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Like all Liesel's plans, it went swimmingly right up until it didn't, which was far longer than anyone else's plan would have lasted.
"In light of this newly publicized information about the imminent threat to all enclaves, now revealed to be the rogue terrorist Galadriel Higgins, erstwhile inhabitant of our neighboring Wales and current wanted outlaw and vagabond, I see no alternative but to react with extreme measures to any and all possible collaborators she may have enjoined, by fair means or foul, for the purpose of inside aid in her destructive campaign," Christopher Martel proclaimed to the rest of the London Council at the hastily-convened meeting. He appeared to be trying to diplomatically maintain an air of sorrowful gravitas instead of jumping and clicking his heels together with glee, but the glee was showing through around his weaselly eyes a bit.
"It now seems absurd that we should continue to honor this miscreant's outrageous demand of us. Since we have taken in so many new residents, space inside the enclave is ever more at a premium, and I move we close our doors immediately to all those not on our member, employee, or guest rolls. I realize this may have unfortunate consequences —" he darted an oily glance at me, privileged to sit in my father's shadow for this 'emergency' session "—for our over-committed scion, who perhaps too hastily swore himself indebted to this Galadriel character. Nonetheless I cannot longer abide that London Enclave should kowtow to her demands in perpetuity, weakening us and undoubtedly serving her destructive machinations in some convoluted plot we do not yet understand." He sat back down triumphantly.
"I second the movement," Gilbert popped up to say, so quickly I suspected he'd been coached on the necessity.
"I object," my father got in, a hair behind. "There is no plot, and even if there were, the stability of the foundations…"
"I am assured by our scholars," Sidney piped in for his turn, not sounding any less rehearsed, "That our having replaced all three major enclave centers should be sufficient to ensure the safety and structural integrity of London Enclave, even should a surprise attack on one or more of the emergency exit foundation points occur. Furthermore, a pause on any more population increases in the near future is most highly advisable…"
My father looked around the room, but even his usual close allies wouldn't meet his eyes. "How quickly our undying gratitude has withered on the vine," he said acerbically. "It was only five years ago that Galadriel Higgins came here when no one else would or could, to kill a maw-mouth that would have destroyed us. My son put himself on the line to get her to come. And now you want him—what? Forced to try to uphold the oath some other way, when she's given a perfectly altruistic out?"
"Hm, it is true we wouldn't want our home to be compromised by such divided loyalties," Martel oozed. "Did I forget to mention earlier? Tragically, I see no option but to exile him and his closest associates until the situation can be resolved." He waved a hand signal, and several people popped into the room, all known toadies of Martel's faction and braced for combat.
My father's lips whitened, furious. I don't think I've ever seen him so close to betraying himself in public before—he ingrained it in me from a young age that we have a reputation to live up to, and that means never losing your temper where anyone can see, or indicating in the least that things are not perfectly in control. But after a single breath, he said, in a tone that might almost be mistaken for pleasant, "I suppose we had best be packing our things for departure, then. I hope you won't mind if we use the enclave gateways on our way out?"
I'm sure Martel would have loved to have his goons fling us out by our ankles right then and there, but after darting a hard look around the room at those who were just as likely in usual times to side with my father as anyone, civilized behavior prevailed, for a wonder, and he waved graciously. "Not at all, Richard, old chap. No hard feelings, you understand how it is."
It wasn't a question, and my father didn't bother to dignify it by answering, just turned and swept out. I had to jerk myself into motion to catch up—I cursed myself for not maintaining composure better, but I admit I wasn't expecting my world to be upended quite so thoroughly today.
Liesel was pacing in the hallway when we got to our suite. She hadn't been invited to the council meeting; probably our first sign that the bounders were up to something. "How bad is it?" she demanded immediately, on seeing our faces.
"Bad," I said immediately. Liesel, I've learned, doesn't care for sugarcoating things. "They're going to close the enclave to the public, and we're being banished."
"Also, they're going to put a hiatus on any more foundation stone replacements," my father added. "Bloody bastards'll likely consider it a coup if any of Yancy's people get swept off next time one of the exits goes."
Liesel nodded as we all entered our rooms—maybe for the last time, and wasn't that a strange thought—and started packing. "Martel's support in the lower ranks of the enclave is not high, but he has control of the council, and that is what matters for now. We must regroup and gather support from other high-ranking enclaves to strengthen Sir Richard's position so that when Martel's hold falters, which it will, we will be ready."
Part of me relaxed a little just to know that Liesel had a plan, even with unknowns looming so high around us. I could visit other enclaves. There were some I'd visited before, even. It wouldn't be that different. "Right-o," I said. I knew Liesel wouldn't voluntarily go back near any of the German enclaves, but that left most of the rest of the Continent, or possibly America… "Where to first?"
But when I went to dig into the depths of the closet, I could only stare in dismay at the tiny, dimly flickering glow that was all my light spell produced. I hadn't had such an unimpressive result since I was a first year. My word and my mana on it…
"You will not be visiting other enclaves with Sir Richard and myself," Liesel was eyeing my spell with a grimly unsurprised look and spoke with, I felt, unnecessary finality. "Three will be no better than two for what we need to do, and besides, it will not be work that satisfies you for long."
My stomach roiled uneasily as I thought about what it really meant for London Enclave to abandon its commitment, to refuse to honor Galadriel's request. I remembered the way she'd casually yanked on my obligation to get her out of the lost-in-a-maze spell, the way my magic had jumped to find her and get her out because it was what she wanted, although normally I'd never have tried tangling with that spell, on my own and with no notice, once it had someone in its clutches. It felt almost like the way casting something aligned with your affinity always felt easier, lighter, better — except with a tangibly artificial essence when it was due to the oath, with a heavy undertone of or else. This was the "or else," and I knew it'd only get worse from here. If I tried doing something actively opposed to what El wanted, it would probably feel like an oppressive bear lying across my ribcage, getting worse the longer I didn't give in, and that was if my mana didn't give out completely. Not to mention I thought I could feel something like an itch starting, that I imagined would only get worse the longer I wasn't actively doing things for her.
Liesel wasn't entirely without sympathy. "You are not so free to act as you will, anymore. Fortunately, this may be to our advantage currently. Aadhya's mother has been after her to settle down long enough to set up her business, and Liu and Yuyan make moon eyes at each other in their messages every time the Survey talks about anything. Also, this new publicity is doing no one any favors. If only I had gotten two more years before it broke, we could have eased Martel out without this fuss! But I think El's friends would be happy for a break from wandering the world with her, if only it did not leave her alone. It is not good for their business long-term to be labeled renegade and outlaw, and El knows it as well as they do. I will write to them suggesting they may take a leave, and this is where you will come in."
Assuming I wanted to wander the world with El, avatar of destruction, looking for maw-mouths so she could kill them and presumably mopping up the floods of bloody viscera that ensued — I shuddered just remembering the gore from five years ago — and potentially being attacked by any enclave that heard the news that was even now, surely, travelling fast around the world's enclaves: Galadriel Higgens is the maleficer taking down enclaves. Stop her before it's too late.
"Jolly good," I said faintly. But even as I thought about it, something was settling in me: my affinity has always been about knowing where my shields can do the most good, and it was suddenly pulling at me in perfect alignment with my burgeoning sense of the unfulfilled oath: help El. El needs protection. El needs me.
"Right," I said, more confidently. "I can do that."
Liesel looked at me, then, one of those studying looks, like I'd surprised her. "I must accompany your father," she said, as close to apologetic as she ever got. "I cannot network and run the Survey while on the run with El, and your father will look more diplomatic if he has a proper assistant. And in diplomacy, looks can be everything," she added grimly.
I waved it away. "You don't need to tell me," I said. "Truly, I'll be fine. Better than fine. It's got to be my turn for a spot of adventure, hasn't it?"
Liesel laughed and kissed me. "Alfie, I don't know anyone in the world as good as you," she said a little wonderingly. "Have your adventures, then. And come home safe to me when you're done."
We didn't need to rehash the conversation we'd had all those years ago, when we first got out of the Scholomance to discover London being attacked by a maw-mouth and our only hope of salvation the terrifying girl we'd gotten to know only a very little as we all tried to survive and graduate. "Whatever she wants, whatever can compel her to our side," Liesel had said then, low, before we joined Sarah to set out in the car to Wales. "I do not put limits on you, and you do not put limits on me, when it comes to El, yes?
"Yes," I had agreed instantly, taking her hand and squeezing it. "Yes, of course." El was too great an advantage when it mattered. And it wasn't just that, either. I had been surprised to discover, those last hectic months in the Scholomance, that El was one of very few people I would trust to do the right thing, over and above anything else.
Not to mention…well, let's just say El had a very extraordinary presence, admittedly off-putting until you got used to it, and even once you were sitting across a planning table every day at lunch, she still had a way of looking at you that made your whole body sit up and take notice.
Well. My body, anyway. I don't know that it was a universal experience.
But I'd have done any number of things El wanted me to do even if my father hadn't been about to go into a maw-mouth, let's put it that way.
"I'll come home to you," I promised Liesel, because that, too, was a promise I could make easily. Liesel with her fierce determination and intellect, and fragile willingness to be human every so often despite herself—Liesel who took a harebrained idea to "do better" for everyone and marched us all off to make it really happen. Liesel, who had seen me and wanted me and tied her fortunes and her life to mine.
"Good," she sniffed. "Now, you will want to travel lighter than that; go through all that luggage and take only what you can fit in a backpack. I will cast the expansion charm on it if you need, but not so much weight you cannot run if you need to…"
"Perhaps you'll want to take the car," my father suggested. "It's designed to fit through an enclave portal, and should be able to get you most anywhere you want to go…"
Following Liesel's directions got me to a big open field with a maw-mouth dozing off under a distant treeline. Right in front of me, El was looking even more storm-cloudish than was usual for her, yelling — or trying not to yell — at a pack of wizards who had apparently "figured out" she was about to cast her evil maleficer spells on the maw-mouth their foundation was built on, in order to siphon and attack their enclave's mana store, and had sent a detachment all the way to China to stop her by any means necessary.
"I keep telling you, I don't care about stealing your enclave's mana," El was saying with the kind of gritted-teeth patience that went with having to repeat yourself, even for people with normal temperaments. "So no, you can't bribe me with extra mana to go away and leave your maw-mouth in peace to keep eating other wizards."
"Of course you don't want our mana," their leader repeated. From his thin politeness, he clearly didn't understand why this diplomatic fiction was being insisted on, but was willing to give it lip service in order to get on with the conversation. I knew the tone well, not least because he sounded exactly like Myrthe Christopher, and looked like a close relation, too. "But there must be something you do want; perhaps we could continue negotiations in a more comfortable setting?"
"We cannot," El said flatly. The delegation all looked very offended. "I've just spent two weeks tracking this thing, I'm not letting it out of my sight and starting over…"
"Oh, hello, El, everyone." I judged it a good time to introduce myself. "I say, I don't believe I've had the pleasure; name's Alfie, fresh across the pond from London enclave?" I trailed off expectantly, exactly the way normal civilized people do to prompt an introduction, hoping habit would kick in if common sense didn't.
They regarded me in varying degrees of annoyance, wondering whether I was going to add anything of benefit to them to the conversation; but at least I was an alternative to butting their heads against the conversational brick wall that was El on ground she'd decided to hold. "Winthrop Christopher, council deputy, Santa Barbara enclave," the leader said grudgingly to me.
El crossed her arms and nodded to me, apparently willing to let me take over the conversation for now. A delightful little shiver ran up and down my spine — I was doing something for her, after such a long drought of barely seeing her at all! I did my best to ignore it.
"Smashing," I said, pretending they'd been as enthusiastic in greeting me as anyone ever was at a holiday party. (To be fair, sometimes those had just as little real enthusiasm as this.) "You must know our old school chum Myrthe, how is she?" I politely waited for him to fold his arms and stare at me incredulously. Fair enough; "chum" was stretching the truth almost beyond recognition.
"Right, straight on to business it is. How long does your enclave need to make alternate arrangements for your foundation stone? I'm afraid the current one won't be at all the thing much longer."
Poor Winthrop looked at me a little bug-eyed and still didn't say anything.
One of his wingmen, a witch with a long staff that looked like a fairly deadly magical weapon, took up the slack. "You can't—planning a new foundation stone takes months, years…" She waved her staff emphatically in our general direction.
"Oh, you're terribly behind the times, then," I told her brightly. "Why, all over the world now, they've been using the new spells to change them over quick as you can host a get-together. And then you never have to worry if someone's going to come along and kill your maw-mouth, and have your whole enclave popping off into the void without it!"
From the looks on their faces, they had never for a moment worried about this before, and didn't see why the should have to start now. "People don't just kill maw-mouths!" Winthrop protested. "Whatever spell she's using—She's been using the maw-mouth to attack the mana store…"
"Nope," El put in. "It's really not that complicated. I just kill the maw-mouth, and whatever's built on its magic collapses. Unless you've taken advantage of the multiple warnings you've considerately been given," she added pointedly, "and shored up your foundation with, you know, mana instead of malia. Instead of coming all the way out here to badger me about it."
It took a good deal more convincing, and then once they were convinced, they promptly tried to kill El with a sneaky blast from that witch's staff, no warning, but fortunately El had her shield up, not being born yesterday, and surprise attacks never have much luck against me, either; my shielding affinity tends to give me an instinct for when protections are needed. So the rather impressive jet of mortal flame sputtered out against my evocation of refusal, which unlike my light spell that morning, flared out bigger than I'd ever got it before, easily covering the both of us and about eight meters on all sides. And then El spun up a wall of mortal flame between us and them, and started advancing it slowly to make them back off.
Only then the maw-mouth noticed the commotion, and started coming over to see what the fuss was about, at which point the other wizards all broke and tried ineffectually to scatter and started yelling for us to stop, they hadn't meant it, and they were very sorry. Extremely sorry, and whatever El wanted, they would get for her.
At first, El and I each had to hold different shields up, one between us and the Santa Barbarans and the other between all of us and the maw-mouth. After we were sure they weren't going to try to kill us anymore, and convinced them to form a circle to support the shield, I took down mine between us and them while El kept hers up to keep the maw-mouth off—its presence of indescribable horror beating in at us the whole time, even through the best shield I knew of—and then raised a new shield with the circle supporting me, just inside El's. "Ready," I said, as steadily as I could, praying it was true.
El dropped her shield, and suddenly the maw-mouth's terrible hunger was beating all against my shield, pressing in all around, probing like fingers for any cracks. I staggered, knowing I couldn't hold against this indefinitely—but I had to hold, for El. This was something I could do for her, and some deeply wrong part of me delighted even now doing whatever service I could for her. The more excruciating and loathsome, the better.
El did not take note of my surprisingly conflicted feelings, but instead almost casually cast her French death spell a few times in a row, flicking her fingers at the maw-mouth until it shuddered and some rotting viscera sloughed out of it, making gory puddles on the ground. "Your enclave will have felt that," she told poor Winthrop & Co. grimly. "Who's going to go tell them what they have to do before I take the whole thing out, and your enclave foundation goes with it?"
After a lot of distracting muttered arguments in which the whole casting circle nearly wobbled over multiple times, they elected two of their number to try to get through with the message, looking extremely dubious about their chances of living through extrication from our current entanglement. But the party also seemed to expect the worst for the ones staying, so at length, El stabilized the circle's mana flow for us while the two stepped back from it, and then El cast her own bubble again, much smaller this time, and floated the two of them right out and past the edges of the maw-mouth, like she used to do for kids in the gym she needed to fling out of harm's way. The maw-mouth did perk up and try to spread itself out to chase them a bit, but one was the witch with the mortal flame-shooting stick, and that plus another couple death spells from El dissuaded it so they got away clean.
"Now we just have to hope they're actually going to go tell their enclave that they have until sunset to fix their foundation, and that the enclave's going to do it," El said pessimistically.
She and I traded off holding up the shield several times over the next few hours, before they were all sorted, their new enclave foundation was in place, and El could get on with killing the maw-mouth. At any rate, it was late evening before the other wizards all departed, rather in haste. And then we could go find hot baths.
Or at least, I thought hot baths should be the obvious next step. We'd been decidedly too close for comfort at the last when the maw-mouth dissolved into a large sludgy puddle of gore, and neither of us had quite got the knack of Liesel's emphatic German cleaning spell. And we'd been holding the barrier spell for hours by then, since in these circumstances I seemed able to beat my previous record for holding the spell several times over—because it was for El, something deep in me purred delightedly—and although El seldom ever really looked tired even when you'd think she should, I was exhausted.
But El looked at me oddly when I suggested it. "What are you doing here?" She asked bluntly.
"I thought Liesel told you," I said absently, trying not to breathe the miasma into my lungs. Breathing was unfortunately not optional even for wizards, and although the evocation of refusal did a bang-up job of keeping even smells away, I couldn't face the thought of holding it any longer than we already had if it wasn't life and death.
"She told me you were coming, she didn't say why," El folded her arms.
I winced as I realized that I'd been asked a direct question by someone to whom I owed a huge debt, magically sworn, and blown off answering, and I felt my already low mana gutter. "I mean, I'm here to help you out while Aadhya and Liu take a break, and also it's become a little more immediately necessary that I help you directly since London, er, closed to the public and kicked me out."
I hadn't meant to lead with that. Clearly being magically goaded wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
El, for her part, looked incredulous. "I thought you were a big deal in London. You had an unlimited power-sharer to the mana pool."
I kept my breathing even. "That was really my father's, and anyway Martel won't quit, and he's convinced everybody since the news came out that you're the one knocking off enclaves…"
"So you're guilty by association," El got it immediately. "Sorry."
"Gives me a chance to stretch my legs," I said airily, waving as carelessly as I could make myself look.
"If there's anything I can do…" El started, only to trail off unhappily. The only things she could do would involve not killing maw-mouths anymore, which I wasn't asking and she wouldn't offer, or else coming over to directly bash London's head (in the person of Christopher Martel) in and make them take me back and also open up the gardens to the public again, which, as tempting as it sounded, wasn't really a good precedent to set. Also, even if she did it, it was sure to result in an even greater flow of debt between us than was already being magically enforced due to my oath. I wasn't eager to experience what that would feel like.
"Really, I don't know about you, but I've gotten about as much exercise for one day as I need," I said briskly. "What about those baths?"
El did find us some public baths, I think because she maybe felt bad for me, but I figured she would benefit at least as much after the day we'd had, so that was enough to keep the balance in my head from tilting any more in her favor.
But it didn't stop my head from coming up with several vividly interesting ideas about other things I could do for El in a bath setting, clothes neatly folded out of the way, my hands on her neck or back, gently kneading out some of that tension she's always carried as long as I've known her…or sudsing up her lustrous black hair, finally allowed to grow out longer than the necessarily short and unlovely haircuts of the Scholomance. I groaned and thumped my head back against the locker room wall. Maybe the baths hadn't been the greatest idea after all. There was a bathing suit far more compact and lightweight than my usual swim trunks tucked into the corner of my backpack — thanks, Liesel.
"Alfie, you okay in there? You coming out?" El banged on the wall and my half-formed thoughts of taking the edge off in private withered ingloriously, and I put the Speedo-like thing on and went out to face my doom, feet pulling me along with the force of El's desire for me to come out.
The front desk, for reasons mysterious to me but apparently not surprising to El, had elected to give us a private room in the bathhouse, which it was immediately obvious was usually meant for couples. Romantic music played softly, the decor was decidedly rose-themed, and the furniture—perhaps it was just my overheated imagination, but several fixtures seemed ready to comfortably accommodate multiple positions, as it were.
El, also wearing a swimsuit seemingly designed with lack of weight in mind — I thought I detected Liesel's hand again in its selection — was standing imposingly at the edge of the very inviting-looking pool, and scowling. "I didn't ask for this," she said, more to the room in general, or perhaps the universe, than to me.
"I know," I said, coming up to her side.
"I don't want to make you do things just because you owe me," she said plaintively, turning so we faced each other seriously.
My insides did a flip. "I would want to do some of those things even if I didn't owe you, you know," I said mildly.
El looked rather like she didn't know, and had in fact never contemplated such an idea before in her life. Which was ridiculous, since I knew perfectly well she'd had relations with both Orion and Liesel. Possibly at the same time, if anything had really happened that night of the mid-year cleaning, when it was all over the school that they'd spent the night together all in one room. Liesel had started up with me very shortly afterwards, and asking her for details had never seemed quite the done thing, so I never got the full story; at first I was afraid she wouldn't give it, or would make one up, or even worse, feel too obligated and share it unwillingly; and later, after we had got to know each other better, I just thought it awkward to bring it up after so much time had gone by.
"What things?" El demanded in a choked sort of whisper, then clapped her hand over her mouth as she realized she'd given me something resembling an order.
"I'd like to make you feel good," I could feel myself flushing, this was too forward, too soon, she hadn't asked for me to…but she had asked. "I could wash your hair for you…"
"Stop answering that!" It was harder to tell on her darker skin, but I thought she was blushing too.
I made a sort of choked noise of my own as I cut off abruptly. It felt just as good as answering in the first place had.
"I don't mean to keep telling you what to do, it just comes out of me," she stepped even closer to me, hand raising in concern.
"It feels really good every time you do," I admitted. "Like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing."
"I like it more than I should," she whispered, confessional. "Like you could be mine to do what I want with. But you're not."
Abruptly, the building shook with some sort of impact all around us, water from the bathing pool sloshing up over our toes. I hadn't felt any of my usual warning instinct, but I slammed up a shield over us both despite my exhaustion, magic flaring bright, just as Orion Lake came running into the room, without even pausing at the supposedly locked door. "We've got to move, word's been spreading all day from the Santa Barbara enclave that you're in this city, there's a crowd of other enclavers about to take down the building…"
"Orion!" I blurted, flushing even more, because he'd trailed off, looking at me oddly, but then, instead of wasting time trying to explain that this wasn't what it looked like — true or not, the Scholomance trained all of us very effectively to react to mortal peril first and sort ourselves out afterward — I dropped the shield and bolted for the backpack I'd left in the changing room. El, I noticed, had brought her bag into the pool room with her, the better to grab instantly during an emergency. I added this to my mental list of survival strategies and was hard on their heels as we all sprinted for the building's exit, bundles of clothing in our arms that we hadn't had time to either stuff in bags or re-dress ourselves in.
We made it out the back door to the car, which fortunately hadn't been discovered and sabotaged by the pack of wizards currently banging down the front door and storming into the building. I removed my camouflage-and-protect spell so we could get in it — it's a top-notch spell I've got, if I do say so myself. Then it was a brief but exciting car chase through crowded city streets as the car took us on a wild ride to lose them, and El and I tried to re-dress ourselves in the not-really-as-spacious-as-it-seemed antique interior, and clacked elbows and skulls more than once in the process, while Orion sat in the driver's seat trying to pretend like he knew anything about driving, instead of staring at us. It wasn't very convincing even to me, and I'd always just let the car manage itself, too.
"Sorry," I started. I wasn't really sure how to say, "for blushing in front of your girlfriend," but it seemed the place to start. But Orion threw me a startled look.
"You couldn't have known that they were about to find you if you stayed in the city," he said. "El's never had to move that fast before."
"Since the news is out now, I guess I'll have to stay on the move more," El said. "Really, I've been doing this long enough, you guys don't have to…"
"I meant for…" I shrugged. But there didn't seem to be any tension in the air, surprisingly.
Orion just rolled his eyes. "El doesn't think it's a good idea to be exclusive when we're so young and don't know what we want yet," light teasing in his voice that implied he knew what he wanted perfectly well and was just humoring her. "Anyway, she has to keep travelling, and I have to protect the Scholomance from mals, and she might not need help, but it might come in handy anyway." He looked at me thoughtfully again, and if it wasn't because he'd just busted in on me in an intense moment with his girlfriend, I didn't have any idea why he was looking at me like that.
El glared at him. "Are you quite done with arranging my life for me?"
Orion ignored this question. "Did you have any…enhancements to your magic when you cast that shield back there?"
I blinked. "Enhan…I mean, I suppose it was stronger because of the oath?"
"Oath? What oath?" Orion asked quickly. I didn't think Orion had ever really noticed my existence before today. We certainly hadn't exchanged much conversation in our four years together in the Scholomance, even though London and New York normally got on well, unless it was a suggestion for making the runs better our senior year; but I'd never taken the neglect personally, since it was so universally applied on Orion's part, to everyone except El.
"He swore to make it up to me for saving his enclave and his father's life from the maw-mouth, back before we got you out of the Scholomance," El said irritably, "if his enclave wouldn't. And they've just decided they're tired of paying the debt, so now he's got to tag along being useful whether he wants to or not."
"I want to, truly," I protested. The way El put it, it sounded like I was just getting dragged along in her wake by the spell I'd sworn.
"That sounds great," Orion said, apparently totally sincerely, which was the first time anyone had reacted in any way other than horror and pity when they found out about my oath. "I wish I could take the whole year off, but there'd be freshmen kids getting eaten in the labs by the end of the month. Is all your magic stronger or is it just when you're protecting El?"
"Er," I said. "If it's a spell that helps her, it's stronger. If it's nothing to do with her, it's weaker."
El looked distraught. "I could hex Christopher Martel into a nice, solid garden statue," she suggested. "He'd get out eventually, but it'd take him a while if we hid the statue where his toadies couldn't find him."
"Can I watch you cast a spell that helps her?" Orion asked, and El swiveled to squint at him suspiciously.
"I don't see why not," I said slowly.
"Great, so if you, I don't know, cast your camouflage spell on her…"
"Why not just cast it on the whole car, as long as I'm in it?" El cut in.
I wanted to cast as soon as I heard Orion's request, which was interesting. El didn't seem to have to ask me directly, as long as the request was something that was for her. "It's usually just good for stationary stuff," I said dubiously, before giving it a try. The whole car shimmered and took on the colors of the streets, buildings, and people around us. The upper part looked like the sky. All of a sudden, it was like the three of us were whizzing along at breakneck speeds seated on air, with no car around us.
"Ugh, no, make it stop," El groaned, "This is attracting so much more attention."
It was also causing other cars, bikes, and pedestrians to swerve crazily near us, and I could see disaster looming. I dropped the spell hurriedly, and we went back to driving, or pretending to drive, a merely eye-catchingly antique roadster that liked to swerve up on sidewalks and dip through reality on its way to where we were going.
Orion hadn't taken his eyes off me. "That was really cool," he said.
"Why did you want me to try that?" I asked him curiously.
Orion glanced at El, a bit sideways. "I can see the extra mana glowing," he said.
El threw up her hands in exasperation. "Do you even remember his name?" she asked pointedly, and Orion looked a bit disconcerted.
"Alber…no, Alfred!" he said triumphantly, after a pause.
I put my face in my hands. I had explicitly discouraged anyone from calling me Alfred my entire life. Sir Alfred Cooper Browning could remain in the history books, thanks very much. "Just Alfie, if you please," I said through my fingers.
"Oh," Orion said. "Yeah, okay. I'll remember it now, though." He was still looking at me, thoughtful. "Do you know anything that can make the car look like a different car?"
The car, disguised as an unexceptional little Toyota, pulled up at our destination sometime after midnight, a house out of Liesel's network which she directed us to over the phone. "And do not stay more than 24 hours," she added. "The safehouse's anti-tracking measures are only good that long before they must be rested and recharged."
"Wish you were here," I told her, trudging inside with our bags. I had volunteered to carry them while El and Orion cleared the house, which was nice, but I was also exhausted and just wanted to sleep.
"Don't do anything I wouldn't do," she told me, and smiled.
"Are you still on with Liesel?" El demanded, sweeping back in from the room ahead of me. "Give me your phone."
I handed it over — another dumb little thrill going distractingly up my spine.
"Liesel, why does this safehouse have a hot tub?" El was asking incredulously.
Well, that was unexpected. I began to feel as though I might, possibly, be interested in something other than faceplanting into the nearest undisturbed mattress.
"I thought you had missed out on your baths earlier," Liesel was saying matter-of-factly. "You will have 24 hours until I have another maw-mouth location for you. Enjoy your time." She blew El a kiss, and hung up.
El very carefully handed my phone back without looking at it, possibly so that she didn't reduce it to slag with her glare.
"Hey, did you know there's a hot tub in here?" Orion popped back into the room. "Also, the beds are enormous, how does Liesel even find these places?"
"I have no idea," I said, truthfully. Well, I had some idea, which was that Liesel spent a good chunk of every day talking to roughly 200 people in her Survey networks, but how she'd turned up an empty house with a hot tub in driving distance from us was beyond me.
El was breathing in a very steady way that suggested exercises to get her temper under control, and after a minute she opened her eyes and smiled at us quite calmly. "Well, it would be a shame not to enjoy it while we're here, I guess. And we did get interrupted earlier."
I picked up her bag along with mine, and followed El deeper into the house.