I stared at her. Everyone could sense magic, except me. There were people who never managed to cast a single spell, yet could sense magic. I was the sole exception, the sole person who never sensed magic. And I knew it all too well. My sisters didn't need to bother hiding their handiwork when they booby-trapped my chair. They knew I’d sit down without sensing anything amiss ...
I don’t have magic, I thought. I don’t have any magic.
“I need to go to the library,” I said, out loud. “I ...”
Rose spun around and threw a hex. I was so surprised I couldn't even move before the magic struck me. My lips melted together. I couldn’t speak. She glared at me as I stared back at her, shocked. I hadn't taught her that spell! It dawned on me, as she clenched her fists, that she must have looked it up in the library. She had to be doing something while I worked with Magister Tallyman and Akin.
“Shut up,” Rose snapped. Her voice was breaking. “You ... shut up!”
I would have made a sarcastic remark about not being able to talk anyway, but I couldn't speak. I wasn't sure I would have dared anyway. Rose ... was shaking, her face darkening with rage. I’d often scored points off my sisters that ended with them throwing hexes, but this was different. Rose looked as if she was torn between crying and screaming at me.
“I was expelled,” she shouted. “I was ...”
She stared at me. “I could have lost everything! My parents could have lost everything! I could have been married off to some old geezer because my family needed to get rid of me before the creditors came calling! I could have lost everything ...”
Her face purpled. “I could have lost everything and here you are, talking about going to the library!”
I tried to swallow. My mouth felt uncomfortable. I’d never liked the lip-sealing hex. One of my governesses had been fond of using it. Too fond, according to Mum. She’d literally tossed the governess out of the hall when she’d found out. And now, Rose had used it to silence me.
“Your father saved me,” she added. “Who is he?”
One of the three most powerful magicians in the city, I thought. I couldn’t say a word. Rose was talking to me now ... but she hated me. And yet, she still owed my father a favour.
“You could have killed us both,” Rose shouted. Tears were running down her cheeks. She raised her scarred hand, as if she were about to slap me or hex me, then dropped it back into her lap. “Or worse ... you could have just taken a couple of weeks off, while I was sent home!”
All the fight seemed to go out of her as she sagged backwards. I crawled forward and put my arm around her as she cried, great heaving sobs that racked her body. She tensed, just for a second, then relaxed into my embrace. I couldn't help another stab of guilt that threatened to start me crying too. To Rose - to everyone - it had to look as though my father had saved me from punishment, while she had only been saved from a fate worse than death by an afterthought. She didn't know I’d begged my father to save her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, desperately. “I’m so sorry.”
She waved a hand at me. I felt my lips unseal.
“It was my fault,” I said, softly. Rose had trusted me and I’d hurt her. Worse, I’d nearly destroyed her. If she wanted to hex me into next week ... how could I blame her? “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” Rose said. She managed a weak smile. “Are we going to just keep apologising to each other?”
“It might not be a bad idea,” I said. I managed to smile back. My lips still felt numb. “I had a thought.”
Rose eyed me, nervously. “Does it involve sneaking up into the library?”
“Not yet,” I said. The janitor would probably report us both if we sneaked away. I didn't feel like asking my Dad for a second favour. “But we do have to go up later tonight.”
“If we can go,” Rose pointed out. “We might have been banned from the library.”
I swallowed, hard. The mere thought was a horror utterly beyond my imagination. How - precisely - were we to study without the library? It was impossible.
“I don’t think so,” I said. I rose and looked up and down the corridor. “I think we’d better finish here, then we can try and slip upstairs later.”
“I suppose,” Rose said. Her cheeks were still wet with tears. “Cat ... please don’t do that again.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
I walked back to the bucket, picked up the wet sponge and turned back to her. And then I heard the spell, right behind me. There was no time to dodge. My ankles sprang together, sending me falling face-first to the floor. I heard a second spell, too late. I looked up to see Rose frozen in place.
“Well,” Alana’s voice said. “You’re finally where you deserve to be. On the floor, washing up the dirt and grime.”
She sounded angry. I wondered, absently, if Dad had said anything to her. It didn't seem likely. She’d probably only heard a few things from the school rumour mill, all hugely exaggerated. And yet, she’d sent the card ... maybe Bella had sent the card. Or maybe she was back to normal, now she knew I’d recovered.
I tried to separate my ankles, but it was impossible. Magic held them together, magic I couldn't sense ... I rolled over and glared at her, uncomfortably aware that my head was brushing against Rose’s feet. She had to be trying to counter the spell, but it would be futile without being able to move her arms. No matter how talented she was, it would take time to learn to cast the spell without movement ...
Alana glared down at me. “Everyone’s mad at me because of you,” she snarled. “What did you do?”
I gave her a smile I knew would irritate her. “Magic.”
She lifted her hand into a casting pose, then stopped. “You can't do magic,” she said, in a suspiciously calm tone. A thought crossed my head. Maybe, just maybe, I could trick her into doing something careless. “The potion exploded because you couldn't steer the magic ...”
Her voice trailed off as it struck her. I’d never made a potion explode before. The best I’d done, without help, was a sludge that the gardeners had used to grow carrots in the vegetable beds. Only a magician could start the magical cascade, let alone control it. Alana ...
... Had to be wondering if I really was a zero.
I pushed myself upwards, my hand raised in a casting pose. Alana cast the counterspell automatically, negating the magic. I threw myself aside, landing on one hand. Alana stared, then morphed into a frog. I’d tricked her into freeing Rose too.
“Hah,” I said. Alana turned and started hopping down the corridor. “Bye-bye.”
Rose, grinning from ear to ear, freed my ankles. I resisted the urge to chase Alana as I stood, rubbing my jaw. She deserved a good kick, but we'd already wasted far too much time. And besides, if she now believed I did have magic ...
“She's going to be mad,” Rose commented. “Will she go whining to your father, too?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. Alana would be furious when she figured out the truth, but it had been her own mistake. I’d spooked her. “I think she’ll just set out to get revenge.”
I picked up the sponge again and sighed. “Back to work,” I added. It was frustrating, particularly since I had a very good idea, but we were being punished. “We’ll go up to the library later.”
Rose smiled at me. I couldn't help smiling back.
We were still friends.
Chapter Twenty-Six
As it happened, it was Monday evening before we managed to get into the library.
Sunday was practically identical to Saturday, except someone - I suspected Alana - had told the rest of the school what we were doing. Dozens of students, including Isabella and her cronies, made it their business to walk up and down the corridor in muddy shoes, forcing us to scrub the same places over and over again. Others hexed us from a distance or merely pointed and laughed at us doing the work of commoners. Rose learnt a couple of spells that should have sped up the cleaning, but the janitor caught her casting them and gave us an extr
a two days of detention. The only advantage to the whole affair was that it gave me time to think.
Monday wasn't much better. Protective and Defensive Magic was a disaster, of course, while in Potions Magistra Loanda hauled us to the front and gave us both a scathing lecture that nearly made me break down in tears. The rest of the class merely watched, not daring to either commiserate with us or laugh at us. I wasn't too surprised when she told me I’d need supervision from an upperclassman before I got to use the private labs again, not after what had happened. I was surprised she didn't bar me from using them altogether. By the time we finally managed to get into the library - after class, after dinner - we were both on edge.
“All right,” Rose said, once we were in a private room. Thankfully, half the upperclassmen had netball practice. “What do you actually want to do?”
I reached for a sheet of paper and scribbled down a series of equations, working out the precise details of a spell. I’d been tempted to merely crib Anna’s Amphibian, but that wouldn't have given me the test I needed. Rose watched me dubiously, her eyes clearly worried. She had good reason to remember the last experiment.
“This spell should work,” I said, holding out the paper. “I want you to cast it on me.”
Rose’s eyes narrowed. “And what does it do?”
“I think it would work better if you didn't know,” I told her. “I don't want your intentions bleeding into the spell.”
“Then no,” Rose said. She looked down at the paper, her eyes glazing over. “I can't even see what this spell does.”
I stared at her in astonishment. “It’s harmless,” I said, although I knew that not everyone would agree. “All you have to do is cast it on me.”
Rose passed the paper back to me. “What. Does. It. Do?”
We looked at each other for a long moment. “It should turn me into a frog for a precise period of time,” I said, finally. I didn't want to go into more detail. “That’s all it does.”
“Really?” Rose asked, sardonically. “And you need a new spell to get turned into a frog?”
“Yes,” I said. “This is one I devised personally.”
I went on before she could say a word. “I’ve had a hunch,” I added. “But if I tell you any more about it, your intentions might warp the spell.”
Rose still looked doubtful, but she took the paper back. I didn't really blame her. One of the safety lectures we’d endured had been a warning about casting spells when we didn't actually know what they did. It wasn't unknown for magicians to accidentally cause all sorts of problems, just by casting the wrong spells. And Rose ... well, she probably didn't trust me as much as she had, before I’d nearly killed her. It was hard to blame her for that too.
My heart twisted. Nothing was going to be the same again.
“Fine,” Rose said. “And what do you want me to do while you’re hopping around on the floor?”
“Nothing,” I said, seriously. I nodded to the stack of books we’d borrowed for Theoretical Charms. “Read a book. Do your homework. Just wait.”
Rose quirked an eyebrow. “And what if you get stuck as a frog?”
“It won’t happen,” I said. “There’s nothing to keep the spell in place permanently. The worst that can happen is you having to turn me back before we go to the dorm.”
I kept my doubts to myself. If I was right ... the spell shouldn't last longer than an hour. But if I was wrong, I was dooming myself to three hours of utter boredom. I put my watch on the table, where I should be able to see it from the floor, then stood. Rose watched me as I moved to the centre of the room, her eyes still worried. I wished, not for the first time, that I could trust my sisters to help. Or someone else ...
“Cast the spell,” I said.
Rose reread the paper, then lifted her hand and cast the spell. The world spun around me, my eyesight blurring as my body twisted and changed. It felt different this time, even though I was used to being transfigured without warning. It didn’t hurt, but it felt as though it should hurt. I’d been so intent on timing the spell - and boosting the magic as much as possible - that I hadn't worried about the sensation.
I looked up. Rose was peering down at me from a great height. My body twitched, as if it wanted to jump backwards. I still had nightmares, sometimes, about the day Alana had transfigured me for the first time. She hadn't hurt me - she wouldn't have hurt me, not when she thought I would develop magic soon - but the shock had been horrifying. I’d been shaking like a leaf when Dad removed the spell.
“Cat?” Rose asked. “Are you all right?”
I lifted a green hand and waved to her, then started to hop around the room. The frog body still felt twitchy ... I wondered, absently, if I’d messed up the spell. It wasn't uncommon for someone to feel weird, after spending a long time in another form, but most spells had safeguards built in to prevent that from happening. Had I accidentally left them out? Or was it merely my imagination?
Rose took a final look at me, then sat down at the table and opened a book. I groaned inwardly as I looked at her, silently kicking myself for an obvious oversight. I should have asked her to read to me. I could have listened, even as I waited to see what happened. But it was too late now. There was no way to signal anything more complex than a demand to be turned back. All I could do was wait.
I tested the concept in my mind, over and over again. Dad had always said I had magic, if only because I’d managed to break Great Aunt Stregheria’s spell. I’d never believed him because I’d never been able to do it again. But what if there was something about me that had resisted the spell? Or broken it? Something about my nature that had actively negated the spell ...?
The equations say the formula should work, I told myself. Time was passing slowly, so slowly. But everyone thinks the equations are wrong, because it doesn't work. Except I did manage to get it to work ...
I’d been alone, the first time I brewed the formula. There hadn't been anyone else in the classroom. If someone had been standing right outside the door, they’d still been at least four metres from the caldron. But Rose had been right next to me when I’d brewed the second potion, the one that had violently exploded. She hadn't touched it, she hadn't done anything to interfere with the brewing ... had it been her presence, her mere presence, that had caused the explosion?
Could it be, I asked myself, that the fault lay with Rose, not with me? And, by extension, with every other magician who had tried to brew the formula?
I wanted to believe it. But Dad had told me to be particularly careful when I wanted to believe something ...
The world spun around me, violently. I screwed my eyes shut as my body changed. The sensation was worse, far worse. Being transfigured was normally uncomfortable, but this time it hurt. It felt as though my entire body had turned to water - or acid. Just for a moment, I thought Rose had liquefied me. And then I fell forward and hit the ground, my eyes jerking open. I was human again. And yet ...
I sat upright, feeling the ghostly sensation fading away. It was almost a phantom sensation, as if it wasn't really there. I rubbed my hands together, puzzled. Something didn't feel quite right, but what? And yet, even that sensation faded as I stood.
“You broke the spell,” Rose said. She was staring at me. “Cat ... you did it!”
“Maybe,” I said. I glanced at my watch. An hour. The spell had worn off in an hour. And it should have lasted longer. I’d feared Rose would have to turn me back when the library closed. “Rose ... that spell should have lasted longer.”
Her eyes narrowed, again. “How much longer?”
“At least four hours,” I said. Rose didn't have the power to trap someone in another form for much longer than that, although it was just a matter of time. “I designed the spell to last.”
Rose looked torn between pleasure and annoyance. I hadn't told her how long the spell was going to last, after all. She might have been condemned to sitting in the private room, reading, until we were kicked out of the library. I wouldn'
t have minded - I loved the library - but someone else might have a different opinion. Rose certainly would not have enjoyed waiting for me to turn back.
“I might have underpowered the spell,” Rose mused. “Or ...”
“The secretary didn't,” I countered. Rose had remained frozen until my father had talked the Castellan into cancelling her expulsion. “She was astonished when I broke the spell.”
I went on before she could say a word. “Isabella froze me on the very first day,” I added, starting to pace around the room. “And that wore off too. So did the other spells she hurled at me. And so did your spell.”
Rose met my eyes. “Is that normal?”
“No,” I said. “If you cast a spell like that on someone who can't cancel it, the spell lasts until it runs out of magic or someone takes it off. The spell I gave you should have lasted for much longer than it actually did.”
The Zero Blessing Page 25