Arcane Dropout 2

by Edmund Hughes

  “Look, at the very least you agree that we shouldn’t just wait here, right?” he asked. “It doesn’t matter if Zoe was really the one behind this trap or not. The only reason someone would set up a barrier to keep us locked in this frozen wreck is if they had a good reason to think we’d be uncooperative once they explained their motives.”

  “Agreed. Unfortunately, I don’t see a way for us to escape easily.”

  “It’s an alteration barrier. Instructor Daniels said in class that they aren’t much different from spell shields. Can’t you just blast it out of our way with your fire magic?”

  “It’s not that simple,” said Harper. “The strength of my spells is tied to the intensity and size of the flames I create. A fireball powerful enough to break this barrier would also run the risk of igniting the ship, even in this cold.”

  “You’re also capable of using conjuration and alteration magic offensively, right? Why not just try a different spell?”

  Harper sighed. “Zoe was always stronger than me when it came to those schools. That’s one part of this situation that does fit what I remember of her.”

  She closed her eyes and massaged her temples. Lee rubbed his hands together to warm them up and headed for the stairs.

  “I have an idea,” he said. “It’s a long shot, but it might work.”

  “Be my guest,” said Harper.

  She didn’t follow him to the upper level, which Lee appreciated. He’d been planning on trying to disguise his dispel ability with one of his other spells, but Harper would ask fewer questions if she wasn’t watching him while he used it.

  “All right,” he said, focusing on his breathing. “Let’s give this a try.”

  “Are you sure you’re up for this?” whispered Tess.

  “I’m sure that I’d rather not sit around on this ship and freeze to death,” he said. “Which is basically the same thing.”

  He pressed a hand against the alteration barrier’s inner side. It felt like thick glass, warmer than the ambient air, but not hot in temperature. He slowly pulled in a breath, letting himself focus on using the inversing nature of dispel to weaken the barrier’s underlying form. His nose started bleeding. Again.

  “Why does that always happen?” whispered Tess.

  “I kind of don’t want to know,” said Lee. “I doubt it’s healthy.”

  The barrier began to bend, like thin plastic warping on an extremely hot summer day. Lee pushed his hand forward and then through to the other side. He slid his other hand up and pulled away from the center. It took more strength than he’d been expecting, and he still needed to hold it open once the gap was person-sized.

  “Harper!” he shouted. “Time to go.”

  Harper came back up to the upper level and stared at Lee in surprise.

  “How… did you do that?” she said.

  “It was, uh… an alteration, er, type… thing…” he trailed, mumbling and praying that she wouldn’t press the point. “Hurry. I can’t keep this held open forever.”

  That was true. The barrier was pressing back in with a constant intensity. It was as much a matter of physical strength as it was his mystic abilities. His elbows were groaning under the strain of the angle he had them at.

  Harper didn’t ask any more questions. She ducked under his arm, briefly rubbing against him as she started up the stairs and through the gap. At the worst possible moment, Lee felt one of his muscles cramp.

  “Look out!” he shouted.

  He tried to throw himself upward, taking the steps onto the ship’s deck and through the barrier alongside Harper. What he ended up doing was making it partially through the barrier while also losing his hold on it.

  It snapped inward with both of them only midway out. It was a small miracle that the barrier didn’t continue closing right through them. Instead, it pressed tightly around their bodies, like the grip of a thin hand, locking him and Harper together with their bodies halfway to freedom.

  “Are you okay?” asked Harper.

  Their fronts were against each other, and Harper’s face was nearly against his. Her breasts were against him, a fact Lee did his best to ignore as he felt her start wiggling in a futile attempt to make more room.

  “I’m just peachy,” said Lee. “I had it. The barrier was open. It wasn’t an issue of my, er, spell¸ it was just a muscle cramp.”

  “Can you cast it again?” asked Harper.

  Lee hesitated. “Just… give me a minute.”

  In truth, between absorbing the specter and now pushing his dispel to the limit, he felt weak and a little dizzy. He made a valid attempt at trying to reopen the gap they were trapped in, but the barrier shifted as he used dispel. It would let him push his hand down to make another hole in it, if he wanted, but he found it impossible to get the right angle to expand the one they were already trapped in.

  “Dammit,” he said. “It’s not working. If we could only… uh, what are you doing?”

  Harper was unzipping her jacket and pulling it off to toss onto the deck. She gestured for Lee to do the same.

  “If we could just create even one extra inch of space, it might be enough,” she said. “Tense your muscles as you take your jacket off, to make sure the barrier doesn’t close further.”

  “Good idea,” he said. He tensed his abdominal muscles as tightly as he could as he unzipped his parka and pulled it up through the barrier. He found that there was a side effect to doing that while in close contact with a beautiful, busty blonde woman. A very unfortunate side effect.

  Harper had started wiggling her hips, which only made it harder, in several senses of the word, to stay calm.

  “Can you try to squeeze me closer to you with your arms?” asked Harper. “I might be able to use the friction of our bodies to push myself higher.”

  “Okay,” said Lee. “Just keep in mind that…”

  He never finished that sentence. Harper’s legs wrapped around his abdomen as he pulled her tight against him. His erection nestled itself underneath her thighs and crotch in a manner that was blissful even through multiple layers of heavy clothing. She kept wiggling, her breasts almost at face level, and it awakened a hunger within him that was borderline scary in its intensity.

  “Eldon,” said Harper. “Your kris dagger is poking me in the thigh.”

  “My kris dagger is in my jacket,” said Lee. It was one of those admissions that he immediately wished he could take back.

  “Then what is…?” Harper’s expression shifted from mild confusion to stern amusement. “Ah.”

  “You’re an attractive woman,” said Lee. He was blushing, but his embarrassment was more incidental than an emotion he agreed with. “We’re in a bit of a tight spot. It’s not as though I can turn my body’s reactions off just because you’re my teacher and sister’s ex-girlfriend.”

  “Is that so?” A small, hard-to-read smile flickered across Harper’s face. She started wiggling again, watching his reactions this time, instead of the barrier. It felt incredible, and the awkwardness of their recent exchange only seemed to lubricate the erotic tension. Lee kept his expression as resolved and neutral as he could, feeling a strange sense that the two of them were in a stand-off, of sorts.

  Suddenly, the barrier let out a sharp, creaking whine and shattered into inert arcane essence. Lee and Harper fell apart from each other on the stairs, free of their containment.

  “The pressure we were putting on the barrier must have compromised its internal integrity,” said Harper.

  “Pressure,” muttered Lee. “Yeah.”

  He watched Harper pulling her jacket back, feeling hyper aware of each of her movements and just as aware of how she was watching him watch her.

  “There’s no time to waste,” said Harper. “We need to get back to Primhaven immediately.”

  “I don’t disagree, but why?” asked Lee.

  “We don’t know for sure who trapped us here,” said Harper. “But clearly, they wanted us out of the way of where we would otherwise be
. The college could be in danger.”

  CHAPTER 29

  They followed their own snowmobile tracks back to Primhaven, traveling at speeds that bordered on being dangerous. It was starting to snow, with large, lazy snowflakes dropping in thick enough densities to obscure the landscape ahead of them.

  The sun was also setting, which made their visibility even worse and also meant that they would arrive back after the start of the Equinox Ball. Lee hadn’t expected their trip to run so late into the evening. He made an attempt at getting his cell phone out to let Eliza know that he’d be late, but it was snug in his jacket’s inside pocket, and he doubted he’d have service, regardless.

  It was dark when they finally reached Primhaven’s gate. Harper led him onto campus with a worried frown on her face. The college grounds were quiet and unusually empty for a Saturday night, though that was understandable given how many people would be at the ball.

  “We should split up to search the entire campus,” said Harper.

  “I agree,” said Lee. “Why don’t I start with the men’s dormitories and then make a beeline for the event hall in the Seruna Center?”

  Harper raised an eyebrow at him.

  “What?” he said. “I have a date at the ball waiting for me, after all. I can still keep an eye out for trouble from there. If I was a betting man, I’d say that it’s no coincidence that whoever set the trap for us did it on this specific day.”

  “I suppose that’s logical,” said Harper. “Stay on guard while you’re there.”

  Lee nodded and split off from her. Tess fell into step alongside him, helping him search the dorm common rooms of the upperclassmen as he made his way to his own lodgings.

  He changed into the dress clothes he’d purchased earlier in record time and hurried back outside. The music was loud enough to be heard from outside the Seruna Center as he jogged over, and he had a flashback to some of the dances he’d gone to in high school as he made his way down the hallway.

  “Your hair is a mess,” muttered Tess. “Pull me into your mystic stream for a sec.”

  Lee rolled his eyes, but he obliged her. Tess walked alongside him, brushing his messy locks into a slightly more ordered state, and then dabbing at the spot just below his nose with a handkerchief.

  “There,” she said. “You almost look normal, now. You’re still a bit too pale.”

  The event hall’s doors were open, and after paying the doorman for a ticket, Lee headed inside. Long tables had been set up against one wall of the open chamber, laden with snacks and a punch bowl. Most of the space was dedicated to dancing, and that was where nearly all of the attendees currently were, paired off and gently swaying to the rhythm of a slow, romantic ballad.

  It made it easy to spot Eliza, who was standing against the far wall, very much alone. Lee felt his eyes widen as he hurried over to her. She looked incredible.

  She was wearing a strapless red dress covered in sequins that gleamed like polished rubies in the event hall’s dim light. It clung to every attractive curve of her body, displaying her cleavage as though it was on sale, adding the illusion of motion to her hips even when she was standing still.

  She’d straightened her hair, which fell in glossy brownish-red locks just past her shoulders. Her makeup was subtle, aside from her lipstick, which drew attention to her full mouth and perfectly accentuated her dress. Eliza was dressed to seduce, and she seemed self-conscious of that fact in a way that emphasized how unpracticed she was at being so beautiful.

  “Hey,” said Lee, as he made his way up to her. “Sorry I’m late.”

  She smiled at him, and it was only then that Lee noticed the smudges in her makeup around her eyes. “It’s fine, really. I got here a little late, too. Just… why didn’t you text me?”

  “I had to go with Harper to do some field work,” he said. “We were out of service range and got held up a bit.”

  He wanted to give Eliza his full attention, but he knew that he still had a job to do. He scanned his eyes across the dancing duos, trying to be circumspect as he considered the faces he didn’t recognize. There were enough students at Primhaven to make it hard to know everybody, but even so, he didn’t spot anyone that seemed obviously out of place.

  “We could, uh, dance… if you wanted to?” asked Eliza.

  “I do want to,” said Lee. “But let’s get some punch first. I still need to catch my breath.”

  He held his arm out, crooking it at the elbow so she could hook hers through. Eliza grinned at the small gesture, and they walked alongside each other over to the refreshment table. Lee started ladling punch into a paper cup for each of them, still watching for anything abnormal.

  “One of the boys was joking about how it tasted like it’d been spiked,” said Eliza. “It kind of does, doesn’t it?”

  She smiled and took a sip of the cup Lee passed her. He tried his own and saw what she meant. It left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth, like alcohol with something added in an attempt to disguise the flavor.

  “Yeah, it does,” he said. “I’d try not to drink too much of it, if I were you.”

  He was wary, paranoid, even. He would have laughed and celebrated the possibly spiked punch under normal circumstances, but he couldn’t dismiss the chance that it had been drugged or even poisoned.

  He spotted out a few of the instructors amongst the crowd. Head Wizard Odarin was present, as was Instructor Daniels. It wasn’t as though just anyone could march into the Equinox Ball and start pouring an unknown substance into the punch, right?

  “Lee!” shouted Toma. “About time you showed up.”

  Lee turned to see Toma marching off the dance floor toward him, escorting his date by the hand. Jenna was a few inches taller than Toma and far out of his league when it came to her general looks, but she was smiling and seemed genuinely fond of him.

  “Toma,” said Lee. “You actually did get a date, I’m impressed. Hi, I’m Lee.”

  “Jenna,” she said with a small, knowing smile.

  “It’s nice to meet you for the very first time.”

  “What held you up?” asked Toma. “Eliza was so upset! You’re going to have to work overtime to make it up to her, you maniac. Also… you tried the punch yet?”

  “Yeah,” said Lee. “Don’t drink too much of it. Seriously.”

  “It’s fine, it’s not like anyone would put anything cracked in it,” said Toma.

  Jenna whispered something into his ear. Toma grinned and nodded.

  “We’re getting back on the dance floor,” he said. “We’ll see you guys later.”

  Toma and his date walked off hand in hand. They were getting along so well that Lee felt more aware of how Eliza’s night had been going in comparison, with him arriving late and then acting so distracted.

  “Dance with her, Lee,” whispered Tess.

  He shrugged and faked a yawn to whisper.

  “I’m… not really the best dancer.”

  “I’ll help you,” she said. “Just take her hand and pull her onto the dance floor. She’ll be sad if you don’t.”

  She was right. Lee smiled at Eliza and took her hand. She set her cup down and her face lit up.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s have some fun.”

  The music switched to another slow song right as they stepped onto the floor. Lee knew where to put his hands, but he’d always struggled with the rhythm of his steps. Tess stayed close enough behind him to make the hairs on his neck prickle, whispering constantly.

  “Left, right. Left, right. No, your other right! Now turn… Good! Well, maybe not good, but not bad.”

  Lee would have scowled if he hadn’t been so aware of Eliza staring at his face. She looked like she was having a great time, but for some reason, that didn’t make him feel as good as it should have. His attention was as much on the entrances to the event hall as it was on her, his thoughts caught between imagining what fun they might get into once the ball was over and on potential looming disasters.

  “
I’m really glad that you asked me to be your date,” whispered Eliza. “I know that… I’m a bit slower at this kind of thing than other girls.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I just have always liked taking it slow,” said Eliza. “It’s hard for me to open up to people. I’m glad that you’re the same.”

  Lee nodded slowly, ignoring Tess as she broke into laughter just behind him.

  “Lee Amaranth, the respectful gentleman,” said Tess. “Let’s just ignore the fact that you bedded me on the same day that you first met me.”

  “I didn’t really bed you,” muttered Lee. “We hooked up in a closet.”

  “What?” said Eliza.

  “Uh, nothing,” he said. “I like you just the way you are, Eliza. Not every friendship, or relationship, has to follow the same format.”

  “I feel the same way.”

  The song ended. Eliza batted her eyelashes at him. Lee took the hint. He leaned in and gave her a slow, lingering kiss.

  It wasn’t the same as kissing Tess, or kissing Susie, even. It was different with Eliza, not better or worse, but certainly more chaste and controlled. She wanted something else from him, something that Lee worried he might not be able to give her. But he cared for her, and for more than just one reason, it made sense for him to try.

  “So sweet,” whispered Tess. “She’s got massive, ahem, arcane talents. I’d probably be able to get a bucketload of essence from her.”

  Eliza’s eyes were still closed when Lee ended the kiss. He gently caressed her cheek and took her hand into his. The music had shifted to a more upbeat, EDM-inspired song. The dancing shifted into more of a surging mass, rather than individual pairs. Surprisingly, Head Wizard Odarin was near the center of it all, jumping up and down and pumping his fist as though he was thirty years younger than his true age.

  “I’m not a big fan of this sort of music,” said Eliza, pulling away from him.

  “I’ll catch up with you in a minute,” said Lee.

  He let her go and turned his attention toward Tess, pulling her into his mystic stream. He surreptitiously offered her his hand. She rolled her eyes at him.