by Anne Zoelle
I hugged Christian mentally.
“Suck out the other one's soul!”
I gave his evil twin a dubious mental pat.
Nephthys glanced at my notebook, the front of which was now covered in moving patterned doodles. “I've always wished skill with a pen or brush.”
“I've always wished to be able to belly dance.” Guys seemed to like that kind of thing.
She smiled again, a soft smile that lit up her face. Her eyes danced a bit in the light, as if some part of her needed to be in motion even when she was gracefully still. “Perhaps we can teach each other.” She looked suddenly unsure. “If you wish.”
“I'd love to swap skills. And to hang out.”
Her tension released and the air suddenly felt like a warm blanket of my favorite paints collecting on a canvas. “I'd like that too.”
Making friends with Nephthys Bau was like making friends with a gentle wind or a comforting stream. Just being near her was soothing. It was never a pacifying kind of soothing, though, more like an energizing one. I didn't forget my goals, they became brighter, as if anything were possible.
She joined the three of us for meals when our schedules coincided, and I started getting to the cafeteria even earlier in order to secure a table with more room. It was strange at first that I needed to repeatedly call attention to Nephthys. The eyes of the other people at the table would just...slide right by her.
Considering that Nephthys was beautiful and Mike was always eying pretty things, it was decidedly strange. But I put in serious, daily effort and, as if a veil had lifted suddenly, I was rewarded one lunch period. The boys stared at her for an entire minute until I poked them both with my fork.
Will turned to me with a look of amazement a moment later, then gave me a warm smile, as if I'd done something wonderful. Weird. But I was happy to smile brightly back, feeling the warmth of the moment.
Her soft wit was a good counterpoint to Mike's more raucous vibe, my half-ramblings, and Will's nerdy expositions. Strangely, I always accomplished a lot in the hour after a mealtime with her.
But far more than that was the bright look in her eye. Nephthys would fit in anywhere, so it was strange that she seemed overly thrilled to hang out with us, as if we were extending her an immense favor.
Reaching out to someone else made me feel more self-confident than I had in a long time.
Focus. Concentration. Knowledge. Confidence. They weren't just the cornerstones of magic. They were the cornerstones of my life now. I put them into action in every task I undertook, building my personal pyramid brick by brick.
By the end of my third week at school, I had settled into a modified routine:
* Magic breaking work with Stevens and Draeger.
* After hours recon on the art vault—carefully noting schedules, professors, and the manners in which they each exited the vault.
* Attending any class that was studying anything remotely like a chaos field.
* Watching for Marsgrove.
* Trying not to make eye contact with Alexander Dare, who always seemed to be outside the battle building when I exited.
* Testing ordinary paint drops systematically around campus.
* Serving countless hours of punishing tasks for my offenses and attending two mandatory substance abuse classes.
* Eating meals with Will, Mike, and Nephthys.
“Did you find it?” a boy anxiously asked another outside the cafeteria one day.
“I got the list. Shut up about it already!”
“We discovered something at Arch Twenty-Two-Fifteen,” a girl said.
“We need a better device, though. Ask your cousin.”
Campus lockdown was making people seriously edgy by the end of week three. Horrible and strange things were happening in the other magic layers, but other than keeping tabs on Marsgrove and listening for news on Mr. Verisetti, all of my mental resources were needed for other things.
Will and I had set up our art-science booth at the Art Expressionists meetings. Sitting unobtrusively in the back with Will, a hundred different types of artists argued and shared tips during the town hall format, then browsed the booths. I made enough sales to purchase a number of items I needed for soul binding rituals, and thirty small glass containers of regular paint.
Meanwhile, I racked up a half-dozen more Level One Offenses and two Level Twos testing containment fields.
Most of the time, the students who came to mete out punishments were civil, though by now I was pretty sure all of them thought I was a raging druggie. I used the small glass containers of paint for testing and watched each one zip away.
Unfortunately, Peters had responded to three of those calls, and he loathed me. He had made me attend and assist the creation of a new Blarjack pool. Without Magical Moses to magic the resulting mess off, I had trudged across campus and through the dorm covered in clinging green-snot swamp water, mouth firmly closed.
Upon entering our room, however, a chorus of “Nooooo's!” had emitted and the lot of it splatted upon the floor.
Olivia had been coldly displeased. But I was getting pretty good at scrubbing surfaces with magical cleaning products.
One afternoon I saw Olivia stop and sniff some blue flowers near the dormitory. I plucked a few later that night and put them in the common area atop the fridge. The lines at the edges of her eyes had loosened a fraction upon seeing them. I kept the vase full after that.
And I was getting really close with my containment field, I could feel it. Something was missing, but I finally felt I had enough knowledge to go into the art vault and determine what the missing piece was.
“Yes, then you will help me.”
Christian's voice was sly again. He fully alternated now between raging against the world and consoling me. Encouraging me to test more and cautioning me to be careful. Telling me to save him and telling me to let him go.
His voice was always clearest in the moments before I fell asleep—which made my nightmares worse. I dreamed of him suffocating somewhere, being held in thorny chains, begging me to help him. And occasionally, his words turned cunning, like now. The warnings in the necromancy books were messing with my brain.
But I could hear his calm, confident voice clearly too, suppressing the other voice that sounded like him, but not.
“You can do it, Ren.”
Yes. I just needed to figure out the art vault's wards. Simple observation. Easy. No reason to feel apprehensive.
It wasn't like people died doing this sort of thing.
Chapter Twenty: Death and Consequences
The next midnight, I watched the vault door open and began the countdown in my head. Three. Two. One. Wearing my soft moccasins and dressed in black, I slipped from the bushes and moved from the east as the professor exited to the west—as was his routine. As he moved, so did I. I had five seconds. The professor continued straight west, finger pressed under his ear, paying attention to whatever was playing or talking there. The steel door started to slide shut. I sprinted forward and dove inside, the heavy door clipping my ankle.
The door sealed solidly behind me as I rolled into a crouch, and the room lit, registering a presence. I rubbed my ankle and let the throb ebb before carefully standing. No alarms shrieked, but there was no time to waste. I unstrapped my pack and fished out my reader.
Juleston's Giant Tome of Wardery popped up in full book form. It was passive device magic, but I spent a tense moment scanning the room, waiting for a siren to engage.
No alarm sounded, so I began. The instructions were simple—weave my intention to make the ward lines visible, then match the colors to the text for identification. I should be able to get around the active magic restriction, as identification or study was considered passive magic.
I placed the book down on the counter, and put on the magic-enhanced goggles I used with Stevens when conducting experiments. Ready. I took a deep breath and constructed my mental inverted pyramid. Intent, focus, knowledge, confidence. Char
treuse paint puddled the mental base. Just a little more depth of color needed...there. I sent it sliding down the lines and to the focal point of the pyramid's tip. Studying was passive. Identification was passive. I kept my intent passive.
A mist of light green slipped from my mental pyramid and wrapped into the air revealing colored lines and glittering points.
My shoulder touched a ward, and the field quivered. The vibrations bounced down my arm, making me shudder. The protection wards were so like Christian's electrical sparks during his Awakening.
I cleared my throat and concentrated on the book, trying to get my mind back on track. Fuchsia for protection and offense. That meant the pink line running around the perimeter of the room was likely a protection ward, since offensive magic would make no sense in an art room.
Forest green meant tranquility or trickery. It ran down the center of the ceiling. It was amazing how many things in magic seemed to have an equal and opposing side, depending on the intention of the caster.
There was a light hum in the room now. Not unpleasant, but strange.
I took a mental picture, then sketched out the ward design with regular colored pencils and a First Layer notepad—just in case magical art supplies under my control might trigger active magic. I ran down the list of the different colors again and what they could mean, making notes in the sketch margins. Another book I had in my reader was required for discerning intent. I would triangulate the two books with a third in a reading room directly after this. I needed to do a little poking at the pink ward, though, to see and feel what I was dealing with.
I didn't have the base knowledge to do much else yet. I would though. I'd figure all of it out. I'd figure everything out.
The hum became a buzz. I breathed deeply—calm, tranquility, control—then very carefully touched the pink perimeter line. It vibrated, then stilled. It gave me a strange set of impressions, but nothing firm. I would need to use a bit more magic to be sure.
I hesitated. But not being allowed to truly paint and do some real soul testing was making me angry and unhappy. Not having Christian back now was frustrating. I needed to know how to make wards that would let me paint and experiment.
Uncontrolled magic leaped out from under the edges of my cuff. Focus and intention, but without the requisite knowledge or confidence, streamed out in jagged lines. “No!” I tried to pull the magic back. But sensory input was streaming through my body at the contact. Overwhelming. Knowledge and intuition. A crystal shard flew off the table and shattered across the floor.
The pink thread of the ward snapped tight and expanded.
Boom.
Something exploded outside the room.
“No, no, no.” A siren began blasting, and I automatically covered my ears in response. The action pulled the pink ward toward me.
Oh, no.
The pink ward wrapped around my finger, and the siren grew louder, shrieking painfully. I could hear people running toward the room from the jump point outside. No, no, no. In my panic I tried to shake the pink ward off. It snapped from my finger in the direction I pointed, and the door to the vault exploded. My hand whipped back, and I obliterated the easels behind me in a shower of wood, paper, paint, and wild magic.
I had to get out of here. My eyes went to my supplies and they flew into my bag. I put my arms out—flinging more pink offensive magic—and my bag zoomed onto my back, the straps fastening over my shoulders.
A tight net bore down on me, trying to squash my magic, an external magic force trying to bind and cut off mine. My panicking magic responded, inverting, and I could feel Marsgrove's shield working with whatever Mr. Verisetti had done to it, thrusting hard against the outside magic, repelling it forcefully.
I tried to pry the pink thread off my hand. I had to escape; I couldn't be found here, but the harder I tried to release it, the more tightly it clung, responding to my panic as it continued streaming more information to me.
And then they were upon me.
My shield tightened, green and black mixing with gold, blasting toward the mages who were spilling into the vault. My magic twined with my shield and pushed against the spells they were unleashing.
Magic was bouncing off me and ricocheting back at them just like it had with Mr. Verisetti. I watched a bolt bounce off of me and blow a ten foot hole through the western wall. I had seen Mr. Verisetti kill. And with Mr. Verisetti's spell mixing with Marsgrove's on me, I didn't think my magic was set to stun. Another bolt flew at me, the trajectory of it forming a diagram in my mind—it would hit the mage standing ten feet and thirty-two degrees in front of me.
Draeger's voice barked an instruction in my head, and I fell to the floor and sunk my hands into the tiles. The tiles disappeared, and I fell sharply through space until I hit dirt. I buried my hands in the earth, thrusting the energy downward, then something exploded within and around me, and I fell into darkness.
~*~
I woke to bright lights and Christian's voice in the back of my head babbling apologies, insanities, battle cries, and regrets.
“Ah, you are awake.”
That wasn't Christian's voice. I blinked a few times and the blurred vision of a man turned into one dressed in a crisp white shirt and pants. The men in white had finally come for me.
“You are in a spot of trouble, Miss Crown.” The stranger's voice was even and calm, nonthreatening.
I just hoped my padded room wouldn't feel like—
“Do you Jell-O the walls?” I asked, panicked.
The man, whose face was unexpectedly more rugged than his voice, looked at me sharply, then ran a scanner over me. A blue beam slid across my vision.
He muttered something about delusions and sent a tendril of magic into the scanner, then scanned me again.
A doctor? Or worse? Had Marsgrove captured me? Had the Department bogeymen? I tried to grab the scanner, but a clink and jerk made me realize I was handcuffed to the bed rails. Christian's mutterings grew louder, but I couldn't make out the words in my panic. “Listen, I just don't want the hard kind, ok?” I jerked at my restraints again. “I don't like Jell-O force-fields.”
Clink, jerk, panic, clink, jerk, panic.
“I don't like Jell-O skin. It's unnatural.”
“Settle down, Miss Crown. You’re going to hurt yourself, and I can't get a good reading.”
“I'm fine. No Jell-O needed, I swear.” Clink, jerk.
“What is the date?”
All that Libra Rising and Gemini Falling crap. “It's Ewok Day, for all I know.” Clink, jerk, clink, jerk.
There was the hint of a smile on his face. “In what dorm do you reside?”
It was getting harder to breathe and Christian had gone completely silent. Clink, jerk, clink, jerk. “Twenty-five, north point.”
“And what was the last class you attended?”
“Second Layer Engineering. Hermitage Building.” I really hoped he didn't ask me if I was registered for it.
“Good.” He sent another tendril of magic into the scanner. Then he tried to scan me again.
But I couldn't keep still.
“Listen, do you think you could unclip me?” Clink, jerk. I tried breathing through my nose. Clink, jerk. I wasn't sure I could pick the lock in my panic, but even if he gave me a rubber chicken, I'd try.
“Please be still, Miss Crown.” I was obviously making it hard for him to get a meter read. “It's procedure to keep students who have performed Level Five Offenses chained, until an enforcement official arrives. I'm sorry.”
I had no idea what a Level Five Offense was classified as. Poking at wards? I opened my mouth to ask, but then the sliver of Christian in me promptly shut it. Best to say as little as possible. “Ok?”
He looked at me for a long moment, then sighed. “Not again. Damn pencil pushers.” He looked at his tablet. “Your record is only three weeks old, and without an official start date. I'm not even going to ask how long you've really been here, who created your account in the cursed Ad
ministration office, or who your orientation guide was.”
He reached over and unclipped me, and I could have kissed him. I quickly brought my arms close to my body, hugging them to me.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
He waved a hand and I could see black tattooed lines dart out from the edges of his sleeves. Lines also peeked out from beneath his collar at the back of his neck. “Let me get a good reading, and we'll call it even. I'll try to get someone to help you with your account.”
Hopefully he would forget that part and just let me go. I held as still as possible and watched his teasing tattoos, which moved, darting forward then pulling back inside his cuffs.
His scanner beeped. “Your head seems fine. No Jell-O detected. But I take it you've had some rather unusual experiences with Wobble Walls in the past?”
I etched the words into my memory banks, unwilling to move my arms and access the bracelet encyclopedia. I would look it up later. I wondered if the translation enchantment rendered it to me as the too cutesy “Wobble Walls” and translated to something completely different for, say, Olivia. She probably heard “Transcendental Particle Freezer.”
“A mage once prevented me from running away, before he told me about magic.”
The doctor's lips thinned, and he shook his head. “The government programs need an overhaul. How about we fix you up completely, before someone comes?”
“Fix me completely?”
“You had your first recorded death. Congratulations.”
I blinked. I couldn't remember anything. Had I seen Christian when I'd been dead? I leaned forward, gripping the guardrails. “How long was I dead?”
“Thirty seconds. Would have been less, but you had some impressive shields up even after death. Medical personnel respond to Level Fives automatically.”
Thirty wasted seconds. I had nothing. That at least answered one question. I reluctantly struck temporary death from my mental list.
“Except for a broken toe, you are in shipshape condition. Easy enough to fix, if you want me to do it magically.”
I leaned forward, interested to know about magical medicine. “Yes, please. What do I do?”