said. “If I can g
et all of this done by tonight, we go tonight.”

  “Works for me,” Shack said, and Hanson sat forward, giving Shack the address and directions to the nearest parking lot. Sasha leaned against Valerie.

  “We heard that things went really bad with the Council,” she said. “They told us that you weren’t coming back to school.”

  “That happened fast,” Valerie said, still working through what she was going to do with all of the casting. Most of it was individual, but she was going to try to expand it to the five of them, if she could.

  “They came looking for you,” Shack said. “Didn’t want us to know that that’s what they were doing, but Tabby came first, and then Mr. Trent came to talk to Lady Harrington.”

  “They claimed custodial guardianship,” Ethan said. “They were going to take her out of school, so we ran.”

  “So what’s the next play?” Shack asked. “What are we laying siege to?”

  He looked back at Valerie’s basket.

  “We went to see Samantha Angelsword,” Valerie said. “And she said that the Pure are close to being able to weaponize the cast that takes away people’s magic ability.”

  “Only that’s going to kill them all,” Ethan said. “So we have to go take out the lab where they’re making it.”

  “Why?” Sasha asked. “Why us? Is she sending us? What did she say to you?”

  Valerie shook her head.

  “No. She wanted us to stay at her house where we’d be safe. She told me where to find my parents, and we told them about it, and they went to deal with it.”

  “But…” Hanson prompted. She nodded.

  “My parents went to rescue my aunt, first, and I didn’t see it until this morning, that that might have been a trap. I don’t think that they can do it.”

  “So why not tell the teachers?” Sasha asked. “Lady Harrington.”

  “Lady Harrington has to stay to keep the school safe,” Shack said. “But the teachers would help us.”

  “It’s our job,” Valerie said. “Can’t you feel it?”

  “It would take too long to explain it and convince them,” Ethan said. “The Council was on their way the minute we showed up. You guys would just drop everything and walk out the door with us, but which of them would have done it in time for us to get away?”

  “Then tell the Council,” Sasha said. “Surely they would do something.”

  “Not quickly,” Ethan said. “They’d want to track down Sam and the rest of them and get them to appear before the Council so that they could confirm the story and extract any other information they could think of that might be useful.”

  “I miss when you were just sarcastic,” Shack said, glancing at him. “This is downright gloomy.”

  “I know,” Ethan said. “I just lost what little faith I ever had in them when they were willing to do that to Valerie, just to try to get a lead back on her mom. I mean… They outed a major asset in open Council to try to ruffle her.”

  “They did what?” Shack asked. “On purpose?”

  Ethan shrugged.

  “Won’t ever know. Looked like it from where we were standing.”

  “I can’t wait to hear how you managed to get away from Tabby,” Shack said. “But… First, I’ve got to be straight with you, I’m not sure I see what you think we’re going to do. I mean, we’re freshmen.”

  “And I’m not even that,” Hanson said.

  “I know,” Valerie said. “And I’ve got a few hours to think about it while I get all the casts prepped. All of the defensive magic I’ve been watching Mr. Tannis develop? I’m going to duplicate it for the five of us. And then Samantha…”

  “Sam,” Ethan corrected, and she shrugged.

  “It’s confusing and you know it,” she answered. “Anyway, she gave me another box of stuff to use that’s some of the most potent magic I’ve ever seen. I’ve got to believe it’s enough.”

  “What if it isn’t?” Sasha asked. “Are you sure? I mean, what if we go in there and they just…” Sasha paused, shaking her head. “Valerie, we’re kids.”

  “I know,” Valerie said. “But… The curse.”

  “Sam didn’t believe in it,” Ethan said. “I heard her say it.”

  “Okay,” Valerie said. “My parents. Are we just going to let them get captured and held and… things that Sam the psychic wasn’t willing to even talk about?”

  “We could go back,” Sasha said. “Drop the two of you off someplace safe, and we could tell them. We could convince them to come help us. Mr. Tannis and Mrs. Reynolds and Mr. Jamison.”

  “Dr. Finn, Mr. Marve, your healing teacher,” Shack said. “We have teachers who would listen to us, at least.”

  They weren’t wrong.

  Valerie settled lower in her seat, considering it.

  There was a stubborn part of her that knew she was right, knew that this was the thing that the five of them had been born to do. At the same time, she had no real skill in magic, just a remarkable lucky streak, and while the other three who had grown up in the community knew a lot more than she did, they would be going up against magic users who had been doing this as long as any of them had been alive. There was no rational reason to expect that she could win that fight.

  Ethan twisted in his seat.

  “I hate to say it,” he said, and she nodded.

  “No, I know. It’s that we have to make a decision now. Whatever is going on, the longer we take to figure it out, the lower a chance there is that we pull it off. Maybe Sam won’t even manage to distract the demon, if they caught my parents last night. Maybe he’s still there.”

  “That’s a reason to not go, not a reason to go,” he said, and she nodded.

  “I’m willing to hear reason.”

  “If we go back, odds are good we won’t get out again,” Shack said. “They’ll hold us, no matter what happens. We’re counting on either the Council to go do the right thing or the teachers rebelling and going to do it on their own.”

  “Would they?” Ethan asked. “It would be joining in the war effort. It would nullify protection on the school.”

  Valerie looked at him, and he shook his head.

  “I think we have to commit or decide we aren’t willing to. Are we willing to try it, based on Val thinking that this is the right thing to do and the fact that maybe no one else will?”

  “What do you mean that it would nullify protection?” Hanson asked.

  “Theoretically, the school is a protected space,” Ethan said, holding up a hand. “Yeah, they attacked it three times, now, and we put up a whole bunch of warding to keep them from doing it, but in theory, they leave our schools alone and we leave their schools alone because the teachers and students are non-combatants.”

  “And we don’t nullify that if we go do this?” Hanson asked, and Shack shook his head.

  “No. We aren’t acting as agents of the school or the Council. We’re in open rebellion against both. The teachers are acting on behalf of the school. They can’t just pretend like they aren’t teachers and go attack someplace.”

  The car was silent for a moment.

  “We can go to my apartment and still change our minds,” Hanson said. “Yeah, it’s better to decide now, if we’re going back, but… Maybe I go back. Just me. You four are a lot more useful, and maybe I could convince the Council that they need to do something…?”

  “Or maybe the teachers would break ranks to save the population of the entire world,” Ethan said.

  “I can live with that,” Shack said.

  “I’d feel like I was abandoning you guys, though,” Hanson said. “So I won’t do it unless all of you agree, and then… Look, I’m just useless here.”

  “No,” Valerie said. “I’m not sure you are.”

  She put her fingers through the casts, and he looked over at her.

  “Really?”

  She nodded.

  “If I avoid things requiring spoken casts… how are your simple patterns?”

  “Um. Okay
, maybe?”

  “He’s not bad,” Shack said. “We practice sometimes for homework.”

  Valerie nodded.

  “Sasha won’t cast at someone,” Valerie said, and Sasha shook her head quickly.

  “No. I won’t. I… I don’t think I can.”

  Valerie nodded.

  “I’m planning on mostly defensive magic, because I don’t want to hurt people, either, but if we have to, to save ourselves and to blow up that lab? We have to be equipped.”

  She looked over at him.

  “If I put together the casts for you and taught you how to set them off, would you be willing?”

  He licked his lips and nodded.

  “Yeah. I think so. Yeah.”

  “Don’t say yes unless you really are,” Shack said. “My mom says that’s the first thing that kills off a whole wave of the new recruits. The ones who figure out too late that they can’t bring themselves to intentionally kill someone.”

  “Kill?” Hanson asked.

  “I don’t know,” Valerie answered. “I don’t know if I could live with myself, if I put together a cast that ended up killing someone. We’re supposed to be Survival School, you know? But… If it was you or them and they were willing to kill the two of you, for the cause…?”

  “You do it,” Ethan said. “You don’t think. You just act.”

  “Honestly, I think that’s sick,” Sasha said. “Thinking that it’s okay to take a life without even reflecting on it.”

  “When it’s you or them, you have to be faster than they are and better than they are,” Ethan said.

  “Your parents seriously grew you up for war, didn’t they?” Valerie asked.

  “Your mom did, too,” Ethan said. “You can’t lie to me and say she didn’t.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Hanson asked, and Valerie shook her head.

  “I just… I figured it out, you know? We’ve been watching movies and talking about tactics and strategies and she had me in martial arts classes starting when I was eight, you know?”

  “Huh,” Hanson said. “I’ve watched movies with you before, and I thought your mom was just really into fact-checking stuff. But…”

  “They all knew it was going to come back,” Valerie said. “Even my mom, even hoping that we would stay out of it. Guys. This is what we were born and bred to do.”