Magic University Book One: The Siren and the Sword by Cecilia Tan

at the edge. Another ribbon was hoisted, this one either brown or red—Kyle wasn’t sure in the light.
    “Round two!” Remy barked, the wind blowing his hair across his eyes. “All the way to the river! Under the Kennedy Street bridge! And back to grab the ribbon! Marks...go!” He rang the bell again. This time Kyle was prepared for the leap of the racers and saw them wrap their legs around the broom handles before their speed turned them to blurs again.
    When they were out of sight, he whispered to Jess. “So what makes the brooms fly?”
    “It’s a combination of the amulets they are wearing, the conditioning on the brooms, and their own inherent magic,” she said. “The keepers of the brooms are all in Gladius House. You’d have a better chance of finding out exactly how they do it than I would.”
    “What do you mean conditioning?”
    “There are certain kinds of spells you can do, like soaking the wood with the essence of certain flowers, only under the full moon on a cloudless night...that sort of thing. I’m under the impression it takes all year to get the brooms ready...oh, here they come again.”
    Speyer was in the lead this time, and Kyle could hear her laughter as she closed in on the target, grabbing the ribbon and circling them once quickly before the other three arrived.
    “Aren’t they kind of conspicuous? Glowing like that?” Kyle asked, settling his arms around Jess from behind so he could keep whispering into her ear, hold her, and they could both face the racers.
    “Only if you have the Sight,” Jess answered. “And look up at the right time.”
    “Round three!” Remy cleared his throat to quiet the well wishers around Caitlyn, then tried again. “Round three. The distance round! All the way to the tower at Powderhouse Circle, then back to ring the bell on the Swedenborg Chapel, around the spire of the First Church, then back here for the final ribbon!”
    Once again the racers dropped away, this time veering to the right as soon as they were off, and disappearing over the buildings of the law school.
    “Pretty neat, huh?” Alex said.
    Jess startled. “When did you get there?”
    “Just now,” he said with a chuckle. The parrot made an affirmative whistling noise. “Isn’t that right, Corky?” He gave the parrot some kind of nut or seed and the parrot went to work happily on opening it. “Been a long time since I raced a broom.”
    Kyle’s ears perked up. “I really want to try it.”
    Alex shrugged, scanning the sky in the direction the racers had gone. “After the three races, there’s not a lot left, usually, but they will let folks fly around a little until they go dry. You just have to be careful that you aren’t flying over the river or a major street when you run out. The broom will get lower and lower so by the time it does you won’t have far to fall.”
    Kyle nodded, but sighed inwardly. This seemed to be largely a Gladius House tradition, and if it was like other house traditions, Kyle was too far down the pecking order to rate a flight before the brooms would be exhausted. Maybe next year.
    “Here they come!” Jess pointed. A blue comet was in the lead, no sound coming from Frost at all as he struck the bell and reversed direction, Caitlyn only a second or two behind, then Allan. All the ending landmarks were visible from here, and the students crowded along the edge. Frost was nearly at the First Church when the murmuring began. “Where’s Nichols?”
    The fourth racer was not visible yet. Meanwhile in making the next turn, Frost lost a fraction of a second; then it was him and Speyer. Both whipped past overhead so quickly, Kyle could not tell who had won until Frost came fluttering down with the last ribbon, a lovely deep purple shade, entwined in his fingers. He kissed Candlin upon touching down, and draped the ribbon over his shoulders.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked, a hand on Candlin’s upper arm.
    “Nichols hasn’t come in,” Remy said. Two