into a faint smile. “Just so you know, Soul is against this. She feels you need more time here. Which is why, if you accept, she will be going with you.”
Soul’s mouth opened for a moment, then closed. “You could have told me,” she said.
The CA chuckled. “If you agree to the assignment, Soul will accompany you into the field and provide both a temporary partnership and the last weeks of your training. You may return for graduation, of course. Soul, please explain the assignment to your in-field trainee. If he accepts, collect the necessary gear from the Quonset hut, and credit cards for your expenses from financial.” Smythe stood and held out a wood box. “I am assuming you will accept. Your temporary badge.”
Rick took the box and shook Smythe’s hand. He wasn’t being booted. He was being given an assignment. Before graduation. “Thank you, ma’am.” The CA placed his gear in a paper bag, and had him sign for his personal belongings. Holding the bag and badge, Rick left the admin building with his unit and Soul. They stopped in the sunlight and Soul studied him, shading her eyes.
“They didn’t kick my ass out.” A smile pulled at his face. He wasn’t sure how long since he’d grinned that widely. Probably since he lost his humanity. “I have a present for you,” he said. Rick reached into the paper bag and handed Soul the velvet box. “It was supposed to be a thank-you gift, for after graduation. But you should take it now. Sorry it isn’t wrapped.”
Soul raised her eyes to his and started to speak, but stopped, and took the box instead. She opened it. Inside was a golden apple on a thin gold chain. “A Golden Delicious apple,” he said, “for the . . . creature.” He laughed as sparks flew from her eyes when he brought up the fact that she wasn’t human. “Tell me about the operation.”
Magic Tests
ILONA ANDREWS
Ilona Andrews is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team. They met in college, in English Composition 101, where Ilona got a better grade. (Gordon is still sore about that.) They have coauthored the bestselling urban fantasy series of Kate Daniels. “Magic Tests,” the short story that follows, takes place right after
Sometimes being a kid is very difficult. The adults are supposed to feed you and keep you safe, but they want you to deal with the world according to their views and not your own. They encourage you to have opinions, and if you express them, they will listen but they won’t hear. And when they give you a choice, it’s a selection of handpicked possibilities they have prescreened. No matter what you decide, the core choice has already been made, and you weren’t involved in it.
That’s how Kate and I ended up in the office of the director of Seven Star Academy. I said I didn’t want to go to school. She gave me a list of ten schools and said to pick one. I wrote the names of the schools on little bits of paper, pinned them to the corkboard, and threw my knife at them for a while. After half an hour, Seven Stars was the only name I could still read. Choice made.
Now we were sitting in soft chairs in a nice office, waiting for the school director, and Kate was exercising her willpower. Before I met Kate, I had heard people say it, but I didn’t know what it meant. Now I knew. Kate was the Beast Lord’s mate, which meant that Curran and she were in charge of Atlanta’s giant shapeshifter pack. It was so huge, people actually called it the Pack. Shapeshifters were kind of like bombs: things frequently set them off and they exploded with violent force. To keep from exploding, they made up elaborate rules and Kate had to exercise her willpower a lot.
She was doing it now; from outside she looked very calm and composed, but I could tell she was doing it by the way she sat. When Kate was relaxed, she fidgeted. She’d shift in her chair, throw one leg over the other, lean to the side, then lean back. She was very still now, legs in jeans together, holding Slayer, her magic saber, on her lap, one hand on the hilt, the other on the scabbard. Her face was relaxed, almost serene. I could totally picture her leaping straight onto the table from the chair and slicing the director’s head off with her saber.
Kate usually dealt with things by talking, and when that didn’t work, chopping obstacles into tiny pieces and frying them with magic so they didn’t get back up. The sword was her talisman, because she believed in it. She held it like some people held crosses or the star-and-crescent. Her philosophy was, if it had a pulse, it could be killed. I didn’t really have a philosophy, but I could see how talking with the school director would be difficult for her. If he said something she didn’t like, chopping him to tiny pieces wouldn’t exactly help me get into the school.
“What if when the director comes in, I take my underwear off, put them on my head, and dance around? Do you think it would help?”
Kate looked at me. It was her hard-ass stare. Kate could be really scary.
“That doesn’t work on me,” I told her. “I know you won’t hurt me.”
“If you want to prance around with panties on your head, I won’t stop you,” she said. “It’s your basic human right to make a fool of yourself.”
“I don’t want to go to school.” Spending all my time in a place where I was the poor rat adopted by a merc and a shapeshifter, while spoiled little rich girls jeered when I walked by and stuck-up teachers put me in remedial courses? No thanks.
Kate exercised her will some more. “You need an education, Julie.”
“You can teach me.”
“I do and I’ll continue to do so. But you need to know other things, besides the ones I can teach. You need a well-rounded education.”
“I don’t like education. I like working at the office. I want to do what you and Andrea do.”
Kate and Andrea ran Cutting Edge, a small firm that helped people with their magic hazmat issues. It was a dangerous job, but I liked it. Besides, I was pretty messed up. Normal things like going to school and getting a regular job didn’t hold any interest for me. I couldn’t even picture myself doing that.
“Andrea went to the Order’s Academy for six years and I’ve trained since I could walk.”
“I’m willing to train.”
My body tensed, as if an invisible hand had squeezed my insides into a clump. I held my breath. . . .
Magic flooded the world in an invisible wave. The phantom hand let go, and the world shimmered with hues of every color as my sensate vision kicked in. Magic came and went as it pleased. Some older people still remembered the time when technology was always in control and magic didn’t exist. But that was long ago. Now magic and technology kept trading places, like two toddlers playing musical chairs. Sometimes magic ruled, and cars and guns didn’t work. Sometimes technology was in charge, and magic spells fizzled out. I preferred the magic myself, because unlike ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine-whatever percent of people I could see it.
I looked at Kate, using a tiny drop of my power. It was kind of like flexing a muscle, a conscious effort to look the right way at something. One moment Kate sat there, all normal, or as normal as Kate could be, the next she was wrapped in a translucent glow. Most people’s magic glowed in one color. Humans radiated blue, shapeshifters green, vampires gave off a purple-red. . . . Kate’s magic shifted colors. It was blue and deep purple, and pale pearl- like gold streaked through with tendrils of red. It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen. The first time I saw it, it freaked me out.
“You have to keep going to school,” freaky Kate said.
I leaned back and hung my head over the chair’s back. “Why?”
“Because I can’t teach you everything, and shapeshifters shouldn’t be your only source of education. You may not always want to be affiliated with shapeshifters. Down the road, you may want to make your own choices.”
I pushed against the floor with my feet, rocking a little in my chair.
“I’m trying to make my own choice, but you won’t let me.”
“That’s right,” Kate said. “I’m older, wiser, and I know better. Deal with it.”
Parenting, kick-ass Kate Daniels’s style. Do what I say. There wasn’t even an
I rocked back and forth some more. “Do you think I’m your punishment from God?”
“No. I’d like to think that God, if he exists, is kind, not vengeful.”
The door of the office opened and a man walked in. He was older than Kate, bald, with Asian features, dark
