Page 14 of Junk Magic

“I don’t know what they plan to do,” I said honestly. “You know the drill as well as I do. Right now, we’re in a war and well-trained mages are dropping like flies. They need you, particularly since the other side has no compunction about using everybody they can find with magical ability, regardless of what form it takes. They’ll deploy them as cannon fodder, of course, but—”

“And that’s different than what the Corps plans to do with us?” Sophie hissed, leaning forward.

Her formerly soft blue eyes flashed gold for an instant. Probably not a good sign. But I’d started this, and I wasn’t going to lie to them now. I couldn’t, no matter what those higher on the totem pole wanted, not and teach them at the same time. Teaching—especially the war mage version of it—required trust.

If they didn’t have any in me, this whole thing was doomed from the start.

“War mages have become cannon fodder ourselves lately,” I told her. “For the type of people the Black Circle has been digging up—

“People like us, you mean,” the Asian guy said. Unlike Sophie, he didn’t sound angry. Just vaguely sad.

It hit me harder than her anger had, because we were supposed to be the good guys. The Corps put their lives on the line, every day, to protect the magical community, and plenty of us died for it. But we didn’t protect everyone, did we?

Because magic was like any other physical trait, from hair and eye color to whether or not you liked cilantro: it varied from person to person. Usually, the variance was slight, and mainly boiled down to how much magic your body generated as opposed to the norm. Make too little and you were automatically shut out of a lot of jobs and prestige; make too much, and you usually ended up in the Corps.

Which considering what we went through on a regular basis, sometimes had me wondering who got the rawest deal.

But the point was that magic differed in strength, yes, but also in content.

Which was why a bunch of magically gifted young people were drinking my beer, but looking as if it tasted bad. I couldn’t blame them. The Circle had decided, centuries ago, that certain types of magical expression were desirable and other kinds . . . weren’t.

And life really sucked if your magic was in the latter category.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “People like you.”

“So, the Circle wants their cast offs to fight the other side’s cast offs,” Sophie summed up. “And even if we somehow survive, what do you think they’re going to do with us? Drape a medal around our necks? They’ll put us right back where they found us!”

“They said they wouldn’t—” Jen began, her blonde bob swinging around her face.

“And I’m sure the Circle never lies! Like when they told you that you were going to school, that you’d be trained, that you’d learn control!”

“But I have learned control,” Jen said, meekly.

“Repression is not control!”

“If you think we’re lying to you, why are you here?” I asked curiously. “I understood you had a choice.”

“A choice!” Sophie almost spat it. “That’s for those of you with normally functioning magic. Did I have a choice when I was taken from my home at the age of six? Did I have a choice when they locked me up in a “school” that’s more of a prison? Did I have a choice when they offered me one way, and only one, out of there? Is that what you call a fucking choice?”

I picked up another beer—because hell, I’d bought ‘em—and used Were strength to flick the top off. “No,” I said, as Sophie’s eyes narrowed on my undamaged thumb. “Not really.”

“What are you?” she demanded.

“My father is Guillame de Croissets, a decorated, retired war mage.”

“And your mother?”

“Laurentia . . . of Lobizon.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “You’re half Were.”

“Just Were,” I corrected, because there were no half-Weres. You were either Clan or you weren’t, although my case was a little complicated. But I didn’t want to go into that now. Or at all. And it looked like Sophie knew something about Weres because she didn’t push it.

She blinked and sat back in her chair, belatedly snagging one of the remaining beers. “So that’s why you’re stuck training us,” she said, after a minute. “They thought, if we go rogue and kill you, no great loss.”

“Maybe.” The thought had crossed my mind.

She thought about that. “Why are you doing this?” she finally asked. “You’re not much better in their eyes than we are. We’re all just fodder in their war.”

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