Surviving Magic (School of Magic Survival Book 1) Page 14

  Sasha shook her head.

  “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

  “Ethan might,” Valerie said. “He missed the first four weeks of school. Maybe he knows a lot more than the rest of us. Maybe he decided he needs to tell me…”

  “At one in the morning?” Sasha asked. “They won’t keep us in our rooms forever. What’s going to change between now and then?”

  Once again, Sasha had a valid point.

  They weren’t changing Valerie’s mind, but she appreciated having someone thoughtful and methodical talking her through it.

  “What would you do?” Valerie asked.

  “Mrs. Gold is out there,” Sasha said, and Valerie shook her head.

  “Wrong answer. What would you do?”

  Sasha grimaced, then went to get her bag off of the back of the closet door.

  “If they catch you, you invented all of this in a fit of manic inspiration,” she muttered, and Valerie grinned.

  “Magic,” she murmured.

  Sasha.

  Sasha was a freaking genius.

  Looking at the list of directions and the stacks of potions, the phonetic explanations of the verbal spells… All Valerie could think was that she hoped that Sasha was never on the other side.

  Sasha went through it once more, making Valerie recite the spells in reverse, for fear that Valerie would accidentally trigger them.

  “You have to do it exactly right,” Sasha said at one point. “Since you don’t speak the language, there’s no room for error. Fluency helps so much…” She shook her head.

  “Sasha, this is… This is absolutely incredible,” Valerie said. Sasha gave her a dour look.

  “If you’re impressed by this, I hate to think of what you’d think of war spells. This is basic defense and evasion.”

  “How do you know all of this?” Valerie asked.

  “My mom,” Sasha said. “And, you know, I’ve been going to class for a while, now, too.”

  “I’m so behind,” Valerie muttered. Sasha nodded.

  “Now… please. Just… don’t do it. Okay? It was a cool experiment to see if I could come up with a way to get you there and back, but… Please don’t do it. Just stay here. Let him tell you whatever he’s going to tell you later, if he was even going to turn up at all.”

  “I’m doing it,” Valerie said, looking at the clock on the wall.

  It was quarter to one.

  She had her list.

  She had a bag on her shoulder.

  She had magic.

  Freaking magic.

  She went to the door and turned to look back at Sasha once more, who shook her head. Valerie flashed a grin, unable to contain it, then she took out the first spell, a paste, and marked her face with it, cheekbone to jaw, straight down, the way Sasha had indicated. It had an odd scent to it, and it made it feel as though her feet were a long way away and lighter, somehow.

  Step one.

  Eighteen steps to go, to get to the library.

  Twenty-three to get back.

  Sasha was concerned that Valerie did not pay enough attention to detail to get through this, and she had a valid point once more, but the bag on her shoulder all but sang to her, and Valerie was eager to go.

  She was on a mission.

  She made it to step fourteen.

  So.

  Close.

  She was within sight of the library, but Sasha had noticed that there was a magic field here, just on the other side of the steps, that was designed to keep out people who might have come to raid the library, and it had a side-effect of notifying whoever had cast it - Sasha was guessing Lady Harrington herself - that someone had crossed it.

  So Valerie had to disguise herself from that field, but not before she was out of line of sight of the main office, because the main office had the capacity to identify every student on the premises, and if it saw someone who wasn’t a student or a member of the faculty, Mr. Benson would know immediately.

  Valerie had wondered exactly what about the front office was watching her, but like an awful lot of Sasha’s magic, it had seemed best not to ask.

  At fourteen, she was supposed to slick the bottoms of her shoes with an oil-and-stuff mixture and read one of the spells, then mark the wall at the bottom of the stairwell with a short-term forgetting spell. Sasha said it wouldn’t last more than fifteen or twenty minutes, so that was all she was going to get in the library with Ethan; she needed to be out of there after that.

  The problem was, Valerie couldn’t remember which was the wall-marking oil and which was the shoe-slicking oil.

  They had been in a rack of vials, and she was supposed to just use them in order, but when Mr. Tannis had walked past at one point, Valerie had hidden behind a corner and jostled the rack, and they’d all fallen out.

  She was kind of in trouble, getting back, but she was so close to the library, and there was no way she was failing before she at least heard what Ethan had to tell her.

  So she took out the two oils and looked at them.

  One of them had bits of green flotsam floating around in it.

  The other one looked like Sasha had used two drops of red food coloring on it.

  She opened them both and smelled them, glancing at the library again and wondering how Ethan was planning on getting in and if she couldn’t just hang out here and wait for him to let her in.

  Playing this guessing game…

  The one was sweet.

  The other was quite bitter, by scent.

  Lofty, though, like smelling cold air after being cooped up in a humid classroom all afternoon.

  She poured half of the red oil out onto her hand, ignoring how it dripped onto the ground, then she screwed the lid back on and stuffed it into her pocket. She took the flotsam one and held it up to the light, then sipped it - why had she done that? - and poured it onto her wrist, letting it flow down onto the red. The edge where one met the other was hot, but not uncomfortably so, and when they mixed…

  She quickly slicked the bottoms of her shoes and put a handprint on the wall - there was no time for the intricate symbol Sasha had given her - then ran toward the doors of the library.

  Steps fifteen through eighteen weren’t going to make it. Either she was going to go now, or… Well, her hand was going to fall off.

  Fall off?

  Where had that come from?

  And yet.

  She knew it.

  If she didn’t go straight for the doors of the library, the mix of magics on her hand combined with the protections around the library were going to combust or acidify or something… whatever instinct it was that was guiding her wasn’t being entirely clear on the details.

  She backed through the doors into the library, hearing Sasha’s vials clink around in her shoulder bag and wondering if there was any hope on her getting back to the room.

  “You’re late,” Ethan said, and she shrugged.

  “Had to hide from Mr. Tannis. Are they actually patrolling?”

  “They didn’t figure out who cast the spell in the girls’ dorm wing,” Ethan said. “Lady Harrington said that you were involved, but they think there’s an upperclassman involved as well who knows how to cover his casts. Elvis could do that.”

  “Did you tell me to come here so you could accuse me?” Valerie asked, and Ethan grinned easily.

  “No. Just. If they’re grilling you, looking for who your accomplice was, you could point them at him, and they’d have a merry chase trying to figure out if it was him or not.”

  “You told me to come here,” Valerie said. “And it took me a lot of work to get here. Why?”

  She went to go clean up her books to have something to do. It was likely the librarian would notice her stuff was gone, in the morning, but she couldn’t just leave without it.

  She couldn’t.

  She always cleaned up after herself.

  “That cast,” Ethan said. “I’ve seen something like it before, in Germany. And I think that there are so
me things that you should know that no one is telling you.”

  Valerie straightened, then sat on the desk, putting her feet on the seat of the chair.

  “I’m listening,” she said. He twisted his mouth to the side.

  “It’s stuff that I’m not supposed to know,” Ethan said. “But I have a habit of wandering around where people don’t… Why did it take you so long to get here, again? You should have been able to just walk here.”

  “What?” she asked. “How?”

  “I reconfigured the defenses. I’ve seen the full schematic…”

  He paused, frowning, then went to open the doors of the library.

  “Stop playing,” she said. “What did you have to tell me tonight that was so important?”

  “That mark,” he said without looking back at her. “It’s distinctive magic. I don’t know if you saw it but the shape of the scar on the floor… They aren’t ever going to get it to come up. They’re going to have to cast new defenses around it… Do you hear that?”

  “Ethan,” Valerie prompted, but he opened the door all the way, listening.

  And that was when Valerie heard it, too.

  Footsteps.

  “Close the door,” Valerie hissed. “They’re going to see you.”

  “I reconfigured the defenses,” Ethan said, his shoulders dropping. “Because I needed to talk to you. But they already did it…”

  He looked over his shoulder.

  “I just messed up big time,” he said. “They might… Everyone is in danger. We have to go back.”

  “And do what?” Valerie asked, all the same hopping off of the table and walking over to him, past him into the wide expanse in front of the library. He followed her, letting the doors fall behind them.

  “Do you smell that?” Valerie asked. Ethan shook his head.

  “What do you smell?”

  “Smoke,” Valerie said after another moment as they both picked up pace. “Really… acrid smoke.”

  Ethan cursed and started to run. Valerie wasn’t behind him more than a step, her backpack and Sasha’s shoulder bag jolting back and forth on her back.

  There was hissing and the sound of voices, ones that Valerie didn’t recognize, and Ethan shoved her against a wall, listening.

  “That’s hellspeak,” he whispered. “There are demons here.”

  Valerie thrashed.

  “Sasha is there,” she said. “I have to go help her.”

  “You just need to know going in,” Ethan said. “They see you, they know you, and they are allowed to kill you, if they get an opportunity.”

  “Just tell me what to do,” Valerie said.

  He looked over his shoulder.

  “You should go get Lady Harrington and Mr. Benson,” he said.

  “Nope, try again,” Valerie said, pulling his arm down from where it was braced across her collar bones. “You can, if you want.”

  “You haven’t got the first clue how to take care of yourself,” he said.

  “But they’re here, and my only friend in the whole school is in there, and I’m going to go help her.”

  “How?” he asked.

  She shook her head, pushing him back and away.

  “I’ll figure it out,” she said, starting to run toward the dorm wing again. She glanced back once to see him watching her, then he held up a hand - good luck, it seemed - and he turned to run the other direction.

  For help.

  They only had to hold out for so long, and then the teachers would come and they would slaughter the demons.

  Just for so long.

  Valerie skidded to a halt at the top end of the hallway, seeing men and women, maybe half a dozen of them, tearing open doors and throwing girls into the hallway. Mrs. Gold was there, shrieking words Valerie didn’t understand, and two of the strangers were in front of her, yelling things back. The air was thick with a dark gray smoke, and several of the walls appeared to be on fire.

  Real fire, this time.

  Valerie counted to her own door, finding that the doors on either side were open, but the door on her room was still closed.

  Maybe.

  It felt right.

  She grabbed two girls on the way past, dragging them to their feet and pulling them up to her door. There was screaming as more girls came stumbling into the hallway. Valerie opened her door and shoved the two girls in, sticking her head in to look at Sasha.

  Sasha was ready.

  For what, Valerie would never know, but she was ready, and she had to hold back whatever it was she’d been planning.

  “Hold this door closed,” Valerie said, then - before Sasha could answer - she went back out into the hallway, pulling more girls to their feet and pushing them toward her room.

  “Go,” she yelled. “Go. In there.”

  There was a man yelling at a woman next to a cluster of five girls, and Valerie took the bag off of her shoulder, putting her hand into it and taking out a pair of vials. She knelt, pouring them on the floor in a pattern that was similar to what Sasha had shown her for disarming the library, but not at all identical, then Valerie stood again.

  The two demons looked at her, and one of them took a step forward.

  Halted.

  “Go,” Valerie yelled, walking cautiously around the wet markings on the floor and getting the girls up onto their feet. “In there.”

  “It’s her,” the man said. Valerie shuddered, backing away over her design on the floor. The two came after her, slowly, like they were having to fight their way, and Valerie turned her back and ran into her room, slamming the door and putting her back against it.

  “Someone help me hold this,” she said.

  “It’s magic,” one of the other girls said. “It doesn’t work like that. They broke all the locks on our doors.”

  “They won’t get through that one,” Sasha said. “Not in time.”

  Valerie closed her eyes and nodded, putting her hands out to the wall on either side of the narrow hallway that went from the door to the room, then pressing her back harder against the door.

  The door thumped as the two demons outside reached it, and Valerie felt the door strain as though it was a part of her own body, but it held.

  There was a pair of hands on her shoulders, and a soft voice.

  “You’ve got this,” Sasha said, marking Valerie’s forehead with something. “Strength, focus, and power.”

  “We’re going to get you, little girl, and then you’re going to learn what magic can really do,” the man said through the door. It was like he was whispering it to the back of her neck.

  Her hair stood up as her skin prickled, and she felt Sasha mark her hands. The girls were whispering, terrified, but they kept their voices down as Valerie attempted to focus.

  The door held.

  They slammed into it again, and then it vibrated like it might simply fall apart, and then it burned against her back like her skin would blister and cook, but the door held.

  And then.

  And then something very strange happened.

  It was remarkable what something had to be, for Valerie to consider it strange in that moment, but everything went calm and still and very quiet. Valerie opened her eyes, looking at the girls in the room, at Sasha mixing something new in a stone bowl, all of them frozen in time. The door was completely still. Valerie held it, anyway, suspecting a trick.

  Instead, there was a knock.

  “Valerie,” a voice said. “You need to come with me, now.”

  “Not likely,” she called back. “You can’t come through.”

  There was a pause, and then a laugh.

  “That’s a good trick,” he said, and the doorknob twisted and the door pressed against her back as it unlatched.

  She pushed harder against it.

  “Come on now,” the man said. “Let’s not let this become undignified.”

  “I’m not letting you in,” Valerie said.

  “They’re going to kill you, do you understand that? Th
at’s what they came here for. I have one shot to get you out of here.”

  “The teachers are coming,” Valerie said. “And they’re going to kill all of you.”

  She didn’t know if it was true, but she liked the sound of it.

  “They won’t get here in time,” the man said. “But here’s the trick. If you aren’t here, none of this is worth it. They’ll teleport out before the teachers even get here, because, as admirable a job as Mrs. Gold is doing holding the whole wing on her own, none of the demons want to face down Lady Harrington or Mr. Benson, much less Mr. Tannis, if he’s armed.”

  “So I’m just supposed to go quietly?” Valerie asked.

  “If you want you and your friends to live,” the man said, pushing gently at the door again. Valerie looked in Sasha’s frozen, unblinking face and shook her head.

  “I would,” she said, her voice lower now. “I actually would. But I don’t believe you.”

  “Don’t believe me what?” the man asked.

  “That you’ll leave them alone if I go with you.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Yes, I see it now. No. I’m not with them. I’m here to rescue you.”

  “Why would I trust you?” Valerie asked. “You’re here with them.”

  “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I actually went to quite a lot of effort to get to you before they did, actually.”

  “You’re late,” Valerie said.

  He laughed.

  “Very good. Now. You need to come with me quickly. My spellwork isn’t designed to hold forever.”

  “They’re going to die, if I open this door.”

  There was a long pause.

  “I give you my word that this door will not budge until Lady Harrington herself opens it.”

  “Who are you?” Valerie asked.

  “Valerie, I’m your father.”

  Grant

  The door opened.

  Valerie wasn’t sure if she’d opened it or if he had, but he…

  If she hadn’t been so animated from the fight, she might have fallen to her knees.

  It was him.

  Aged a good bit, with silvering hair that was much finer than it had been, back then, and with stubble on his chin where he’d been meticulously clean-shaven before, but she recognized him from the pictures.