by A. L. Knorr
“Have you found you prefer Ryan’s conversation to your music then?” Basil asked. “I do hope so. I’d consider this a jolly success if you two became friends.”
“We’re tight as ticks.” Ryan said, enunciating every consonant. “Thick as thieves.”
I stifled the look of annoyance I wanted to throw at Ryan. “Sorry to disappoint you, Headmaster. My battery died. Believe me, I’ll be making sure its fully charged before we tackle the library.”
“Suit yourself, but if you give one another a chance you might find you have things in common.” Basil headed for the door.
Ryan and I gave simultaneous snorts.
Turning back to my work, I felt the cold hand of dread lay against the back of my neck. Ryan and I now shared a secret and—along with our mage-bond—it was a nail in the coffin of my peace of mind.
Questions rose in my mind as I cleaned the last frame in the room. I understood a mage-bond to mean that there was something connecting the two magi who felt it. I got it with Basil and with Gage. I was drawn to them for different reasons but in both cases, a bond made sense. But why would I have a bond with Ryan? We could hardly stand the sight of one another.
I wondered how many of the other students shared bonds and with whom. Since I wasn’t in classes with any of them until next year, I didn’t have much opportunity to make skin on skin contact with random students. Going around touching people’s skin wasn’t an activity I felt uninhibited enough to do. I wished now I’d been forward-thinking enough to shake people’s hands at the first of the year whenever I’d been introduced to someone. But students didn’t normally shake each other’s hands at the start of the year, and even a student shaking a professor’s hand was rare. It wasn’t like I could start now just because I was curious. And what would I say? I’m doing a study on mage-bonds, just wondering if you’re relevant? It’d be too weird and definitely wouldn’t win me friends.
I’d only ever touched the headmaster, Professor Palmer (in the summer when we met—no bond) Alfred, Ryan, Gage, April, and Tomio. I shared no bond with April or Tomio. It wasn’t so surprising that I didn’t share a bond with April, but I wasn’t sure why. Because she was a girl? She was the only female student I’d touched. Maybe the bonds only happened between those of opposite gender. Or maybe because her fire was too weak to feel?
But what of Tomio? I really liked him, even found him attractive, but we had no mage-bond. I knew it wasn’t a sign of sexual chemistry because there was none of that between Basil and me, nor Ryan and me. When I had felt it with Basil after our handshake, I’d assumed that all mages were bonded, simply by virtue of being of the same species. But now I knew that not to be true. So, what did it mean? Was it was covered in one of the classes? Perhaps The Supernatural Landscape that Dr. Price taught?
When my mind had worn that worry out, it cast me back to the moment in the basement when it had looked like something had given Ryan a fright. I broke the silence for the first time since the headmaster left.
“What did you see down there that freaked you out?” I looked at him from the corner of the room where I was cleaning a floor lamp with a lot of tassels on it.
“Nothing. What do you mean?” Ryan froze mid-squeegee down a window pane, the same window the thief had leapt through.
“You couldn’t tear your eyes away from something on the table. One of the plaster things. Was it familiar?”
“You’re imagining things.” Ryan’s mouth twitched in that cocky half-smile. “There was zero to interest me down there in Chaplin’s weirdo playroom. It was nothing but a bunch of arts and crafts.”
If he was lying, I couldn’t tell. But I’d already learned that Ryan was quite an actor, and I had seen what I had seen.
We finished Basil’s office and agreed to put a half hour in on the library to lessen the load for the next day. Wandering the corridors to the library we caught several calculating looks from students in passing. It was not my imagination that I was taking the brunt of those daggers. Ryan was a paragon and I was a miscreant. The injustice of it floored me.
The library had its own bathroom and cleaning closet full of supplies. We liberated everything we needed from storage and set it on a trolley, except for the vacuum—a current model this time—which I rolled out on smooth wheels. It was so state-of-the-art it practically navigated by itself. I pulled the plug from its nifty, self-retracting case at the rear of the machine and inserted it into a socket near the librarian’s desk.
“I’ll vacuum this time,” Ryan offered, like he was doing me a favor. “You dust.”
I threw daggers at him with my eyes but didn’t say anything. Plucking a feather duster from a bucket, I resolutely crossed the library to a corner as far away from Ryan as I could get. I put Billie Eilish back on and proceeded to fantasize that I’d never met Gage’s twin.
When I reached the ornate wooden banisters between the raised study area and the History section, I realized the vacuum cleaner was off and the sound of talking broke through my music.
Hitting pause on my iPod and taking the earbuds out, I listened.
“I’m telling you now you won’t get away with it.” It was said flirtatiously by a girl’s voice I recognized but couldn’t quite place.
Crouching a little to peer through the book stacks, I looked toward the front desk where Ryan was supposed to be vacuuming and saw no one. But the owner of the voice finally twanged in my memory. It was Kris P, the third-year girl from the Fire Fair. But where were they?
“Sure I will,” Ryan drawled. “All I need is one night.”
One night? What were they talking about?
“Why are you soooooo bad,” Krispy breathed.
“I don’t see things as good or bad, chicken.” Ryan said this the way a biker would throw a leg over their Harley: oozing confidence. “More as worthwhile or worthless. This is worthwhile. How do you think I aced high school?”
Moving silently between the stacks, I crossed through the Fiction section to get a better view. The door to Dr. Price’s office was now open and Krispy’s voice was coming from there.
“How do you know I won’t tell?” Krispy’s soft murmur conjured all the implications of a lacy black negligée. The sound of it lifted the hair on my neck. Were they in a secret relationship, or just flirting? And what did that have to do with acing high school? My mind was trapped in a briar patch of probabilities.
“You’re the one who told me where the spare key was hidden. You’re complicit.” Ryan’s voice was soft but the library was as quiet as a tomb and they reached my ears anyway.
My heart swung around in my chest like the clapper of an old-fashioned fire-bell. What was going on? Ryan knew I was here. What was he doing poking around in Dr. Price’s office? With Krispy? Who sounded like she was enjoying the situation a little too much.
The voices went quiet for too long. The squeak of a shoe on the hardwood floor of Christy’s office made me whirl in a panic, jamming my earbuds back in my ears, though I left my music off. I went through the motions of dusting with my back to the library foyer hoping that I looked from behind like I hadn’t heard a thing. It was a struggle just to breathe normally.
Another ten seconds and the voices resumed in a whisper. A covert peek from behind my hair said they hadn’t emerged from the office. I couldn’t see them, but a moment later, the door began to close.
Without thinking too hard, because if I did I wouldn’t have the courage, I scampered through the stacks and behind the library desk, kitty corner to Dr. Price’s office. Ducking behind the huge oak desk, I pulled the earbuds out and jammed them in my pocket, straining to hear.
A question flitted through my brain like a frightened sparrow. How was it that I so often found myself acting like a delinquent whenever Ryan was around? I had no time to think about a response as their words drifted through the crack under the door.
“She changes the questions every year, anyway,” Krispy said, having cast off some of the innuendo by this point.
“Not that much,” Ryan replied. There was the sound of drawers opening and closing. “You and I both know it’s a waste of time to read up on all the species she could ask about. Far better to get ahead of the game and spend my time in the gym.”
Puzzle pieces dropped into place. Ryan was looking for the exam for The Supernatural Landscape class.
Krispy’s tone was finally reasonably serious. She must be realizing that Ryan wasn’t as interested in a desktop nooky as he was in the answers, or at least the questions, on the test.
“If the headmaster catches you, he’ll be livid.”
“He’s my godfather, he can’t expel me.”
“Ryan.” All the levity had washed out of Krispy’s voice now. “I’m serious. A second-year was caught cheating in Fire Science last semester and Chaplin blew a fuse. He postponed all the exams and called an assembly in the middle of the day to give a sermon on honesty and integrity. He was so ragey we thought he might light the ballroom on fire.”
There was no response to this. I wished I could see Ryan’s face.
Krispy’s voice came again. “He expelled the kid, Ryan. On the spot. I’m telling you, it’s not worth it.”
There was the sound of a desk drawer being closed. Ryan muttered in a scathing voice, “Honesty and integrity. Someone should air the old man’s closet. More than one skeleton would tumble out.”
My hand drifted to my mouth and my pulse jumped.
“What are you talking about?” Krispy sounded genuinely confused.
I shook my head thinking, don’t do it, don’t do it. It felt like years passed before anyone said anything, but I’m sure it was only moments.
“Nothing. Let’s get out of here before Red gets wise.”
At Ryan’s words I scrambled past the desk and dove around a corner, disappearing from the sightlines of Price’s office. I shoved the earbuds in my ears, panting and gulping as I strained to hear their movements.
There came the soft click of one of the large double doors closing, and a few moments later the vacuum resumed. Returning to where I’d left the duster, I picked it up and went through the motions, hoping my heartbeat would return to normal. Oh, how I hated this feeling, the position Ryan and Kris had put me in. Had Ryan found what he was looking for? Had he taken it, or something else? Should I tell Dr. Price or Basil? What if he hadn’t taken anything after all, then I’d just be accusing him of a crime he hadn’t committed in the end.
“Hey, Queen Cagney,” Ryan barked, making me jump.
I unclenched my jaw enough to yell back, “I refuse to answer to that!”
“I need your help.”
I took a breath and tried to appear unruffled and unaware that anything out of the ordinary had happened as I walked out of the stacks to where I could see him. I didn’t answer, just put a hand on a hip and cocked an eyebrow.
He stood by the row of potted ferns and palms, looking irritated. Behind the plants lay a scattering of dead leaves. He kicked at one of the pots. “Is this a library or a bloody greenhouse? Move these so I can get behind.”
“You can’t vacuum those leaves, you’ll have to pick them up by hand. And move the pots yourself. Troglodyte.” I turned and walked back into the stacks.
“Mouth-breather,” he yelled.
I almost screamed back, Cheat! but opted for the high road and put my earbuds back in instead.
Twenty-Six
Cold as Winter
The main doors to the CTH opened, making me lift my head to see who it was. I lay flat on my back on the hafnium floor, arms out and misshapen lumps of metal scattered all around me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked as Basil came toward me, looking perplexed.
“Tell me what you’re doing on the floor first.” He stopped just outside the hafnium plate and tucked his hands into his trouser pockets.
I drew myself up to sitting and gestured at the metal blobs. “In case you haven’t heard, I’m now a social pariah so I thought I’d distract myself before my session with April by arriving before her for once.”
He held out a hand and pulled me to my feet, our mage-bond firing along my arm. “I came to see how you are. Take comfort. You won’t be an outcast for long. I’ve seen this before. It’ll pass.”
“The sooner the better.” I blew a curl away from my forehead and gestured at the mess on the floor. “I’m at my wits’ end with this reconstitution thing. Are you sure it’s even something I’m capable of?”
“Of course. You are likely trying too hard. The first time is always the most difficult. Once you crack the feeling of it, it will become second nature. Would you like to show me how you’re doing it?” He toed a lump of nickel with his wingtip shoe and raised a brow. The lump looked like a misshapen brain.
I nodded, though after three-dozen attempts, I was ready to take a break. Picking up a palladium chunk which I’d previously vandalized, I headed for one of the basins. Holding it in my hand, I raised the temperature in my palm and watched as the palladium oozed into a puddle. Pulling back on the heat, I lowered the temperature, eyes narrowed into slits, willing it to revert to the shape I’d originally found it in: a sphere.
Ripples passed over the silver surface like a wind licked over a pond. The blob quivered then sort of crouched like a badger, a little too oblong. My gaze locked onto one end as I mentally probed the palladium the way a kid pokes at playdough. The surface wrinkled as the palladium cooled and hardened. I let out a disappointed breath as the opportunity to mold it further was over. I’d have to heat it up again. Raising the temperature a second time, I pinched my lips together in frustration and focus.
“I think I see the problem.” Basil said. “Relax, Saxony.” He patted my shoulder and then disappeared into the walk-in closet, reappearing a moment later with a test tube containing what looked like mercury, only I knew it couldn’t be because mercury wasn’t a metal any mage was required to handle.
“This is gallium.” He placed the test tube in my hand. “The heat from a flashlight or even from a natural’s palm is enough to liquify it. Why don’t you have a go with that?”
I eyeballed it dubiously. “Why are you giving me something that’s already liquid?”
“It’s not. Turn it upside down.”
Tilting the test tube revealed that the gallium was indeed solid. Closing my hand around it I waited until the metal softened and liquified enough to slosh back and forth before I poured it into my hand.
“But, it’s only a little above body temperature.” I glanced at the headmaster, not sure what to do.
“Draw what little heat there is out of it and coax it into a ball.”
Taking a breath, I glared at the silver puddle and commanded it to congeal into a bearing. Almost at once, it squashed itself into an oblate spheroid.
The headmaster chuckled. “Noble effort. Do you mind if I touch your back?”
I shook my head, bemused. He lay his hand against my lower back and even though there was fireproof fabric between us, I felt a rush of crackling heat, as though he’d injected his fire into my torso. It took a moment to realize that was exactly what he had done. His fire traveled up my spine and down my arm of its own accord, or rather, by Basil’s command. When it reached my wrist, it paused there as though it had reached a crossroad. A curious sensation blossomed. It was as though layers of cold lay between layers of hot, like a fluid cake of temperatures had stacked themselves within my wrist. It then flickered and rolled through my palm and out into each finger, soft as tendrils of smoke. While my fingers did not move, I could feel movement inside each digit, Basil’s movement. It was not under my control but his.
“Join your flame to mine,” the headmaster instructed.
Sending my fire into the same hand, the feeling morphed again. It was at once foreign and familiar as my own fire mimicked Basil’s in a pas de deux with him as the lead dancer. It was strange but wonderful how my fire submitted to his, how it had the intelligence to learn what it was being shown. I
almost forgot to breathe in the wonder of the new feeling.
The gallium tightened into a perfect sphere.
Basil took his hand away from my lower back and the feeling of his fire retreated, leaving behind an echo of instruction.
I lifted my gaze from the gallium sphere to stare at him. “What just happened?”
“You did it.” He smiled enigmatically.
“I beg to differ. You did it.”
“No. My fire merely showed your fire what it was supposed to feel like, and you took over from there. It’s called endowment. I made a kind of deposit, a pre-instructed gift for your use.”
I stretched and flexed my tingling fingers. “Amazing. I don’t remember seeing it in the manual.”
Basil smiled and pushed his glasses up his nose. “That’s because it’s a fourth-degree skill. Only Burned mages can do it.”
“Only Burned can endow Burned?” My fire seemed to stir within me, yearning to try reconstitution again, now that it knew what to do.
“No, only the Burned can endow period, but they can do so with any mage of any level because it’s a gift. Now that you know how reconstitution feels, you’ll be able to replicate it with any metal.”
“Even at high heat?”
The headmaster nodded. “Even at high heat. I used gallium because I wanted you to be able to feel the sensation without getting distracted by pitch. When you reconstitute metals with higher melting points, the sensation can go numb beneath the overpowering demands of controlling the temperature, but you’ll still be able to do it. Work your way up the melting point chart and you’ll see what I mean. It becomes almost like muscle memory after enough practice.”
“Thank you.” I rolled the gallium in my palm, enjoying its perfect round smoothness. When I felt it growing soft in my hand, I pulled the heat out of it and nudged it back into shape, which it did with a quick, satisfying confidence.
“That’s what I’m here for.” He turned toward the door. “Have you managed to get through the Palumbo report?”