by Chloe Garner
“Rises from the ashes,” Ethan murmured.
Hanson rose and Valerie held the necklace out where she could see it. The tinny rhinestones had a richer pigment to them, now, a beautiful array of yellows and oranges and reds, and the silver had a rosy hue to it that hadn’t been there before.
“Should I be jealous?” Ethan asked as Hanson left.
“If you are, you’re stupid,” Valerie answered, settling the pendant against her chest again and looking at his plate. “What did you find?”
“Bacon,” he said. “BLT.”
“Awesome,” Valerie said, leaning across the bed to take half.
“So how are we supposed to carry all of this?” Ethan asked, looking around again. Valerie was looking in the toolbox again.
So many flashing ideas.
She was going to wait. If anything had to happen, she could do it in the morning before they left…
“Tomorrow,” she said, and he nodded, chewing.
“Tomorrow.”
“Are they ready?” she asked, and he shook his head, almost laughing.
“Are you?”
No.
“We all have our backpacks,” she said. “Well, they do, and I’ve got everything from the Council robes.”
“I have mine, too,” he agreed.
“So we should be able to carry everything okay.”
“I think we ought to try to sneak in,” he said. “The longer we can go without having to fight, the better off we are.”
“I don’t know how,” Valerie said. “If we can figure it out, I’m not arguing with you.”
He nodded, finishing his sandwich. Valerie had only taken two bites.
“Come on,” he said. “Come sit with us.”
She looked around the room once more.
“At some point I have to teach you guys how to use all of this,” she said, and he nodded.
“Come have some dinner, watch a movie with us. Today has been unreal. Let’s just… you know. Tonight. Do something normal.”
She nodded, standing, and he took her hand, smiling.
She followed him down the hallway and into the small living room, where Hanson and Shack already took up most of the space. Valerie sat on the floor in front of Hanson, leaning against his knees as Ethan sat down in front of her, putting his shoulders back against her chest.
It was nice.
Nice in a new kind of a way. Her friends. Hanson’s apartment. Sasha, Ethan, and Shack.
The movie was an old one, one she remembered watching with her mom when she was younger, and it made her smile. Ethan reached up to take her wrist and put her arm around his neck, and she leaned her head against Hanson’s knee, cozy to the point of sleepy.
It was good.
They worked all night.
They ate, they drank sodas, they talked, they laughed, but they didn’t sleep, because Valerie was right - they had to learn every cast, how they went together, how they interacted with defenses, how they interacted with attacks, and they had to know them on sight. There wasn’t time to consult a list and read instructions.
For Hanson, she could give him single slips of paper with designs that he needed to make, and it appeared that would work, but that was it.
Everything else had to be memorized.
Fortunately, they were all getting pretty good at that.
Valerie had run low on everything, so she didn’t have enough for practice casting, but as the dawn started to color the sky outside, she started handing out the defensive casts that would last, watching as Hanson cast them, watching to make sure that they worked for Ethan.
They worked differently for Ethan, like her intentions had been slightly different, designing them for him, the way her magic worked against his.
Light and dark.
He wasn’t himself, but the skills he had were dark magic, and they… It was like a dance, the way she watched it work, and she thought that maybe he could tell.
Shack and Sasha were soldiers, capable, skillful, focused, and aligned. After the first of each cast, Valerie stopped worrying about either one of them being able to get things to work.
Shack had such an easy-going attitude, compared to Sasha, and Valerie felt bad at how much she had underestimated his academic skills.
“He’s only been doing this his entire life,” Ethan said. “And we aren’t heading for shoo-in spots with the Council. He and I are going to have to work for anything we’re going to get, and there are high expectations.”
Valerie narrowed her eyes at him.
“I’m not sure life is as hard for you as you think it is,” she said. “You’ve never seen the inside of an apartment before.”
He grinned.
“Sure, but it’s not going to keep me from feeling sorry for myself.”
She snorted, handing him the next cast. It was specific to fire magic, because she was concerned that maybe her more aggressive casts might not avoid hurting her friends, even where they were designed to protect the person who cast them. And she liked fire magic.
She knew how to cook someone from the inside out.
Apparently that was hard, and she had figured it out.
She took out the twiggy wand that Mr. Tannis had given her and Shack shook his head.
“I still can’t believe he gave you that,” he said.
“Anyone tell you those are against the rules in most classes?” Ethan called from the kitchen after he poked his head around the corner.
“Why?” Valerie asked.
“Because they’re dangerous and they make casting too easy,” Sasha answered, working a powder through her hair and helping Hanson to paint a symbol on his face with oil.
“Aren’t those… opposite?” Hanson asked, and Sasha shook her head.
“Nope. They’re dangerous because they make it too easy to make casts go way bigger than you meant to, but when you’re able to control it, all of the skill of casting is reduced a lot.”
“It’s a multiplier,” Shack said.
“It’s a multiplier,” Ethan agreed from the kitchen.
“Might be different for her, though,” Sasha said. “She isn’t relying on doing things exactly the way she learned them. If she’s just feeling them… Maybe it’s less dangerous for her.”
Ethan came to stand in the doorway to the kitchen and nodded.
“You might be right. I’m really enjoying getting to watch her work.”
“Standing right here,” Valerie said. She put the wand to Shack’s forehead, just barely making content, and cast a shield against physical force, flicking the wand toward the floor like zipping up a suit.
“Wow,” Shack said. “That feels… tight.”
“Uncomfortable?” Valerie asked, trying to feel it through the wand as she poked at his shoulders. He shook his head.
“No… like a battle suit.” He moved his arms up over his head and nodded. “No, that feels good. Like nothing is coming through it.”
“Oh, do me, do me,” Ethan said, bounding into the room with an easy smile. Valerie shook her head, standing face-on to him and focusing.
It would be different with him.
Everything was.
She closed her eyes, putting the wand to his forehead, feeling the sparking of dark against light as she even considered the cast.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she said.
“Why?” he asked.
“You don’t feel that?” she asked. “It’s like putting the wrong ends of a battery together.”
He shook his head.
“I’m fine.”
“I don’t want to trap you in,” she said. “Or hurt you.”
“Just do it,” he said. “You can undo it if you need to. Right?”
She closed her eyes again, drawing on her focus.
This was what she had learned most, working for Mr. Tannis.
Figuring out the way the magic played over itself, if she paid attention and let it tell her what she needed to know, to do it.
More powerful, as she really dug in. Her magic didn’t just spark against his; it rebounded and circled back against it again. The words were different, when they came. Harder. A battle unto themselves. But she felt the magic form against him, building and strengthening, and she flicked it to the floor and watched as Ethan shuddered.
“Are you okay?” she asked, and he opened his eyes, looking at her with bewilderment.
“I mean,” he said. “Yeah. It doesn’t hurt. It’s just… I feel different.”
“I can take it off if you want,” she said.
“What does it do?” he asked.
“Blocks physical attacks, a lot of them,” she said. “Any cast that is intended to strike you as a physical blow, it ought to deflect at least partially.”
He felt his own arms, then nodded.
“Yeah. I’m okay. It is like wearing armor.”
“Me next,” Hanson said. Casting Hanson, and then Sasha after him, was like casting on Shack. Just easy. Ethan, somehow, had taken an extra layer of cast to fit her magic against his, but it had felt stronger when she was done, not compromised.
“What about you?” Sasha asked, and Valerie shrugged.
“Can’t cast it on myself. It’ll be fine. I have plenty of other stuff going on.”
“I can do it,” Sasha said.
“Are you sure?” Valerie asked, and Sasha put out her hand for the wand.
“And you’re sure you aren’t going to blow my head off?” Valerie asked.
Sasha gave her an annoyed look and Valerie handed her the wand.
“Wow,” Sasha said. “This is a good one.”
“You’ve used them before?” Valerie asked, and Sasha shook her head, pointing the wand up at Valerie’s forehead and repeating words that Valerie could scarcely remember. There was a sense of the magic coiling around her, taut, like a constrictor, then smoothing, still snug, until it zipped closed, one layer along another. Valerie found herself unsure she could take her next breath.
Sasha watched her with calm eyes, and Valerie nodded, finally forcing herself to breathe again.
“That is tight,” she said.
“What kind of cast is that?” Shack asked, and Sasha shook her head.
“Don’t know. But I like it.”
“I do too,” Shack said, rotating his elbows to either side. “I like it a lot.”
They looked at the kitchen window, where the light was beginning to come in.
Valerie looked at the rest of them.
“I’m going,” she said. “If anyone wants to stay, I won’t think any less of them.”
“The plan needs all of us, to have any hope,” Hanson said, picking up his backpack and heading for the door.
“Plan’s got no hope, anyway, but I don’t let anyone else drive my car,” Shack said, following.
“You know I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t about saving the entire world,” Sasha said, giving Valerie a grim sideways smile and nodding.
“We’re just going to see if your parents have broken in and already pulled it off,” Ethan said. “I’m laying good odds that we’re going to be the second robbers to the bank vault and we’re gonna show up to chaos.”
“I hope so,” Valerie said, nodding. He kissed her cheek.
“You’re amazing,” he said. “I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.”
Shadows
The night before, the day before, the trip to North Carolina, going before the Council.
It all felt fake.
Like a pantomime of things that couldn’t possibly happen, that she’d been watching as they happened to someone else.
Driving to the building where the magic was being developed that had the potential to end the world?
That felt very cold and very real.
Valerie sat in the back next to Ethan, the wraps under her sweater packed out with every spell she’d spent the past day prepping, his hand curled around hers.
They were going to die.
This was foolishness, her ego, teenage sense of immortality and invincibility, something that they should have summoned adults to deal with.
All of the arguments yesterday that she’d been so hard-headed toward made a lot more sense, that morning, and Valerie wavered hard toward telling Shack to turn the car around, to point it north or west or wherever North Carolina was at this point and go hide while the real fighters took care of the problems.
She was stubborn.
Everyone knew that about her.
But Lady Harrington had stood by as they’d left the school. Mr. Tannis had gone back to teaching class.
They had faith in her.
More.
They thought that there was a chance she was right that she was the only one who could do it, even with the limited information they’d had to go on.
It made her even more insecure, that they would trust her that much when clearly she had no idea what she was doing.
What was she?
Just a natural, someone to whom magic came by inspiration rather than study.
It didn’t make her a General, or even a leader.
And she was leading her friends to their deaths.
She knew, intuitively, that Ethan considered himself the leader of the group, or at least the co-leader, and that he was following her because she was the one who knew what to do next, not because she was the one making the decisions.
And on the one hand it made her want to smack him, but on the other, it was comforting that he didn’t think he was following someone. He was just letting her be in front. He was the one making the decisions.
And there was every chance that Shack was following Ethan, not Valerie, in point of fact. That if Ethan had thrown on the brakes, that Shack would go along, regardless of how hard Valerie might have pressed. But Hanson and Sasha, they were here because of her. Not just because of her. For her.
Her friends.
The ones most likely to suffer from her poor decision, there out of loyalty specifically to her.
“Will you cut it out?” Hanson asked from the front seat. “I can feel you angsting from here.”
“No kidding,” Shack said. “I can, too.”
Valerie shook her head.
“I have to,” she said. “What if I’m wrong? I mean, if we go at this and never even think about it…”
“We did think about it,” Ethan said. “We talked about it all day yesterday. And we all agree that this is what we need to do.”
“No, but, seriously, I can feel you angsting,” Shack said. “I’m not kidding.”
“I can, too,” Sasha said, shifting. “Is it part of one of your casts?”
Valerie shook her head.
“I don’t know. You mean it?”
Sasha nodded. Valerie looked over at Ethan, who shrugged.
“I feel fine,” he said. “Nothing is going to get me today, I don’t care what stupid thing we go try to do.”
She frowned, and he shrugged.
“I survived my dad. There really isn’t anything the Pure can do to me that could be worse than that.”
“They’re cooking people,” Valerie said.
“But you gave us defenses for that,” Ethan answered. “You and Mr. Tannis wouldn’t have kept working like you did if your stuff wasn’t successful.”
She hadn’t thought of that before.
They pulled up to the parking lot that Hanson and Shack had agreed on, and they got out of the car. They were about three blocks away from the building, and if they got there and the place was crazy, they were just going to keep going. If they got there and people came after them immediately because they’d been watching for them, they were going to split up two-two-one, and Ethan and Valerie were supposed to try to circle back to see if they could sneak in another way.
That was as far as the plan really went.
If they got there and it was just another building…
They had decisions to make.
Hanson had pulled up the surface-level pictures of the building, and it looked like a rather run-of-the-mill office building with doors on both streets that it faced and blinds in all of the windows.
It looked like there was a lobby on the shorter face of the building, and Valerie wasn’t sure if that made it the right way to try to get in or the wrong one. She was just hoping that they would get there and Ethan would be right. That it was all over.
They rounded a corner and all of them stretched in the same direction to see.
The building was red-brick, like most of those around it, and… there was simply nothing remarkable about it.
She looked at Ethan and he shook his head.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” he said. “You don’t know yet. Get closer and see if it still has all of its defenses up. I bet it doesn’t.”
“Act natural,” Shack said, and suddenly Valerie forgot everything about how to walk.
Ethan took her hand in his and she relaxed again, nodding.
They walked.
The sidewalk between here and there got shorter and shorter, and then they were walking past the building. Valerie reached out her fingertips to touch the brick, feeling the buzz of energy there.
“We could go in and say that one of our parents works there and we’re meeting them,” Sasha said.
“Which one?” Valerie asked.
Her grandfather might actually be in there… the thought stunned her as though for the first time. But asking for him was beyond stupid.
“Keep walking,” Ethan said.
Valerie nodded.
“This is actually going to happen,” she said.
“You knew it would,” Shack answered.
“Four corners,” Valerie said. “One of us at each of them. Sasha, you and Hanson stay together. Put down the melting cast at the corner and set it off as soon as you’re far enough away for it to not hit you. Shack, Ethan, and I will go in this door. Hanson and Sasha go in the other door. Be ready to cast the first stunning spell the second you get in the door, and then keep moving.”
“How do we find your mom?” Sasha asked. “And after that, how do we find you?”
“Just find my parents and get them out,” Valerie said. “Don’t worry about us. If you can get out and get away without anyone following you, meet back at the car. Otherwise, meet back at the apartment if you can do that within an hour. After an hour leave the apartment and go back to school. Ethan and I will figure out where we go, but we’ll find you guys at school, eventually. You ought to be safe there.”