Surviving Magic (School of Magic Survival Book 1) Read online

  “Plants and herbs,” she said. “There’s so much to memorize.”

  “My grandma used to take me walking in the woods, everywhere we went,” Yasmine said. “She made me name everything that might possibly be used in potions.”

  “Which according to her was everything,” Ethan said, and Yasmine grinned. Ethan picked up a finger to point casually at Valerie. “Her grandmother is one of the premier potion-based spellcasters for seventy-five-plus light magic potions. Wrote two or three of the books that they use as textbooks at Light School.”

  “I expect I’ll read them at some point,” Valerie said. “Mrs. Reynolds is very enthusiastic about how much reading and memorization I need to do.”

  “Mrs. Reynolds is the best,” Shack said.

  “Not like Mr. Tannis,” Milton agreed. “She loves to do what she’s doing, but she also likes teaching it. Mr. Tannis just can’t leave the potions room.”

  “Like a hoarder,” Shack said.

  “I’ve actually been studying with him for several weeks now, and he’s been as enthusiastic about what I can do as anyone,” Valerie said. “He’s really passionate and supportive.”

  They looked at her.

  “What can you do?” Milton asked. She shook her head.

  “I just mean how fast I can learn,” she said.

  Milton didn’t look entirely satisfied, but Shack was the first to jump in.

  “The first day,” he said to her. “They made everyone leave the class for you to do something, and when you came back out, they said that some of the teachers looked scared. What did you do?”

  “And can I learn how to do it?” Patrick asked.

  “I just did what they asked me to,” Valerie said. “And they figured out that I had no idea what I was doing.”

  “They shouldn’t have put you here,” Ann said. “No offense. I know that your mom is a big deal, and she got to do whatever she wanted to, when they called her back in again. But you should, like, be sleeping in the office or a cottage or something, and let a real freshman take your slot.”

  “They didn’t give me a vote,” Valerie said. “I would still be at home, if I got to choose. Wouldn’t know anything about any of you. Would have gotten to see my best friend play basketball.”

  “Lady Harrington wouldn’t let her stay if she didn’t have potential,” Ethan said. “You all know that.”

  Valerie lifted her head as Sasha came into the room, but the girl flushed and went through the food line as fast as she could, then went to sit at a small table at the edge of the room by herself.

  “You have a friend who plays basketball?” Ethan asked.

  “He had just found out he was going to be varsity when the guy from the Council showed up and tried to scare me into the car,” Valerie said.

  “Which guy from the council?” Ethan asked, and Valerie frowned.

  “Roger,” she said after a minute. “His name was Roger.”

  “Ah,” he answered, like that made total sense. “Yup. He’s one of my dad’s attack dogs. Does exactly as he’s told.”

  “I didn’t like him,” Valerie said, and Ethan nodded.

  “Neither do I. You should have your friend come up for a weekend. There’s a court here out by the cottages. We could play.”

  “I didn’t know we could have guests come,” Valerie said. “They won’t let me talk to him on the phone.”

  “Oh, no,” Ethan said. “You definitely have to write him a letter. But the school has a PO Box in the city that they use to send and receive mail, and it’s pretty casual.”

  “I’m going to invite him to come visit my new boarding school by snail mail?” Valerie asked.

  Ann snorted.

  “You too good for our rules?” she asked, and Valerie shook her head.

  “Look, I don’t like being controlled, and it feels an awful lot like being controlled. But that isn’t it. I just can’t imagine saying ‘hey, do you want to come hang out some weekend’ and then putting it in an envelope and waiting a week to hear back. I mean, it’d take the rest of the semester to get it planned.”

  “Tell him that we have visiting weekends the second and third weekend in October, and that if he wants to come, there’s a bus that leaves town at eight on Friday night and gets back Sunday afternoon.”

  “You think he’d actually get on it?” Valerie asked. “Because of a letter?”

  “If he wants to see you, he has to,” Yasmine said.

  “Mrs. Gold is brutal about keeping the guys out after curfew,” Ann said. “So if you’re going to hide him in your room, you have to be really clever.”

  “I wouldn’t want him in my room,” Valerie said. “We really are just friends.”

  “Uh huh,” Ann said.

  “You guys seriously let non-magic people come here, though?” Valerie asked.

  “Why not?” Ethan asked. “They sleep in the visitor cottages, we put away the stuff that just screams weirdo, and we maintain relationships with the outside world that don’t involve magic.”

  “Things would get seriously weird if the only people we were around were magic,” Shack said. “I mean, we’re weird enough as it is.”

  One of the boys whose name had presently escaped Valerie elbowed Shack, and Ethan grinned.

  “There aren’t enough of us,” Ethan said. “We have to keep the civilians around, just for company.”

  “How many magic users are there?” Valerie asked, and Ethan shrugged.

  “Couple thousand families in the western hemisphere and Europe. The schools on this side of the Atlantic are all English-speaking, but there is a French one as well. We know that there are magic users all over the other continents, too, but they kind of do their own thing.”

  “If Hanson came, his mom would want to come, too,” Valerie said. Ethan shrugged.

  “So?”

  “And she’d want to know where my mom is,” Valerie said. The table quieted for a moment, then Ethan shook his head.

  “Talk to Lady Harrington,” he said. “There’s got to be a story that they’re using. It’ll be simple and to the point, and you just follow their lead.”

  “How many of you have parents who are in the war?” Valerie asked.

  Ann looked up and down the table, then shrugged.

  “We’re mostly Council brats,” she said. “The washed-up ones who couldn’t get into Light School.”

  “My dad is on the quick-strike team,” Shack said.

  “Of course he is,” one of the brown-haired boys teased.

  “What does that mean?” Valerie asked.

  “He’s on the cleanup team,” Shack said.

  “There are two,” Ethan added. “The attack force and the cleanup force. Both of them have to be really quick on their feet with magic, but the cleanup force is more… humanitarian.”

  “Healers?” Valerie said.

  “And defenders,” Shack said. “That’s what my dad is. He graduated from here, and he goes and tries to keep people alive while the attack team is fighting with the Superiors.”

  “Everyone is involved,” Yasmine said. “Just not all of them are assassins.”

  Valerie blinked at her.

  Assassin.

  No one had used that word before, though maybe that was what Mrs. Reynolds had been dancing around, calling Susan Blake a sniper.

  “Her mom isn’t an assassin,” Ethan said. “At least, she wasn’t.”

  “Did she or did she not go behind enemy lines and kill people?” Ann asked.

  “First, that stuff is still technically secret,” Ethan said. “No one actually knows what either of the Blakes or the rest of the Shadows did.”

  Valerie only just managed to avoid asking who the Shadows were, realizing at the very last instant that she didn’t want to admit out loud that she didn’t know.

  “Second, not everyone who goes behind enemy lines is an assassin. She sent back a lot of information, too, that helped keep people alive. And third, so what if she is an assassin? It�
��s what the world needed most with Hitler, isn’t it? Sometimes killing just the right guy saves thousands of lives.”

  “I think it’s hot,” Shack said, and Valerie gave him a withering look that he ducked with good grace.

  She wanted to tell Ethan that he didn’t need to fight her battles for her. The problem was that she did. She had no idea what her mom had been, what she’d done.

  And it sounded like he did.

  “She doesn’t belong with us,” Ann said after a moment, lowering her voice for Ethan’s benefit but saying it loud enough to be sure Valerie heard.

  “You’re welcome to go,” Ethan answered, turning his attention to his food.

  Hands clapped down on Ethan’s shoulders, and Valerie looked up at Elvis.

  “Finally made it,” Elvis said, slapping his palm against Ethan’s face with what might have been affection.

  “Elvis,” Ethan said, a greeting.

  Elvis looked over at Valerie and gave her a smile.

  It wasn’t a kind smile, but he was still witheringly attractive, even as the words formed to mock her.

  “See that you wasted no time figuring out the worst way to slum it,” Elvis said. “You know that she’s worthless at magic. Only here because her mom’s important.”

  “Make you feel better, pointing it out?” Valerie asked, standing.

  “Does, actually,” Elvis said, then smiled again. It was almost friendly. “See, the rest of us worked hard to get here. I’m on my second school, trying to master the craft and become someone useful to the community. Hoping to end up on the Council myself, someday. You took somebody’s spot, and we all kind of resent it. Someone deserves to be here who isn’t, because you’re here instead.”

  “You’re being a jerk,” Ethan said. “And there’s no point. She’s here. Lady Harrington wouldn’t have let it happen if there wasn’t a point.”

  “They’re having to teach her everything,” Elvis said. “There’s no way she graduates.”

  The entire room was looking at her. Valerie sighed, nodding.

  “Look, whatever. You guys enjoy your dinner.”

  She picked up her tray, grabbing the cookie and the apple that she hadn’t gotten to and walking for the door.

  The room fell fully silent as she left, and she stewed all the way back to the library, where she hung out outside long enough to eat the remains of her dinner before she went back in to study some more.

  A few minutes later, Sasha sat down beside her.

  “The Trents are jerks,” she said softly. “All of the Council brats are.”

  Valerie glanced over at her.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say a mean word about anyone,” she said.

  “I don’t like to,” Sasha said. “They all do what they do because they think they’re right, and because… war is hard. But even when there isn’t a war, they’re doing things that matter, on the Council. Making sure that people don’t abuse their magic or each other and… I don’t know, keeping track of people, I guess. I think that’s important, somehow, even though they’ve never really been able to say how. It’s not that they’re bad people…”

  “Yes,” Valerie said emphatically. “They are. They’re snobs and they’re cliquish and they aren’t real. My mom asked specifically for me to be in a room with you. Can you imagine what my life would be like if I’d been with Ann the Council brat? I mean… I would have locked her out of the room and never let her back in, first opportunity. No question. You’re a good person, and I don’t care how genuine their motives are. They’re bad people.”

  Funny thing was, she’d hung out with ones just like them, at school. Catty girls with lots of boyfriends and politics when it came to who they invited to what event.

  Valerie was mostly immune to it - she was… well, she was Valerie, and everyone always invited her, because if she was there, it was cool - but she hadn’t ever seen her friends act like that to someone. Not directly and not to their face.

  Sasha shook her head and looked at the table.

  “I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said. “I guess you are.”

  “Who were the Shadows?” Valerie asked. Sasha looked at her and frowned, almost pained.

  “I don’t know,” she said. Valerie pursed her lips, about to say something about how unhelpful that was, when Sasha waved her hands. “No, not like… Like, no one knows who the Shadows were. Or what they did. I don’t even know if your mom was one, for sure, but if anyone was going to be one of the Shadows… She probably was. And your dad. They were people who did was they had to, to win the war. Ones that the Council didn’t talk about what they were doing, and… There are just lots of rumors. Maybe they didn’t even really do anything. My mom told me once that she thought it was possible the Council invented them to give the Superiors something to be paranoid about.”

  “That’s smart,” Valerie said, and Sasha nodded.

  “That’s war,” the redhead said. “They have whole teams of people thinking up stuff like that. The tactics committees.”

  Valerie blinked at her, then shook her head.

  “This is all too organized for me,” she said. “Schools and councils and committees… What if I don’t want to do it?”

  “Then you don’t,” Ethan said, coming in the doors. “Hey, Sasha. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

  “We met once,” Sasha said, standing. “At a post-war ceremony for my mom. We were little.”

  He frowned.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “No,” Sasha said. “You were too busy running around with a burning gwell lump on a stick.”

  He grinned.

  “I do remember that. You were there?”

  “Your dad gave my mom a medal,” Sasha said. “My whole family was there.”

  Ethan frowned, sitting down across from them.

  “Huh. Well. I’m sorry if I was a jerk little kid.”

  She shook her head.

  “Just bored,” she said. “I wanted to play with you, but I was afraid you were going to fling the gwell lump off at any second and it would hit me.”

  Ethan looked at the table, thinking.

  “That’s exactly what happened, isn’t it?” he asked. “Ann came to yell at me and I turned too fast.”

  Sasha nodded.

  “Yeah. My mom patched her up before your dad could give her the medal.”

  Ethan pulled his mouth to the side.

  “She was angry at me for years about that,” he said.

  Sasha nodded.

  “I’m going to go work on my homework,” she said after a long pause. “Good night.”

  “You can stay and study with us if you want,” Ethan said, and Sasha looked at him with cagey eyes, then shook her head.

  “Tell your brother to lay off,” she said, and he shrugged.

  “If I could come up with a way to do it, I would.”

  Sasha looked at Valerie, as if expecting her to come, too, but Valerie motioned at the stack of books.

  “I’m not allowed to take these yet. That’s a junior privilege.”

  Sasha sighed and nodded.

  Valerie watched her leave, then frowned.

  “She’s not going to be able to get into the room,” she said.

  “Why is that?” Ethan asked.

  “I locked it too hard,” Valerie said, watching after Sasha. “She can’t open the door unless she focuses.”

  “You’re serious,” he said, and she shrugged, returning to her book.

  “You locked the door so hard Sasha Mills can’t open it, when she’s your actual roommate?” he asked. She looked at him again and shrugged once more.

  “I didn’t mean to,” she said.

  “Geez, you really are a natural,” he said. “I heard that the drain spell at her entrance test didn’t even knock her out, that she put up a ward to protect herself from it in the middle of the protection cast.”

  “I have no idea what any of those words mean,” Valerie said
.

  “She’s the best,” Ethan said, and she looked at him once more. He nodded emphatically. “Like, Light School was fighting to make her take the entrance exam there, just so that they could offer her all kinds of inducements to come there. She’s the best. And you locked her out of her own room.”

  “And she really doesn’t like you very much,” Valerie said.

  “She’s right not to,” Ethan answered. “I mean, I suck a lot less than I used to, but she wouldn’t know that, would she? Her mom went tearing out of here after the last of the war stuff was done, and she never looked back. Sasha knows… Well, everyone knows about her, and I think there are a lot of kids who know her okay well because her mom would stay with them when she was traveling from one place to the next, but she avoided anyone from the Council. On purpose. So… she doesn’t know that I’m not that same jerk kid that I was before, and now she’s had a whole month with the rest of the Council brats to prove how much more awful we are now.”

  Valerie lifted her chin.

  “This is game, isn’t it?” she asked. He grinned, and she gave him half a smile in return, going back to her book, though she wasn’t reading any of it anymore.

  “Is it working?” he asked.

  “Why?” she asked. “You just got here. Are you seriously so bored that coming to hit on the new girl is that exciting to you?”

  “No,” he said. “Hitting on Susan Blake’s daughter, the one who was out in the cold but who came back and is working her fine butt off in the library trying to catch up? That is worth my time. I’d have flirted with you either way. I like to see girls smile. But… You see what coming from the center of power within the Council did to my brother. I woke up about four years ago, as Elvis was going to Light School, and realized that I don’t want to be a prick the rest of my life. If I want anyone who isn’t going to treat me different because I’m the Head Councilor’s son… Gotta be you, right?”

  “And you thought that all the minute you walked in here,” Valerie said, still not looking at him.

  “No,” he said. “I thought ‘wowza, who’s the hot chick with all the books?’. The rest is since then.”

  She lay her forearms across the table, hand over hand in front of her, and she looked at him intently.

  “Hanson could turn you into a pancake if he thought that you were just messing with me,” she said. “And that’s nothing on what I could come up with to do to you.”