(x) Irregular Magic

chapter 25 - child's play

The sky had melted into puddles of mauve with swatches of soft gold when Mattie jerked awake. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and stretched. The relief of realizing her terrifying dream was only that faded when she remembered where she was. Dread flashed through her when it occurred to her that she was alone.

"Lucas?" Mattie called, trying to keep a note panic from creeping into her voice. She hurriedly got to her feet and yanked twigs from her hair. Had he left her when she had been sleeping? While it was hard to trust him completely, it was true she had felt much safer knowing he had been nearby. "Lucas?"

"Don't call me that," a voice-familiar but young-sounded from behind the trunk of a large beech.

Mattie swallowed. "Which one are you?" she asked, eyeing the jagged bark warily. It seemed every time she fell unconscious he changed. "And why are you hiding?"

Sarcasm dripped from every word: "It's not like my clothes shift with me."

"Oh."

"Apparently, I gain quite a bit of height as an adult." The words were said with equal amounts distaste and appreciativeness.

She digested this. "So what you're saying is-you're pants-less?"

The silence that followed this question confirmed her suspicions. She bit back a giggle. "I'm sorry, I wish I had clothes for you. I didn't think to bring any."

"You aren't the only one," said that sharp, needle-like voice. "Maybe I lose brain cells along the way. Lucas didn't think to bring clothes, either."

"We did run away in a hurry," she said, suddenly defensive of Lucas. Something about the way he spoke reminded her of something he had told her, back when she first found out about his peculiar . . . condition.

Luke is an arrogant ass, L is a prick, and Lucas is a selfish bastard.

She had already met Luke, so that only left one. Lucas had gotten it quite right.

"You're L, aren't you?"

"I'm not planning on staying like this."

"What's your plan?"

"A trade."

"A what?"

A streak of blue grazed the patch of grass directly in front of her, making her jump. When she could see again, there was only dead grass in its place.

"Enough of my magic is back to teleport once."

"Yeah, I can see that," Mattie said, hoping she sounded calmer than she felt. His stunt had reminded her she was in the presence of a mage-by his own admission, an arrogant one. A misstep and she could be the target of that streak. "What kind of trade do you have in mind?"

"Your hat."

Mattie stroked the stitches of her invisibility hat with trembling fingers. "Until we find clothes for you?" she said stiffly.

"No." There was a pause. "A trade is permanent."

She exhaled shakily and clenched her hand into a fist. "I'm not like you. I don't have magic in me, I can't fight back. This is my only defense." The unspoken words hung in the air: my only defense against people like you.

"Tough luck."

Tough luck.

The words echoed in her mind, each successive time louder and more warbled, as if they were being run through a filter.

"Yeah, it is," she managed through gritted teeth. "For you. I can make it out of here without you. All I have to do is get to a tele-stop and I'm out of here and away from you." As if to prove her point, she pulled on the hat and managed to move several paces to her right without as much as disturbing a fallen leaf.

From her new position, Mattie could see a boy about Tara's age, with a head of dark hair and the edges of his green cloak. She had spent enough time with Lucas to realize what he

It took L about three seconds to realize she had disappeared from sight, and he quickly moved into view. His cloak was big enough that it only really left his ankles bare. His eyes were wide and frenzied, and she suddenly felt a wave of guilt. Which dissolved after he opened his mouth again.

"I can blast this whole place," he said, his eyes flashing angrily. "Take you with me." L paused, as if for effect. "To hell."

A bubble of laughter escaped her lips before she could stop it. His head jerked in her direction, and Mattie took another few steps to her right. Silence stretched between them, heavy and thick as a cloud. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, trying to think of a way out.

Even though she didn't know Lucas that well, she was fairly sure he wouldn't have tried to coerce her out of her only method of defense. Likely not even the kid-Luke-would have done so. The thing that scared her most about L was that he seemed like a lot of other young mages-the kind that harassed the students at Cavmoire. From what she could tell, L-Luke, Lucas, and all the other variations-had a lot of magic, and he knew how to use it.

Something occurred to her. A way that she could make the trade temporary, but without him knowing.

Mattie began moving, slow and erratically so he wouldn't be able to pinpoint where she was. "Are you going to ditch me as soon as you get what you want?" As quietly as she could, she crossed the clearing and watched as L's eyes searched for the source of her voice.

"What does that mean?"

"Can I trust you?" she said, each word deliberate and as calm as she could manage.

Something shifted in his stance. L was standing more rigidly than he had been before, his hands balled tightly into fists. "Why wouldn't you trust me?" he spat, venom seeping into every word.

"Take a guess," she said mildly, though every fiber of her being screamed in defiance. He had tried to blackmail her, threatened her, and tried to attack her, yet he wanted to know why she didn't trust him? Even though she was blown back by his audacity, Mattie was somehow unsurprised by it. He was a mage, through and through.

A sharp, measured exhale hissed through his teeth, and she could almost hear the gears in his mind turning. "Right."

"How about now? Can I trust you now?"

"Yes."

Mattie could tell that was about as far as she was going to get right now. "Okay. You have to agree to three more teleports. Three, and then I'll give you my hat." She put intentional stress on the words give and my. "You can manage that, can't you? For a mage as great as you, that's like child's play."

Her upper lip twitched. For someone who seemed to live and breathe sarcasm, L seemed to miss her own. He stood a little straighter and his chin lifted slightly.

"Child's play," he repeated. "Three teleports? That's all?"

"Three teleports."

"It's a deal."

Her stomach fluttered with unease. There was no guarantee that when she shed her disguise he wouldn't attack her and take the hat by force. But the look on L's face convinced her. It was the look Tara wore when Mattie asked her for a quick teleport; it was the look Inness had had when he found out he had been accepted into the Hall of Orange; and it was the look every mage wore when they heard the name Jonathon Marhew: unspeakable, unfathomable pride.

Weary but feeling like they were at last getting somewhere, Mattie reached up and pulled the hat off. The magic lifted from her, and suddenly the faint hum that filled her ears when she wore it vanished. The silence that followed was almost too much.

"Ready?" She extended her hand out to him, and he placed his hand on top of hers, with such little pressure it barely felt like they were touching. His eyes-a searing stormy gray-bore into hers and, with a familiar dogged ferocity, Mattie glared back. At first, he seemed surprised that she would meet his gaze, and then something glinted in his eyes-amusement? she wondered with incredulity-and in a blaze of violent winds they left behind the forest clearing.