Page 5 of Darkest Magic

“I’m one of their community contacts that is allowed to recommend names should any arise.”

“Community contacts? What are they the secret service or something?”

Her mouth tightened at the corners. This wasn’t going the way she’d expected. “It’s mostly librarians and teachers, sometimes doctors in much smaller towns. People likely to notice unusual children who might otherwise be missed.”

Unusual. That was a loaded word. I pulled my new sleeve down over my wrist. “Did you recommend me?”

“I did.”

“When?” She did not answer quickly enough. “Ms. Mercer?”

“When you were eight.”

The room seemed to shrink in on itself for a moment as I processed that. Not visibly, everything remained where it was and its normal shape and size, but I felt squished and my perspective seemed to have shifted. Suddenly Edie Mercer wasn’t just the kind librarian that had looked out for me my whole childhood, she was cataloging me. At eight I’d been reading three grades above my peers and my father’s hours had just been cut, my mother had just picked up a night shift job cleaning offices, and I was learning how to microwave soup by myself. At eight she’d been watching.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you were brilliant.”

“That’s not what you mean.”

“No.” Her gaze fell to the box again. “No, it isn’t all I mean, but it’s the important part.”

The radiator in the room kicked and startled her. The printer in the next room chose that moment to clean the printer head and the familiar beep of someone checking out a book sounded in the background. All the sounds were normal parts of being in the library and yet they all sounded strange to me at that moment.

“I’ve seen bright children before,” Ms. Mercer said. “Not only that but I’ve seen hungry children, lonely ones, angry ones, children who read because a book is the only place they feel safe.” Her gaze shifted to meet mine. “You were all of those things and more. You always knew when someone was coming before they arrived. You could put your hand on a shelf and tell me the book I wanted was three rows over, and you were right more often than chance had any right to allow.”

“That was just good recall.”

“Sometimes,” she nodded slowly but her voice went sad as she added, “Sometimes it’s more than that.” She slid the gray box toward herself. “After I reported what happened at the Walkers’ home they sent an assessment.”

Reported. The word moved through me leaving a cold trail in its wake. “You told them about the fire.”

“I did. I told them you saved a child’s life.”

“Did you tell them I didn’t get hurt?” My voice came out sharper than I intended.

Her face went still, and there it was, the answer. “I didn’t know.”

“You suspected.”

“I hoped I was wrong.”

That almost made me laugh, but I swallowed it because if I let it out, I did not know what else would come with it. “What is in the box?”

“The assessment.”

“For what?”

“For whether the school will offer the place. It assesses your…aptitude for the things the school teaches.”

Magic, some part of me thought, and the rest of me rejected it so hard my jaw hurt. Magic was a word for books. Magic was a wardrobe, a ring, flying on a broom. Magic was the thing poor girls checked out and returned by the due date. It did not sit in a gray box at the Calder branch library while the woman who had taught me how to use interlibrary loan looked at my unburned arm and the unspoken questions swirled around us both.

She must have been able to sense my wariness because she said, “You don’t have to do this.”

“Will they leave me alone if I don’t?”

She looked away.