As Isis sank back into her seat, relief washed over her, somewhat diminishing the cold sweat she’d been feeling. She couldn’t even hear Mr. Zachary, her compatriot at the end of the alphabet, stumbling through his own levitation of an empty snail shell. So far a combination of written exams and being at the end of the alphabet with Zachary had meant Isis had been called upon to do relatively little magic. This had been her first public test, and she had pulled it off flawlessly and fooled everyone.

Once Zachary was done and the class had broken up for the next period, which was study hall, Ms. Maxine beckoned Isis over. “I shared your little trick with some of the other teachers on our group text,” she said, “and Principal Ember wrote back that he would like to have a word with you during study hall. Will you go to him now, please? Here’s a hall pass.”

The teacher thrust an ornately engraved and quite ensorcled scrap of paper at Isis, who took it with a smile. “Of course, Ms. Maxine,” she said with a slight curtsey. “I’ll go there right away.”

Instead of coatracks, the classroom had a series of cages where the students kept their familiars during class. Some world watch with great interest, others would sleep or play.

Then there was Rowan, Isis’s familiar.

“So I couldn’t hear what was being said,” the crow croaked in his hollow voice as he hopped onto Isis’s arm. “Permanent aura of silence on the cage and all. So I passed the time by making up funny things that matched the way peoples’ lips were moving. You shoulda seen it when your teacher said ‘scratch the purple worm, dummy, and then eat it raw!'”

Rowan wasn’t a real familiar, of course. Isis couldn’t afford a real familiar anymore than she could afford a real wand in place of the stick of dead wood she waved around. No, Rowan was just a crow from her old neighborhood that she had befriended with peanuts and kindness, wearing the small band common to all the familiars that allowed them to have an instinctive, telepathic link with their students.

“Did you see me in there? How they ate it all up?” said Isis. Well, it was more of a thought rather than speech, but it seemed as much with Rowan, anyhow.

“You made that twig float like it had wings,” said Rowan–again, more of a thought, but still. “How the heck did you pull that off?”

Isis rolled up her right sleeve and held out her arm–they were walking through an empty hall toward the principal’s office, after all, with no one to see or hear.

“Old family secret,” she said, grasping a bit of monofilament fishing line that was tied to the wood. It was magic, of a sort: the sleight-of-hand that street magicians used. The sort that her brother Isaac had taught her and that they’d practiced endlessly together into the night. At least, until he’d died.

“I’m amazed they didn’t see through that,” Roman croaked. “I thought this was supposed to be a school for smart people.”

“People see what they want to see,” Isis said. Isaac had been right about that much, at least so far. “Besides,” she added. “It’s a school for people who are gifted at magic, not who are smart.”

“From what I’ve seen it’s a school for stuck-up rich people who waste food,” Rowan replied. “Care to offer an unsalted peanut to a bird in need?”

Isis produced one from the folds of her robe and Rowan greedily seized it. “Just be sure to take some water soon, too, okay?”

“Yeah,” Isis said. “I was really hoping for more.”

“It’s to be expected,” said Rowan. “If the principal really does have a document that says ‘we killed Isaac Wright and are proud of it’ they’re probably not going to leave it just lying around, are they?”

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