Ruthless Magic Read online

  “I’m fine,” he said breezily.

  “Maybe now. Keep it that way, all right?”

  When she straightened up, her gaze fell on me. “Digging for inside tips?” she asked in a teasing lilt.

  It took me a moment to connect that question to my conversation with the examiner. “Didn’t get any,” I forced out. It was easier if she assumed that was what I’d been doing.

  The boy with the smile stood up and rubbed his hands together, looking around at all of us. “So, shall we pretend for the evening that this is just a highly intensive summer camp session and introduce ourselves?”

  “What’s the point?” Mohawk said with a twitch of his jaw. “Exchanging names isn’t going to make us friends.”

  “I’d like to know who I’m sharing a room with.” The purse girl held up her hand. “Judith Pan. Seattle Academy, most recently.”

  “Desmond Powell,” said the guy with the spaceship tee, next to her. The sweep of his dark eyes across us was so penetrating I felt as if he’d looked right through me. “Greater Chicago Tutorial. Boldly going where no one back home has gone before.” He grinned and tugged at his T-shirt, and I noticed the words “To boldly go” were printed under the spaceship too. A quote from a movie?

  The boy with the smile tipped his head. “Finnegan Lockwood, Manhattan Academy. Though we’ll have words if you call me anything other than Finn.”

  “Prisha Mathur,” the girl beside me said. “Also Manhattan.”

  My turn. “Rocío Lopez. Brooklyn-Queens Tutorial.”

  Lacey pushed her hair back behind her ears. An awed light had come into her face. She blinked, realizing we were waiting for her to speak. “Lacey Nilsson,” she mumbled. “Sort of Saskatoon. That’s, um, Canada.” Then her voice rose a little higher. “Do you think— Are we really done? We made it through the first day?”

  “Looks like it,” Finn said, his smile widening.

  A loud, hoarse laugh burst out of her. A strange reaction, but I’d take this girl over the beaten-down one I’d seen at Axton’s side.

  Mohawk let out a huff. “I’m Mark Ornstein from San Diego,” he said. “Now I’m going to get to know dinner, thanks.”

  A creamy, gravy-like smell filled my nose. A spread of platters had appeared on the table while we’d been talking.

  The others headed for the table with a murmur of anticipation, and I trailed after them. I picked up one of the steaming mini potpies, a handful of carrot sticks, and a cookie somewhat at random, not sure if I’d manage to swallow even half of what I’d put on my plate. I was turning back to my cot, my thoughts whirling around the examiner’s comments again, when Prisha snagged my elbow.

  “Come eat with us,” she said. “You really saved my hide with the bottle cap—thanks, now that I can say it properly.”

  I didn’t really feel like chatting, especially with the old-magic crowd, but rejecting her gesture felt like a bad strategic move if nothing else. “Sure,” I said.

  Us was her, Finn, and Judith, who’d spread her cot’s blanket on the floor for us to sit on as if we were having a picnic. “So it doesn’t actually rain there all the time?” Finn was saying to Judith in his wry tone.

  She rolled her eyes. “No. Only, like, ninety percent.” Her hand dropped to her side, as if to rest on her purse, and clenched. “I don’t see why we had to leave our stuff outside. I wasn’t expecting the Exam to be like this.”

  Prisha raised an eyebrow. “What were you expecting?”

  “I don’t know,” Judith said. “I never had much chance to ask anyone about it. I was only at Seattle for two years, and everyone already had their own friends, you know? We were always moving around. My father’s a diplomat.”

  “Well, sorry you had to put up with Callum being a jerk during that last test. It’s definitely him, not you. I’ve heard him talking with his parents, and I don’t think even they like him.”

  “I’m not taking it personally,” Judith said. “It’s not as if he has any reason to help me... But I feel as if I’m so behind everyone else. My whole life, all my dad has ever cared about was me saying the right pleasantries to impress people at the political functions and whatever. I’d like to have the chance to do a little more than that.” She jabbed her fork at her pie. “What do you think we’ll have to do next?”

  “Search me,” Finn said. “The Confed doesn’t want us to have any clue what’s coming—they’re too good at holding their cards close.”

  Not really, unless the examiner in the hall just thought I was a ghetto-girl who was too stupid to infer his meaning.

  I reached for my cookie. The buttery dough melted on my tongue with a rich, honey-like sweetness.

  It tasted like the last birthday cake Dad had baked me. He’d found the recipe online and been excited to try it out after our traditional birthday weekend excursion to Coney Island, where as always he had eaten too much cotton candy and Mom had hopped onto the rides with me as eagerly as if she were a teenager too. For ten hours we’d been a full family again, like a temporary ’chantment.

  There were more days like that waiting on the other side of the Exam. I’d make sure there were.

  I gazed at the crumbs on my fingers, wishing I’d at least paid a little more attention to what the cookie had looked like so I could find another the same.

  Finn got up to grab more food. Prisha nudged his leg with her shoulder. “Get me an orange?”

  “Certainly,” he said brightly, but I thought I saw him flinch. Had he hurt himself somehow during one of the tests?

  Desmond was contemplating the fruit bowl. Finn made a comment to him, and after a moment they were both laughing. Finn added something with a goofy expression, and suddenly even Mohawk—Mark, I corrected myself—was grinning despite all his attitude about the bunch of us not being friends.

  Clearly the boy with the smile had a silver tongue as well.

  Judith leaned toward Prisha. “So how long have you two been—?”

  Prisha cut her off with a chuckle. “Oh, no, Finn and I are just friends. He did confess his undying love for me once when we were thirteen. Went down on one knee and everything. I told him I loved him very much too but like a brother—quite a bit better than my actual brothers, to tell you the truth—because I happened to only be interested in kissing girls.”

  Finn returned in the momentary silence that followed that statement. He took in our combined expressions and glowered at Prisha as he sat down. “Why is it that, without fail, you tell everyone that story within five minutes of meeting them?”

  “We obviously like each other too much,” Prisha informed him. “People always ask. And it’s a good story.” She turned back to Judith and me. “See, after I told him that, he asked whether I was completely sure and if maybe I shouldn’t give boys a try just to confirm. He must have realized how crass that was from the look I gave him, so he immediately ’chanted his mouth away in contrition. If you’ve never seen a person without a mouth, I can tell you it’s difficult to stay angry when you’re laughing that hard. Other than that blip, we’ve always been good.”

  She patted Finn on the back, and he side-eyed her as he handed her the requested orange. His cheeks had turned faintly pink. “Yes,” he said. “Except for when she insists on telling that story yet again. Then I’m forced to question the entire friendship.”

  I couldn’t help trying to picture him mouthless. “How did you ’chant it back?” I said. “If you didn’t have a mouth to speak to the magic...” I trailed off as the three of them stared at me.

  Finn recovered with a blink. “I hummed,” he said. “It’s just the vibrations, the rhythm, that allow you to conduct the magic, right? The words only help us focus intent.”

  “Don’t they teach theory in tutorials?” Prisha said.

  My own cheeks flushed hot. “No, they do,” I said quickly, remembering back in early elementary when we’d reached the magic by tapping our feet or drumming our fingers. “I just wasn’t thinking.”

  The
magic was always there when I reached for it, no long-winded explanations necessary, so I’d focused on practical texts at the library, and it’d been forever since we’d delved into theory in class. What was the point when most of us wouldn’t get to use more than a fraction of our original ability?

  “It’s been a long day,” Finn said, but my embarrassment eased only slightly. No one was going to be surprised to see the Exam take me down after that slip. Then he offered me a cookie. I recognized it as the same type I’d grabbed before.

  “You looked as if you really enjoyed it,” he said when I didn’t move. “I thought you might want another.”

  I met his eyes as I took the cookie, and he smiled just for me. My pulse fluttered.

  “Thanks,” I said, and yanked myself back to Earth.

  “Speaking of stretching one’s magic,” Prisha said, “you would not believe the conjuring Finn and I saw on Saturday. This amazingly detailed dragon illusion. Considering how high up in the sky it was, the thing must have been at least a quarter mile long.”

  Finn glanced at her with his forehead furrowed. The second she’d said “dragon,” my skin had gone tight. Still embarrassed from my last blunder, I almost kept my mouth shut, but when Judith asked, “Where?” and Prisha started describing it, I knew I’d only feel worse acting ignorant through a long dissection of my work.

  “Ah,” I said, and took a bite of the cookie as if it could fortify me. “That was me. Mine. I mean, the dragon was.”

  Then I did shut up before my pendeja of a tongue could stumble more.

  “Really?” Finn said. When I made myself look up again, he was outright grinning at me. “It was spectacular.”

  Both of Prisha’s eyebrows had leapt up now. “What was it for?”

  I couldn’t talk to them about Javi. Not while we were sitting here in the middle of Rikers Island. Not with four more days of the Exam ahead of us.

  Not when an examiner had just expressed his anticipation of my impending death.

  The knot in my stomach came back. “I just... wanted to see if I could,” I said weakly.

  “What in Hades’s name are you doing here when you can cast like that?” Finn burst out. “You could top every person in our class. And why weren’t you at the Academy if you live in the city?”

  I stared at him, and he looked back at me so earnestly that my careful control started to crack. They were his people, the Confed—it was his world. Did he really have to ask that?

  “I wasn’t at the Academy,” I said, “because the tuition fees would have taken all the money my family needed for food and rent and being able to survive. And I’m here because the Confed would rather take half-talent mages with names they know over any level of gutter-magic nobody. What do you think?”

  I pushed myself to my feet and stalked to my cot. Keeping my back to them, I breathed in and out and willed myself to relax.

  Mark had just sat down on his bed. He rubbed his hand along the base of his mohawk. “Confed brats,” he said under his breath. “Underneath, they’re all the same. I don’t know how my brother—”

  He cut himself off and looked away. What had the Confed done to his brother?

  He didn’t seem to want to talk about it. Well, like he’d said before, none of us here were going to be friends. I needed to focus on surviving—and surviving in a way the three I’d left on the blanket never had to consider.

  I used the little two-stalled bathroom off the side of the room and then lay down on my cot. The time must have been later than I’d have guessed, because after what seemed like only a few minutes, the lights started to dim by increments. By the time their glow had dropped to half its previous brightness, the others were shuffling around me. Lacey tested the door to the hall—it didn’t budge. She drifted to her cot.

  The light dipped even lower. Prisha crawled under her blanket on the bed next to mine. Fabric whispered behind me. Then Finn’s voice reached me, soft and level with my ear.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, crouched down beside my cot.

  I waited for him to offer some explanation, to throw in a joke to break the tension, but he let the apology stand alone. When I didn’t answer, he added, “Good night, Dragon-Tamer,” and headed for his own cot in the corner.

  A lump rose in my throat. Good night, Silver-Tongue. My lips pressed tight against the words.

  He might not have meant to hurt me. He might be a perfectly wonderful human being. But opening myself up was risking another wound and another hostile response bursting out of me. And that was exactly what the Confed expected from me, wasn’t it? Exactly what would justify the examiners culling me like chaff from wheat...

  What they expected.

  The examiner had said, I expect you’ll end up on the same path, blatant as anything. But what was it Finn had pointed out? That the Confed didn’t want us to know what was coming, that they were good at keeping their cards close. He should know, shouldn’t he? And it was true that I hadn’t heard one hint of what happened here before I’d arrived.

  Was it really likely that an examiner would have revealed so much to me out of carelessness?

  It might have been a lie, all of it. An extra test just for me, to see how provoking me would affect my performance.

  The lights went out completely, and the chill inside me hardened.

  The Confed had almost gotten to me. They’d almost shoved me straight into the role I was meant to fill. Whether I was snapping at the others or shunning them, I’d look like the new-magic threat they’d feared enough to throw away whatever good my magical abilities could do.

  I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want to hurt anyone—I didn’t want anyone else getting hurt. Hadn’t they seen that when I’d tried to stop Axton, when I’d given Prisha a hand?

  It hadn’t been enough.

  Resolve rose inside me. I’d wanted to use magic to help people see, to give them something they might not have otherwise. Why couldn’t I start here, even if it wasn’t quite what I’d pictured? I wouldn’t just not harm anyone; I’d help them.

  Let the examiners expect whatever they wanted. I was going to make it through this Exam alive, and so was every other person in this room, no matter what I had to do to protect them. The Confed couldn’t watch that and then claim I was any kind of threat.

  Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’d accept Finn’s apology, and anything else—

  My thoughts were cut off by an odd prickle that raced over my scalp. The room around me tumbled away.

  One instant, I was deeply asleep. The next, my eyes were popping open with a jump of my pulse.

  I sat up, holding my blanket. The lights were still out, but when I looked around, enough of a glow seeped from somewhere in the distance for me to see that there was a distance. The wall that had been at the head of my cot had vanished. A hazy gray space stretched out beyond the dorm room as far as I could see, split here and there by columns of slightly blacker shadow.

  A thin peppery smell filled my nose. My heart thudded faster with it.

  “What now?” someone—Mark?—grumbled.

  Prisha slipped off her cot and waved her hand where the missing wall had been. It really was gone.

  “The hall must have been an illusion,” she said. “They conjured up those walls temporarily so we couldn’t see the whole space.”

  Someone at my other side—Desmond, I thought—whispered a few lilting words. A square pane of light blinked into existence in the air over our heads, quite a bit higher than the ceiling had been before.

  Even with the illumination, the great gray space beyond the alcove of the dorm room didn’t appear much less gray. The shadowy columns looked like trees that had lost all their branches, just smooth trunks with flat stumps protruding out at awkward angles. The closest was some thirty feet ahead and to our left, a larger one maybe a hundred feet and a bit to the right. A thick fog drifted around them, obscuring any view of the landscape beyond.

  “It would appear Day Two just started,” Finn said.
>
  It didn’t look like day out there, and I wasn’t sure we’d slept long enough for it to be light outside. But then again, I hadn’t seen sunlight since we’d been brought in from the courtyard. My head felt muddy. They’d ’chanted us to sleep and then yanked us awake, hadn’t they?

  I pushed myself off the cot and took a few steps into the space beyond the dorm room. When I crossed the boundary where the wall had been, the ground shifted beneath my feet. It had more give there, almost spongy in feel.

  A tremor passed through the magic, touching me as if ghostly hands gripped my shoulders. The presence I’d felt in the courtyard was back. I took another step, and it grasped me harder, as if it was trying to hold me back.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said, glancing back at the others. I didn’t know what the presence was or what it wanted, but I could tell a warning when I got one.

  Judith hugged herself. “I don’t like this.”

  Lacey was gnawing at her lower lip, her arms stiff at her sides. Finn walked past me, studying the fog. His hand hovered by his hip.

  A low whirring sound, too crisp to be the warbling of wind, rolled over us. It made my nerves jitter. I recognized that sound. I knew it, because—

  A billowing rectangle floated down in front of the nearest amputated tree. Understanding hit me like a fist of ice. No. No, no, no.

  My voice came out in a croak. “Those deadly enemies we made all those ’chantments for,” I said. “We’re the enemy. The examiners are turning the magic we worked on us.”

  Chapter Seven

  Finn

  On hearing terror in the tone of a mage infinitely more skilled than I was, the sensible thing would have been for me to run away screaming. Rocío’s tan face shone unearthly pale in the hazy magical light, an even starker warning than her tone. But Lockwood dignity kept my feet fixed in place on the rubbery floor—or maybe it was the fact that if I were sensible, I wouldn’t have been here to begin with.

  “What’s coming?” I blurted out. “What did—”

  “Lie down, everyone. Close your eyes! Don’t move!” Rocío yelled.