The Best of Galaxy’s Edge 2013-2014 (19 page)

Still, when just before lunch some of the whispers finally got loud enough to reach her, she nearly dropped the books she was getting out of her locker in surprise.

“
Lipstick lesbian …
”

“
Fag-hag.
”

That was the best they could do? Really?

They’re dumber than I thought
. Why they thought rumors about being gay, or gay-friendly were going to cause her a moment of unrest—well, they hadn’t been paying attention. First of all, St. Rhia’s had very firm policies in place about homophobia, to wit that acting on it was an invitation for expulsion. And secondly—well—she really and truly did not give a rat’s ass.

Then again, this might be 2002, but there were still plenty of people out there with homophobia, and it looked like there was a big fat clot of them right here in St. Rhia’s. Just because they were all young magicians, it didn’t follow that all or even most of them had exposure to all of the myriad sorts of folks Vickie’d had. If anything, their upbringing might be even more insular than the average mundie and—

Wait a second. Fag-hag
…
She could almost hear the mental pieces clicking together and solving the puzzle of the pale kid. And that was when she got angry. Because it was bad enough to bully someone, but to do it over something they couldn’t help, any more than they could help the color of their eyes, just made it all the worse.

Heck if I am putting up with this shite
. The first thing to do, though, would be to verify. Which, fortunately, she was in the perfect position to do. She hurried to the dining hall, and headed straight for the table she’d sat at yesterday, plunking herself down beside the pale boy, who looked even more alarmed than he had yesterday. She said nothing, however, until the proctors happened to be looking away.

Looking, in fact, at the Pretty People who were engaged in some stupidly obvious whispering, giggling, and smirking. Vickie took the moment to lean over and whisper in the pale kid’s ear.

“
Follow me. Just leave your lunch and follow me. And don’t argue if you know what’s good for you.
”

She was pretty certain that he had been cowed enough by the bullies that he would just do what she ordered without question, and she was right. She got up and left the table, acting as if she was upset by the whispers, and he followed a moment later. As soon as they were out of sight and the door to the dining hall had closed, she grabbed his hand and headed for the Central Courtyard.

“What—” the poor kid gasped, his pale face even paler, as he probably anticipated her taking some sort of revenge on him.

“Hush,” she said, put him in the Earth circle with her, and burned through the equations. He gasped as they apported into the basement of her house.

“But you—but—” His eyes were as big as the proverbial saucers. “How did you—”

“Because I’ve been doing apports since I was twelve, I told you,” she said, seizing his hand and dragging him upstairs to the kitchen, where she shoved him down into a chair and threw a couple of Cornish Meat Pasties into the microwave. “Here,” she said, handing him one. “Now I can talk to you without anyone interfering.”

“But I thought—we aren’t supposed to leave—” he stammered.

“I’m a Day Student, I’m allowed to go home,” she pointed out, and smirked. “And I’m allowed to bring study partners with me. Of course, they’re rather stupidly assuming that it’s Mom doing the apport, and not me, and that I’m stuck at school until she gets me. That’s not my problem. Who’s bullying you? The Pretty People?”

“How—why—” he began, and then his face just crumpled and words poured out of him. Mostly, they were nonsense about how he was going to hell, he was a pervert, and he deserved every bit of it. Vickie let him spew, then cut him off.

“Did you get that crap from your parents?” she said, scornfully.

He nodded.

“And I bet they would tell you that you were going to hell if they thought you were doing magic, too, wouldn’t they?” she pointed out. The poor kid actually started, as if she had slapped him.

“But I—but they—”

“They’re wrong about both, obviously,” she interrupted again. “And if I have to keep you sitting here until we both get demerits from missing class until you believe it, I will.” She paused. “Or else I’ll tickle you into submission. Either one works.”

The second was so absurd he actually laughed weakly.

“
OK
. We’re good.” She grinned at him. “Now, let’s get to the important part. We’re going to keep anyone from messing with you ever again. After classes, you come back with me; they told me specifically I can bring people home for study partners. I have a plan …”

* * *

Every afternoon, Vickie and her new “study partner” apported straight home and went to work. After seeing they really
were
working and not fooling around (and probably realizing more quickly than Vickie had that the kid was gay) her parents left them alone, just setting an extra place at the dinner table for him and sending him back before curfew.

Finally,
finally
, Vickie had found someone who saw magic the way she did! When she explained the whole math thing to the pale kid—Paul—he’d grasped it immediately. In fact, he turned out to be better at it than she was, although he couldn’t manage to use modern tech any better than most magicians, so she still had something of an edge on him.

Slowly, and with the help of Konrad Lorenz, Farley Mowat, and other ethologists, she convinced him that he wasn’t some sort of perverted monster. And once convinced, he was willing to let her help him.

What the Pretty People were doing was completely counter to the rules, as she had pointed out. The entire problem was that they needed to shine a big fat light on the cockroaches and send them scurrying. And the only way to do that would be to trick them into coming out into the open in the first place.

Paul had wanted to just avoid stirring up a nest of hornets, but she’d convinced him about that, too. She knew how bullies worked. When they couldn’t get to him because he was spending most non-school time with Vickie, they’d find some other way to torment him, and the number one target would probably be his room.

Here was the challenge that she had been craving, and she and Paul slaved over both the rules of conduct and the mathemagic. The rules, because she was dissecting them like a lawyer. The math, because they were building something so brand new no one had ever tried it, out of the break-down of the spells they already knew.

When it was ready, Vickie snuck in one night after both of them should have been asleep, and they set up the trap. After that it was just a matter of waiting.

* * *

“Victoria Nagy.”

Vickie looked up from her book, startled. This was study-hall, she was working on her history lesson, and she was so deeply into it she hadn’t noticed the proctor until he spoke.

“Yes?” she managed.

“Come with me. Leave the books.” The older kid was stony-faced, but she knew immediately why he had come for her. What else could it be? She felt a rush of mingled apprehension and elation. This, after all, was mostly her magic. If anyone was going to get in trouble, even expelled, it would be her. She had made sure it was her signature that was all over it, because Paul didn’t
have
a safe place to go to if he got expelled.

She got up and followed the proctor out of the library, out of the building, and across the Courtyard, as she had anticipated, to the dorms. Up the stairs to the fourth floor, and out into a hallway, and into an uproar.

This was, of course, one of the boys’ floors, but there were students of both sexes crowding the hall and rubbernecking, and the proctor had to push through them to get to the area of Paul’s room. A line of proctors was holding the curious back; they went through that line, and finally Vickie could see the … damage.

Whoa!
It was hard not to be excited. She’d been pretty exact as to her parameters, but she hadn’t anticipated the sheer weight of nastiness that the Pretty People had brought to the party and which they had gotten back in their teeth.

It was hard to recognize Lucille, the tall, blond, head-cheerleader type, because she wasn’t thin or pretty anymore. She was round to the point that her clothing was straining and splitting in places, and she had a face like a frog. The only thing that remained to recognize her by was her blond hair.

Bert, one of the jocks, was black and blue, and on the floor, moaning and holding what looked like a broken arm. A couple of the other boys were in similar straits.

Angela was bald. Bridget had the worst case of acne Vickie had ever seen.

Standing over them was Professor Elba, with a face like a thundercloud. As soon as Vickie entered the cleared area, the Professor rounded on her.

“
What did you do to them, you miserable little—
” It looked as if the Professor was going to actually
attack
her, and in that moment, Vickie realized who it was who had been protecting the bullies all this time.

Fortunately, at just that moment, the Dean stepped into the space. “
Meredith
!
” the Dean snapped. “Control yourself this instant!”

Since the Dean had her wand out—the Dean was clearly one of those magicians who felt she worked better using a wand—Professor Elba backpedaled a step or two.

“This—
girl’s—
magical signature is—”

“I’ve been fully briefed, Meredith, thank you,” the Dean replied, in tones of cold neutrality, and turned to Vickie. “Miss Nagy, I have the greatest respect for your parents, as does nearly everyone in the magical world. I find it … remarkable … that you would have perpetrated this sort of harm on your fellow students. Quite out of keeping, one would almost say. Explain yourself.”

“I didn’t perpetrate the harm on them, Dean,” Vickie said, as she had rehearsed a thousand times. “They perpetrated it on themselves.”

The Dean, a tall, stern woman with hair like cast iron and a face like a stone statue, raised one eyebrow, slowly. “Indeed? Would you care to explain further?”

And Vickie did. She explained how she and Paul had broken down one of the old Wiccan Sacred Circle spells into its component parts and isolated the sequence that read the intent of anyone or anything that tried to cross the circle. She detailed how they had broken down the Warding spells that established real-world perimeters. She described how they had worked out how the Mirror Spell that cast back
magical
harm on the caster worked. And how they had put these things all together in order to create something new: a Ward that read the intent of anyone trying to get into Paul’s room, and did to them exactly what they were intending to do to Paul or his property.

“Impossible!” spat Elba.

Vickie shrugged, and before anyone could stop her, strolled across the threshold of Paul’s room. She stopped, spread her hands wide, wordlessly showing how she came to no harm at all, and came back.

“Impossible!” Elba said again. “You just created a hazardous Ward that would only recognize you and that little pervert!”

Vickie bristled. “That’s not true! We did exactly what I said we did!”

The Professor began to shout, or rather, scream, but the Dean cut her off—not by look, or order, but by stalking across the threshold of the room herself. There was a collective gasp, and when she came back out without so much as a hair being out of place, there was another.

“Take the … so-called victims to the Infirmary,” the Dean ordered. “And someone go to the Staff Reading Room, wake up Professor Higgins and bring him here, please.”

Vickie perked up a little at that.
So-called victims?
So the Dean believed her?

But she had to wait in silence while this Professor Higgins was fetched. This gentleman was someone Vickie had never seen before, tall, lean, wearing an odd flat velvet hat and academic robe over a shabby suit.

“Miss Nagy,” the Dean ordered. “Tell the Professor
exactly
what you did. Down to the smallest detail.”

So Vickie did—but the moment she started, the Professor suddenly looked as if he’d been jolted awake by electricity, and began questioning her—about the
math
! Jarred into excitement herself, Vickie could hardly get the words out fast enough. The Dean listened, looking vaguely baffled, for about ten minutes, and finally interrupted them.

“Professor,” she said, politely. “Will this Ward do what the girl says it will?”

For the first time the Professor actually looked at Vickie’s work, peering at the doorway over the top of his glasses. “Oh my, yes,” he said, sounding as if he had just discovered an entirely new theorem. “Oh my, certainly yes. It reads the intent of those who cross it, and if they are intending something wicked, it bounces them back with as close an approximation of their intended actions as it can manage, wrought on their persons. So elegant for such a youngster! Why look here—” He began describing some of Vickie’s process, and the Dean cut him off again.

“And would you be willing to take Miss Nagy and her confederate as your pupils?” she asked.