The spark of rebellion flared hotter inside me. I tugged the phone on Dad’s desk toward me and flipped through his agenda to the contacts section. With a little luck, Carl would be home right now…
“Hello?” a familiar mellow voice answered after two rings.
I smiled, my shoulders coming down even as the rest of my body tensed in anticipation. “Carl? It’s Jonathan Lockwood.”
“Oh, hey, Jon,” Carl said. He was the only one who ever called me by that nickname, which I didn’t really like but somehow didn’t mind when he used it. “To what do I owe the pleasure? Keeping up with your studies, I hope?”
“Of course,” I said. “I, ah— I’m calling about something a little different. About your work in the Environmental department. You’ve talked with my dad about Mount St. Helens.”
His jovial tone faded. “I have. That’s a rough situation.”
“I know. That’s why I was wondering—I hope you don’t mind me asking—have you been able to speak to the Circle about intervening? I have to think there’s some way we can help mitigate the damage, or at least—”
“Jonathan,” Carl broke in. I fell silent. He dragged in a breath. “We’re still debating whether there’s an effective way to make a difference without being too overt. No one wants to go to the Circle without a clear proposal.”
O gods, the damned bureaucracy of the Confederation. I’d heard Dad complain more than once about how many people needed to sign off on any decision. “Or we could just do something without worrying about whether we revealed ourselves,” I couldn’t help saying.
“I wish it were that simple. I’m trying my best to push, but it’s a delicate subject for a lot of people.”
My free hand balled in frustration. “Can’t you just go to the Circle yourself, whatever the rest of them think?”
“You know it doesn’t work like that. I’ll only reflect badly on myself if I go against the majority of my team. I’m the newbie in the department too. I promise you, like I promised your dad, I’m doing everything I can. If it isn’t this one, maybe the next one we’ll get ahead of.”
The next natural disaster? Combating it wouldn’t matter to the 50-500 people who died from this one.
“There’s got to be something,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“I know how you’re feeling, Jon,” Carl said. “You’re just like your dad when he was your age. Raring to go at any challenge.”
A few weeks ago, that comment would have been a compliment. Now, it stung. Dad might be raring, but he wasn’t doing anything. I didn’t want to be like him when it came to this. When so many people could die if we didn’t act.
But Carl was clearly of the same mindset as him. I groped for some benefit I could get from this connection.
“Yeah,” I said. “And I get it. I just— If the situation changes, if you realize the volcano is about to blow or another important development happens… I’d really like to hear about it, as soon as you can tell me. Dad’s being kind of closed-lipped about the whole thing. I just don’t like being in the dark.”
Carl was silent for a moment. “I think that’s something you need to work out with him,” he said.
“I’m trying,” I said. “But in the meantime, could you just, I don’t know, give me a nudge so I know to call you if something major comes up, as soon as it happens? Please?”
There was a rustle as he shifted. He sighed. “All right. If it means that much to you. If it’s something I can share. I know you mean well, Jon.”
I more than meant well, I thought as I hung up, a heavy weight settling on my gut. I was going to do well. That was what really mattered.
Chapter Eight
Amy
The lock on the office door stuck for a moment before it turned over. That was all it took to get my pulse thumping harder. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this sneaky subterfuge stuff. But we were here. I pushed open the door to my dad’s workplace.
The reception room was dark except for the light from the streetlamps that streaked in through the window. I didn’t want to turn the main lights on, though, in case someone came by and wondered why anyone was working here in the middle of the night.
“Come on,” I whispered to Jonathan. He scooted in behind me. I shut the door and pocketed the key I’d “borrowed” from Dad’s keyring after he’d gone to bed.
Guilt pinched my stomach. Before that, we’d had a really nice “family” dinner, the two of us. Dad had fried steaks and I’d put together a salad, and we’d shared theories about a TV show we used to watch that we’d finally picked back up again. It had felt so normal… And sneaking around like this, stealing from him, didn’t feel normal at all.
But how could I have told Jonathan no, when all those people might die if we did nothing?
The two of us crept through the reception room to the hall that led into the work rooms. The office was even darker over there. I should have thought to bring a flashlight or something.
No, that would have looked even more suspicious if anyone glanced through the window.
“I’m sure they’ve got some kind of directory with contact info for the different government departments and so on,” I said, turning toward the room where I usually did my volunteer work. The blinds in there were shut over the one small window that I knew only looked onto the alley. I hesitated and then turned the light on. It didn’t do us any good being here if I couldn’t see anything to find it.
“What should I be looking for?” Jonathan asked.
“Why don’t you just let me. It’s probably around my dad’s station somewhere.” I went to his work table. Oh, right there on the corner of his desk—a rolodex. “Here we go,” I said, grabbing it. “But what are we even going to tell them?”
“That’s the tricky part.” Jonathan frowned. “The data in the reports my father had, it’s based on magical assessments of the volcano’s structure and activity that go beyond what regular scientific equipment could pick up.”
“But they’ve got no reason to believe us if we just say they have to take our word for it.”
“Exactly. I think, from my readings, there’s some intersection with the readings they’d have available. We can say we’ve done a close analysis of the quake frequencies and the content of the gas emissions, the patterns between them, and we believe the threat is greater than currently estimated. That’ll at least get them thinking.”
I nodded. “My dad says there are already scientists who feel the government isn’t being cautious enough. They’ll want to find any evidence they can to support that position. If those magical measures have some way of finding connections they wouldn’t think of right away…”
“We’ve got to at least try,” Jonathan said when I couldn’t figure out how to continue.
“Yeah.”
He sat down at one of the desks. I pulled up a chair, keeping a little distance so I didn’t accidentally affect the phone there. I’d been sending out tiny twitches of energy here and there over the last couple days, completely by accident. Just needed more practice at control now that my sense of the magic around me had risen to a faint but continual murmur, I guessed.
I flipped through the cards in the rolodex, each printed with a different contact’s name, address, and phone number. “It’s late even on the west coast right now, you know,” I said. “I don’t know if anyone will be at the phones.”
“They should have answering machines, though, right?”
I nodded, and Jonathan reached for the phone. “It’ll be better for us to leave messages anyway,” he said. “If they start questioning us about our credentials or what have you, it’s not as if we’ll be able to tell them anything. We just want to point them in the right direction.”
“Are you going to get in trouble with your parents for doing this?” I asked.
“I’m not planning on telling them I did it.” He paused, catching my gaze. “Are you going to get in trouble?”
I didn’t think so, not if I returned the key befor
e Dad knew it’d ever been gone. But that wasn’t the point. I grasped onto the resolve I’d summoned when I’d talked with Jonathan after school today. “Probably not. But even if I was, I think saving all those people’s lives matters more than whether I get grounded.”
The corner of his mouth curled up. “Two mages, saving the world with a telephone. Not quite how the stories usually go.”
I laughed. “We’re not exactly saving the world. And I’m not exactly a mage yet.”
“Of course you are,” he said, with so much certainty a warm glow spread through my chest. We might not be going to save the world, but I felt more alive than I had since… since Mom left, let’s be real.
Maybe I couldn’t make her come back, if I’d have even wanted to, but I might be able to stop a whole lot more people from losing someone they cared about.
Knowing that was so much better than the helpless feeling that had been hanging over me since the day I’d come home from school to see Dad sitting at the kitchen table with a stunned expression and a note clenched in his hand. The feeling that had only gotten worse with the few stupid postcards she occasionally remembered to send—the only way I’d even heard from her in the last ten months.
I shook those memories away. “Okay,” I said. “Figure out what you’re going to say and I’ll give you the numbers. You’ll sound more professional than me anyway.”
Jonathan grabbed a slip of paper and a pencil and jotted down a few lines, stopping to press the eraser against his lips a couple times. “All right. I’m ready.”
I peered at the rolodex card I’d stopped on. “First up we have the Association for Geophysics of the Pacific Northwest.”
The whole process went faster than I’d been imagining. I rattled off each number while Jonathan turned the dial. He waited for the machine to pick up on the other end and recited his quick but urgent message while I flipped to the next entry that looked like a good bet. Lather, rinse, repeat.
We were on our sixth or maybe our seventh attempt when Jonathan went rigid, his grip on the phone tightening. “Oh, hello,” he said. “I, ah, wanted to pass on a message based on our analysis of the data from Mount St. Helens.”
Crap. Someone had been working late in Seattle. I tensed in my chair as Jonathan rushed through his spiel. “Just an independent party going over the reports,” he added quickly. “Well, I— Why don’t I get back to you with that information tomorrow?”
He smacked the receiver back into its cradle and made a face at me. “That didn’t go so smoothly.”
“Oh, well, at least you still gave them the message,” I said.
Only a few more contacts looked like places worth contacting. When we’d finished those, Jonathan tucked the paper he’d written his message on into his pocket, and I set the rolodex back on Dad’s desk. We done everything we meant to, in theory, but for some reason I felt kind of deflated. Like we hadn’t done much of anything at all.
“If it doesn’t work,” I said. “If they don’t listen to us—or the people who make the decisions won’t listen to them… your people could still help, right?”
“I don’t think there’s any power in the world that could stop a volcano from erupting when it’s ready,” Jonathan said. “But we should be able to protect people from the results.” He hesitated, as if there was more he could say, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“Don’t worry about that side of things,” he said before I could push for more. “I’m handling that end. How’s your practice been coming along?”
“I’m at it every second I can.” Dragging in a breath, I raised my hand toward the pencil still lying on the desk. “Rise up, rise up,” I sang under my breath, aiming all my focus at it. Willing the magic to wrap around it and propel it upward.
The pencil floated up about a foot off the desk. The same old trick Jonathan had seen before. But I’d worked a little more into it. I smiled and switched to one of Dad’s favorite songs. “Turn, turn, turn…”
The pencil bobbed at the dip between the lyrics, but then it started to spin in a slow circle. The energy jittered against my throat. I lost the rhythm, and the pencil fell, bouncing on the desk with a patter.
“Nice!” Jonathan said.
“I can do better. I kept it going for a whole five minutes yesterday,” I said, my cheeks warming. “I also tried… Obviously it’s just an illusion, and I haven’t figured out how to get it to stick after I stop singing, but…”
I rolled out another quiet lyric from a song I’d had stuck in my head after hearing it on the radio, picturing my reflection the way I’d seen it in front of the mirror this morning. How was it Jonathan always put it? Conducting the magic, into a bright green sheen that covered my inconsistent hazel eyes.
I let the illusion drop. Jonathan smiled at me, softer than his usual grin. “I could show you how to make the effect, ah, stick, as you put it, for longer. But maybe not the wisest when you might get some very puzzled questions from friends and family?”
“Good point.”
He cocked his head. “Would you really want your eyes to be that color? They’re very nice the way they are. In my opinion, anyway.”
When he was gazing into them like that, it was kind of difficult to argue. “I don’t know. It’d be nice to have a change sometimes, I guess.”
“When you’ve completely come into your powers, you’ll be able to change things up as much as you like.” He touched the side of my face, his thumb resting just beyond the corner of my eye. “But I hope you’ll keep coming back to this.”
“Don’t get too attached,” I managed to tease despite the breathless feeling that had come over me at his touch. “You never know. I might go for a whole magical makeover.”
He laughed, a glint dancing in those deep blue eyes. His feet shifted against the floor. “I suppose we should head out,” he said, but he didn’t actually move to get up. His hand stayed against my face.
“Yeah,” I said. My body leaned forward of its own accord. And then we were kissing, which wasn’t getting us any closer to the door, but I couldn’t say I minded. When I was with Jonathan like this, it was hard to mind anything. Whether I tucked Dad’s key back into place in a half hour or an hour didn’t make a difference, really, did it?
Chapter Nine
Jonathan
I knew I was in for some sort of awkward conversation when my mother insisted on driving a half hour out of her way to chauffeur me to school.
“Your father had to head in early,” she said as she came into the hall where I usually met him on the way out. “I’ll drop you at the College.”
Her office was farther uptown, in a newer building the Confederation had purchased when the main center had run out of neighboring buildings to annex. And it wasn’t as if I hadn’t made my way to school on my own before.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll take a taxi. Practice my ‘real world skills.’”
I grinned at her. If she’d realized just how many taxis I’d taken, and where to, in the last two weeks, she probably wouldn’t have smiled back at me with quite that much amusement.
“You can practice them another time,” she said, sweeping her dark brown hair back into her usual loose ponytail. “I feel like I don’t get enough time with my son these days.”
That comment should have been a warning sign. Possibly I was a little distracted.
Mom’s Lexus smelled like the light, crisply floral perfume she’d worn since I was a little kid. Breathing it in always made me feel almost as if I were a little kid again.
She didn’t say anything until she’d pulled onto Madison Avenue. “We really haven’t been seeing a lot of you lately. Never home until just before dinner, rushing off to your room the moment you’re done eating.” She shot me a glance that asked a silent question.
“I’ve been doing some extra studying and applied practice to make sure I come out as well as possible in the end-of-year exams,” I said, which wasn’t entirely untrue. It just wasn’t the whole tr
uth.
I waited for her to bring up the girl Uncle Raymond had caught me with, but she just hummed to herself thoughtfully. Hadn’t he reported my dalliance to my parents? Maybe he was capable of a tiny bit of human sympathy after all.
Or maybe he didn’t want me mentioning his intrusion into Dad’s office in turn.
“You have seemed as if your mind is elsewhere,” she said. “Your father said you were asking him about the Confederation’s approach to Mount St. Helens.”
“I was,” I said. “Not that he told me anything.”
The words came out a little more brusquely than I intended. Mom gave me another of those questioning glances. “You’re upset about that.”
Had she done some sort of casting to read my mood or was that just motherly awareness? I supposed it didn’t matter. “I’m not a child. I’m attending the College now. I’ve earned my magic. I don’t like being kept in the dark as if these things are beyond my understanding.”
“Oh, Jonathan, it’s not that,” Mom said. “We both know how capable you are. It’s been wonderful seeing your talents progress so quickly, both magical and otherwise. Your father isn’t thinking you can’t handle the responsibility. We’d just like to spare you the stress that comes with that responsibility for a little longer, if we can.”
I couldn’t be angry at her, especially when she put it like that. But Dad… A sharper heat than I’d known I had in me seared up my throat. “Or maybe Dad doesn’t want to admit how much he’s shirking his responsibilities.”
Mom’s eyebrows rose. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, is he going to actually step up and take a real stand about this? Insist that someone listen instead of waiting politely for everyone to agree? People could die. Lots of them. If the magicless authorities aren’t able to do enough on their own… He’s always said that’s why we need to integrate, so that we can help them in situations like this. Well, now a situation is imminent. I know you’ve got friends who support the idea. Isn’t it time to really push for it?”