by Keary Taylor
“You’ll regret this, Borden,” David snarled as the two other Boys held him back. “All these years and you go and screw it all up in the final months. Guess we know what kind of life you’re going to have. I’ll make you regret every decision you made since Christmas. That’s a promise.”
Glaring death threats, David snapped out of Gerald and Howard’s grip and stalked out of the common room, leaving a trail of blood drops on the floor.
The crowd that had been watching was shocked into silence for a solid three seconds. But as the bell rang, they headed off toward their classes.
Goosebumps flashed over my skin as I watched David and the Boys disappear around the corner. “You sure this is worth it?” I asked. “This exchange?”
Borden touched his cheek where he got hit, but he didn’t even flinch. “David’s an asshole, but assholes with power are even worse. This is a life lesson he’s needed to learn for years. Not everyone is going to always bow down to him.”
I met his eyes and swallowed once.
If this didn’t prove his loyalty had shifted, then I wasn’t sure what would.
“Come on,” Nathaniel said, putting his hand on Borden’s shoulder. “Let’s get you some ice before that starts swelling.”
Chapter Four
On Saturday, Borden once more came to the solarium. We taught him fire starting, which was exceptionally easy for him. Not surprising, considering his electrical abilities.
As the end of January approached, I kept hoping for warmer temperatures, but winter persisted. The snow kept falling, and the temperatures only occasionally crept above freezing. Just enough to keep us from being entirely buried beneath the white snowbanks.
I was headed across the grounds after school on a Tuesday, back to the library to work on some homework, when someone called my name. I cast my eyes across the blinding snow to find Borden on the opposite sidewalk, also headed back to the school.
There was a bounty of student housing that surrounded Alderidge. While all the houses on the north end were for professors, all the houses on the west and south sides were for students.
“You headed to see Nathaniel?” Borden asked as our sidewalks joined into the main one leading for the central doors of the university.
“I’ll say hello, but I actually have some homework to do in the library,” I said as we walked side by side toward the doors.
“Me too,” Borden said, nodding. “Mind if I walk with you?”
I didn’t answer but just nodded.
“I grew up in New York, but it’s hardly any different, weather wise,” Borden said, making small talk. “Everyone is always talking about wanting the weather to turn and get warmer. But I kind of love the cold.”
I chuckled. “Must be your Scottish blood.”
“Maybe,” he said, and it was kind of nice when he smiled, and it was easy. “Should I count myself lucky I didn’t also get red hair?”
“Hey, don’t be colorist against red,” I teased. “You’re a Stewart. Mary herself was a redhead.”
Borden laughed. It was a quiet and controlled thing, but it was deep. The kind that went all the way to the bottom of his belly and vibrated through his whole body.
Looking sideways at him, I started to see him a little differently.
He seemed so much lighter. He seemed real. Like any normal person I didn’t hate. Like someone who just needed a change in his circle, just needed someone to believe that he could be different.
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” I said, moving on. “If you’re a mage, and I’m a mage, and Nathaniel is a mage, what is the likelihood there are more of us here at Alderidge? Or more in the area?”
“It seems like a pretty high chance,” Borden said. “There has to be a somewhat concentrated number of us here in the east. Out west it might be different. But a lot of people immigrated here, and their families never left the area. Look at all three of us.”
I nodded. “Exactly. If you look at family trees, they start getting really wide, really fast. Our mage ancestors could have hundreds of descendants. Somehow we need to find them.”
“We could hire a professional genealogist,” Borden said.
I just looked over at him with a glare. “Yeah, ‘cause we have those resources.”
Borden looked over at me, a look of confusion on his face. And then he realized I was being sarcastic. And I realized he was being serious.
“Sorry,” I said, looking back at the doors as we reached them and walked through. “I forgot you’re a hybrid. Formerly a Society Boy, meaning incredibly connected, and now one of us. Nathaniel and I weren’t quite cut from the same cloth as you.”
“Money is just money,” Borden said as we walked through the hall toward the library. “It does make life easier, but it’s meaningless if that’s all that matters to you. I have my own resources and money. I’m happy to use them to help…whatever all of this is.”
I shook my head as we pushed through a group of students congregating outside a classroom. “Maybe someday, but I think for now, we need to figure out some kind of test we can perform on our own. Why spend money, when we could come up with a free test?”
“You mean like the glamoured book?” Borden asked as he grabbed the handle of the door to the library and pulled it open, holding it for me.
“Exactly,” I said as I dropped my voice to accommodate the quiet nature of the library. “But something quicker and easier. I wish there was some kind of magic… stick, or something, that we could simply touch to someone and if they had mage blood, it would glow. You know what I mean?”
Borden nodded, and when I looked over at him, I could see the gears turning in his head.
“We need something simple and quick. Just imagine. If we had something like that, how many others like us would we discover?” I shook my head, my entire chest filled with longing and amazement at the possibility.
“I’ve seen you do some pretty impossible things, Margot,” Borden said. “I imagine it can be done.”
I smiled in appreciation but didn’t say anything more. We stepped up to the reference desk, just as Nathaniel returned from an aisle, pushing the return cart.
“Hey, just wanted to say hi,” I said as he walked around the desk and wrapped a hand around my waist and leaned in to kiss me. “We both have some homework to get on.”
“Glad to see the two of you are finding your stride,” Nathaniel said, pride in his eyes when he looked at me. Which just caused me to roll my eyes at him.
“Margot has some interesting ideas,” Borden said, moving along. “If you get a break for a few minutes, you should come talk to us.”
Us.
Us had changed.
Us was getting bigger. No longer just Nathaniel and I, and the occasional conversation with my father. But now Borden, too.
“I will,” Nathaniel said, and the tone of his voice told me he was intrigued.
Mrs. Walker called for Nathaniel, so he kissed me once more and got back to work.
Together, which was exceptionally weird to think, Borden and I turned, and he followed me back toward the Eidem room.
As usual, when we got there, there was no one inside. But there was a fire raging in the fireplace, keeping this far end of the library warm.
Borden took one couch, taking his books and papers out of his backpack. He scattered them across the coffee table in front of him and immediately got to work.
I took my things and laid them out. But I found my mind wandering. I found myself going through every book we’d found useful in Mom’s office. Compulsion. Glamouring. Alchemy. Transfiguration. Fire starting. Altering memories. And a few others that, so far, we hadn’t figured out the functionality of.
None of that seemed helpful to me. We couldn’t make people confess to being a mage if they didn’t know what they were. Glamouring did nothing. Alchemy was useless. Maybe there would be something with transfiguration, but we were having a really hard time with that. Lighting people on fire didn’t do us any good. And alterin
g their memory did nothing either.
I’d done things without any instruction before. Maybe I could do it again.
My head jerked up when someone stepped inside.
“Oh, sorry, no one is ever in here.”
Mary-Beth stood there, looking ready to turn out of the room, when she realized who I was.
“Hey,” I said, offering her a smile. “You don’t have to run away. There’s plenty of room in here. Borden and I were just working on homework.”
“You sure?” she asked. Awkwardly, she looked from Borden to me and back again. She’d seen Nathaniel and I together plenty of times, but here I was, alone in a room with another guy, just me and him.
“Of course, please,” I said, nodding her in.
She offered a smile and walked in, sitting on the other end of the couch from me, and taking her things out.
“Borden, this is Mary-Beth Foster,” I said. “Mary-Beth, Borden Stewart.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Borden said with a nod. “Foster, is that any ties to the Foster Room?”
“Guilty,” Mary-Beth said, her eyes dropping in slight embarrassment. “I mean, really I shouldn’t even have been able to get into Alderidge, but when your grandparents donated millions and have a whole room named after them…”
“You’re from those Fosters?” I asked in awe. “I’m a Latin major.”
“You’re welcome?” she said awkwardly. The Foster room was filled with Latin books, a large portion of them donated by the Foster family.
“Sorry, that’s just…” I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. I’d already made things plenty awkward.
“No, it’s fine,” Mary-Beth said. “My family’s a bit obsessed with books, too. I’d dare say like, a third of the books here came from my family. Latin, fiction, academic. Even useless fairy tales. When Grandma runs out of room in the house, she sends them here.”
I shook my head with a laugh. “Did you inherit her love of books?”
Mary-Beth shrugged. “Maybe not her same level of obsessiveness. But yeah, I’ve read a few books in my day.”
I chuckled and smiled. This was… nice. And weird. I hadn’t hung out with other kids my own age in forever, except for Nathaniel. And here I was with two others.
And like normal college students, we each got to work on our homework.
An hour passed and I wrapped up my Latin work. Another passed and I completed my Humanities homework.
And just as I closed my last book, my stomach let out a ravenous growl.
“Dinner time?” Mary-Beth asked as she raised an eyebrow at me with a smile.
“What time is it?” Borden asked as he checked his very expensive-looking watch. “How is it already six?”
Just then, Nathaniel walked in, and if he was surprised to see Mary-Beth, he didn’t show it. The inclusion of Borden into our group seemed to change him. He was open. More accepting. Honestly, he kind of reminded me of Dad sometimes. It was hard to believe he wasn’t already a professor.
“Think you can skirt out of work early?” Borden asked as he started packing up his things. “We’re all going out for pizza.”
“We are?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I am dying for pizza,” Mary-Beth said, all agreement and on board. “If I have to wait two minutes longer for food I am going to die, Margot.”
I laughed and shook my head, joining them in packing up my stuff.
“Mrs. Walker just told me to head home, actually,” Nathaniel said. “And I can’t remember the last time I had pizza.”
“What are we waiting for then?” Mary-Beth asked as she slung her bag over her shoulder.
I gave Nathaniel a look, one that acknowledged how bizarre this felt to me too, that we were going out with… friends? But he just smiled and slid his hand into mine as we turned for the door and followed Borden and Mary-Beth out.
It was even colder outside when we stepped out. The wind had picked up a little bit and snow threatened to fall from the sky. But we walked quickly, hurrying toward the pizza shop just down the road from Alderidge.
We all stumbled through the door as snow began to blast from the sky. The hostess took us to a booth toward the back, took our orders, and brought drinks.
“Mary-Beth is one of those Fosters,” I said to Nathaniel, raising impressed eyebrows.
“This doesn’t need to be a thing, Margot,” she said. “I really wish you wouldn’t make this a thing.”
“Foster,” Nathaniel said, and I knew exactly where he was headed the moment he said her name. “Irish.”
Mary-Beth nodded. “Mostly. Great-great Granddad was Scottish. Actually, I’m pretty sure I have an ancestor who was killed in Salem. How grim and cool is that?”
Instantly my eyebrows shot up toward my hairline and I looked at Nathaniel.
There was a spark in his eyes. And Borden looked just as surprised.
“I do, too,” I said, my words coming out a little breathy with shock. “Mare McGregor.”
“That actually sounds familiar,” Mary-Beth said with a smile. “Hey, we must be like, second cousins or something like that.”
“I think that would make you third cousins, twice removed,” Nathaniel said, his tone reflective.
“Nice to reconnect, cuz,” Mary-Beth said playfully. She reached for her cup and held it up. It took me half a second to realize she was making a toast. I awkwardly raised my own cup and touched it to hers. But my mind was now racing a million miles a minute.
I was dying to ask more. I needed to know if there were any witch trials in Ireland. I needed to know just how direct of a descendant of Mare Mary-Beth was, though I was pretty sure she wouldn’t know.
I needed the glamoured telekinesis book.
I needed to test Mary-Beth right then.
But I couldn’t do any of that.
I had to act normal.
I had to pretend this was nothing more than an evening out with friends.
So, for an entire hour, the three of us faked it. We held it together. Until finally, at eight, Mary-Beth declared that she needed to head back to her house.
“Thanks for the pizza,” she said, smiling. “We should do this again sometime.”
“We will.” All three of us responded with the exact same words.
She just laughed and headed to the door, and we all watched her as she turned the corner and walked down the sidewalk.
“She’s got to be one of us,” I blurted the second she was out of sight.
“Ireland was different from England and Scotland. They had very few witch hunts. But I know I’ve read the name Foster among the ones that did take place,” Nathaniel let out all the words he’d been holding in this entire time. “And if she really is related to Mare McGregor, that would mean she has mage blood on both sides.”
“We have to tell her, too,” Borden said. “She’s one of us. She…we need her.”
We each stared at one another for a solid ten seconds while we thought through this. “I can test her tomorrow during class,” I said. “I’ll bring the glamoured book to class and ask her if she can read it.”
“With her family, there’s a chance she can just read Gaelic,” Borden said. “But still. And you’re right, Margot, we need another way to easily test people. If Mary-Beth is one of us too…”
“There could be a dozen others just at Alderidge,” I said breathily.
Turning to Nathaniel, Borden and I explained our idea of creating a way to test people simply by touch, or something similar.
“You’re right,” Nathaniel said. “This…if Mary-Beth really is one of us, and there are others…”
“It will change everything,” I said.
Chapter Five
On Wednesday, I brought the glamoured telekinesis book to school with me. It felt like this golden beacon in my bag, screaming to all the world that it could reveal secrets. And as I walked to school that day, a thought occurred to me.
This book only revealed itself to other mages.
I’d written off glamouring before, but maybe it was exactly what was needed. Someone, at some point, had hidden the book from anyone but mages. We could use glamouring to create some kind of test, one that was easier and quicker than seeing if someone could read a book.
I wasn’t sure what the solution was yet, but I knew between Nathaniel and Borden and me, we could figure it out.
My brain was reeling, thinking through all the possibilities, when I stepped into the hall, and found Borden sitting in a chair against the wall. The blank expression in his eyes told me something was wrong.
I pushed my way through the crowd and came to stand in front of him. “Hey,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
Borden’s eyes rose up to mine, and in them, I saw hollow worry and anger and… he just looked lost.
“David follows up with his threats,” Borden said. “He got in touch with my family. Told my dad I’d walked away from the Society Boys. He was waiting for me at my dorm when I got home last night.”
I felt the color drain from my face, and I didn’t even know what all of this meant yet. “And?”
Borden shook his head as his eyes shifted away from me and fixed at a random point in front of him. “It was an interrogation, to put it lightly,” Borden said. His voice grew deeper with each word. “He wanted to know why and what had happened to make me leave a Society that has ties to our family going back five generations. Me telling my father that it was because the Society was filled with a bunch of bullying assholes wasn’t an acceptable answer.”
I didn’t know what to say. These were a different breed of people than I was used to dealing with.
But I did notice the electricity crackling along Borden’s hands, singing his slacks.
Though he didn’t seem to realize.
“I’m ‘under investigation’,” Borden said, his voice hard and tight. “On probation in my own family. Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.” He scoffed and shook his head. “Whatever. Dad can cut me off or shame me. I have my own money and dealings. This semester is already paid for and then I graduate. I’ll deal with all these assholes later.”