The light grew closer and it was almost maybe a mouth. A giant mouth ringed by sharp, sickly yellow teeth. As they fell farther and faster, he recognized the mouth. It was the wolf. The wolf that bit him. The wolf whose offspring lurked inside him. And they were falling into it.
It wanted Cassie. It wanted more. It wanted to swallow the world to sate its hunger.
He couldn’t do that. Mal couldn’t let that happen. It couldn’t have her. He barely knew her, but the urge to protect her, to keep her safe, ripped through him like a thunderbolt. With his burned hand he seized her wrist and held it tightly, despite the pain, and he tore his other hand away from the orb.
And then.
In a breath.
They were back on the picnic blanket.
Cassie looked at him with confusion. “Why did you break the spell? I was having quite a lovely conversation with Grandmama. Really it was the best reception I’ve ever had. It was as if I was sitting with her in her little cabin in the woods. I could smell the pines and taste the sweet tea.”
“You didn’t see it? You didn’t feel it?”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
Mal told her what he’d seen, and at first Cassie was skeptical but as he continued she realized he wasn’t playing a trick on her and her eyes widened with shock.
“You fell into the ball,” she said. “You saw your greatest fear. Oh, this is so exciting.”
“Exciting? It almost devoured both of us.”
“It takes true power to tap into the crystal ball like that.” She clapped her hands with glee. “Do you know what this means?”
That he had a murderer in his heart that wanted to kill Cassie and eat the world?
“It means that we’ve been going about this all wrong. I’ve been concentrating our lessons on finding the little spark of magic within, but it’s like we’ve been standing in the middle of a forest fire and trying to light a match. You don’t need to kindle your talents, you just need to control them.” She beamed at him, like she’d found the answer and Mal risked a half-smile back.
“Yay?” Mal said.
When he closed his eyes all he could see was the wolf’s teeth snapping at Cassie’s bare legs.
7
Cassie was bubbling with excitement. Seeing her grandmama again had been amazing, even if it had been brief. She’d been in her old cabin, during the war. It was barely larger than her family’s dining room, but grandmama made it work. The wooden floors were etched with runes and protection circles, but not in a crazy hermit way. They looked more like incredible murals of red metal laid into the oak beams. The walls were lined with precise tools and also paintings her grandmama had done. One of the paintings hung in her family’s hall now. It was oil paint, rather expressionistic, of a handsome man standing shirtless on a hill, with an axe over his shoulder and a pile of split logs at his feet. Grandmama had written in looping script, “The One Who Got Away” on the bottom.
The contrast between her grandmama and her mother couldn’t have been more stark. How was it possible that one came from the other? Grandmama had been a free spirit. She’d graduated school as a nurse, which was one of three options available to witches at the time, and traded in her starched whites for stalking through the woods alongside a werewolf pack. She couldn’t put her finger on why it meant so much to see grandmama, maybe it was just that someone in her family was actually happy to see her.
On the way back to The Keep, she sketched out plans in her head about ways to help Malcolm focus his gifts. Everyone said that the Afflicted couldn’t really do magic. That what they did was a crude parody, like a parrot speaking. But what she felt within him—that was real. She should have been working on her own project, but there’d be time for that later in the week. If she couldn’t help Malcolm, it wouldn’t matter, she wouldn’t even have the chance to present her research.
Campus was especially beautiful with everyone gone, or maybe without the stress of hurrying to class or passing midterms the students just seemed prettier. Cassie wasn’t crazy enough to wander Penrose after dark, but with a warm wind gently blowing and a feeling of possibilities in her blood, she was sorely tempted. The stars sang in the sky above. The scent of night-blooming jasmine and other magical flowers welcomed her. Come out into the night, they beckoned. But her feet knew the way home and only the way home, no matter what her heart wanted.
A howl ripped through the evening stillness. Something pained and savage and not far away. Was it Malcolm shifting and crying out? Should she go to him? Cassie paused on the steps of The Keep. Once she entered, she’d need to stay put until dawn. There were rules. Old rules. But until she crossed the threshold, she was free. If it was Mal, and he was in pain, who else could help him? Who else did he have? He’d said something about roommates, but if they were anything like Maddie they’d just use their relationship as a way to sabotage him.
Another howl split the air. This one closer. Could you count the seconds between howls to see how close a werewolf was? Were they like thunder and lightning?
Something flashed in the windows of The Keep. The wide oak doors flew open. Two suits of armor—some of the enchanted guardians of women’s virtue that patrolled the dorm—were struggling with a shape that Cassie couldn’t quite see. It was person-shaped and shimmering, like a waterfall in the sun. Another boy with some magical camouflage no doubt, trying to sneak in.
The guardians paused at the doorway and hurled the shimmering shape down the steps where it bounced with a series of ouches and fucks and owws. The shape rolled and landed next to Cassie. The field around the boy was perfect when he was still. Cassie couldn’t see it at all, but when he moved it struggled to keep up with him.
“Invisibility cloak?” she asked, reaching out a hand to lift the guy up.
“I didn’t mean anything weird by it. I was just trying to see if it would work. I don’t even know anyone who lives here.” The voice was thin and reedy. “And it’s a magic belt I made. Final project. This was to be my proof that it could work for military applications in the real world.” He took her hand and hefted himself to his feet. He was shorter than her and his hands were damp with sweat.
Cassie slid her wand from her sock and cast a quick analysis charm. “Your refresh rate is too low. It’ll fool tired people and mundanes, but it wouldn’t stop even the dumbest animal from seeing you.” Glowing runes floated around his head, the results of her charm. It was a spell she herself had invented to help debug her own creations. Only she could see the golden words burning in the air. “You also failed to mask your scent, your breath, your footfalls or your sounds. Your mind is clearly human, too, and a boy’s no less. No wonder the guardians caught you. You did everything wrong.”
The invisible boy jerked his hand away. “Fucking highborn bitch,” he sneered. “You’re all so goddamn special aren’t you? You think the world revolves around you. You’re born on third base and think you hit a homer, you know what, I appreciate your advice. Because I’m going to use it. I’m going to sneak back in here. And I’m going to give you a surprise one night.”
Cassie’s fingers burned on her wand. It’d be so easy to lash out. Fifty different offensive spells popped into her head. She could set him on fire. She could summon an eel in his throat. She could cut his fingers off with but a word and a gesture. But no. She was already in trouble enough. If she hurt the vile little troll, her mother would just use it as an excuse to punish her more severely.
“Whats the matter, girlie? Afraid that a real wizard like me is too much for you?” The invisible boy stepped closer to her.
Cassie flicked her wand up at his belly and said, “River of earth” in the old tongue. A purple light flashed from the tip of her wand and then vanished.
The boy laughed. “What was that? Is that the best you can do?” His voice was cruel and mocking, but it just made Cassie feel tired. She’d been around his kind all her life. Mundanes who though born wizards had it easy, or men who though women couldn
’t do proper magic, as if having breasts and a uterus got in the way.
“One of the things about being highborn,” Cassie said. “Is that you spend all of your school years around vindictive little monkeys who need to be taught a lesson in politeness. One learns quickly how to deal with an aggressor in ways that are all but invisible to the headmasters.” She smiled politely and nodded as a rumble sounded from the invisible boy’s belly.
He groaned and doubled over.
“Unfortunately for you,” Cassie said. “At this time of night all the public restrooms are closed. You’ll have to hurry back to your dorm now, unless you’d prefer to make a mess right here.”
“Fuck you,” the boy said, but his voice was a sickly whisper.
“Hurry along, little troll. Ta ta.”
The invisible shape hunched over and ran as best as it could. There was no way he’d find a bathroom in time before her bowel disruption spell took effect.
She felt a momentary glee at the victory, but then realized that the jerkface had ruined her pleasant evening stroll. Sighing, Cassie entered The Keep, nodding at the guardians as the doors slammed shut behind her.
They met again the next day. Cassie was all smiles and excitement, even though she’d been up half the night preparing lessons for Mal. And Mal looked even worse than the day before. Dark bags hung under his eyes. He was even more unshaven than before and his hair stuck up at odd angles. He was pale and stared off into space whenever Cassie wasn’t directly speaking to him.
After she gave a brief lecture about control charms, which he clearly barely heard, Cassie snapped. “What is going on with you? Don’t you want to succeed? We made real ground yesterday and today we could again, but only if you commit to this and actually try.” Her voice was her mother’s voice, no matter how much she wished it wasn’t.
Mal glared at her. “What’s the point? I was up all night, again, helping my roommates with their project. And the things they can do—I’ll never be that good. Never. I’m so far behind I may as well just quit and slink back home where they can just chain me to a wall every night.” As he spoke, his eyes blazed with fire and his fingers lengthened into claws. He was closer to the beast than before.
Cassie regarded him. He was raging fire and she was ice. She stayed calm and cool and when he was done complaining and feeling sorry for himself, she asked again. “What’s going on?”
He flopped back onto the picnic blanket and stared at the sky. His shirt rode up a little, revealing a nicely muscled belly with a scattering of hair leading like a trail downwards. “Do you like music?” he asked.
“Music?” Cassie blinked. “I suppose so. Doesn’t everyone?”
“I mean real music. Not like the chamber music and string sections and bells and pan flutes that the kids here seem to be into.”
“That is real music,” Cassie sniffed. “There’s a very long tradition of classical music in the wizarding world. I myself took nine years of piano and four of cello.”
Mal lifted his head and glanced at her. “For real? I didn’t know you could play.”
Cassie looked down at her fingernails. Something about the way Mal was looking at her made her uncomfortably warm. “I don’t really. Not for years. I haven’t had time since I came to Penrose.”
“I was in a band,” Mal said, still watching her with his intense stare. “Before I got bitten and became, y’know, Afflicted, I was in a band. We weren’t amazing, but I loved it. I lived for it. Just the feeling of being on stage, letting the music move through me, it was unlike anything else. The lights, the crowd, the wall of sound. The smell of the sweaty dancing bodies and spilled beer. The way it felt when the whole band gets into it at the same time. It was better than sex.”
Cassie blushed again, hard. Why did he have this effect on her? Was it some shifter thing?
“You should play again,” she offered. “Many wizards channel their magic through song.”
Mal growled and sank his clawed fingers into the earth. “Do you think I haven’t tried?” His voice was rougher, savage. He took a deep breath and continued. “One of my roomies, this guy Ash, he’s in the bardic school. He’s all about channeling magic through song. He can inspire people, really inspire them, like give them the energy to pull an all nighter or to do damn near anything. He can shatter stone with his voice or weave illusions with song. And when I see him, I just get so angry.”
“Why?” Cassie asked. Mal was talking to her, really talking to her, and she worried that if she said too much he’d fold back in on himself and never speak again.
“Because when I try and play a guitar I snap the neck. My fingers shred the strings. The sounds are so loud and shrill that my stupid shifter ears don’t even register them as music most of the time. When that wolf bit me, he didn’t just steal my humanity, he stole my dreams.”
Cassie let his words hang in the air. Hearing him open up made her giddy with excitement. She could see a path forward, a real path, for the first time, but she wanted to approach it just right so as not to scare the wolf off.
The quad was empty that day. Perhaps the sun was a bit too warm. Perhaps everyone had spent the night partying a little too hard and was sleeping it off. Or perhaps the universe had just decided to give Cassie and Mal the space they needed for one bright morning.
“I can help you,” Cassie said. “Really and truly. I can help you control your wolf so that you can play your music.”
Mal rolled over onto his side and squinted at her. “Yeah, right.”
“A lot of powerful magicians go through a period of adjustment, where their potential outstrips their control. When I was a little girl, I used to draw a lot. Like everywhere. I always had a box of crayons and a notebook with me. I drew houses and people and horses, all the usual stuff. But one day my drawings started picking themselves up off the page and walking away. Little crayon horses, all purple and wobbly, just running around the house leaving these smears of colors on everything they touched.” Cassie laughed. “I got in so much trouble when my mom came home and saw what had happened. She thought I’d drawn all over the antique wallpaper on purpose. Neither of my parents believed me when I told them my drawings came to life, until they saw a pink crayon unicorn gallop across the kitchen floor. I enrolled in Penrose the next day to learn better control.”
As Cassie spoke, an odd thing happened. The clods of grass that Mal had plucked from the ground wove themselves into little unicorns and horses and people and chased each other around in a circle.
“How are you doing that?” Cassie gasped.
“What? This?” Mal nodded at the grass people. “Doesn’t this sort of thing happen to all witches? I just thought about your story and then … Poof.”
It shouldn’t have been possible. The amount of raw talent to animate nature in such a way, it was unheard of.
Cassie seized Mal’s hand and blurted out, “If you could do one thing right now, if you had perfect control, what would you do?”
The little grass people rode off on their horses and unicorns, seeking greener pastures.
“I don’t know,” Mal said.
“Yes you do, I can see it in your eyes. Tell me.”
“I, well, I’d go see this band that’s playing next week, Perfect Day. They’re easily my favorite. No contest at all. And yeah, hearing they were gonna be playing nearby and that I couldn’t see them, it got me down.”
“What if I said with my help, you could see them?” Cassie grinned at Mal. She was still holding his hand. It was oddly comforting, warm and strong.
“I don’t believe you,” Mal said. “But for Perfect Day, I’d give it a try.”
8
For days he did nothing but practice. Mal had never been a big fan of school, not even normal people school where no one tried to set you on fire with their mind. But the way she looked at him, the promise in her eyes of better days, convinced him he had to try.
The days were a blur of self-control charms and magic theory. Everything Ca
ssie said either went over his head or was magic for babies, but he didn’t care. If he could play music again, if he could go to shows and dance and swing and not turn into a murderous wolf monster—that meant there was actually something in his future to look forward to.
He hadn’t realized what he was missing until Cassie gave it to him—hope.
Also, a wand.
“This was my old wand from elementary school,” she said, passing it over to him during their picnic lunch on the quad. She was eating some vegan sushi thing that smelled both delicious and horrifying at once. He’d packed beef jerky, potato chips, a jar of peanut butter and three sodas. At first he tried to ignore the disgusted look Cassie gave his food, but then he began to relish it. Teasing her, seeing the red blush explode in her cheeks like a sunrise, was the most fun he’d had in weeks. He even dipped his beef jerky into the peanut butter once—a terrible idea—just to see the shocked expression on her face. Whenever she questioned him about the food, he swore that all muggles ate like him.
The wand was white wood and very thick, like a comically large pencil. Rainbow stickers, faded from age, were plastered up and down its shaft.
“This will match my pajamas perfectly,” Mal said.
“Oh hush,” Cassie laughed. “That is a perfectly good wand to learn with. It has wards worked into the wood that will prevent you from harming yourself or others with magic. Or setting fires.”
“They told me that Afflicteds like me don’t need wands,” Mal swung the wand in lazy circles. He could feel power in it, dragging behind the wand. It was like trying to run underwater.
“Yes, your whole body is one huge wand,” Cassie agreed, then immediately blushed again. After spending so much time with her, Mal was beginning to pick up on her scents. He could sense her anger, her confusion, her surprise. They all smelled different, like different flowers blooming brightly. But when she blushed that way, a deeper scent came to him. Something earthy and exciting and just out of reach. It was like a forgotten memory, or a word on the tip of his tongue. He wanted to press her down against the soil and hold her still while he sniffed every inch of her to find the source of the scent. But he didn’t, because that would be weird.
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