Wearing pants again felt weird.
“How can this bother you?” Kylie asked, not looking up from her tablet. “You wore pants for fourteen years. You’ve been in robes for, what, three months?”
“They just do. Were jeans always this scratchy? Ugh, and I have to wear a suit tomorrow.”
“I find suits far more comfortable,” Max remarked.
“Yeah, well, your suits are probably hand woven from pure silk collected by holy maidens on a mountaintop somewhere and sold at six thousand dollars a metre. Have you ever even worn jeans before? I assume you’ve seen them, on the gardeners of your vast estate.”
“I live in Sydney.”
“Exactly my point. You have to be a millionaire to own a vast estate in Sydney, moneybags.”
“We have a two-bedroom house, actually.”
“You still have to be a millionaire for that in Sydney,” Kylie cut in.
“Also, you might not be aware of this, moneybags, but to most people a ‘bedroom’ is a room with a bed and some clothes in it, not like, a separate cottage with its own bathroom and kitchen and servants quarters for your personal cook.”
“Just what century do you two suppose that I live in? Anyway; I know you won’t need luck, Kayden, but I wish it for you all the same.”
“Thanks, Max.”
“Bring me something stolen from the courthouse as a souvenir.”
“I will not be doing that, Kylie.”
I was meeting Casey in the valley, but on my way I ran into the Fiore, almost literally. He flashed me a bright smile.
“Kayden! I was hoping to find you.”
“You… were?”
“Of course. I wanted to thank you. I’m given to understand that you saved our family some embarrassment by clearing my nephew’s name over an assassination attempt.”
“It wasn’t an assassination attempt, but we found the real culprit, yeah.” Did he know I was the one who accused his nephew in the first place?
“Capital. I’m sure the world owes you a debt for making it a safer place and so do I, personally. Should you need anything, know that the Fiore and the Madja family are always eager to repay our debts.” He held out a hand, and I shook it, a little bewildered.
“Sorry about your ring, Instruktanto.”
“Yes, well, we will rectify those debts with the relevant parties when the time is right. Until then, we must all simply make the best of our situation, yes?” Was there something predatory in his eyes? No; I was being paranoid. But I couldn’t help remembering what Miratova had said about having to make a lot of concessions to get the Madjas to delay collecting from Clara, and if they would collect from her anyway… I had the feeling that somehow, the Fiore was getting a lot more value out of the ring’s destruction than he ever had from the ring itself. “I suppose I’ll see you when you’re a proper mage student, yes? Not long now!”
“Yeah. I guess it isn’t.”
“Best of luck in there, Kayden.” The Fiore headed off down the hall, a bit of a spring in his step.
Huh. Well, I could probably safely ignore that forever. I didn’t want to get drawn any more into byzantine games of crimes and debts and information than I already had been.
Casey’s car was a lot fancier than Instruktanto Cooper’s old van. It was something black, shiny and expensive-looking, and came with a driver. A driver with a suit and sunglasses and everything. He opened the door for me, and I clambered in next to Casey, who had two tablets in their lap – one a Haven one, one a normal electronic one – and a very worried look in their eyes.
“Something’s gone wrong?”
“Nothing catastrophic,” Casey said in a tired voice that suggested something catastrophic. “Mr Parker’s condition has worsened somewhat, but he is alive, so our defense stands. And there is one small additional issue.”
“One small issue?”
“The Honourable Craig Erikson was supposed to be our judge for this case, but there has been a last-minute change. We’ll be dealing with the Honourable Greg Eagle.”
“Those names mean nothing to me.”
“Judge Eagle is generally fair but… has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to magic. Or the opposite of a blind spot, one might say. An eagle eyed spot, if you’ll excuse the joke. Judge Eagle is generally disapproving of magic and tends to assume the worst when it comes to causing magical damage. If he were disapproving of mages, that would be an easy matter, because witches are not generally considered mages unless they also go on to train as mages, and the commonfolk tend to view the two as quite distinct. But Judge Eagle dislike witches, even more, if anything, than mages, who at least have laws and regulations.”
“So he’s going to say I’m guilty no matter what. Great.”
“No. Our case is still firm; we still have legal precedent. Furthermore, it is the jury who get to decide your guilt or innocence, not the judge. But the judge controls the trial, so the bias is still an issue. He also controls your sentencing on the rare possibility that you do lose. It just means that our dependence on witnesses to your good character is rather a lot weaker than I would have hoped. Our whole case relies on the jury believing that your casting was unintentional, but so long as we can stop the prosecutor from painting you as a violent psychopath, we should be fine.”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Why do you look so worried, then?”
“Pre-trial nerves. Are you well?”
“Kind of overdosing on pre-trial nerves myself, but other than that, yeah.”
“You will be fine so long as you take care not to come across as too belligerent or obnoxious.”
“So long as I do the impossible, then?”
“See, it’s remarks like that that you should avoid making tomorrow.”
The car stopped. I’d been too distracted to really even pay attention to the fact that we were driving, let alone where we’d gone. Casey’s driver opened my door, then Casey’s, and we stepped out onto the street.
We weren’t at my house. We didn’t want to have to deal with predatory reporters. Instead, I’d be staying in a hotel with my family, and we’d head to the courthouse together the next day.
Said family were waiting for us in the foyer; as soon as we walked in, I was swept up into my mother’s arms, and quickly sandwiched between her and my father.
“Not here,” Casey muttered as we embraced, “or you might be recognised.”
Mum swept me quickly into the elevator and to our room, inside, I was immediately sandwiched between two new people; Chelsea and Melissa. Wedging my way out from between them to grab a few precious gasps of air just landed me straight in my mother’s arms again.
“I missed you so much,” she murmured into my hair. “Oh, my; you need a haircut. You can’t possibly go to court like this. I’ll have Sophie come round tomorrow morning.” She held me at arm’s length and looked me up and down. “Have you been eating enough? You don’t look like you’ve been eating enough.”
“I’ve put on weight since you last saw me,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but you’ve put on even more height, so it doesn’t count. The mages didn’t bully you, did they? You look stressed.”
“I’m stressed about tomorrow. Seriously, I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” I traced my fingers down a new scar on her jaw. “Which is more than I can say for you.”
“It was just a little tussle. I’m okay.”
“I’m going to kill them. I’ll find them and pound them to jelly for laying a finger on you.”
“Kayden!”
“I’d appreciate it,” Casey said, “if you didn’t mention those plans in court tomorrow.”
“Fine. My revenge plan is postponed until after the trial.”
“Then I’ll expect your business for an assault charge in the future. Mr and Mrs James, I need to go over some case details with you before I leave.”
The three of them headed off to talk, leaving me with Chelsea and Melissa. They’d grown. I wasn’t expecting that. The height difference between Melissa and me was larger now (not fair!), and she had a lot more freckles. Chelsea had rounded out more, developing a distinctly feminine (although still quite athletic) figure, and had grown her hair long enough to wear in a ponytail – if I didn’t look at her face, she looked like a different person. Had I changed that much?
“So,” Chelsea said with a mischevious grin that made her look like herself again, “how was it? Did you cause a whole lot of trouble?”
“More than you can imagine,” I said.
“You didn’t break anything expensive, did you?” Melissa asked.
“Me? No. But there was a whole thing with a valuable… well, it’s a really long story. I’ll explain after the trial. How’s your youtube thing going?”
“Booming right now, but it’ll simmer down after the trial. We’ll have to find a good hook if we’re in this for the long term. Of course, we could simply retire the channel after – ”
“Screw that!” Chelsea said. “We’ll move into that review thing. Kayden can come on board and we’ll review TV shows together.”
“Books would be better.”
“No they wouldn’t. One: less marketable. Two: Kayden would never read them.”
“Neither would you!”
“Good point, that’s point three. Tell you what, we’ll do shows that also have books and you can tell us that the books were so much better.”
“A fair compromise.”
I cleared my throat. “Actually, guys, there’s… something I need to talk to you about, with… all that.”
“The youtube channel?”
“No; the future. I didn’t want to bring it up in a letter, and I kind of… haven’t told my parents, yet. I’ll have to, after the trial tomorrow, but until then, well…”
“Spit it out, K.”
“Okay. So you guys understand how my whole scholarship thing… works, right?”
“Yeah,” Chelsea said. “You go with the mages so they can keep an eye on you for six months, and in return they pay for an awesome lawyer for the case.”
“That’s… one possible way it can be used. But technically, it’s more expansive than that. Technically, I have a free ride to a magic school, a school that trains mages, and included in that scholarship is a variety of benefits – boarding, food, a supply stipend, access to things like lawyers – provided I hang around for six months.”
“Yeah; that’s what I said.”
“What I’m trying to say is that I’m not obligated to leave the Haven after the trial.”
The pair stared at me.
“You’re going back?” Melissa asked, incredulous.
“Yes.”
“You’re leaving us?” Chelsea asked.
“I have the chance to study to be a mage. Mages have better job opportunities, better chances to lead better lives, than the rest of us. If you had the chance, wouldn’t you take it?”
“Do you even want to learn magic?” Melissa asked.
“I haven’t had a choice in that since I was six months old.”
“I don’t mean learning to keep that thing under wraps, I mean learning, you know, potions and spellcasting and stuff.”
“Well the thing about spellcasting is… look, it’s not important right now. The school can teach me to control my curse better, and at the end of it I’ll be a qualified mage. I think I have to go for it.”
“So you’re leaving us,” Chelsea said.
“It’s not like that. Liss, you want to be a doctor, right? So you have to do this same thing with university – leave and study and come out of it with new skills and better job prospects.”
“Yeah, she’s going to university after high school,” Chelsea said. “That’s years away. When we’re adults.”
“Are you sure this is what you want?” Melissa asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I think so.”
“You think so?”
“I want both worlds. I want to go back and catch up with everyone and learn about this curse, and I want to stay here, with my friends and family.”
“Oh. Then you have to go.”
“I… huh?”
“To achieve that. You have to go. Because we’ll still be here. You know our addresses. We can talk as much as you like, by letter. Going is the only way to stay in both worlds.”
“We’ll have to find a way to sneak a phone to you,” Chelsea said. “There’s got to be a phone network somewhere near the school. Even people in North Korea can find mobile phone networks.”
“Are you mad at me?’ I asked.
“What? No. Just… sad that my friend’s going away on such short notice.”
“I’ll see you in the holidays and stuff,” I said.
“That’s not enough time! We’ll never get to play the tracker game again!”
“Sure we can. I’ve already hidden it. I should point out that the longer you wait to find it, the harder it’s going to be.”
Chelsea’s eyes widened. She pulled out her phone, glanced at it, and dashed out the door.
“”So you just stopped somewhere on the way here and got out to hide a tracker?” Melissa asked.
“Of course not. If she wants it, she’s going to have to break into my lawyer’s car.”
“Are you trying to get her arrested?”
“Well, I got arrested. I wouldn’t want her to be jealous.”
The adults returned from their discussion. “Alright,” Casey said, “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, Kayden. We’ll come and pick you up; I’d advise staying out of sight until then because reporters finding you here will only make things more difficult.” They headed for the door.
“Wait!” Melissa barred the door. “Uh, can I ask you, some, uh, questions, about… the case?”
I didn’t think Melissa would be able to delay Casey long enough to give Chelsea time to get the tracker, but it was nice of her to try. It was good to be among my old friends and family again. It was good to be home.
However briefly.