Alden managed to fall asleep again after an hour or so. Meg felt like leaving him alone was a bad idea, so she grabbed up her homework and brought it into his room. Lucky for her, he kept a pretty clean desk — and he'd taken some of her classes four years ago. She could use his notes, since the teachers never came up with new assignments (to her parents' vocal disappointment in their coworkers).

  But she couldn't focus. Her thoughts kept drifting back to what Alden had said, both about the bar and about Hailey. It was one thing for Kelly to call Hailey reckless and dangerous — she didn't know Hailey, or anything. She was just talking about stuff she didn't really understand.

  Alden knew Hailey, and Alden had been there. It was a lot harder for Meg to dismiss what he'd said.

  Reluctantly, Meg dug her phone out and pulled up the video of the building fire. She watched it again, but this time she focused on Hailey's face, not the action or the looks on the people surrounding her.

  Hailey looked excited, but there was something else too. She was surprised. Almost like she hadn't expected anyone to be watching. When she looked right at the camera, she was scared. Meg had mistaken it at first, but it was obvious now.

  Hailey hadn't had a clue what was going to happen when she leapt out of that window.

  Still, it didn't prove anything. It was just an expression on her face — and besides, she did save those people. That was good, no matter what someone might say.

  "Number four is wrong."

  Meg nearly dropped her phone as she spun around. Alden was leaning over the desk and looking at her math assignment.

  "Number three, too. You're doing these wrong."

  Meg snatched the paper out of his hand. "I would have found out when I checked the back."

  "Want help?"

  "No, I got it."

  Alden shrugged and sat back down on the bed. He seemed a lot more awake than he had before. Come to think of it, he hadn't woken up once in the few hours of napping he'd managed. That was progress. "Where are Mom and Dad?"

  "Went to a movie." She put away her phone and tried to start working on her homework again. It was due on Monday and she really wanted to have Sunday all to herself, if she could. Something still nagged at the back of her head though. She'd been with him basically every hour since he'd got home, except for the game. He hadn't eaten once. "You hungry?"

  "No."

  "Come on, you haven't eaten at all. You gotta be hungry."

  "I'm not."

  She frowned. "Maybe try eating something anyway? Like when you're sick, right?"

  Alden smiled weakly, which made her feel both a little better and a lot worse. "When'd you get to be my older sister?"

  Meg rolled her eyes. "Someone's gotta be the smart one in the family."

  "...I'll go eat something."

  "Do whatever you want." She leaned in and went back to her homework, while Alden headed downstairs. He returned with a plate of microwaved leftover pizza, which he chewed through slowly while watching the clouds drift by through the window.

  Meg turned on some music after a while, plugging her phone into the speakers on his desk. He didn't seem to mind, and it was better than the total silence. He occasionally glanced at his phone, but never turned it on. Like he was waiting for something. For Hailey? For one of his other friends, back in Rallsburg?

  But it never lit up. Eventually, he went back to sleep, while Meg kept working. She had a lot of homework, since she'd put it off all week. Then Friday had been so busy, so she hadn't gotten anything done, and now it was piled up high. On a normal Saturday, she'd be working through it with Kelly.

  For a brief moment, she considered calling Kelly, apologizing and getting together for the night. At Meg's house, of course, so she could keep an eye on Alden.

  She changed her mind almost instantly. Kelly couldn't be forgiven so easily. Not until she owned up to what she'd said.

  Even if it might be a little bit true.

  As she finished another class's stack of work and set it aside, she heard Alden getting up, so she wasn't surprised when he suddenly spoke up again. "You don't have to do all that in here."

  "You've got nicer speakers and a bigger desk," she pointed out.

  "But you have a nicer chair."

  "I dragged it in here." She pointed at his own chair, shoved into the corner. Somehow, he hadn't even noticed. "I'm just taking advantage of you, don't worry."

  "Okay."

  She grinned mischievously. "And you have to show me more magic later. Deal?"

  "Sure."

  Meg raised her eyebrows. "That easy?" Alden didn't usually agree to it so quickly.

  He hesitated. "...I think I'm going to need to start doing a lot more magic."

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "Why's that?"

  "To get stronger." He didn't elaborate, but Meg got the message.

  He wanted to be able to fight.

----------------------------------------

  Meg had expected Hailey to show up that night, or at least call or text, but neither of them got a single message from her. They watched the news just in case, but there wasn't anything new. Nothing new on the secret site for magic users either, which Alden still refused to let Meg see. She'd tried to get it out of his computer once while he wasn't home, but he was smart enough to lock everything before he left, every single time. He didn't want her snooping in on the people, apparently, but stuff about magic itself? He was more than willing to share.

  After their parents went to sleep, which was way earlier than either of them, they went out to the shed in the backyard. Meg pulled the chain for the single light bulb, and they pushed aside the lawn equipment to make a bit of space. She hopped up on the stack of patio chairs in the corner, excited as ever, though now it was tinted with a tingle of fear and trepidation.

  They had a bigger reason for Alden to get strong with magic now, besides just for the fun of it. People were really trying to hurt them now.

  Even though Meg couldn't do magic, she thought of herself as one of the group. She might not be awakened—to use their super-lame word for it—but she was still on the team. She covered for Alden and Hailey all the time, for one, and she also helped Alden train, helped him think of new spells on occasion. She'd come up with a few ideas he'd never thought of—and since he got a lot of his new stuff from the website, that meant no one had ever thought of it.

  Meg was pretty pleased with herself that day.

  Tonight, Alden was trying out one of her new ideas again. Having a specific topic like this, where he didn't have to think about anything that happened, seemed to snap him out of his fugue for a bit.

  "Go over it again?" he asked, staring at the candle sitting on a stack of plastic recycling crates.

  "Well, your affinity is Movement stuff, right?"

  "Yeah."

  "But you wanna be able to do elemental stuff better. Like being able to throw fire, since that's like everyone's go-to thing?"

  "It's the most well-known spell, so everyone knows how to make it without much energy. But I'm bad at manipulating it or creating a lot of it. And definitely not both."

  "Right, so just do one. Don't do both."

  "...That doesn't really help, Meg."

  She grinned. "You only make the fire with Elemental magic, but then you move it with Movement magic."

  "That's… not really how it works."

  "Why not?"

  Alden hesitated, and she could see his mind clicking through ideas. It seemed so obvious to her, but maybe she was missing something. She couldn't do magic, only he could. Still, he turned back to the candle and stared it down. She could see it flickering in his pupils.

  A bit of flame jumped off the candle and slid through mid-air to the side. Alden's eyes went wide.

  A second later, it flickered out as a tiny bit of ash fell to the concrete floor of the shed.

  "Bingo," Meg gloated. "I'm the best."

  "But it didn't last." Alden frowned.

  "Well you don't have to be mean about it."

  "It's because I moved the wick, not the fire. Maybe if I…"

  He tried again, and moved his hand a little at the same time. This time, there wasn't a tiny spot of black, and the candle was suddenly no longer burning. It was just an insubstantial flame, attached to nothing at all.

  Meg clapped, and Alden smiled. A few seconds later, it puffed out. He clutched the pile of crates to keep himself up.

  "Too much?" she asked, recognizing magic fatigue when she saw it. "We've been going all night. Maybe take a break?"

  "Nah, it was just too sudden. I had to switch from moving the fire to keeping it alive. Still easier than making it myself though. It's a good start. I can work with it."

  "Awesome."

  Alden sat down in the lone chair on his side, taking a drink from his water bottle. Meg decided it was as good a time as any to ask a few more questions, since he seemed to be in a pretty good mood. It was loads better than earlier.

  "Hey Zack."

  "Yeah?"

  She took a breath, building up to a question she'd been meaning to ask for months. "Did you ever find out… you know." He didn't seem to understand. "What you went there to find out. You know. To Rallsburg."

  "Oh." He glanced up at the small window in the shed, where they could just barely see the empty room that had puzzled them both for so long. Even now, it sat totally unused. They'd thought about practicing magic in it, but decided the shed was safer. Plus, something about it just made them both feel sad. None of the family liked going in that room. "No, I didn't. Not really."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Well. She and I—"

  "Who?"

  He glanced at her oddly. "I never told you about her?"

  "Who, your girlfriend?"

  He laughed. She felt indignant for a moment, but it was gone as soon as she'd realized he was laughing. This was miles better than she'd hoped for only the night before. "She's way out of my league. Out of anyone's league probably. She's in her own league of one and she'd never let anyone else into it if she could help it."

  "I know some girls like that."

  "She's the one who taught me how to cast a lot of my early stuff. I met her on the train ride there."

  "And what's she like?"

  "Kinda short, blue hair, and she'd be really attractive if she wasn't so scary."

  Meg rolled her eyes. "Her personality. You are such a guy."

  "What, scary isn't a personality?"

  "No."

  "...She's really intense, but you can tell she cares a lot. Too much, probably. And she's always on a mission. One specific mission, really, and she's never gonna let anything get in her way."

  "What's that?"

  "She's trying to find her father."

  "Well how hard could that be?"

  "Really hard, I guess. We never really got into specifics. I think he's in hiding though. He was super rich, then he sold off his company and all his stuff and disappeared one day."

  "Wow. I hope she finds him."

  Alden shook his head. "I don't."

  "Huh?"

  "I think she's actually gonna kill him."

  "...What?"

  "She said she was going to. I didn't really believe it at first, but I saw her in action. She'd do it." He sighed. "It's a long story. We got off topic."

  "It's cool."

  Alden glanced up at the empty room again. "I think we had an older sibling, and I think they were erased by magic somehow."

  Meg took a few seconds to process what he'd just said. "...That's supposed to be impossible, right? Mason's Law or whatever."

  "Yeah, but some things break that law. Like recoil from broken spells. Or…" he trailed off. "Or this, apparently."

  "How'd you figure it out?"

  "Well, it's the only thing that made sense with everything I had. The university envelope, the empty laptop, the empty room, so on. I didn't think it was magic though, until I got to Rallsburg and… yeah."

  "And you got awakened and now you can do cool magic tricks."

  "Pretty much. Grey-eyes told me that it couldn't be undone. Whoever they were, they're not coming back. Our memories are toast."

  "That's crazy." Meg felt weird. She didn't know what to think about it. Someone had messed with her head? She couldn't remember someone at all? And the goddess of magic herself said it couldn't be reversed. It was too much to consider. All she could do was try to take it with a dash of humor, or else she knew she'd start stewing about it for days. "You know what though?"

  "What?"

  "I bet we had an older sister."

  Alden's mouth twitched slightly. "Why d'you say that?"

  "'Cause an older brother wouldn't have cleaned everything on his way out. He would have left a mess." She jabbed him with her foot teasingly.

  "Hey, I clean up after myself."

  "Yeah you do, you freak." She picked up the candle lighter and lit it again. "Come on, let's keep trying. You should get this down."