Breaking Magic

Chapter Ten: Adam

It hits me when I wake up the next morning, and El has to try to calm me down while I have a panic attack in her living room.

"They're going to come for me, oh my god, they're going to take my magic away," I babble, practically incoherent. I keep trying to stand up but El keeps forcing me back down, despite the fact that she's half a foot shorter and fifty pounds lighter than me.

"Nobody is coming for you, and even if they did, I wouldn't let them come near you," she insists, trying to get me to drink from a glass of water. "I'd clobber them before they came close. Nobody is going to come for you, except Ms. Cross, and she's going to take care of everything. Doesn't she always? She kept the mundanes from arresting you back when she first found you, she can certainly keep anyone from taking your magic. Ms. Cross will put it all right."

I don't know if she really believed that, or if she was just saying it because she thought it might take the edge off my panic. It didn't.

"She's going to throw me out! I burned down the fucking school! I'm going to be expelled, and the Council is going to take my magic!"

"You won't be expelled, and even if you were, it's your senior year anyways and you're already 18, so what's the big deal? And I'll take down the whole Council myself if they try to come after you. I'll drop out of school too, and we'll both go down to Mexico—I think I might have some distant cousins somewhere down there—and we'll find that old healer woman and she'll teach you how to control your magic, and then you'll return as the most powerful magician since Merlin and put them all in their places."

"You can't drop out and go to Mexico with me, you're supposed to go to college-"

"I can't get into college anyway with my grades. The University of Hecate has to accept me like they do all magicians, but with my grades I won't qualify for any scholarships and no way can I afford it."

"But you already qualified for financial aid," I point out. "Besides, you speak even less Spanish than I do. What are you going to do down there while I'm supposedly training with the old lady version of Yoda?"

"Teach kids English? There's probably some kind of English Language teaching program in Yucatán. I don't know, it doesn't matter. I'll figure something out when we get there."

"That's insane, you're being insane. You can't leave behind your family and your life to run away with me to Mexico." My breathing was starting to slow down, and the sharp edge of panic was beginning to fade. Somehow, focusing trying to talk El out of her crazy idea was helping me get a grip on myself. She forces the glass of water on me again, and this time I take a long drink.

"Alright. How about we just wait for Ms. Cross to get here and actually give us some more information before we start packing, okay?" Her expression is a bit self-satisfied, and I get the sense that she had brought up the suggestion with the intent of making me be the rational one in the conversation. However, I didn't doubt that if it came down to it, that El would in fact follow me to Mexico if she felt like she had to.

Ms. Cross did come that day, though it wasn't until much later in the evening.

Most of El's family were leaving me alone, allowing me to wander through the house like a restless spirit. I didn't much want to talk and they respected that, though Mr. Fuentes, who worked from home, kept trying to present me with elaborately prepared meals in some sort of weird display of expressing sympathy and moral support through food.

I was still ravenous after burning through so much magic so quickly, and ate everything he made. It reached a point where I was starting to feel guilty for how much I was sure to be costing them in terms of the sheer amount of food consumed.