Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

Author:Sarah Gailey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

“SO, YOU WENT TO SCHOOL up in Portland, right?” Rahul asked as he dropped his credit card on top of mine. The waiter swept by and picked up the check without looking at us.

“Yeah,” I said. It didn’t feel like a lie. It just felt like a story we were sharing. That’s all. Under the table, his foot bumped against mine. “Same school as Tabitha.” I didn’t feel even a little guilty.

“Wow,” he said, his eyes widening. “Headley is really intense. Was it weird to be competing against each other for ranking and stuff?”

I laughed and shook my head. “Honestly, you’ve met Tabitha. It was never a competition. I’ve never been on her level. Not academically, anyway.”

It wasn’t a lie. Tabitha was more brilliant than I’d ever be. The world had given her magic and brains and she had pressed her advantage to the fullest extent of her ability. So it wasn’t a lie when I told Rahul that I’d never felt like I was competing with Tabitha’s intellect. I wasn’t lying much at all—just the bare minimum, just the smallest details to support his belief about who I was. And those were just little lies, just propping up the story.

The date was easily one of the best I’d ever been on. There had been almost no initial awkwardness to get through. Rahul asked all the right kinds of questions about my work. I coaxed a few funny Osthorne stories out of him, without the conversation turning to Sylvia or the investigation. I made him laugh so hard that he almost choked on a basil leaf. In retaliation, he turned one of my jalapeños into a ghost pepper.

It was easy. It was fun. And, somehow, I hadn’t once had to stop being the version of Ivy who could flirt with a physical magic teacher without flinching. I hadn’t once been irritated by the little magic things he did. I wasn’t trying to pretend that he was normal. I was just … being with him, like he was anyone, like I was anyone, like there was no barrier between us. I’d cracked a window into another world, and I was sticking my head through it, breathing the sweet air on the other side.

“Anyway, me and Tabitha, we went really different routes. In the end I guess going to Headley mattered more to her than it does to me, you know?” I continued. Rahul’s calf nudged mine under the table. A flock of starlings fluttered inside my chest. The waiter dropped our cards back off, and we both signed, peeking at each other’s tips.

“I don’t know that he really earned that much,” Rahul said with his eyebrows raised.

“I know,” I muttered, “but the pho was really good and I want to come back here sometime.”

“Oh, right,” Rahul said, quickly scratching a larger number over the one he’d already written. We pushed our chairs back from the table with a loud scrape; before we’d finished standing up, the table was being cleared and wiped down.

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