by Sara Hanover
My presentation didn’t snap out as it should, but rather melted down like liquid rain into my hand and then into the stone. I’d never had that effect before and when I looked up, I could see a lot of pale expressions. I wished I knew what I’d done wrong/differently, but I don’t think anyone here was going to tell me. Yet. Again, I seemed to have achieved something far more difficult than Archer suggested.
I still battled the drained effects from earlier. I felt thinned out and unsubstantial. I scanned the room and saw a few tables in the back, pushed up against the wall, filled with finger foods and juice drinks and urns for coffee and tea. I broke away from the lineup, trotted over, and tossed a bruschetta or two down, my mouth filling with the taste of fresh tomato, olive oil, and a touch of garlic. They had to have been hothouse tomatoes, because we were in the dead of winter, but this group could afford to pay for what they wanted.
Archer cleared his throat. “Miss Andrews. We are far from done.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I returned to the lineup.
My wary student target gave me a crooked grin, reinforcing my s’mores label. Layered, different flavors, complicated textures, and the need to be careful while handling in case she was still flambé. I’d like to know her name, but Archer wasn’t into introducing his students. Protective? Perhaps. It reminded me that I stood in a hall where true names could be used in power rituals. Unfortunately, they’d made it clear they knew mine.
We did two more tests which I failed utterly, in the line of sympathetic magic where you took a sliver of an item and replicated it in its entirety. The professor hadn’t drilled me in its aspect, although I’d read his book, but we’d never gotten around to discussing it or applying its principles. I didn’t push myself to accomplish something I wasn’t skilled in and ignored the low laughs amid muttered sneers. I could produce a rose from rose petal if I had to, but why strain?
Then we did some aura reading. Opening the vision to see outside the box of our own world is not common or easy and, quite frankly, until my stone gobbled up bits of the Eye of Nimora, I hadn’t been able to do it. Not unless Carter or one of the others touched me and used their own power to open my inner eye; since that is taxing to my partner, I’d only experienced it once or twice. But as a sorceress, my skill comes from knowing the real name, the intrinsic existence of another thing, so that I could manipulate it or draw power from it, or even give it an exact reality by naming it. To do that, I have to be able to see it. My ability in that area had been nonexistent before acquiring the pieces of Nimora. It expanded slowly, as if I were learning to do it on my own with coaching from the shards. I could almost do it consistently without the eyes. That night, however, I felt too weary to even try. I watched the others scan their compatriots, and I’d no clue if they were right or wrong or scamming me. I would only know when it was my turn, and eventually it came down to me.
“I don’t read auras,” I told Archer.
“To be an effective magic user, one must have the Sight.”
One also shouldn’t reveal all the cards in one’s hand. I allowed myself a smile and answered, “I do all right.”
“I’m not certain you understand why we invited you here this evening. We’re trying to ascertain not only your power but also your control of it. There is a minimum amount of magic required to keep one’s powers in check as well as in tune. We have to certify you can do that, or we will . . .” Archer’s crisp voice trailed off.
I read him then, quickly so that he would have no hope of detecting it, and saw condemnation behind his words. He wasn’t nearly as friendly as he projected. I reacted. “Or you’ll what?”
A ripple went through the Society. A number of them shuffled back a step again, their attention fixed on my inquisitor. That put their backs to the wall. Would they turn and run next?
I had a good guess for his silence. “Strip me of my power?”
Archer produced a piece of pewter-gray metal, very shiny, rather like a gold ingot bar, from an inner pocket of his nicely cut coat. “We will do whatever is necessary.”
I eyed it closely. “What is that?”
“A relic,” he said. “One that has proved quite useful and can be very effective. A nullifier, if you would.”
“I would rather not. I came here tonight because you invited me—and because I had hoped for some basic schooling.”
“Your aura indicates you have a great deal of power, untapped and undisciplined. We can’t let you be a menace to others. As for schooling, you seem to be resistant to the idea.”
“Ah.” No wonder the professor had been adamant about my not getting mixed up with the Society. When they were good, they were very good . . . and when they were bad, they were awful. Also, he had had some idea about the first impressions I tend to make i.e., I often come on a little brash. I held up my hand, palm outward, and waited for a tense moment for my eyes to open. They did, instantly, as if eager to jump into the situation. I waved my hand in front of Archer and then the double row of students. As suspected, the youngest one was the real power-dealer in the bunch, after the adult. I could see more than the auras of their talents; I could read their emotional standing as well. Most of them were wells of animosity. S’Mores hit me as intrigued and a little sympathetic.
But Archer—well, Archer reminded me a bit of my nemesis Judge Parker—full of power and not about to be crossed if he could help it. I don’t like dictators, good or bad, if there is such a thing as a benevolent dictator.
The maelstrom stone vibrated a little in my hand, warming up, leaving me wondering as to its intentions. It can be very independent.
Archer stepped close to me, his nullifier in hand, and as I swung about to meet him, to fend him off—my stone jerked my fingers to his relic, sticking to it like a powerful magnet. Before Archer could gasp or I could warn him—the stone swallowed it.
Like that. One minute he held the shiny ingot and the next it had disappeared into the palm of my hand. I could almost swear I heard the stone burp in satisfaction.
“My god.” Archer stared at me. “Can you get it to release my relic?”
“Mmmm . . . I’d say no. At least, it’s never spit anything back out yet.” Not the whole truth, but I didn’t feel like giving him false hope. Or anything else, under the circumstances.
“But it—it contains the powers of those it’s erased until it’s emptied.”
“Then I’d say definitely that it’s gone. I told you it absorbed items.”
“Did you come here with that intention?”
I tilted my head. “Should I have? Because it’s beginning to look to me like I should have, to protect myself if nothing else. But I don’t see as how I could have. I didn’t know what to expect here. I’ve never heard of a null stone. And I don’t think the swell of animosity,” and I swung about indicating everyone else in the cavern, “is going to make my defensive shield feel any more secure.”
S’Mores edged close to me. Her whispery voice reached me. “Make a trade.”
I took it as a sound idea. I opened my eyes a little wider at Archer. “How about a proposition?”
“A proposition! Tell me why we shouldn’t drop you in your tracks?”
“Well, one, the stone will protect me, but I can’t control any backlash. And two, with a bit of schooling, I might be able to figure out how to get the stone to relinquish what it’s gobbled up. I know it’s absorbed one or two things, but frankly, I can feel the nullifier. I’m thinking it might react like that grain of dirt that irritates an oyster into manufacturing a pearl. I ought to be able to force it out when the stone is ready.” I couldn’t sense it, but it certainly sounded plausible when I said it.
A slight tic at the corner of his forehead developed. I didn’t know if this meant he was thinking hard or annoyed or, hell, he might even have been receiving telepathic opinions from members of the Society around us. I stood very still and gathered
my power as quietly and inconspicuously as I could to defend myself. It would have to be a one-punch strike, hard and decisive, because I didn’t have the stamina right now to do anything sustained. Someone said, very close to my ear, close enough that I did not think anyone else could possibly hear it, “Don’t antagonize.”
It sounded like advice.
Late advice.
When I looked about to see who it might have been, absolutely no one stood next to me but Archer.
I wanted to walk through their ranks and set off the little items they all wore to augment their magical skills, because if it has magic stored in it, and I can sense it, I can access it. That’s one of the things a sorceress is good at. It wouldn’t take more than a slight nudge of the resources I had left, too. It might be enough of a power play to make the Society back off, it or might be a very bad idea. Did they really consider me one or just a half-assed magician with a far more powerful stone embedded in her hand?
Truth to tell, I had no idea how much magic I might hold if it was taken/moved upon, but I had some. I had felt it before and one day I would feel it again.
But now . . . right now . . . I could own them. All of them. At least until one of them decided to drop me in my tracks. The actions I wanted to take, though, would give them fair warning how dangerous and brash I could be. So not a good idea. It’s always better to have the enemy underestimate you. If they were the enemy. I hadn’t decided yet.
I took a step back, out of the range of both Archer and little Miss S’mores.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NEGOTIATED POSITIONS
HIS IRE SEEMED as restrained and formal as the morning coat he wore. Archer flicked off an invisible bit of lint from one cuff, frowning, but when he looked up, he nodded. “Your proposition is accepted. The main intention of the Society is education, after all, and you’ve offered to participate in that. We will, of course, insist on the remittance of our nullifier—and it isn’t the only such relic we have in our possession, merely the one at hand—for your information.”
I didn’t appreciate the threat even as he agreed to a deal. I’d remember that. “Done. I shall work diligently on getting that relic returned. But you’ll have to schedule any classes you want me to take around my college and athletic obligations.”
“Field hockey, I was informed?”
“Yes.”
“Your season is finished, then.”
And, it was, but that didn’t mean the coach would let us go fallow. No, indeed. Most of us were added to the track and field team, to take advantage of the “legs” we’d already developed. “I still have classes.”
“You shall have to forward me a calendar of the best available days, then.” He produced a business card with a fluid movement of his hand. Archer must have been, at one time, a very adept magician with astonishing sleight of hand. Trickery, I knew, but still impressive. The professor wouldn’t have thought so. I could almost hear his cantankerous bluster. I missed him, almost as much as I missed my own father. The business card held a private postal box as well as his email address.
“I’ll get my hours to you as soon as the school has confirmed them for the spring semester. That should be any day now.” He nodded briskly and then turned to the double line of students. “Dismissed.”
I watched them scatter, rather hoping that they might take flight like refugees from Hogwarts, but none of them did. S’Mores dared a half-smile as she disappeared into the crowd, veered to grab some food goodies from the table, and then whisked out a side door.
Archer waited until the students had all dispersed before leaning in and saying, “If this trade of ours doesn’t work out, we shall have to take steps.”
I didn’t think he meant baby steps either.
A corridor opened, leading back to the double doors and beyond that, the car park steeped in night shadows. I took it as a sign that I should leave posthaste, and so I did. The driver opened a door for me, I stepped in—and found Miss S’mores waiting for me.
She tilted her head and smiled at me. “Hi! Archer sent me to start your lessons.”
“Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
She giggled. “My day starts at sundown.” She put up a window between the front and back and did a little finger wave. I hoped she was soundproofing the car.
“You’ve got my name. Fair is fair . . . yours?”
“Sophie,” she told me as she leaned over to offer her hand.
“Sophie,” I finished. She looked like one.
With a laugh, she tapped her hand on her jeans as if I had static-shocked her. Maybe I had.
Sophie glanced at me. Now her eyebrow went up. “That’s a bit of a burden.”
“What?”
“The power snapping at me. See, that’s telling people what you are. You’ve lost any advantage you might have.”
“But you can handle it, right? I didn’t hurt you.”
She stared at me solemnly. For an eerie moment, I saw what she would look like as an adult—chiseled face, serious eyes, intelligent consideration, and—perhaps—even a tinge of sadness. Sophie gave an abrupt nod. “Of course not. The issue is control. And there won’t be anybody but Master Thigpen about tonight who can report on you, and he won’t know.”
“He won’t?”
“First lesson. I’ll show you how to distract being assessed.” Her mouth thinned in thought, before she knocked on the glass to tell the driver to leave. “All ready.”
“That’s a deal, then.” I reached behind me to lock the door and off we went.
My experience with unknown cars and drivers made me look back, over my shoulder, as we pulled away. I turned back, settled in the car seat, and gathered a bit of power to my stone.
In the car, she tapped the back of the driver’s seat, and the window obligingly rolled down between us and him. Sophie waved her hand again. “Catch that?”
The barrier stayed down, but I detected a muffled sound to her words.
“Sound waves?”
“Yup. I’ve cut off one of his major senses, so he will disregard us.” She made the motion again as I looked at her warily.
“It’s not so much the sigil you’re sketching but the intention behind it.”
She beamed. “Fast learner!”
I tapped the back of the driver’s seat, and the window whined upward. She leaned toward me and sniffed. “Do I smell dog on you?”
That unnerved me a bit. “He just had a bath a few days ago, too. But yeah, that would be my pup. Do I reek of it?” I lifted one arm and then the other.
“Just to me. Labrador retriever and . . .” Sophie waited for me to fill in her sentence, but I didn’t.
“And?” she repeated.
I shrugged. “No one is quite sure.”
“Oh, wow. Something magical, then, maybe.” She sniffed again. “Not hellhound. They always have this smell like an old fire pit.”
“Sulfurous?”
“Maybe.” She rubbed the side of her nose with one finger as if the very memory made her itchy.
“So . . . is this a sanctioned lesson, or did you just decide to drop by?”
She gave me a side eye. “You won’t tell?”
“Never.”
“I volunteered. Archer wanted someone to follow you, to put a tracer on his nullifier. I just wanted to see you on your own. I mean, who you really are, you know?”
And she wanted to evaluate me on her own. I wasn’t sure if I found that encouraging or not. Suppose she was a pint-sized Joanna? As nice as she seemed to be, even though her offer might be genuine, I couldn’t discount that she was fully immersed in an organization the professor mistrusted completely. I sat quietly and gave her the merest of nods and tried to think of my curmudgeonly wizard in his grand old tradition.
That made me even more cautious. Though I didn’t think she’d detect
ed my weakened reserves which told me that Miss Sophie S’mores wasn’t as all that as she thought she was.
I was more than certain Master Thigpen would be.
“We’ll be at a neutral practice area in a few.” Sophie lapsed into silence, or perhaps she was working to keep her ward going. The smile on her face stretched thin, and she didn’t really focus on anything but the back of the driver’s head.
Because we’d turned into the quarter of town where I’d gone to high school, I caught a pretty good idea of where we were going this time and paid attention. Next time I’d drive on my own, thoroughly disliking the idea of being at the mercy of a driver/car I didn’t know. The car, however, cruised past and toward the city limits.
Try as I might, I couldn’t catch a glimpse of the driver in the rearview mirror. That disturbed me a little, wondering how it was possible to avoid being seen. I couldn’t even tell if it were male or female although I had a feeling of female. Something about the shoulders and arms in the uniform coat, and the gloves covering the hands. Not delicate but nearly. It crept over me, like an ice-cold feather tickling against me that I didn’t like riding in strange cars with unknown drivers. Nor was I headed toward the Butchery area, which gave me a little comfort . . . but not enough.
I turned around on the car seat to face Sophie. “How much farther?”
“Oh. You know.” She gave a little waggle of her fingers.
“I don’t know, or I wouldn’t ask.”
She didn’t answer right away. I watched her for a moment, noted that her color had paled, tiny drops of sweat trickled from her hairline down her forehead, and one of her hands had begun to tremble. Not, I thought, from the soundproofing spell which didn’t need to hold much power since the window stayed up. What unnerved this young lady so much? She wouldn’t look back at me, her gaze fixed to the front, as landscape blurred a bit around us. The realization I was being taken somewhere I probably didn’t want to go became much more than a suspicion. And Sophie was no more a willing participant than I was—someone had leveraged her. She hadn’t volunteered, whether for Archer or someone else. She’d been forced to participate. That angered me more than my own situation.