Spellhacke- M. K. England Page 0,40
in the basement, and my parents rarely come down there anymore.”
“And you’ve never taken your scrub friends home to meet Mommy and Daddy,” I can’t help but add. “So they won’t recognize us even if they do eventually show our faces on the news. Good. We have a plan, then.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait up,” Ania says. “We still have to get you all to my house without being seen, then get you inside. It might be . . . you know . . .”
She hesitates, and all the mixed-up, messed-up, roiling anger and everything inside me comes out in a fearsome glare.
“I’m going to kindly assume you were going to say that it’s not smart for us to walk around showing our faces openly, not that our broke-ass selves will stick out like sunnaz in a shit storm in your neighborhood.”
Ania winces and turns her back to the road to hide the faint glow of her maz as she begins to weave.
“Let’s just use some concealment spells, okay?”
I take the offered spell wordlessly and crumple it over my head, watching the faint purple-black sparks drift to the ground like embers of burning paper.
I wish there was such a thing as a concealment spell for your own thoughts. I have it together for now, but the threads are fraying, the awfulness lying just below the surface, watching. Waiting.
Death toll, they said.
The barest crack in the surface is all it will take.
Ten
WHEN ANIA SAID HER ROOM was in the basement, she should have said “rooms.” And when she said basement, she should have said “luxury apartment suite that happens to be on an underground level and yet still manages to be just as nice as the rest of the house that we weren’t allowed a tour of.” I’ve known her for six years and this is the first time I’ve seen any of it.
The walls are painted a cool, relaxing blue, the same color as the water maz Ania’s family is named for. The bel Wataza family crest is framed on the wall, next to a string-woven tapestry of their home city back on the Small Continent, near where my dad grew up. The room holds two sleek, modern couches in clean white, accented with a brighter, more vivid blue, with end tables sporting carved sculptures and drink coasters. Gauzy curtains hang over the windows, and light fixtures adorn nearly every wall and surface. It’s so bright I never would have guessed it’s mostly underground. The front room is bigger than our entire flat.
I’m not bitter. Really.
“So, what are we not allowed to touch and where are we allowed to sleep?” I sneer, then mentally slap myself. Everyone is stressed. This isn’t the time to harass Ania about her fanciness.
Ania takes it in stride, though, as always. “I think it would be best to stay out of this main sitting room—”
“Sitting room?” I say before I can help myself, then cover my mouth and gesture for her to go on.
“Since this is where the staircase from the first floor leads, this is the first thing my parents see if they decide to come down,” she finishes. “There’s a gaming room back here, a guest bedroom, my bedroom, and a kitchenette. You can survive down here without being seen for quite a while, I think.”
I let that sink in for a moment. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, knowing Ania has been living in such spacious luxury the whole time we’ve known each other, while the rest of us shared one bedroom in an apartment in the orphan district. Not that I want any of it. It feels weird, like I’m going to break something or get it dirty if I touch it. I’ve always known, of course, but there’s a difference between knowing and seeing.
I knew the second she walked into the tech shop where I worked six years ago, with her fancy babysitter. I was newly twelve, barely able to work two hours a day by law. The babysitter looked around with her nose in the air, obviously appalled at the cramped quarters, dust, grease, solder fumes, and whatever else. Ania, though, looked around at everything with wide eyes, her expensive training hardware clipped around her wrist and her curls bouncing as she scrambled from one display to another. Her clothes were new and clean, her steps light, the heels of her fancy boots pinging like falling coins across the shop floor.
Twelve-year-old me was enchanted, and immediately wanted to show off. “Are