by Chloe Garner
“Not me,” Hanson said. “And not Sasha.”
“She’s not a fighter, she’s a healer,” Valerie said. “We need that just as much.”
“Not there,” Shack said.
“No,” Valerie said. “You’re right. I don’t want her in the middle of all of it. I just… She needs to be there, you know?”
“I’m not a magic wand that you can wave at boo-boos and make them go away,” Sasha said. “And I’m right here.”
“I’m sorry,” Valerie said. “What do you want to do?”
“I want you to all stop talking about kill or be killed and figure out how to do this without having to kill people.”
“Sometimes that isn’t possible,” Shack said.
“Then you aren’t doing it right,” Sasha answered, looking hard at her knees. “No one is attacking us. Maybe if we went in, in the middle of the night, and we just sneaked in, you know?”
“They aren’t going to leave their magic lab undefended just because the sun goes down,” Ethan said. “Any more than they all go to bed at school and turn off the wards.”
“Don’t talk to her like that,” Hanson said.
Ethan turned his face toward the window then looked back again.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yes, you did,” Sasha said. “Because you think there couldn’t possibly be a way to do this without fighting.”
“Do you believe that, or do you just really want it to be true?” Valerie asked. “I’m asking honestly, because… Sasha, I’m worried they have my parents. And that they’re going to hurt them and kill them, and then accidentally release a cast that’s going to kill… more people than I can even imagine.”
Sasha shook her head.
“I don’t know. I just… I helped my mom put all of these things right that someone else had broken. I don’t want to be a party to breaking them.”
“I know,” Valerie said. “But someone has to. Right? Or do you want to sit aside and just see what happens?”
“Valerie’s mom, back during the last war, she killed a friend who was developing the cast, back then. Someone who had no bad intentions at all, but she was getting close and Susan Blake turned the cast back onto her and it killed her,” Ethan said.
“If she was getting close, then why kill her?” Sasha asked. “Is it so bad?”
“Getting rid of people’s ability to do magic?” Valerie asked. “Would you be okay with it if someone did that to you?”
“But if you weren’t losing anything?” Sasha asked. “If you never even knew?”
“Sam said that taking away someone’s inherent magic is always going to kill them,” Ethan said. “That it’s intrinsic.”
“So there’s no way it could ever do anything but kill them?” Sasha asked, and Ethan shook his head.
“It didn’t sound like it to me,” he answered.
“And if they manage to make it contagious before they figure that out, they’re just going to kill everyone,” Valerie said.
“So we all agree it’s important,” Sasha said. “Just… Valerie, there’s no way we succeed at this.”
“We’re the only ones here to try,” Valerie answered, looking out the window. “There’s no one else.”
Hanson’s apartment smelled the way it always had, but emptier, drier somehow, like the life had left it and it was just the memories that remained.
“Are we going to be here through dinner?” Hanson asked, and Valerie shook her head.
“I don’t know. Can I set up in your room?”
“Sasha and I can go get food from the market,” he said. “If you want.”
She glanced over.
“Okay.”
The idea of still being here, come sunset, disturbed her, but she didn’t see any way around it. She’d been working with Mr. Tannis long enough to know that this was going to take time, and there wasn’t any rushing it.
“So is this what your apartment was like?” Ethan asked, following her down the hallway to Hanson’s room. She shook her head, struggling to carry a conversation with all of the instructions in her head.
“Ours was different,” she said. “It was a little smaller, but all of the walls were white, so it felt… different.”
He nodded, going to sit on the unmade bed.
“What can I do?” he asked.
“You want to help me prep?” she asked.
“If I can. I mean, everyone’s seen you do this but me, at this point, but I get that you do things weird.”
She nodded.
“I think maybe,” she said. “Just. Let me get started. If I can hand things off, I will.”
“You have a plan?” he asked, and she shook her head.
“Make everything.”
“Right,” he said. “That ought to cover it.”
She worked.
Someone brought her a sandwich and she ate it.
She handed things to Ethan and he handed them back, one at a time to make sure he didn’t do them all wrong before she could fix it.
His fingers brushing across hers was virtually the only thing that she remembered, looking back, other than the magic.
Her back hurt, and she knew that she was running out flat space, that she should have packed more prep tools - bowls, boards, like that - and she found herself surrounded by things from out of the kitchen trying to substitute in, though she didn’t remember who had brought them.
Ethan’s voice.
Ethan’s voice was there. She remembered that, too.
It felt right.
Felt like this was the machine that she was built to be.
When she woke from it, it was deep dark outside and the light was on, overhead. The desk lamp was on and pointed over at her, as well.
“I need…” she said, looking around at everything. “I need some time.”
“Okay,” Ethan said. “Then what?”
“Then I think we go,” she said. He shook his head.
“I know these are time sensitive…”
“No they aren’t,” Valerie cut in, shocking herself how simple it sounded. “No. Sorry. These are designed to go out into the field for fighters to use when they need them. They’re designed to be inert until you activate them. There are a few that are still setting, and then I’ll seal them off, and…”
“Then we should wait for morning,” he said.
“Ethan, they might have my parents,” Valerie said. “Never mind that every minute is a risk to the whole planet. We should go when we’re ready.”
Ethan shifted on the bed, looking at the sheer volume of stuff she’d generated. She still had the toolbox. She didn’t know what she was going to do with it, but she could wait to find out.
“Dark and light,” he said.
“Dark, light, and natural,” Valerie said, and he shook his head.
“No, you miss my point. Dark and light, they fight each other. Don’t they? I mean, it’s natural, right? Dark and light can’t exist at the same time. Natural and light, that’s fine. Natural and dark, that’s fine. But dark and light can’t be together.”
“Are you saying you’re dark?” Valerie asked. “Because you aren’t. You’re a mage and you can do all three. And it doesn’t mean that you are dark…”
“Dark can fight dark,” he said. “I’m not trying to tell you I’m insecure. I’m trying to tell you that the Pure have embraced the dark. And if you want to fight it, when you really have a big chance of losing, you ought to wait until you have as many things going for you as possible.”
She listened to that carefully, then nodded.
“You think we can do this,” she said and he shrugged.
“I think we’ve got a better chance after dawn.”
“No sneaking in? No trying to be some big secret?” Valerie asked, and he raised his eyebrows.
“If you’ve got that in your bag there, sure. I’ll take it. But… I think we can do this. I wouldn’t do it if I thought we were all g
oing to die.”
“What if you thought any of us were going to die?” Valerie asked.
“Do you think…”
She nodded.
“I think we can do this,” she said. “But I know that I can’t guarantee that we all make it.”
“And you’re living with that,” he said quietly, and she nodded.
“You guys are my friends. The most important friends I’ve ever had. If I could just go in there on my own…”
“We won’t let you,” Ethan said, and she nodded.
“I know. That’s why we have to do it. We all have to go. If I could talk Sasha into staying back, stay here with Hanson…”
“She might say yes,” Ethan said, and Valerie shook her head. Her hands were chafed from the physical work she’d done with the ingredients.
“No, she would agree to it right up until we were leaving, and then she’d realize that she has to be in the middle of it just like the rest of us.”
“How do you know?” Ethan asked.
“Because when my dad came to get me out of the school, she jumped at the last second. She wanted to see. She’s afraid and she knows better, but this is where she wants to be, same as the rest of us.”
There was a knock on the door and Valerie turned her head.
“Did she come up for air, then?” Hanson asked, and Ethan stood.
“Started talking a few minutes ago. Think we’re getting close.”
Hanson looked around.
“Man,” he said.
“Is Sasha freaking out?” Valerie asked, and Hanson shook his head.
“No, my parents have cable still, so they’re watching a movie.”
“I might go get something else to eat,” Ethan said. “If you’re done for a minute.”
Valerie nodded.
“Fifteen minutes,” she said. “Maybe twenty. And then I’ll finish it all up and… Can you bring me the tool box, when you come back?”
“Yeah,” he said, clapping Hanson on the shoulder on his way out of the room. Hanson carefully walked back across the room, taking the exact spot Ethan had just left because there weren’t any others.
“You okay?” he asked, and she nodded, frowning at the room.
It was ready.
It was all ready.
“Seriously, Val,” Hanson said. “Are you okay?”
She glanced over, then remembered that the question meant something.
“If we go in there and it’s all chaos and my parents have clearly already been, I’ll just blow a giant hole in everything and we’ll run away. You and Shack should figure out where to leave the car. Ask Sasha if it’s safe to use the internet to pick a spot from satellite photos.”
“Okay,” he said. “But are you okay?”
She looked at her hands. Lotion wasn’t the right answer. Lotion was just going to make her feel like she’d done something. In the toolbox from Samantha Angelsword, there was a bright red powder that if she mixed it with the right oil…
“Hmm?” she asked. “Um. Right. I don’t know. It’s like… I’ve been this person my whole life, and I’m just figuring it out now, and I feel like I’ve lost my whole life, leading up to it, but… I’m so happy. I mean… I might die. I don’t want to die, but I could. Right? And I don’t care. I mean, I do, but I can’t even think about it, because this is who I am.”
“Yeah,” he said, scratching his chin with his thumb. “I wish I felt that way.”
Oh.
Yeah, she’d kind of been wrapped up in her own thing too much to really deal with the fact that he felt worthless.
“Ethan told me that he tested you,” she said, and he nodded.
“I’m light,” he said with a vague smile of pride. Valerie didn’t point out to him that she wasn’t particularly convinced that that was a sign of virtue. Sasha was all-out natural, as far as Valerie could figure, and the girl was the best person Valerie might have ever met.
“But you’ve got power, right?” she asked. He nodded.
“Just don’t know how to use it.”
“You’re getting there,” she said. “Sasha says, all the time.”
He nodded, looking at his hands.
“Shut up, Hanson,” she said. “Just shut up. I’m counting on you. I’m counting on you to do what you have to, to get my parents out of there and to get Sasha out of there and…”
He frowned, and she pointed.
“That, there. It’s going to put off a vapor that’s going to stun everyone around. I’ve made it once before, but I adapted it for a magic field that’s protecting the people who are supposed to be there. I’m trying to blend it into looking defensive, but it isn’t. It’s going to make them forget what’s going on, get confused, and look for things that they always do, because those make sense. If you set it off before you defend yourselves, though, the two of you are going to get knocked out, too, and someone is going to catch you before you figure out why you were even there. The protection spell against it is over there on the desk, and you have to make the right symbol on the backs of your hands. I wrote it on the paper, there.”
“What do you mean, defend ourselves,” he said. “Aren’t you going to be there?”
She shook her head.
“No.”
As she’d been building casts, she’d realized that she was building two distinct sets.
“Shack, Ethan and I are going to go blow up the lab. You and Sasha are going to find my parents. I have a bunch of stuff for you to give them, once you find them, and Sasha has a bunch of stuff for healing, in case they need it. You get them out, okay? If they’re fine and in great shape and you’re really sure, they might have you and Sasha get out on your own while they come make sure that we’ve made it, but I don’t think… I think they’re going to need help, just to get out. And… There might be more. You might have… I don’t know how many people there might be that the two of you are going to have to help get out in the middle of… Whatever else might be going on.”
He looked at her hard, and she nodded.
“I can’t do this if I know I’m going to leave my parents in there, and I can’t get to them and blow up the lab. My Aunt Gemma… she might be in there, too.”
“We’ll get them out,” he said. “If they’re there. I mean… My mom and I chased your parents around for weeks. They’re hard to catch. They really are.”
“I know,” Valerie said. “But they set a trap, and I handed them the bait. I heard them… They weren’t going to leave Gemma there…”
“Just…” he said. “I don’t know your dad, but your mom, Val. She’s… Don’t underestimate her, here.”
Valerie nodded.
“Okay. Yeah. I hear you. But we can’t just sit and wait.”
He shrugged, then gave her a halfhearted little smile.
“I still have your birthday present here,” he said, going to a desk drawer gingerly and pulling it open. He took out a small white bag and went back to the bed to sit, handing it to her.
“I forgot,” she said, and he nodded.
“You were too mad at me, and… nothing about that weekend really went the way it was supposed to.”
Ethan had kissed her that weekend.
Not a total bust.
She looked at the bag with a warm curiosity that reminded her of simpler times, then took the tissue paper out of it and took out a box.
She frowned at him.
Hanson wasn’t a jewelry kind of guy. He’d always gotten her goofy birthday presents. Things he’d found at random little shops, or giant fuzzy socks, a talking stuffed cat, once. This was… It was all the way to sentimental.
She opened it and put her hand to her mouth.
She’d loved her high school.
Not so much the people or the building or the classes or… Well, any specific thing about it. But she’d been happy there, and she’d loved it. And Hanson had known that.
He’d bought her a necklace from the Yearbook-run shop, little bright-colored rhinestones f
orming the shape of the mascot - the Phoenix.
“Thank you,” she said, and he nodded.
“I was going to say something about not forgetting where you came from, but… Yeah.”
She unclasped it and put it on, putting her fingers over the textured surface of the bird, then smiled.
“I love it, thank you.”
She closed her hand around it for a moment, then frowned, going to get her basket. She’d used up so much of it, and a lot of what was left was budgeted to go to Sasha to top up what she would have been carrying as she was in class.
Ethan came back with a plate that smelled like bacon, and he held up her toolbox. She snatched it - more rudely than she intended - and dug through it, finding three, four things that just fit together like a children’s puzzle.
“Give me your hand,” she said to Hanson, and he offered her a handshake. She turned it palm-up and poured the red oil into the bowl of his hand, just a few drops, laying a narrow leaf across it and then crushing another over top of that. The dark brown stone in the center of the oil began to dissolve slowly, and Valerie snapped her fingers at Ethan.
“Lighter,” she said. “Lighter.”
“Hold up,” Hanson said, trying to ease his hand away from her.
“Trust me,” she said as Ethan shuffled to get his lighter out of his pocket and hand it to her. She looked at Hanson and nodded. “Trust me.”
He nodded, and she struck the lighter, putting it down to his palm. It caught and she tossed the lighter back behind her again for Ethan to catch, cupping Hanson’s hand in both of hers. She spoke over the low blue flame and it sparked, vibrant yellow, popping softly. Finally, the dissolving stone caught and it shot a red flame up and through the blue that would have caught Valerie’s eyebrows if she hadn’t felt it go. She held the necklace out to Hanson.
It wasn’t instinct.
He wasn’t certain what she wanted him to do.
But she nodded, and he closed his hand around the phoenix, red flame shooting out from under his thumb as the cast took root and extinguished in the same moment.
“Whoa,” Ethan breathed.
“You can let go,” Valerie said. “Go wash your hand.”
“What was that?” Hanson asked.
“Phoenix,” she said, wondering how he couldn’t see it. “It’s a fire bird.”