Magic for Liars

by Sarah Gailey

“Now, district policy states that we don’t provide any medications or potions that might induce adverse effects in a fetus being carried by a student we know to be pregnant.” She stared at me, unblinking, making sure I understood.

“If, hypothetically, a student came to me in the immediate aftermath of an accident, I could provide them with a potion that would prevent fetal implantation or induce a menstrual period. Either one would cause about thirty minutes of heavy bleeding followed by a bit of fatigue. If, hypothetically, a student came to me in the less-immediate aftermath of an accident—say, perhaps, anything earlier than nine weeks in—I could give her a pair of potions. She’d take the first one right away, and then spend the next three days bleeding and drinking the second one.”

“She would have to drink the second one every hour, on the hour, even at night. She would have to take it continuously, do you understand? But there would be no pain, no risk of infection, no nausea even. She’d feel fine. But I would give the girl the full day off of her classes in case she has a hard time emotionally. Hypothetically,” she said, her voice suddenly returning to full volume. “Not that I’ve ever provided a student with such a potion.”

“That’s not what I said, girl. Listen better next time.” Her voice was sharp.

“Theoretically? A healer can do anything,” she said, “but realistically, it’s just not possible to do that to someone.

Courtney caught me watching and lifted her hand in a wave, knocking one of the papers from her shirt. As it fell, it folded in the air, falling to the linoleum and bouncing high before falling a few feet away—an elaborate star.

I’d overheard just an hour before—if you tell anyone, I’ll say you’re a lying slut. She was afraid.

“All that’s gold doesn’t glitter.” Her eyes snapped to mine. She looked hunted. “What did you just say?” Bingo.

The Theoretical Magic section was still dizzying to look at, and I could hear the books inside whispering.

“If I had to guess?” she’d said. “The books whisper because they saw something so terrible and powerful happen. It’s part of why I don’t believe Sylvia had an ‘unfortunate accident’—it would take something big to make those books talk.”

“I had Tabitha working on it for a few weeks, but she said that it’s a new book-language, beyond what we can even begin to translate.”

I had to admit that I still had no idea if I was handling the investigation the right way. I usually

I felt like I was just barely keeping my head above water, swallowing brine with every new wave.

“You don’t know anything about me,” she said in a harsh whisper. “You don’t know anything about me and you don’t know anything about Dylan and I don’t have anything to tell you anyway, and it’s not like we did anything wrong—” I didn’t whisper like she had, but I kept my voice low. “I just want to ask you some questions. I don’t think you did anything wrong.”

“You’re right,” I said. “You’re absolutely fucking right.” She flinched when I swore. Good. “I’m not a cop, and I’m not a teacher, and I’m not your parents. I’m a private detective, and that means I get to decide what I tell people and what I don’t. It means I get to decide if I help you cover your ass or if I throw you right under the goddamned bus.

I’m giving you a chance to tell me why I shouldn’t cut my losses, tell the authorities that you’re the killer, and walk away from this shitshow of a case. So what’s it gonna be, Courtney?” She chewed her lip, wide-eyed. Cornered. She was out of options, and her tough-girl act was disintegrating.

“Do you ever feel afraid of Dylan?” She blinked at me, thought it over. I wondered if there was a possible situation, in any universe, when someone having to stop and think about that sort of question would indicate a good answer. “He’s going to be the most powerful mage in the world,” she said. “Of course I’m afraid sometimes. But he would never hurt me. At least, not on purpose.”

But, of course, it wasn’t different. It was right there on the Planned Parenthood website: what to expect after a medical abortion. It sounded exactly like the lines Courtney had fed me, down to the way she’d slipped up and said “pills” instead of “potions.” She was lying. And she wasn’t just lying in the moment—she had that explanation handy. She had looked it up ahead of time, if not for me then for someone else. She’d found a plausible story, she’d memorized the symptoms that would fit, and she’d tried to get me to buy it. “What are you hiding, Courtney?” I whispered it to myself, and the books seemed like they were trying to answer—but their answer was incomprehensible.

GambleGambleGambleWeKnowYouGambleDidYouGambleAreYou I paused by the end of the stacks and listened to the books seethe with my name.

She’d taught me how to find my way through what I thought was anger. It took me years to realize that she was actually teaching me how to find my way through fear.

I hated that fear.

I was back to being seventeen again, hyperventilating because everything was just Too Much.

“No story. There never is a story with her. I mean—it always seems like there could be a story, but she does damage control better than anyone I’ve ever seen. The hurricane always just misses her.” His brow furrowed. “Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that she always seems to be right in the eye of the hurricane. Which I guess would make Dylan the hurricane.”

“The ‘Alex’ thing,” I repeated. “She gets really pissed if anyone calls her that.” “Oh,” he said. “That. Well, when she got to this school, she went by Alex. I had her in my Intro to Phys class that year. She was really different then.”

“When she got here, she looked like that.” I realized that I was looking at his exact recollection of Alexandria from four years ago. Her hair was brown, with mistake-bangs, and she had crooked eyeteeth. She was smiling a wide, excited, can-I-sit-with-you smile. Her uniform shirt was misbuttoned. Her face was younger, that on-the-cusp face that girls get when they’re one summer away from coltish. She was pretty, sweet-looking. Her eyes weren’t shuttered yet.

“Then something changed. Like, overnight, she was practically a different person.”

“Alex DeCambray came back from Spring Break that year and she was blond, and her bangs had suddenly grown out, and she had all this … I don’t know. Charisma. And she wanted to be called ‘Alexandria,’” Rahul continued. “We’ve all tried to remember not to call her ‘Alex,’ but honestly, it’s such a natural abbreviation that it just slips out sometimes.”

I knew that she did poorly on the project because she hadn’t wanted to put the effort in, and I told her so. I said I’d pass her effort with a D-plus. But this is a pretty big project, so the D-plus would have brought her cumulative grade down from an A-minus to a B-minus. And I don’t grade on a curve, so—” “Um, Rahul—?” “Right, I know, that’s not the important part. I just.” He closed his eyes. “I just don’t want to talk about the next part.”

“So, she showed up in my classroom at the end of the day. I think she actually watched for everyone to start leaving. She said she’d forgotten something and needed to look for it. Once everyone else had cleared out, she came up to me and said that if I didn’t raise her grade, she’d go to Torres. She said that she’d tell Torres I was writing theory essays and selling them to my students.”

“The whole car. It had been turned into glass, and then shattered. Probably with a vibration-key spell.”

It was perfect. For a minute—just one, just long enough for me to close my teeth around his lower lip—I forgot about the whispers in the library and the lie of who he thought Ivy Gamble was and the bloodstain on the carpet and the students who may have committed murder. For that minute, the only thing making my heart pound was Rahul’s breath, whispering its way over the top of my tongue. For just that one minute, everything was okay.

“Hey, of course you’re good at this,” she said. “You’ve been doing this for … um, how long have you been doing this for?”

“I have complete faith in you,” she said. Her eyes were locked on mine. I realized I didn’t mind the way she changed them with her magic. It wasn’t so bad, if I just let go of the resentment I’d been clinging to for so long. If I did that, it felt less like looking into a flawed mirror, and more like looking at my sister. She bit her lip, then nodded, like she’d decided something.

The tiniest smile I’d ever seen tucked itself into the very corners of her mouth. “Yeah, well. I thought maybe I’d try not hiding for a change.”

The thought you probably shouldn’t tell her about this wandered through my mind and smashed into you’re pretty drunk and fuck it. Only fuck it survived the collision.

This was a performance we were putting on for each other. It was a shadow play of female camaraderie. I found that I didn’t mind so much, as long as we were both pretending together.

I wanted her to confide in me so badly just then. I wanted us to share something, some secret,

“I hesitate to bring it up, because it’s from right befor—” she said. “Sylvia said that she was … worried.” “Worried?” I said. “Or scared?”

Tabitha made a scrunch-mouthed face. “Well, I guess Alexandria needed something. A potion.” She looked around, making sure no one could hear. She was reminding me of someone, but I couldn’t place who. She leaned in, sotto voce: “She needed an abortion potion.”

“She didn’t get it, because her friend was too far gone for the potion to work. Ten weeks. Sylvia said no. She told Alexandria that the potion wouldn’t work after ten weeks.”

“Anyway, I guess Alexandria wanted the potion. She thought Sylvia was saying no because of some moral objection. Sylvia told me that Alexandria showed up in her office and started making threats, saying that she was going to tell everyone that she’d seen us together if Sylvia didn’t hand over the potion.”

“So Sylvia said there was no way she was going to hand over the potion?” Something about this wasn’t fitting right, but I couldn’t quite remember. All of the interviews I’d done ran together, muddy in my drunk memory.

“Well. Strange. That the last time Alexandria DeCambray blackmailed a teacher and didn’t get her way, she got aggressive. And then she tried to blackmail Sylvia and didn’t get her way, and now … Sylvia’s dead.”

The cab ride back to Osthorne was strange. I told the driver I had a migraine—it was the closest thing to the truth I could find. I didn’t feel properly drunk, but something in my head felt … wrong.

couldn’t remember anything until the next morning, waking up on her bedroom floor with a raging headache and a wide, blank swath cut through my memory.

I know I can eliminate fatigue, and if I can do that then I can work hard enough, I just need to work hard enough how can I work hard enough

drawing a spiderweb that spread across multiple walls. In the center of the web was that single bold phrase: It was positive.

As soon as I finished writing their names down, the ringing sensation in my skull faded away. It left exhaustion in its wake.

WHEN I WOKE LATE THAT morning, the sense of clarity I’d had the night before started to slip. I felt off-center. Something had slid out of alignment in the night.

I felt certain that if I could get away from them for just a little while, I could find the thing I’d had a hold on the night before.