Wicked As You Wish (A Hundred Names for Magic #1) - Rin Chupeco Page 0,2

some boys and girls who weren’t just boys or girls, and so on. That was around the time Mr. McLeroy’s daughter was supposedly making a scandal of herself with another girl and had been kicked out of their house as a result. Tala’s father said McLeroy was a shite old bampot and if anyone deserved a good kick to his tiny bushels it was him and not his daughter, the poor bird.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she repeated meaningfully, and glanced down at the Mark/frog hybrid. They lived on a dead-end street few people bothered to go down, so it’s not like anyone else was watching. “But won’t he know?”

“Nah. He’ll change back in a few hours and forget everything.” Alex spoke wearily, like he had enough experience with it to fill out a résumé.

“How do you do it?”

“Always been able to. But it’s a censured spell.”

Censured spells were the worst kinds of magic, the ones punishable by death. Magic worked using a system of equivalent exchange, her mother had explained to her once: the more powerful the spell, the more you had to give up to earn it, and the consequences varied from person to person.

The effects on humans can be permanent; last year, a pyromaniac two towns over had purchased a fireglyph from some internet black market and received an extremely low tolerance to the cold for his troubles. He wound up burning down two houses but was eventually caught after he was found nearly frozen to death in front of his open refrigerator.

But magic powerful enough to be classified a censured spell was the sort of magic world wars were fought over. It was the reason the kingdom of Avalon was gone, its sole surviving royalty missing and presumed dead, and its citizens scattered and in hiding. Censured spells were a constant fixation with King John, since he was convinced a magical assassination attempt was just around the corner.

Luckily, turning assholes into frogs wasn’t that powerful a spell, though Alex’s curse working just fine despite being in Invierno did suggest it was a stronger one than it looked.

“What did you give up for it?”

“The ability to form normal relationships with other people, I guess,” Alex said with a shrug, but his hands trembled slightly. That was clearly not the whole truth, but, censured or not, he was scared. Tala felt bad for asking something so personal.

“Well, Lola Urduja did tell you my secret, right? So we’re even.”

“What secret?”

Tala felt just a little bit insulted that nobody had cared enough to inform him about her. “Try turning me into a frog.”

He stared. “You saw what happened to him, right?”

“Yeah, but that’s not going to happen to me.” At least, she hoped so. “Do you, uh, have to do it on the lips, or would a cheek or a forehead work…” Tala was sixteen and a self-professed cynic. This was her first kiss, but she was old enough to dismiss the sentimentality of it. This was technically more of an experiment than anything else.

“No. It has to be on the—” Alex rubbed at his eyes. “Look. I’ve blundered my way through this enough for you to realize I’m gay, right?”

“Pretty much, yep. I’m not gonna propose to you, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

He actually grinned at that. “Don’t blame me if you suddenly start chasing flies.”

It was only a quick peck, a didn’t-really-count-as-a-kiss kiss, not too unpleasant, and over quickly. Tala didn’t turn green, or develop bulging cheeks, or discover a newfound urge to hop.

“That’s never happened before,” Alex finally said.

Tala laughed, pleased with herself and also relieved. “Magic doesn’t work on me. It never has. My mom’s the same, but we’re not supposed to tell anyone. We call it an agimat; a charm, in Tagalog.” Other curses didn’t work on her, and neither did glass magic, or oath-binding contracts, or the spell-infused vending machines littered around town that surprisingly worked despite the Invierno curse but didn’t stop her from drinking free bottled sweet tea for years. But indirectly sabotaging spelltech machinery for personal gain didn’t carry the same risks as attempting temporary amphibianship. “So, are we even?”

Alex stared at her. “You’re one of the Makilings,” he finally said. “The spellbreakers. They’re the only ones with agimats.”

“Tala Makiling Warnock,” Tala agreed. Granted, Tala dela Cruz Warnock was what it said on her passport, since the Makiling name was an infamous one, and her parents knew enough about the system to have taken earlier precautions. “So you have heard of