Ordinary Magic (13 page)

They sprawled on the grass, laughing. Becky held out her hand as he stood. “I win.”

Dimitrios yanked her to her feet, brushed the grass off her shoulders. “No, I let you look good in front of the newbies. Plus you still owe me from last time. I’ll take it off your tab.”

Becky shoved him and turned to us. “Self-defense,” she announced, back in teacher mode. “Yes, you will be learning how to fight and to defend yourselves. But first things first. We’re going to go over simple maneuvers, escape techniques, what to do if you are captured. We’re not going to be getting to that stuff”—she nodded at Dimitrios—“for a little while yet. Not until I get to know you all a little better. Not until I trust that you won’t act out.

“Which leads us to the next part of our class.” Becky whistled and the kids in the windows quieted down. It was strange
how the courtyard went from pep-rally loud to dead silent so quickly. “And this is the most important part, boys and girls. Using your knowledge responsibly.”

Becky stared at us. “Protection spells don’t work on us, or wards or charms. We can walk right into a bank vault, into someone’s home. Being an ord means more than just magic not working on us. It means you can steal—you can hurt—and you cannot be punished. Normal jails? Can’t hold us. We can cross back over enchants borders. We cannot be Banished. Right now people are afraid of you, and they should be because you can’t control yourselves. And that is what ultimately makes you dangerous.”

There was nothing amused or playful in her face right now. It was so hard and fierce, a thread of fear crept down my spine. “Now, I hope you learn something in this class. I hope you enjoy it, but—Mark. Me. Well. This is not a place for messing around. What you do reflects on every other ord out there. If I catch you doing anything I don’t like, you’re out. The school will still take care of you, feed you, help you find a place if you like, but your days as a student are over. You got that?”

We got it.

“Good.” Becky smiled. “Now, who wants to hop on inside a fireball?”

The beginning of the school year was a busy blur—all movement and new stuff and us new kids panting to keep up.

It was tough at first, because we were always moving. Morning classes were quiet and normal and stationary, but once we got to Becky’s class, forget about it. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were self-defense days, days when we never stopped running, jumping, running, dodging, and more running, until our legs felt like they were going to fall off. Even when we were just studying, Becky tried to keep us moving. She couldn’t just describe breaking through a barrier, we had to run through one to see for ourselves. She wouldn’t tell us what different ward stones meant, she’d toss five different heat-based ones around the courtyard and tell us to hunt for the one that had smoke magic. We knew it was bad when we started joking that history with Ms. Macartney was a vacation.

Eila, the other Majid sister, finally broke down during a Saturday class—yeah, that’s right, we had Becky every single
day including weekends—and demanded to know “
why
do we have to do so much
running
?”

“What else are you going to do if someone tries to snatch you?” Becky asked. “You’re too little to fight back, even if you knew how.”

The trickiest part about self-defense was that Becky would demonstrate a move with Dimitrios and then pair us up to try and attack each other. It sounds fun and exciting, and to be honest we weren’t at the point where we could hurt each other. That is, unless you were paired with Cesar.
Nobody
wanted to be paired with Cesar. Usually there was a rush to find a partner, any partner, that wasn’t Cesar. The first two classes the Majid sisters tried to bully Fran into taking one for the team, which got Becky mad and earned all of us extra laps for not “sticking up for one of our own.” Then she paired both of the sisters with Cesar, which he totally had no problem with, by the way.

The rest of us were pretty much on an even playing field. The Majid sisters liked to mock people into submission, which, though never fun to endure, was also not what Becky called “an effective fighting strategy.” Fred never hit girls, and Fran couldn’t be counted on to hit anything at all. The best thing I had going for me was endurance. We all thought Peter would be tough, because of the general bitterness that seemed to absorb his every waking moment. And he would hit you, but never hard. It was always just enough to let you know he’d won. Instead he preferred to point out your weaknesses and tell you how he was going to take advantage of them. Granted, this provided an opportunity for the less scrupulous among us—if, say, you
deliberately
made a mistake and then used the time when Peter stopped and snarked at you to tackle him to the ground.

The problem with Cesar was that Cesar fought dirty. Biting, pulling hair, twisting fingers, there was nothing he wouldn’t do to win, which meant he
always
won, which led to a very informative lesson on how to treat a human bite wound.

It was early on still, and Becky had been teaching us how to twist out of somebody’s hold. She was correcting one of the Majid sisters’ postures when suddenly Fran cried out. Cesar had gotten her on the ground and it wasn’t practice anymore, it wasn’t fun, because he was hurting her. I charged Cesar and tackled him—I was actually pretty good at tackling people; turns out most of it is about where you hit them—and we went rolling. And then Cesar went crazy. Kicking and scratching, he grabbed my hair and twisted so hard I cried out. I heard Fred pleading, “Come on, stop it, you guys,” and Peter jumped in, and there was a full-on fight for about half a second before Becky lifted Cesar up by the scruff of his neck. She carted him over to a corner of the courtyard and reamed him out. I only caught the words “Alexa Hale” and “funding” and “disciplinary action.”

Fred hurried over and helped me up. “Abby, are you okay?”

“Is Fran okay?” I asked.

Fran was still on the ground, squashed up in a bundle, her fingers wrapped in her hair. “
I’m fine
,” she said, not looking at us. “
I was fine. You didn’t have to
…” Her voice faded away and she turned pink.

“No, you didn’t,” Peter agreed, getting up off the ground. “That was really stupid. Fight your own battles, Hale.”

“He was
hurting
her!”

Peter rolled his eyes so hard I was surprised he didn’t strain something. I would have smacked them straight out of his head except Fred latched on to my arms.

“Enough.” Becky’s voice was a sharp, cold slap. She swung over to snatch up the first-aid kit, then bore down on us. “Everyone. Sit.” We dropped, and Becky waved a hand at Peter. “No, no, not you—you come here.” She positioned him in front of us, and I saw that his arm was bloody.

Becky stripped his sleeve back with practiced efficiency, while she lectured us about bacteria and the importance of cleanliness and the damage a bite could do. Fran raised her hand, dropped it, then raised it again.

“Miss Rose?” Becky called, her attention still on cleaning the raw, red circle of holes in Peter’s arm.

“Isn’t that … what Cesar did? I mean, isn’t that cheating?”

“Yes.”

“He
cheats a lot
,” Fran said after a moment. When Becky didn’t respond, she continued, “Isn’t that
wrong
?”

“No.” Becky looped a fresh white bandage around Peter’s arm, not missing a beat as she finally looked over at us. “Not when it matters. Not when it’s the auction block if you lose—or a back-alley deal with a rope around your ankle to keep you from running. Not that I approve of teeth marks in my students, Cesar, and don’t you think that you and I are done having words about this. But you don’t fight fair when it’s your life on the line.
They
won’t. You can trust me on that.”

Becky tied off Peter’s bandage and came over to Fran, looked
her straight in the eyes. Her voice was low, but we were listening. “We play it safe here, I know, but you need to know that we’re not
playing
. This is your life. And you need to choose—right now, while you’re warm and safe, while there are no chains on your wrists and you have a meal in your belly and you know where the next one’s coming from. You have to decide what you’re willing to do to keep it that way. You have to decide now, before something happens. Because when it does, you won’t have time to wonder about it. You just have to know. Consider it homework.” Becky stood and raised her voice. “For all of you.”

After that, Cesar was only ever partnered with Becky.

Our last class of the day was zoology, with Dimitrios. When we were done running or fighting, or we were just too exhausted to move, he would appear from somewhere and herd us down to the dark cave of the Public Safety office. It was our favorite, and easiest, class by far, because Dimitrios didn’t assign homework or schedule tests. In fact, he didn’t ask us to do anything more than sit down and listen. It turns out there was yet another fun part of being an ord—there was no shortage of magical creatures that were a lot more dangerous to us than they were to normal folk.

We started off with goblins, because they’re basic and easy and everybody knows about them. At least, that’s what I thought until class started, because it turns out there were actually tons of different goblins; some good, some that’ll give you nightmares.

Along with all that, I was expected to be in the kitchen, at the sink and at the ready, for every meal. I’d get a chance to eat
something quick while everyone else was working, and I was usually scrubbing and scraping while they clustered around the island to eat. I didn’t know how they had so many dishes, or where they stored them all, and sometimes I wondered if it was all a big practical joke and someone was magic and they’d enchanted a never-ending pile of dishes.

“Are you sure about this?” Alexa asked when she discovered I’d been helping out in the kitchen. “You don’t have to work there.”

“I want to,” I said. “It’s fun.” She lifted her eyebrows at
fun
. “I said I would.”

“As long as it’s
fun
. But if it’s ever not fun anymore, you let me know. Cook Bella can be a little difficult.”

I wanted to say,
uh, yeah
, but I didn’t want to tell Alexa just how difficult Cook Bella had been toward me. So I blinked up at her and gave her my most innocent “baby of the family” look and said, “Oh really?” and “How interesting” and “I hadn’t noticed that,” which Alexa didn’t believe for a second but at least she didn’t go marching into the kitchen and start a scene.

Because the truth was, it
was
fun in a strange, exhausting way. I was getting used to the kids laughing at me for being new and not knowing anything. Oddly enough, the kitchen was the only place I saw kids smile. Really smile. Like they enjoyed being around each other. And the kitchen was always hot and noisy and busy, and the air tasted like tomatoes, garlic, onions, and olive oil. It wasn’t like Mom’s bakery, but it was close enough—and close enough was everything in those first weeks.

Now, you might think with all the washing and running and the schoolwork on top of that—because clearly it wasn’t a school if they didn’t pile you with homework—I’d be completely exhausted. And I was, but being tired and going to sleep are two different things. Every night at lights-out, we had to check in with Becky and shut our doors and pretend to go to bed. Alexa had arranged for me to have a private room, and I know this’ll sound stupid and spoiled of me, but I didn’t like it. I didn’t like being alone, and I didn’t like the quiet. Not that it’s ever totally quiet in Rothermere, but after a while you just forget about the street noises and the sirens and all that and it seems quiet. When I did sleep it was in fits and starts, waking suddenly in a panic that I’d heard something, only to realize it was what I
hadn’t
heard, the sounds that were supposed to be there. Like the shower running and the soft, padding footsteps as Mom got ready to leave for the bakery in the dark hours of the morning. Like Dad humming as he started a new project, and Gil muttering to himself as he wrote, testing out dialogue, and Jeremy’s aggravated cry of
Mom!
whenever he needed her to settle an argument, and the clink of Olivia’s hairpins on her dresser as she put her hair back down after a date. I missed those noises so much my stomach burned.