Rivalries: Chapter Two, Part One

Notes: It's my birthday, yaaaay! Have some story to celebrate with me :)

Title: Rivalries: Chapter Two, Part One

***

Rivalries: Chapter Two, Part One

 

The sophomores were almost as easy as the freshmen—not as innocent, but not as tutored in using their knacks yet either. There were the standouts among the class of twenty-one, but none of them were approaching mastery yet. The closest were the pair of twin crossovers, ornamentalists to the outside world and mentalists with each other. They’d been practicing together for years, and could talk to each other psychically. They were smug about their powers as only prodigies could be.

“We’ve been good at this for ages, Mr. Verlaine,” the one with the shorter hair—Sophia—said, glancing slyly in her sister’s direction.

“Really good,” her twin, Grace, said. A second later their images wavered, then reformed. Each girl was sitting in the other’s seat now. Grace tossed her long brown hair over her shoulder and grinned as the rest of the class snickered. Apparently this wasn’t a new trick.

Wait until the military gets ahold of you. There’s no way you’re headed anywhere else with knacks like that. Charlie could already see it in his head—they’d be incredible assets, but also incredible risks. What if one could feel the other’s pain under extreme conditions? They’d have to learn to put up barriers, and it would be excruciating, and when they finally learned what “alone” was for the first time one of both of them might have a mental breakdown.

He’d seen it before, in some young recruits who’d come on at the same time he had. They’d both washed out, their knacks fundamentally damaged after intense training. He hadn’t kept up with them. He hadn’t wanted to—it would have been too depressing. The rate of suicide among those with damaged knacks was high, and the highest percentage of people with damaged knacks came from the military. People like him.

The tittering was dying away into an uncomfortable silence. Charlie forced a smile. “That’s quite good. Can you do it while running?”

Sophie frowned. “Why would we need to do that?”

Charlie bit his tongue against the truth. “It’s always a good idea to push what you can do,” he replied. “Even if you’re out of breath, even if you’re tired, you want to be able to use your knack convincingly. Any other ornamentalists in the room?” Three other kids raised their hands, two boys and another girl. “Great. Can any of you cast an illusion while running?”

“I can,” one of the boys replied. He had hair that was just millimeters away from being a buzzcut, and the squared shoulders of a child who’d been called to attention more than he’d been hugged. “Not really elaborate ones, just, trees and stuff, but my dad makes me work on it.”

This kid almost certainly had a military father. “You’ll be a good help on that subject then,” Charlie said, and the kid beamed. “All right, where are my elementals?”

The kids were more than happy to show off their skills, and by the end of class Charlie felt like he was getting a handle on what they could all do. He took a break for lunch—brought from home, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a side of tabbouleh—then met with the juniors.

The juniors were next-level serious, facing the crushing pressure of a year that could make or break them educationally while also trying to refine their knacks to a point where they could say they had general mastery. There were twenty of them, and they ran the gamut from stone-faced to jittery to overly ingratiating and bubbly. Charlie knew nerves when he saw them in action, and these kids were nervous.

“What about the standard tests for knack knowledge and practical workmanship?” one of the kids, a girl with short brown and blue hair in the very front row asked as soon as he opened things up to questions. “Can you teach to the test?”

“I could,” which was slightly a lie, because he hadn’t gone over the test material yet, but he could get those resources at any time, “but that would be a mistake.”

“It’s never a mistake to teach to the test!” the girl replied, aghast at the very suggestion. “How else are we supposed to get top grades on it? If I don’t get rated ‘Exceptional’ with my knack, I won’t make it into the university I need to graduate from!”

Charlie pushed aside everything that was wrong with that sentence in his mind—and there was a lot to unpack there—and checked his attendance sheet one more time. “Dahlia Moore, right? Mental knack?”

“Persuasion,” she said confidently.

Oh, damn. “What are the top five professions for someone with a persuasive knack?”

“Politics, sales and marketing, healthcare, media and communications, and influencer.”

Charlie shook his head. “Wrong. Those are professions that benefit from having a persuasive knack, but your ability to use it is rigidly circumscribed by law. You’re not allowed to make people do things that they don’t want to do, in general society. That includes influencing voters, forcing them to take certain pills, getting them to sign contracts that are injurious to their personal finances…”

Dahlia looked offended. “I would never do any of that!”

“It’s easy to think that now, but the truth is, people with knacks like yours in visible professions are never trusted. You’d either have to keep your knack a secret, which is illegal, or go to work in an invisible profession. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

“But…I don’t…” She bit her lip and looked down.

“You want to excel,” Charlie said gently. He looked around the room. “All of you want to excel with your knacks. You want to be the best, and that’s a great goal. But you need to think long and hard on precisely what aspect of your knack you want to be the best at. Persuasive knacks can get good work in the government, but if you’re not careful you’ll be pulled straight into black ops. Do some research on it and get back to me, okay? We’ll look at refining your goals for your knack, and what you need to do to accomplish them. That goes for all of you,” he added. “If you have your future planned out and know exactly what you want to do, that’s great. Just make sure that your skills support your goals.”

“What if our knack is useless?” a boy in the back spoke up, sounding bored.

Charlie frowned. “Like what?”

“Like mine. I always know how to find up and down.”

Huh. Charlie had never heard of a knack quite like that. There had to be more to it. “When you say up and down…”

“Up.” The kid pointed at the ceiling. “Down.” He pointed at the floor. “When they tested me as a kid they had me do it dizzy, in midair, underwater…I can always tell up and down.”

“You might make a great rescue diver with a knack like that,” Charlie offered. “Especially in caves and caverns. Or if your knack is somehow gravity-centric, I wonder what it would do in space? How’s your math?”

“Good,” the kid said, sitting up a little.

“You might be able to do some really cool experiments on the space station with a knack like yours,” Charlie said, warming to the idea. “Like, fundamentals of physics cool.”

Another boy raised his hand. “What about me! My knack is physical, I can lift five times my body weight, but I don’t want to go into search and rescue because I’m afraid of tight spaces.”

“There are so many other great options for strength knacks,” Charlie assured him. “Let’s see…”

The hour he spent with the juniors was the most interesting and active yet. By the time the final class of the day rolled around, Charlie was feeling pretty good about his first day.

Then he met the seniors.

Rivalries: Chapter One, Part Two

Notes: The school day begins! Have a little more background on knacks :)

Title: Rivalries: Chapter One, Part Two

***

Rivalries: Chapter One, Part Two

 

“Mr. Verlaine.” The principal, Georgia Cross, met him at the door to his new office with a neutral look and a prim, uncomfortable handshake. “Delighted you could make it. You were very nearly on time, too.”

“My first class isn’t until third period,” he pointed out.

“That’s hardly the point. You’re paid to be here for the entire day, not just when you’re working and not just when it suits you. Is that clear?”

As clear as your dislike. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You will not ‘ma’am’ me,” she said, stepping back so he could get into the classroom. It was the first time he’d seen it in person, a room with twenty or so desks in it, a pretty decent audio-visual setup—and why wouldn’t it be, when at Euryale Academy the parents shelled out twenty-five grand a year for their kids to be educated—and a desk at the front that was clearly intended for a much smaller person. Charlie looked sidelong at the chair. He didn’t personally know Miss Wydell, the teacher he was replacing, but she couldn’t be more than five-foot-two.

“You will call me ‘Principal Cross’ or simply ‘Principal’ when you refer to me,” she continued. “I require the same from all my faculty and students. While we are a school with deep ties to the military community—” meaning that a disproportionate number of the Academy’s students were the children of high-ranking officers who worked in DC or Langley “—it is not something we advertise.”

No, only in your recruiting materials.

Principal Cross turned and looked at him. Her face was thin, and striking in its intensity, but there wasn’t a hint of friendliness to be found there. “The fact that you are retired military will not have an effect on your treatment at this Academy. You will be neither lionized nor censured for your service, is that clear? I don’t want your students developing some sort of ill-conceived notion of hero worship for you. You will not use these students as a means of bolstering your own self-image due to whatever your circumstances are.” Her look at his bare right side was pointed. “Is that understood?”

God, Charlie wished his hands—hand—was free so he could casually stick it in his pocket. Maybe roll back and forth on the balls of his feet, whistle a little tune. This woman was so sternly full of herself she didn’t realize how she came off. You’re like the worst, most ineffective kind of drill sergeant—the kind that will micromanage you to death but lead from behind if real trouble starts. “Understood, Principal,” he said instead.

“Good. You have your lesson plan. I suggest you stick to it.” She turned to leave.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Charlie added as she walked away, “what’s your knack, Principal?”

She paused in the doorway, but only partially turned to face him. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re the principal of one of the most prestigious magical academies on the east coast,” Charlie said easily. “I figured you had to have a knack to work here.”

Her back stiffened so much it was like she’d rammed a rod up the middle of her spine. “Don’t presume to cozen personal information out of me, Mr. Verlaine,” she snapped. “A knack is not required to work here, which is certainly fortunate for you, isn’t it?” She left without answering the question, and with a parting jab that shouldn’t have stung as much as it did.

Charlie heaved a sigh and put his briefcase on the desk. First order of business—adjust the seat. Second order of business—go over the lesson plans again. He was pretty sure he had them memorized at this point, but that was small comfort.

A little tinkering got the chair to where it needed to be. He opened up his briefcase and pulled out his tablet, opening it up to the plans. He’d have four classes to teach three times a week, between fifteen and twenty-two students in each. The in-class work wasn’t the bulk of his responsibilities, though—that was reserved for the training grounds. Still, better to start with the classes.

The freshmen group would be easy. Introduction to various schools of knacks—pure mental, pure physical, ornamental, elemental, and crossovers. A little history, but mostly exploration of what they could do. About one percent of the population of the United States was born with a knack, and only ten percent of that had one that was powerful enough to warrant training. That amounted to a little over three hundred thousand people who needed schooling in their gifts, which was for the most part taken care of privately. Public schools didn’t have the resources in place to effectively protect or handle the kids with knacks, and while they generally looked like normal, everyday children, some of their manifestations could be frightening. People who could afford it chose places like Euryale Academy, with conduits to prestigious universities, elite jobs, and political connections.

People who couldn’t afford Euryale went somewhere else with their kids. Somewhere like the place Charlie had gotten his high school education, Euryale’s impoverished sister school Stheno High, about twenty miles and a million bucks away from here. That was where the military really liked to have a presence—where the kids were too desperate for a future using their knacks to truly question how they got there.

Charlie shook his head and refocused. Sophomores got more basic info coupled with group activities for the different schools of knack. Juniors got more focused attention on where their knacks could be used in society, while seniors…shit, why did he have a senior class anyway? In a place like this, those kids would be very accustomed to their knacks by now—they’d have a clear path ahead of them, educationally. So what was he supposed to do with them three times a week?

One on one training. Well, that was something he could do, but the teaching suggestions were so boring. “Encourage ornamentalists to work on specific illusions! Allow mentalists to attempt various mental locks on each other—remember, dampening equipment at all times!” Ugh, dampening equipment—helmets and pads designed to reduce the effectiveness of knacks. It worked decently well for high school students, but by the time you got into the forces, you were trained to strike through dampening equipment. It was dangerous to get too reliant on it.

This would be so much fucking easier if Charlie’s own knack was working. He raised his left hand slowly, holding it out in half of the traditional shield triangle in front of him. He could feel the knack inside of him, its power pulsing like a busted electrical cable, sputtering and eventually flickering out when it got no release. It just didn’t work without the shield symbol, the physical funnel through which Charlie’s knack let go. It was how he’d trained from a young age, and while he knew that there were people changing the dynamic now, people who said the brain could learn to rechannel the knack if it was still plastic enough, his wasn’t. He was too old to learn a new way to channel his power, a new way to live.

You’re only twenty-nine, you jackass, a little voice in his head pointed out. He ignored it and kept going through the lesson plan.

After another hour and a half, his first class arrived. It was the freshmen, eighteen of them, fresh-faced and hesitant, and so fucking young Charlie almost felt his heart break just looking at them. As soon as the bell rang, he started out at their apprehensive faces and made a decision. He got out from behind his desk and sat on the front of it, so that they could clearly see him—all of him, there and not.

A few kids murmured uncertainly, and one kid’s jaw dropped. “Welcome to the knack class,” Charlie said conversationally. “I’m Mr. Verlaine, I’ll be your teacher until Miss Wydell comes back. I know a lot of you probably already understand your knacks pretty well. Some of you might not. That’s okay. No matter where you’re starting from, I’m here to help you figure this out. I’ve worked with people from all schools, and seen more crossovers than you can count. You can ask any question you want, and as long as it’s not privileged information, I’ll do my best to answer it. Okay?” Eighteen heads nodded. “Great. Now…” He looked down at his tablet. “Roll call.”

Quick message re: commenting

Hey darlins,

For some reason I can't comment on my own blog right now, and not for several months. I'm working on it, but in the meantime, if you comment, please know that I love you! YOU ESPECIALLY, RC, yeah I'm talking to you :) Thanks for your kind words and encouragement, comments really do help motivate me to keep going with this blog in the face of local upheaval, global uncertainty, keeping up with a toddler, and hustling for work.

Cari :)

Rivalries: Chapter One, Part One

Notes: NEW STORY, NEW STORY, NEW STORY! My magical academy story Rivalries starts today! Get you some conflicted teachers, enemies to lovers (eventually), slow burn romance, and more powers than you can shake a stick at. It's going to be fun :)

Title: Rivalries: Chapter One, Part One

***

Rivalries: Chapter One, Part One

 

He’s staring across the testing field at a young man—a boy—half a head shorter than him, dark haired and wide eyed, but with a flinty set to his jaw. There’s a trickle of blood running down the boy’s chin, and Charlie feels bad but he also feels powerful, like his knack is running through his whole body and he could cast a shield in any direction. He feels like the shield he should be, strong, like he knew his mother was.

Everyone is watching, and Charlie knows this is his chance to choose. Which way will he go? Does he tone it down, rein it in? Does he stop pushing, when he knows there’s nothing to push against?

“Ready…steady…now!”

Charlie’s knack rumbles through him like a roll of thunder, tethering him to the ground as he stretches both arms out in front of him. The shield emerges like a storm-gray soap bubble, thinning at the edges but so, so strong in the middle. It’s never been so strong before, so powerful. He gasps as it leaves him, and gathers his breath. By the time he screams “No!” though, the shield has already hit the boy. He flies backward, and—

 

 

“Cast quickly enough and you can climb a wall with those tethers,” his drill instructor is saying, glaring at the group of shields like they’ve personally inconvenienced him. “The power holds you down to whatever you’re standing on, as long as it’s solid. You cast this on water, you’re going to be in for a hell of a shock when you go flying backward. Cast the shields down and behind you so that you learn how to fight against gravity’s pull. Yes,” he adds when some of the other shields’ jaws drop, “you’ve got to learn to cast a shield behind you, unless you want to walk up a wall backward.”

He grins. “Get ready to learn how to be Spiderman, shields. And don’t worry. We’ve got our healing cadets on hand to give their own abilities a workout fixing any bumps, bruises, or breaks.”

“Breaks?” one of the other men whispers anxiously. The drill instructor hears him.

“Yes, breaks! What the hell did you expect, we’d have you learning this in a padded room with a levitator on hand to keep you from falling on your heads? This is the army, cadet, and you’re not getting paid to be coddled!” The drill instructor moves close to the brick wall behind him. “Now, watch me do it, then you try.” And he’s off without another word, tiny red shields impacting the dirt like drops of blood as he slowly, casually walks up the wall.

 

 

Charlie is laden with heavy equipment, but he hardly feels it through his focus. He sees his target—in the center of the compound, tied and made to swim in the middle of a pool of water. These fuckers are smart, they know Delta Force was the most likely to come after this guy, and they know their specialty is shielding. If they had someone with a water elemental knack in their troop, like the SEALS, it would be a different story.

Still, they’ve got their orders, and he can do his part. Infiltrate the building. Retrieve the target. Return him unharmed to the embassy. “Got me covered?” he asks his sniper.

“All clear,” she says, not bothering with a scope—her knack is farsight, she’s a natural killer with a gun. “You’re good to go.”

He doesn’t waste more time talking, just heads for the nearest wall and, quickly and quietly, walks up it in a crouch. The color of his shields are a boon for night work—dark grey is a lot more covert than red or blue, which are far more common. He’s up on top of the wall and over it in an instant, checks in both directions for watchers, then levers himself over and runs along the side of the compound’s outer wall, shields a murmuring wave against the ground.

He almost loses his balance when a fighter turns around and sees him, raising their rifle and spewing bullets in his direction, but he manages to free one hand for a quick shield blast before putting both back to use holding himself up. The ground between him and the pool is covered with mines—only the fighters in their cordoned-off zone and the pool itself are free of them. “Full coverage,” he requests, and his sniper starts firing a moment later. She’s picking people off—they don’t want to spook them into killing the target, so a large-scale assault is out of the question until he’s got the target secure.

Bullets are flying. He’s grazed by one, but he barely notices the pain. He musters all his power for the thirty-foot jump he’ll have to make to the middle of the compound, then blasts the wall behind him with a shield. It sends him soaring through the air, exhilarating but also dangerous—he can’t shield right now, not when he isn’t tethered. Please let me hit the water, please let me hit the water…

He plunges into the water less than a foot from the target, who is swimming very weakly now. He takes a deep breath, lets himself sink to the bottom next to the wall, and blows the side of the pool out. The water drains away, and he catches the target before he hits the ground.

Charlie pulls him in close and tethers tightly, then uses his newest trick—a stationary shield that covers both of them in a half-circle, like a localized storm cloud. They’re being shot at, he can hear the bullets, but he can’t see them—his knack is rumbling through him like a freight train, and it’s all he can do to hold onto it while his team, seeing the target is secure, launches the assault they’ve been waiting for.

The little boy in his arms looks up at him, then tucks his face against Charlie’s neck. They—

 

 

—fire on all sides, and he can’t use his knack because there’s nothing beneath him, the floor has melted away and all he can do is fall, and he hears a scream and he thinks it might be him but it doesn’t matter now, because he has to shield to save himself but he can’t, he can’t, he can’t—

 

 

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep… Charlie finally reached over and slammed his hand down on his alarm clock, silencing it. His head ached like someone had driven an ice pick through it, and his eyes were gritty in the corners. When he reached up to wipe it away, he felt the tear tracks on his face. “Great,” he muttered. “Just great.” This was a fantastic start to his first day at his new job.

He got out of bed, scratching his hand through his hair as he headed for the bathroom. He didn’t bother to look at himself in the mirror—he knew what he’d see, and he hadn’t liked it for almost a year now. A year of moldering away in Intensive Care and psych wards. A year of rebuilding and rehab, and who did they even build? Somebody, I guess. But the somebody he was now felt nothing like the man he used to be.

Charlie got into the shower, careful to keep the temperature low—hot water still burned pretty brightly against some of his wounds. He washed up, paying extra attention to his hair. Shit, it was so long now. He hadn’t had hair longer than half an inch for nearly a decade. He’d have to get it cut soon, but for now…

He got out of the shower, toweled off, brushed his teeth and shaved, trying to make peace with how long it all took. He got dressed—fucking buttons, seriously—and made a cup of coffee, pouring it down his throat in his haste to get out the door so he could make it to the academy on time. He checked his phone—forty-five minutes. He could do this.

He couldn’t keep himself from taking one little glance at himself in the bathroom mirror, though. This was the first time in a long time he’d bothered to try and make himself presentable, except for the interview and training, and those had both taken place entirely online, so he’d been able to wear a nice shirt and sweatpants.

His dark blond hair was neatly styled, his Academy tie was tied—thanks, YouTube, for showing him how to get a pre-knotted tie over his head and snugged up—his jacket was on, his pants were pressed. He looked…good, if you discounted the dark circles under his eyes.

Oh, yeah, and the lack of a right hand and forearm.

The urge to bust the mirror out with a quick shield was almost overwhelming, but Charlie resisted trying. He didn’t have time to clean up glass. Besides, it had been too long since he’d cast a shield—he didn’t know what would come out of him now, and he wasn’t about to find out.

That’s what rehab is for, jackass. Right now you’re wasting commute time. Get to work, Charlie Verlaine.

New Release: Luckless!

Hi darlins!

I have a new release today that I'm really excited about. This one has been a whirlwind--I wrote it over two years ago for Riptide, then pulled it from them for reasons which many of you know, then sent it in to Tor.com and almost--almost!--got accepted by them. Seriously, it was the most flattering rejection letter I've ever gotten before or since, but it was still a no. I was starting to think I should change the title.

Eventually I decided to self-publish, and today's the day! Luckless is a story about monsters and dragons and a city under siege, but it's also about second chances, new love, and family. It's one of my favorites, and I hope you enjoy it too.

Luckless on Amazon

Evan Luck is a dragon rider with no dragon. Five years ago, his dragon gave her life defending the monster-ridden remnants of Marble, and ever since, his ability to connect empathically to another dragon had been as broken as his heart. Now he spends his days dodging his disappointed mayor, crafting arrows, fighting off the not-as-legendary-as-they-should-be beasts that’ve overrun America, and just trying to get by in the city of Forge.

But when he meets newcomer Lee Caldwell, Evan thinks his lonely luck might be changing. Lee is the only person in the city who doesn’t blame Evan for his dragon’s death, and he welcomes Evan into his own little family. There’s more to Lee than meets the eye, though, and between his refusal to talk about himself, pressure from the mayor to split them up, and a monster attacking the city’s foundations, Evan isn’t sure he’ll live long enough to learn the truth.

But not learning the truth will almost certainly be fatal, both to Evan and Lee’s budding relationship, and to the entire city.