This Lightning Storm, Chapter One

Handshakes. Applause. Cameras flashing. Another name called. Again, and again, and again. Vivienne checked her wrist for the seventh time since the ceremony began and, for the seventh time, sighed in irritation when she remembered she taken her watch off this morning. She lowered her hand to her lap and stared at the contrast instead, light-brown fingers splayed over the cream fabric of her skirt, the red ribbon on her diploma peeking out from under her thumb. It matched her nails, which she’d painted for the occasion.

Boredom gnawed at the pit of her stomach. Forty-six of her formmates had received their diplomas already, including herself; thirty-eight remained, including Heather Murray, who’d just been called up. The commencement was already pushing two hours, and Vivienne felt like ants were marching up and down her skin. Her bones itched wherever her magic had grown into them, along her ribcage and down the length of her spine. She closed her eyes and counted breaths.

One. Two. Three.

A clatter and a startled rush of murmuring—Vivienne looked up to see Heather Murray picking herself up from the grass, ugly crimson blotches spreading across her cheeks as she snatched up her boater and settled it back on her messy updo. Wisps of ginger hair dangled in her face as she hurried back to her seat a few chairs down from Vivienne, her diploma clutched in her hands.

Four. Five.

She almost hissed at Greg Novak, who sauntered up to the stage at a pace more suited to elderly persons with walkers than an eighteen-year-old football prodigy and then took his sweet time posing for photographers as Headmaster Commons handed over his diploma. Her spine tingled as the magic rose to the surface in response to her irritation; it could light Greg on fire, if she wanted it to, or it could flay him alive or summon grave-hounds from the Bone Place to tear him to shreds.

Vivienne pushed it down and sliced away the tendril of compulsion that had slid into her mind along with the images. In the two years since she’d welcomed the magic into her body, such maneuvers had become almost automatic. Her magic settled back into her vertebrae with something like resignation, and she closed her eyes again.

Six. Seven. Eight. Nine.

Jessica Kerry sniffled beside her. Vivienne sent her an incredulous look. The other girl had lived in Vivienne’s dorm every single year with the exception of First Form, and spent most of last year hiding from Ben Sacco in Vivienne’s room. Vivienne had never seen her cry, not even the day her then-roommate outed her to their Fifth Form English class, but now Jessica had twin streams of tears making tracks down her rounded cheeks.

Vivienne nudged an elbow into her ribs and raised an eyebrow.

“Shut up,” Jessica muttered, gulping. “I’m gonna miss it.”

She pulled a soft blue handkerchief from the front of her dress and daubed at her eyes. Vivienne patted her shoulder and tried to look non-judgmental. “I’m not,” she said. Developing control over her magic and working her ass off to guarantee her acceptance into Brown had been the only things that kept herself from ripping her own face off from sheer boredom this past semester. Another year at Groton would have killed her.

“Not even a little?”

Vivienne snorted, ignoring the glares this drew from the people around them. “Everything I didn’t throw away last week has already been shipped back to New York. Three hours from now I’m getting on a train from Boston to go home. I broke up with Warner this morning. My bridges are burnt, Jess, and they’re staying that way.”

Jessica had quirked an eyebrow at the mention of Vivienne’s former boyfriend, but she didn’t comment. “You’d better at least email,” she said. “Queer girls have to stick together, right?”

In all honesty, Vivienne hadn’t intended to keep in touch with any of her formmates. Even her friends just knew the shy-but-brilliant persona she’d cultivated here; she doubted any of them would stick around long if they knew how she actually thought. But Jessica was headed to the prelaw program at the University of Georgia this fall, and, like Vivienne, she had her long-term sights set on Harvard Law. Keeping in contact with her couldn’t hurt.

“Sure,” Vivienne said. Jessica clasped her wrist and squeezed gently.

“You’d better,” she said again.

Vivienne nodded, and Jessica let go of her wrist. Vivienne settled her hands in her lap once more and tipped her head back to examine the roof of the tent shielding them from the blazing late-June sunlight. She started counting breaths again.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

They were down to twenty-four. Vivienne tapped out a tattoo against her knee as Ruan Meiling received her diploma, beaming. She had a blue flower pinned behind her ear, and her boater tilted to one side to avoid crushing the petals.

Twenty-three.

Ben Sacco followed Meiling and tipped his boater to the cameras with an unctuous smirk that made Vivienne want to slap him. When he left the stage, he jumped from the last step and clicked his heels together before he landed, to general laughter. Her magic offered to break his ankles for her and Vivienne pushed it down, smiling grimly.

Twenty-two more.

She shifted in her seat, wishing she could extend her legs further. They were too long for Vivienne to sit comfortably in this chair without stretching them out, and digging trenches in the grass with the heels of her shiny red pumps would have given her something to do.

But that would be undignified.

Eight. Nine.

She could feel her eyes beginning to glaze over, and at this point, Vivienne didn’t care enough to stop her thoughts when they started to wander. She had better things to do than pay attention.

A week ago, a dragon reserve in Ontario had lost one of its juveniles. The thing had showed up a day later in downtown Minneapolis, trying to nest on the north bank of the Mississippi. Forty-three people had died, a miraculously low death toll due mainly to the fact that the dragon was too young to flame. Thousands of mundanes had seen the damn thing, and footage of the beast dropping out of the sky in the final hours of Northern Spark got splashed all over the internet.

Even the concerted efforts of the International Federation of Arcanists and CEDAR, a US-based organization that was the de facto arcanist government in North America, were insufficient to cover it up. Already weakened by the growing popularity of the internet combined with camera phones and security cameras, the masquerade popped like a fragile soap bubble.

The whole world plunged ahead like a runaway horse while Vivienne had to sit on a too-short folding chair draped in blue fabric and watch her formmates lurch across the stage in slow-motion.

It made her want to scream.

Ten.

She held her breath and let it out very, very slowly. A warm breeze swept through the open sides of the tent and threatened to knock her boater off her head. Her hair ruffled against the side of her neck.

Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.

Headmaster Commons droned on. The last eighteen Groton graduates made their procession across the stage, and Vivienne clenched her fists in her lap and endured.

•

June. July. Record-breaking heat and an internship with Brandt Martin & Huffman. Easy work—paper-pushing and note-taking. Vivienne could see a sliver of Central Park from the window by the desk she used, see tourists making a world wonder out of a dusty shopping mall while she shuffled exhibits and depositions.

Her brain felt perpetually in danger of leaking out of her ears.

She passed boredom and rocketed straight into ennui. Hunger to do something—anything—exciting warred with intractable lethargy.

I am better than this. I am more than this.

In mid-July, she took the A train to visit CEDAR’s offices in Brooklyn and almost screamed from pure frustration when she found that it had, against all odds, been passed over by the ubiquitous protesters. For a while she dithered on the sidewalk in front, wondering if it would be worth it to go in and harass the receptionist.

It would be beneath her.

Or she could reveal herself as a conduit of the Bone Place. Fending off would-be executioners and evading arrest would at least break up the monotony.

Best not.

Her magic flexed in her bones as she walked away, sending shocks of pain pinging through her torso. It could burn away these stifling shrouds of boredom. It could show her passion that burned so bright nothing could ever muffle it. It could fill the emptiness.

She need only let it out, and nothing would ever feel stale again.

Vivienne slapped it down, disgusted by how tempted she felt. Giving in meant losing herself; her mind would scatter into tiny fragments and get washed away into the sea of the Bone Place, and all that would remain was a body chock full of raw, wild magic. That was not a solution.

All the same, she was tempted.

Pathetic.

•

From: madeline_torres@brown.edu

To: vivienne_kensington@brown.edu

Date: Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 3:37 AM

Subject: hey

just got the message that we’re going to be roommates, so i figured i’d say hi.

hope you’re as excited about the whole college thing as i am.

cheers,

maddie

From: vivienne_kensington@brown.edu

To: madeline_torres@brown.edu

Date: Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 6:07 PM

Subject: Re: hey

I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’re international and that time stamp isn’t indicative of your actual sleeping habits.

No, I’m not excited.

—V

From: madeline_torres@brown.edu

To: vivienne_kensington@brown.edu

Date: Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 4:58 AM

Subject: Re: hey

harlem, darling.

just for you, i stayed up an extra hour this time.

why aren’t you excited?

kisses,

maddie

From: vivienne_kensington@brown.edu

To: madeline_torres@brown.edu

Date: Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 6:21 PM

Subject: Re: hey

If you call me darling again I’m going to set fire to your bed.

I see no point in getting excited about things I’m abundantly prepared for. Nor do I relish the thought of spending the next semester living with a grown woman who still signs her emails with kisses.

—V

From: madeline_torres@brown.edu

To: vivienne_kensington@brown.edu

Date: Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 2:42 AM

Subject: Re: hey

the lady doth protest too much, methinks.

hearts and flowers and pretty pink ponies,

maddie

•

Madeline Torres had no Facebook profile, no Twitter account that Vivienne could find, no blog, no email addresses other than her Brown account, no presence on the internet whatsoever. Dedicated searching turned up an Alice Torres living in East Harlem, but still no sign of Madeline.

A spark of curiosity caught in Vivienne’s chest, and the lethargic, suffocating pall began to smolder.

•

She moved to Providence on the last day of August. The temperature flirted with triple digits, and Morriss Hall was not air-conditioned, so moving in proved a laborious process even with the spells knotted around all of Vivienne’s things to make them light and easier to carry. By the time she’d finished getting everything up to her room on the fourth floor, her shirt had been glued to her back with sweat and she felt in very real danger of melting.

And to add insult to injury, Madeline arrived before she did and had already claimed the better half of the furniture and spread an appallingly saccharine violet comforter over her bed. It had flowers, and glitter.

Madeline had left a fan in the corner, at least, and Vivienne melted in front of it. She wished, not for the first time, that she could bend her magic to climate control. That was a particular skill of Mother’s, though not one Vivienne had ever managed herself. The best she could do was to wick moisture out of her clothes so she at least looked presentable, even if she felt half a degree away from collapsing into a puddle.

The door opened. Vivienne refrained from scrambling to her feet and raised one eyebrow instead. She was sitting on the floor, yes, and for two weeks she’d been itching to get a good look at Madeline, but that didn’t mean she had to act undignified.

She swept through the doorway in a flurry of long limbs and waves of thick red hair that had somehow escaped the humidity unscathed. Vivienne’s breath caught in her throat; the dry lightness of written word had done nothing to prepare her for the unfiltered reality of Madeline Torres.

“Hi,” Madeline said. She stared at Vivienne with open fascination, her eyes glassy and her mouth open just enough to reveal pristine white teeth and a tongue the color of ripe cherries. Vivienne thought for a moment that she might be high, but then Madeline blinked hard and a warm smile replaced the glazed expression. “Are you Vivienne? Of course you are, stupid question. I’m Madeline, obviously, you can call me Maddie.” Slender, fine-fingered hands flashed through the air as she spoke, drawing circles around nothing and pulling inward now and then to flirt with the hollow of her throat.

It was incredibly distracting. Vivienne stood up to shake the hand Madeline offered—cool and dry, in total defiance of the weather. Come to that, Madeline looked as if she didn’t even know the meaning of the word perspiration. “Yes. Well.”

“We emailed,” Madeline added blandly.

“I recall,” Vivienne said, and Madeline let out a bubbly little laugh and flung herself down on her bed. The bottom of her shirt rode up as she folded her arms behind her head, revealing a strip of smooth skin and the blood-red edge of a tattoo on her stomach. Vivienne carefully redirected her gaze.

She didn’t smile. She wouldn’t give Madeline the satisfaction of thinking she’d gotten that far under Vivienne’s skin. But for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, Vivienne felt eagerness to watch her future unwind ahead of her, rather than simple resignation. It was cool water over a burn, the first second of free-fall, the sharp claws of a good scotch against the back of her throat.

Better, even.

Already her mind raced forward, sketching plans for interrogating Madeline about her past without being obvious, checking for evidence of a magical identity wipe, winning Madeline’s trust, drawing the mystery out for as long as she possibly could before maneuvering her into a confession…

She was going to have fun this year.