by B. C. Palmer
I honestly did have to weigh that option for a moment. Ultimately I erred on the side of not seeming like I wanted to stare at his body, and besides—I doubted I would retain whatever wisdom he intended to impart if he didn’t. “That’s probably best.”
Isaac opened the door the rest of the way while Lucas went to his trunk and fished out a shirt. It was plain white and fit like a second skin. Great. Not really helping.
I stood awkwardly inside the room, just a few feet in, while Isaac sat in the chair at his desk and Lucas sank onto the edge of his bed where he’d been enjoying Isaac’s attention before. He patted the bed next to him, but with enough distance that I wouldn’t be shoulder-to-shoulder with him, and honestly at that point my knees weren’t a hundred percent trustworthy—traitors—so I did sit, still clutching my primer.
Lucas gently pried it from my arms, and I let it go when I realized he was doing so. “So,” he said, “what’s giving you trouble?”
“All of it,” I admitted. “I’m trying to learn Gamberly’s Living Ink, and Serena says I’ve got the somatic component right and I could say the semantic part backward and forward at this point in my sleep but it just won’t happen for me. Serena says it’s because I’m not actually using magic. Like, the magic part of magic.”
Lucas flipped through the primer to the page where the instructions were laid out and nodded. “She’s probably right,” he said. “It’s part of our primary education—kids from magical families—and most of us get in touch with it pretty early to one extent or another. It’s the tricky part, honestly.”
“Can you help me with that or am I a hopeless case?” I asked.
Lucas reached to his desk and plucked a pen from a stand and used it to mark the page before he set the primer aside and turned to me, pulling one knee up on the bed. “If you can be kind of open-minded,” he said, “I probably can. It requires some flexibility. Like, mental and emotional flexibility.”
I spread my hands helplessly. “It’s that or fail out, I guess.”
“Basically,” he agreed. He licked his lips slowly, and then pursed them as he glanced at Isaac. Isaac only looked on with apparent interest. “So… magic is about balance. It’s about a combination of stillness and action, a kind of cosmic anticipation. Think about drawing back a bowstring, but before you can shoot the arrow you have to construct it while you hold the string.”
My stare was probably vacant because his eyebrows mushed together in the middle with obvious pity. “I haven’t actually shot a bow before,” I said. “But I guess I… kind of get it?”
He chewed his lip and looked to Isaac for a moment. Isaac only shrugged a shoulder. “Go on, Master Lucas. I’m fascinated.”
Lucas snorted softly and chucked a sock at his friend, partner, not-boyfriend. Were all magicians this “it’s complicated?”
“Smart-ass,” he muttered before he turned back to me. “All right then… try this. Ever had a lover who could take you right up to the edge of a really intense orgasm, but then hold you there, balanced on the edge, not coming down but not quite tipping over yet? And how it feels like you could just disappear into the space between the two states? This kind of endless, cosmic place of being and not being, where you start to dissolve into nothing and everything all at the same time?”
There came that heat again. I crossed my ankles, then decided maybe it was better to just cross everything right up to the thighs. “Um, no,” I rasped. I feigned a cough. “Something in my throat. Uh, no, that has never… I’ve never had someone quite that… is there like an analogy that’s not quite that and more like the bow thing?”
Isaac leaned to rest his elbows on his knees. “It’s actually ideal,” he said. “Even if it’s a little edgy, pardon the pun. The thing is, magic is an intimate experience between you and the universe. It may as well be sex.”
“Ah, but sex and intimacy are not the same thing,” I pointed out, proud that I’d retained at least a few good lessons from my godmother.
Lucas grunted. “Not if you’re doing it wrong, they’re not.”
Touché, I granted him silently. “All right,” I said. “So do I just nip off to the bathroom stall and figure it out?”
Isaac swallowed a chortle.
Lucas cleared his throat and scooted an inch closer on the bed. “That’s an option,” he admitted. “The other, though, is probably more fun.”
“And you’re more likely to get it in one,” Isaac pointed out. His voice was that deep dark velvet again. Immediately I thought of his hands on Lucas and what they’d feel like on me.
It wasn’t as subtle as I imagined he thought it was. I found it difficult to move although I told my body to stand up and politely decline the offer. It didn’t; it seemed it had joined my face in the free republic of my body. So, instead, I scrambled around my brain looking for words. Any words, really. “Yeah,” I whispered, and there was no point trying to speak any louder because it wasn’t happening, “it’s just… not that I don’t find you very… we just don’t really know each other like that yet. And also I’m… you are both really just kind of—is it the uniform, or…?”
Lucas did back off a little. He folded his hands on his lap and smiled at me. “It’s not the uniform, Amelia. Look, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want. It’s culture shock, I completely understand. Up there in your head, there are a lot of rules and regulations the world out there gave to you. Your teachers, your par—your godmother—maybe your preacher? About how the world works, how people work. Being a magician isn’t that. I’m not saying you have to change everything about yourself, but that box is holding you back. There are no rules, Amelia. Not the ones you thought there were, anyway. Being here, you replace them with new, wider, more flexible rules. Rules that you’re meant to find ways to break. I’m not going to hurt you, or force you into anything; neither will Isaac. If you can relax a little, though, and let yourself feel like you can do anything, I promise—you’ll be able to do anything. Think about it. Anything.”
Isaac had leaned back in his chair as well, and swiveled the chair away from me. “You can go whichever way you want. That’s what being a magician is. Charting your own path, by whatever rules you prefer.”
Lucas stood from the bed, and held my primer out to me.
Somehow, I expected more of a hard sell. I’d been with one guy, my sophomore year of high school. It was… not exceptional. But he’d talked a good game and gone on and on, and made promises, and he’d even kept one or two of them. I’d liked Gary, and he seemed safe enough, and in the end he was. And that was about all he was.
There was some unspoken promise in the way Lucas spoke. In the way Isaac casually watched on. A kind of “no pressure here, but you’ll be missing out” that I couldn’t miss and couldn’t entirely make myself walk away from. They were… easy. Like all of this was no big deal.
And was it? I thought so, but I didn’t know why I thought so. It was some mysterious rule.
I decided to break it. Just the once.
“I mean, if you really want to… um, show me, then… I mean it is a school. I’m here to learn.”
Lucas smiled and looked away, and I could swear there was just a hint of pink in his cheeks. He laid the primer carefully on the desk, as if it might break or jump off. He rubbed his jaw, eyed me sideways, and then nodded to himself. “I promise, we’re very gentle teachers.”
I held up my hand to stop this from going further. “The door needs to be closed.”
“People can just project—”
“Zzzt—” I interrupted Isaac, much to his obvious amusement. “For my sanity. I won’t be able to relax if I think someone can just walk by and check out everything I’ve got going on.”
Lucas took the few steps and closed the door, even exaggerating the motion it took to lock it. Now, I just had to forget the fact that others might be watching us in some magical spy shit way.
I looked between Isaac and Lucas, arousal and apprehension warring with one another wi
thin me. I’d never been one for casual hookups and wasn’t sure how we did this. When I finally admitted as much, Isaac’s humorous grin turned salacious. Suddenly I wondered if Serena knew what would happen when she sent me here.
Isaac looked to Lucas, rubbing the same hand he’d used on the other man over his chin in apparent thought. “Which would you prefer, theory or practicum?”
Lucas dragged his gaze over me and my throat went dry. This was supposed to be a lesson in magic, but his eyes promised something else entirely. His eyes met mine even as he answered Isaac. “Theory, this time. Besides, if you explained it, we’d be here all day, and as enjoyable as that would be—we have classes.”
Isaac smirked and I let out a squeak as he moved the chair so that he sat right in front of me. His eyes held an amused challenge. “Lie back, Amelia, and think of the universe.”
“Um,” I started but Lucas distracted me, his face inches from mine. I had to lie flat on his bed, a mirror of his position from earlier, else risk our faces collide. My eyes flickered to his lips, wondering if he planned on kissing me.
I felt strong hands wrap around my ankles, lifting my feet until they rested on the bed. I clamped my legs shut and reached to keep my skirt covering everything.
“Tick-tock, Miss Cresswin,” Isaac teased, his hands ghosting up my calves, coaxing me to relax. “Remember, the universe.”
“Right,” I choked out. I opened my eyes once more, not realizing I had closed them. Lucas was there, an understanding smile on his face. I was hypnotized by his eyes, losing myself in the fractals I found there.
“Are you with us, Amelia?” he asked, idly playing with a strand of my hair with one hand. His other reached for my knee, spreading my leg open to Isaac’s view. “You must open yourself to magic.”
I found myself clinging to the sheets as if they could save me from drowning. Isaac brushed the fabric of my panties with his knuckles and I was embarrassed at how wet I already was. They hadn’t even gotten into my panties yet, and this was already the best I’ve ever had.
“Magic is this wonderful, amazing thing,” Lucas said, bending his head until his lips brushed the shell of my ear with every word. His fingers teased the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. Each finger tap brought him closer to my pussy, which was entirely too eager for his attention. He snapped the band of my underwear as he spoke a sharp word. “Magic lets us break barriers, to remove things in between us and what we want. What we crave.”
I let out a soft gasp as I felt a finger drag up through my lips, exploring me. “You vanished my underwear?” I barely got the question out before Isaac’s mouth replaced his hand.
He licked me like a man possessed, and I was helpless against his tirade. This man, someone I’d exchanged a handful of words with, devoured me. Gary had gone down on me, but it always felt like something he did in exchange for sex.
Isaac? He hardly knew me, but he was already pulling me closer to the edge of an orgasm. He certainly knew what he was doing. All the while, Lucas murmured in my ear, his hand having crept up until it rested on the mound of my pussy. It was an anchor against the storm Isaac was building.
“Don’t run from it, don’t run toward it. Just be in the moment, in your body.”
Lucas’s words fueled the storm racing through me, my legs quivering on either side of Isaac’s head. But I tried, for him. For Lucas. I let myself stop thinking about how I’d just met these two men days ago. I let go of this last summer. Of MIT. Hell, even of Gary.
I lay back and thought of the universe—even if my universe had narrowed down to Lucas’s lips caressing my ear and Isaac’s tongue fucking into me.
“Feel what it’s like to be in that anticipation.” Lucas never stopped his lecture. “Something magical is about to happen, Amelia.”
Oh, fuck, he was right. I could feel my orgasm building as I pitched my hips upwards against Isaac’s mouth. Instead of pulling away, my need seemed to renew his fervor. I was so, so close.
I needed—I ground against Isaac, frustrated in such a primitive way. “I need—” I held my breath, waiting on the edge.
“Breathe, Amelia. Never hold back. Magic has to flow, move. In and out. Breathe with me.”
Lucas’s lips were suddenly hovering above mine. They were so soft, barely touching mine. He breathed in, and it was as if he breathed for us both. He held my gaze and we breathed together. This action was somehow so much more intimate than Isaac eating me out, keeping me on the cusp of orgasm.
“When you’re ready,” Lucas whispered against my lips, “when you have gathered all that potential within you, you have the power to choose. To decide to cast the spell. Not a moment too soon, nor too late. Commit and release yourself.”
I felt my orgasm coiling in my body, winding me tighter and tighter. I felt full, as if I contained multitudes, each shared breath deepening the power. Thickening it, making it nearly tangible. And just when I thought I was going to explode…
“Now, Amelia. Come for me.”
I released all of that energy, that pleasure, orgasming so strongly I nearly sat upright. A hoarse shout ripped from my throat and I collapsed back onto Lucas’s bed, empty but thrumming with power and satisfaction.
I couldn’t speak right away. Instead, I just kept swallowing, like a fish stuck on land, while Lucas continued to brush his lips against mine and Isaac’s mouth lingered around my upper thighs. The world gradually started to take on its usual forms—gases, liquids, and solids instead of the ethereal plasma it had been for what seemed like an eternity.
“So endeth the lesson,” Lucas murmured. “Think you can give it a try or… should we let you sleep?”
I gasped as Isaac caressed the inside of my thigh again and began to squirm between them, trying to put myself back in my body. “I should,” I said, and accepted Lucas’s help to sit up.
We shifted around on the bed, giggling a little as limbs got tangled. Isaac simply leaned back in his chair, his leg crossed over his knee and a satisfied grin on his lips. For as wild as magicians apparently were, the school seemed intent on making sure only so many people would fit on these things. Probably a good idea although, based on the pre-term party, it was obvious everyone found ways around that little limitation.
Lucas provided me a pen and my notebook, and placed the pen in my left hand. I contorted my right hand into the appropriate shape—and took a minor correction from Isaac—and rehearsed the spell’s words in my head a few times.
“Now,” Lucas said, his breath warm on my ear, “think back. Close your eyes. Breathe deep. Be in between. Remember what it felt like to be held on that edge. Not running to it, not running away. Feel it here.” He laid a hand on my chest, between my breasts.
“And here,” Isaac muttered, and slipped a hand under my shirt to rest on the lower part of my belly. “At the same time. Connect them.”
Having each of their hands on me made it easier, and in a moment of breathing and letting myself float under their touch I almost couldn’t tell the difference. And then, something began to vibrate gently inside.
“That’s it,” Lucas said softly. “Sink into it. Let it build in you, around you.”
I nodded absently and let the vibration rise and become a strange kind of tension. I could feel it then—if I pulled away from it, it would fade. If I rushed to get to it, it would come pouring out. Instead, I let it be, and become.
“When you’re ready,” Isaac said. “Focus on your hand, and on the words. Don’t push the magic. Let it go with your intention.”
It took a moment longer, but when it felt right I spoke the words and passed the pen through the open space in my right hand like dipping it into oil. There was resistance, too. Just the slightest feeling of passing through some gelled substance.
The moment the last syllable of Greek left my lips, the vibration inside seemed to flow out of me like a quiet storm of bees. I let it go.
Lucas and Isaac took their hands away and gave me a bit of space. I was smiling. So wid
e it almost ached. I relaxed my right hand and barely noticed the ache as I took the pen in it and realized I could feel the enchantment. Like invisible gossamer clinging lightly to the surface.
“Just scribble anything,” Lucas urged, tapping the notepad. “Doesn’t matter what, as long as there’s ink going onto the page. Just think anything.”
I nodded once, and pressed the tip of the ballpoint to the paper and dragged it gradually between two of the faint blue lines.
The ink came alive, curling itself into loops until, in my cursive, it read, I did magic.
“Oh my God,” I breathed. My eyes burned and misted with a mix of joy and wonder.
The letters curled again. Thank you.
Lucas chuckled softly and kissed my temple as I stared at the miracle. “Any time, Amelia.”
Isaac’s arm draped over my shoulder. “Look at that. You’re a fucking magician. Well done.”
Amelia
With a fresh understanding of how to access magic itself came a whole new world of helpful little spells courtesy of the Essentials Primer. Over the next few days I filled three notebooks full of lecture notes, and managed to cast three other spells—one to clean small stains, one to make an object about the size of a textbook disappear and reappear, and one to make a small light for studying. It took hours of practice each time but was worth it when I tried to keep studying during lunch and frequently spilled or dropped something onto my Rosewilde blazer.
What those practical little spells did not do was help me master any of the dozen ancient languages that seemed to be a part of every text on magic. Thaumaturgy was largely in Greek, with supplemental materials in Latin. Elemental Essences was mostly theory and in English, but all the reference materials recommended by Professor Xi were in Greek or an extinct dialect of Cantonese. Even the sacred geometry class relied largely on Sanskrit texts.
