Allie cleared the frost off the car window using her sleeve. Her hands grown pale and stiff from the early morning chill. She knew she should have stolen that winter coat she saw at Target yesterday. It would have been so easy to walk away with it during the holiday rush.
Though, considering her luck, she would have been grabbed by the security guards six steps from the exit. Allie blew on her fingers to wake them up a little before pulling her wand out her back pocket. She kissed the pointed white oak’s surface, praying to any spirit that could hear her for it to work just this one time.
“Reserare,” Allie whispered. Sparks sizzled the car door’s lock then she heard a low click. Allie checked the empty suburban streets again. Being caught doing magic amongst the mortals was an instant first-degree offense and being eighteen meant no more cushy time at juvie.
She rubbed the long scar a rather deranged half-fairy had delivered to her neck her first stint in those cursed halls. It flared, the puckered flesh none too fond of the cold.
Her end goal was to get the car to Mr.Obin down at twenty-second street which was a good fifty miles away. Allie slid inside the car and smiled at the interior’s almost pristine condition. The new car smell was still clinging to the nice leather seats. Maybe she could haggle a higher price out the old troll. Mr.Obin did say he liked to see spunk from his thieves.
“Got to get the car there first girly,” she said to herself. She stowed her wand back inside her pocket, not willing to tempt fate further, as she ducked below the steering wheel. All it took was reconnecting a few wires to send her barreling down towards the highway.
Feeling secure her theft would go unnoticed, Allie imagined the the things she would buy once she had some cash. A nice hotel room to stay in. Those new morphable wands the rich kids at her old school were getting. Sure the sky wasn’t the limit, but at least she had nudged the ceiling blocking her path to some type of future. Baby steps.
It wasn’t until she had swung into fast food lined streets of the University district that she heard the sirens behind her. Allie’s heart jumped to her throat while her mind raced to find a plan to avoid them. The car slowing down despite her foot smashing the gas pedal the hardest she could wasn’t helping.
Why the hell was there a bait car in the suburbs? Allie swerved into a nearby shopping plaza, semi-frozen hands struggling to wrench her wand free from her back pocket. She spoke the first spell to come to her mind. “Velocitas.”
The regained its speed to her delight. It also hurled itself at an unstoppable pace towards an abandoned shoe store.
“No! No! No!” The brakes were useless at stopping Allie’s momentum.
Her face ricocheted off the expanding airbag as the car ripped through the storefront, broken bricks cracking the windows. She was barely aware of the two hands yanking her across the space-time continuum till she found herself sitting between a raving old woman and man in a well-tailored suit.
Allie blinked at the harsh lights illuminating the green tiled hallway. It took a few moments for her to recognize the somber decor from under her shock-induced haze.
The Low Wizarding Court. Where the little bads were tried so the High Wizarding Court could handle the actually important cases. To a girl like Allie, it was more a home than the hundred sum foster homes she’d been stuck in.
“Ehhm,” coughed the suited man.
She registered the thick paper folder laying on his lap with confusion. “Are you supposed to be my lawyer?”
“Yup.” He smoothed dreads down then offered her a hand. “Ja’shawn P. Kallory at your service.”
“Where’s Miss Lins?” she asked, ignoring his hand.
“Miss Lins is assigned to handle juvenile offenders and as of last week, you aren’t a juvenile anymore.”
“Don’t remind me,” she thought.
Ja’shawn rifled the papers in his folder. “Any reason you decided to steal that car?”
“I needed the money.”
“You couldn’t get a job?”
Allie squared her shoulders defensively. “What’s it to you?”
Ja’shawn closed the folder, lips curving to a deep frown. “Let me not mince words here Ms. Mincy. The charges against you are rather severe. Using magic in the presence of Normals. Using magic to commit a crime. Destroying Normals property. Requiring a magical cover up.”
She drummed her fingers on her knees. “How much am I looking at?”
“Fifteen to twenty years at an adult penitentiary is what you’ll get if we get a good judge.”
Her stomach threatened to hurl its contents across the gray tiled floor. Allie tried to rise to her feet but Ja’shawn yack to her seat.
“The only reason you aren’t in handcuffs right now is because this place is locked up tight. If you want to go anywhere I’ll have to accompany unless you’d like a zap to the face.” He offered her a handkerchief. “Plug your nose. You’re getting blood all over yourself.”
“Why am I here now? I was just in a car crash, shouldn’t I be at a hospital or something?” Her fingers shook too bad to get the cloth into her nose on the first try. She folded silky square to smaller and smaller triangles while Ja’shawn fought to be heard past the raving woman’s unintelligible shouts.
“Extractors checked your injuries before they dumped you on me. There nothing wrong with you a healer can’t fix later.”
Fix. Dump. She was a person, dammit! Not some object to be tossed at whatever poor bastard who got cornered by the previous schmuck in charge of her. Allie kept this angry declaration to herself though, focusing on gathering her nerves.
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A fairy woman, lacy orange wings clashing with the conservative pantsuit she wore, collected the raving old woman and disappeared down the hallway.
Ja’shawn checked his phone. “Okay, we’ve got thirty minutes or so until the judge’s ready to hear your case.”
“Thirty minutes?! I just got here, shouldn’t I be talking to a cop, getting my statements in.”
“We’re wizards. Evidence gathering in uncomplicated like yours takes around ten minutes.”
“That’s not how we did it in juvie,” said Allie, deflating.
“Blame the Three-One Council for the difference. They somehow got it in their heads that mimicking what kids see on Normals’ television shows would make juvenile offenders less troublesome before they’re shipped off.” Ja’shawn threw his hands in the air. “Politicians. What can you do?”
“Oh, spirits! I can’t go to an adult penitentiary. Look at me! They’ll break my skinny ass in half within the week. ”
Ja’shawn raised an eyebrow. “You do know there are guards there too, right?”
“So? One prison riot and the next time you’ll see me I’ll be some corpse at a morgue.”
“You watch too much Normal shows.” Ja’shawn checked his phone again. “Alright, when we go to the judge, you’ll enter a guilty plea. I’ll ask the judge to consider your youthful age then we’ll just have to pray they’ve had a good day.”
Allie flung Ja’shawn’s carefully folded napkin, too angry to control herself anymore. “Are you kidding me? That’s it? I want a trial! I refuse to just slink off to prison with my tail between my legs.”
“Then your best case scenario goes from fifteen to twenty to twenty to forty. I would expect a girl who's lived the life you’ve had would recognize the society we exist in. Do you think a jury are going to take pity on a low-level magic user such as you? You want me to look at you? Why don’t you look at yourself.”
Hot tears prickled Allie’s eyes as she realized her abrasive lawyer was right. Everywhere she went, her inability to easily channel magic had been thrown back in her face. Rich kids. Poor kids. White. Latino. Black. Asian. Fairy. Troll. Beating up on her was a cause anyone could unite behind. Even her foster parents made it known why she remained while others were taken to new homes, though some sugarcoated it.
“I’m sorry.” Ja’shawn collected his handkerchief off the floor and used it to wipe her still bloody nose. “I went too far.”
She pushed him away. “Don’t touch me. Let’s just get this trial over with already.”
“Fine.” He deposited the handkerchief on her lap, then gestured for her to put it in her nose. After she did that, he stood. “Try to keep your composure. Some judges really hate to see defendants cry, especially women. It makes them feel manipulated.”
“Leave me alone.” Getting to her feet sent woozy quakes to her battered forehead. She was taken aback by her reflection on the shiny tile floor. Black bruises rimmed both eyes, their dark tendrils reaching her neck like someone was drawing on her face but was interrupted before they could finish. Her battered nose was a shade redder than her knotted hair. Allie wiped the blood off her split using her thin shirt.
“Come on, let’s go.”
The march the black door’s at the hallway’s end reminded Allie of the funeral marche’s she’d seen on some half-forgotten march. Except she was alone, she wouldn’t mind being dead at the moment, and no one was going to visit her once she was buried behind penitentiary walls.
“Put on your game face.” Ja’shawn opened the doors to a spacious undecorated room. Benches filled the space between the Judge’s desk and the entrance. A bailiff, troll if the sharp canines jutting out his lower jaw were anything to go by, stood guard at the only other door to the room. His rat-like eyes gazed at Allie in a way that made her skin crawl.
“Approach the bench” called the judge. The woman was the same shade of mahogany tone as Ja’shawn but unlike Ja’shawn a curled horn graced each side of her temple. Dusky feathers coated the two gargantuan wings attached to her small frame. Allie never thought she would see a mountain fairy this close to Normal civilization. Emblazoned on in her desk’s front was a plaque.
“Judge Ruth Satsori of the Low Wizard Court,” it read.
Her lawyer placed a steadying hand on Allie’s back during their slow walk to the wooden rail separating the judge from them. The judge watched their procession, head resting her head on a taloned fist, absolute boredom etched on her leather face.
“What’s the plea?” asked the Judge.
“Guilty, your honor,” Ja’shawn replied.
Judge Satsori pointed at Allie. “I know we are all tired this late night but proper protocol must always be followed. The girl has to give the plea.”
“My apologies ma’am.” Ja’shawn nudged his defendant a bit forward.
Allie’s tongue clung to the roof of her mouth worse than any peanut butter cup. The tears she had held at bay for the last thirty minutes threatened to overflow onto her cheeks. “I. . . I. . .”
“Yes?” prodded the judge. She tapped her finger impatiently against her desk.
The apathy on the older woman’s face, the room’s suffocating emptiness, and the fact no one except her seemed to care her life was finished broke Allie’s control.
She burst into tears. “Please don’t send me to prison! Please, please, please. I’ll do anything.”
“Handle your client.”
Ja’shawn tried to put his arms around Allie yet the gesture only transformed her sadness to rage. “I already told you not to touch me!”
The bailiff grabbed a mysterious weapon holstered to his belt only to be stayed by the judge’s sharp glance. Judge Satsori returned her attention to the shaking Allie. “If you didn’t want to be here then you shouldn’t have used magic to steal a car.”
“My foster parents kicked me out the day I turned eighteen. Those shelters you cunts build to house freaks like me are literal death traps. Humans wouldn’t accept us because they can smell the magic on us and you wouldn’t accept us because we can’t channel enough to use. So fuck your moralizing. Fuck you for acting like you can hold any opinion on the things I’ve done to survive.”
“Oh, spirits.” Ja’shawn laid his head into his hands.
Judge Satsori didn’t seem to share his exasperation. In fact, her face was beyond inscrutable to Allie. A fact which began to disturb her the longer she remained beneath the judge’s icy gaze. The anger sustaining her dread cooled to a terrible dread. The years she was certain to be fated to stretched across her mind at an unending length.
“Allie Mincy.”
“Yes, your honor,” whispered Allie.
“I, Judge Ruth Satsori, sentence you to complete the corrective program at Munnins Reform School for Wayward Wizards. You think you deserve a second chance, you got it. This second chance is also your last.”
“T-Thank you Judge.” Reform School? Weren’t those the places Normals sent their bratty teenagers too. Allie felt Ja’shawn grip her shoulder.
“Your honor, where are you sending my client to?” asked Ja’shawn.
“Munnins Reform School for Wayward Wizards. Was I not clear in my diction?”
“I never heard of such a place. Is it a penitentiary? An asylum? What?”
Judge Satasori leaned forward in her seat. “Haven’t you heard the good news? Dr. Rodriguez, the ‘Compassionate Mage’ some have called him, has finally gotten the Three-One council to adopt his more rehabilitative towards criminals. At a judge’s discretion, a criminal can be sent to the Munnins Reform School for Wayward Wizards to complete the three year program.”
“And if she fails to complete it,” asked Ja’shawn.
“She’ll spend double the maximum sentence at a nice supermax prison. ”
“Wait, what?”
Cruelty tinged the wide smile crossing the Judge’s face. “All deals come at a compromise dear. You also can’t reoffend, ever, or you’ll be considered to have failed the to complete the program. Isn’t it a win-win? No matter what happens, you’ll end up fitting in somewhere.”
“She can’t do this to me, Ja’shawn.” The bailiff grabbed at her arm but Allie jerked away in time to miss him. “Tell me she can’t do this to me.”
Ja’shawn sighed, refusing to me Allie’s eyes.
The bailiff sealed Allie’s hands together using an invisible bind before Alli could dodge him again. She still fought him. “This isn’t fair! You can’t steal my entire life like this!.”
“Bailiff,” snapped the judge.
It was the last thing Allie heard for awhile. She reawoke alone on an empty bus, hands and feet shackled together, a gray desert stretching endlessly outside her window.