The Awakening of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  I scrolled. Level Two Offense. Enchantment on Unknowing Student. Serial offender. Tracking device implemented and alarmed.

  The door opened to a familiar face framed by black bangs and an outfit Erté would have designed.

  “You.” I narrowed my eyes on the girl from the Student Center. I needed to be far more paranoid, indeed. I looked down at my tablet, then back at her. I noticed the green band glowing on her wrist near her cuff. Alarmed, eh? Now that I had an idea of what was going on in this screwed up system...

  “You were doing community service. They decided to make you man the Student Center for community service?” I really questioned some of the officials at this school. “And you got a Justice Tablet to do it?”

  Delia Peoples smirked. “Hey, the tablet karma worked, didn't it? It read you and said you needed a map and that you needed to work on meditating. I just fulfilled those needs. In my own way.” Her smirk grew.

  “Great. Thanks a lot, Goat Turd.”

  She tsked, shaking her head and sending the ends of her black bob flying. “Temper, temper.”

  I narrowed my eyes, then smiled brightly. Her smile dropped to suspicion. “So, should I look through the list of punishments, before I ask a few pointed questions?”

  I looked down, but could feel her shifting in front of me.

  “Let's see. Level Two. Old recommended punishments include...oooh, waxing the entire entrance hall with a two-by-two piece of cloth and one toe. Kind of like mapping the hall, and that would give you a wonderfully long time for meditation and reflection. Or...popping camel zits. Wow. Who knew they even had them? I wonder where they are located? But that sounds too mundane for you. Hmmm...”

  “I get it.” Her voice was tight, with an edge of defeat that pleased me, given the circumstances.

  I tapped my finger against the tablet, mind working quickly. “Name?” I didn't look at the tablet.

  “Delia Peoples.”

  “What enchantment did you put into place that made your alarm bracelet ring tonight?” I worded the question very carefully.

  Delia's eyes narrowed, then focused on my messed up hair. “That hair of yours looks like you've been doing some naughty things yourself. It was far too much fun playing a game with you, though. They rarely let me play around here.” She lifted her wrist, shaking her bracelet.

  I nodded pleasantly. “Please answer the question, or I will have to up your Offense Level.”

  “It was a suggestion enchantment.”

  Ok, that sounded like it could be really creepy, actually. I narrowed my eyes. “Who was your victim?”

  “I—”

  “Scratch that question.” The magic complied. Reading that manual had been worth every minute of non-toad-turning time. “Who was the recipient of the enchantment that made your alarm bracelet ring tonight?”

  Her teeth visually gritted together at the verbal modification. “Anastasia Kaparov.”

  I nodded, more disturbed. “I'll get someone to take care of the enchantment right away.” I sent the designation into the tablet so that it would go on the Neutralizer Squad's list. They would reverse the spell and effects.

  “What was the suggestion you attached to the enchantment that made your alarm bracelet ring tonight?” I asked, carefully structuring the words again.

  “To take an exam for me.”

  The tablet didn't zap her. I felt my shoulders relax. Thank God. But I still put it on my list of things to research. I wondered about the strength of the anti-dust protection.

  Maybe I could ask Stevens what normal people did to protect themselves. The chemical stuff, at least, was totally within her jurisdiction.

  I had to take solace in the fact that the campus had this type of monitoring, though it had been through Delia's bracelet. That meant she had likely slipped some suggestions through before and gotten away with it. It also indicated that she had been reasonably certain that she would slip this one through too.

  “Was that the only suggestion attached?”

  “Yes,” she said in such a disgusted manner, that I had a feeling she was not a huge fan of this Anastasia person.

  That helped me make my choice. Though I would word it to leave the option up to the victim. “Do you agree—should she ask you—to do all of Anastasia Kaparov's laundry, errands, and cleaning for three days to the best of your abilities?” I had learned from the manual that the magic would make it so. Delia couldn't put reds in with whites, if she knew better.

  She was watching me, her eyes narrowed. She didn't answer for a moment, but finally said, “By my magic I so do vow.”

  I smiled and tapped the tablet. “Great. I now consider us even.” The tablet didn't zap me. “Do you now consider us even?”

  Her expression shuttered for a moment, but then she got a considering look on her face. “I do.” The tablet didn't zap her. “You are an interesting addition to the club.”

  I nodded. “So I've been told. I'm off to another call. It was...interesting...meeting you again, Miss Peoples. I hope I can look forward to the next meeting.”

  She cocked her head. “Perhaps.”

  Well, good enough for no zap. I saluted and turned.

  ~*~

  Service took up a lot of my time. So I divided my hours into blocks—working with Stevens, attending classes, working with Draeger, attempting to secure Christian's soul in fifteen thousand different ways, figuring out how to hide how magic punished me each time, answering calls, and working out all of the ins and out of this new world. Not in that order.

  I guarded my cafeteria time zealously, and always met the others there, even though there were times I nearly fell asleep in my potatoes. And days when I bled through the bandages under my clothes.

  I didn't know why I was having such trouble securing and binding my brother's soul. But I was losing a little confidence in my planning and execution abilities because of it. The rituals and enchantments should have worked. At least some of them should have worked. I wasn't used to failure.

  Each day that Marsgrove didn't return was a gift. I wouldn't be able to get away with my deception twice. I developed some tactical art magic with Draeger—trying out snares and other art creations to formulate practical defensive and offensive uses—and kept my news feed running silently at all times.

  Community service kept me on my toes. Not everyone opened their door willingly. Handing down punishments was a quirky business—some of the malcontents tried to be quicker than the tablet magic. I had ended up glued to the wall, thrown through a window, and blinded.

  But I always got the perp in the end. Thank you, paintball. And my tablet always felt that an attack on us earned the perp double punishment, so it really sucked to be them.

  After a punishment got logged, there was no need to do anything else. Magic was a funny and vicious mediator, I knew firsthand.

  The karmic magic did its trick, and if it felt the punishment was satisfied according to the terms set down by the spell's creator, it rested without issue. The problem really was that last part—according to the spell's creator. Many of the repeat offenders had realized how to work the system to their advantage, while still serving their punishments, and the officials seemed happy and absent, using the service students for projects when it was convenient.

  I leaned against the jamb of room one hundred sixty-nine in Dorm One. “Another Level Three, Leandred. You want lab duty again?”

  Constantine folded into the high-backed leather chair he favored. Today he looked like a weary medieval baron who had just surveyed his crumbling estates; projecting a jaded disdain with the world. Sometimes he was Loki—wearing a playful façade that wanted to cause mass mischief. Occasionally, he mixed the two. Luckily, he hadn't tried the seducer persona on me since the first few minutes of the initial call.

  I'd been terrified to return on the second call, but he had been all languid insouciance—only showing the predatory nature that had been in evidence during the first call when I could see him in my peri
pheral vision.

  I never forgot it, though. The evidence of it always simmered behind his eyes.

  But after responding to five calls to him, I was used to his routine.

  “If I must, Crown.” He repeated the necessary words to bind him to his punishment.

  I shook my head and let the magic wrap, then tucked my tablet back in my bag, moving my latest box sketch and reader to the side. The latest ritual text was waiting on my reader and I was eager to read it as soon as I got a free moment.

  The absent thought that maybe the Ritual of the Troll Bells would work where the others had failed sifted through the forefront of my mind. As I was securing my bag back on my shoulder, I caught sight of something on one of Constantine's shelves in his huge and richly appointed room. My feet took me forward automatically.

  “Are those troll bells?” I asked in disbelief.

  “No.” But he was smirking and playing with the black ribbon he always had nearby.

  “Where did you get them?”

  He lifted a negligent shoulder. “I can't recall. And they aren't for sale.” His eyes moved to my bag. “However...for the right trade...”

  I blinked. “I'm pretty sure they won't let me give you Justice Toad.”

  He looked unimpressed with the name I had given my tablet. “You have something else in there. A drawing. I saw it when you opened your bag.”

  I looked down to see my most recent box sketch. I hadn't put anything in the box yet. The drawing looked flat and uninteresting—what would prompt him to ask? “You want a sketch of a box?”

  He leaned back in his chair, winding the ribbon around his finger and watching me. “How much does the space hold?”

  I touched the edge of the paper, fingers feeling the flat threads. “How did you know...?” I shook my head at his knowledge and his raised brow. “It holds two pounds, but no more than eighteen inches in each direction.”

  His eyes never left mine. “I want it.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you want the bells?”

  I did. They were horribly hard to get a hold of, even by catalog—I had been trying to find some for weeks. I lifted the sketch and examined it. I could make another. Why did I feel reluctant to give it to him? Because it contained a drop of precious paint?

  One drop of paint for the possibility of bringing Christian back?

  I held out the paper.

  He looked at it, then back at me. “Will it to me, when our hands are both upon it.”

  I did as he asked and felt magic zip through my fingertips and travel across the page to his. I let go as he pulled the paper to him. I ticked off a research task in my mind. Ownership transfer. That was why Marsgrove's paper had been reluctant to serve me.

  But...Marsgrove's paper had served me. I unticked the mental box, modifying it to ask why I had been able to use the paper without an ownership transfer.

  Constantine carefully put a pencil on top of the paper, watched it disappear, then retrieved it. He had obviously either seen Marsgrove's paper or one like it, as he knew exactly how to work it. And since I had modeled my design after it, they worked the same way. He looked decidedly gleeful—as gleeful as Lothario could look—before floating the bells over to me, his eyes barely leaving the paper. “A word of advice, Crown,” he said in his satiny voice. “If you make more of these, keep them hidden a little better.”

  I elatedly checked over the troll bells, nodding absently to him. I went through all of the ingredients and objects I needed in my head. I had everything. I could definitely try this ritual tonight and push back my other Level Three ritual to tomorrow. The rituals were supposed to be spaced out more, but I could handle the aches, pains, and fractured bones that doing them one day apart got me.

  I wished I could handle the consequences of doing more than one in a single day, but in addition to gross physical ailments, I lost track of time, passing out for long hours that would be far better spent with research and other smaller trials.

  “You have no idea, do you?” The satin of his voice turned gruffer.

  I looked up at him, then over to his shelves again, not following the thread of his conversation. The ceramic container that sat innocuously on his shelf was the same one I had seen him with the first day in Stevens's lab.

  Constantine, as one of Stevens's primary students, was often in and out of her lab while I was there. I had the sure notion that he was trying to figure out what we were doing. But since we were always making art supplies, there wasn't much to uncover.

  I should check into what he was keeping in that container. I had suspicions.

  “No idea about what?” I asked.

  The predatory look was back for a moment before he smoothed it out. “Keep your sketches like that out of sight.” He waved a hand, his ribbon following the motion. “I'm feeling decidedly helpful toward you. But I always collect on helpful advice given.” The edge of his mouth lifted.

  Predatory.

  “Well, I'll just have to disregard it then.” I smiled and turned.

  The one foot satin ribbon was suddenly six feet long and wrapped around my left wrist, turning me back toward him. He said nothing, but his eyes were piercing, and the satin binding tightened.

  Then, abruptly, the smooth ribbon trailed from my arm and shortened back into a twelve inch decoration hanging from his hand.

  Nothing further was said. But I purchased a security folder to hide my box sketches in.

  ~*~

  The Ritual of the Troll Bells turned out to be...complicated and painful.

  Three hours after beginning it, I limped to Nephthys' room. Since I had started necromancy testing with abandon, I had fried my hair, caused it to fall out, turned it horrible colors, burned different parts of my body, and lost three fingernails.

  “Sit right here.” She gracefully pointed to her dressing chair.

  I perched delicately on the plush brown cushion. I had needed to attach the troll bells to every imaginable part of my body, and the resulting burn marks...fiercely burned.

  She produced a bottle of sparkly gel and a stack of light gauze pads. “These will absorb the burns fully in time.”

  She squeezed the gel onto a pad, then pressed it against my arm. The pad...absorbed...into my arm. The relief from part of the pain made me abruptly sag. The burn scar looked as if it had been healing for a week.

  I closed my eyes. “I love magic. Thanks, Neph.” Being in Nephthy's presence was an automatic relaxant, in and of itself.

  “Of course.”

  She asked me about classes and projects as she applied the salved pads to the rest of my singed areas. If Neph didn't ask me soon about what I was doing to get this injured, I was going to start wondering about life back at the Sakkara Institute. She'd calmly produced a bottle of nail glue last time I'd come for a patch job. Glue that made nails instead of repairing them.

  “What about you? How have practices been?” I looked at Neph. “Did you want to redo your choreography tonight? I can tweak the animation in any way you need.”

  “You need to sleep, Ren,” she said soothingly. “The animation is lovely as is.”

  I mentally squeezed in a block of time in my overly crammed schedule to do it tonight anyway.

  There were too many things I needed to do and so little time. I crossed off the bell ritual from my mental list. It had produced a ghostly image of a shrieking bat. The shrieking had sounded a little like evil-Christian in pain, but a bat was not what I was looking for.

  I touched the burn marks at my waist as she worked. Bells had been strung, like a loose belt, all the way around. It was just a good thing nothing had been attached to my neck. Even healing at seven times the normal rate, those marks would have been hard to hide.

  “No, I feel great. Tonight, I insist. I can tell you have been working on different moves.” I looked around her room. There were well-worn paths of magic in the air that spoke of repeated practice.

  “You are seeing magic better.” She tilted her
head, then placed the next gel pad.

  “Practice.” I grimaced. “Hideous practice.” With all of the defensive magic I was using in order to protect myself in some of the rituals, I was getting far better at identification. That, and now that we were back in the vault, Stevens was upping her expectations of my performance, so I had been working extra hard with Draeger in the Battle Building.

  I had even unknowingly connected through the building to Alexander Dare's room during one practice session—my magic unconsciously connecting to his—and been squished to a pulp in under thirty seconds while we “sparred.” More like while he sparred and I had been tossed about. Lying spreadeagled on the ground afterward was the first time I had heard Draeger snicker.

  “I'm coming back tonight and we are working on your choreography animation,” I told her, pointing my finger.

  She smiled and finished applying the gel pads.

  ~*~

  I was happy to see Isaiah in the Squad's break room that night. He motioned me over. “How is it going?”

  I shrugged, then winced, the burned skin at my back pulling beneath the healing salve. “Well?”

  “Good to hear. You missed the thousand shrieking bats that appeared in the middle of Top Circle earlier.” He shook his head. “Had to call in the combat mages to help. Strange things happening around campus. Things appearing and parts of the mountain being blocked as if chaos magic is running amok.”

  “Blocked?”

  He waved a hand. “Things that worked previously with magic, but now suddenly it is as if their magic or...or space...was sucked dry. Arches or spots turned non-magical or altogether ceasing to exist. Some geology mages said there were a few small magic zones inside the mountain that have been petrified recently.”

  Huh. Strange things were always happening around campus. And magic often influenced magic. Therefore, maybe my ghost bat had simply been a reflection of whatever had happened on Top Circle. Annoying, but it meant that if I tried the ritual again, maybe I would get something else.

  I pulled out my mental list and made the appropriate modifications cheerfully, removing the strike-through from the bell ritual. I made a note to procure burn cream in advance of my next experiment, though.