by B. C. Palmer
Serena shifted her weight to one leg, her hip stuck out to one side as she folded her arms under breasts I was pretty sure weren’t real. She looked me over in that same way she had before—like I was in some kind of unconvincing costume. “A hoax?” she mused. “Like, we all put this on just for you, to like fuck with your head or something, right?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess?”
She whistled. “Wow. That is like… really impressive narcissism right there. Who the fuck are you? Are you famous?”
The comment caught me off guard and put me off-balance. “I… no, I’m not famous. I just—”
“So let me get this right,” she went on, waving a nail at the courtyard. “You think it’s possible that all of us got together and we were like, ‘you know what would be fun? Let’s prank this nobody and see how freaked out we can make her, I bet we can get YouTube famous.’ Is that right?”
“No, it’s not that I—”
“Honey, I get it,” she said, waving me down. “You’re not from a traditionally magical family, didn’t get your primaries in, I’m guessing never imagined there was such a thing as magic before in your life, right? Look, I’m not from one of those families either. I understand where you’re at right now. But the way I see it you’ve got two ways to spin this bitch.”
“And those are?” I asked helplessly.
She held up a thumb. “Either this whole thing is an elaborate trick set up just for you and when it’s all over we’re gonna Truman Show this shit and you’ll be famous and probably rich or something, or two”—she counted with her first finger—“all of this is real, and you lean into it, and then you get to be a fucking magician. So the way I see it, you can pick one of those two or you can have your nervous breakdown, go home and take up a Xanax habit and tell yourself all of this was just a bad trip. It’s up to you. If they were both equally possible, equally valid options, and you were gonna choose, which one would it be? You wanna be a world famous reality TV star in the most convoluted, complicated, technological marvel of modern media culture, or do you want to be able to do shit that is literally impossible and go on to be famous because you discovered a new particle or turned dark matter into an energy source or, fucking I don’t know, gave the world lightsabers or something?”
I gaped, trying to make sense of all of that. If it was all a prank, it was elaborate. As if to help me make my decision, Serena knelt and plucked a stray wildflower from the grass. A dandelion. She held it up for me to see, and then pinched the stem between her thumb and forefinger. She crooked her free hand into a complicated gang-sign looking configuration and muttered words in a language I thought sounded vaguely Semitic, and then snapped her fingers.
The little dandelion grew before my eyes, the yellow and orange petals furling and unfurling as it opened and closed, until the petals and the leaves grew stiff and fell away, and feathery stalks replaced them. When they were full grown, Serena brought the plant to her lips and blew, then muttered another word. With this one, the seeds flitted away on her breath and in midair, not a foot from us, each turned into motes of starlight that were visible even in broad daylight as they danced up and away from us on the breeze.
She handed me the spent flower’s remains. “You’ve got two good options. Which one you want?”
“I guess,” I said, my voice barely a rasp as I struggled to process what I just saw, “I… I mean…”
“Pick the magician option,” Serena urged. “Trust me. You won’t regret it.”
I found Lucas and Isaac still staring at me. Magicians. Real magic. Was I actually crazy? Was all this a hallucination?
The two men smiled at me, then turned away to head toward the west end of the building.
“I guess,” I told Serena slowly, “if I have to choose. I might as well choose… magic?”
“Good girl,” Serena said. “Now, say it with me. ‘I’m a fucking magician’.”
I grinned as she did, her perfect eyebrow arching slowly as she folded her arms again.
“Yeah, all right,” I said, caving under her infectious confidence. What was the worst that could happen? “I’m… I’m a fucking magician.”
“That’s my bitch right there,” Serena said as she high-fived me. She took on a conspiratorial smirk as she put an arm around my shoulder. “Now, how about we skip the rest of this stupid tour and go get you ready for the pre-term party tonight. Because trust me—don’t nobody in the cosmos party like a bunch of magicians. Fact. The Yakuza got nothing on us and I once attended one of their motherfucking three-day-long blood orgies.”
“Jesus,” I laughed.
Serena shrugged. “I mean don’t get me wrong, they are a lot of fun. Let’s go.”
Lucas
“You’re sure she’s that Cresswin?” Isaac asked me as we turned away from Serena’s little display of magic. “Because if she is, why would they have invited her to Rosewilde? After what her parents did?”
I shot him a chiding look. “Now she can’t be held responsible for all that. And it’s unfair to assume they did anything at all. Do you know what happened?”
Isaac shrugged a shoulder. “A hundred and twenty-three students died that year, only seven survived. It’s not complicated math.”
There was no dearth of rumors about what had happened to the class of 1999 their senior year, but none of them could be confirmed. Everyone had a pet theory, though. Isaac subscribed to the evil cabal of magicians seeking unlimited power from some other dimension. I wasn’t so quick to reach conclusions for which there was virtually no evidence.
His opinion, at least, was somewhat more sober than many of the others, including a plot by the administration to destroy the world. Which was also ludicrous. Where would they have lived afterward? The other planes were all largely inhospitable to human life and magicians were only top-dog on this one. “I’m not arguing this again. It’s math that’s missing some variables and you know it.”
“Nathan agreed with me,” he said.
A stab of guilt made my heart twist. I paused and met Isaac’s eyes with a hard look. “Don’t do that. It’s not fair.”
Isaac dropped his eyes and looked away, sighing softly before he changed the subject like he hadn’t brought it up. “Suit yourself. So. She’s rather attractive, isn’t she?”
I rolled my eyes as we started walking again. But I didn’t disagree. Amelia was of average height, but that was all that was average about her. She wore her hair loose, and I itched to run my fingers through the thick chestnut locks. She had just enough curves to be eye-catching, but she walked as if unsure of her appeal. What I wanted most though, ever since the moment I greeted her at Rosewilde’s front door, was to tug her pouty lips between my teeth. What would she sound like with my mouth on her gorgeous breasts? “You know she was accepted to MIT as well? Physics track. Four-point-one GPA through high school and she lobbied her school board for healthier meals and was class president two years in a row.”
“That’s all very impressive but I’m afraid her student file isn’t tattooed on her forehead,” Isaac said. Let it never be said he lacked a sense of humor. “Don’t tell me you weren’t pleasantly surprised to see she was gorgeous, too. You’ve got bollocks. I’ve seen them, remember?”
That earned him a small grin, but I smoothed it before he got full of himself. “I didn’t say I wasn’t.” We turned back briefly to see Serena leading Amelia back across the courtyard toward the south wing. We weren’t the only ones who watched her. Even if no one else knew her family name, they couldn’t miss how clearly her magic begged to be unleashed. She’d have no end of offers this evening. “That’s got to mean trouble.”
Isaac snorted. “Serena’ll have her in stilettos and painted like a Kabuki dancer for the party, I imagine. She loves a new little bird to take care of and corrupt.”
It was certainly Serena’s typical modus operandi, but Isaac hadn’t had to contend with Amelia yet. “Don’t be so sure,” I muttered as I
thought about our first meeting. Inelegant, yes, but also unforgettable. “She’s the type to dig her heels in deep, and I’m not convinced she doesn’t bite when pushed too far. Doesn’t sound like her style.”
He gave a hopeful grunt, and waved me back onto our walk. Term began tomorrow, which made it our last day for uninterrupted ‘personal study’. Heading to the library put me in mind of the other anomaly. “They roomed her with Hunter, you know.”
Isaac stumbled, righted himself, and cleared embarrassment from his throat. “Sorry, what? What does that mean, you think? They know what he’s up to? It can’t be a coincidence. Did you talk to him?”
I pulled the door to the west wing open and held it open for him. “Just the usual. I’m busy, fuck off, you can leave. Remarkably civil, but maybe he was just trying to make a good impression on his new roommate.”
He grunted ruefully. “Sure. The full Prince Charming he is. Did the headmaster say anything about it?”
I shook my head slowly. “But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t aware what he was doing. I don’t think she’s a spy or anything. You should see Hunter’s walls. Warded to fuck and back. At a glance, I think it’s part glamour, but I haven’t checked to see what it shows. A tidy room, probably, for a start. Layers on layers on layers. Worse than the last time by a lot. He’s getting paranoid, I think.”
“Maybe he should be,” Isaac muttered. “Maybe we should be, too.”
We walked in silence down the hallway to the library. Hunter had his pet project, and we had ours. They’d been the same… until last year. Isaac approached the desk once we passed through the carved doors and into the smell of old ink and parchment. I swear I saw him inhale deeply and shiver as we entered.
The librarian greeted us with a nod when she looked up from a book behind the desk, her usually wild, curly black hair today gathered at the nape of her neck in a fluffy tail. Her half-moon reading glasses cut her pupils into neat halves as she looked at us over them. “Mr. Turner. Mr. Roth.”
“Hello, Mara,” Isaac said as he approached, pitching his voice into something more suave. “Just a few books to pull for Dean Maycomb. Mind if I pop into the back?”
Mara drew a small wooden square with the key sigil to the restricted stacks inlaid onto the surface and passed it to him. She eyed me as she handed it over. “And Mr. Turner?”
“Helping me out,” Isaac said. “Got to get ready for the party. Will you be there?”
“Obviously not,” the librarian said flatly.
Isaac grinned at her. “What a shame. You’d have fun, I assure you.”
Unimpressed as ever, she turned her attention back to her book. “Move along, Mr. Roth.”
Mara Eze looked like a young, dark-skinned black woman in her late twenties, but that was only because she had once specialized in temporal magic. About ninety years ago. Beautiful as she was, Isaac’s flirtation was more of a tradition than anything serious—she liked him, inasmuch as she liked anyone, and tended to trust his word. Which was ideal because, while Isaac did have a book to retrieve for the dean of alchemy, we had come for something more important than that.
“Do you think Amelia knows anything about what happened?” Isaac wondered quietly as the gate to the restricted section thudded shut and locked behind us. There was no one else inside; the glyph on the lock glowed yellow when someone was perusing the shelves to warn that silence was preferred. “Like from her parents?”
“She doesn’t even know her parents were magicians,” I said. “She’s just eighteen this past summer, so her parents would have died when she was, what, four? She’s just lost her godmother, too. It was in her file. No siblings, not aunts or uncles—no family at all.”
“Shit,” he breathed. “Well, that’s depressing, isn’t it?”
The whole affair was depressing. Isaac led me back through the shelves to the alchemy section and plucked a book from the fourth shelf down, about three inches thick, the leather edges of the spine starting to crack gradually after some six hundred years. He held the book up and shrugged. “Must be misshelved somewhere. Could take a bit to hunt it down; mind helping me?”
“Sure,” I said, and turned to stalk down the length of the back shelf to the desk where the register was kept.
In the year of ‘the incident’, there had been approximately 2,014 books checked out of the restricted section. Every one of them was recorded in the register, but due to the nature of the incident the names had been redacted. The entries took up pages 233 through 258. So far, we’d checked every book on the first four pages, one at a time, during short visits to the restricted library, and were halfway down the fifth page. Seniors with special authorization could take out restricted books for specific approved projects. Isaac had finagled a position with the dean of alchemy over the summer specifically to gain access, which was lucky because I had failed to get a position with the dean of mental arts. That honor had been given to Robert Banyon, who in fairness was a remarkably gifted dreamer.
I ran my finger down the list, looking for where we’d left off during the last visit. All changes to the register were recorded and reflected in secured copy elsewhere in the Academy, and any magic performed on the tome would be reflected as well. Casting a history spell to discover which books Nathan had ultimately pulled from the shelves would have made the process faster, but after what happened last year the deans had declared the matter closed and forbidden investigation. Supposedly, the administration was carrying out an inquiry. Strangely, none of them had spoken to Hunter, Isaac, or me.
“Ibrahim Shah’s Treatise on the True Nature of the Pauline Art of Solomon,” I read. “That’s next. What’s that? Ritual magic, you think?”
“Or mnemonics,” Isaac said. “It’s a memory ritual. I’ll take ritual, you take mnemonics.”
I closed the register and we each sped to our respective sections. It didn’t take long to find the book in mnemonics, and when Isaac turned up nothing in his section, he joined me. “You found it,” he breathed. “So?”
I had only begun to flip through pages. It was an old book, and without an index. “This would be easier if Hunter would talk to us,” I murmured.
“If you want to have that conversation,” Isaac said, “be my guest. I’ll stand on the other side of campus when you do, if you’ll pardon me. Anything?”
The book wasn’t long. Each diagram from the original text was reproduced, with an accompanying, lengthy explanation of the various elements present in them, as well as the protracted ritual which, the text explained, was designed ultimately to invite a spirit of memory into the magician as a kind of companion; a second mind which perfectly recorded information. The many dangers of this process were outlined in detail as well.
None of it looked anything like what Nathan had attempted. “At a glance, no,” I sighed. I shelved the book into its rightful place. “Well, that’s that. Only 1,573 to go. Come on, don’t want to make Mara suspicious.”
Isaac tucked the new book under his arm, signed the register, and led me back out of the restricted section where we showed the book to the librarian and received a disinterested wave of one hand. “See you soon enough, I expect,” Isaac crooned.
Mara only sighed heavily and turned a page in her book.
I walked with Isaac as far as the hallway to the north wing, which was as far as I could go. The headmaster’s office was near the entrance—only the deans and their assistants were granted access to the dean’s research laboratories. “So I should be finished up in a few hours,” Isaac said when we reached the doors there. “Meet you back at the room, or at the cottage?”
“Send me a Whisper,” I said, and jerked my thumb toward the courtyard. “There are still a few more students processing through the exam, and Larian’s temporal prism work is… well, I could be late to the party, don’t want to hold you up.”
“Sure,” Isaac agreed. He grinned and leaned in to steal a kiss, a heated promise for later. I never got tired of Isaac’s sinful mouth. I let him
and smirked back at his impish face. “See you then.”
He pushed through the doors to hurry to Maycomb’s lab, and I wandered back down the west wing hallway toward the front of the estate, happy to have a bit of quiet after a busy day.
I did have to wonder, though… Amelia likely didn’t know anything consciously about what happened with her parents. But she’d spent at least four years and nine months with them. Pulling that book on the Pauline Art had planted the seed of a thought that only began to sprout as I pushed through the wide doors from the west wing into the south.
She might not remember anything consciously. But that didn’t necessarily mean there weren’t unconscious memories she might hold. Though, I suspected getting her to let us take a peek at them wasn’t the sort of conversation that would be easy to start.
That, though, was just a matter of tactics.
Plus a bit of old-fashioned charm, perhaps, as well. And it would be a pleasure to flirt with her.
Amelia
“I can’t believe you’re wearing a sweater to a party,” Serena remarked as she led me through the back of the north wing and onto a cobblestone path down the hillside toward the sound of heavy bass. Lights were barely visible through the trees, flickering as we moved and they passed behind trunks and branches.
“It’s chilly,” I complained. “And besides, I’m just going to meet people. Not… you know.”
Hunter’s declaration of no… none of that in the dorm room wouldn’t have made a difference. The man himself hadn’t even looked up as I left. I tried to make conversation with him about going to the party, but he just stared at me blankly before I gave up. I was weirdly disappointed; it would have been interesting to get to know him outside of our shared room.
