“I don’t want to fight him,” Cheri said, peeking over the edge of the rooftop at where Heinrich stood, arms crossed, in front of the hotel’s double doors. I could hardly blame her. We were four stories up and he still somehow managed to seem gargantuan. There wasn’t a martial technique in the world that would help me if he got one of those ham-sized fists on me.

“You won’t have to though, right?” I asked, trying to keep the note of concern out of my voice. “You said you could outrun him, if he chased you?” 

Cheri chewed her lip, her hands tightening on the hem of her skirt. She’d changed back into the clothes I’d first seen her in, though they’d long since been run through the wash. The pink of her skirt and the red of her scarf were vibrant, and the haphazard, rainbow coloration of the light jacket and leggings she wore made her seem even more childish than her size normally would. The hood of her jacket was up, with the scarf wound around her mouth and forehead, but the slim expanse of her face that was left uncovered didn’t look as worried as she sounded.

“It’s not that,” she said, still watching the boy below. “I could probably take him, if it came down to it.”

“But?”

“But it would draw attention. I’m not sure I could actually put him down without broadcasting who and where I am.”

It spoke to how attached I’d grown to the girl, that I could accept her calmly admitting confidence in her ability to take on that giant of a wizard.

“Well,” I said, “ideally it won’t come to that. Do we need to go over the plan again?”

Cheri shook her head, thankfully. It had taken Cheri just under four minutes to fly here, carrying me on her back, and so we’d only had a few minutes to hash out our plan. It ought to work, if I had a good read on Heinrich, which I was inclined to believe. Marika would pull up to the parking lot around the corner in only a few minutes, which meant we needed something to pull his attention away from the front door. For this to work, there couldn’t be any sign of forced entry or anything illegal. Marika had to enter through the front door, and use Augustus’s card to get into his and Julia’s suite. The girl was stealthy, and most of the regimens she voted into the Tryhard Club’s practice schedule involved some manner of subterfuge, but I wouldn’t want to be the person trying to sneak past this particular guard.

I put a hand on her shoulder, pulling her back from her study of Heinrich.

“Let’s do this,” I said. “Give it ten seconds after we get his attention, then high-tail it back to the Clubhouse and get on the microphone. You still remember how to use it?”

Cheri nodded, walking with me to the edge of the building, where she could fly us down to the ground without Heinrich seeing us descend. I wrapped my arms around her neck, feeling kind of silly as I did. I was a bit more than a full foot taller than the girl, but for all the effort it took her to pick me up and float gently down to the alley below, I may as well have been a toddler. We walked together to the mouth of the alley, where it exited onto the street that Heinrich was currently watching. This next part wasn’t going to be pleasant, but if someone was going to take a hit for the plan, it was going to be me.

“You’re sure?” Cheri asked me.

I felt like I would lose my nerve if we didn’t go through with it quickly, and we all had too much riding on this. I refused to sit by and let Julia and Augustus walk over the students at the school, not while there was something I could do.

“Let’s get this over with,” I said, projecting more confidence into my voice than I felt.

I had just turned to face the street when I felt Cheri grab me by the waistband of my jeans and the back of my collar. Panic surged as she hefted me into the air, but I was too focused on mitigating the damage of the incoming tumble to manage more than an unenthusiastic whimper as she hurled me out into the street.

I hit the ground hard, rolling for a few feet before coming to a stop on the asphalt. I kept my body relaxed, limiting the damage I took to an impact to one knee that would probably see me limping for a few days and a scrape along the back of one hand. I’d made sure the road was clear before giving Cheri the go-ahead, but I didn’t want to lay in the road any longer than I had to. I hauled myself to my feet, trying to keep weight off the injured knee. My thoughts were somewhat scattered from the impact with the road, so my surprise was pretty close to genuine when I felt Cheri pick me up again.

Right, twice was the plan. Damn it.

She wasn’t holding back, either. Once she had me in the air, lifted as easily as I’d once seen her pick up Jay, she spun once, gathering speed to hurl me at the wrought iron fence that separated the hotel’s parking lot from the street.

This one hurt a bit more. I was turning pretty quickly as I flew, but I had just enough presence of mind to get my arms up in front of my face before I slammed into the bars. I fell to my knees, letting out a very real moan of pain as my already-swelling knee made contact with the sidewalk. I turned over, putting my back to the fence as I sank into a seated position.

My blood ran cold.

I had known confusion before, when I was faced with Julia’s subtle subversions, and I had felt anger in my heart when I saw Augustus threaten helpless students with fire. Xander’s transformation was disconcerting, but in an age rich with fantasy media, it was honestly on the tamer side of things, barely even registering in my understanding of how the world should work. Heinrich’s speed and strength evoked disbelief, probably because of how familiar I was with how strong and fast humans were supposed to be.

It wasn’t until I saw Cheri in that moment, looking down at me with dispassionate, glowing eyes, that magic inspired fear in me. The energy that came off her was palpable, oppressive. The air felt heavy, and I couldn’t seem to get enough of it into my lungs to get my breath. It was broad daylight out, but the scene around me fell away into darkness until all I could see was her, that sliver of face with brilliant crimson eyes.

I opened my mouth to tell her to stop, any thoughts of the plan fleeing my mind. All that emerged was a whimper, so weak and frightened that I didn’t immediately recognize it as my own voice. Cheri had one fist drawn back, light gathering at the knuckles.

I’d asked her to do this, I knew. I’d seen her perform magic with a level of expertise I hadn’t yet seen any other wizard wield, and five different kinds of it, no less. She had her secrets, her reasons for being in hiding, but none of that had ever mattered to me. Not until that moment, where I couldn’t get my body to move, couldn’t get my mind to think of any course of action that didn’t immediately end with my utter destruction. I felt my consciousness begin to waver beneath that pressure, and one thought, one word, rose unbidden to the surface.

Monster.

As soon as the thought entered my mind, Cheri reacted as if she’d been slapped. Hurt flickered across her face and she backed away a step, though she didn’t drop her threatening stance. The oppressive atmosphere vanished in an instant, and I was left appalled. I knew Cheri could read minds, or at least feel them, and though I didn’t believe it was fair that I would have to police my own thoughts, I was still pretty shocked that I’d had the thought at all. I knew Cheri wasn’t going to hurt me. She was hesitant about the plan from the beginning. Even despite my understanding of the situation, the feeling had been instinctual, almost primal, cutting through layers of mental fortitude and logic to awaken raw animal terror. It almost felt like it was a programmed response, like a reflex. It felt like someone had been commanding me, whispering straight into my mind.

Fear the rainbow girl.

“Cheri, I-” I started, struggling to get back to a standing position, but I was cut off as a massive shape collided with the girl from the side. In the space of a blink, Cheri was gone, launched off her feet by Heinrich’s massive form. Judging from the way he stood, one shoulder down, he’d just run into her, but the distance Cheri had traveled down the road made it seem like he’d shot her out of a cannon.

Cheri gradually slowed as her flight kicked in, at which point she righted herself and settled gently on the ground. It was sort of hard to tell, given that she was forty feet or so away at this point, but she didn’t seem injured at all.

“Can you stand?” Heinrich asked me, though his eyes were fixed on Cheri’s distant form.

My knee really hurt, and I could tell that it would hurt a lot more in the morning, but I knew I’d probably be able to stand if I needed to. That being said, I decided that the situation would be a lot easier to manage if I pretended I couldn’t.

I nodded, using a shaky grip on the bars of the fence to haul myself to my feet. I turned, as though I were intending to head off down the street in the opposite direction, but my leg crumpled as soon as I put weight on the knee. As I’d expected, I wasn’t even halfway to the ground when Heinrich caught me. He eased me slowly back into a seated position before turning his gaze back down the street.

During the moment when Heinrich’s attention was on me, Cheri had moved to the rooftop of the building across the street, where we’d surveyed the situation earlier. From the limited experience I had with her flight, I felt it was too far a distance and too brief a moment for her to have flown. Heinrich gazed up at her, his lips set into a thin line. Cheri was looking back, but I could somehow tell from the moment I set eyes on her that she wasn’t looking at Heinrich. She was looking at me.

“Who are you?” Heinrich called out, his voice hard. “Why did you attack this girl?”

From where I was, on the ground behind Heinrich, I nodded slightly to her. Without another word, Cheri turned and left, heading west. The Clubhouse was straight south from here, but we’d decided earlier it was best to take a roundabout route back, in case anyone saw and tried to follow her.

Heinrich stared after her for a long moment before sighing and turning to me. He knelt on the sidewalk in front of me, and I instinctively recoiled a bit when he reached out for my leg.

“Please be calm,” he said. “I am not going to hurt you. I must check to see whether or not you will require an ambulance. Unless you would like me to call you one regardless?”

That was the last thing I wanted. Any authorities, magic or otherwise, could turn this whole operation on its head.

“I think I’ll be fine,” I said, thankful that the pain and shock was adding a shake to my voice. Confidence would have been highly suspicious at the moment.

Heinrich probed at my knee, his touch practiced and business-like, without being rough. I’d witnessed a similar type of medical care before.

“You’re trained,” I mused, wincing slightly as he applied a small amount of pressure to the area where the swelling was worst.

“First aid training is a requirement for those hoping to join the Rainbow Cabals.”

I couldn’t say I was surprised that someone as imposing as Heinrich was headed for a government position. “Vengeance?” I asked.

Heinrich gave me an odd look. “The Path. You know the Cabals?”

“I did some research after E-Day,” I said with a shrug. “As much as I could, anyway. Your government was pretty tight-lipped with the specifics.”

He narrowed his eyes at me, and for a moment I thought I’d said something damning, though I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what. Just as I was about to say something to break the discomfort of his silent scrutiny, he leaned back, snapping his fingers and pointing a finger at me.

“I thought you looked familiar,” he said, a relieved smile appearing on his face. “You’re Emily Browman.”

My face must have shown my surprise, because he let out a jovial laugh, the sound a lot warmer than I’d expected, considering his intimidating exterior. My mind raced through all the potential ways that knowing who I was could interfere with the operation, but he held a hand up, still chuckling.

“Don’t be alarmed. There was a brief period early in the exchange when you were under scrutiny, but you have since been removed from the list of possible extremists.”

I bit back a scathing response. It wouldn’t do any good to bring that bit of frustration back to the surface. After the administration had ignored my first three complaints, I’d compiled a list of formal charges that I felt would stick against Julia and sent them to the mayor’s office. There wasn’t a lot of precedent for pressing charges against wizards at the moment, with most apprehended criminals simply being held until they could be extradited back to Avalon, but I felt confident that just voicing my concerns as a student and a citizen would get me at least some of the results I was looking for.

What I received in response was a letter formally acknowledging the situation, and requesting that I cease submitting complaints regarding it. 

According to Jay, I’d been so enraged that I’d come pretty close to seriously hurting him in a sparring match later that day. I normally couldn’t hold a candle to Jay in hand-to-hand combat. As such, I hadn’t been as worried about controlling myself when he’d offered to let me blow off some steam, but the thought that the government’s willful ignorance of the situation had pushed me to such an extreme probably played a significant role in my altercation with Julia, that day that I met Cheri.

“Well,” I said after composing myself a bit, “I’m glad at least someone heard what I had to say. Even if they ended up ignoring me like the others.”

“I wouldn’t be so quick to assume that, if I were you,” Heinrich responded. “The last I heard, the Prism Council had assigned a further four Dreamers to the Haden Exchange. Ms. Karalis was called in for an interview recently, and apparently left Lady Violet with the impression that she could no longer be trusted.”

It spoke volumes of my self-control that I managed to keep the glee from my expression. I supposed it was the nature of youth to believe establishments run by adults were hopeless, but I honestly hadn’t expected anything to be done about Julia without doing it myself. There was no way she’d be able to keep up her sociopathic games under the direct observation of four officials. That wasn’t to say that I was about to let her off the hook for all the bullshit we’d had to put up with so far. It was just good to know that she was going to be under pressure from other angles. 

“I guess I just have a hard time thinking well of a government that would put someone like her and her brother in this position in the first place,” I said. “It makes it seem like they aren’t as invested in building rapport as they are in establishing control.”

“Well, you’re right and wrong,” Heinrich said, finishing his examination of my knee and settling into a seated position next to me. “The first of those things is the desired end of the exchange program. The second is the required end.”

I frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Heinrich heaved a sigh, leaning his head back against the fence. “If I tell you something that is technically classified, could I trust you to be discreet with it?”

“I can’t say that I wouldn’t ever betray your trust,” I said, “depending on what it is you’re talking about, but I can say that I wouldn’t be careless with the information, and I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. You seem like one of the good ones.”

He gave me an appraising look. “That is a responsible answer. For what it’s worth, I believe you are one of the good ones as well.”

Heinrich closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them again.

“Have you heard of the Familiar pact?” Heinrich asked me. I had, but only in the rumors that filtered in through the information blockade that the Rainbow Cabals were attempting to maintain, when it came to magic.

“I guess so,” I said. “Nothing particularly concrete, and a lot of what I’ve heard sounds a little far-fetched.”

“Between wizards,” Heinrich told me, “the Familiar pact acts as a sort of mandatory apprenticeship. All youths undertake it, usually beginning at the point where their magic first manifests. The master agrees to instruct the Familiar, usually in regards to their magic, but sometimes it is more of a functional, career-focused sort of mentorship. In return, the Familiar serves the master, aiding them in their work and daily life until such a time that the master believes the Familiar is ready to be recognized as a full-fledged wizard. It is at this point, regardless of their age, that an individual is considered to be an adult.”

I scoffed. “Well, I hope Julia’s master is paying attention.”

Heinrich offered me a commiserating smile, and I felt my heart sink.

“Of the four wizards involved in the Haden Exchange,” Heinrich went on, “only Augustus is still a Familiar.”

That didn’t do much to inspire me, as far as Avalon went. The notion that someone had watched over Julia’s growth, and had given their approval to set her free in the world left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

“The Familiar pact is a simple thing. A simple agreement, a single touch between two agreeing parties, forges the bond. A fragment of the magical energy that lives in the master is gifted to the Familiar, until such a time as the bond is released or broken. But that was never the true purpose of the pact.”

Heinrich fell silent, and though I had a feeling I knew where he was going with this, I waited patiently until he continued. I imagined going against government mandates was a pretty grave undertaking.

“The Familiar pact was originally created to grant magic to Mundanes. The fragment of energy from the master acts as a spark that ignites the latent magic that exists in all humans. The process is simple, quick, and is taught to every Familiar that finishes their apprenticeship.”

“All humans?” I asked, my eyes going wide. “Anyone can have magic? All they need is to get a wizard to agree to it?”

Heinrich nodded. “You begin to see the problem. If the Rainbow Cabals manage to integrate with the Mundane government, then they can apply all the necessary controls on the dissemination of magic. This can happen with or without the Mundane people being generally enthusiastic about wizards. On the other hand, if the Mundane people become comfortable with magic before they become comfortable with the magical government…”

“...then there won’t be any checks in place for people making the Familiar pact,” I finished for him. “Would that really be so bad? To let things progress organically?”

He shot me a glance before reaching into his pocket and producing a device that looked remarkably similar to a smartphone. He turned it on with a wave of his free hand, and the similarities dropped away. The interface projected into the air in front of the screen, and he navigated it by touching the dancing cubes and symbols and sliding, flicking, or prodding them. After a moment of silent operation, a tinny voice sounded from the phone.

“Heinrich Sommer, Shepherd. What is your request?”

“Access database of convicted criminals,” Heinrich told it. “Randomize inside my access level, withdraw ten profiles.”

I watched in silence as a roulette of photographs blurred by on the projection. When it stopped, an array of ten pictures settled into the air, each showing a person photographed in various states of imprisonment. Most of them simply had their hands bound in chains, but some of them had significantly more going on.

Heinrich touched the first one and the array shrunk into the background, though it didn’t completely disappear. The one he had selected blossomed into a much wider array of related information.

“Walter Esshen,” Heinrich said, reading off the projection. “Designation: Fleshsculptor. An Alteration/Transmission type who could exchange the material type of any two things he touched simultaneously. Thirty known victims, mostly children, kidnapped and turned into statues of glass, ceramic, or stone.”

I shivered, despite the relative warmth of the afternoon. Heinrich flicked the picture off to the side, where it scattered into fragments of light, and the next image from the array behind it took its place.

“Esma Rogers. Designation: False Prophet. A Knowledge/Compulsion type that could infect others with obsessive glimpses at potential futures, after which they were compelled to ensure those futures came about. Her full list of crimes was hard to pinpoint, because the behavior of the victims was so erratic and self-justified that many of them never had the frame of mind to confess the source of their motivations, but at the time of her trial she was proven to be responsible for twenty-six counts of robbery, eleven murders, four kidnappings, and two counts of treason.

 “Lord Victor Elrith. Designation: Highlord. A Connection type that could move raw magical energy between wizards using himself as a medium. He was found to be running an underground arena with kidnapped Mundanes from across the world. He would perform the Familiar pact with these Mundanes, awaken their power, and force them to fight to the death with other captured Mundanes. Any time one of these slave gladiators would come close to death, he would withdraw the power he’d given them, as well as all of the magical energy they possessed themselves. He was difficult to arrest, as all of the surplus magical energy he gained throughout the years was gifted to a team of elite mercenary bodyguards. After the current government overthrew the last regime, he disappeared, and his underground arena dissolved.

“Apollo Est-”

“That’s enough,” I said sharply, clasping my hands in my lap to hide the fact that they’d begun trembling. “Why are you telling me this?”

Heinrich powered the device off and put it back into his pocket. “Magic is chaos, Ms. Browman. There isn’t a power in the world that doesn’t have the potential for great evil. And these transgressions, which I would stress to you aren’t in the upper realm of the abominable acts committed by wizards over the years, occurred under the watch of the Rainbow Cabals. I cannot even imagine the level of destruction that might be inflicted without the aid of Avalon and its systems.”

He stood, all at once, brushing off the seat of his pants with his massive hands. “I am going to go make a report to the Cabal of Vengeance regarding the attack you suffered. I have no authority over you, but I would suggest you accompany me, so as to share any details I might have missed.”

That wasn’t going to happen. I at least made it seem like I was having a difficult time deciding before I shook my head.

“Would you at least tell me everything that you can remember? Had you ever seen her before?”

It felt like a fair compromise, so I gave Heinrich the full list of fake details Cheri and I had ironed out beforehand. I’d been on my way home when the sound of a girl calling for help had drawn me into an alley. After I’d entered the alley, I’d been hit from the back, at which point I began fleeing until the point where Cheri caught me and threw me out into the street. She didn’t attempt to rob me, and the closest thing I could gather to a motive was her continuous use of the words “filthy Mundane”.

Now that I was saying it, I hoped it didn’t seem too melodramatic, but Heinrich took it in stride. After offering to carry me to the nearest bus stop, which I declined, he bade me farewell and went inside, assumedly to make his report.

I limped around the corner before going for my earpiece, praying that I’d bought Marika enough time to get in and out.

“Cheri?” I said, stopping once I was out of sight to lean against a lamppost. 

“It’s Jay,” came the response. “Cheri’s downstairs with the others.”

I heaved out a sigh of relief. “So everyone’s okay?”

“Yeah.”

There was a hint of something in Jay’s voice that made me pause. If he hadn’t just told me everyone was okay, I’d have thought someone had gotten caught, but the shadow of uncertainty in his one-word answer told me that some part of the plan had produced unwanted results.

“What’s wrong, Jay?”

There was a period a lot longer than I liked where nothing came through the earpiece save the crackle of static, then:

“I’m sending Mari to pick you up. It’s...it’s bad, Em.”