The Apprentice's Apprentice

Part 30

Cora dumped her backpack onto the floor as soon as she got through the doorway to her room before dropping down onto her bed with a groan. Her head continued to throb until she closed her eyes. Her whole body felt like it should be sore even though it wasn't, a fun side effect to having had her shields broken over and over again. Her last one had held up well enough, but by then even Selena said they'd been at it too long and had sent her home.

At this point the rogue couldn't be worse than Selena. She seemed downright happy to be hurling spells at Cora all afternoon. And Warren didn't make it better by flinching when half of them connected with her shields. That made her nervous. Cora sighed, opening her eyes long enough to drag her pillow over so she could plop her head onto it.

She wondered about the rogue even as she wanted to stay as far away from them as possible. Why had they become a rogue? What had they done that they'd been considered a rogue? It had to have been pretty bad considering how Warren had spelled her entire school without a second thought. Had they hurt someone? Killed them?

Cora shivered a bit at that last thought. Having seen what Selena could do, that possibility was very real in her mind. She'd supposedly be able to do the same with more training, but Cora wasn't sure she wanted to know how to. There really was no good use she could see for being able to shoot crazy magic lightning out.

Rolling over, she shaded her eyes against the weird leaf-shaped light above her. Her mom kept promising to redo her room and get rid of it, but had never gotten around to it. Even though Ash had gotten his room redecorated. Twice. Some days she hated being the oldest.

It was kind of weird, now that she really thought about it, how her life had gone off into a new and strange direction. If you'd told her a month or two ago she'd be learning magic and prepping to fight some dangerous rogue, she'd have either laughed herself sick or asked what drugs they were on.

Sometimes Cora felt that she'd hit some kind of Strange button in her life, one that had turned her whole world on its head before turning it inside out as well. Stuff with Zoe, Moira, and school were normal, but then there was the spell-slinging side of things with Warren, Philippe, and Selena. She wondered why magic was kept so hidden. She could understand doing it before, when there were witch hunts and stuff, but now?

Unless you were still in danger. But she thought Warren would have mentioned that by now. Then again, he hadn't told her anything about rogues before Selena had mentioned it. Cora made a mental note to ask him about it sometime. Every time she thought about anything now it felt like she came up with a dozen questions to ask Warren about magic and how it related to...well, everything.

Some days she wished she'd never met Warren, wished that she could go back to pretending to be at least relatively normal. But Cora knew it was far too late, she'd followed the white rabbit and there was no turning back. With another groan she rolled off her bed, landed gracelessly on the floor and then heaved herself to her feet. Whatever magical nonsense she got caught up with didn't stop her from having homework.