Acacia’s laugh is more like a cackle, and for some reason, it makes me like her more. She doesn’t push the subject, just shrugs up her shoulders and grimaces at the sound of students screeching as they spot me from around the corner.
“The new teacher better not have forgotten to bring coffee again, or I might purposefully over-boil her eye of newt this time.”
She has forgotten, and from the looks of her, we’re not going to be the only ones grumbling under our breath this morning.
The new Ritual teacher stops at the table in front of us, and all the other Ritual Mages gather around. The old benches and picnic tables from down below are replaced by neat, stainless steel tables and carefully labeled measuring instruments on racks and shelves.
The principal requested that we focus on small rituals and potion-making until better, safer, quarters are set up that are meant to accommodate the possible side effects of a ritual gone wrong.
There are still just the eight of us, including me now. The teacher pushes up the sleeves of her shirt and drags out a bucket of dirty-looking roots from underneath the table.
“Never forget, Ritual Magic is a combination of precise measurement combined with your own skill. While we can study the attributes of the individual pieces we put into our rituals all day, nothing but actually practicing them with make you any better at performing when the time comes.”
With that, she dumps the entire contents of the bucket out onto the table.
Roots and dirt tumble out in clumps. The teacher starts rooting through until she finds one root that is particularly long and fat. She plucks this from the table, steadies it in the palm of her left hand, and slits it from end to end.
Thick red sap bubbles out and overflows from it. She squeezes the root, and even more of the liquid pools and drips in long sticky lines down the pale ivory of her skin.
“This is the root of the Dracaena cinnabari, or Dragon’s Blood Tree. It’s prized for its medicinal purposes, but even more famous for the color of its sap.”
She tilts the splayed root back and forth in the light, unable to hide her own admiration for the plant. “We use it for a variety of rituals. The resin produced in the sap has abortifacient properties, and as such, is often used in rituals pertaining to fertility…or more specifically…the suppresion thereof.”
She must catch my sideways glance towards Draven, because she adds, “Yes, Octavia, I mean that the resin of Dragon’s Blood can be used to cast a ritual far more effective than the pills you’re getting prescribed at the doctor’s office.”
My ears burn red, and I drop my eyes down to the table. While the teacher starts ordering us to gather up a handful of the roots each, Draven leans in to whisper in my ear.
“The pill?”
If my face wasn’t already a deep shade of maroon, it is now. “Shut up,” I whisper back. “And I’m not. That wouldn’t matter anyway, since you’ve been so determined not to touch me.”
“That’s hardly—”
Our conversation is cut short as we’re handed deadly sharp paring knives and shallow basins where we are supposed to empty the sap of the roots. I try to copy how the teacher sliced it so effortlessly from one side to the other, but I end up with a jagged line instead.
Draven takes the root from me and demonstrates how I’m holding it wrong.
“You have to cut it with confidence,” he says. He holds the blade tightly between his fingers and slices the next root so quickly, I think for a second that the dark liquid pooling out is his own blood. “There is no room for hesitation when it comes to Ritual Magic.”
“What Draven says is true,” the teacher says. I jump a little at how close she has come to stand over my shoulder. But she doesn’t lecture me further. Instead, she shows Draven and I how to fold the skin of the roots back and twist the knife deep into the center of it to make the sap drain out faster, and with less plant matter to be strained out.
She takes the withered husk and throws it into a bucket along with others. She sees me peering after it, staring in at the lifeless peeled roots, and promises they won’t go to waste.
“The powdered root makes for an excellent conductor,” she says. “The ash has stimulating properties that can be used to enhance the effects of certain rituals. But you have to be careful,” she pauses a second to wag her finger at us. “You don’t want to enhance a ritual beyond your level of ability,” she says. “There are many reasons that Ritual Mages are few and far between, and it has more to do with the fact that not many of us live long enough to bear children, than it does any other.”
“Very motivational,” I say, as soon as she’s turned her back and left us alone long enough to dump the rest of the husks in a dehydrator that will speed up the drying process so we can use them in the ritual later on.
“Ritual teachers like to do that,” Draven says. “Remind us how close we are to death at all times.”
“No wonder everyone looks like it,” I say, cutting a look around the room. Most everyone here looks like they haven’t spent more than a few minutes outside in sunlight since they got here to the academy—or even before. The whole early-2000’s goth vibe is very strong.
“Speaking of death…” Draven says, this time more careful to make sure that the teacher really isn’t within earshot. “What was that you were saying about the vision you had earlier? About Cedric’s mother?”
I lean in a little closer. I can’t ignore the fact that both of us are stained up past the elbow in red liquid sickeningly similar to blood. The sight of it makes my stomach flutter, and our words somehow carry more weight. “It was like she was staring into my soul. Do you know what happened to her? Cedric never says.”
Draven shrugs. “I don’t know the particulars, only that she died, and it was a big to-do for a while.”
We move on to the next task—which is thickening the sap into a resin. It’s taken me and Draven longer than the other students to finish our task, so by the time I’ve scraped the last of the red sap out from under my fingernails, we stand alone at the wash stand. I take my time wiping my hands on a damp towel.
What Draven said, it’s got me thinking. I just assumed what I saw was a vision of the future, but truth be told, I don’t really know how visions work. Before we go back to the worktable, I reach out a hand to stop Draven.
“How much do you know about visions?”
He takes the towel from me and carefully, methodically, dries each one of his fingers in turn. “Not as much as I would like, but probably more than you.”
“That vision I had, what if it wasn’t about something that is going to happen, but something that already did?”
I assumed that the woman that Cedric’s father spoke of was me, but what if it wasn’t? The look on his mother’s face when she peered back out at me from the inside of the crystal ball is not one I’ll easily forget.
For a second, I watch as the last of the blood-red sap pools into the bottom of the sink and slowly, slowly drains away.
“Then what I’d like to know,” Draven says, “Is what the death of Cedric’s mother has to do with you.”
19
Octavia
“That was over a decade ago. I think even for you, for this vision, that’s a stretch.”
“You say that like I’ve made up visions like this before,” I snap, then remember to lower my voice a bit as we come up out of the basement. It’s well after dark already, especially since Ritual class not only ran late but Draven and I took longer than everyone else to finish.
Since it’s going to be a week before I’m back in class, the teacher made us stay after to finish preparations for the ritual next week. My back aches from standing on my feet all day, and a Tylenol-resistant headache has formed behind the back of my eyes from the thoughts left unchecked and churning in my mind.
“But look, even if it does have something to do with her, it isn’t like I can just come out and ask Cedric.” I say. “He flew off the handle when I just looked at the image he conjured o
f her. Can you imagine how he would react if he knew what I was thinking now?”
“Which is...?”
Before I get the chance to tell him exactly what it is I’ve been thinking, Kendall appears at the doorway to the dorms and waves at us excitedly from across the street.
At first, I think there must be something wrong. I hurriedly hoist up the strap of my backpack and run over.
“What happened? What is it?”
“Oh no, nothing crazy…just, come on.” He nods towards the doors and leads the two of us inside. I want to ask him what is going on, but as soon as the elevator doors open into the second-floor common room, I see exactly what he means.
Wednesday sits in the corner, her face buried into a notebook. But that isn’t what is unusual. It is who is sitting beside her.
Mathilda, the girl Wednesday is paired to but has outright refused to acknowledge this whole time, is scribbling in a notebook beside her. I catch Wednesday briefly look up at her for a second, before she catches me staring in the reflection in the window.
She slams the cover of her notebook shut so hard, the coffee she had been drinking tips over and spills. But before the liquid can bubble over the edge of the table and into Mathilda’s shocked lap, Wednesday plunges her hands into it. Even from here I can see as the liquid suddenly stops, the edges of it churning and curling until, after a long second, it starts to slowly draw back—flowing backwards and back into the cup it just spilled out of.
No explosions, no backfiring magic.
“See…” I say, sidling up and plopping into the chair closest to her. “There are benefits to admitting—”
“Nothing. Mathilda just offered to study with me since you were taking so long.”
Mathilda doesn’t take kindly to Wednesday’s sudden change of tone. It is her turn to slam the cover of her book shut and get to her feet.
She glares down at Wednesday and stalks off with a flippant, “Whatever.”
I turn to watch her go and see Wednesday doing the same out of the corner of my eye. She tries to hide the look of disappointment that momentarily crosses her face before I look back.
“So…I really want to ask you what that was all about, but…” here, I hold up a finger to stop her, “I am not going to.”
Her mouth snaps shut.
“Instead,” I say, glancing between her, Draven, and Kendall. “We need to discuss something else.”
I see the look on Draven’s face and know he thinks I am about to bring up my vision again. But I’m not completely crazy. Instead, I bring up something far more important.
“I have an idea of what I would like to do for my night out.”
I’ve been out of the infirmary for just shy of two weeks now, and already I feel like the list of things I need to do is longer than ever. With each passing day, rather than checking off one box, I add three more. I have so much work to catch up on, both for my classes themselves and to prepare for the tribunal, but I can’t stop the feeling that I’m being suffocated between the walls of the school.
All I want is a single day to just…get away from it all and be with the people I care about. No classes. No practice. No visions nagging at the back of my mind.
I tell this all to Wednesday, Kendall, and Draven, and immediately—Wednesday’s face lights up.
“Leave this all to me,” she says, reopening her notebook and flipping to a blank page. “Finally, something I can actually help with.”
20
Octavia
Wednesday wakes me up at such a godawful early hour that the promise of Brooklyn’s finest bagels and lox almost isn’t enough to coax me out of bed. But I do it, half for her, and half for the bagels. They are one New York City specialty that I cannot get enough of.
It isn’t until I get out of the shower she forces me to take and sit down at her desk, sopping and still sleepy, that she informs me that it is actually mid-afternoon. I don’t believe her until she reminds me how, after calling Cedric to tell him what we’d like to do for the evening, we’d spent the rest of the night playing a game that involved taking shots of something Draven kept under his bed every time someone gave me a nasty look across the common room. It is needless to say that I do not remember playing at all.
While I sit at her desk nursing a bit of a headache that I now realize is a hangover, Wednesday starts picking through her own closet to find something for me to wear.
“So you got to plan this whole day for me, and you decided the thing you wanted to do with me the most was pick out what I’m going to wear?”
For a second, Wednesday feigns offense. But then she finds a shimmery silver dress that matches my hair, and she holds it out to me. It’ll be a little small in the chest area—weeks cooped up with carb-heavy hospital food has filled me out some—but she makes me put it on anyway. Once I do, I have to admit that the color makes me look more alive than I have in weeks.
“I chose to help get you ready for your first official date,” she says. “Or dates...I guess, since all four of your boyfriends are going to be there.”
I spin around, but she immediately makes me turn back as she starts running her fingers through my hair. “You never did really get to go on any before, you know,” she says. “It’s a rite of passage for both of us. Just let me do this.”
It’s the first time someone has called them my boyfriends, and since I rather like the sound of it, I let her do what she likes.
She takes the opportunity to show off another skill she learned while I was cooped up. She runs her hands through my hair and hot wind starts to blow through the locks. It’s a little wild, and my hair almost gets caught up in one particularly intense gust, but pretty soon my hair is dry and fluffy and Wednesday is trying to pin it back so I look a little less windblown.
By the time she is happy with how I look, I have almost fallen asleep at the desk. The sun has started to sit low on the horizon already, however, and I have to stop myself from rubbing the inner corner of my eyes or else smudge the makeup she so carefully applied to make me look a little less eternally tired.
I get a text from Cedric, checking in to let me know his car will be arriving soon. Wednesday glances over and must catch me smiling like an idiot at my phone.
“You know,” she says, “I really was jealous of how you got paired.”
I nearly choke on my third bagel. “What?”
“But now that I’ve been…I guess I never realized how complicated it could be.”
Wednesday looks down at the straightener in her hands and thinks for a second. “I’d just gotten used to the idea of doing this whole thing on my own when…she…turned up.”
I hastily wipe my face on the back of my hand and swallow the giant bite I’ve been chewing. “You really had no idea? I mean…” I shrug a little.
Wednesday keeps staring at the hot tool. “No. Yes. Maybe? I don’t know.” She sits on the edge of the bed and kicks her heels on the bottom of the box spring. “I was so sure that the affinity ritual would pair me up with the perfect mage that guess I never really considered who that might be.”
“So does that mean…”
A timer starts going off on her phone, and unless I am mistaken, Wednesday breathes an audible sigh of relief.
“Time to go!” She chirrups and stuffs half a last bagel in her mouth. She doesn’t finish chewing before she throws open the door, only to find both Flynn and Kendall waiting outside.
She drags me out of my chair and gives me a little shove towards the door. “I’ll see you tonight. First on the list, last on the list.” She winks at me as she goes. “You’re going to have to tell me all about it.”
“But—”
She shoves me out into the hallway before I can quiz her any further, and Flynn steps up to take her place.
“She really did us a bad one, didn’t she?”
“Yeah,” I say, craning my neck around him so I can catch one last glimpse of her before we leave. “Now that’s all I can think about.”
/> Draven is already waiting in the car downstairs. He bounces up and down in the seat like a little kid, examining all the buttons, asking the driver questions about horsepower, and trying to see just how tinted the windows really are.
He scoots over when he sees me coming, and I squeeze in between him and Kendall. Flynn takes the front seat and the driver, who I am finally starting to recognize, pulls away from the curb.
“So you could go anywhere, anywhere tonight and you chose a quiet night in at the principal’s mansion?” Draven asks.
“Cedric promised his father won’t be in!” I say. “I wouldn’t have planned it otherwise.”
The principal is so often away on business for the weekends that Cedric usually has the whole place to himself. He’s told me that he rarely stays there, however, since he has to cover things for his father at the academy whenever he’s gone.
I lean over onto Kendall’s shoulder to get a better view out the window as we cross one of the many bridges into Manhattan. Traffic is atrocious, of course, but I don’t mind. I think it just gives me a better view of the skyline as the sun finally sets behind it.
It’s a beautiful view, but I’m not able to thoroughly enjoy it. A knot has settled in the pit of my stomach. I know I tried to tell myself and everyone else that I wanted one normal, uncomplicated night, but this dinner party is more than just a bit of fun. I need to find out if that vision I had means, and if it is truly something to do with Cedric’s mother, like Draven said, what on god’s earth does it have to do with me?
21
Octavia
By the time the car pulls up to the mansion on the Upper East Side, I’ve already begun to feel slight pangs of anxiety. The last time I was here was one of the worst nights of my life. It’s partially why I requested this. I believe a new version of that night is in order.
This time I am not dumped alone and cold on the sidewalk. Flynn opens the door for me to get out, Draven offers me his jacket to keep away the cold October air, and Kendall slips his arm into mine and leads me up the steps.
Adapt: Book Two of the Forgotten Affinities Series Page 11