Free Ordinary Magic by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway Page A

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    MARGARET GREEN SCHOOL
Chartered in 1 STPN
by writ of His Royal Majesty
King Stephen I
    There was another, smaller plaque on the gate with a button: RING FOR ASSISTANCE.
    Alexa pushed the button, and there were three strong, clear rings in succession. It took a minute for someone to answer, and Mom’s shoulders slowly tightened and Dad started shifting from foot to foot. Apparently, the iron affected them too.
    “Breathe through your mouth,” Alexa told them. She was standing close enough to the gate that her words fogged in the air. “It helps a little.”
    A woman with glasses whisked up to the gate. She was lean and wiry, with an aura of shrewd-eyed responsibility about her, as if she did a lot of babysitting. Her face was lean too. She had one of those quirked-eyebrow, thin-lipped faces that’s not somuch pretty as it is interesting. Her cap of short dark hair was uneven, as if she cut it herself. She was wearing a high-necked, long-sleeved jacket buttoned all the way up, scuffed leather boots, and a length of black chain around her hips like a belt. The deep, rich green of her jacket caught the light as she wrenched open the gate barehanded.
    Most important, she had something—or maybe a lack of something—that reminded me of Ms. Whittleby. Of Peter, and Fred and Frances and me. The missing piece and the look in her eye that said “ord.” And she was
old
. Not as old as Ms. Whittleby (this one looked like she was in her early twenties, give or take a few years, maybe around Gil’s age), but still. Another one.
    “You’re late,” she announced. Her voice was brusque but friendly. She took a good hard look at Alexa and said, “Fireballs, huh?”
    Alexa grinned. “A couple.”
    “Looks like more than a couple. Looks like more than just fire.”
    Alexa shook her head. “One of these days I’m going to get used to you doing that, Becky.”
    The woman looked at us and then dropped down into a crouch by Alexa’s hem. “Quick lesson,” she said, waving us kids down next to her. “The first part is obvious. This,” she said, drawing her finger along a line of thread in Alexa’s skirt, “is new. It tells us something damaged her dress and it needed to repair itself. See here,” she said, pointing at a trace of wavy magic clinging to the hem. “How it looks like heat off a griddle?”
    “Could we step off the sidewalk for this?” Alexa asked.
    “The next clue is the smell.” She grabbed Alexa’s hem and held it out toward us. “Go on, take a sniff.” Fred glanced at us, wary, and Frances shook her head, but Peter and I leaned in and smelled. It smelled like heat, thick and almost muggy, and beyond that, the acrid shadow of smoke. “That’s fire magic. There’s a little more to it than that, but those are the basics—”
    “Becky,” Alexa said. “Could we please go inside? Before the charms in your sidewalk start eating through my nice new boots.”
    Becky stood, smooth as a cat, and, grinning, swung the gate wider to wave us in. “Mrs. Murphy already checked everyone else in and she’s working on the dinner. Ms. Macartney’s taking them on a tour now. I can get O’Hara, though.”
    She took us through the main entrance into the brightness of the courtyard. A middle-aged man sailed over as we entered. He had a hearty, good-natured face, and his clothes were well worn but clean, with professorly patches at the elbows. “Miss Hale!” he exclaimed, clasping Alexa’s hands in his. “What a completely expected surprise. However, we expected you to surprise us much earlier. I hope there wasn’t any trouble.”
    “Fireballs,” Becky informed him.
    “I thought you had the triumphant air of someone who’d just picked a fight,” Mr. O’Hara remarked. “Nothing serious, I hope?”
    “Adventurers,” Alexa said. “A nasty pair. They got away, for the moment. I’d recommend upping security.”
    “Because of a pair of adventurers?” Becky sounded skeptical.
    “Because they were