Cheri’s hair settled slowly down to her shoulders, like she was underwater. There was an ethereal beauty to it, even as covered in filth as she was, but the easy grace of her movements and the almost fairy-tale quality of her appearance only served to fuel the storm that was beginning to rage inside me.

I’d trained myself, body and mind, every day for the last four years. I’d put myself through hell, chasing a version of myself that probably wouldn’t ever be good enough. But I’d let myself hope. I would graduate this year, head to college, and hopefully towards a life where I could help as many people as possible. Something in law, or the enforcement thereof.

Something that could help me pay back what I owed.

But in the face of what wizards could do, in the wake of their trampling entrance into society, it felt like it was all slipping away. 

Humanity was outclassed. I was outclassed. None of my efforts, none of the training or the long hours spent struggling or the plans made any difference when compared to the gulf that sat before me. Rumors were heard about some secret ritual that could awaken magic in a normal person, but the government refused to comment, refused to give any indication as to the truth behind such claims. They claimed it was for public safety, to keep it from becoming an issue before a system could be put in place to regulate it, but the message being sent felt impossible to miss.

Not for you.

Now they were in our schools. I still remembered the frustration I’d felt when the student exchange program was announced. Not that any students were being taken to Avalon to learn magic. Avalon didn’t have a standard schooling system. They were just sending their children, their Julia’s and other sociopathic tyrants, to lord over us, to start their subjugation of the Mundane people at the root.

And now, the one place I had that I could find solace, the only inviolable piece of my existence was being trampled by that same intolerable arrogance. By some wizard child that, by virtue of magic alone, could walk in, take what she wanted, and leave without any consequences.

Not gonna happen.

I crossed the room, my hands ready to deflect any blows the girl sent my way, though she really didn’t seem like much of a fighter. She was slight, probably a waif of a girl even before her purported brush with starvation. Still, I wasn’t going to get caught off guard again. I knew her magic, now.

One of the most informative things I learned from studying the broadcasts, the interviews and the press releases, was that wizards only had one magic each. It was always different, depending on the person. Some varieties of magic ran in the family, mutating little bits with each generation, but they seemed pretty random, for the most part.

Cheri could fly. To be honest, it seemed more like floating than any of the kinds of flight I’d seen in superhero movies. Like movement in low gravity. It was kind of hard to wrap my mind around, but I could get used to it. She wasn’t fast, she’d just caught me off guard.

As I approached, Cheri tugged on the door behind her, but it was still securely locked. She risked a glance over her shoulder at the mechanism that held the door closed, and I closed the gap in two long strides as she did. Without even looking back at me, the girl turned and planted one foot on the door, then kicked off it, leaping high into the air again, just over my head.

It was stupid of her to try the same trick twice. As she sailed upwards, toward the vaulted ceiling some ten feet above, I reached up, seizing her by the waistband of her skirt. She made a surprised sound, more like a squeak than any verbalization, as I hauled her back down, twisting her face-down as I pulled.

Once she was below my knees, I let her go, but the momentum carried her down, bouncing her lightly off the carpeted floor. I lifted a leg, intending to pin her beneath my foot, but she spun, using her odd floating magic to orient back towards me. I made to seize her by the collar, but she batted my arm aside with one hand, the other raising to point at me as her eyes flashed with green light once again.

All at once, her scarf flew off of her neck, coiling itself around my reaching hand like a snake. Startled, I stumbled back, trying to peel it off my wrist with my other hand, but it moved like it had a mind of its own, avoiding my attempts at removing it before ensnaring that hand as well. Cheri floated back upright, moving slightly faster now, and she made a shooing gesture with one hand. The scarf that held my hands pulled them over my head, and then abruptly down to the ground, knocking me over as they dragged me back towards the futon.

I hauled myself to a kneeling position as Cheri floated slightly closer, panickedly trying to free my hands as the remaining end of the scarf tied itself in a neat knot around one leg of the futon. I ceased my struggles as Cheri stopped in the air, her hands on her hips, sadly just out of reach of any kick I might throw.

“I told you I didn’t want any trouble,” she said, her emerald stare slightly more intense than it had been. Her timidity had been short-lived. Then again, why be timid to an inferior species you were capable of incapacitating, at a distance and with no apparent effort?

“Of course not,” I said bitterly. “Why would you want trouble when you can take whatever you want, from whoever you want, whenever you want?”

Cheri frowned, crossing her arms. “I told you I would pay for-”

My eyes widened slightly as Cheri’s own eyes changed color, going from their shining green to a soft sky-blue, though still casting that clearly magical light. She whirled around, floating down to the ground as she moved away from me. As she touched the floor, I heard the click of my sliding door being unlocked from the outside.

Tyler and I shared this room, but I still hadn’t thought it wise to give him a key. It seemed more responsible, as an older sister, to make sure that he had to at least have my permission to abscond to an area of no oversight and abundant snacks. Everyone else was allowed to carry keys to their own rooms, but only Jay and I carried master keys to the building.

It was one of those incredibly strange moments, the few still seconds that followed Jay sliding the door open. None of us moved, and the silence felt heavy after the brief period of frenzied motion. He had been talking over his shoulder to someone --I assume Marika, as the girl was rarely far from Jay-- but he froze upon turning back to the room. He looked Cheri over, took in the scattered layer of snacks, some still in their packaging and some trampled into the carpet by our scuffling, and then saw me, tied to the futon.

If it wouldn’t have sent such a confusing signal, I would have had a savage grin on my face. The little wizardling was in trouble now. Jay was several inches taller than I was, standing just over six feet tall, brown hair shaved short, even in the colder months. While I usually made do with speed and skill in combat practice, learning how to throw punches so that they had more force behind them than my slim frame could normally muster, Jay was faster, more practiced, and he had around thirty pounds of lean muscle on me. He moved quickly, and he hit hard.

Cheri was the first to break the standoff, making to dart out past Jay on his left, ducking low to slip beneath the arm he had on the door. With a slightly amused look on his face, Jay tugged the door closed, until the edge of the sliding wood rested against his left foot. Cheri leapt back a few steps, as much to avoid crashing into the door as to get out of range of Jay’s arms, though my friend had yet to move. He just stood there, in Cheri’s only escape route, as though inviting her to make the first move.

“Would you...move, please?” Cheri asked, her voice uncertain, knees bent like she was ready to spring away at any moment.

“You tied up my friend,” Jay responded, and I heard a little more mirth in his voice than I’d have liked. Jay was one of the only people that I would describe as fully more capable than myself, in every area that mattered, but he did sometimes lose out in his eagerness to play around with that competence.

“You care about her,” Cheri said, apparently content to continue the chain of non-sequiturs, whatever kept the situation outside the realm of apprehending her.

Jay cocked his head to one side, his brown eyes on Cheri’s brilliant, crystalline cerulean. “I do,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “We’re best friends.”

Cheri shook her head, the rainbow strands glistening as they slid over one another, a shimmering curtain. “More to it than that.”

Jay shot a glance at me, something like worry across his face. I felt uneasy as well. It could be cold-reading, just some manipulation tactic the girl had learned. Leading Jay through obvious answers, saying things designed to confuse him or keep him off balance.

But Jay seemed really off balance. And I didn’t like the familiarity with which she addressed him. The way she seemed content to dig through our relationship the way she dug through my stash of food.

“We went through hell together,” I said, my voice carrying across the room despite being relatively quiet. “We came out the other side, still with each other. Stronger. We earned our friendship, fought tooth and claw for it. We have a bond too deep for someone like you to even recognize.”

The grin spread back over Jay’s face. He nodded, chuckling a bit. Cheri took a step back as Jay stepped forward, stretching one arm over his head.

“I get it, now,” he said, finishing the stretch and swapping arms. “Though I feel stupid for having it take so long. Glowing eyes, general creepy vibe? Somehow getting the upper hand on Emily? Wizard.”

I wasn’t sure besting me was a good rule of thumb for someone being a wizard, but I was glad we were on the same page regarding the thief. Jay put both of his arms up, hands open, like he did when we practiced wrestling or jiu-jitsu takedowns.

“I think we need to sit you down and have a little chat about respect and boundaries,” Jay mused. “Maybe see what those fine wizard policemen over at the station think about this whole ordeal.”

Cheri stiffened at the mention of the police. It took a moment for her to relax, during which Jay approached her steadily, hands at the ready. Eventually, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, smiling the sad smile she’d shown me just a moment before. When she opened them, her eyes had changed color yet again, a harsh, vibrant red. It triggered old instincts in me, the type of lessons we all learn as children, when it comes to how we color-code the world.

Danger.

I’d barely formed a cry of warning when she moved. To be honest, if I hadn’t been staring wide-eyed at the scene, I’d probably have missed the movement entirely. Jay had started to reach forward with one hand when Cheri was at his chest, gripping him by the collar of his shirt and the wrist of his outstretched arm. She whirled around, pivoting on her heel, and Jay came with her, hauled off his feet like he was a fraction of his actual weight. Cheri hurled him across the room, bouncing him off the futon and into the corner behind the wardrobe. 

I growled in anger, struggling with the scarf that still bound my hands tightly, even as Cheri held a hand up toward me.

“For what it’s worth, I really am sorry,” she said, her eyes shining green once more. 

I closed my eyes and grit my teeth, waiting for whatever blow was incoming, when I felt the pressure release from my hands. I opened my eyes to see Cheri catching the scarf out of mid-air, wrapping it once more around her lower face. She nodded once, then turned and ran out the door.

As soon as she was gone, I rushed over to where Jay was hauling himself up out of the small crevice between the edge of the futon, the wardrobe, and the corner of the room. I gave him a hand, the two of us groaning in concert as I pulled him back to his feet.

“You okay?” he asked, once I’d released his hand.

“Seriously?”

“Oh, c’mon. How bad did it look?”

I scoffed, smiling despite the situation as I turned to head out the door and onto the loft. Jay followed me out, still protesting, but the two of us froze as we saw the floor below.

In the pit of cushions and pillows, I could see Marika’s raven-haired form, standing over Cheri. Marika seemed to be barely taking it seriously, bashing the wizard over the back of the head with a hefty cushion, but Cheri looked incapacitated somehow, struggling to get her equilibrium in the odd arena of cluttered couches and tangled blankets.

Jay and I hurried down the ladder, barely even touching the rungs to slow our descent. I stopped at the edge of the pit, shaking my head in disbelief as I watched Marika’s delicate face widen in a maddened grin. She was having way too much fun with this.

I called out Marika’s name, but was drowned out by her cackling and Cheri’s occasional grunt. Jay approached her, stepping lightly over the couches, and she immediately froze mid-swing, shouldering the pillow dramatically.

“Magical burglar subdued, Vice President,” she stated, her eyes alight with mischief, face slightly red from the exertion.

“How on earth did you stop her with pillows?” I asked incredulously. 

She glanced at me, affecting disinterest. “Oh, were you here, Emily?” 

I snorted, and she stuck her tongue out at me. 

“Bagged me a wizard,” she said. “Think I’ll get a wish?”

I rolled my eyes. Marika was capricious as ever. It would be next to impossible to get a straight answer out of her. If you weren’t Jay, that is.

“This girl just threw me across the room like I was a beanbag chair,” Jay said, putting one foot up on the couch where Cheri had curled up into a ball beneath Marika’s onslaught. "Had Emily tied up when I got there. What’d you do?”

I sighed inwardly as Marika shot me a delighted look, but she wouldn’t ever ignore a direct question from Jay. That didn’t mean I wasn’t certain to hear more about this later.

“I didn’t do much, to be honest. I confronted her when she floated down here, but right as I was moving in, she started moaning and groaning, clutching at her stomach.” Marika stopped and glanced at the girl beneath her. “Not that my efforts weren’t valiant and praise-worthy,” she added.

“You did great,” Jay said, flashing his friend a smile. Marika didn’t really go out of her way to extend her bonds to the other members of the Club. I had always been under the impression that Jay was the sole reason she’d joined, and I received seldom few reasons to disbelieve that impression in the years that followed. Still, when Jay gave her that bit of praise or notice, she practically glowed. In this particular moment, she made a small, satisfied noise before depositing her coach cushion and clambering out of the pit. She stood next to me as Jay shook Cheri by the shoulder.

“You okay, little girl?” he asked, as though that “little girl” hadn’t just tossed him like a discus thirty seconds before. Cheri struggled to get back up onto her knees, but gave up with another piteous moan before she made it too far.

“What do you people put in your food?” she asked, sounding like she was on the verge of tears.

I couldn’t restrain myself. I burst out laughing, doubling over before collapsing onto my side as the mirth conquered my reasoning. She had a stomachache. It didn’t surprise me. If she wasn’t used to Mundane food, and then she suddenly went berserk on a stock of our starchiest, sweetest, junkiest snacks? I imagine even a bottomless pit like my brother would balk at the sheer amount and variety of food she’d been half-burrowed into up there.

Served her right.

“Is it poisoned?” she moaned, curling tighter into a ball around her afflicted stomach.

That got Jay laughing. “We got anything for indigestion?” he asked me.

I raised an eyebrow. “We’re taking care of her, now? After the robbery and the assault?”

“She looks half-starved, Em. She’s just a kid.”

I opened my mouth to argue, then shut it. He was right, of course. It left me feeling sort of guilty, knowing that I’d probably overreacted in the beginning. The girl was a runaway, desperate for food and shelter from the cold. I certainly wouldn’t want her to be outside when night fell, alone in the darkness as the frost formed.

“I’ve got some stuff,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll come with!” Marika added, falling in behind me as I headed back up to the loft.

Wonderful.

As I dug through the medicine cabinet in the storage area, Marika let me have it.

“Tied you up, did she?”

I ignored her, mostly just to refrain from giving her more ammunition. There wasn’t any stopping her when she started teasing. I wasn’t sure if she just had a mean streak or if she was simply trying to cover her own insecurity, but she had a habit of calling people out or slipping in a jibe here and there, when she thought she could manage it without Jay noticing.

“Why’d she pick the fight?”

I felt my face grow hot, but decided it would seem worse if I held my tongue and the truth came out later. 

“I picked the fight,” I said, still rummaging. I kept a stock of medicine for indigestion and heartburn, as they were the most common grievance of the Tryhard Club aside from surface cuts. I grabbed some of the better-tasting chewables, and turned to find Marika giving me a strange look.

“I get it,” I said exasperatedly. “Emily got her ass kicked by a tiny girl. Let’s move on.”

“It’s not that,” Marika said. She didn’t have the twinkle in her eye that normally appeared when she was getting ready to tease. She looked...uncomfortable.

“Out with it,” I said, eager to get back downstairs, but also somewhat intrigued. I knew Marika probably wouldn’t say what she was about to in front of Jay, so I’d have to finish talking to her up here if I wanted to know.

Marika turned to look over the railing of the loft, to where Jay and Cheri were still talking quietly. Well, it looked like Jay was doing most of the talking, with Cheri nodding occasionally.

“You found a girl in the clubhouse, looks like she’s been chased through the woods, eating like she’d never seen food before...And you attacked her?”

“I wasn’t in a good place,” I said, hating how empty the excuse sounded. “Had a bad run-in with Julia. Then I come here, trying to find someplace to be alone, and find another wizard relaxing in my clubhouse like she’d been invited, eating my food.”

I frowned as I looked down at the two of them.

“It was stupid of me,” I admitted. “And she held back quite a bit fighting Jay and me. She’s strong.”

“I’ve heard about some pretty awful things happening to Mundanes who deserved far less.”

Marika had been one of the first to really take to using the term “Mundane” when talking about non-magic humans. It was hard to get through some conversations without at least being aware of the differentiating term, but Marika seemed to have taken her mundanity to heart. There were a lot of people who saw the appearance of wizards as a sign that magic was soon to be in the hands of everyone, and Marika was one of them. She usually seemed more excited than worried when discussing wizards, even when talking about the scary stuff.

And she was totally right.

If Cheri had really been one of the bad ones, what would have stopped her from killing me? On the contrary, she seemed to have gone out of her way to avoid hurting me. She’d gotten spooked when Jay had mentioned the authorities, but even then I can’t imagine Jay would be more than bruised after the toss onto the futon. 

I resolved to apologize to her, once she was feeling a bit better. And obviously I wasn’t about to throw her out into the cold. It would get really bad out there once night fell.

It kind of shook me, how easily I’d fallen into a mindset that demonized all wizards. They were just people too, weren’t they? And just like non-magic folk, there were bound to be good ones and bad ones, only...amplified, by the power they wielded. More polar. The bad wizards seemed far worse than the bad humans, so did that mean the good wizards would be far better than the good humans?

I wasn’t sure I felt any better about the situation as Marika and I rejoined Jay and our indisposed trespasser. Cheri accepted the medicine with the blind obedience of a child much younger than she appeared, which made me think she probably came from a somewhat well-to-do family. The chewables went straight from my hand to her mouth. It looked reflexive, like she expected whatever remedy that was handed to her to be trusted and effective. It fit into what I’d seen of her personality so far. She spoke like she’d never had a reason to be afraid of the world, and there were little pieces of her clearly entitled outlook to be gleaned from the way she’d wandered into the clubhouse and eaten my food. Situationally? I couldn’t fathom why a possibly rich, definitely powerful wizard teenager would flee their home, so close to winter. Why someone so obviously sheltered would go three days without food, trudging alone through the forest in an outfit that made me feel cold just looking at it.

Cheri made another small mewling sound after finishing the chewables, curling back up into a ball. Marika sat next to her on the couch, combing the tangles from the girl’s pretty hair with a brush she’d produced, probably from her room. She hummed tunelessly as she brushed, but it seemed to help Cheri relax, and soon the wizard girl had straightened enough to set her head on Marika’s lap. Jay motioned me over to the side, and I followed him out of the cushion pit.

“Cheri told me how it all went down,” he said, once we were out of earshot of the others. I felt my face grow hot as Jay frowned, staring at the pair of girls we’d left. I was about to speak, not to try to defend myself, but to go over how I’d decided to try to make it up to her, when Jay continued. “She said she would apologize for attacking you once she felt able to walk, then find somewhere else to stay.”

My mouth was frozen half-open as Jay turned to look at me, my mind going a dozen directions at once. There wasn’t a possible interpretation of the events that made Cheri out to be the aggressor in that situation. That meant…

Over Jay’s shoulder, I saw Cheri was looking at me, her head at an angle where Marika couldn’t see that her eyes were open. They were glowing with the same violet color they’d had when she’d first opened the wardrobe. Jay and I stood there silently for a long moment, him searching my face and me searching Cheri’s mysterious, magical gaze.

Eventually, Jay cleared his throat. “Well, we can’t let her go out there on her own again, obviously. But she probably feels some need to repay what she’s done here.”

I wasn’t so sure I felt that she had much of a debt to settle, but I felt like Jay was going somewhere with it.

“So what’s your plan?” I asked.

Jay grinned, the type of smile he had when he had something in store for the whole club, something he was particularly excited about.

“I was thinking about setting up a trade.”