Wicked As You Wish (A Hundred Names for Magic #1) - Rin Chupeco Page 0,10

her father loved to play spun through her head. And then she remembered she was supposed to answer.

“I’d like that a lot,” she squeaked out. Dammit.

“The game ends at seven thirty, so would eight be good? Okay if I have your number so I can call you once I get there? You’re going to watch the game, right?”

She just nodded, having exhausted human speech, and let him put his own contact details into her phone.

“Done.” Ryker leaned closer, and for a short, delirious second Tala thought he might actually kiss her. Here, in a roomful of witnesses. But all he did was place her phone very gently back into her hands. “It’s a date.”

* * *

“You coward,” Tala snarled much later, after classes had ended. She’d finally located Alex in the library, and now that she’d regained command of words, she was primed to do some deserved, possibly misplaced yelling. She was giddy at the turn of events, of course, but she was also painfully aware of how flustered and embarrassed she must have sounded. Tala had very little reason or opportunity to engage with uncomfortable things like crushes, and recalling her behavior only made her cringe.

Alex was settled in one of the quietest corners of the library. He was staring at his laptop and didn’t seem to realize she was there until she poked him, hard.

“You shouldn’t have left me alone with him,” Tala groaned. “What were you thinking? I was at least expecting some kind of wingman support.”

Alex was quiet.

“I should have wished him luck for the game. Why didn’t I wish him luck? I just stood there like a moron. He must have thought I was a…”

She stopped. Alex was looking up at her, but it didn’t look like he was focusing on her face, or on anything at all. “Hey. Are you okay?”

He looked back at his computer. “I think you better watch this,” he said. “You’re gonna find out about it soon enough, anyway. Everyone’s talking about it.”

Someone had uploaded a video on social media titled She Has a Point, and Tala started when she saw it was Miss Hutchins, one of Elsmore High’s teachers. The camera shifted slightly, briefly panning over the rest of the students in the class, and Tala saw Alex sitting in one of the chairs, looking stupefied. Then the lens swung back to Miss Hutchins’s strained face.

“…supposed to tell you lies.” Whoever had taken the video had started filming midway through the teacher’s speech, but it was clear she was just getting started. “It’s always been lies. That’s how it starts, by changing the truth into the lie that suits them best, and they always start with schools.

“They’ve already softened your textbooks’ stances on slavery, on the massacres of Native Americans. They’ll argue that it was for the greater good. They’ll tell you why California is an illegal kingdom and unpatriotic for refusing to assimilate with the rest of the Royal States. They won’t tell you that their anger is because the Native Americans there control the only major glyph mine in the country that they’ve never been able to get at.

“And today I am supposed to instruct you, as the newly revised curriculum states, of: Magic over the centuries, from the Greek advancements that helped shape magical philosophies, to the American breakthroughs of the last few decades, down to the latest strides in spelltech and its many advantages.”

She paused. For probably the first time in her life, everyone in class was paying attention to her.

“Most of you have heard about the Wonderland Wars. They will show you this as a prime example of how magic was misused by all sides involved, resulting in the destruction of both the winter kingdom of Beira and of Avalon itself. They will tell you that new laws have been put into place in the aftermath to ensure they cannot be abused again.”

Miss Hutchins sneered. The usually quiet, polite, almost meek Miss Hutchins actually sneered. “But these new laws will allow them everything but accountability. Oh, there were plenty of terrible people from both nations, they’ll say. They’ll tell you that King Ivan of Avalon had no business dragging other countries into his personal vendetta against the Snow Queen of Beira, that he was just as greedy. And what was the cost? The loss of magic, the fallout plunging many countries into an economic recession, including the one America has just barely struggled its way out of.”

Somebody snickered. Immediately Miss Hutchins turned to the