Chapter 24 Melodia

“Well this is disturbing,” Pickati stared at nothing as I sat on my bed, staring at my brother’s neck. “At the very least, my decision to not consider the children of magi has been vindicated.”

He nervously chuckled at his own weak joke before the three of us all sat around in silence. In the middle of the three of us was the paper with the direction for the café.

“So what do guys want to do about this?” Arturo looked up at Pickati. “Technically, they only want me and ‘my teacher’ and that’s you.”

“Going into the lair of unknown magi will always be a risk,” he looked up at the ceiling, “but at the same time, leaving this alone also feels like a risk. It might even be the bigger one.”

“Do we really have any other real option other than going?” Arturo said as I realized what I had to do.

“Yeah, me coming with you,” I announced as both of them started opening their mouths, “no, don’t argue. You both know I’m the magically strongest person here. If the two of you are going, I’m going too.”

Plus with the way that Marvin guy had treated my brother, he was going to get a piece of my mind, no matter what.

“She has a point,” Arturo shot Pickati a glare, “in terms of magical strength, she’s the strongest one here, even without her transformation.”

“You want to take my sister with us?” My brother demanded as I rolled my eyes.

“No, I don’t want to,” he grit her teeth, “but if things go wrong, we have better odds with her than without her. And considering what they’ll probably do to me if they catch me, I would rather our chances be the best they can be.”

“And I’m going, no matter what you say anyway,” I pointed out as I felt a little scummy for my next move, “and if you try to stop me or go without me, I’m going to find a way to make Mom and Dad keep you in the house.”

He looked back at me for a few seconds as we started an impromptu staring contest. He blinked first and sighed.

“Fine… fine you win,” he grumbled before glancing over to Pickati again. “So you weren’t kidding about the whole ‘other magi would dissect you’ thing, were you?”

“Not a word of it,” my eyes went wide as Pickati shivered, “I would rather keep all my insides on my inside, thank you very much.”

“So anything else we want to talk about before you two start on your homework?” he asked as Arturo looked over at me.

“Yeah, you have anything to tell us Melodia? You looked really happy when I got in,” I felt my face flush up. That’s right, I needed to tell him about Ray.

“Okay, so this is what happened,” I jumped to my feet and started swaying my arms back and forth as I told them everything that happened earlier today. By the time I was done, my brother looked like he was almost ready to cry.

“And that’s why I need your help, I need you to help me convince Dad to not scare Ray away. Can you help me out with this?” I finished as Arturo jumped to his own feet and picked me up in a swinging hug.

“You can bet I’ll do it,” he cheered, “my little sister made her first friend in years. Oh this was the news I needed after what happened today.”

“Thank you, and… you’re welcome I guess?” I couldn’t help but laugh. I glanced over to Pickati to see if he looked ready to celebrate too.

He was frowning for some reason.

“Pickati?” Arturo set me down and then saw his expression too. “Is there something wrong?”

“As much as I hate to rain on this parade, and trust me I really hate to rain on it because this is great progress, we might need to exercise caution.”

“What do you mean?” He floated over and landed on my head.

“I mean that with this happening on the same day of Arturo’s encounter with Marvin, we can’t assume this Ray boy isn’t some sort of magi as well.”

My eyes widened as I replayed the events of the day. The project partners had been picked randomly, we had gotten them out of a literal hat. But with magic, there were so many ways someone could cheat something as simple as a hat. And Ray did get his paper after me.

“How do we find out?” I didn’t want it to be true, but with what this guy did to my brother, the risk was too high. “Should I tell him not to come after all?”

“No… I think he should still come here,” Pickati glanced over at the walls, “in fact, him coming here gives us the best possible chance to figure this out. We’ll know when he’s coming and be able to prepare for him.”

“How do you want to play this Pickati,” my brother said, “you sound like you’re already forming a plan.”

“I can have a passive scan set up for when he arrives,” Pickati floated over to the wall and put a paw on them. “And I have just enough time to set up a spell called a ward.”

“What’s that?” the word didn’t sound familiar. I grabbed my magic theory book and started leafing through it.

“You won’t find it there,” he explained as I closed the book and looked up at him, “wards are one of the most complicated and dangerous kinds of spells. They imbue a spell into an area permanently. Think of them as magical defenses. You’ve both seen me use them before. They’re the kind of spell I used to keep people away from the training ground.”

“And what would the ward do?” I asked as my mind went through the possibilities.

“Well, it could do a lot of things. Right now I’m leaning towards tripling the weight of anyone not connected to them when activated,” Pickati flew over to a different wall and it looked it over, like he was searching for something. “I should have enough time to get all five of us connected by the time Ray comes over. Do you two have any other ideas?”

“No that sounds good,” Arturo nodded as I gulped.

“There’s no chance of it going off by accident, right?” If Ray was a normal person, then I didn’t want to imagine what suddenly feeling three times your weight would do to him.

“Not even a little one,” Pickati shook his head as I let out a sigh of relief. “After this I’m going to have to find a way to come to school with you two and scan both places for magic users.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Might be a little tricky getting you in there,” Arturo chuckled, “not sure my rep could take the hit of getting caught taking a fox plushie to school.”

Pickati turned around to my brother and gasped dramatically. “You have a rep? If the students of this school are that blind, getting around without being seen will be no trouble at all.”

The pair of them laughed as I glanced between the two. Since when were these two so close?

“So I’m going to the living room and start working on my homework,” I headed back downstairs, the last thing I heard was my brother asking Pickati if he had the time to teach him his first spell before Thursday came around. I wondered how he would react when he learned his first spell was going to be Internal Stabilization. Still it wasn’t like it wasn’t important. In fact at this point I had it up at all times these days. It was a good way to train my magic even when I wasn’t doing anything else with it.

Mom and Dad made it home a little later and saw me working on my homework. We did our usual greetings and at dinner I asked if I could have a friend over on Wednesday. The hug my mom put me in came closer to killing me than any of the dolls had.

The next day was the worst one in a while. The second I arrived at South Palm Middle, the other three girls were waiting for me at the entrance. I would have gone around, but this was the only entrance. I kept my head down and kept walking, hoping they wouldn’t notice me.

“Hey, Melodia,” Oh come on! Why?

I looked up as Anna called my name. The three of them had spotted me and were now walking right at me. I would have backed away, but I had my back to the wall.

She got in my face like she usually did. She was laying the glare on way thicker than normal today.

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but leave Ray out of it. If you hurt him, we’re coming for you.”

She thought I was going to hurt Ray? Did they really think I was that kind of person? Well it was a good thing I wasn’t planning on doing anything to him…

Oh right the wards. If he really was some sort of magic user trying to hurt me or my family, I couldn’t promise his safety. If that happened, would Anna and the rest still come after me? Could I take them if I did? I mean I was better at them when it came to magic…

She walked away in a huff as I wondered how well I would do in a three on one. At least fighting them would be easier than talking to them. Oh wow, it probably would be easier to fight them three on one then it would be to talk to them. The worst part was, I wasn’t even sure if I was praising or insulting myself.

The rest of the day was a lot like the old days. I could feel three sets of eyes following me around the hallways between classes. Every single class I shared with one of the girls was an hour of them watching me like hawks. I was pretty sure I failed a math test from Claire drilling a hole in the back of my head with her eyes.

I dragged myself into history to find the entire room changed. Instead of having all the desks evenly spread around, they had been moved into sets of two. Ms. Calloway didn’t have to say a word for me to know what this meant.

“Okay class, I left the letter for your project on top of the desks. Please take a seat next to your partner,” Of course she was going to talk about it anyway. “We’ll be having normal class for the first half of the hour, and the second half will be for working on your project.”

I took a seat next to Ray, trying really hard to not think about the fact that Rashell was right behind us.

“You okay?” He asked as he sat down next to me. I took out my books and stared straight at the front of the class.

“Yes,” I lied as I felt Rashell right behind me. How close was she? Was she leaning over me? Why did she feel so close?

“Well if you say so,” He muttered as the last of the class came in through the door and Ms. Calloway explained the seating arrangement again. We tried our best to advance on the project, but with everything else going on, it was hard to concentrate. I kept dropping my pencil and it kept rolling off the desk. And a few times, it rolled in such a way I had to look back behind me. Whenever I did, Rashell was there, ready and waiting to give me a glare.

“You want to try to get more progress done at the library after school?” I nodded as Ray looked at the paper in front of us. He looked back at Rashell and narrowed his eyes. I wondered if he caught her glaring at me.

Class ended and I got to my feet before either of them could say a word.

“Hey wait up,” Ray called out as I glanced over at Rashell. She didn’t look like she was in any hurry to get to her next class. I looked back at Ray who looked more than a little worried. “Where’s your next class?”

I told him where it was and he smiled.

“Oh, my next class is over there too. Want to walk over there together?”

Was he… was he trying to look out for me? You know what, even if he was some sort of hidden magi, I didn’t care. I nodded as the two of us left class together. We spent the first half of the trip mostly talking. Well, Ray talked. I nodded along and made the occasional one word comment. But he didn’t look too annoyed by that, so I guess he didn’t mind.

As soon as we made it halfway through, I felt the glares on me again. I took a deep breath as Ray immediately noticed the change in atmosphere.

We kept walking through the school until we reached the stairs we needed to climb up to get to our classes. We started going up only for three figures to appear at the top.

“Ray, get away from her,” Anna said with a neutral expression, like she was trying her best to not show any emotion.

“You seem to be taking this a lot further than most girls,” he half joked while slowly walking up so he’d be between me and the rest of the girls.

“Get away from her Ray, she’s dangerous!” My eyes widened. Was she going to talk about the dolls? Here? Now? For something like this?

“Dangerous? What do you mean dangerous?” No Ray, don’t ask her. Keeping the fights with the dolls secret was hard enough as it was.

“I can’t tell you,” Okay so she wasn’t that crazy. “But I can tell you you’ll get hurt if you keep hanging around her.”

“I think I’ll take my chances,” he growled as Anna flinched back.

“I’m just trying to help you!” Her neutral face was breaking, the emotions getting through. Rashell and Claire both looked over at her in concern.

“Like I said, I’ll take my chances,” he grabbed my wrist and started walking up the stairs, daring the girls to stop us. Ray and Anna faced off for a while before the three girls finally let us through. As we passed, he took one last look at her. “When I first met you, I didn’t think you’d be the kind of person to do this. I guess I was wrong. Maybe try paying attention next time.”

She looked like she had been slapped. As I walked away from the three, I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty.

We made it to my next class and split off. From what Ray said, his next class was down the hall. As he walked away, a part of me wanted to say something about Anna, but I couldn’t get the words out in the little time we had left. At least we were meeting in the library after school. I could tell him then.

The rest of the day went by and I didn’t feel nearly as stressed out as I had at the start of it. Looked like Ray had managed to scare the other girls off, because I walked into the library feeling more relaxed than I thought I could be at school.

“You look like you’re in a good mood,” he chuckled as I sat down across from him at the table.

“They’ve never left me alone like this before,” I admitted before feeling a stab of guilt.

Ray reached into his bag for the book and I knew if I wasn’t going to do this now, I wasn’t going to do it later.

“Listen Ray…” I took a deep breath as he paused to hear me out, “Anna… she’s not a bad person,” I told him honestly. I mean… personal treatment of me aside, she was doing her best to protect the town from the dolls. I had to assume she was a good person from that alone.

“What, how can you say that after what happened today?” He pointed out and I had to admit, from an outsider’s view, it did look pretty bad.

“I made some mistakes… she has reasons to think I’m a bad person,” I felt myself blushing as I looked down at the table.

“But you’re not a bad person Melodia. What would even make her think that?” Well, now wasn’t I in a pickle. The first thing that came to mind was everything that happened during and after the doll fights, but those were off the table.

Oh, I still had the incident which started this whole thing in the first place, even before the dolls.

“I don’t do well with new people,” I said like it was some sort of big secret. Ray held back a chuckle and then started trying to apologize, but I cut him off. “No, don’t worry. I’m the one saying the obvious. But I don’t do well with new people, especially new people who get in my face right away and try to talk to me.”

“Oh…” He had a look on his face like he was remembering something, "oh I think I know where this is going.”

“Anna tried to be nice with me at first, but I couldn’t meet her halfway so she thinks I hate her,” I explained as I felt myself sink into my chair. “I tried to fix it, but every time I tried, I made myself look even worse. If I had tried a little harder at the start, we could have avoided all of this.”

“Hey don’t blame yourself. This is on her, not you… Do you want me to tell her the truth or something?” Why did every person in my life who learned about my situation try to fix it for me? I was getting tired of it happening every time.

“No, I want to do this on my own,” that my brother was already planning on doing the same the next time he had the chance crossed my mind. I squished the thought, not wanting to think about it right now.

“Okay then,” I didn’t like the look of doubt Ray was giving me. He reached into his bag and pulled out the books we needed. “Let’s just… get this done.”