Magic Breaks

“More or less.” It was more, but he didn’t need to know that.

  His dark eyes fixed on me. “One day my kingdom will be greater.”

  Ha-ha! Yeah, right. “I’m here with Master Gendun’s knowledge and at his request.”

  He didn’t say anything. The metal table under my fingers felt warm. I rested more of my hand on it. Definitely warm. The cafeteria was air-conditioned and even now, with magic up, the air stayed pretty cool, which meant the metal table should’ve been cold.

  “A girl disappeared. She was a small girl. Shy. Her name is Ashlyn.”

  No reaction. The table was definitely getting warmer.

  “She was scared of you.”

  “I don’t kill little girls.”

  “What makes you think she was killed? I didn’t say anything about her being killed.”

  He leaned forward slightly. “If I take notice of something that offends me, I choose to ignore it or kill it. I ignored her.”

  Boy, this dude was conceited. “Why did she offend you?”

  “I’ve never threatened her. She had no reason to cringe in my presence. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  I thought hard on why he would find an obvious display of fear offensive.

  “When she cringed, you felt insulted. You had no intention of hurting her, so by showing fear, she implied that your control over your power was imperfect.”

  Yu’s eyes widened slightly.

  “I’m the ward of the Beast Lord,” I told him. “I spend a lot of time with arrogant control freaks.”

  The table under my hand was almost too hot to keep touching it. I held on. “Ashlyn annoyed you. You said you ignored her. You didn’t say anything about your bodyguards. Did they do something to Ashlyn to make her disappear?”

  His face was the picture of disdain, which was just a polite way of saying that he would’ve liked to sneer at me but it was beneath him. I’ve seen this precise look on the Beast Lord’s face. If he and Curran ever got into the same room, Kate’s head would explode.

  I waited but he didn’t say anything. Apparently Yu decided not to dignify it with an answer.

  Thin tendrils of smoke escaped from his book. The table near him must have been much hotter than on my end. That had to be something because the metal was now hurting my fingers.

  “If I find out that you hurt Ashlyn, I’ll hurt you back,” I said.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Do. Your book is smoking.”

  He picked it up. I slowly raised my hand, blew on my skin, and got up to leave.

  “Why do you care?” he asked.

  “Because none of you do. Look around you—a girl is missing. A girl you saw in class every day got so scared by something, she had to hide from it. Nobody is looking for her. All of you are just going on with your business as usual. You have all this power and you didn’t lift a finger to help her. You just sit there, reading your book, comfy behind your bodyguards, and demonstrate how awesome your magic is by heating up your table. Somebody has to find her. I decided to be that somebody.”

  I couldn’t tell if any of this was sinking in.

  “True strength isn’t in killing—or ignoring—your opponent, it’s in having the will to shield those who need your protection.”

  He raised his eyebrows slightly. “Who said that?”

  “I did.” I walked away.

  Brook was staring at me.

  “Come on,” I told her, loud enough for him to hear the derision in my voice. “We’re done here.”

  • • •

  IN THE HALLWAY I walked to the window and exhaled. The nerve. All that power, all that magic boiling in him, and he just sat there. Didn’t do a thing to help Ashlyn. He didn’t care.

  Brook cleared her throat behind me.

  “I just need a minute.”

  I looked outside at the courtyard, enclosed by the square building of the school. It was a really large courtyard. No place to hide, though: benches, flowers, twisted stone paths. A single tree rose toward the northern end of it, surrounded by a maze of concentric flower beds, spreading from it like one of those little handheld puzzle games where you have to roll the ball into a hole through a plastic labyrinth.

  “You’re wrong,” Brook said behind me. “You know what, we all got problems. Just because I didn’t look for Ashlyn doesn’t make me a bad person. Do you have any idea how competitive the Mage Academy exams are? Getting the right credit is taking up all my time. And I don’t even know you! Why do I have to justify myself to you?”

  The flowers were in full bloom. Blue asters, delicate bearded irises, cream and yellow, purplish spiderwort—I had a lot of herbology in my old school. Normal for early June. The tree had tiny little buds just beginning to unfurl into gauzy white and pink petals.

  “It’s not like I even knew her that well. I don’t see why I should be held accountable for whatever problem made her hide. If she’d come to me and said, ‘Brook, I’m in trouble,’ I would’ve helped her.”

  “What is that tree?”

  “What?”

  “The tree down in the yard.” I pointed to it. “What kind of tree is it?”

  Brook blinked. “I don’t know. It’s the dead tree. You can’t get to it now anyway, not with the magic up, because the flower garden is warded. Listen, I’m not proud that I didn’t look for Ashlyn. All I am saying is that maybe I didn’t look for her and I probably should have, but I was busy.”

  I bet it was an apple tree. Some apple trees bloomed late, but most of them flowered in April and May. It was June now.

  “How long has that tree been dead?”

  “As long as I can remember. I’ve been in this school for three years and it was always dead. I don’t know why they don’t cut it down. Are you listening to me?”

  “It’s flowering.”

  Brook blinked. “What?”

  “The tree is blooming. Look.”

  Brook looked at the window. “Huh.”

  Perfect hundred in botany. Apples in the drawer. Wolf print on the desk. Terrified of a boy who creates heat, because where there is smoke, there is fire. Blooming apple tree that has been dead for years.

  It all lined up in my head into a perfect arrow pointing to the tree.

  “Can we get down there?”

  Brook was staring at the tree. “Yes.”

  Two minutes later I marched out of the side door into the inner yard and down the curved stone path. I was fifty feet from the tree when I sensed magic in front of me. I stopped and snapped into the sensate vision. A wall of magic rose in front of me, glowing lightly with pale silver. A ward, a defensive spell designed to keep out intruders. Currents of power coursed through it.

  Some wards glowed with translucent color, both a barrier and a warning that the barrier existed, and walking into it would hurt. This one was invisible to someone without my vision. And judging by the intensity of the magic, touching it would hurt you bad enough to leave you writhing in pain for a few minutes or knock you out completely.

  I turned and walked along the ward, with Brook following me. The spell followed the curved flower bed.

  “What’s the point of the ward?”

  “Nobody knows,” Brook said.

  “Did you ever ask Gendun?”

  “I have, actually. He just smiled.”

  Great.

  Ahead, a two-foot-wide gap severed the circle of the ward. I stopped by it, looked through, and saw another ward. This was a magic maze, with rings inside rings of wards and in the center of it all was the apple tree.

  “She’s watching us,” Brook hissed.

  “What?”

  “Second-floor window, on the left.”

  I looked up and saw Lisa looking at us. Our stares connected. Lisa’s face had this strange mix of emotions, part realization, part fear. She had figured me out. She understood that I saw the ward somehow and I knew about the apple tree, and she was afraid now. It couldn’t be me she was scared of. I wasn’t that scary. Was she s
cared that I would find Ashlyn?

  A bright green glow burst from Lisa’s back. It snapped into the silhouette of an eight-foot-tall wolf. The beast stared at me with eyes of fire.

  My heart fluttered in my chest like a scared little bird. Something ancient looked at me through that fire. Something unimaginably old and selfish.

  The wolf jerked and vanished. If I had blinked, I would’ve missed it.

  “Did you see that?”

  “See what?” Brook asked.

  So I had seen it with my sensate vision.

  Lisa turned away and walked off. My forehead felt iced over. I swiped the cold sheen off my skin and saw sweat on my hand. Ew.

  Things were making more and more sense. I turned to Brook. “Do you have a library?”

  She gave me a look like I was stupid. “Really? Do you really need to ask that question?”

  “Lead the way!”

  Brook headed to the door. Just as she reached for it, the door swung open and Barka blocked the way. “Hey!”

  Brook pushed past him and marched down the hall, clenching her teeth, looking like she would mow down whoever got in her way. I followed her.

  Barka caught up with me. “Where are we all going so fast?”

  “To the library.”

  “Is it on fire and they need us to put it out?”

  “No.”

  Barka must’ve run out of witty things to say, because he shut up and followed us.

  The library occupied a vast room. Shelves lined the walls. With magic coming and going like the tide, the e-readers were no longer reliable, but the library stocked them, too. If you needed to find something in a hurry, the e-readers were your best bet. You just had to wait until the magic ebbed and the technology took over again.

  Sadly the magic showed no signs of ebbing.

  I walked through the library, checking labels on the shelves. Philosophy, psychology . . .

  “What are you looking for?” Brook snapped. “I’ll find it faster.”

  “Greek and Roman mythology.”

  “Two ninety-two.” Brook turned and ducked between the bookshelves. “Here.”

  I scanned the titles. Encyclopedia of Greek and Roman Myths. Score!

  Brook’s eyes lit up. “Shit! Of course. The apples. It’s so plain, I could slap myself for being so stupid.”

  “You got it.” I yanked the book from the shelf and carried it to the nearest desk, flipping the pages to get to the letter E.

  “What’s going on?” Barka asked.

  “She found Ashlyn. She is in a tree,” Brook told him.

  “Why?”

  “Because she is an Epimeliad,” I murmured, looking for the right listing.

  “She is a what?”

  “An apple dryad, you dimwit,” Brook growled.

  Barka raised his hand. “Easy! Greek and Roman was three semesters ago.”

  “Epimeliads are the dryads of apple trees and guardians of sheep,” I explained.

  Barka leaned against the desk. “That’s a bit random.”

  “Their name comes from Greek melas, which means both apples and sheep,” Brook said.

  “This explains why she’s scared of Yu Fong,” I said. “He’s all about heat and fire. Fire and trees don’t play well together.”

  “And someone left a wolf print on her desk. Wolves are the natural enemies of sheep,” Barka said.

  “Someone was trying to terrorize her.” Brook dropped into the chair, as if suddenly exhausted. “And none of us ever paid attention long enough to see it.”

  “It was Lisa.” I scanned the entry for the dryad. Shy, reclusive, blah-blah-blah . . . No natural enemies. No mention of any mythological wolves.

  “How do you know?”

  “She has a wolf inside her. I saw it. That’s why her powers are stronger. I think she made a deal with something and I think that something wants Ashlyn.”

  They looked at each other.

  “Just what kind of magic do you have, exactly?” Barka asked.

  “The right kind.” I pulled a chair out and sat down next to Brook. “If Lisa had made a deal with a three-headed demon or some sort of chimera, I could narrow it down, but a wolf, that could be . . .”

  “Anything,” Brook finished. “Almost any mythology with a forest has a canid. It could be French or Celtic or English or Russian or anything.”

  “Can any of you remember her saying anything about a wolf? Maybe there’s a record of books she checked out?”

  “I’ll find out.” Brook got up and made a beeline to the library desk.

  I flipped through the book some more. Dryads weren’t too well-known. They were just supposed to be these flighty creatures, easily spooked, pretty. Basically sex objects. I guess Ancient Greeks didn’t really have a lot of access to porn so it must’ve been fun to imagine that every tree hid a meek girl with big boobies.

  Somehow I had to untangle Ashlyn, and not just from that apple tree, but from this entire situation. I didn’t know for sure if Lisa had made some sort of deal with the creature. I could be wrong—it could be forcing her. The only thing I knew for sure was that I alone didn’t have the strength to take it on in a fight. My magic wasn’t the combat kind and that thing . . . well, from the intensity of the wolf’s magic, it would give even the Pack’s fighters pause.

  Sometimes I wished I had been born a shapeshifter. If I was Curran, I’d just bite that wolf’s head off.

  Curran. Hmm. Now there was a smart thought. I pulled a piece of scratch paper from the stack on the library desk, wrote a note, and read it. He would do it. After I pointed out all of his shortcomings, he would do it just to prove me wrong. I felt all happy with myself.

  Brook came back with a disgusted expression on her face. “Apple trees. She checked out books on apple trees.”

  “That’s okay. Barka, can you take this note to Yu Fong?”

  He shrugged. “Sure. I like to live dangerously.” He took the note out of my fingers. “Later!” He winked at Brook and took off.

  “You’re going to fight the wolf,” Brook said. “You are the stupidest person I’ve ever met. We need to take this to adults now.”

  “I think Gendun already knows what’s going on. He wouldn’t have missed the tree coming to life. He didn’t seem frantic about Ashlyn’s disappearance and he said that the locating spell indicated she was on the grounds. I think that I’m meant to solve this one myself.”

  “He would be putting your life in danger.” Brook shoved her glasses back up her nose. “And Ashlyn’s.”

  “I can’t explain it. I just know that I’m trusted to do this on my own.” Maybe it was something only I could do. Maybe Ashlyn would trust another girl her age, but not an adult. Maybe Gendun was just clueless. I had no idea. I just had to get Ashlyn out of that tree.

  When I was stuck in my old school, there were times I would’ve hid in a tree if I could have. I knew Kate and Curran and even Derek, the dimwit, would come to rescue me. But I knew none of my school friends would. Sometimes you just want a kid like you to care. Well, I was that kid.

  “I’m coming with you,” Brook announced.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” I told her.

  She pushed her glasses up at me.

  “Fine.” I grinned. “Get yourself killed.”

  • • •

  I WAITED IN the courtyard on one of the little benches on the edge of the wards, reading my little book in plain view. I’d borrowed it from Brook. It was explaining how the universe started with a giant explosion. I understood about two words in it, and those were the and and.

  The day was dying down. Most students were long gone and those who lived in the dormitory had left campus, too. Strangely, no teachers came up and interrogated me or demanded to know when I was planning on leaving. That only confirmed my suspicion that Gendun knew all along what I was up to. Maybe he had some sort of secret adult reason for handling this problem through me. Maybe it was a test. I didn’t really care. I just waited and
hoped the magic would hold.

  The dusk had arrived on the wings of a night moth, silent and soft. The sky above me darkened to a deep, beautiful purple. Stars glowed high above, and below them, as if inspired by their light, tiny fireflies awoke and crawled from their shelter in the leaves. Late enough.

  I put my book on the bench and started toward the wards. The magic still held, and when I focused, using my sensate vision, the glowing walls of the wards shimmered slightly. I walked along the first gap and paused. I was pretty sure I’d be followed. Lisa alone might not be capable of remembering all the gaps in the invisible fence, but a wolf would follow his nose and my scent.

  I’d have to ask people in the Pack how to make my scent signature stronger. If I had had dandruff, I’d scratch my head, but I didn’t. I dragged my hand through my blond hair anyway and moved on, walking along the next ward to the narrow gap.

  I weaved my way through the rings of defensive spells, taking my time, pausing at the gaps, until finally I emerged in the clear space around the tree. Blossoms sheathed the branches. Delicate flowers with white petals blushing with faint pink bloomed between tiny pink buds.

  I hoped I was doing the right thing. Sometimes it’s really hard to figure out what the right thing is. You do something, and you wish you could go back in time for five seconds and undo it or unsay it, but life doesn’t work that way.

  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  I pulled a Red Delicious apple from my pocket. The skin of the fruit was so red, it was almost purple. I crouched and rolled the apple gently to the tree’s roots. It came to rest against the trunk.

  The bark of the tree shifted, crawled . . . A bark-sheathed leg separated from the trunk and stepped into the grass around the tree. The toes touched the grass and the bark melted into human skin. A moment, and a short petite girl crouched in the grass. I caught my breath. Ashlyn’s hair had gone completely white. Not just blond or platinum. White.

  She picked up the apple. “Red Delicious.”

  “Hi, Ashlyn.”

  She glanced at me with green eyes. “Hi. So you found me.”

  “It wasn’t very hard.”

  A spark of magic flared beyond the wards. Ashlyn cringed, her eyes wide. “It’s coming!”

  “It will be okay.”