Ordinary Magic (15 page)

I cut him off in a nervous rush. “This is going to sound crazy …”

Becky and Dimitrios put down their coffee cups and stood in the same movement. “What is it?” He wasn’t grinning anymore.

“I saw something. Across the street. There were … eyes in the dark.” Okay, it sounded stupid out loud. “It was like they were watching the school. I thought it was a kid, but it’s not, I don’t think it was. Kids’ eyes don’t look like these eyes—”

“Show us,” Becky said. Dimitrios picked up his spear as Becky put her hand on the back of my neck and steered me out into the hallway. Dimitrios whispered a shadowed word and the lights winked out. A few seconds later Fran’s door opened and she peeked her head out in the darkness. Becky pointed at her and told her, “Get back inside, young lady”; her tone didn’t leave room for argument. Not that Fran would have argued.

They hesitated outside my door, Becky tucking me close as Dimitrios cast a wide-arced shield, big enough to cover all three of us. “Don’t step out of this, or they’ll see you,” Dimitrios said.

“Who’ll see me?”

He didn’t answer. We crossed my room carefully, an inch at a time, with Becky’s iron fingers digging into my shoulder until it felt like she was grinding the bones together. When we stopped in front of the window, Becky took in the street in one quick glance. “Alleyway, seven o’clock.”

“There was also one on the roof—” I began.

Dimitrios cut me off. “Rooftop. Second building to the right. Two o’clock.”

“Garbage can, alley, five o’clock.”

“Bookstore alley, ten o’clock.”

“That’s four,” Becky said. Her fingers wound around her belt, but Dimitrios put his hand over hers with a pointed look. “All right, all right,” she said. “But I could take care of this now.”

“That I do not doubt. You could clean out the entire city if you had a week and no other responsibilities.”

Becky eyed him down, and then sighed and nodded. She and Dimitrios all but carried me out of the room. My door safely shut, Dimitrios dropped the shield and winked the lights back on. “I’ll sound the alert. You grab the Year Ones?” Becky gave a sulky nod, and he laughed. “Sorry, Beck. No killing tonight.”

“Darn,” she muttered, but she was smiling.

Dimitrios ran off, the tile floor shuddering with each hoof-beat. “What’s happening? Where are we going?” I asked.

Becky stopped by her room first. “Dimitrios has to report
it to Public Safety. You and I are going to get the other Firsties, and we’ll all sleep in the lounge tonight.”

“Why?”

Becky buckled on a holstered belt with two sheathed daggers, taking care it didn’t cover her chain. “Those things you saw, they’re red caps.”

“Red cap.” The words tasted cold and prickly. We’d heard about them in zoology—but we hadn’t learned much because we were still working our way through “nice” goblins.

“They’re always waiting, you know.” She looked down at me sympathetically. “You need to know that. This is our life. Come on, and let’s keep the red cap bit to ourselves for now.”

Becky took me by the arm and dragged me down the hall. She stopped at the first door and knocked, three harsh solid cracks that had the door rattling on its hinges. One of the Maj girls answered, rumpled and sleepy-eyed. Becky streamed out something in their language and moved on to the next door, not waiting for an answer.

When we’d gathered everyone, half-asleep and grouchy, we headed back to the lounge, clutching pillows and blankets. Fred, hair a mess and tripping over his feet, grinned at all of us. “Slumber party?”

“If it helps to think of it like that. Let’s push all this furniture out of the way,” Becky announced, and she wouldn’t answer any questions about what was going on or why we were in the lounge.

Dimitrios was back before we finished clearing the floor. “Nic’ll be up in a second,” he said, taking a seat by the door and
leaning his spear against his shoulder. “Murphy wants to double up protection for the newbies.”

“’Course she does. Is she in her office?”

He shook his head. “Ours.”

“Good. I’ll check in with her before I start rounds,” Becky said, and helped us fold our blankets into makeshift sleeping mats. “Bedtime, everyone.”

I lay awake after lights-out until my eyes adjusted to the dark, until everyone else was asleep. Becky headed off, disappearing for long stretches, but she always came back for a few minutes at the door with Dimitrios before heading out again.

“They’re early this year,” he said quietly.

Becky nodded and started playing with a dagger.

“A lot of them this year too.”

“Fewer than last year.”

Dimitrios snorted. “Of course. After the beating Steve gave them last year, I’m surprised they’re willing to risk it, actually.”

“Guess that means they’re hungry,” Becky said, twirling the dagger in her fingers. The blade was a dull glint in the shadows. I watched her carefully flip the dagger back and forth one handed, until I drifted off to the steady, soothing movement.

I slept better that night than I had since I’d started school, and woke up in a panic that I was late for the kitchen. I only just made it, but Cook Bella didn’t have any sharp words that morning. During class, Mr. O’Hara kept the humorous asides to a minimum, and Ms. Macartney was quieter than usual, if that’s possible.

When I ran into the courtyard after lunch (after that first day, Cook Bella was very good about getting me out in time), Becky and Dimitrios were talking to Mrs. Murphy off to the side. It was a quiet, serious discussion, with lots of quiet, serious, grown-up looks. Finally Mrs. Murphy nodded and headed back inside.

That day Becky didn’t have us run. She sat us down and looked at us, hard. “You’re probably wondering about last night. Why we slept in the lounge.” Becky cleared her throat. “This morning, just after midnight, red caps were spotted outside the school. Nothing happened, thankfully”—Dimitrios muttered what sounded like a prayer—“but red caps aren’t something you want to take chances with.”

Fred raised his hand. “Red caps?”

“A goblin. A kind of goblin,” Dimitrios corrected himself. “This is my fault. We should have gone over this in class straightaway, but I … wanted to stick to the lesson plan. And I hoped we’d have more time. We don’t, and I’m sorry for it.”

“They’re nasty little buggers,” Becky interrupted. “They’re a problem for us, and they are a very big reason why you’re here, right now, in this class.”

“
What do they want
?” Frances asked.

An undercurrent passed between Becky and Dimitrios as they looked at each other. “To eat us,” she answered. “And dip their caps in our blood.”

“Don’t you scare them,” Dimitrios said.

“They should be scared,” Becky shot back, eyeing him down. You might not think a twenty something woman could
stare down a minotaur, but she held her own. “They like it. They could go vegetarian, get donor blood, animal blood. They like …” Still staring at Dimitrios, Becky seemed to struggle for words, before settling on, “Going after people. Problem is,” she continued, turning back to us, “most people out there are magic. They have spells and shields and such to protect them, so goblins—”

“Red caps,” Dimitrios interrupted, holding up his hands. “Let’s not go stereotyping all goblins.”

“Red caps,” Becky corrected with a gracious nod. “They can’t get to regular folk. Not without a mess, or cops, or someone caring. Lucky for
them
,” she sneered, “here’s a whole group of weaker, unprotected targets. People who don’t have magic, or who don’t have people who will care if they go missing.”

“Becky …,” Dimitrios started.

“They should know what they’re in for.”

“Lucky for
us
,” Dimitrios said, cutting over her, “red caps tend to stalk their prey, so five times out of seven we catch them watching us before anything happens. Just keep your eyes open. King Steve has a contract with you, to protect you. There’s not a red cap or dragon or any creature with a working brain that’ll shrug that off.”

“And we are not without our own protection,” Becky said, standing and hooking a finger through a loop in her belt. One quick flick, and she pulled the belt free. The movement was smooth and fast and perfect—perfected, I guessed, through repetition.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Cold iron. Master of them all.” She handed it to Fred, so he could take a look at it and pass it around. “Best weapon we have against red caps. And fae, for that matter, unicorns, mermaids—oh, a whole lot of things, but it’s mainly for red caps.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I bought it off a metallurgist my very first Fall Fest here. The reds got sixteen that year,” she told us, and it was awful because her voice was so calm and casual, though her eyes went distant for half a moment. “We lost five before the caps went underground for the season, and another eleven when they came out of hibernation. I almost had to auction myself to get that”—she nodded at Fran, who was staring down at the chain-link belt soberly—“but it’s saved my skin more times than there are links in the chain.”

Frances passed the belt to me. The metal was rough and prickly, as if it hadn’t been filed down after it was carved into links, and it was a lot heavier than I expected. The cold of it frosted the air around my hands and made my breath fog. Only an ord could have worn it every day; it would have frozen a regular person solid.

Fran said what everyone else was thinking. “
I want one.
”

“I don’t doubt it,” Becky said, taking the belt back once it made the rounds. “And if you have a mind to and the means, you can get one of your own one day. But not yet. You don’t know how to use it, and that’s just as dangerous as knowing how. More dangerous, maybe. Instead, today we’re going to teach you a couple of tricks to get away if you can, and fight back
if you can’t. It’s all about the soft spots. Eyes, ears, cap,” she said, tapping each. She clapped her hands. “All right, partner up and remember, this is just practice, so no real power behind your punches. Anybody who forgets that gets punched back.”

Being part of the kitchen meant a lot of early mornings and late evenings, and it also meant I was usually the last one to escape.

One night in October, the kitchen was nearly empty. Most of the kids had already finished up their dinners and headed back to the dorms. Usually I gave a hand to whoever was helping dry, and we went back to the dorms together, as the school frowned on kids going anywhere or doing anything alone. My partner was an older girl. She wasn’t mean, not really, but I still wasn’t “one of them,” so it was hard to get her to talk.

We had put the last of the dishes away and wiped down the sink, but Cook Bella stopped us when we headed toward the door. “You can go, Sarah. Abby isn’t done yet.”

Sarah and I glanced at each other. “I’m not?” I asked.

Cook Bella shook her head, taking a bucket and a bristly wooden brush out of a bottom cabinet. “The floor needs a good scrub. Don’t just stand there,” she said, waving the bucket at me. “Fill this up, soap and water.”

There was a moment as Cook Bella stared at me, and Sarah stared at the floor, and then I swallowed a sigh and went over and took the bucket. I set it filling with hot water (of course it had to be hot water, it always had to be hot) and hunted under the sink for soap.

Sarah hesitated in the doorway, then came over and helped me lift the full, heavy bucket out of the sink. “It’ll get easier as you get stronger,” she said in a low voice as we set the bucket down. Water sloshed over the edge onto the tile floor.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked. I knew the floor got cleaned every day—I always had to move out of the way for the kid with the bucket—but I had been paying attention to the dishes. That’d teach me to be more observant.

“It’s easy. Soap goes in here—”

Cook Bella cleared her throat and Sarah stopped dead. Cook Bella went to the door and held it open. “Good night, Sarah. Don’t forget your leftovers.”

“I … can help.”

Cook Bella nodded, as if she was sure Sarah could, and then nodded toward the door. Sarah rubbed her hands on her skirt and hurried out. “Good work tonight,” Cook Bella murmured as she passed by.

The door swung closed with a muffled
thwack
. Steam rolled up from the bucket. I sat back on my heels, hating to ask, but knowing I’d hate it more if Cook Bella came down on me for doing something wrong. “What—”

“Figure it out,” Cook Bella said, pulling the chalkboard off
the back wall and carrying it to the island. “You’re not stupid, Abigail, so you don’t get to act like you are.”

Turns out scrubbing a floor is just like scrubbing a dish. A really big dish that you have to wash on your hands and knees, with nooks and corners and the space under the island that you have to lie down on your belly to get to properly. It’s hot, sweaty work, with my sleeves sticky and too tight after ten, then twenty minutes. But it’s not that bad, especially when compared with having to look Cook Bella in the eye and tell her I couldn’t figure it out or I wasn’t able to do it.

It was almost lights-out when I finished. Cook Bella set aside her cookbooks and chalk, and, after pointing out one or two corners I needed to do over, walked me across the courtyard to the dorm.